Monday, March 30, 2009

Clouds before the Storm

These were the clouds that appeared the day before a large rainstorm hit the area. They kind of look like boulders.
I don't think I have ever seen clouds like these.

Saturday, March 28, 2009

Visit to Tampa

We celebrated Easter early so Samantha would have practice hunting Easter eggs. She did a good job.
Exciting news. Stevie and the family are having a new house built. It will be ready at the end of May. It is just perfect for them and close to good schools.




We had a great visit with the grandchildren.




Samantha honored us with her constant babbling and saying " dog, plane and bidiebiddiebiddie."



Grandma do you like my new Easter hat? I think it will go with my new outfit.



Katelyn is staring a new fashion trend. I think I like it. Now where are my polka dot socks?


I like to go outside now and Daddy is going to get me a new red wagon. I can wear this outfit when I go out.




This is my final layout for my digital class which has over 50 layers. It was quite an extravaganza. I learned so many new skills and put in mega hours learning. I still am behind in the class and it is over so you will just have to wait for the next installment.







Friday, March 13, 2009

Molly Then and Now

This is my layout for the digital scrapbook class I am taking at JessicaSprague.com. Once again it has taken me all week just to finish this layout. I am learning so many new things. This week I learned to make my own custom brushes, re-color patterned paper and created a photo overlay. I even learned how to do a custom drop shadow. Look at the Journal tag to see my special drop shadow.

Monday, March 9, 2009

Newspaper Photos and Photoediting



This is so exciting. I had all my pictures on this one page layout in the March Observer. If you look really close you can see my name in the middle of the page.



I am taking a class on Photoediting. The picture below is straight out of the camera. (SOOC) Now of course it is really nice but just wait.....




SOOC



RAW

This has been edited in RAW. This means that the picture has not been processed..hence the raw word. Just like raw chicken. You have to do something with it to get all the pixels to act nice.




Black and White Conversion
Then I converted the picture to black and white. I am so pleased with the results.



Sepia

Friday, March 6, 2009

Blog-a-versary---Happy Birthday

Happy Blog-a-versary


This week is the first anniversary of my blog. Over the past year I have had over 4,000 visitors. For the year 2008, there were over 3,000 unique visitors. The page that was most visited was the mosaic bowling ball. Visitors arrived from all over the world from as far away as Malaysia, India, Italy and Sweden, just to name a few.




I am now taking my third digital scrapbooking class from Jessica Sprague. This is our first layout. There are 10 lessons each week and one 10 minute lesson took me 1 1/2 hours just to complete. We are learning about clipping masks, compound masks, semi-transparent boxes and how to re-color textured items. It almost sounds like I am taking a medical class. Maybe I will use the clipping and compound masks on my face.



When I started this blog Molly was 4 months old. I took a video of her running through our sprinkler trenches. She was so cute. Here is the latest video. Not up to Hollywood production quality but you can see how much she has grown.




A new year starts with more fun things to blog.