A way to save energy...

The first sun tea of the season...

A little bit of fun in the park

It was an absolutely gorgeous evening. After supper the girls and I went to the park. The back field is covered in pretty purple clover...a perfect spot for some pictures. I wanted to try something different so I held my camera in one hand and had Wendy hold my free hand. Then we started spinning while I snapped shot after shot. Oh, my...so FUN! She laughed and squealed. We spun until we were dizzy. Heather wanted to try also, so I spun again. I was surprised that I got anything useable, some of the shots are blurry, but not terribly so, just enough to show movement. I'm calling them artistically blurred! ;) These two are my favorite. I love the backlighting on Heather.

(they look a little washed out...the background has a bit more contrast and color)

Thanks for stopping by!

A little bit of gardening...a way to save money & the Earth

We started our garden today. We planted radicchio lettuce, a lettuce mix, spinach and sugar snap peas. The zucchini & cucumber plants were put into bigger pots...it's too early yet to put them in the ground. The herb seedlings have just started to sprout in their little greenhouse as have the tomatoes and peppers. We still have carrots and bibb lettuce to put out.

Remember the Barbara Mandrell song, "I was Country when Country wasn't Cool"? That's how I feel about our gardening. We always had a garden, but it seems like in the past couple of years, more and more people are planting home gardens. With the whole "go green" movement and people looking for ways to save on their grocery bill, gardening is now chic.

I played around with the processing on these photos a bit. I was going for a 1930's-40's type of look. I'm not sure if that's what I acheived, but I like it anyway. :) Why that particular look? Because the resurgence in the popularity of gardening made me think of the Victory Gardens of WW II era. My mind works in weird ways sometimes...it's a scary place! lol!

I have a whole series of shots I plan on making a storyboard with.

Thanks for stopping by!

Discovery

So happy to go outside and shoot in the sunshine! While I was in the yard today, I saw a plant in the wildflower/butterfly garden that I've never seen before. Can anyone help me identify it?

I think I call it EggPlant! ;) Just a little April Fool's joke!

I have a new favorite Easter decoration. I found the basket at Goodwill and fell in love with it. It was just a bit too distressed and rusted, so I dabbed on white acrylic paint in a few spots. The eggs came from the Home & Garden show held in downtown St. Louis in early March. At the end of the show all the garden vendors sell their plants and flowers from their displays. We were buying some tulips from one of the vendors and he threw in the eggs for no charge. There were too many purple eggs, so I painted and speckled three of them. (the two yellow eggs and one of the blue eggs). I love acrylic paint...instant makeover! I filled the basket with green excelsior.

Just looking at this cheery basket makes me smile!

Completion of LOAD

Wow! February went by so quickly! I was so busy keeping up with the LOAD scrapbooking challenge, I didn't have time for too much extra. I had a blast...and I haven't stopped! 3 days into March and I'm still scrapping! Just wanted to show the rest of the layouts I did in February.

A little more scrapbooking

Actually a lot more. I have 7 days worth of layouts to share. I've been keeping up with LOAD and doing a layout a day. I've also been taking pictures just about every day for POTD, had plenty of shots for last weeks theme, just haven't found the time to post. (or I've been too tired in the evenings) Anyway, I'm babbling. On to the layouts:

Day 4:

Day 5:

Day 6:

Day 7:

Day 8:

Day 9: (this one is completely digital)

Day 10: (this one is a hybrid, a mix of digital and traditonal)

That's it! Thanks for stopping by!

A little bit of Scrapbooking

I'm participating in a scrapbooking challenge called LOAD (layout a day), through Lain Ehmann's website, ScrapHappy. I took and completed the challenge when she first did it in January 2008 and had a blast! The challenge is simple...a scrapbook layout a day for 28 days, the entire month of February. There's one other rule: NO WHINING! lol!

I'm posting my layouts on Flickr, but I'll be blogging them also, if you'd like to follow along.

Here are days 1-3:

One of my main goals for this challenge is to make a dent in my scrapbooking stash. The papers used on this layout are over 5 years old. The scroll die cut is almost a year old. The title was done in photoshop. I need to add the journaling...Wendy bought the skateboard at a yard sale for $1.

Very simple 2 page spread. I wanted to use all these photos and I didn't want to cut them, so this is what I came up with. The scallop borders are Just the Edges by Bazzil, the chipboard letters are Hedi Swapp. The photos are mine...all taken in my backyard. More stash busting...everything (except the photos) are a year old.

I literally threw this together, took less than a half and hour. It's not my favorite layout, but it's done! ;) The papers are new to me...but who knows how long my mom had them before giving them to me this weekend. lol!

Three days, three layouts....right on track! Thanks for stopping by!