Wishes, Dreams & Other Things

Photo Art Friday - February 10, 2012

2012-02-09T21:55:00.000-08:00

Hello! - Hey it's Friday and time once again for another great addition of Photo Art.
Please join us over on Bonnie's Blog (Pixel Dust Photo Art) where this weeks theme is open to whatever you want. Bonnie did mention last week since Valentine's Day is rapidly approaching that if we wanted to go that route we could so I did! Here is what I came up with.

For this I used one of Bonnie's newest textures: Ephemeral. I changed the hue to suit my photo and lightened it as well. Then I went to Picnik added the Viginette feature and the Postage Stamp Frame and Text. Pretty straight forward and easy but I think it turned out really pretty.

Please stop by and leave Bonnie some comment lovin and let her know how much you enjoy Photo Art Friday. Pop by a few of the other entrants and then why not give this a try yourself.

Have a great weekend.

KK Texture Tuesday - Live Your Life

2012-02-09T09:58:00.000-08:00

Here is my entry for Texture Tuesday. I took this photograph of a Seed Pod in my flower bed yesterday. It's been so dreary here this week with fog, rain and overcast skies. Still if you look closely enough you can find interesting things that you might overlook. I rather like how this turned out and hope you do as well.

I used Kim's texture, MusicLovin for this piece. Please click on it for more detail.

Photo Friday Challenge - Animals

2012-02-06T09:03:00.000-08:00

For my Macro Monday Shot click HERE:

Carly (The Simple Things) has a new challenge on her blog called Photo Friday where a theme is picked and you post a photo according to the weeks theme. This week the theme is, Animals. Well hey I've got plenty of those running around my house so I just had to participate! Of course you probably know that my photo is going to be of a cat since we have 6 of them and you are correct. My shot is of a cat but not one of our own.

This is "Piglet" the stray that has adopted us. He likes to sit in the empty window box outside my Craftroom window. It was raining but it's under the eaves so he wasn't getting wet. However he does have a pretty pathetic look on his face as if to say, "Hey why can't you let me in." notice that there is one of our cats on the desk looking back out at the other kitty.

I'd love to let him in but with the other male cats in the house I don't think that would really be a good idea.
Be sure to pop over to Carly's blog and join in on the fun.

Macro Monday 2-6-12 and Your Sunday Best Shot

2012-02-05T21:28:00.000-08:00

Hello friends!. It's time for Macro Monday(Lisa's Chaos) and today I'm also entering another "new to me meme" called Your Sunday Best Shot over on Nancy's Blog, A Rural Journal. Sounds like fun!

Friday while walking Coleen home from school she picked up something out of the street and said, "Grandma look at this." - It was a small piece of a branch off some tree. I found it quite fascinating and decided to take it home and photograph it. I tired taking shots outside but the stray kitty we take care of kept trying to eat the branch so I ended up bringing it inside and taking photo's on our window ledge.

Here is my shot for Your Sunday Best and Macro Monday:
CLICK ON PHOTOS TO ENLARGE

Now Nancy did say, One Shot Per week but I'm going to show 2 other shots below just because this branch was so interesting. I hope she won't mind. We'll consider them "Bonus" shots!

Please stop by both Lisa and Nancy's blogs and check out some of the other participants blogs. It's fun and you get to see some amazing photography.

Scavenger Hunt Sunday - February 5, 2012

2012-02-04T21:48:00.000-08:00

Welcome! - Hope that you all have had a great week. It was pretty much a normal week here. Oh I should report that I did have great bowling scores (for a change) this past Tuesday - 146 (which is 1 pin over my average), 192 and 180! Now if only every week I could bowl that well.

Okay time to move on to this weeks Scavenger Hunt Sunday . I really liked the prompts for this weeks hunt. I just wish the weather would have been nicer so I could have actually got out and found some better shots for some of the prompts. So please try not to laugh to hard at what I came up with for a few of the prompts.

CLICK ON PHOTO'S FOR A LARGER VIEW

First up,
Strike a Pose: For this one I decided to dig into the Archives mainly because this particular photo was one that I just couldn't pass up sharing.

This was taken last summer when Coleen was playing outside and wearing a cape that her great-grandma (my mom) had made for her. She started posing and I started snapping away. Priceless!

Footwear: Yikes this one I just wasn't sure what to do but I finally settled on taking a picture of Coleen's Rain boots. They have Frogs and Flies on them...Aren't they fun!

Hobby:
Well lately Photography has become my newest hobby but I still love Rubber Stamping/Card Making so I'm sharing the latest of a card I made.

Shiny - This is the one you need to try and not laugh at. It's a stretch but here it is:

I was laying in bed and happened to see the way the light from the window was shining on a hanger above the bathroom door and thought it would be cool to take a picture of it. It's not the greatest photo but I do think the sunlight turned the hanger into something quite shiny.

Color Me Green - Again another photo from the Archives as I wasn't going out in the rain to find something Green to photograph (I know what a wuss!)

I took this last fall when I was doing a series about fall images and just didn't post it then. I love how all the Ginko leaves are strewn down the sidewalk creating a carpet of Green.

So that's it for this week. Next week the prompts are:
Facial Feature, Shadow, Spicy, Gold and Fabric.

Be sure to check out Ashley's blog and the other enteries. It's always a real treat.
Have a great weekend.

Photo Art Friday - February 3, 2012

2012-02-02T21:01:00.000-08:00

Hello! - Happy Friday. - It's time once again to join Bonnie over on Pixel Dust Photo Art for, Photo Art Friday, This weeks suggested theme, Surprise. That's a pretty wide opened theme. I'm pretty much always surprised by anything I create as Photo Art because it's all so new to me.

For this week I started out with a photo of some Thistles that I took while on my walk last weekend with Coleen. I started playing around in Gimp using some of Bonnie's textures and trying to learn how to do Layer Masks etc...I'm not very good at trying to figure out directions in Gimp and mostly I just fiddled around on my own and I think that I actually got a mask to work the way I wanted it to but I have no clue as too what I did so I have no formula to tell you about as far as the results I got. - Sorry.

Here is the first of my attempts:

I do know that for this one I used Bonnie's texture, Light Dust

I'm not sure but I think I used the Difference Mode on this at some point to get the text to be white but again I didn't write it down so I can't be certain.

Next up I tried the same texture and on this one the Thistles showed up just the way I wanted them to.

Finally my last version is probably the one that "surprised" me the most. Oh not so much in what I did with it (although I do like how it turned out) but more so because while saving it I accidentally hit (Save) instead of (Save As) and sadly my original photo went to photo la-la-land. I tried to do a System Restore on the photo but for some reason there was no previous version to restore so I can't show you the original photo.
Not much of a surprise but a lesson learned.

Anyway I used Kim Klassen's texture, Simplicity for this one and then added a quote using Picnik. This is being entered for Texture Tuesday.

It's always a, Surprise when you start playing around seeing what you can do with your photos. Who knew that something so ordinary as, Thistles could be so beautiful.

So don't forget to check out the other enteries for PAF. Have a great day.

Macro Monday - Flowering Bush

2012-01-30T09:06:00.000-08:00

Welcome! - It's Monday and time for another great round of Macro Monday photos.

You can find all the links here on Lisa's Blog.

I'm a little late getting my post up because I couldn't decide which photo I wanted to use. I took a walk on Saturday with my little Granddaughter, Coleen and naturally took a lot of photo's. Some were Macro and some were not. We had a good time and discovered some things we hadn't seen before (see post below).

I finally settled on this lovely photo of a flowering bush on the college campus. I'm not totally sure what type of a bush it is but I believe it is a type of flowering Heather. At any rate it was so pretty and a nice spot of color which was refreshing since it's still winter here.

Enjoy!

Scavenger Hunt Sunday - January 29, 2012

2012-01-28T22:32:00.000-08:00

Well here we are once again at the start of a new week and it's time once again for,

Scavenger Hunt Sunday on Ashley's blog, Ramblings and Photo's. This is always such a fun challenge. Each week you are given 5 "Prompts" and the object is to take photo's during the week relating to each of the prompts and then post them. You can use (Archived) photo's if you get stumped but hopefully that doesn't happen.

This weeks prompts were:
Smile, Stand Alone, Rusty or Old, Artificial and Repeating Pattern. So are you ready to go on the hunt with me? Then let's get started:
Smile:

I tried earlier in the week to do a "photo session" with Coleen to get a picture of her smiling. Let's just say none of those photo's were very successful. Today however she was outside on my mom's porch and picked up the cat we've dubbed, "Piglet" and I snapped this sweet photo of the two of them. Look at that natural smile, ah beautiful!

Stand Alone:

I live in a town called, Walla Walla and this is a statue of one of the Indian Chiefs of the Walla Walla Tribe, His name was, PeoPeoMoxMox-Yellow Bird pronounced: (Pew, Pew, Mox Mox) - Try not to laugh. You can read about him here:

While some say this statue is not a true rendering of how he actually looked I rather like it.

Rusty or Old: Oh this one was difficult. Not so much in finding old or rusty things but more so because I had a hard time deciding which photo to share. So I'm going to share 2 for this prompt.

Today Coleen and I took a walk and discovered these items along the way. Both are located on the grounds of Walla Walla Community College. The first is some sort of Metal Art Sculpture and the next one is part of a Sculpture called a, Campanile which means, Bell Tower in Italian.

I'm also sharing a little video of Coleen playing on the Campanile.

Artificial:

I borrowed my mom's Artificial Fruit and got creative using texture and text in (Gimp and Picnik) I used a couple of Free textures from Bonnie (Pixel Dust Photo Art) the textures I used were: Goodness and Acceptance both of which Bonnie offers, Free.

Repeating Pattern: This one stumped me a little and then I settled on this photo:

I think the Geometric Design of the College's Dome qualifies as a, Repeating Pattern; don't you?

So that's it for this week. I hope you've enjoyed my Interpretations of the Prompts. Don't forget to stop by Ashley's blog and check out some of the other links.

Next week: Strike a Pose, Footwear, Hobby, Shiny, and Color Me Green.

Photo Art Friday - Jan. 27 and the Roast that almost wasn't.

2012-01-26T21:21:00.000-08:00

Happy Friday! - It's been a good week. The ice/snow has finally melted and things are back to normal around here. Well almost...You see the challenge this week for Photo Art Friday (PAF) was to create a piece of Abstract Art using 3 photo's or cropped portions of 3 photo's and at least 1 of Bonnie's textures. I was "scared to death" of this challenge. I mean how on earth could I take 3 cropped photo's and create Abstract Art with such limited knowledge of Photo Editing.

I decided to give it a try though so I begin picking out photo's that I wanted to work with. I chose the following 3 photo's that were cropped to fit my needs.

I know it's a pretty odd combo of pictures but I like how this turned out. Again I want to add that I "tried" to write down the steps that I used to get my final effect but after several different changes along the way things sort of got muddled up as far as what I did so I'm giving you the best explanation that I can but it may not be totally exactly what I did.

I started by taking the Cropped Frog photo and adding the Brick Building/Tree Shadow Photo over it. First I re-scaled the shadow photo so that it was the same size as the Frog. Then I used Bonnie's texture: Heavenly in Difference Mode at 45.5% Next I took the Cropped Portion of the Berries which had already been Posterized and added them using Soft Light at 69.3% I added another layer of the Heavenly texture with the Hue adjusted using Soft Light at 20.8%

Here is what I came up with:

So how does all this fit into the title of my post? Well you see after I finished this version I started playing around with it doing different things on Picnik (which sadly is closing) and came up with some other versions.

This one is the same photo but I used the "Boost" feature on Picnik:

Pretty bright and certainly, Abstract.

Still playing around I Inverted the 1st Photo on Picnik and got this version:

So then my mom came over and I was showing her what I had done and decided to show her how I came up with my piece of Abstract Photo Art. I messed around with the 1st photo this time using Gimp and some Color/Hue changes and created this last version, which is my favorite of all of them.

I didn't write down the formula for this one though so I have no idea how I got the final version.

At this point I looked at the clock, it was 4:30 and it was time to start fixing dinner. I went to the Refrigerator and discovered the Roast that I had bought and was going to fix for dinner. Well needless to say at that late hour it was too late to start cooking a roast and still eat by 6:00 pm so we opted for Take-Out from KFC and the Roast waited until the next day.

I need to make a note when playing around to make sure dinner gets cooked on time!

Be sure to check out all the other Fabulous pieces of Photo Art on Bonnie's Blog.

Macro Monday 1-23-12 Frozen in Ice

2012-01-23T10:32:00.000-08:00

Happy Monday! - I missed last week for Macro Monday so I thought I'd join in this week.

Due to the icy conditions outside the past few days I haven't really been out much so I wasn't sure I'd have anything to share.

I did manage to get out on Saturday and took a few photos outside around the house. I'm sharing one that I took of a rose branch in my mom's flower bed.

This was the side view and below was a view from the back where you can see one of the leaves encased in the ice.

Scavenger Hunt Sunday - January 22

2012-01-22T11:16:00.000-08:00

It's time for:

Oh my gosh it's been a BUSY week here. Monday was a holiday so Coleen was home from school. Tuesday she wasn't feeling well so she stayed home from school. We had Bowling League so she had to go with us to the Bowling Alley. She was home from School again on Wednesday which happened to be my mom's 83rd Birthday. Wouldn't you know it...It snowed on Wednesday and the roads were nasty. Had to bake a cake, do some shopping etc...but the family all made it over for the birthday celebration. Thursday school was canceled due to freezing rain making the roads way to treacherous to be out on. Thursday also happened to be Coleen's Birthday. She turned 7. We had a little party for her that evening. Then yesterday was her "kids" birthday party. She had 4 little friends over. So where is all this leading...Well I didn't have much time for the
"Prompts" for Scavenger Hunt Sunday so I've combined 2 of the prompts and also used an Archives photo but at least I'm posting. So without further ado let's get started.

This weeks prompts were: Sunset, Black and White, A Day in My Life, Four (suggested series of 4 photos) and Colorful.

Sunset: This one is from the Archives as there haven't been to many sunsets lately with the overcast, stormy skies of late. I took this one back in November 2011 looking down our driveway towards the back neighbors.

Black and White: These are my Granddaughter, Coleen's pet Rats (which now reside in our basement) They are of course, Black and White rats but I took the photo in BW as well and I like how it turned out. Meet, Cheesy and Wheezy:

A Day in my Life and Four have been combined. I was a bit "stumped" about what I could use for the (Day in my Life) prompt. I'm home most of the day and spend a lot of time on the computer but my craft/office space is a disaster right now so I really didn't want you all to see what a mess the room is. So I'm sharing photo's from Coleen's birthday party yesterday which was part of a day in my life since she lives with us and is a big part of my life. I've also shared 4 photo's from her party for the number 4 prompt.

Lastly: Colorful: These are the "Goodie Bags" that Greta fixed for Coleen to give to her little friends as a thank you for coming to her party. I think they are pretty colorful.

Next weeks prompts are: Smile, Stand Alone, Rusty or Something Old, Artificial, and Repeating Pattern.

Wow I could not believe how many people participated last week. Over 150!

Needless to say I did not get around to every one's blogs to comment. But all the entries were great and I can't wait to start viewing this weeks entries.

Winter Magic

2012-01-21T12:33:00.000-08:00

Well we finally hit 40 degrees today!!! - It's been a rough few days since the snow and freezing rain. I know I've said this before and I think I'll say it till the day I die...I am so NOT a Winter person. Didn't like it much as a kid and I like it even less as an Adult.
However....it does make for some lovely photo's so I guess the saying that there is beauty in everything must be true.

So for your viewing pleasure here are a couple of Wintery photo's that I took this week.

Branches from one of the 3 Fir trees we have in front of our house.

I'm not sure what kind of a tree this is but those seed pods are pretty interesting and haven't fallen off the tree so the snow on top of them make for an interesting shot. I just wish it was a little brighter.

Lastly I'm sharing a picture of my mom's dog, Rusty. He looked so "peaceful" sleeping on the snow with the sun shining down on him. He's 13 years old and is 1/2 American Eskimo and 1/2 Chow. He was a pup from our two dogs (Angel-Chow and Rebel-American Eskimo) both of whom have now sadly passed away.

Hopefully winter won't last too long or at least we won't get much more of the "white stuff" because while it makes for pretty pictures it also makes it very hard to get around and I hate driving on icy roads.

Photo Art Friday - Jan. 20 and some Birthday Stuff

2012-01-20T08:43:00.000-08:00

Hey it's Friday! - Did you get snow in your neck of the woods. Much to my dismay ours arrived late Tuesday evening (after 11:00 pm) so Wednesday morning we woke up to this:

I am so NOT a winter person. - Wednesday was also my mom's 83rd Birthday and by evening the roads had gotten pretty doggone slick as it had started raining (freezing rain) by then. Thankfully the family all made it over to celebrate her birthday in spite of the nasty weather.

So now let's head on over to Bonnie's Blog, Pixel Dust Photo Art for this weeks Photo Art Friday addition.

This weeks assignment was to create an Photo Art piece using the number 3 as a starting point. For added excitement we could also use one of 2 new "Free" textures of Bonnie's on our Photo Art. I loved both textures so I decided to pick one and use it for my Photo Art.
I started with this:

I chose the texture, Off Kilter : Then I used the Difference Mode (which now I can't remember what percent I used) and got this result:

This seemed a bit dark to me so I decided to hit the Auto Correct button on the Microsoft program and look what happened:

I played around one more time. This time I used Difference at 70.1% then saved and used the Auto Correct button again in Microsoft and got this version:

How fun is that! - So which is your favorite? I think I like the last one the best.

This week was so busy with 2 birthdays back to back. My mom's was as I stated, Wednesday and Coleen's was Thursday. She turned 7. Due to the nasty weather School was canceled on Thursday and Coleen had been home all week due to the MLK holiday on Monday and she was sick Tuesday and Wednesday so she's had a long week at home (so has Grandma).

Here are the Birthday Girls:

There is school today although it's delayed by 2 hours so I really don't see why they even bothered. Oh well. I knew the almost 70 degree weather on Jan. 4th wouldn't last but a girl can dream can't she!

So be sure to check out all the other great Photo Art enteries on Bonnie's Blog.

Have a great week. Stay warm, safe and dry.

Scavenger Hunt Sunday - January 15 2012

2012-01-15T11:04:00.000-08:00

Hi, Well I almost didn't participate in this weeks Scavenger Hunt Sunday due to the fact I just didn't have time to photograph all the prompts and some were really "hard" to find around here. This weeks prompts are: Stacked Up, Winter Wonderland, Sweet, Hole and Frozen.

But then I decided to go with what I was able to get this week and use a couple of photo's from the "Archives" to complete my set.

Let's get to the hunt:

Stacked Up:

My little granddaughter likes to come up with new things to occupy her time and one day she created a coin sculpture of Sponge Bob! I took this Macro shot of his body. Below is the full shot of Sponge Bob in coins so you can see the full creation. She's a clever little girl.

Winter Wonderland (Where?) - Okay we have had just about "el zippo" of snow this winter so where was I going to get a Winter Wonderland shot? Now if this was next weeks prompt I might have been able to have got a photo since Snow is in the forecast but alas I had to resort to my archives for this one. 2008 was a "Banner" year for snow so check this out:

Oh yeah, that's a lot of snow. I am so NOT a winter/snow person so I'm happy to have no current Winter Wonderland shots to share. Sadly the people who owned those lovely trees across the street from us cut them down this year. I miss them.

Sweet: Okay I had planned to bake something yummy this week and photograph it but just never got around to doing so. Instead I happened upon two of our cats sleeping together in a chair and the first thing I said when I saw them was, "How sweet" so guess what you get. Give Up?

This is Miss Dottie and Callie-Jo who usually don't get along that well actually being civil in the same chair. I think they look pretty, sweet.

Frozen: While we haven't had snow we have had cold temperatures and frost has been abundant on Van windows since we don't have a garage. I hate having to scrape the windows but the frost does look kind of pretty.

Last up: Hole - This was another one I struggled with. I thought about doing something out of the box like using a Donut Hole (not the actual hole in the donut) but those little pieces of the donut that are punched out of the donut. I know, weird huh?

Okay I didn't get creative at all but I like what I came up with even if it's another one from my Archives. This was taken last November at the city park.

I took this looking inside one of the kids tunnels outward at the park bench. I really like this photo for some reason.

I hope to visit as many of your blogs as possible and comment. Last week there were over 100 entries and believe me it takes quite awhile to pop by all those blogs and comment so if I don't leave a comment on your blog it's not because I don't enjoy your work but time wise I'm finding it difficult to comment on every one's entries.

Next weeks prompts are:Sunset

Black and White

A Day in My Life

Four (suggested approach: a set of four photos that go together...four photos of your pet, around your house, scenery, whatever you like)

Colorful

Have fun joining in on the Hunt or just enjoying every ones interpretations of the Hunt prompts.

Photo Art Friday - Jan. 13 Birds of a Feather

2012-01-12T21:01:00.000-08:00

Happy Friday! - Well the weather has certainly cooled down from last week and the dreaded (Snow) is in the forecast for next week, much to my dismay. I am so not a "Winter" person but I'll survive.

In the meantime it's time for Photo Art Friday on Bonnie's Blog, Pixel Dust Photo Art.
This week Bonnie asked us to use one of her FREE texture's in our Photo Art. She has some really great textures to choose from so be sure to check them out.

I've chosen to do not 1 but 2 pieces of Photo Art this week and a couple of different versions. I hope you like them. I struggle with Photo Art because I don't know half the time what I'm doing and not having Photo Shop I've had to try learning to use Gimp (a free program similar to PS) and just haven't had much luck learning it either. I would love to take a class so I could have someone show me how to do different things.

In the meantime I do what I can so here goes.

Original Photo #1 - Taken at our local city park Bird Aviary.

This is a female bird: The male is really a gorgeous bird. I'll have to share his photo another day.

For my 1st Edit I used two of Bonnie's textures: Sapphire Dust and Acceptance.

I also edited the photo on Picnik adding a Matte look to the photo and the quote.

For this edit the same two textures were used but at different levels. Then I tried to get creative and added a layer of a photo of some leaves that I had taken as well. They were softened on Picnik before adding them to the photo.

Here is the picture of the leaves.

They aren't real visable in the photo by you can see the color and some of the leaves in the upper portion of the photo.

Next up: For this photo I've chosen the Male bird.

Again I have two different edits of this photo. For these photo's I used:

Bonnie's Cinnamon texture and Acceptance.

This was also edited on Picnik using different features there and adding a Canvas feel to it along with the quote.

My last photo uses just the Cinnamon Texture and a few edits on Picnik.

I tried hard to write down what I had done but after several different changes my paper started getting all mixed up with different edits and before I realized it I couldn't figure out which edit went to which photo.

I'll try harder the next time to keep everything straight.

Macro Monday - 1-9-12 The Bracelet

2012-01-09T10:01:00.000-08:00

Happy Monday! - It's good to be back to a somewhat "normal" routine after the holidays.
So now it's time for Macro Monday on Lisa's Chaos. Her entry this week is awesome. Be sure to check out the other participants as well.

So here is mine for this week:

This is one of the links in one of my favorite bracelets It also happens to be my favorite link of the bracelet. All the links I believe are types of Shell and yes the ones with the cracks were meant to be that way.
A few years back I was out shopping a couple of weeks before Christmas and spotted this bracelet in a store. I loved it and called my hubby to ask him if I could buy it. He said, Yes, get it as an "early" Christmas present from me!" Of course I still got other gifts but how fun it was to indulge in something so pretty.

Here is the entire bracelet:

Have a great day.

Scavenger Hunt Sunday - Jan. 8 2012

2012-01-07T21:01:00.000-08:00

Hello - It's been a good week. In fact I've enjoyed most of this week. Coleen went back to school so my mornings have been quiet and my time has been mine to do what I wanted. This week I decided to get back into joining in on Ashley's, Scavenger Hunt Sunday prompts. I spent some time outside this week and inside as well getting pictures to match this weeks prompts.
One Color, Laundry, Empty, One Dozen and Soft. - Some of these I thought were going to be hard but they actually came pretty easy once I started taking photo's.

Up first for One Color: Took this one during breakfast this morning after a lightbulb went off in my head about how my breakfast was, One Color.

Yum! - What's better then Peanut Butter and Bread!

Next up: Laundry. - At first I thought who wants to see a pile of dirty laundry, we have a lot of that around our house on any given day. We don't have a close-line for cool outdoor shots of clothes blowing in the breeze so I wondered just what I could get to capture laundry to make it interesting. Low and behold the problem was solved when I spotted this in the living room one morning:

Doesn't Captain Cuddles look content perched on top of the clean towels that hubby had folded the night before. He slept there most of the morning too before I decided to put the towels away.

Moving right along let's see what I decided upon for the prompt of, Empty.

I had thought about a shot of my empty coffee cup or the bag of BBQ potato chips that I couldn't stop munching on while watching TV but ended up with something totally different. I had started out on a drive to go photograph some Geese and as I started to drive past our city park I had another "light-bulb" moment and quickly pulled into the park. This shot is also being entered in Shadow Shot Sunday2 . This will be my first time participating there.

This is the fountain at the park and well it's obviously "empty" as now water is flowing in the fountain nor the basin either. - I like how the shadows of the trees are falling across the fountain. It was a lovely day outside to take pictures.

Next up: One Dozen. Again I thought, who wants to see a picture of a Dozen Eggs in a carton (not very original) well at least not to me. I really got lucky when I took this photo. I was trying to get a picture of a bunch of black ravens in the trees behind our house but they flew about the time I snapped the picture. As "luck" would have it I just happened to be able to capture 1 Dozen Ravens flying in this picture. Okay I'll, "fess-up" and admit that I did crop out a few of the birds in the photo and I'm not counting the ones sitting in the trees. If you look closely in the upper left of the photo there are 2 birds flying together so you have to count them as more then just one bird.

This last one is my favorite of the week. I had the pleasure of finally meeting my newest relative, my "Great-Niece, Callista Claire Antes who was born on December 19th, 2011.
We were suppose to meet her Christmas morning but her mom wasn't feeling well so sadly we had to wait but it was worth it. She is just so precious and yes, she's:

Soft! - See how I worked that last prompt in!

Can't wait to see what the new prompts will be. Sometimes they are easy to come up with shots for and sometimes, not so much but they are always fun and challenging.

Do take the time to stop by Ashley's Blog and check out some of the other enteries.

Photo Friday Challenge - Selfie

2012-01-07T09:46:00.000-08:00

Hi, Would you like to try a new photo challenge? - Carly from The Simple Things has started a new challenge. It's called, Photo Friday Challenge. This week the theme is to take a "Selfie" or self-portait of what else, yourself and share a link to your photo.

I thought I'd give it a try. Now I want to clarify that I don't have a fancy camera, don't take good pictures of myself and find it hard to get them with my little point and shoot but I tried and that's what matters. Here is my picture. I'm being "goofy" for the camera because being serious just doesn't seem to work for me. I did do a bit of editing on Picnik and sure wish that corner shelf wasn't in the photo but cropping it more took away from the picture concept so I left it in. Oh I should also mention that I took this before getting dressed for the day. I'm still in my bathrobe and haven't showered or fixed my hair so I'm a bit of a "hot mess" as they say so hopefully my picture doesn't scare anyone!

Thanks Carly for doing these challenges. It was fun and certainly a challenge. You should have seen some of the "rejects"...scary!

Photo Art Friday - Jan.6-8th

2012-01-05T21:01:00.000-08:00

Hello, I trust you are all off to a great start in this brand New Year! So far things are going well here in "Wally World" (aka - Walla Walla, WA). - In fact hard as it is to believe yesterday we hit a "record" temperature here of 69 degrees! I know it won't last but it sure was nice.

So now let's join in on the fun over on Bonnie's Blog, Pixel Dust Photo Art for Photo Art Friday - This week was sort of an (easy) assignment as Bonnie asked us to revisit our favorite photo or piece of photo art from 2011.

Here is mine:

I loved the way this turned out. The sheer sense of Joy on my granddaughter's face was just delightful.

A funny thing though is later when I was talking to her about this picture she said she didn't like it and that she was only pretending to be happy so I'd quit taking pictures of her! - Does it spoil the photo for me knowing that, not in the least. She looks happy and joyful and no matter what that is how I will always view her when I look at this picture.

Don't forget to check out the other enteries to see what captured other people's attention as their favorites for 2011. Here's to another great year of pictures and photo art.

Remembrance

2012-01-04T11:13:00.000-08:00

Today is a day of "Remembrance" for me. It's the anniversary of my dad's death in 1998. - It's hard to believe that 14 years have past since that day. Sometimes it seems like only yesterday. So much has happened in the 14 years that he's been gone but one thing remains the same. That is that I still love him and honor him as my father even though he is no longer physically with me.

Below is a picture of my dad taken in 1996, just 2 years before he passed away. He's attending a Potluck dinner at the Bowling Alley. He and my mom both bowled on a Senior League at that time. He would have been 75 years old in that photo.
My dad loved bowling, hunting, fishing, model trains and yes, Potluck dinners!

"Dad I miss you."- I cherish all my memories of you, the good ones and yes even a few of the bad ones. You were a great dad and I'm still your "little girl". I know you are enjoying Heaven and someday I'll see you again. Love always., Ida"

He was a wonderful man with a great sense of humor and an easy, laid back personality. People always seemed to enjoy being around him.

Below are a couple of photo's of the flowers my mom & I took out to the cemetry today. Normally we take flowers from our gardens but it's January and there are no flowers blooming. Well there are a few hardy Snapdragons in Coleen's little flower bed still bravely blooming away but not enough for a good bouqet so we bought our flowers at the store instead.

Macro Monday - Welcome 2012

2012-01-02T09:24:00.000-08:00

HAPPY NEW YEAR! - Wow the holidays are over and I survived!

It's time to join in again on the fun at Lisa's Chaos for Macro Monday. Today I am sharing some of the fun from New Year's Eve at our house.

How about some Party Decorations

Yes we put on Party Hats, Beads and had our Party Horns ready to blow when the New Year Arrived. Goofy Fun for sure.

What Party would be complete without some Party Food. - We had plenty of that. Here are the Meatballs and a Salad.

Yum! - We had lots of other stuff as well and it was all good.

Lastly what New Years Party would be completed without some Fireworks. This last photo isn't technically a "Macro" shot but hey you can't really get that close to these things but this seems close enough.

I wish everyone a fantastic New Year filled with lots of great things and some wonderful photography too. Join in on the fun and check out all the other enteries at Lisa's Blog.

Happy New Year 2012

2012-01-01T00:01:00.000-08:00

HAPPY 2012 FROM THE KRAUSE & ANTES GANG:
Mike, Coleen, Greta, Marian and Ida

Here's to the promise of a great New Year! May God grant us peace, joy and love through out the coming New Year.

Visions of Sugar Plums

2011-12-23T09:39:00.000-08:00

Hello, I've been away for awhile trying to get things ready for Christmas and haven't had time to post of blog surf/comment much. I apologize for not stopping by your blogs and commenting but it's just been crazy around here. I hope to be back to regular posting and commenting/blog viewing after the start of the New Year.

I did whip up this little photo today to keep you all in the Holiday mood.

I used one of Bonnie's textures - Pixel Dust Art Photo(Blue Me Away) on this photo. Then I uploaded it to Picnik did a little editing there and added the text. This is one of my Christmas Decorations.

Below is the same photo but look what happened when I used the (Auto Correct) feature in the Microsoft editing program.

Isn't that weird and yet I like it too!.

Macro Monday - Dec. 19

2011-12-19T08:25:00.000-08:00

Hello! Yes, I'm still alive. - It's been awhile since I've posted so I thought I'd best get something up before people started thinking I'd dropped off the face of the earth.
Just super busy getting ready for Christmas.
It's time though for Macro Monday on Lisa's blog. It's always a pleasure to see what people have posted. Today I chose to share one of my "cheery" Christmas decorations with you. He use to be an ornament but now he sits next to a decorated Christmas cabin.
Just in case I don't get by all your blogs I want to wish you all a very MERRY CHRISTMAS and a HAPPY NEW YEAR as I am not sure I'll be posting until after the New Year - That may change but I like to cover my bases. Have a great holiday everyone and thank you for all your wonderful support and comments. Looking forward to sharing more in the coming New Year.

Photo Art Friday Dec.9-11

2011-12-08T22:23:00.000-08:00

Hello! Well the count down towards Christmas is going by quickly. I spent most of today out shopping until my feet hurt so bad I could hardly walk. Still not done but I will carry on.

In the meantime let's have some FUN and visit Bonnie's Blog (Pixel Photo Art) for Photo Art Friday this is the last one until after the New Year so be sure to check it out. Everyone is showcasing something to do with Holiday Preparations, Decorations, etc...

I chose one of my favorite Christmas decorations to showcase. I used various techniques on Picnik and a couple of Bonnie's textures for my photos. So here goes:

This one was mainly edited in Picnik using the Vignette feature.

The second one was soften in Picnik and I added a texture from Picnik but I don't recall which one. I messed around doing several different things and added a frame and once I got something that I liked I closed my photo and this is the result. I really should write this stuff down but I was in a hurry.

This one uses Bonnie's texture, (Abstract Scratches) and 1960's Picnik and Vignette features.

I think this one is my favorite.

See you back for Photo Art Friday in 2012.

Macro Monday - December 5

2011-12-05T09:52:00.000-08:00

Happy Monday! - It's time for Macro Monday at Lisa's Chaos.

For today's Macro I am sharing a shot of one of the newest neighborhood cats/strays that we've taken to feeding. This guy showed up about 3 weeks ago and we have no idea if he belongs to anyone in the neighborhood or was dumped or lost. He hangs around though and enjoys the food and the milk we leave out. He especially loves milk as you will see in this photo. We've named him, Piglet as he drinks milk like it's going out of style and does a pretty good job on soft cat food as well. I truly wish people who have cats would not leave them outside especially at night and during the winter when it's cold outside. If I had my way every cat in the world would have a nice safe, warm place to stay but alas that just can't be so I do my part to make them as comfortable as possible.

He's a really pretty cat and tame enough that I can pet him and he'll come in the house although he's very skittish about coming inside and I can only let him in after all our cats have gone to bed for the night. He just comes in for a few minutes and then wants back outside.

Below are a couple of pictures of him that I really like too.

Be sure to stop by Lisa's blog and check out the other Macro Monday enteries. Always inspiring and interesting. Have a great week.

Scavenger Hunt Sunday - Dec. 4

2011-12-03T22:07:00.000-08:00

Hello. - Wow time is sure marching by quickly. I am so not ready for Christmas yet but it arrives right on schedule (ready or not).
So are you ready for this weeks Scavenger Hunt Sunday. Yes it's time for Ashley's Scavenger Hunt over on her blog: Ramblings and Photo's. - I wasn't able to participate last week but made an effort to get my pictures ready for this week. For one thing Ashley chose 2 of my suggested "prompts" for this week so how could I not participate.

This weeks prompts were: Portrait, Nostalgic, Time, Full of Light and Motion.

So here we go:

I'm not sure this would qualify as "portrait" quality but it's a pretty decent photo of my little Granddaughter, Coleen taken at the Christmas Light Parade on Saturday night. It's not easy getting a good picture of her these days as she's always looking off to the side or up in the air instead of at the camera so I was happy to have snapped this happy photo.

Nostalgic: This was one of my prompts. - I knew right away what I wanted to do for this photo.

These sweet little Angels belonged to my Grandmother. She passed them on to me one day shortly before she passed away in 1988 - They are a part of her that I treasure. I believe they were probably made in the 1930's-40's and are of course "vintage" now.

Next prompt: Time (also my suggestion) - For this I decided to photograph the Clock Tower on the Whitman College Campus here in Walla Walla.

Full of Light:

These little Gingerbread Figures and House are part of our holiday light display between our house and my mom's next door. They sit in her yard. We really light up the neighborhood with our lights.

Lastly: Full of Motion: This one was a touch one for me. I ended up with something a bit different (at least I think it is).

These are little bells hanging off a Christmas Santa that plays, "Just take those old Stockings off the shelf." to the tune of Bob Seger's, Old Time Rock-n-Roll.

So there you have my interpretations of this weeks prompts. Don't forget to stop by Ashley's blog and check out what other people have done.

Photo Art Friday - Dec. 2-4

2011-12-01T22:05:00.000-08:00

Hello! Well with the holiday season in full swing now I haven't had a lot of time for editing photo's and such. Due to the Thanksgiving holiday in the US I was unable to participate last week for Bonnie's, Photo Art Friday challenge. I have prepared something though for this week.

We were to try a new technique or tutorial etc...that we've been wanting to try. I really didn't have a lot of time to try and learn a new technique or find a tutorial to try and follow. So I went with something that I sort of understand now how to do.

Here is my "Before" photo:

This is my newest Christmas decoration. I fell in love with this Angel the minute that I saw her. She is so beautiful. The problem was that she was a bit "spendy" ($75) so I called hubby and asked if it was okay to buy her. He said, YES!

So I have edited my photo using one of Bonnie's FREE Christmas textures that she offered here: This one is called, Christmas Music.

I used the GIMP program and did a few adjustments (which of course I didn't write down) and then went into Picnik and edited the photo, went back to Gimp and reapplied the texture again using different settings, back to Picnik and voila~ finished up with this:

I hope to get by all your blogs to leave comments but time is so limited these day with so many things to do before Christmas arrives. So if I don't get around to commenting on your blog please know that I truly enjoy all your work and hope that once the New Year is here life will once again settle back down to a normal routine and I will have more time for commenting.

Before I close I'm going to share a picture of the Angel in full length.

Macro Monday - November 28

2011-11-28T07:42:00.000-08:00

Hello and Welcome! - Wow it's been a few days since I've posted. I want to apologize to anyone who has visited my blog and left a comment if I have not gotten around to visiting your blog and commenting back. With the Thanksgiving holiday here in the US and my Granddaughter being home from school and my mom having to go in for doctor's appointments I just have not had the time nor the energy to comment on every one's blogs. I try my best to leave comments on your blogs but if I don't it's not because I don't like your work but more because I just don't have enough time to get it all done.

Okay with that said it's Macro Monday on Lisa's Chaos and let me just say I popped by there quickly this morning and you are going to be blown away by her photo's.

This week I'm sharing 2 photo's because I couldn't decide which one I like the best.
The first is a bit of an "out of the box" type photo for me. I took this one out at my Husband's Shop the other day. It's sort of a fun and whimsical photo (imho).

He's working on a big computer desk project and these wood shavings were on one of his tables. Don't you just love the way they curl up in little corkscrew shapes.

Next up is a picture of what I believe are Apples or some type of fruit/berry that I saw on a tree one night as I was driving to the store. I liked the yellow color of the fruit, that's what caught my eye since most berries on trees are either red or orange in the fall it was surprising to see the yellow color.

So that's it for me today. I am trying hard to work on getting a few Christmas cards made this week and then start getting them ready to be mailed.

Be sure to pop by Lisa's blog and see all the great entries for this fun challenge.

Macro Monday - November 21

2011-11-21T08:16:00.000-08:00

Hello & Welcome. - Hope the start of the new week is a good one for everyone.

It's time to join Lisa (Lisa's Chaos) for Macro Monday.
I just love seeing the world up close through the use of a Macro Lens. The detail is often astounding.

Just the other day I went in to get my Allergy Shot (I'm allergic to cats) - Yes I know we have 6 of them living with us. Call me "Crazy" but I can't resist them. - Okay now back on track here ("Focus Girl - Go get another cup of coffee and get on with the task at hand.")

As I was saying when I went to get my Allergy Shot I happened to have my camera along (imagine that) and as Coleen and I were coming out of the Clinic we stopped to look at the little fountain/garden area at the entrance of the building. There were still some flowers blooming and I decided to take some Macro Shots of them. Here are my results SOOC except for resizing.

I love the delicate lacy look of these flowers. They do seem a bit "pale" in color so as a bit of fun I uploaded the first picture to Picnik and gave it a bit of a color boost with the Orton-ish feature:

Ahh...Sunshine on a gloomy November Day!

Have a great week. Don't forget to stop by and check out the other entries. It's always amazing to see what everyone has come up with.

Scavenger Hunt Sunday-November 20

2011-11-20T08:12:00.000-08:00

Hi! - Welcome back. It's been a fairly quiet week here (whew!) - My mom's been doing well this week which makes me feel a lot less stressed. So I had some time this week to play around and capture some photo's for this weeks, Scavenger Hunt Sunday

This weeks prompts were: Mainly One Color, Around the Home,

Reflection, Writing and Water.

So here is what I came up with.

Mainly One Color:

Once again I've captured one of the many squirrels that come to the feeder out back to eat peanuts everyday. This little guy just sat there eating his peanut while I snapped away. So cute!

Next up is, Around the house: This is a pretty typical scene around our house on a daily basis. You can always find one of them somewhere in this position.

My next two photo's have been editing using techniques on Picnik

Reflection: I wanted to do something different other then a picture of a reflection in water since (water) is also one of this weeks prompts. I wasn't sure exactly what I wanted to do and then an idea came to me. I must admit I actually took my camera with me in hopes of finding something just like this to photograph. I also had my "model" with me as well since she so enjoys visiting the local Fabric/Craft Store.

This is my Granddaughter, Coleen looking at a Christmas ornament and her reflection in another ornament.

Writing: This one was tougher but after some thought I went and got my old "memories" box out and found a letter that my mom & dad had both written to me while I was away at Bible College many years ago. This letter was extra special because my mom always wrote me while I was there but my dad wasn't much of a letter writer so gettting a letter from both of them was very special. I decided to give it a bit of a "vintage" feel since the letter is almost 40 years old. I added a Postage stamp frame around it keeping with the theme of writing/letters.

Lastly, Water: This is a bit different because I decided to capture the stream of water running from one of our drain pipes into my flower bed. I like the simplicity of this photo.

Hope you have enjoyed this little photo journey.

Be sure to stop by Ashley's blog and check out the other links as I'm sure you'll be delighted by visiting others blogs and seeing their interpretations of these prompts.

To all my US followers I wish you all a very warm, safe and Happy Thanksgiving this week.

To everyone else may you have a great week.

Peace and Love

Photo Art Friday - Pure Joy

2011-11-17T21:00:00.000-08:00

It's Friday! - You all know that can only mean one thing...It's time for Photo Art Friday

on Bonnie's Blog, Pixel Dust Photo art.

This week we were asked to showcase one of our favorite techniques in Photo Editing and share what we did to get that effect. Since I'm still learning and have a "long way" to go before I can pick out a favorite technique I'm going to have to say that just about anything I am able to edit is probably a big accomplishment for me. I love SOOC photo's but am learning that they can be a lot of fun and really unique when you edit them as well.
So for this week here is my SOOC shot: It's a shot I took of my granddaughte, Coleen playing in the leaves at the park.

Next I added a Texture (Autumn Grunge) which is a FREE texture offered by Linda of Sienna Photo Designs here: I added the texture using the Gimp program (a Free photo editing program) found here: I used Hardlight at 85.1%. Then I closed the photo and uploaded it on Picnik (I love this website) and used the Orton-ish effect, Bloom 30%, Brightness 50%. - Then I added a quote that I looked up by Emily Dickinson. I used the Font, Bleeding Cowboy also in Hardlight.

Here is the results of my edits:

Well that's it for this week. Be sure to stop by Bonnie's Blog to check out the other enteries for some fantastic photo art.

Mosaic Monday and Macro Monday - Signs of Autumn

2011-11-13T21:01:00.000-08:00

Happy start to a new week! - Things here are going okay. Still worried about my mom. She's still having issues with her BP and now I'm trying to learn to cook low sodium menus which is not as easy as it sounds. Do you know how much Sodium is in foods. Far to much! But you didn't come here to read about that so lets move along to something more pleasant.

I thought for a change I join in on Mosaic Monday on Mary's Blog, Little Red House. This is my 1st time participating but I love the idea of putting together collages/mosaics of different subjects. For my Mosaic I chosse, Autumn as my theme. I went out last Friday with my Granddaughter, Coleen on a walk and took a bunch of pictures of different things. Here is the mosaic I created:

I used Picnik to upload and collage my photo, then did a little editing with the Orton technique and Vigenette.

It's also Macro Monday over on Lisa's blog, Lisa's Chaos. Now all of the above photo's were shot using the Macro feature on my little Canon Power Shot camera but I am going to share another photo not in the collage that I took the same day.

These are the seed pods of what I believe to be a Maple tree of some type but I am not positive. ETA - Thanks to Stewart of Paying Ready Attention I have since learned this tree is a type of Sweet Gum ( Liquid Amber (Liquidambar styraciflua)) - If you do a Google search you can learn more about this tree.
You can see one of the leaves in the mosaic above. Aren't they cool looking!

Be sure to check out both links for other fabulous mosaic and macro shots. You won't be disappointed. Have a great week.

Veteran's Day in Review

2011-11-12T15:18:00.000-08:00

Thought I'd share a few photo's from yesterday's Veteran's Day parade. - It wasn't a huge parade, nothing super fancy, very few bands but still nice. I took my granddaughter, Coleen with me. - I felt the Veterans there, especially the eldery one who came out from Nursing Home's to ride in the parade deserved to know that people still care & appreciate what they did for our Country and also to support those who are still serving.

The local High School Color Guard with the presentation of the Flag followed by the Sponsor Corp. Drill Team

The Valley Transit Trolley carrying some of the Veteran's along with Wheatland Village Veterans

One of the Bands that played in the parade.

One of the Antique Cars in the parade followed by one of the Muscle Cars from the parade.

Coleen being goofy. They were passing out Frisbees, Key Rings, Bottle Openers, Pencils, lots of candy etc...along the parade route and she decided to put this on. Naturally she was looking the other way instead of at the camera (she does that a lot these days, it's hard to get a good picture of her).

We met another BIG dog at the parade too. This one is an, Irish Wolfhound.

Lastly a lady offered to take our picture together. Forget that we're both "squinting" and that my "double chin" (Ugh) is showing.

We had a good time and that's all that matters.

Photo Art Friday - The Frog and Seed Pod

2011-11-10T21:01:00.000-08:00

Welcome! - Did you all have a nice week. It wasn't to bad of a week here.
I'm still battling a bit of a cough from the Cold I've slowly but surely been recovering from. My mom had to go off her Cholesterol medicine as it was causing her joints to hurt and she was in a lot of pain. She's feeling better day by day though.
My bowling this week went well (156-145-179) so I was happy about that. Coleen has been good all week, hubby is doing well and staying very busy, and weather hasn't been to bad so I can't complain.

Now it's time to show off my work for Bonnie's Photo Art Friday

Last week I played around with a photo but forgot to write down what I had done to it but I've decided to share it along with another one that I did write down the edits.

First up is my original photo:

This is the seed pod of my Oriental Poppy. I think it looks beautiful just as it is, SOOC but I did play around with the photo and came up with the following.

Again I am not sure of the edits I did on this. I do know that I used one of Bonnie's textures,
Acceptance and added a frame around the image as well using something in Gimp.

So now on to my 2nd Photo: See below.

This is a Frog Statue that sits on a corner in the down town area. It's called, The Thinker. I really think it's a fun little statue all by itself but then I did some creative editing and love how it turned out. This time I managed to write down the things that I did to my photo. (Hip, Hip, Hooray!)

First up in Gimp I edited the Brightness/Contrast of my Original photo. Then I added Bonnie's Texture, Happy Day at 55.4% Soft Light. Next up I went in to the Picnik programs and used the feature called, Lomo-ish, Blurred the edges 50% and Faded 30%.
Then I added the text.

I'd love to be able to do more things but figuiring out how to use Gimp is challenging to say the least.

If you'd like to see more great Photo Art be sure to pop on over to Bonnie's blog where everyone posts their work. It's pretty awesome.

Is it a Dog or a Small Pony!

2011-11-10T11:50:00.000-08:00

Yesterday I took Coleen to the park after she got home from school. It was a lovely Fall afternoon and I wanted to do something fun with her and naturally I decided to take my camera along.

We were getting into the car to drive over to the play ground area when this man and his ~~pony~~ or rather his dog walked by. The dog started to poke it's head inside the van and when I turned around to look I was shocked by what I saw. This was no small dog. We got out and talked with the man and he let Coleen pet his dog. His named turned out to be Adonis (a fitting name) and he told us the dog was a, European Great Dane.

Coleen was a bit "aprehensive" about petting the dog but the owner said he was a gentle dog and he told him to sit and told Coleen to take ahold of his collar so I could take her picture with him.

Can you imagine feeding a dog that size. The man said his wife had recently had knee surgery and she normally walked the dog so he'd gained some weight and now he was having to take him for walks to see if they could get some of the extra weight off him.
What was really funny was there were some other people walking their dogs, a small Scottish Terrier and a small Poodle and when they saw this dog was loose they quickly started to head off in another direction until the man assured them that his dog wouldn't hurt their dogs.

I mean if I was a small dog and I saw that "horse" of a dog heading in my direction I'd be a bit scared too but he turned out to be a very well mannered dog.

Watery Wednesday and a Blog Award

2011-11-08T20:57:00.000-08:00

Found a new challenge (well new to me) called Watery Wednesday and decided to give it try.

Here is my photo:

This lovely little bridge and waterfall is located in a yard around the block from our house. My granddaughter and I often walk past it on our walks. She likes to drop leaves, twigs etc...into the water and watch them float under the road. It's such a peaceful little piece of scenic beauty. I hope you enjoy it as well.

I was given this wonderful award by Nancy over at A Rural Journal -Thanks so much Nancy.

I need to tell you 7 facts about myself that you may not know. I find this hard to do at times but I'll give it a try.

1. My very first job was picking Strawberries and I started in the fields when I was 11 years old and my last summer of picking was my Senior Year in High School.

2. My most embarrasing High School moment was walking into the men's room by mistake. All of the bathrooms in the High School except one had the women's room on a certain side of the building. Naturally the one building that didn't would be the one I walked in on while a bunch of guys were inside.

3. Most people know that I'm a "Cat Lover" but my very first pet was a little dog named, Bandit.

4.After High School I went to a Bible College in Canada but only stayed one Quarter as I got Home Sick and had to move back home.

5. I'm a hopeless "romantic" and love watching shows like The Bachelor and Bachelorette.

6. I resist "change" of almost any kind and often fear trying new things. Once I won a Free flying lesson and a White Water Rafting Trip but turned them down out of fear.

7. I've always been interested in Photography but never thought I could do well at it until I started participating in various photography blogs this past year. I love it!

Now the object is to pass this award on to other bloggers so I am going to pick out 5 blogs that I've started visiting within the past year. You are NOT required to participate back unless you would like to. I just want you to know how much I enjoy your blogs.

Evelyn at Within My Focus

Darcy at My 3 boybarians

and

Laura at Happy HomemakerUK

Thanks for inspiring me with your wonderful blogs and photography.

Macro Monday - November 7

2011-11-07T08:13:00.000-08:00

Oh my goodness I almost forgot to post my pictures for Macro Monday on Lisa's Blog.

It's always amazing to see the world up close and personal through the camera lense.

Today I'm sharing a few pictures of a little Spider that I became rather fond of after spotting it on one of my rose bushes. It camped out on one of the blooms for several days until the wind blew off all the petals one day.

My first shots are the spider and it's "catch of the day"

I love the detail on this as you can see the Spider looking right at me with those little "beedy" eyes!

Now he's mad because I'm intruding on his meal time so he's moving the bee off.

Okay a couple of days later I took a few more shots of my little spider friend.

By this time we were becoming pretty good friends as far as Spiders and Humans can be. Normally I am scared to death of spiders but again after shooting this little guy so many times it was becoming less frightening to me. Although I do admit when it started to rear up on it's back legs I backed off rather quickly.

So are you tired of my Spider friend yet...I hope not as I have two more shares. These were taken a few days later and I actually got the spider out of the rose bloom and onto the stem so I could get some shots of the wonderful color and markings on him.

Sadly after the rose petals fell off he moved on to green pastures (or rose bushes) as I have not seen my little friend since.

Scavenger Hunt Sunday - November 6

2011-11-06T00:01:00.000-07:00

Hello and Welcome - It's always a pleasure to have you stop by and see what's new here on my blog.

It's time for Scavenger Hunt Sunday over on Ashley's Blog Ramblings and Photo's.
I didn't get to participate last week but am excited about sharing my photo's this week.

The "Themes" or "Photo Prompts" are: Food, Purple, In Disguise, Shapes and Photographers Choice.

So let's get started:

From my "Archives" - Cotton Candy - Macro Shot
Below a current photo: Cinnamon Shredded Wheat

Purple: - I only have 1 purple photo to share. - Took this shot of some Pansies blooming in my mom's flower bed. The weather has turned pretty cold but some plants are still blooming and this was one of them. So bright and cheery.

Next up: In Disguise. With Halloween just past I couldn't resist showing a photo of my little Granddaughter, Coleen all dressed up in her "Ladybug" costume.

I also have another "Archive" photo taken earlier last week that I really like and thought it would be fun to share. This is a "promotional" Horse/rider for a Wine :Headless Red.

Shapes: - I'm sharing two different photo's of patterns on some old bridges here in town.

This one is my favorite of the two:

Lastly it's Photographers Choice. For this I'm showing my Original photo and then an "Altered" version of the same photo.

To alter this I went to Picnik and used the Vignette and Neon features.

Photo Art Friday - Feeling Squirrely

2011-11-03T21:30:00.000-07:00

Hello and Happy Friday! - It's time for one of my favorite weekly features. Photo Art Friday on Bonnie's Blog, Pixel Dust Photo Art. This week she challenged us to try a new technique, new editing tool, something out of our "norm" etc...So since I'm pretty much a "newbie" when it comes to anything photography related that left things really wide open for me. I'm going to start by saying that I am slowly but surely searching out tutorials on how to use the Gimp program to edit my photos. Since I don't own PSE and can't afford it I'm using Gimp as it's "Free".

For starters this week I found a short explantion on how to use the Brightness/Contrast feature to edit an (okay) photo and make it a (better) photo.

I started with this picture of a Squireel that I'd taken awhile back on the shed in my mom's yard.

This is my "Before" version

Here is my "After" version. - I think this one looks much crisper/sharper.

Next up is another Squirrel photo I took out in our back yard area where we park our van. We have a Feeder there that the squirrels visit on a daily basis for the Peanuts and Corn that I put in the feeder. This one was up in a tree just under the feeder. Later there is a video of this squirrel so be sure to check out my entire entry.

I did a little editing with the Microsoft photo editing program. Then I decided to play around with this photo using Gimp. I ended up using a feature called, Pencil Sketch and came up with this photo below.

I really like this effect and it's something that I haven't ever tried before so I think it qualifies under the challenge.

Now I promised that there was a "Video" so be sure to watch this little ditty. - I happened to be outside when I heard some squirrels chattering back and forth. I went in and got my camera and decided to video tape them. After locating them in the tree I started filming. You can obviously tell that something was really upsetting these poor squirrels. The one really starts chattering rather boisterously. I couldn't figure out what on earth was bothering them (until later)...

Later after I'd gone to the store and returned home I spotted something on the shed behind the fence next to the squirrel feeder. I happened to have my camera with me and was able to snap this photo just before said squirrel deterrent fled the scene.

Kitty must have been laying on top of the shed while the squirrels were in the tree hoping one would come down for peanuts and become said kitty's lunch! Curses....foiled again.

Macro Monday Meets Monster Mash

2011-10-30T22:46:00.000-07:00

It's Monday and here in the US it's also Halloween. One of my favorite holidays since I was a kid. What's more fun then dressing up in a costume and going door to door filling up a bag with yummy candy!

In honor of this holiday for my Macro Monday on Lisa's Chaos & 31 Days of Reflection I am show casing Halloween Ghoulishness.

Can you guess what this is?

This is a close-up of a Floormat that I purchased many years ago and decided it made a much better wall hanging. Who would want to walk all over something this awesome.
There is no artist listed anywhere on this rug and oh how I wish there was as I just love this piece and would like to know if there is anything else out there like it.

Talk about "Scared to Death" this look pretty much says it all. I edited this in Black and White for a much spookier effect.

Below is what this actually is:

It's actually a Styrofoam pumpkin. The stem was chewed off by one of our cats a couple of years ago so maybe that's how the look of fear arrived on this poor pumpkins face!

For my last musical reflection I am going with: Monster Mash by Bobby "Boris" Pickett and the Cryptkickers (don't you love the name of the back-up group).

Happy Haunting!

31 Days of Reflection - Cowboy Logic

2011-10-30T09:45:00.000-07:00

Hello and Welcome. - Well today is the last day of the PBR Bullriding finals so once again my musical selection relates to Cowboys. Today I have chosen two songs, Cowboy Logic sung by Michael Martin Murphy and Mama Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Cowboys by Willie Nelson

The first one is just a FUN song and the 2nd one I'm sharing because after watching some of yesterday's PBR finals and seeing the hits the cowboys and bull fighters took it seems like a very appropriate song. - Check out this link to see what I'm talking about:

Long Live Cowboys!

31 Days of Reflection

2011-10-29T13:25:00.000-07:00

Happy Saturday! The day is rapidly winding down and I realized I hadn't yet posted my 31 Days of Reflection, musical selection yet. In keeping with my "Cowboy" attitude for the PBR Bullriding Finals once again I am sharing a song about, Cowboys.

This time it's (Even Cowboys Like a Little Rock-n-Roll) by Chris LeDoux with Charlie Daniels. - I had the pleasure of hearing Chris in concert just about a year before he passed away.

Take care and I'll be back tomorrow with another musical selection.

Thought I'd also share a shot (taken off the television screen) of, Trickster one of the Bulls at the PBR Finals.

Delicious Autumn

2011-10-27T21:37:00.000-07:00

Hello and Happy Friday! - First before I get to my entry for Photo Art Friday I want to thank everyone for their thoughts, prayers and get well wishes for my mom. I am happy to report that her BP seems to be under control now. She had a good report at her doctor's visit on Wednesday and is feeling much better now. I am slowly but surely catching up on e-mails and other stuff so hopefully I'll be able to visit each of your blogs and leave comments on your photos.

Here is my entry for this week.
I used Bonnie's Medieval Magic texture (again-can't seem to get enough of that one) on my photo. Then edited further in Picnik. Doggone I keep forgetting to write down what I do to these photo's. At any rate I really like how this turned out and hope you do as well.

In case you can't read the quote I added: Delicious autumn! My very soul is wedded to it, and if I were a bird I would fly about the earth seeking the successive autumns. ~ George Eliot.

Here is my Original Photo:

Now for those who may have noticed I have missed another couple of days of my 31 Days of Reflection musical selections. During the past couple of days our Internet was off due to lines being cut at a construction site about 50 miles from where we live. So I've not been able to be on the computer much and just couldn't get songs posted.

We are "Big" PBR (Professional Bull Riders) fans and the Built Ford Tough finals have started in Las Vegas this week. In honor of that event I am posting: Willie Nelson's,
My Heroes Have Always Been Cowboys as today's musical selection.
Enjoy

Macro Monday & 31 Days of Reflection minus a couple

2011-10-24T08:51:00.000-07:00

Wow it's been a tough few days but I'm hanging in there.
My mom is home from the hospital and doing okay but there are still issues I have to deal with like taking her to doctor's appointments, taking her BP and being the "worrywort" that I am I tend stress over the little details far more then I should.

So here is my entery for Macro Monday over on Lisa's blog.

I was out taking photo's of "orange" items for another challenge and this was one of my Zinnia's. As I was shooting photo's this Box Elderbug walked onto the flower and I snapped a bunch of pictures. I liked this one the best. I love how this photo shows both the detail of the bug and the flower.

Hope you all have a wonderful week. I will try my best to get around to comment on the other enteries. If I'm not able to leave comments on all your blogs I just want you to know that I really enjoy looking at your photo's. Don't forget to pop over to Lisa's blog and check out all the other enteries. There are some awesome shots there.

Since I've missed a couple of days now of my 31 Days of Reflection due to being at the hospital with my mom I thought I'd just pick up here today and continue on through the month as I am able to.

My selection for today: Obladi, Oblada by the Beatles. Also used in a TV called, Life Goes On, I think it's fitting given my life the past few days.

Scavenger Hunt Sunday - What a week

2011-10-23T10:09:00.000-07:00

Wow I did not think I would get this up and posted but here I am. I've spent the last 2 days at the hospital with my mom. You can read more about this below after my post. - It's time for my entry for Scavenger Hunt Sunday.
The words this week were: Orange, Fly, Under, Words and Always look on the bright side.
I strugged with a few of these but finally got something done so lets get started:

Orange: I didn't want to do a Pumpkin photo for my orange so I decided on this photo of one of my Perennial plants, Some type of a Wallflower plant. I love the color of this plant and sure hope it will weather the winter here.

Fly - Taken from my photo Archives. I tried and tried to think of something for this and couldn't seem to get any decent shots. I took pictures of airplanes but they were blurred, I tried some Carrier Pigeons but the shot wasn't close enough, I tried an Ariel Act at the Circus but the lighting was to poor so finally I remember this incredible (imho) photo that I had taken and just happened to get lucky enough to catch the bee in flight.

Under: This one gave me some trouble but not to much. I decided on taking a photo of the underside of a toadstool in my mom's yard. I'm sure the neighbors thought I was nuts laying on the ground with my camera snapping pictures of a toadstool. It's not the greatest of photo's but I think it works.

Words: This one I knew right away what I wanted to photograph. We have a couple of really cool signs on buildings here in town that I've always been fascinated with. One was above the old movie theater but I couldn't get a decent photo of that so I opted for the other sign.

Lastly: Always look on the bright side. This one gave me the worst time. I just couldn't think of anything to fit this concept. Here's what I finally came up with.

I figured when you look on the "bright" side of a situation you should be able to smile about it so without further ado...

This is a portion of a new Halloween wall canvas that I recently purchased. I think that pumpkin is certainly looking on the bright side. I know it's probably a stretch but under the circumstances of the last few days I'm just happy to get this posted.

On Friday morning my mom came over a little before 7:00 am and said she wasn't feeling well. She told me she had a burning sensation in her chest and back that just wouldn't go away. Naturally our first thought was, Heart Attack and after a few minutes of trying to decide what we should do we opted to just go to the ER. It's a good thing we did. Her BP was up to 201/97 NOT GOOD. They gave her medication for her heart, and also to lower her Blood Pressure. She was feeling pretty good but the ER doctor felt she should be admitted and spend the night so they could monitor her BP and other vital signs and rule out that it was a Heart Attack. So she spent Friday and most of Saturday in the hospital which was where I was most of the time as well. I'm happy to report she is home now and doing a lot better. We'll see her regular doctor on Wednesday but in the meantime they have her on BP medication and a bunch of other stuff as well.

So be sure to drop by Ashley's blog and check out the other enteries. This is really a lot of fun and I hope that this coming week is a lot less stressful for me and I can get my post up a lot sooner.
Have a great week.

Photo Art Friday and 31 Days of Reflection-Day 21

2011-10-20T21:02:00.000-07:00

Happy Friday everyone! I hope you've had a good week.
It's time for Photo Art Friday at Bonnie's blog (Pixel Dust Photo Art). I was excited this week to play around and use some of Bonnie's Free Texture's now that I've learned how to use them in the Gimp program.

Here is my original photo that I shot in Black and White

I started playing around and decided to use Bonnie's Medieval Magic Texture and Tangled Tendrils. In the Gimp program I overlayed both these textures using various Opacity settings. I tried to write them down but somehow things got jumbled as to what I used and how much percentage etc...so you'll just have take the photo's as they are and next time I'll try harder to write every step down. After adding the textures I opened the photo's in Picnik and messed around with a few edits there as well.

Here is my 1st edit:

Then I played some more and this time used, the Fanciful texture. Once again I went to Picnik and did some other editing. I know on this one I changed fonts on the text, used the 1960's feature and one other thing but I can't recall what it was.
I apologize again for not writing this all down.
This one is my favorite:

Since these photo's have a Spider (which by the way normally use to scare the heebie jeebies out of me) until I started photographing them. I have decided to use, Boris the Spider as my musical Reflection. I love this song (I know, strange but true).

31 Days of Reflection - Day 20

2011-10-20T10:56:00.000-07:00

Okay today I'm feeling a bit frustrated as I've spent the better part of the morning trying to re-install some files from the old computer to the new computer. Discovered we need to re-install a program that I used and I have no clue where the disk is or if we even had one to begin with. Still can't figure Microsoft Office out - Why or why do they have to change things! - With that being said I thought I would just play something totally goofy for my musical reflection. So today I am sharing, The Credit Card Song by Dick Feller. So I hope you all have a good laugh or two and I'll carry on with my computer woes!

31 Days of Reflection - Day 19

2011-10-19T09:26:00.000-07:00

Happy "hump" Day!

Today I thought I would share my 2 favorite photo's of Coleen from the Pumpkin Patch this year. We've been taking her out since she could walk to get her "official" Pumpkin Patch Photo's taken. She is growing up so quickly and every year I can see the changes just by reviewing past years Pumpkin Patch photo's.

Sometimes I wish I could keep her young just like she is now but I know that isn't possible.

She is just an amazing little girl and so full of love, life and a joy (most of the time) to be around.

With that thought in mind today's Musical Reflection is,
Forever Young by Rod Stewart - This song really shows that no matter how much they change and grow they will be in our hearts forever.

Have a great day.

31 Days of Reflections - Day 18

2011-10-18T08:43:00.000-07:00

Welcome! - I'm heading off to the Bowling Alley shortly and as I was thinking about what "musical" Reflection I wanted to share today the song, Come On Get Happy by the Partridge Family popped into my head.

Lately my bowling has been awful. Last week (shhh don't tell anyone) my scores were, ~~123-121-121~~ and I was not a Happy Camper so I'm hoping today will be better.

I thought this little Candy Corn Candle would bring a smile to your face if you are here viewing and reading this post.
Have a great day and Smile!

Macro Monday and 31 Days of Reflection

2011-10-17T09:53:00.000-07:00

Good Day! - It's Monday and that means it's also time to post for Macro Monday on Lisa's blog. I've been taking a lot of Macro Shots lately so the hard part for me is trying to decide which one to use.

I was out at my husband's workshop this weekend and of course I had my camera along (hey you never know what might be waiting for you to snap a picture) I walked outside and saw these Thistle Plants and knew right away that I had to take a picture of them.

Then I decided to get up close and personal (not to personal though as those things have nasty thorns) and took a Macro Shot of one of the thistle heads.

Lastly I've been playing around and trying to learn how to use textures etc...on photo's so I thought I'd include a this shot editing in Gimp using a new Free texture from Bonnie at Pixel Dust Studio. This one is called, Happy Day.

I'm not totally sure of all that I did with the texture to get this next photo. I'm still learning and need to write these things down as I go along. So for now you'll just have to take the photo as is since I didn't write down the formula on how I did the edit.

In keeping with my 31 Days of "musical" Reflection today I have chosen a song by Carly Simon, Anticipation. I like this song and it's really true that "We Can Never Know about the Days to Come, But we Think
About Them Anyway." I find myself looking ahead to so many different things or thinking about all the things that I want to accomplish and learn and sometimes it's just overwhelming. So for today I'm just taking it one step at a time and trust that no matter what God will see me through whatever comes my way.

Have a great week. - Ida

Scavenger Hunt Sunday and 31 Days of Reflection-Day16

2011-10-15T23:30:00.000-07:00

Hello and Welcome. - This is my first time participating in Scavenger Hunt Sunday

over on Ashley's blog, Ramblings and Photo's. This is a really interesting and fun challenge. Each week you are give 5 different themes/words that you are then to take photographs of and share back with a link.
This week the words were: Abstract, Round, Fire, Seeing Faces in Strange Places, and Stars. - Everyone does their own interpretation of the themes.

Here are my photo's.

First up, Abstract

This is actually a Macro shot of a portion of an Abstract Paperweight that my husband bought me several years ago. I really love all the different colors and patterns in the paperweight and thought it was just ideal for this challenge.

Next up, Round - I took this picture out at the local Pumpkin Patch this week. I'm not sure what these wheels originally belonged on but I rather like the way they look in this shot.

Fire:

I have this really fun candle holder that has black ghosts and cauldron. The holder casts ghost shadows on the wall which is really cool.

Seeing Faces in Strange Places: This one was a bit of a challenge and I did use a photo that I took a couple of weeks ago. I'm not sure if it qualifies as faces in strange places or strange faces as you will see in the photo.

Normally they are not all on the bed at one time. I happened to open the door to go to bed and saw them all laying on the bed so I quickly shut the door, ran and got the camera, opened the door and "snapped" quickly. This is the result. Don't their eyes look awesome!

Stars:

For this photo I decided to get a little creative. I took a Glass Drinking Jug that had stars on it, I photographed it outside and then cropped and added texture to the photo. The texture is, Medieval Magic which is a free texture offered by Bonnie over at Pixel Dust Photo Art.

In keeping with my 31 Days of "musical" Reflection today I am sharing,
For the Beauty of the Earth - This video has some gorgeous photo's as well so be sure to watch as you listen. Enjoy.

31 Days of Reflection - Day 15

2011-10-15T11:55:00.000-07:00

Today's Musical Reflection is, Time Passages by Al Stewart.
I chose this because we have been considering some "changes" in our life right now and yet cannot seem to come to full agreement on where we want or need to be. We do realize thought that eventually things can and will change. I believe we just need to trust God to bring about those changes when the time is right.

It was late in December, the sky turned to snow

All round the day was going down slow
Night like a river beginning to flow

I felt the beat of my mind go

Drifting into time passages

Years go falling in the fading light

Time passages
Buy me a ticket on the last train home tonight

Well I'm not the kind to live in the past
The years run too short and the days too fast
The things you lean on are the things that don't last
Well it's just now and then my line gets cast into these
Time passages
There's something back here that you left behind
Oh time passages
Buy me a ticket on the last train home tonight

Hear the echoes and feel yourself starting to turn
Don't know why you should feel
That there's something to learn
It's just a game that you play
Well the picture is changing
Now you're part of a crowd
They're laughing at something
And the music's loud
A girl comes towards you
You once used to know
You reach out your hand
But you're all alone, in these
Time passages

I know you're in there, you're just out of sight
Time passages
Buy me a ticket on the last train home tonight

Photo Art Friday and 31 Days of Reflection

2011-10-13T21:02:00.000-07:00

Hello and Happy Friday. - It's time for my entry for Photo Art Friday over on Bonnie's Blog, Pixel Dust Photo Art. - This week we had an "optional" theme to use one of Bonnie's textures in our art work. I chose to work with a Free texture she offers called,
Sapphire Dust.

I also edited in Picnik using Viginette.

Here is the original photo:

In keeping with my 31 Days of Reflection I thought it would be fitting to add a song with Dreams in it since I used a quote about dreams.
I decided on, These Dreams by Heart. Please enjoy.

31 Days of Reflection - Day 13

2011-10-13T10:42:00.000-07:00

Well it's officially "Hair Pulling" time. - The new computer was installed yesterday and I'm now trying to figure out a new email program as the new one doesn't use the same program as the old computer did. It's messed with how my Address Book looks and I'm getting frustrated trying to figure everything out. So with that said I thought my musical reflection today should be a song about frustration or going bonkers and what better song then: They're Coming to Take Me Away by Napoleon XIV.

So this is dedicated to anyone having "One of those days" and you know the kind I'm talking about.

31 Days of Reflection - Day 12

2011-10-12T07:00:00.000-07:00

Yep, I've "pre-scheduled" these posts and hopefully they go live when they are suppose to.

So I've been sharing a lot of serious songs and thought that today I'd like to just throw in something totally fun and silly. Sometimes we all need those moments where we can just be a little "crazy" and kick back without thinking about all the things around us that need to be done. So what did I pick...how about, Hair by the Cowsills. Does anyone remember this group? - This song is really silly and the video equally so but I enjoy both and hope you do as well.

31 Days of Reflection - Day 11

2011-10-11T07:00:00.000-07:00

Well today the old computer is in to have the data transferred to the new computer. Wednesdy the new computer will be installed and hopefully Thursday I'll be back if I haven't pulled my hair out or smashed the computer in frustration. I hate having to learn new stuff when I'm so familiar with the old. Oh well change was inevitable.

So here is my "Musical" reflection for today.
I chose John Denver's - The Music Is You.
Music has and always will be a big part of my life. I love all kinds of music with the exception of a few generes.

31 Days of Reflection - Day 10 and Macro Monday

2011-10-10T11:22:00.000-07:00

Happy Monday! - It's a Cloudy and Rainy day here in "Wally World."

Here is my entry for Macro Monday over at Lisa's Chaos.
My granddaughter, Coleen came in the house all excited because she had spoted a Preying Mantis on the side of the house. I went out and took some pictures and then we transferred the Mantis to the Rose bed. Here are shots both on the house and on one of my roses.

She was pretty excited about seeing this bug and even commented that she had never seen one this color before. Most of the time they are the Green colored one's but this guy (or girl) was brown.

Be sure to stop by Lisa's blog and check out all the other fantastic enteries for today's Macro Monday feature.

Now for my 31 Days of Reflection my "muscial" selection today is, Lean on Me by Bill Withers.

I love this song and hope that whatever you are going through in life you will have a friend you can lean on. Plus I know that if you trust in the Lord you will always have a friend you can count on in the good times and the bad times.

Have a wonderful day.

31 Days of Reflection - Day 9

2011-10-09T14:21:00.000-07:00

Hello, Today I am sharing one of my all time favorite Hymns, Amazing Grace as my musical inspiration. - This song is truly one of great beauty and deep meaning. As a Christian I feel hope and peace when I hear this song. There have been numerous artists who have preformed this song but I discovered this group, Il Divo and just get the chills when I hear their version. I hope you enjoy it as much as I do.

31 Days of Reflection - Day 8

2011-10-08T18:35:00.000-07:00

Well I am a bit "late" for today's entry but as they say, (who are "they" by the way?)
"Better Late Then Never."

Today I am sharing, Long Gone sung by, Trio (Emmylou Harris, Linda Ronstadt and Dolly Parton.)

This song pretty much says it all. I found this video on YouTube and it has some nice photo's that go with the song.

31 Days of Reflection - Day 7

2011-10-07T13:30:00.000-07:00

If you are here for my Photo Art Friday entry please scroll down one post or click here:

Today's Musical "Reflection" is, Get Over It by The Eagles:
We often played this song to our kids when they were complaining about things. Personally I think this song should be played over loud speakers everywhere with so many people out there complaining all the time.

I turn on the tube and what do I see

A whole lotta people cryin' 'don't blame me'
They point their crooked little fingers ar everybody else
Spend all their time feelin' sorry for themselves
Victim of this, victim of that
Your momma's too thin; your daddy's too fat

Get over it
Get over it

All this whinin' and cryin' and pitchin' a fit
Get over it, get over it

You say you haven't been the same since you had your little crash
But you might feel better if I gave you some cash
The more I think about it, old billy was right
Let's kill all the lawyers, kill 'em tonight

You don't want to work, you want to live like a king
But the big, bad world doesn't owe you a thing

Get over it
Get over it

If you don't want to play, then you might as well split
Get over it, get over it

It's like going to confession every time I hear you speak
You're makin' the most of your losin' streak
Some call it sick, but I call it weak

You drag it around like a ball and chain
You wallow in the guilt; you wallow in the pain
You wave it like a flag, you wear it like a crown
Got your mind in the gutter, bringin' everybody dow

Complain about the present and blame it on the past
I'd like to find your inner child and kick it's little ass

Get over it
Get over it

All this bitchin' and moanin' and pitchin' a fit
Get over it, get over it

Get over it
Get over it

It's gotta stop sometime, so why don't you quit
Get over it, get over it

Photo Art Friday - Wk. 5 Matilde

2011-10-06T21:01:00.000-07:00

Hello and Welcome! - It's always a pleasure to have you pop in and see what is happening here on my blog. What's exciting is that it's time for, Photo Art Friday over on Bonnie's Blog (Pixel Dust Photo Art)

Here is my piece for this week:

You will be surprised (I think) when you see the before shot of what this actually is.

I edited my photo on Picnik
Sadly I forgot to write down what things I did to the photo so I'm trying to go from memory.
I know I used the Neon feature, and the Posterize feature and also added the textured background. I may have used (Boost) as well but I'm not totally sure.

So here is the "Before" photo:

This in itself is a piece of "Art" - This statue is one of many here in Walla Walla where I live. I took several shots of this piece and will share those at a later date.

Here is a brief bit of information about this statue:

Matilde On Her Way To The Market by Nano Lopez catches folks attention from the front lawn of the Walla Walla, Washington, Public Library. When she was first unveiled in 2003, there were mixed reactions to her from the locals. Some thought she was just fine, others wondered who in their right mind would call her art.

When the library went into a period of renovation, Matilde had to be moved and folks began to wonder where she went. She's back, still generating comments and quizzical looks and rating high on the number of folk who just have to have their picture taken with her.
Name: Matilde On Her Way To The Market
Figure Type: Animal
Artist Name: Nano Lopez
Date created or placed: 2003
Materials used: Bronze
Location: Walla Walla Public Library

31 Days of Reflection - Day 6

2011-10-06T14:05:00.000-07:00

Today's Musical Reflection is: Stay For Awhile by Amy Grant

I've always loved this song even though it often brings tears to my eyes. Below are the lyrics:

The Video shows a "couple" and I'm sure the song is probably about broken relationships but to me I feel something different. I think it's about "lost" relationships and remembering those who've passed on before us. I'd love to just be able to "freeze" time and remember my family/friends just the way they were. I think that's what memories are for and like the song says, "When I close my eyes, I remember."

Enjoy.

Long time since I've seen your smile,

But when I close my eyes,

I remember

You were no more than a child,

But then so was I,

Young and tender.

Time carries on;

I guess it always will,

But deep inside my heart

Time stands still.

Stay for awhile.

Well, it's good to see your smile,

And I love your company.

Stay for awhile.

And remember the days gone by;

For a moment it can seem

Just the way it used to be.

Snowfalls, phone calls, broken hearts,

Clear summer days,

Warm and lazy;

Long walks, long talks, after dark;

We vowed we'd never forget.

Now it's hazy.

Time takes its toll,

And time alters our view.

It would be nice to

Spend some time with you.

Oh, stay for awhile.

Well, it's good to see your smile,

And I love your company.

(Oohhh) Stay for awhile.

And remember the days gone by;

For a moment it can seem

Just the way it used to be.

Stay....

(Please stay.)

Stay, stay, stay....

One, two, one, two.

Stay for awhile.

Well, it's good to see your smile,

And I love your company.

(Oohhh) Stay for awhile.

And remember the days gone by;

Just the way it used to be.

Stay for awhile.

Oh, it's good to see your smile,

And I love your company.

Won't you stay with me for awhile,

And remember the days gone by;

For a moment it can seem

Just the way it used to be.

31 Days of Reflection - Day 5

2011-10-05T18:00:00.000-07:00

Well after the 1st couple of days of doing this I finally figured out that I'd like to spend my 31 days of Reflection sharing songs that mean something to me. Today I'm bringing you: Ripple by the Grateful Dead.

Since we all have our own perception of things I will leave it up to you to decide how or if this song reflects anything about you or your life.

Lyrics:

If my words did glow with the gold of sunshine

And my tunes were played on the harp unstrung,

Would you hear my voice come thru the music,

Would you hold it near as it were your own?

It's a hand-me-down, the thoughts are broken,

Perhaps they're better left unsung.

I don't know, don't really care

Let there be songs to fill the air.

Ripple in still water,
When there is no pebble tossed,
Nor wind to blow.

Reach out your hand if your cup be empty,
If your cup is full may it be again,
Let it be known there is a fountain,
That was not made by the hands of men.
There is a road, no simple highway,
Between the dawn and the dark of night,
And if you go no one may follow,
That path is for your steps alone.

Ripple in still water,
When there is no pebble tossed,
Nor wind to blow.

You who choose to lead must follow
But if you fall you fall alone,
If you should stand then whos to guide you?

If I knew the way I would take you home.

La dee da da da, la da da da da, da da da, da da, da da da da da

La da da da, la da da, da da, la da da da, la da, da da.

31 Days of Reflection - Day 4

2011-10-04T15:54:00.000-07:00

Some days you're the Windshield, Some days you're the Bug!

Today I think I was "the bug"!

Okay I woke up feeling great and had high hopes for my Bowling Scores....something went drastically wrong, (154-138-126) I'm guessing it had something to do with the "bug" Not much else to say about that.

So my reflection today is about how we perceive our days. Are you the Windshield or are you the bug?

Macro Monday and 31 Days of Reflection-Day 3

2011-10-03T11:34:00.000-07:00

Hello and Happy Monday!

Today I'm combining two very different challenges. First up I recently discovered Macro Monday (Lisa's Chaos) so I want to share this picture I took recently for that:
This is my 1st time participating.

I captured this shot on one of my flowers and am really please with how it turned out.

Photography has always been fascinating to me and even though I haven't taken any classes or don't own a fancy camera I want to learn and someday I hope to get a better camera and take some classes but for now I am enjoying wht I can do. The "Macro" feature is one of my favorite things about taking photo's. I love the clarity you can get by using this feature.

The 2nd challenge I am doing today is my entry for my 31 Days of Reflection.
Today I'm featuring a link to the Fleetwood Mac song: Landslide.
I love music and this song in particular speaks to me. The line about, " Children growing older and I'm Growing older too" hits home. Life is always changing and one can never go back in time...we can only move forward with each phase. While there are things about my past that I'd love to change I know that's not possible. Instead I have to concentrate on the here and now and what things can be changed so that as I do grow older I can reflect back on those memories and not feel a sadness that they weren't what I had hoped they would be.

Enjoy the song and the video.

31 Days of Reflection - Day 2

2011-10-02T12:51:00.000-07:00

It's Day 2 of my 31 Days of Reflection. I had this "brilliant" idea about taking a shot of myself looking into the mirror but then I had a "duh" moment when I realized that if I'm pointing a camera at myself in the mirror what are you going to see...Yep, a shot of me with a camera in the mirror. I don't own a Tripod so I opted to set the camera on a Timed Shot and have Coleen, my granddaughter click the button. So am I looking into the mirror in this shot...not exactly but I like how it turned out except that you always get glare from my glasses which I don't like. But it is what it is.

So why a picture of myself looking into a mirror? I thought about how we all look into mirrors every day and see our own "Reflections" looking back. Do you always like what you see? Do you wish you looked different? Are there things about the way you look that you like? For me I know that sometimes when I look into a mirror I am not always happy with how I look. But is my reflection really who I am inside? No, it's just the external me and what I really should be concerned about is how I am on the inside rather then the outside. Oh that's not to say that I shouldn't try to look as good as I can but more that I should try to concentrate on what is most important and that is what kind of a reflection am I making to those around me who see me every day.

On a "lighter" note...One night when I got up to use the bathroom and get a drink of water I happened to catch sight of someone in the mirror that I thought was standing behind me. It startled me so much that I jumped back through the bathroom door and landed on the bed a few feet away. That woke hubby up and he wanted to know what was wrong. I realized by then what had happened and was a bit embarrassed because I realized that it was actually my own reflection in the mirror that I had seen. We have one of those 3-way panel mirrors and one of the panels was open so the person I saw standing behind me was actually me but in the dark and half asleep I thought it was someone else. It nearly scared the life out of me and of course hubby got a good laugh over it too.

So today I want you to reflect on what kind of a life are you showing to the world. Is it one that you are proud of or one that you need to do some changes to to make it better.
I'll do the same.

Till tomorrow...have a beautiful day.

31 Days of Reflection

2011-10-01T16:15:00.000-07:00

Today is Day 1 of my 31 Days of Reflection series. I chose this photo:

Since I think it "reflects" on what life can sometimes be like in my little corner of the world. It's often one of those days and as the old saying goes..."There's no use crying over spilt milk."

I want to share things that are reflections of who I am as a person and the type of person I'd like to become as well.

I'm not entirely sure what I hope to accomplish here or if I'm even going about this right but you can check out the details of this project by visiting:
http://www.chattingatthesky.com/2011/10/01/14988/ or
http://my3boybarians.com/2011/09/lots-and-lots-of-31-dayers-october-2011-series/

There are lots of different links here to various blogs participating with their own series so feel free to check them out. I'm sure we'll all gain inspiration by visiting.

Please come back tomorrow. I can't promise anything earth shattering or profound but I hope to learn and grow from this.

Photo Art Friday - Week 4

2011-09-30T13:02:00.000-07:00

Well I wasn't sure I'd be able to participate this week. We had computer issues and had to take the Hard Drive in to be repaired. Thankfully it wasn't anything major and I was able to get it back today. - We are getting a new computer though so shortly I'll be learning how to work on Windows 7 and will probably be pulling my hair out for a few days while I learn. In the meantime I am so glad I had the chance to participte after all in Photo Art Friday on Bonnie's Blog Pixel Dust Photo Art.

I wanted to do something a bit different this week. I decided to do a series of shots using "Berries" as the subject material. I drove around town photographing various bushes that had berries on them. It was really fun and interesting to see how many varieties I could find. I'm sure I got some odd looks from passer-by's seeing me snapping pictures of bushes.

I went to Picnik, uploaded my photo's and then created 2 Collage's out of the photo's. I really like how they turned out and am thinking of having them made into prints to hang on the wall. I hope you enjoy them.

This 1st one was my favorite of the two. I love the top left corner and bottom right corner photo's. I learned that the berries on the bottom right are, Elderberries.

Here is my 2nd Collage:

Not a lot of editing other then just the general editing to sharpen the photo's a little.

Be sure to pop in to Bonnie's blog and check out what other people have submitted. There is a TON of fabulous inspiration there.

Out of Commission for awhile

2011-09-29T23:06:00.000-07:00

Hello friends and visitors. If you have come here to view any photographs please note that I am going to be out of commission for a few days. Our computer is in for repairs and they have strongly suggested we purchase a new one. So with that being said once I am able to get back on-line I will be able to participate in challenges and posts again. I will try to check out your submissions as I do have access to a computer just not my own personal files at the moment. Thanks for your patience and understanding.

Sweet Shot Tuesday

2011-09-27T13:16:00.000-07:00

Well my appetite for photography is growing...I found another new (to me) blog today.
It's called, Sweet Shot Tuesday. So I thought I'd give it a try. I've been taking lots of pictures lately. This past weekend my granddaughter, Coleen and I walked around the block taking pictures and we happened upon this sweet little kitty and just had to stop and take some photo's. We are "cat lovers" at our house, being owned by 6 of them and even feed neighborhood cats/strays.

Isn't this kitty gorgeous!
Coleen is calling it, "Green Eyes". Here is another photo that we took.

Sweet Shot Tuesday is going on "hiatus" after this week until
Nov. 1st. - But do check out the website as they are going to be doing a special series, October's 31 Days of Photo Tips. - I'm going to be checking them out for sure.

For those interested I use a Canon Power Shot A1100 IS.
Nothing super fancy but I like the way these photo's turned out.

Other news of interest (or not)... Today's bowling scores: 137, 168, 160. A lot better then last week. I'm feeling much better. The breathing is still a little labored but I've got a few more days of the Prednisone to see if it clears up or it's back to the doctor again.

Photo Art Friday - Week 3

2011-09-22T18:10:00.000-07:00

Week in review: Most of this week has been pretty unproductive. Came down with an infection of some sort that went into my lungs. Not good...Had to go on Antibiotics and Prednisone. Still coughing but not as bad. Lost a lot of sleep at night so had to sleep during the day when I could so that's why nothing much was accomplished.

Okay now on to today's Photo Art Friday photo. In case you don't know about this please check out Bonnie's Blog: Pixel Dust Photo Art. Every week you can upload a photo that you would consider a piece of "Art" - It can come straight from your camera or you can do any type of editing to the photo that you want and then post your photo on Thursday night 7:00 pm EST through Sunday 7:00 pm EST. - It's a lot of fun and there are some really fabulous photo's to enjoy so be sure to check it out.

Today I am sharing this photo:

The before photo will be shown below.
I first edited the photo using a program called, Paint Net.

It's a FREE program you can download from here:

I used the Ink Sketch feature with the ink outline at 48 and the coloring at 68. Then I saved the photo and opened it again with Picnik - Now this is a FUN place to start editing photo's. Especially if you know nothing about photo editing or don't own the Photo Shop program.
I upgraded to the Premium addition so I could do more stuff with my photos.
For this one I added some texture (rain drops) and then added text. I really like how it turned out.
Here is the original photo. The only editing on this was just the "auto" adjust in the Microsoft photo editing program.

These two "mating" bugs landed on my Azalea bush and I used the Macro setting on my camera to capture them. I believe they are what is referred to as a Mosquito hawk (which I've now learned from googling) that they are actually Crane Flies (and don't eat mosquito's at all).

Have a wonderful weekend and be sure to keep that camera with you as you never know what you may discover and want to preserve.

Here is the link to the Photo Art Friday post.

Photo Art Friday #2

2011-09-16T08:59:00.000-07:00

Hello and Welcome. - Just a quick update on my granddaughter, Coleen who came down with a BAD case of "Hives" last week. I am happy to report that the medication worked and she has been hive free now for almost a full week. Thanks for your prayers.

Now it's time for this weeks Photo Art Friday picture. - Again I want to just say that I am still a beginner and my photo's will not have any fancy editing or layering as I don't have the programs nor the knowledge to do that right now. Still I want to share my photography so I hope you enjoy what I have to share today.

The original photo will be shown below. I did do some editing using Picnik. I added, Text, Frames, and Used the Viginette feature to soften the color around the sunflower so they stood out more.

Can't wait to see what everyone else did. I love looking at photo art.

Photo Art Friday

2011-09-09T12:44:00.000-07:00

Well first off I want to say that I am just a "beginner" with my photography skills. I don't have a fancy camera, I use a Cannon Power Shot A1100 IS camera but I want to get better and hopefully learn a lot more about taking pictures so I thought I'd jump in on this challenge. I found it thanks to another blogger that I recently found, Eveyln (Within My Focus). I love her work.

Anyway the challenge is called Photo Art Friday and so without further ado here is my photo:

This is one of our 6 (yes, Six) cats. Her name is Callie-Jo and she is part Siamese and part Calico. Her face is so interesting. We call her, "Wonky Face" because of it. Aren't those blue eyes just gorgeous!

Now I really don't know much about photo editing. I did a few minor edits in Picasa to sharpen and highlight the color a little more. So what you all think...I'm open to suggestions but please be gentle.

Hives

2011-09-08T21:19:00.000-07:00

Poor Coleen came down with a nasty case of Hives this week. We aren't sure what caused the sudden outbreak and according to the doctor at the ER 85% of the time the cause of hives goes undetected. Poor little thing was so itchy the first day. They have her on Prednisone and Benadryl to control the itching. In the mean time we are trying to determine what may be causing the outbreaks. Could be tomatoes, berries or even the new stuffed toys she won at the fair. Bedding is being washed, stuffed toys are being washed and no tomatoes or berries for awhile until we get this under control.
Pretty nasty looking. I really feel for her.

Butterfly Dreams

2011-09-03T09:33:00.000-07:00

I happened upon a photo of a butterfly on this blog (Within My Focus) and immediately realized that I had some photo's of the exact same butterfly. I thought why not share them so without further ado here they are:

This was just after it had landed on the flower.

This shot my Granddaughter, Coleen took. We were hoping to get a photo with it's wings open but at this point it wasn't cooperating much.

Getting Closer at this point.

Success at last!

I don't know the type of butterfly either but it's a lovely one none the less and I hope you've enjoyed these photo's. Thanks Evelyn for inspiring me to share mine.

A Cooking Demonstration

2011-08-25T19:41:00.000-07:00

Just a little background first before you view the video.
Coleen was using her imagination the other day and had decided to put on a cooking demonstration. I was to be her photograhper and take pictures of her every time she said, "Step 1, Step 2 etc...") - Instead of taking pictures I decided to film her and as you will hear in the Video I did not follow instructions! - Also the outfit she is wearing is a Dress-Up outfit that my mom (Granny) made for her. It was a hat and a cape but she used the cape as an apron. Enjoy and try not to laugh to hard!

Rock On

2011-08-17T19:59:00.000-07:00

Grandpa and Coleen having a "jam" session. I love the expression on her face when she's done.

Grandpa said she picks things up quickly so maybe somewhere down the line Piano lessons may be in order.

Girls Day Out and Lunch With Bugs

2011-07-31T12:50:00.000-07:00

Grandpa's Gone, Coleen's bored and Grandma and Granny just want to get out of the house for a little while. So we pack an "impromptu" lunch and head off to the mountains for a picnic.

Lunch is great and you can see that Coleen was ready to eat in this next photo:

We did however have some unexpected lunch visitor's flying around and landing on our plates and in our hair. Besides the normal pesky wasps (how do they find food so doggone quick anyway?)....there were loads (and I mean "LOADS" of.....
these critters everywhere.

Can you guess what they are in this photo? Yes, it's "blurry" but all that brown/orange stuff on the tree trunk is not bark.

Here are a couple more photo's...

These are believe it or not....Ladybugs! - They were everywhere, especially on the trunks of all the trees. You could see them flying around through the air as well. Several landed in our Chicken box and I'd have to pick them out and set them free. Thankfully none of us ate any!

We didn't stay long because of the bugs but it was still a nice little outing. One last picture up close before we go:

Would you believe there was a woman there trying not to step on any of them. I mean come on...there were thousands of them everywhere so how could you possibly not step on at least one.

Yes I'm Still Alive

2011-07-03T16:33:00.000-07:00

Hello! - Wow it's been a few months since I've posted. Life got busy and sadly I didn't take time to post. Never fear lots of pictures are about to appear as we play "catch-up" on what's been happening in my life.

May was one activity packed month.

We celebrated my oldest brother's 60th birthday May 6th (No pictures though, :o( as I didn't take my camera with me.) He had us over for BBQ which we tried to eat outside but the weather didn't cooperate and it rained us back inside.

Sunday May 8th was Mother's Day. Hubby gave me this beautiful hanging planter:

and Greta/Coleen gave me a lovely bouquet of flowers.Mike and Coleen fixed dinner (as Greta had to work until after 5:00) Here's a picture of them working on the Fried Chicken together.

Of course I can't leave out my own mom so here she is planting the flowers that I gave her. (She hates her picture taken so it's rare when I actually get one of her).

The next weekend was the annual Hot Air Balloon Stampede here in Walla Walla but again the weather was really nasty so the only day they launched balloons was on Friday and I did not get any pictures nor did we go out to any of the event activities.

May 20 was my hubby Mike's birthday. Coleen made him a Maccaroni Motorcycle Masterpiece for his gift. Here they are together with the picture of her masterpiece.

The next day was the Open House at the Vet Clinic where we take our pets. Our Pug, Cricket was the May "Pet of the Month" so we spent the morning showing her off at the event. They had Pony Rides for the kids, a scavenger hunt, bunnies, kittens, goats, etc...there. So the next pictures were taken at that event.

First up Cricket meets Buddy who is another 3-legged pug. He's missing his right hind leg and she's missing her right front leg. They sure looked cute checking each other out.

On one of the horses they painted the skeleton of what a horse looks like. It was kinda freaky but yet, cool looking at the same time. Coleen love this horse and spent the better part of the day petting it.

They had the cutest little goats there and I just had to get a picture of Cricket checking them out. She didn't even bark at them which was good.

We tried to get Grandpa to let us bring this sweet little Kitten home with us. He said, No but if it would have been me I would have said, YES!

Coleen tried roping and then got roped herself.

We didn't do anything special over the Memorial Day weekend. The weather was cold and rainy so we just stayed home and did stuff around the house. My mom & I did take flowers out to the cemetery but we ended up having to buy most of the flowers as are had barely started growing much less blooming at the time.

Coleen had her end of the School picnic on May 25th and since mommy was working Grandma got to go in her place. We had a super fun time. Here's a picture of the two of us together at the picnic.

So that's it for May. Come back later to catch the June activities.

What Not to Feed Your Dog and a Cricket Video

2011-04-21T13:00:00.000-07:00

Sunday morning right before church Cricket got a hold of Coleen's Super ball and chewed it up. Naturally I was upset and concerned since I knew this kind of thing might cause problems so I called the on-call Vet right away and talked to her about the situation.

She advised me to just keep an eye on Cricket that she might have loose stools or vomit and if she started vomiting excessively to bring her in right away. She seemed okay all day on Sunday so we thought things were going to be fine.

Cricket seemed fine for most of the day on Monday but towards evening she started having the "runs" and was rather listless and not wanting to eat or drink anything. That evening she upchucked all over Coleen's back pack and had very watery and runny stools that showed traces of blood as well. (Sorry for the graphic description). I got up every 2-3 hours during the night to check on her and got her to lick water off my fingers but she wouldn't eat.

Tuesday morning arrived and she gobbled up her food and was happy go-lucky so we figured she was getting better. I called our regular vet and she suggested just keeping an eye on her and if her condition got worse to bring her in right away. Cricket seemed fine again for most of the day but by evening was having the "runs" with a lot more blood in them. So once again I spent a restless night checking in on her every few hours. We decided then to take her in on Wednesday morning just to make sure nothing serious was going on.

She was bouncy and happy yesterday morning and eating again when I took her to the Vet. She talked it over with me and since Cricket was going to the bathroom she didn't feel that she had a blockage and instead gave us Antibiotics to give her, some fluids to keep her hydrated and an antacid to help calm her stomach down.

I am happy to report that as of today she is doing much better and is showing no more signs of bloody stools and I think she has gotten all that nasty ball out of her system.

I took this video of her and one of our cats, Harley yesterday morning right before I took her in to the Vet so you can see she was feeling pretty chipper and was probably on the mend but it never hurts to make sure they are checked out.

On This Day

2011-04-18T09:53:00.000-07:00

On this day 19 years ago I married this wonderful man! - He has truly been a blessing in my life and I am thankful every day that he chose me to be his wife.

We've had our share of "ups and downs" over the years but we've grown closer and our love has grown stronger.

So happy Anniversary dear!

Don't we look young (and skinny!)

Thought I'd share a couple of other photo's of the day.

Open Wide!

With our parents.

Coleen's Baptism

2011-04-17T14:22:00.000-07:00

Today was a very "special" day as our Granddaughter, Coleen was baptized. For some weird reason I was not able to get the video on my camera but thankfully her mommy got one off her phone.

We rejoice in the fact that Coleen chose to be baptized and has a wonderful faith in Jesus at such a young age.

Please watch and celebrate with us as you watch her baptism.

You Can't Keep A Good Dog Down

2011-03-30T18:51:00.000-07:00

It's been a few weeks since our little puppy, Cricket arrived. You will obviously notice one BIG change when you watch this video. Yes, she's missing her right front leg.
On March 21st while playing outside with Coleen she fell off the back porch step and caught her leg on the chain link fence. I was not home at the time but Mike (hubby) said that he heard her yelp loudly and raced to the door to find out what was wrong. We couldn't feel or see any broken bones so we waited until Tuesday morning to take her in to the Veterinarian.

Mid afternoon she called with the news that Cricket had broken her (Humerus) quite badly. They wanted us to take her up to Washington State University to have it repaired. The Vet told me this would cost us between $2000-3000 (possibly more).
Well after talking it over we decided to have her put down even though we knew it would break Coleen's heart. I call the Vet back and told her and she assured me there was no need to put her down. She explained she could amputate the leg and she'd lead a perfectly happy life as a 3-legged dog. She told me to watch YouTube video's of 3 legged dogs so I could see for myself how easily they adapt. Once again after a discussion about this we opted to have her leg removed. The surgery was done on Wednesday (23rds) and this video was shot today just one week after the surgery.

Wow! Can you believe how well she gets around. She's having a blast playing with that toy. We are suppose to keep her calm for at least a week but it has not been easy as she wants to go, go, go!

Hope you have enjoyed this moment of silliness as much as we did.

Say hello to...

2011-02-28T12:33:00.000-08:00

Well it's official now as we got another dog. Mike and I swore that we would not get another dog after Angel passed away. Somehow though that didn't last long. For one thing Coleen wanted a new dog so badly and when she told me that she had prayed to Jesus to change Grandpa and Grandma's minds I knew it was a losing battle. Plus to tell the truth I missed the thought of not having a dog around. I'm mainly a "Cat" person but for the past 19 years I've been around dogs and well it just seemed so lonely looking out in the Dog Pen and not seeing a dog there. So after some pleading and coaxing to hubby he agreed to let us get a new dog. It had to meet certain criteria though. 1. No long haired dogs. 2. It needed to be a female 3. We decided on a small dog and 4. It had to be good with children. So while searching the Internet for puppies I happened upon a picture of a sweet little black puppy that was available right away. I called and made arrangements to drive over on Saturday morning and pick the puppy up. Coleen was so excited she could hardly wait until the owner arrived at the designated meeting place. It was "Love at first sight" or should I say "first lick!"

So who is this new little bundle of energy? We'd like to introduce you to....
Cricket Krause

Isn't she adorable looking!
She is certainly a bundle of energy and oh so cuddly and lovey.

The cats were not so thrilled about the new addition and you can see they were really checking her out in the carrier after we got home in the following pictures.

They all ran from her every time she got near them. It was comical because all of them are so much bigger then she is. Slowly but surely they are warming up to her so I think in a few days all will be right in their world again.

Here she is peacefully asleep on Mike's lap Saturday night.

Coleen adores her already. You can see that in the next picture and in the fun little video we took of her and Coleen.

Alot of people might think it was too soon to get another dog after Angel's passing just barely a week ago but we feel that we have our wonderful memories of Angel and that we have love to give for another dog and so we opted not to wait.
Cricket is already becoming a well loved family member. We hope you will enjoy her to as we begin our new journey with her as a family pet.