The Pathfinder

I just finished making an album of my grandsons' visit to the zoo in Houston.  I had to share this page I made of the youngest, Grif.  Of course he was not really this close to the animals;  I removed him from a couple of pics and placed him into two more.  Photo merging. I am actually getting pretty decent at PSE8.

What makes Grif reading the map so meaningful and amusing....his Papa Larry is the pathfinder in our family....he always studies the map and decides on the best plan of action.  Grif seems to be a chip off the old block!!!

 The background on the page was something I found online.  I was going to merge it into another solid color for a texture effect, but it looked absolutely perfect this way.

Andy Warhol?

My daughter is wondering about her mama.  Here are the last two scrapbook pages I have made.  They are pages with pictures of me as a girl.

This is the original b&w pic.....so boring.

I am on the phone.....one phone in the hall; black; rotary; cord; party line!!

Here is a fresh take:

Much more eye catching.

Now this is a complete page I designed, using some premade stuff but changing colors and adding effects.
My daughter said it looked kinda like Andy Warhol.  Not sure if she liked it or not.  I find it interesting.

Below is the pic I scanned.  Boring.

 I did a PSE effect on it and then slid the hue slider to change the colors andchose three.  Don't you just love the stuffed monkey (with a plastic face, no less). I have so far made many, many heritage pages in muted tones, some bright kiddie pages, some kid fantasy pages, now I am doing my own pictures and am using color and effects. 

Another fun effect of me at one of my birthday parties.

The black and white/sepia photos were great for the heritage albums of my parents and grandparents, and me as a baby and toddler, but I want some jazzed up stuff for the girl.   

No More Phooey to Pho

I tried Vietnamese soup or "Pho" once, years ago.  I was completely unimpressed.  Since then I have developed a taste for foods flavored with fish sauce, cilantro, sricha, etc.  Tastes change.  So today when I spotted this blog post from Food Republik, I was intrigued.  For one thing, the photo looked wonderful.

It was time to make our lunch.  I had rice sticks, cilantro, edaname chicken broth, fish sauce, etc, etc.  No chicken.  But I did have frozen shelled shrimp.  So I made shrimp pho.  And it was so good.

Here is mine:

I even made a special recipe print-out using PSE8

Salmon cakes

Oh my, Jenni's salmon cakes were wonderful. Those potatoes put them over the top!
Don't hesitate to try them. I did use fabulous marinated roasted fresh wild red salmon. That added a lot to the wow factor

Salmon Cakes

These lovely salmon cakes were made by my daughter, Jenni.  I plan to make then soon.

This is how she made them:

 Chunked up some sweet potato and russet potato, boiled then mashed, stirred into a leftover flaked salmon fillet with some breadcrumb, egg beaters and old bay/s/p. Dipped patties in more breadcrumb and pan fried. Sauce is Greek yogurt with a touch of mayo, added lemon juice, old bay, garlic powder and hot sauce. YUM - and I got a good ten cakes out of one piece of salmon! I liked the combo of sweet and white, gave it both good flavor and texture.

Can we say orange?

I really, really hope this photo just has not aged well, color-wise. I hate to think I wore orange. Even if it WAS the 1970's? Now you see why women who lived through the 70's dislike many of the current styles/colors/patterns!

This is an old snapshot I found of me and hubby. We had been married about 2 years and were living in Miami, Florida. We drove down to Key West. It was a very quiet little town. We rode the tourist train and obviously got somebody to take a pic of us. And forget the orange.....he chose burgundy pants and we must have been quite the clashing pair.

We went back to Key West a couple of years ago and my, has it changed. It was a stop for a cruise ship and we had only a few hours; that was quite enough. I think we rode the train, again.

As to designing this page. It is three versions of the same pic, layered one on top of another and offset. The left one I made b&w2, the middle one is the icky print in all its tacky glory. The one to the right is PSE's take on poster edges. I do love that effect. It makes my orange pants outfit look artsy instead of tacky.

The frame is from Freckle Bear Creations' Just Because Kit. The flower is from Blue Birthdays, but I changed the color. I used several different fonts.