Wordless Wednesday: Maryland Looks at Virginia

the Potomac River

Travel With Me Tuesday: Vienna

AAM Monday: Project Life Week 28

While the 4th of July is usually a quiet one for us, early to bed and early to rise misses most of the fireworks, I did want to get a bit of that on these pages. This week I also went down to a retreat on the Potomac river and as usual, this is when some really hot humid weather appears. That means summer!

TBT:1980 3 children, 3 cats Malawi 1980

Wordless Wednesday: It's Baltimore, hon

looking at Camden Yards

Travel With Me Tuesday: Arrival in Vienna

It was quite a treat to be back in Vienna, a truly cosmopolitan city. The smaller towns were lovely in their own right but give me a major city any day.

AAM Monday: Project Life Week 27

I've really been liking this mint green lately. i think when it started getting warm, fortunately not full on unbearable-to-me hot, the idea of visual coolness took hold. Whatever. The color is not usually one of my go-to colors but then again, maybe I forget that every year til the weather changes. After all summer had officially started. It was even time to get the July art up in the kitchen.

Five on Friday: June 15, 2016

I haven't been here on Friday lately with things going on. Of course, for the life of me I can't think of what all those were but obviously things got in my way. A weekend retreat was one of the good things which is always a nice way to get the batteries recharged. But for today.

1. I just started the HBO series "The Tunnel". Good and creepy but sadly too close to the horrendous terrorism of our daily lives.

I really do like the one image at the opening credits of the train going into the tunnel in the midst of bucolic fields. I'd love to capture that or find it on line.

2. Watermelon! It's that time and we've had one really delicious one despite its really tough skin. Hard to cut but sweet to eat! Better than the reverse.

3. Speaking of watermelon, that's now my screen saver. There are a couple other summery ones at this website and best of all - they're FREE. Thank you ModCloth

click here

4.  I've recently been reading J.K. Rowling's thrillers, written under a pseudonym. As Robert Galbraith, she had done the Cormoran Strike series. I've only read two and like them a lot! Here's the one I just finished, #2 in the series, and there are currently four. Yay!

5. The heat has finally arrived in Annapolis. We've had rain now and then in the form of summer thunderstorms, often with real downpours. Yesterday, however, the temps reached 97° and it was one of those days when the heat was a shock when I opened the door. No, I wasn't outside yesterday but happily stayed indoors. Thank you whoever invented air conditioning!

So if it's summer for you, stay cool, and if it's winter stay warm! We'll all switch soon enough!

Have a great weekend and do something fun for yourself!

TBT: 2007 Vancouver Pride Parade

August 2007. A hot sunny day in Vancouver and we'd had lunch just off Robson Street. Afterwards, we spent a lot of time watching the parade. There was such a feeling of inclusion with the buses, the police and the fire trucks sporting signs and rainbow flags. It made us wonder why Vancouver is so ahead of us in the US. Maybe one day...

Wordless Wednesday: Beautiful Vancouver

2003

Travel With Me Tuesday: Durnstein

November 13, 2012 was a very November day with heavy mist. Not good for the lungs but the kind of weather I like.

All in all a very full day in Durnstein. Full of activity and full of food.

AAM Monday Project Life Week 26

For a lot of my recent Project Life layouts, I have been making my templates with an action from Mommyish at The Lilypad. At first I thought it would be too hard, but wow was it easier than I thought and I love playing round with the various shapes. I did come to the conclusion that, for now, I really prefer square edges to rounded ones. That of course may change as I found the rounded ones a nice change for images etc back when that design hit the scrapping world. As long as it's fun, I'll continue this project. And for now, it is!

Just a bit more about what I've done after the basics of the template making.The action allows you to place the various sized shapes on a base which has a lot of guides to allow the shapes to 'snap to guide.' I then add a drop shadow to all the shapes, and then add a blank layer UNDER the original base.

After I put my photos, cards etc on, I select all the layers ABOVE the new base, hit CMD T (CNTRL T on PCs) and reduce the size to 95%. That gives me visual space for the true background paper - here the yellow ones. Yes there are two papers there with one used as an overlay. I rarely use a lot of patterned papers but this allows me to still have fun with them.

And really the final thing I do template wise is to take everything above that original white base and reduce that to 99%. I wanted to see more white than the action originally allows. Then add the elements that I haven't added earlier and decide what papers to use.  I'm loving it!

click her to see action in store

TBT: 1973 Can You Believe?

It really was the 4th of July in England and this favorite photo aged a whole lot. At least I have it and it was fun remembering details of this day.

Wordless Wednesday: Remember When It Was Cold?

Boston Winter 2012

Travel With Me Tuesday: Cesky Krumlov CZ

Since this was a day trip Dick took I can only surmise what went on.





But the photos tell of a beautiful city in the Czech Republic.

Hip Hip Hooray!

Straight from Designer Digitals

AAM Friday: Summer Goals ...Why?

It usually takes me until July is here to realize it IS summer unless we have one of those years when the 90°+ temperatures start in April. Then by the end of June I'm so over summer and am shocked that it is just beginning.

But in the past few years, I've seen the many summer manifestos, the lists of summer goals. Things you get to list and check off as the summer goes on. Really??? I can fathom this for the working parents who do have to schedule every minute of their children's lives and June-September is no exception. But really? for yourself?

click the image to go to Cathy Zielske's page for download

Isn't summer supposed to be that time for NO plans, just taking each day as it comes, perhaps languidly? Until I retired, I used to keep Sunday as a day, if not for church, then a day to keep sacredly still. No housework, no Getting Things Done, no stress. It was a good break and I learned to do more bits of things during the week so that I could relax on Sunday.

I consider summer the Sunday of the year. Yes, things do have to get done and because we didn't get a lot of  house & garden things done during the winter and spring, we had to play catch up. Not all my flower boxes have flowers and they probably won't but we did get a hell of a lot of dead bamboo cut away and out to yard waste, week by week. The deck is power washed, the gardening table is repainted, the freezer is cleaned out waiting for the Alaskan halibut - insh'allah.

Now I get my load of laundry in when I get up; it's ready to hang on the line by 6:30 right after the sun tea jar goes out. Well that jar goes out every other day as I'm trying to cut back on the decaf iced tea and alternate that with cucumber, lemon or mint water.  Then in the afternoon it's a glass or two of iced coffee (made the night before) with a book. Once my chair is in the shade, I read outside. Now it's feeling like summer! Dinners are as easy as I can make them and often I don't even feel like dinner so I make it just for him. You get my point.

But if you want to make your list, go right ahead. Sometimes there are concerts or dates that you can miss if you get too far into the laissez faire mood of summer,  But no matter how you roll,  do take time to just sit and watch the fireflies! Summer sparkles.