Word Art

Playing around today with creating wordart brushes.  And since I have a CD full of beautiful wedding photos...

Cat in a Jar

Not really.  Last year as I was learning digiscrap, I did a very bright page with Kitsa, Jenni's cat, inside a jar.  The Digidares want us to scrap about a pet.  I shared Kitsa with Jenni for years, but she (thankfully) now lives with Jenni and Kory.  She rules their house, I do believe.  I did update the page a bit.

Stacks

I stacked a waterfall today.

STUCK

No, I am not stuck; that is name of a scrapbooking blog I found.  It is called Stuck?! and posts a monthly sketch to challenge digiscrappers.  Since I do not have my cousin Kay to challenge me several times a day on the book we created together, I have to find something else to jog my creativity.  This is my first month to participate.

Since I am working on the Iceland pages, I created a page for that series from the February sketch.

This is the sketch

This is my take on it:

It is the companion page to Out and About.  I used items from these kits and designers: Freshly by This Little Missy, Butterfly Garden by Mommy Made This, curious Cute by Meagans Creations.
the Girl by Scrappin Serenity.

Color Challenge

I found a blog called Use Your Stuff that has weekly challenges.  So I jumped right in.  This week it was a color challenge to use the colors teal, purple, gold.  Since I love those colors, I had fun.  The photo is of Jason and Jennifer MANY years ago.  Love the smiles.

Two more creations

I downloaded a free template that gave me a  cool zigzag effect, so I popped in  couple of decorations and stamped a bit and found a pic of Jenni "posing" and here it is.

I am also still working on the pics from Iceland and did this one, showing pics of me and Larry taken by friends as we explored the countryside.

Rescuing another drab picture another way

Am working on scanning the old 1980's photos of my kids.  These two photos were really bad, taken from a distance, color drab, but I love that he is flying a kite in our yard.  So I put the two pics on a scrapbook page, then used the kit Backyard Play and did some filtering to change up the papers and made the page pop.

No Blue Water?

Panama City, FL, with its white sand, is known for its clear sparkling blue water; at least when the sun shines and the seaweed is absent.  But when you take a photo of your little boy (circa mid eighties) and the sun is not shining enough to make that water blue, what do you do?  You scan it in 2012 and run a photoshop filter on it!

Before:

With a little digital magic....... (and, yes, the ocean CAN be that color....just not everyday.

French Vinegar Chicken

 This is an amazing recipe I collected back when I printed out recipes and put them in a loose leaf notebook. I decided last week to try and put some of these printed recipes info my Paprika App. I had always liked the recipe but had omitted the tarragon since I never had any. This time I had some and included it. My advice to you:  NEVER leave out the tarragon. It takes the recipe to another level.   Click here to go to the recipe and enjoy  (Now I have the link properly inserted.  Bloggsy would link properly, so I am on the big computer.  Now you can get the recipe.

Swing

My cute little Jenni.  I found  these two photos:  Such an ugly background.

So I used some magic and  turned them into this:

It is amazing what can be done with computers and software.

Column of Steam

While living in Iceland, we noticed a huge column of steam a pretty good distance away.  The sky was clear and blue and nobody knew what it was.  We wondered all day; it never went away and looked exactly the same every time we would look at it.  We found out the next day that it was an unexpected volcanic eruption and we were seeing the column of steam as the lava poured into the sea.  We never saw any lava erupting from our distance.

Several of the military guys volunteered to go and help shovel ash out of the homes, which were being buried.  He took some photos and brought back a hunk of lava he picked up with gloves while it was still hot.  He gave it to me and I have it in a box somewhere.

What makes this a serendipitous story....the Icelandic government contracted with Peerless Pump to manage pumping the seawater onto the lava to redirect it and save the harbor.  My uncle in Indiana worked for this company.  He was sitting at his desk when his boss came through and asked if anybody was willing to go to Iceland to manage this assignment.  Not a plum job, of course.

My uncle looked up and said "my niece is in Iceland, I will go".  What a treat for two lonely twenty-somethings in the land of Frost and Fire!  He stayed in the capital city in a lovely hotel.  He seemed to enjoy the trip, except he could not believe how expensive the eggs and bacon were at breakfast (we told him he was supposed to be eating the smoked fish and skyr!!!)

Here is the scrapbook page I made with the photos.

Product Warning

I had a really creepy experience today with my Fry Daddy mini fryer.  It is a small fryer, no on/off switch or temp control, very basic.  Plug it in, it heats up the oil, you cook your food.  Especially good for brussels sprouts, believe it or not.

Anyway, it is lined with teflon.  Today I plugged it in but left it on for about 20 minutes while everything else cooked.  When I went over to the fryer, the teflon had melted.  Literally.  I unplugged it, used a regular saucepan to fry in.  When it cooled, I pulled on the wrinkled teflon, and the entire inside lining peeled away.  Just so you know.

Went online and bought a minifryer that is stainless steel. It also has several heat settings, for whatever that is worth.  Got a deal, too. $20. I LOVE deep fried brussel sprouts. Love, love, love.  Found this photo online, but mine look better because I fry them pretty dark and use balsamic vinegar and honey to dress them.  I also fry the whole, not cut in half.  But you get the idea.