I Won!

I was asked to sub at Bunco probably this time last year, and that turned into a permanent gig. What an awesome group of ladies, and I'm using that term loosely!  Really, they are great! So much fun. I've had a blast!  

Normally, we play for prizes. But one of the Bunco'ers lost her mother to breast cancer recently so we played and donated.  I thought I'd try a different approach to 'winning' and use reverse psychology, acting like I really didn't care if I won.

 Well, I guess you could say it worked, I did win!  Well, actually I lost so bad, I won. I had the most losses, 17, some said that was the most they'd ever seen (there's a b-word for those people). So I guess I have one thing going, if I'm going to do it, I'm going to do it well! And I'm going to take pictures of my winnings that will make me feel like a winner!

Let's talk about these! Pink tulips from Michelle.  Background in the first picture, my living room wall. Picking that blue for the living room was a grave mistake. It's not a what I would call a dark colour, but the camera sees it as dark, and I have to crank up the ISO every time. Makes Christmas morning photos pretty hard to get. I like how the top right hand corner is lit up, that's the light from my door windows.
The second shot is in the exact same spot, in front of my front door, it's retro, has 3 square windows running vertically down the door. Lets in some indirect light through those stylish frosted windows. The back ground, hold on, is the inner box from the Rock Band guitar. Anything can be a background when you shoot at f/2.8. The box was right there, it's white, but it's not very wide, it was a perfect background/reflector. I'm crafty, I can made do.

Crafting and an Outing

I made another canvas on Friday. I started with an idea, and then it didn't end up the way I wanted it to. I ended up having to paint the camera image over the original iron on because I painted over it and it lost it's clarity. Now I can live with it. 

For what ever reason, the juices were flowing on Friday and I started and finished a 6x6 American Crafts album. It's our Christmas one. It's too fat, but I'm over it.

Saturday, don't get too excited, but we went to the Art Gallery. The school district had an exhibit of a select number of students' work displayed. Emily had a drawing picked so we went to check it out. There's lots of amazing talent in middle school! This photo was taken before ice cream, and she didn't want to have her picture taken.

As an added bonus, or maybe it was the endorphins from her favourite ice cream from Moolix, she let me take a few shots of her. I love that she's sitting on the sidewalk beside the garage, where the reflection from the white of our garage, and the cream of the neighbour's house makes for awesome light.

See previous post!

Ironing? Me?

I was doing my morning blog reading when I came across this blog and some free transfer patterns. I have a couple packs of iron on transfers and I never use them. So I thought I'd try them out. 

But then I didn't have anything to iron them on to. So after lots of thinking, hey, it wasn't even 8:30 am, I  decided to use my shopping bag that I had made a while ago. I found a clean, dog hair free spot and ironed the image on to it. I have a few more printed out and can't find anything to iron them on to. I did iron one on to some fabric paper that Marg gave me, and I'll put that in my Project Life album at our meeting tonight. 

 I wonder if Kerry will notice if I iron a bunch of things on the backs of his Subaru t-shirts?

Making Things

 I've been busy making new samples for around my scrapping room, and for classes.

 This super cute one is not my own, I totally copied it from here, because I liked it so much.

 The following cards were made while using blue, vanilla and tan.

 Then I played with grey, olive and pink.

 After finding this pattern on Heather Bailey's blog this morning, I made this cute little bat. Then I spent 2 hours at the dentist. Emily and I needed a cleaning and it took a lot longer than normal because the office is switching from paper charts to computerized ones.

Spring is on it's way!

We spent the weekend doing yard work. Kerry borrowed the chainsaw from work and we cut down a nut tree, and pruned the curly willow out front. That sounds kind of kinky, it's not. 

 Saturday, fight night. Pizza at mom and dad's before the fight.

 Sunday, dinner at the Gasthaus in Peachland. Kerry's been putting in longer hours because of a new system at work so his boss paid for us to go out for dinner. It was a hard choice! We knew it would be a good meal at the Gasthaus, always is. Kerry had the Bavarian Beer Roast with bread dumplings.

 Both meals came with a side of purple cabbage. I love it!

 I had Rouladen with spaetzle. I could only eat half of it, so I ate the rest for breakfast the next day.

 We tried to get a few pictures of the two of us together. I hate docks. It helped that the water was clear and not deep at all. The picture is crooked, I had to put the camera on a rock and use the timer, which meant I had to run down the dock, which is scary too.

 My Project Life album is caught up, right up to this week. I'm pretty amazed that I have managed to stay  this caught up. And as the weather improves, I've noticed I take more pictures. There's the odd week last month that has maybe 2 photos in it. But that's okay, I decided right at the beginning that I wouldn't stress about it.

 I found a picture on the internet to use for my bit about the earthquake/tsunami in Japan. I used CNN for facts for that day. Since then things have changed.

 I have been saving wrappers from different food items, candy, hot chocolate, and have been adding them too. It was Lorana's birthday, so we went out for dinner at Olympia, it was awesome. We had such a great time and we took pictures. I'm loving that part of Project Life. It's forcing me to take my camera out more, and use it.

 St. Patrick's day, Spring, trip to the scrapbook store, blood test, tatertots to get over blood test trauma, self portrait, sick kid, muffin, Walmart. I have developed a new skill, I can hide my veins when the thread of a needle is presented. Which makes life even harder, and painful. No veins in the arms means the veins that can be seen on the body will be used, hence the swollen, bruised back of my right hand. Which stayed true to me and didn't give up any blood! So the left hand was used too, held between my legs, it gave up a bit more than the right hand, and didn't hurt at all. I'm a freak of nature.

 Chainsaw, dinner out, green grass, pizza.

 And I made a layout too. Paint, ink, polaroids, corrugated cardboard from an Amazon box, washi tape, stitching, I went all out. And I mixed up paper lines, different manufacturers on one page!
Thank you, Amy Tangerine for getting those creative juices flowing.

Other things I've been doing...taxes, business stuff for photography, studying, eating better!

Ch...ch...changes

I will be moving my blog over to a new address and will keep you posted to where you can find me in the very near future!

2 weeks of food

We watch a lot of Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives. We've been to a few of them on our trip to California. I'd only go back to one of them, the other ones were nothing to write home about. 

One thing we did discover is that biscuits and gravy are not that great. The 'cream' gravy is gross. So when we decided we must try Chicken Fried Steak with cream gravy, we knew we wouldn't make it with the cream gravy. When I say "WE",  I mean me. When I emailed the recipe for Chicken Fried Steak to Kerry, the reply was pretty much "Yum! But I've looked over the recipe and can't figure out where the chicken comes in." I responded with "It's either 'fried like chicken' or it's 'fried by a chicken'. You decide."

I had a hard time finding the steaks we needed. Good think I like hanging out at the butchers. They always find meat for my odd requests, they cut the steaks and tenderized them for me. Cheap Cheap. I was impressed.  It was a messy ordeal, touching raw meat is not one of my favourite things to do, dipping it in raw egg makes it worse. But the outcome was worth it. I made mushroom and shallot gravy topped with onion rings, garlic mashed potatoes and green beans. 2 thumbs up. It's one of those meals you should only have maybe once a month or every other month. Unless you want to die young.

My mom made these, I don't know if they have a name. She said she found them from my blog somehow. One of my readers, commenters, had a link to a recipe. It's all vague. They are pretzels with Kisses melted on top. They were so good, sweet and salty. And cute! Thank you!

One of my favourite meals on our trip was at the Cocina Cucamonga in California Adventure. I had my first tamale. I found all the ingredients to make them at home so I tried last week. It was a little time consuming, mainly the wrapping. The soaking of the corn husks and slow cooking of the beef wasn't too bad. Set it and leave it really. The big surprise was how much Emily liked them. She doesn't eat polenta/ corn meal, but has enjoyed ripping into these little corny packets.

I've been trying different foods from the Oriental Market. We haven't gone there for dim sum, it's on our to-do list. But they do sell the items frozen so I thought I'd try 'pork buns'. Not to be confused with bbq pork buns of a few weeks ago, these are more like gyoza/dumplings/wonton. They had to be steamed. They got eaten as fast as I could steam them. Can't wait to pick a new item next time I'm at the market.

Did you notice a theme or lack of one? Very few or no veggies! We are working on changing that. I had a physical this week and won't go into details but the scale was where I thought it would be, and it still wasn't something I wanted to see. The dr. said that some of my 'issues' could be weight related, and I'm getting some tests done to rule out a few things.  I have to do a bit of fasting before the blood test, which isn't a problem, it's the actual blood test I can't handle. I should go in tomorrow but am thinking I might rope someone into going with me....just incase. I tend to scare other patients with my lack of control.

Templates?

Storyboard templates, something I haven't played with yet. 

The verdict is still out.

Hey!

I could not wait the 3 days to let the paint cure. I used my heat gun to help the drying time along. And I only used one chalk board, incase I wrecked it by using it too soon.

Emily thought they were pretty neat!

She made sure everyone got in on the fun. 

It's Project Life night, we are moving right along. I can't believe it's the first week of March. 

Things I'm adding to the book tonight: 

pretzel bites, Rock Band, chalk board making, Criminal Minds watching, and dogs napping in sun spots.

Just the usual daily grind!

I make things, many things.

Most of you know me as this person, the one that makes things out of paper. But did you know I used to work with wood?

 A long time ago, I made wood crafts, sold them at local craft sales and taught classes. I had all the toys, an industrial bandsaw, a drill press, a little router and a scroll saw. They were MINE, not ours, and not Kerry's. I ordered wood from the mill, I had paint by tin, saw dust all over the place. Then I discovered paper, stamps, and ink, and the wood working tools either got pushed to the side or sold. The band saw was sold and a camera was purchased, and then another and another, until my 50D came along and I was content with it. (I have to say this because a new camera is not in my immediate future.)
I have been coveting chalk board speech bubbles for a long time, I thought they'd make great photography props, I knew I could make them, but didn't really want to, Heather offered to make them and said I could make them if I wanted to. And there was no way I was paying for something I could make. Call me stubborn. But after going to the high school tour things changed. Walking into the wood working room and inhaling all the good scents, the wood, the varnish, the sawdust, glue, and the tools (yes, tools smell too),  I knew I would be making my own speech bubbles.

It was the first time the saw had been run in years. I made sure everything was in working order, after the big band saw incident the last time I used it I've been a bit saw scared. Don't even get me started on the circular saw, any saw you can walk around with while it's running, can't be a good saw.  Anyways, after the safety check, I managed to cut a bunch of the bubbles out, and cleaned everything up so that Kerry would never know I was even in the shop. I sanded, painted and glued. And now I am the very proud owner of my own set of speech bubbles!
Now if only I could knit!

Tuesday's Thoughts

I want more days like this, where the sun is low, the grass is green, the dog is not digging a hole in the yard. I am contemplating getting the walnut tree cut down, it seems he doesn't spend his time outside eating walnuts for anyone else but me. 

 A certain girl child, whom shall remain nameless, came to me to day after reading that the local art supply store has Copics on sale and said "I need a few more, I don't really have a good selection of colours." I think I said "Uhhhhh....."

 These are scenes from a Rock Band in the making. They have a name. It was something like "We Might Be Moustaches" but it could have been something else, I was laughing too hard when I heard they had named themselves. They are 'jamming' as I type this. I'm not bitter that I didn't make the band. I still have my tambourine.

My living room looks much better in black and white.

 We tried to re-incarnate the happy, sunny days of Disneyland by making pretzel bites. Totally rocked the tastes, now we need the sounds and the weather. Apparently, I deleted the sound track to the teacup ride. I wonder why?  It's not like hearing it played over and over 36 times a day would bother a person.