random reflections

Project Life: July 2015 (Part 1)

We spent most of July hiking and sightseeing in the Canadian Rockies and Glacier National Park. The first page, however, documents some of the events prior to our trip. Tracy's mom turned 86, and we spent three days with Sarah, Adam, and Caleb in Chicago before flying out of O'Hare to Calgary. It also includes one of my favorite photos of Matt, Betsy, and the girls taken on their vacation in Nantucket while we were away. Then there's the story of the worst hike of the summer at Indiana Dunes State Park. The second page includes our itinerary, and the story of our missed flight. Luckily, we got to Calgary in time to see the Stampede on Saturday, although we lost our great tickets for the Friday rodeo.

More Calgary Stampede and a road trip to Missoula, MT. We stopped for a visit at the St. Ignatius Mission.

We spent a wonderful three days in Glacier National Park. The first two days we were at Many Glacier, and then we drove across the Going to the Sun Road---just gorgeous!

We hiked to Apikuni Falls, around Swiftcurrent, Josephine, and Grinnell Lakes, and on the Going to the Sun Road, hiked from Logan's Pass to Hidden Lake.

There's one more page to come with photos from Two Medicine at Glacier before we drove back to Canada to Waterton National Park, but I'll save those for the next installment.

Project Life: January 2015

Well, finally, I've gotten to the current year. January found us in Wilmette with Sarah and Adam, and then quickly after our return, on our way to Florida with my mother-in-law's van. 

Last year, all my title cards were created with Papertrey Ink's Monthly Moment dies and stamps. For 2015, I switched to the Paislee Press Calendar Title cards, and I like them very much. I wish the family photo on the card showed up better on the layout. It's one of my favorites. The journaling card and the filler card are both from Papertrey's Monthly Moments Journal Collection, and the mittens were punched with a punch I bought so long ago, I have no memory of where I purchased it.

Adam thought we ought to take Caleb on a "bean hunt," so we headed to Millennial Park for the morning. Sarah thought it was way too cold, but she was a good sport, and I appreciated the opportunity for some good family photos. Caleb was fascinated with the ice skaters on the level below. This was also the weekend of Sarah's official start as Acting Associate Pastor for the Winnetka Congregational Church.

I decided at the beginning of the year, to do another Capture Your 365, but this time soley with my iPhone. I've kept it up for 4 1/2 months now, and have learned to use quite a few of the apps I had already downloaded to my phone. When I looked at them for January, I realized they painted a pretty good picture of my life:  family, travel, and some of my volunteer commitments. This is the first page of them. The photos of the beautiful pottery are from the Cameros Collection on view at the Rockwell Museum in Corning, NY. It's one of our favorite museums, and we stop there whenever we go through Corning.

I created the filler card with some patterned paper from MME, and some stamps from My Favorite Things and Live, Love, Life by Papertrey. The die is an old Spellbinders: Label II.

The filler card here was created with some Avery Elle paper, "Sorbet," and a wood veneer from Ali Edwards. The photo of Ella and me has to be one of the very few selfies I've ever taken that I liked enough to print! I was babysitting, and the mirror over Matt and Betsy's couch proved to be a great way to get a photo without the iPhone showing.

I was sick the whole trip to Florida. We managed to get to an Antique Auto Museum in Tallahassee (photo on the Instagram page), and drove out to St. Mark's Wildlife Refuge. When we finally arrived at Fort Myer's Beach, I basically vegged out the whole five days. Not many photos to show for it.

Summer Feet and the BPC Phone Photography Project

On a whim, more or less, I enrolled in the Big Picture Class "Phone Photography Project" in July. I'm not sure if I didn't read the class description accurately, or if it wasn't quite presented as billed, but I was a bit disappointed. From reading the message boards during class, I know I wasn't the only one. I was hoping to get some good ideas about how to improve my iPhone photography, but there was little, if any, content related to that. There were great reviews of apps, and I learned how to use a few I already had, and picked up a new camera app that I'm quite pleased with so far. I also got in the habit of posting to Instagram regularly which I'm always meaning to do, but don't. The bulk of the content was a project to work on each day. The first day was Summer Feet, and I decided that would be my Project 365 for the month of July.

This turned out to be a lot of fun. Trying to capture some context to the photo was the challenge, but most days it worked out well. Here's where I was this month (left to right, top to bottom): Strong Hospital, working at Foodlink, at an RPO concert, in the garden, under our tree where mushrooms are sprouting daily, at the gym, at church, buying groceries, at the Irish Harp for lunch in Niagara-on-the-Lake, in the OR waiting room with my friend, on a walk with Tracy, at book group, on the Ford St. Bridge walking to the Corn Hill Arts Festival, at the pool, on the patio, catching up with email, in the kitchen, getting a haircut, out to dinner, at a wedding (no context here though I really tried!), at the Dryden Theater (waited too late for good context on this one), lunch on the Erie Canal, dessert on our patio with candle light through our open work table, a midsummer pedicure, at Charlotte Beach for sunset photos, with Skylar, at the Mt. Hope Cemetery where Susan B. Anthony and Frederick Douglass are buried, at the Silver Thread Winery, pumping gas, waiting for the dermatologist, and ready to run errands. 

Most of the other projects were ones I was familiar with after doing Capture Your 365 for nearly two years. I may go back to look through them another day, but I didn't find any of them compelling. I'm not sorry I took the course, but I'm not sure it was worth the money.

 

Gratitude Journal: Part 3

You can see the beginnings of this project here and here. When I began the Gratitude Journal, I made a list of words that represented things for which I am truly grateful. While Sarah and Caleb were here, I looked for opportunities to capture photos of them with words I had chosen. Now that they’ve gone back home, it’s back to creating photo opportunities for some of the rest of the list. It hasn't been nearly as easy to keep up with this since they've gone home. I only have four more pages to go, but there are too many for one post, so I'll start with these for today, and finish it up in a day or two.

11.14 OK, so I really don't like flying, but without air travel I would rarely see either of my children. So, yes, I am grateful for air travel!

11.15 The first full day since Sarah and Caleb left. It's a good thing the sun is shining! I am always grateful for sunshine in Rochester.

11.16 Papercrafting has brought me a lot of joy---the ability to creat hand-made gifts, make new friends through blogging, and new opportunities for sharing my passion. (These are the gift tags I made for the family gift exchange this year.)

11.17 Ten years ago I wouldn't have believed the amount of traveling we've done since we retired. I love seeing new places, visiting friends and family, and learning so much about this country. (This is the next trip planned out. We're driving Tracy's mother's van to Florida for her in early January, stopping to see friends in the Cheasapeake Bay, Charlotte, and Stuart, FL before we head to Fort Meyers for a few days.)

11.18 We've belonged to Third Presbyterian for over 30 years. Here we've found friends, support, and opportunities for service.

11.19 I missed Sarah and Caleb the minute I left them at the airport. Thank goodness for Face Time and the ability to SEE them as well as talk to them.

11.20 This man is the best thing that ever happened to me. Kind, patient, loving, supportive, forgiving--the list goes on and on. Lucky me!

June POTD

It's hard to believe it's July already.  When I realized how busy we'd been in June, it's no wonder the time goes flying by. I wanted to get this layout done before we leave tomorrow to spend a long weekend with my brother and attend my niece's wedding on Friday. 

The journaling on the homemade tag reads:

June, like most months, was busy with many commitments and social events. We saw “The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel” which we enjoyed, and GeVa’s production of “Company” which we loved. I went to a lecture by Stephen Johnson at The Eastman House, and attended a workshop on Speedlite flash attachments.

Matt was home for a long weekend over Father’s Day and we celebrated with dinner at The North Shore Grill. It was a perfect evening to sit on the deck overlooking Conesus Lake. Tracy and I had dinner for the first time at Zeppa Grill, and used our Groupon for dinner at The Wintonaire one night. We had dinner with Bill and Tina, Bob and Cathy, and Bill and Beryl. I lunched with Mary, Marie, Karen, and MaryEllen one afternoon, and had lunch with Jane, Sue Fay, and dinner with Karen. We went to Rod’s retirement dinner. 

I completed three books: “The Call,” “The Sisters Brothers,” and “Lots of Candles, Plenty of Cake.” Although I didn’t manage a layout a day as I hoped, I did complete 10 layouts, a mini-album for our Oregon trip, and made (and sent) 20 cards.

I leased a new Forester. The only new feature on it is Blue Tooth, but I’m already in love with it. I have all my music on a flash drive and can listen to any of it by using the controls in the car. A phone call automatically comes in on the speaker, no need for an ear piece. 

The Triple Play Grant committee met and I completed the interviews and site visit for the grant application from Focus On The Children. Evaluating grant proposals is definitely a new challenge, but one I ended up enjoying.

Most of the supplies for the layout came in a Studio Calico kit. The patterned papers are from Studio Calico and Basic Grey. The scalloped border I cut with the medium scallop die from Papertrey Ink. The brad is Basic Grey and the star clip came in the kit and I'm not sure of the manufacturer. The alpha is from Paper Studio.

If you're celebrating the Fourth of July, make it a safe one!

Project 64: Mahogany

I thought last week's color at Project 64 would be more difficult, but when I went to look I found a lot right in my studio and in our front hall. My desk is definitely mahogany, but it wouldn't make for a very artistic photo right at the moment. I found this jar (check the lid) sitting on my shelf with two balls of twine (not mahogany by any means).

In our front hall, I found these. I'm linking the last one to Project 64.

This beautiful, small dresser belonged to my great-aunt, and has lovely inlaid drawers. We keep our dining room linens in it, but it sits in our front hall below the mirror you see above. The candlestick sits on top of the dresser.

My brother is coming for the weekend. I haven't seen him since September, and it's been 2 1/2 years since he's been here to visit. I think he wants to tour some Finger Lake wineries tomorrow, and then we're taking him to one of our favorite restaurants to celebrate his birthday which was two weeks ago. 

Weekend Projects

First of all, the Weekly Gratitude pages for the last two weeks. I'm not sure why last week's never got posted.

 

And this week's--I used just the journaling part of the Weekly Gratitude template so I could put it on the back of last week's page. I'm liking how flexible this album is turning out to be.

Now for my favorites from this week's Project 365. Despite my "note to self," once again I didn't take as many photos as I'd wished. I'm taking "Moving into Manual" at Big Picture Scrapbooking now. There are just two assignments this week, both of which I've done previously to help you evaluate the light in different settings and to see the effect of changing the ISO in a setting with the same lighting. I'll do both again because every time I work with the photographic triangle of shutter speed, aperture, and ISO I learn a little more. 

1. I finished two books this week. Both were memoirs, one of my favorite genres. They couldn't have been more different, and I really enjoyed reading both of them. 2. A vintage-style phone at Donut Delite. 3. Ice Dancing during the 2010 Olympics. 4. Shrimp and vegetable chowder from a new Crock Pot cookbook.        5. The beautiful sky taken from inside my car as I drove down the street one night. It's hard to see in the collage but there's a sliver of a moon just above a tree in the middle of the photograph. Taken with my point and shoot through the windshield. I'm always amazed that this works.

And last, but not least, two scrapbook layouts, neither of which photographed straight. Sigh.

 I did get my hot cross buns, and they were delicious!

Tracy and I spent the afternoon on Friday with his best friend and his wife in the Finger Lakes. We had a wonderful lunch in Hammondsport, and visited three of our favorite wineries.

I'm finally getting the hang of the hybrid layout. The first uses a digital template from Cathy Z. I used only four of the layers before printing it out. The second uses Katie Pertiet's clustered frames. I've seen Paula Gilarde use these over and over on her blog and decided to give it a try myself.

Project 365

Here's my layout summary for January. I used the color picker in PSE to color the text squares, and didn't realize quite how bright it was until I printed it. I was unwilling to use the ink it would take to redo it, so went through my stash and found this equally bright graph paper from Paper Loft. The photo template is one of Cathy Z's from Designer Digitals. It's definitely not me, but done. I do like the format, though, mostly photos but a bit of journaling about our month.

 

I played around with some textures and blending modes this weekend, so for this week, I'm sharing the original and the altered photo. For the first one I used an Antique Paper action and then a black and white tint. I rather like it.

 

For the second one I used the pencil sketch action in PSE and adjusted the contrast. It turned the photo into a drawing. I think it's a technique I could use for a transfer or maybe for a card.

 

At any rate, it was fun to play around.

Project 365 Week 2

Here are three of my favorite images from this week. (Actually I'm saving my two favorites for a scrapbook page which will show up here eventually.) The first two photos in this triptych are the reason for the third photo. I had finally had it with the cold, gray weather and treated us to some Gerber daisies since we had company both Friday night and again at noon today for lunch. The icicles were hanging from our garage door, and the pretty mittens were my Christmas gift from Sarah. I love them, and especially love that turn into gloves if you flip over the tops of them.

Photo-a-Day 2010

I'm still deciding how I want to organize my Photo-a-Day Project this year. For now, I think I'll post a few favorites from the week here on Sundays. One of my favorites was the frozen bud I posted with my Weekly Gratitude page yesterday so I decided not to post it again.

Our windows have looked like this all week. It has rarely gotten above 20 degrees.

The crows seem to flock to our trees outside the bedroom window at dusk. There are a hundred or more of them, and they are incredibly noisy. I think I'd like the photo better without the icicle, but they are hanging from every eave.

Matt was standing at the stove, and I said "Smile," so he did.

(Coffee Shop Vintage Frames)