The Class Is Over!

 Finally!  The end of the 6x6 class!  

Sketch #9: I was challenged to scrap a photo of myself.  There are very few photos of me because I'm generally the one pointing the camera.  Surprisingly there are very few of me in my Halloween garb, so this one is rare indeed.  This was my last Halloween at work - I had dressed up every year that I was with the Agency and generally visited some of the classrooms to tell stories to the children.  That is one of the few things that I miss.

Sketch #10:  As my back and knees have aged I've given up flower beds and moved to container gardening.  My gardening now consists of herbs and mosquito repellent plants in large containers on the deck.  I dry them as they mature and generally have enough herbs to supply my entire family!  The cats especially enjoy the fresh and dried catnip.

Sketch #11:  Some more of my herbs.  This year I planted 2 varieties of basil, sage, 3 varieties of thyme, oregano, catnip, citronella, and of course rosemary.  The portulaca seeded from last years plants so there were actually some flowers in bloom.

Sketch #12:  Macie and Kelly, with Macie painted as a butterfly.

Sketch #13:  Macie's spring dance recital.

Sketch #14:  My neighbor's granddaughter taking her first driving lesson.  Brooklyn did a great job and Mica was a perfect pony as always.

Sketch #15:  Julie's new car!  She was so excited!

Sketch #16:  Macie showing off her dance skills for her daddy!

Sketch #17:  This LO was a PITA to do but it turned out to be one of my favorites!

Sketch #18:  50's Day at Cross Pointe Church.  We had a great time throwing back to another era.

Sketch #19:  This was one of those LOs on a white background that I wished I'd used a colored border around the edge.  The inked edge helped, but it really needs more.

 

 

Sketch #20:  Last one!  I opted to use a solid sheet of 6x6 instead of cutting it into shapes and using a lot of patterns.  I think keeping it as simple as possible was the best way to highlight the photo.

I'm glad that I took the class even though some of those LOs were a struggle for me.  There are some LOs that I'll definitely try again, and there are others that I never want to see again!  😂  It's all a learning experience and hopefully I'll keep my momentum going.

Stay safe!

Another Month, Another Class

Darn - it's been a while since I posted anything!  I keep meaning to but something always seems to get in the way. 

I'm taking another class - this one sponsored by Scrapbook Generation with designer Allison Davis.  It's  centered around using those 6x6 paper pads that seem to accumulate dust most of the year.  The class has been fun in some ways and frustrating in others.  Most of the course LOs feature small or odd sizes of photos, and I tend to use 4x6 and 4x5 photos primarily.  When I could I substituted for my preferred sizes and a few I used the suggested.  I also found a few of the sketches a PITA and ended up using the class sketch as inspiration - which totally upset my OCD with sketches, but I'm learning to "let it go."  😀😉

These have already been posted in the class folders so I'm free to share here.

Sketch #1:  First in the series.  I substituted squares for the hearts in the sketch.

Sketch #2: I stayed fairly true to the sketch.  This was a LO I've wanted to do for a while.  I had random photos of Macie's family and wanted to combine them somehow.

Sketch #3:  I love this tree and it's always a stand out in the spring.  I really need to find another angle to photograph it!

Sketch #4: Again, fairly true to the sketch except I used large square and photos.  I wanted to be able to see that face!

Sketch #5:  Again, fairly true to the sketch except for photo size.

Sketch #6:  George's girl Tiger.  She has a "resting bitch face" and rarely looks happy!

Sketch #7:  I really didn't like the sketch so used the "flags" as inspiration.  I ended up really liking this page.

 

Sketch #8:  Bailey Boo!  Love this horse and helped bottle raise her following her dam's death.  She lives next door and I take care of her several times during the month so our neighbor can show his carriage pony or visit family. 

And that brings me to the end of the first two months of the classes.  More to post later!  The class is still ongoing but I have another 8 LOs!  Yay me!

Mini Paper Class

 The weather outside is dreich (look it up - it's a good Scottish word to describe foul weather and who knows more about foul weather than Scots?).  Since I can't count on staying dry while trying to dig up unwanted plants, cut limbs and rake - this is a great time to do some more "catch up."

Last month I signed up for a class sponsored by Shannon Allor - She's Crafty Mini Paper Class.  Unfortunately I was doing the class late, by which time almost everyone else had finished, but WTH?  I needed something, anything to get me out of my creative doldrums.  The class consisted of a sketch a week for 10 weeks as well as instructive videos.  We were to do our interpretation of the sketch, using whatever part of it we wanted to use as inspiration - all of it or only a few pieces.  Since I'm fairly OCD where sketches are concerned, my pages pretty much followed the designs with only a few changes.

Jan. 3 sketch:  Since I went into the class late, I did the sketches that appealed to me first.  Trying to match photos with LO concepts can be fun, but not always in the order you need them.  This one ended up serving double duty as a PAO challenge LO.  As I said in the last post, this is my favorite place to be.  It feels like "coming home" and soothes my soul.

 

Jan. 10 sketch:  Our beautiful granddaughter, Maddie.  I think this is the only photo I have of her wearing her glasses!

 Jan. 17 sketch:  George on Christmas day.  It's traditional that we don't open presents until our family is together, which annoys Chris to no end.  😂

Jan. 24 sketch:  Our friends' grandson celebrating his first birthday!  Because of Covid this was the first time I'd been able to see him even though I fell in love with him the first time I saw photos of him.

Jan. 31 sketch:  The gang gathered on Christmas day!  Chris, Adam, George, Maddie and Julie.

Feb. 7 sketch:  Macie and Kelly during their annual visit with Santa.  I "think" Macie was holding a baby goat!

Feb. 14 sketch:  Our Lazy Bums - Ghost and Bugs.  Ghost lives up to his name by disappearing whenever someone new comes into the house.  Bugs is a Manx - a nub for a tail, long back legs, and grey and white.  His full name is Bugs Bunny for obvious reasons.

Feb. 21 sketch:  This year's tree.  Our tree is more of a memory tree as we made a point of picking up ornaments on our trips to various places, and we annually purchase an ornament to represent each family member.  There are also ornaments that my sister artists at PAO made and have a place of honor on the tree.

Feb. 28 sketch:  Back to the birthday party.  Liam definitely enjoyed his cake!

March 7 sketch:  Our great-great niece Macie was treated to a photo shoot by her Aunt Jenn.  She's 5 going on 15 and growing up much too quickly!

It was a fun class and I promptly signed up for another one that starts on May 10!  Now all I need to do is find some photos since I've been a lazy slug with the camera the past few years. 😮  Wish me luck!

Love and light!

 

Catch Up!

Dang, almost a year since I've posted.  Time flies when you're living in what feels like a post-apocalypse world.

I think that I'm going to refrain from making this a "rambling thoughts" sort of post and stick to posting some of what I've been doing.

Unfortunately I don't have photos, but I spent a couple of months this past winter working on cards for servicemen and women to send back home to their friends and families.  Thanks to the beautiful art work created by members of Paper Artists Online (PAO) I managed to complete well over 200 cards.  It was a labor of love and thanks and I'll definitely do it again soon.

The scraplift challenge is on-going at PAO and we're now up to #29.  I skipped several of them for various reasons, but those I did I really enjoyed.  I also took a few classes and will do a separate post for those.

So - onto our scraplift challenge.

#19 - I chose a photo of Adam that I took the day he received his Associates Degree-Criminal Justice in the mail.  His classes switched over to on-line only because of the Chinese virus, and of course there was no ceremony.  Adam maintained Dean's list throughout both years and was President's list once.  Soooo very proud of this young man!  He's since begun classes at UNC-P in CJ-Forensics and is finishing up his first year there.

#20 - Poor Apollo - He can't get out to roam anymore!  I wanted to title this "Don't Fence Me In" for obvious reasons.

#21 - My niece Michelle on a casino cruise.  I think she was actually checking out the guys instead of gambling, but WTH - she's single!

#26 - Our grandson Adam again.  He was around 18 months old in these photos.

And that brings me to:

#28 - These were taken standing on my friend Bonnie's dock at Taw Caw Creek, SC.  This has to be one of my favorite places in the entire State of SC and is a part of the Santee Lakes system.  You can take the girl out of the SC Low-Country but you can't take the Low-Country out of the girl!

And that, my friends, catches me up again with the challenges!

Until next time - love and light!

Behind Again!

Oh, heck.  I keep forgetting to update.  At this point I forget what day it is.  I "think" it's day 4,576 of Corona.  I could be wrong about that, but it's certainly how it feels.

We're still doing our challenges at PAO.  I have to admit that I skipped one because two were sent to me at the same time.  I'm having to dig for photos because, truthfully, I don't want to dig into the box of really old family photos.  Since we're pretty much doing a lot of nothing (other than mowing) I haven't taken many pictures.  Maybe giving myself a "photo a week" would be a good challenge.  Project 365 was a lot of fun a few years ago (one photo a day), but my chosen subject was our property and after a few months I was incredibly bored with that.  Maybe a more realistic approach would cure the photo doldrums.

Anyhow, time to get caught up on the LO posts.

#8 was the last one I posted, so onward and upward!

#9 - I was cleaning out some old files and found these photos of me and 2 of my great-nephews.  These were the first photos we took with my Nikon D1x, which shows how old they are!

#10 - This year was the first time this Dogwood wasn't under the shade of one of the large oaks that we took out.  It was absolutely gorgeous and just seemed to scream "Spring."

#11 - When I first saw these pictures I told my sister not to be surprised if they ended up on a LO.  The colors are a little wild but I think the paper choices are in the spirit of the fun she and Macie were having.

#12 - My Apollo!  Love this big silly idiot to the moon!

#13 - A day in the life long ago.

#14 - Adam's First Communion.  I'm still trying to get the date.  This was at St. Mary's Catholic Church in Sylva.  Father Williams was the celebrant (I think that's the correct term).

#15 - My birthplace in Coeburn, Virginia.  It's a very small town located in the southwestern part of the State not far from Abingdon and Bristol.  High up in the Blue Ridge Mountains of the Appalachians.  The older I get the more I miss my mountains.  All photo credit goes to Shadowlands Photography - a very talented artist and photographer.

#17 - A summer surprise!  All of my orange daylilies have decided that they now have 4 layers of petals instead of 1!  I'll take it!

#18 - Which finally brings me up to date.  These are some of the other varieties of day lilies that I grow.  This has been a wonderful year for them with the spring rains that we've had.  Every time they bloom it's like seeing them for the first time.

And just like that, I'm caught up!  Yay! 

Stay safe and listen to the "news" with a jaundiced ear - methinks that things are not always what they seem.  🤭

Love and light!

Doubts and Uneasy Feelings

I haven't ranted about anything lately and I feel like it's time.

I've been watching the news, reading posts from news sources that I trust, listening to others, checking out the news videos and articles on their websites, and I've come to some very disturbing conclusions.

All of the tin foil people have been making some pretty outrageous claims all along.  The first one that I heard was that this virus currently causing so much fear worldwide was created in a lab in Wuhan, China.  This was poo-pooed by so many news agencies that, well hey!, maybe those people early claims were a bunch of garbage.  For many reasons, one of which being that one of the "tin foil" hat people is a scientist who always has good information, I kept that in the back of my mind.  Turns out they were right and the "official" track was wrong.  Seriously, who ever believed that the virus started because people at a wet market made some very strange food choices??

The next thing we're hearing is that Trump is recommending a certain drug for treatment of the virus.  Enter the talking heads who don't agree with him and are saying he's going to kill millions.  After weeks of hearing that, it turns out he was right and at least one State is now doing clinical trials to prove the efficacy of this treatment.  People are being healed by hydroxy chloroquine .  Taken in combination with zinc sulfate and Azithromycin more and more patients are leaving the hospitals.

Early reports had people requiring ventilators, with Cuomo going nuts and screaming that he needs a ridiculous amount.  Following that I received information, again from trusted sources, that placing patients on ventilators was causing more harm than good and was in fact destroying or permanently damaging patients' lungs.  Now what's the "official" recommended treatment?  Avoid ventilators.

Masks.  We must all wear masks.  Doesn't matter what kind.  So the country went crazy making masks.  Doesn't matter that they don't do any good - make them and wear them.  At the same time that we're being told that this can be transmitted by air particulates, touching something that someone infected touched, walking through a store where an infected person walked and picking it up on our shoes, and so on ad nauseum.  The truth is they don't know exactly or in how many ways it's transmitted, but we have to avoid contact with anything and everything.  Just curious - how many of you are sterilizing everything you brought home from the grocery store or Wal Mart?

While we're at it - do you sterilize your mail, your Amazon packages, your FedEx and UPS deliveries?  Just asking.

And now the big push is for vote-by-mail because of the virus.  Coincidentaly this push is being espoused by the same political party that has in several States declared that voter ID is Un-Constitutional.  It's also the party that has tons of dead and illegals voting for them.  Vote-by-mail does NOT require an ID, and it's already been proven as a sure fire way to commit voter fraud.  I guess if you can't beat 'em, cheat 'em.

And consider this - hospitals are labeling every death as being caused by Corona.  WTH?  If I have a heart attack tomorrow and die as a result, I'm labeled as a COVID death.  Car accident?  Diabetic coma?  Snake bite?  Nope, that's not the official COD - it was the virus.  Why fudge the numbers?  Could it be yet another reason to keep the country closed and under what basically amounts to martial law?

There are some States that are even banning the purchase of seeds and are closing garden centers.  Why?  Why are we being denied the right to plant gardens to feed ourselves fresh food?  Could it be because certain facets of government (read: certain Party lines) want everyone dependent on their largesse?

Welcome to the Socialist States of America, people.

It's time to push back. 

Falling Behind!

My last post was Challenge #5 - we're already up to #9!  This has been a great inspiration for all of us and a good kick in the pants to spend some time playing with ink and paper.

#6 is actually a companion page to one I finished last year.  It's my 80# baby Apollo on the day he came back from spending several weeks with a trainer.  I wish I could say that it was effective, but he was still a wild child when he came home.  The best part of it was the fact that he was (mostly) house trained when he came home.  I guess I should be grateful and count that as a win!

#7 - I've been trying to document all of the changes we've been making.  This was in September 2019 when I had 5 dead trees removed.  One was hanging over my bedroom, one was over the deck.  The other 3 were scattered in the general area.  The trees basically died almost overnight, as did a lot of others in the neighborhood following the flooding from the 2 hurricanes that dumped 35"+ on us in a 3 week span.  The water lingered for 6 months before finally evaporating.  Strangely enough our trees weren't in the flooded area, but the fungus that killed them started because of the water.  I was amazed at how much it opened up the yard to have them removed.

#8 - October 2019 - I decided that I was tired of paper bag brown walls in the living room and red and bronze in the dining room.  I selected colors that appeared more aqua tinted on the chips than they looked on the walls.  So... I ended up with BABY FRIGGIN" BLANKET BLUE walls.  Since I screwed up my knee royally painting just one wall, we had a painter come in to finish.  I love the way the dining room looks, and will just live with the living room.  The den will be repainted as soon as the Corona Virus has passed and the painter can come back.  Memo to self:  buy a small can of paint and test it before committing to it!

Stay safe and maintain social distancing!