Texture Tuesday - Christmas

I found time today to rework my 'live green' arrangement and make two smaller ones with the left overs. And tonight we decided to leave town Christmas morning and make the 1000 mile trek to the Dakotas to see family. Needless to say I will NOT spend any more time decorating for Christmas. Or baking for that matter. And I had such plans…

The good part of this road trip will be…
I can clean up my email, delete photos off my phone and iPad, catch up reading my Photoshop User magazines and who knows how many others I have on my iPad I never seem to read.
Years ago my ritual for this long drive at Christmas was to bring photo albums and all my printed photos for the year, organize and put them in the albums. The last time that happened was 2008. (oh yes, I'll just hang my head for a minute here, but only a minute.)

I must admit, I really like last minute trips. I didn't need the added stress of thinking about this one the past few weeks. I do have a couple days off and plan to bake Kuchen to take home for the family. It's a german tradition in our family and I'm the only one that makes it any more. (Excluding a few aunts.) I told my brother I'd trade him some deer sausage. Can't wait!

I thought Kim was taking a blogging break, but I guess not, so here is my Texture Tuesday, edited in PS Touch. 2 layers of her textures I keep handy on my iPad.

Friday Finds December 19

It's Friday Finds again! This week my best ever find was a bundle of greens at the florist.

I've said for years, "This year I will make something with real greens." (It almost didn't happen this time either as I saw them sitting in water on the patio for days while I kept forgetting to get a few things I needed for the job.)

I found this photo in Martha Stewart's magazine this month and thought, 'hmmmm, I should try that'.

 The vase I used for my fall branches would get another work out. Late last night I started putting it together.

As I stood this morning admiring it, the smell just took me to heaven! I wanted to stay home from work and just inhale!

I decided it was too flat on top and I need bigger ornaments and more red ones. (Another thing to add to my ever growing list. Cross one off, add two.)

So I'll be redoing it tonight and try to decide if I want to add the 'snow' or not. (I'll show the finished product later.)

I only had time for some iPhone shots this morning, edited in VSCOcam.

Yes, I realize it's a bit late for getting the decorating done, but you've got to live with what life dishes out. Has your life been thrown any curves during this holiday season?

Come on over to Kim's blog today and see what kind of great goodies everyone has found/discovered this week...

Friday Finds Oct 31.

Some days just don't go as you'd expect. Monday was one of those. it turned out to be a 12 on my scale of 1 to 10. I met my friend, Kathy for breakfast on the north side of town and then the day took a detour….
I had meant to throw the camera in the car and go by the Garden and Arts Center to check out the flowers and trees. But Ms. Canon got left at home. Well the least I could do would be to drive by and check it out the tree colors. I shot some good pics there a couple years ago and was hoping to collect a few horse apples for some unusual still life pics. Because we had a very late freeze I figured my chances would be slim on finding any. It is also known as an Osage Orange.
There is on only one tree in the park grow on and it is a huge glorious tree. This year when I saw it, I felt that I knew just how the 'Tree House Man' feels when he talks about 'his' trees. There is something magical about this one.

To my delight the ground was covered with horse apples!

I love these guys! 

They're actually quite large. More like grapefruit size. Of course Miss Unprepared took the only course of action possible.

My purse must become the mode of transport. Not good, because they have a tendency to be sticky. Sticky with sap like a pine. I picked up the best ones then decided to pick a 'bouquet' of branches to take home.

My afternoon was spent "autumn-izing" the living room and some random still life shots in my studio. It's SO nice when the creativity flows.
The grand daughter also came over and we played in the leaves.
I have enough photos to keep me busy for quite awhile.

It was a very good day. Now I will be cleaning the inside of my new purse.
PS. I went back on Wednesday well dressed and prepared. More to come…..
Come on over to Kim's blog today and see what kind of great goodies everyone has found/discovered this week.

Autumn Decorating

Here are a few shots around the house this week. 

It all started when I discovered the sun had crept across the sky enough to come in the dining room window shortly after sunrise. My white chair always sits ready and waiting. 

Hallie has now taken it over as her own. She just LOVES to stare out the window and climb on it. Anyway here's my first shot and right away wasn't totally happy with the white.

 Out comes the rickety brown one for the rest. Much better.

This was everyone first stop when they came in from the garden, the fireplace hearth. 

Oh yes, we grew pumpkins this year and they pretty much took over. This was just the first major picking.

I love the tiny ones the best. The kitchen got blessed with a couple behind the sink. Small pie pumpkins.

I know I just decorated the mantle for summer not long ago. But it made for a pretty easy switch up.

( I confess, I bought the white ones.)

I really love these yellow ones with the dark stems, They may have come from a hybrid I planted. Not many of those showed up and I got a few others like the green and white striped that I didn't have seeds for.

Are you decorating yet? This blogging thing really makes me stay on my toes more. I'd really gotten lazy in the past few years. I guess this is my Geritol.

All edit done in Lightroom with the new presets from Pretty Presets called Clean and Creative Advanced Workflow.

Linking up with Kim Cunningham for Little Things Thursdays.

Studio Makeover

One of the things on my To Do List for this year was to revamp what was originally my sewing room. I discovered a cool way to do before and after photos of rooms was to do a camera phone panorama. (We'll get into details later in this post, but I did use Photosynth on these.)

A. My green wall was full of faux finish experiments from 11 years ago including joint compound swiped over stencils. Time for white.
B. My bubble gum pink corner was a reading nook that I decided to turn into small photo shoot area. Time for white and new curtains. Used the trim to finish out around the rest of the ceiling. (Which doesn't show on the photo.)
C. Made a dream board (which is much fuller now). I hot glued upholstery-weight fabric to insulation board. Then attached industrial strength velcro to it and the closet door.
D. Hung 2 new shelves. The lower one holding some art supplies because the table gets sooooo cluttered.
E. Finally hung some of my photos and art on the walls.
F. General clean up and organization.
G. I still hope to recover the lamp shade and get rid of or switch out the chair to a smaller one.
For several weeks it stayed nice and clean. That was because I would just go in and look and go, ahhhhh..... Now it's a mess again. Perhaps today I will clean it a bit and get back to some messing in some paint.

Panoramas

As I said these were taken with Photosynth. The disadvantage with it as you can see is that they need cropping. That can also BE an advantage depending on your needs. Also I was able to nearly get a 360º circles worth. Here's an interesting article on Photosynth.

In the native iPhone camera app, it crops for you automatically. It also flashes move up or move down if it senses you're getting off track. Very nice feature. 

Last week we were able to fly our Bonanza to the the Texas coast and had the most amazing clouds to fly through. I hadn't thought of doing panoramas in the 'air' before. Quite addicting if the clouds are awesome.

It does have a little glare that I could take out in photoshop if I feel ambitious enough. But I just discovered this gem that I will be ordering today. A polarizing filter for my iPhone from Photojojo.

Perhaps I'll take some panos of every room in the house, just for recording sake. Perhaps a scrapbook page. hmmmm.

an R will do

I've been working on my 'art' room (former sewing room) lately. I've repainted and rearranged a tiny bit. Put up shelves, etc, etc, but that's for another post. I'll have before and afters.
I had an idea while browsing Hobby Lobby a couple weeks back. I love 'letters', individual letters, and came across some that drew my attention. I'm particularly fond of 'a's and thought I should spell out 'art' on the wall.  I even knew right where I wanted to put it. Found the perfect A and T but couldn't find an r to suit my taste. Thought I could find a chip board r that wasn't a capitol, but no luck.
Well, surely I can figure out a way to make one myself. The other 2 letters where on a square background so the r should be cut out. I should do an 'altered art journal' type of r and would do it digitally. (After all that is my word this year.)
Sometime things just click and don't you love it when they do.
I was having so much fun, I may decide to make a whole alphabet. But when I finished, I just had to play with some layering and it ended up on a background too with fake brads holding it to a black mat board.
And now it didn't look right where I had originally planned to hang them, so I took a photo to 'move' the letters around in Photoshop. This even helped me to hang each one in the right place. In fact I plan to do this at work this month because it's time for some redoing there too.

PS: did you notice it says 2012? Oh, good grief!!!! And it is already March! (I may just leave it)

(Bits and pieces from some of my scrapbook kits.)

I am pleased with the results. Yeah! And the room is nearly finished. Hopefully I'll have a post later this week of before and afters.