Day 97

I love the flowers that pop up each spring in my yard.  By the time the year goes by, I’ve sorta forgotten what’s there, so it’s like a nice little surprise when they appears out of the ground.  Look at this little beauty in my front bed.  I have white ones too.

As part of my birthday gift to myself, I bought some new scrapbooking supplies.  The order arrived last night, so I spent some time today putting it all away.  Who can resist new ink pads, paper, stamp sets, ribbon, buttons, & brads?….especially when some of it was free with this month’s promotion!!!

After putting my new stuff away, I was enjoying all the color in my craft room and thought I’d take a few photos.

Part of my paper stash.  Gobs of cardstock!

A gutter full of ribbon…..literally.  And that’s not even all of it.  I have more in the cabinet above!

Day 70

Today was my day off and I spent most of the day doing one of my favorite things….scrapbooking!  The only photos I have of the day are pictures of my scrapbook pages.  Here’s one of them.  You might recognize the photo on the page from my Day 52 post regarding our trip to the theater to see Justin Bieber’s Never Say Never movie.  I wanted to scrapbook this photo before I lost the movie ticket stubs. 

Day 45

Brian and Seth bought a bouquet of roses for Mia and I.  As soon as I got them arranged in a vase, Kenai jumped up on the table and started nosing them.  Apparently the baby’s breath has catnip-like qualities and a sweet taste that appeals to cats.  Soon, he was biting off the little flowers.  At one point, he knocked the entire vase over, so I had to set it on a side toaster counter in the kitchen.  But before long, he had found them again and leaped up onto the tiny ledge to harass them once again. 

Couldn’t help snapping some pics because it looks like he’s smelling the roses.  Make sure that you remember to take time to smell the roses in your life!

Editing: cropping, adjustments in ACR, the pioneer woman boost action

• f/2.8
• 1/25 sec
• 800 ISO
• 42mm

And since it is Valentine’s Day, I couldn’t resist getting a photo of my 2 little Valentines. 

Editing: cropping, adjustments in ACR, the pioneer woman boost action

• f/3.5
• 1/25 sec
• 800 ISO
• 28mm

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here are the Valentines that Crockett and I got from the kids.  Simple notes that they designed in AfterCare.  So sweet!

Editing: cropping, adjustments in ACR

• f/3.5
• 1/40 sec
• 800 ISO
• 30mm

Day 29

I’m cheating a bit by posting this.  Obviously I didn’t take it myself.  I had my friend Laura take this photo of me at our scrapbooking retreat this weekend.  Note: the photo was taken on automatic settings.  Though I didn’t take the photo, I wanted to appear in this blog at least occasionally.  I really don’t like to have my picture taken, but I know that it’s important to document my presence in life!

While I actually like this photo of me, I was bothered by the chaos of colors.  My purple sweatshirt really clashes with the out-of-date brown couch in the background.  Knowing that I didn’t want to have to do a bunch of work in Photoshop, I tried a simpler approach.

 

I changed the photo to black and white and I’m much happier with it. 

Editing: cropping in ACR; icing action and the pioneer woman b&w beauty action in Photoshop

• f/4
• 1/100 sec
• 400 ISO
• 40mm

Day 14

It was my day off today, so I decided to use the time to get organized.  I have a weekend scrapbooking retreat coming up at the end of the month and I need to figure out what I want to work on next.  Unfortunately I don’t scrapbook in any kind of order, so I can’t actually put my pages in an actual scrapbook album.  The only exception is our first vacation to Maine….it’s my only completed scrapbook.  Instead of storing my pages in scrapbooks, I have a hodgepodge of loose pages stored randomly in clear Iris containers. 

So, I sat down on the living room floor and started grouping my pages by year.  Then I went through each year’s stack and sorted them by month, writing down the events I have completed.  Now I have a much clearer picture of what I still need to accomplish and I’ll know which photos not to print.  And it’s a good thing, I came across 3 different events which I had scrapbooked twice.  My pages for these duplicated events look different, but most of the same photos are featured. 

After I got up to grab my camera, I noticed that I had inadvertently made a pattern on the floor with my stacked pages and thought it would make a cool photo.  I was really pleased to see that I captured a little sunbeam streaming in the window at the top of the picture.  There is some glare on the upper photos due to the sunlight, but I like the muted effect.  I don’t want people to focus on the individual scrapbook pages….I want to them to notice the stacks and the pattern that they make.  Note that this is only a portion of my pages!

Editing: slight exposure increase in RAW

f/7.1

1/40 sec

400 ISO

28mm

I couldn’t resist getting a close-up of a few of the scrapbook page stacks.  Considering that I average about 1 hour per page, that adds up to a lot of time.  Luckily, it’s my passion. 

Editing: slight exposure increase in RAW

f/2.8

1/100 sec

200 ISO

28mm