UFOs

How about something pretty before I start on this?

Lightly edited in Lightroom. (lightened the shadows) Taken with iPhone5 HDR setting. 
I decided to clean out the notes on my phone today. (I also need to clean out my email and my closet.) the only reason I even started to do this was because the microphone all of a sudden was greyed out so I couldn't speak my notes in. (If you haven't tried this it's soooo awesome, speak your texts and anything else that has keyboard access. hmmm I need to see if this works on Instagram)
I found notes from 2009.  I guess that's when I got my first iPhone. I found a To Do list for August 20, 2009 and guess what? It may as well be today's date. 

TO DO

Phone case

Cream (let's just say this is hormone cream)

Bug spray. House. Yard 

Fertilizer Sutherlands  

Fertilize flowers  

Prime and touch up paint at work

Guess I won't delete this, just add it to the most current To Do list. 

Speaking of notes...

Early last year I had this bright idea. I went around to every room in the house and made a list of UFOs for each room on sticky notes and stuck them to the door frames. I was surprised that I had only 4-5 in each room. What is a UFO you ask? Why, an UnFinishedObject. I first learned about these in my quilting days. A project would get started and then end up in a box to be completed later, sometimes by the next generation. I acquired a lot of these over the years. I seldom sew these days but they are all labeled and stored in the closet.

(Snapseed edit)

Back to the sticky notes.

I could swear I took a photo of them because I planned on a blog post, but I've searched Lightroom to no avail. Also thought I had saved them, (I'm sure I did, but only found one still stuck to a large framed painting of poppies leaning behind a chair in the bedroom. The good news for the bedroom is that only one thing on the list gets carried over to this year. (the painting, but I've added painting the frame to the list.)

(Snapseed edit)

So I've redone my list of UFOs and mostly what's on the list is redoing wall decor and some new shutters or blinds.

I seem to have a hard time staying focused as the years go by. So I'll just add another class to my list to take in July. What is wrong with me?!?!?!?

Can I have the month off?

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.

Tag Time

Trying my hand at mixed media. I found some small thin wood pieces with holes that I think we're supposed to be made into Christmas ornaments. I thought they would make great tags. Since this is so new to me, it took 4 different play times each about a week apart to get this finished. Hope the next one goes faster. But I like it and that's what matters. Oh how many things have I made that I'm never quite satisfied with? and.... I think that's the reason I don't finish a lot of things. hmmmm.......