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Project 365 and Shuttercal

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Photojojo sent me an email this weekend about Shuttercal.com. It’s a free site where you can upload your daily photos to a calendar. Then, if you wish, you can have each month’s photos printed in a cool square format.

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I signed up, and it’s very easy to use. One thing I like is photos don’t need to be resized before uploading. I have a Photo a Day blog (on the sidebar) which sadly needs much updating. I started working on in early in September but didn’t get back to it. So why move to Shuttercal? I wanted to try it out because I think I’d love having the photos printed next year. (If I decided to take this one again.) And it’s renewed motivation to get the daily photos processed.

Just Around the Corner

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It’s hard to believe, but Christmas is just around the corner. There have been years in the past when I have completed most of my Christmas shopping by now. But this year, I had barely begun before today. It’s true that the busier I am, the more organized I am. It’s not that I’m not busy now that I’ve retired, but it’s a different kind of busy. I’m no longer captive to others’ schedules, and it’s really been lots of fun.

I was, however, somewhat shocked to read on someone’s blog this week that there are only 30+ days to get your shopping done if you need to mail packages. For the first time ever, I do need to mail all of Sarah’s and Adam’s gifts to California. So today I got a good start on the shopping. It was in the 50’s; highly unusual for November in western New York, so it was a great day to be out and about. When I got home, I pulled out my Christmas Planner. I made this four years ago, and it has proved incredibly helpful.

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There are six sections: Gifts, Cookies, Cards, Menus, Decorating, and Receipts. In the Gifts section I list each gift I buy. It’s very helpful to be able to look back and see what I’ve purchased other years. Last night, when I asked for ideas for stocking stuffers, Adam told me I’d always done a good job, “just do the same again.” It was good to be able to see exactly what that was. The other sections have similar lists. Under Decorating I list the new decorations I purchase each year. The Receipts section is one of my favorites. It has an envelop for each person or group of people so if something needs to be returned after the holiday I know exactly where the receipt is.

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The Christmas Planner has turned out to be one of the most useful projects I’ve ever made.

CPS 141

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It was a busy day:  Zumba, lunch with college friends, a hospital visit, grocery shopping. While I was watching the Friday news programs, I managed to get a quick Christmas card made for CPS 141.

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I love stamping an image on more than one inchie and then separating them. A few gems, a little glitter, and some feathery ribbon (I have no idea where I found it), and it’s a quick and easy card. I love the shimmery cardstock from Papertrey as well. The snowflake is from Snowflake Serenade by Papertrey.

My Brother and Me

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In an earlier prompt, Shimelle mentioned blogging a story you want to use later on a scrapbook page. I have two pages in mind for these photos. One with the story in today’s post and one with photos of my brother and me from our childhood.

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Both of these photos were taken on the new Hudson River Walkway Historic State Park in Poughkeepsie, NY.

Recently I went through all the photos I have from my childhood for Ali Edward’s Yesterday and Today class. I was saddened to find only one photograph of all four of us. It’s an old, old photo and not in very good shape. Since my mother took almost all of the photos, and hated to be in photos, there are very few of her, and none of just my mom and me that I can find. There are few more of my father and me, and lots of my brother and me, and a professional photo of my father, my brother and me taken after my mother died. But I also realized that there are none of my brother and me as adults. I have photos of his daughters, of him and my son, of him and his girlfriend, of him with his daughters, but none of just the two of us. So when we went to visit in October, I made sure to get a couple of photos. Now if he would just smile!

Embellish with Owls

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I’ve had a lot of fun this afternoon making cards for a couple of challenges. All of them use the same images. The first is for the Embellish Owls Color Challenge.

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I recently purchased a fun clear set of Hero Arts stamps I’d been looking at for several months. A 50% off coupon sealed the deal. One of my favorite images is this cute little owl.

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Here’s a detail shot that emphasizes the glitter on the owl.

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Stamps (Hero Arts, Memory Box), Cardstock (Papertrey Ink), gems (Amuse Creative Candy), twine (unknown), button (Papertrey Ink), Copic markers and Spica glitter markers.

Here are  a couple more cards using the same images but different color combinations. On the first, I stamped the branch on the back of a coffee wrap and then cut it out. The leaves were stamped, cut out, and attached to the branch.

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And finally the simplest of the three:

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November Leaves

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The last few years it has snowed before we’ve gotten the leaves to the street for pickup. Matt brought home the power blower last night and Tracy finished blowing in the dark. This morning he dragged the huge pile from the backyard to the street. It is an amazing pile.

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Here’s the sad part. There are still leaves on the trees.

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Quite a few, in fact.

Moxie Fabic Plum Crazy

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I finally had time to create a card for the Moxie Fab Plum Crazy Challenge. Once I had the peacock colored and layered on two Nestability oval die cuts, I went hunting for a card. In my stash were these wonderful tags and envelopes from Paper Source which were just perfect. The perfect ribbon in the “purple box” as well.

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Stamp (Hero Arts), Copic markers, miscellaneous gems from stash, card (Paper Source), ribbon unknown, Nestability oval and scalloped oval dies.

Projects

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Two projects on my “to do” list have been accomplished. The first you can see readily as I have created and posted a new banner on my blog—without any help! I have really avoided this task for weeks because I was afraid I would mess up the blog and not be able to recover it. The second project still needs a little work, I think. I created a watermark for my photos which you can almost see on the second photo below. It’s pretty hard to read, so I need to adjust it a bit.

The adult ed class on external flashes was quite good. I now  understand all the buttons on the flash and what they do. I haven’t had much time to play with it, but here are two photos. The first is with the on camera flash. You can see the glare on the mantle and the light is quite harsh. The second is with the external flash and is much more pleasing to my eye. I’m planning to get some more practice with people (we did a bit in class last night) before Thanksgiving, and hope that the family photos that night are better than usual.

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Goals

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Today’s prompt for the blogging course was about setting goals. It was a timely topic. One of my goals for the last year and a half is to learn how to use the external flash Tracy gave me for Christmas two years ago. I’ve tried it a few times, but it all seemed overwhelming, and even with a book, I haven’t put the necessary time into learning how to use it. With the holidays approaching, it would be very nice to have a good flash to use. So weeks ago I signed up for an adult ed class at a local school called “Abstract Flash and Lighting.” It takes place tonight, so maybe by tomorrow I’ll have some idea where to start.

Another goal I’ve had on my list is to learn how to round corners so I can switch the photos in my blog banner without relying on my son-in-law and his Photoshop skills. Just this morning Cathy Zielske posted a video using Photoshop Elements 8 demonstrating how to do this. No more excuses. I can figure this out! Hopefully, by the end of the week, there will be a new blog banner. (I also have to figure out how to change it!) Last night I managed to reorganize and clean up the side bar of the blog and add a Shelfari widget to the left column. It’s too bad it takes a class to get me moving!!!

Sunday Drive

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It was a gorgeous day here in western New York—warm and sunny. After church we drove up to the boat yard to check on the sailboat. I knew our boat was a bit small when we take it out on Lake Ontario, but today I really understood how small. I had never been up there after all the boats had been put up on dry dock. Our boat looked like a toy! But the plastic Tracy covered the boat with has stayed in place so that was good. On our way home we drove through Durand Eastman Park, another beautiful park designed by Frederick Law Olmstead. It’s still beautiful in November.

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Later this afternoon Tracy and Matt moved most of his furniture and belongings from our garage to an empty garage in Naples that Tracy’s mom owns. There’s still a bit of cleaning out to do, but we’ll eventually be able to park in the garage this winter. While they were gone, I got a few more Christmas cards made–three of each design.

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It’s hard to see in the photograph, but the trees all have a bit of glittery “snow” on them. The star has a tiny Hero Art rhinestone in the center. Both stamps are by Memory Box.

Autumn Decorations

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A few of the fall decorations around the house. We had friends for dinner and finally some sunshine so I managed to get three shots I was satisfied with. More later, perhaps.

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The dining room centerpiece.

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On the dry sink in the dining room.

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On the coffee table.

I wasn’t happy with the shots of the mantle, so I’ll try again tomorrow and add them here then. I’m trying to live up to my goal to post every day—maybe not such a good idea some days.

Neighborhood Walk

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We live just about a block from Highland Park. It was designed by Robert Law Olmstead and is the site of an annual Lilac Festival that draws thousands of visitors each May. When we went for a walk earlier this week, I was delighted to see these beautiful new signs on Goodman Ave.

Here are a few more shots (taken with my point and shoot) as we walked to the park and around the neighborhood.

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The Highland Park Reservoir

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There are still a few trees with most of the leaves still on the tree.

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I love the shape of this tree. There are several old trees in Highland Park that are just lovely.

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Tracy noticed the cool shadows along the sidewalk from the reservoir fence.

New “Toy” and a New Layout

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It’s my version of a toy; I got Photoshop Elements 8 today. It took the better part of the afternoon to get some of my actions loaded in it correctly. I don’t upgrade for every version of software, but PSE 8 has some new features worth having, this is the second update since I purchased my last version, and the rebate was still good until the end of October. I ordered it from Amazon just under the deadline. I’ve been playing with it and there are a few changes to the basics that will take some getting used to, but there are also a lot of new frames and photo effects that are fun to play with as well. I preordered The Missing Manual for PSE 8 for Mac, and it shipped today. That will be a big help in learning the new features.

I decided to try using a template for some photos I took a couple of weeks ago in Mendon Ponds. I used a Calendar/Album template but I have no idea where I found it, and there is no designer noted in the file. Figuring out the new printing commands took just as long as completing the template. Here’s the layout:

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Patterned Paper: Cosmos Cricket; cardstock: Bazzil; flowers from a Studio Calico kit of many months ago; brad: Basic Grey; word stickers: Making Memories; alpha: Jillibean

Five Favorites

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One option in today's prompt from Shimelle was to post some links to favorite sites on the internet. I use Bloglines to subscribe to a long list of blogs that I enjoy. Some days there are lots of posts to read; some days I only skim the blogs; other days there isn't as much action. I get a lot (if not most) of my inspiration from blogs now. It's cut down on the number of idea books I buy, and I'm seriously thinking about letting a couple magazine subscriptions go.

My first favorite is a site I learned from Jessica Sprague during a class on her site. (A list of great class sites might be next.) It's vi.sualize.us. This is where I save and tag all the cards, photographs, and scrapbook pages I see on the internet that I love or where there is a detail, perhaps, that I'd like to use on a card or a scrapbook page. The tags work really well, so if I'm looking for a birthday card idea, I search "birthday" and all the birthday cards I've saved show up. As I've added to my pages I've gotten better at the tagging. I think I have over 200 pages of ideas. Some day I'll clean some of them out, but it hasn't gotten overwhelming yet.

The next two sites are blogs hosted by card makers who I really admire. Debbie Olsen's cards are exquisite and the details are wonderful. She also posts tutorials on coloring with Copic markers which I am trying to learn how to use effectively. Nicole Heady is one of the owners of Papertrey Ink, my very favorite source for stamps, paper, ribbon, and buttons. Nicole has a superb sense of style, and I love almost all of her creations.

The last two sites are photography sites. I've been following The Shutter Sisters for well over a year now. Now only is the photography inspiring, so is the writing. It's also a good source for information. Words to Shoot By is a new site for me, but I love the idea of taking one word and finding images to fit it. I also love the way they use triptychs to showcase the photos. I'm off to check out some links posted by my classmates.

NaBloPoMo & Prompt 2

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Last night I discovered that it’s National Blog Posting Month. I set a goal in January to do one blog entry a day. I haven’t come close, but since I’m taking Shimelle’s blogging class, it seems like a good opportunity to try to do it once a day for a month. Might not be as easy as it seems. Here’s today’s layout: three photos I’ve wanted to scrap since the summer. There’s a back story, of course, but I kept this one clean and simple. 

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