"Seeing Double." Along the Perkiomen Creek, it is hard NOT to see double. But then, I'm a big fan of water reflection photography anyway.
Wednesday, April 13, 2011
Picture Inspiration 6/52
"Seeing Double." Along the Perkiomen Creek, it is hard NOT to see double. But then, I'm a big fan of water reflection photography anyway.
Tuesday, April 12, 2011
Picture Inspiration 5/52
I've let myself get way behind in Picture Inspiration. Over the last month, it was a combination of not feeling well, the weather being too miserable to be outside, and being totally bored with taking photos in my home.
But April 11 was one of those absolutely glorious Spring days that bring a hint of Summer - with temps in the upper 70's, beautiful sunshine, birds chirping... the outside was just calling me. I threw open a lot of the windows and chased the (hopefully) last bit of winter chill out of the house, then headed out to a local park for a photo walk.
The Week 5 Picture Inspiration prompt was "to Infinity and Beyond". When I first arrived at the park (near the ball fields) I snapped this photo of the temporary fencing. Does it look like it stretches to infinity?
As you can tell from the bare trees, Spring hasn't fully sprung in my neck of the woods yet. But it is trying!
Heading onto the walking/biking path that runs along Perkiomen Creek, I was greeted by this harbinger of Spring. Yes, daffodils apparently ARE blooming in my sleepy little town!
My final "best" shot for Infinity and Beyond.
Our weather has settled back into rainy, grey, and mid-50's for the next few days. But I sure enjoyed that little taste of Spring! More on my photo walk tomorrow.
But April 11 was one of those absolutely glorious Spring days that bring a hint of Summer - with temps in the upper 70's, beautiful sunshine, birds chirping... the outside was just calling me. I threw open a lot of the windows and chased the (hopefully) last bit of winter chill out of the house, then headed out to a local park for a photo walk.
As you can tell from the bare trees, Spring hasn't fully sprung in my neck of the woods yet. But it is trying!
Our weather has settled back into rainy, grey, and mid-50's for the next few days. But I sure enjoyed that little taste of Spring! More on my photo walk tomorrow.
Net Worth - v.2
I'm featured today over at the "I Am Enough" Collaborative. You will all recognize the photos and writing - my contribution was supposed to go live mid-March, but due to some scheduling issues was changed to today. It feels very vulnerable having something that personal "out there" but also exciting!
Brene Brown and Jen Lemen have collaborated to offer up a new eCourse based on Brene's book, I Thought It Was Just Me.
The course - Ordinary Courage: Lessons in Love, Shame and Worthiness - looks fantastic. It starts April 18th and runs six weeks. Having completed two read-a-longs of Brene's book and having just completed the Dream Lab based on her newer book The Gifts of Imperfection, I've decided to pass on this particular course. But I'm sure it will be fantastic and might be just the right timing for some of you who haven't already read both books three times!
I have, however, signed up for the companion bit (which is included with the eCourse) which is
Wholehearted Living - A Year of Reflections. I love the work of the ladies collaborating on this and couldn't miss out completely!
How about some more digi goodness???
Bought this one today over at Scrapbookgraphics. It's a new release, so 20% off - and in my HAPPY colors! (well, at least one version of them anyway).
There's also a sale on templates and paper packs over at Designer Digitals. I'm using the sale as an excuse to redeem a gift certificate and stock up on some Cathy Zielski templates including this adorable little hybrid mini-album.
If you haven't kept up with Sarah's escapades on the other side of the pond, check it out. Her latest blog post is about Leed's Castle and the photos are gorgeous.
Brene Brown and Jen Lemen have collaborated to offer up a new eCourse based on Brene's book, I Thought It Was Just Me.
I have, however, signed up for the companion bit (which is included with the eCourse) which is
Wholehearted Living - A Year of Reflections. I love the work of the ladies collaborating on this and couldn't miss out completely!
How about some more digi goodness???
If you haven't kept up with Sarah's escapades on the other side of the pond, check it out. Her latest blog post is about Leed's Castle and the photos are gorgeous.
Monday, April 11, 2011
And The Winner Is...
Please add me to the list of those who'd love to get their hands on this book! :o)
Last Chance!
This is the last call for anyone wanting a chance at:
I will be drawing a winner today from all comments posted on THIS POST.
click the link to comment in the right place -comments added here will not count. I will draw a winner this afternoon (late evening for all of you over the pond), so check back before beddy bye to see who the lucky gal is!
click the link to comment in the right place -comments added here will not count. I will draw a winner this afternoon (late evening for all of you over the pond), so check back before beddy bye to see who the lucky gal is!
Friday, April 8, 2011
Project Simplify - Week Five
If you've been keeping track, no, I didn't skip Week Four - it was pantry/fridge declutter time and since we keep up with this pretty regularly I didn't have much to do. About 1/3 of a kitchen trash bag of freezer burned opened & partially used foods (french fries, chicken nuggets, etc.) that my darling offspring left in the bottom bin of the freezer made it to the trash. I had already reorganized the shelves following a shopping trip the week before. So before/after photos would have looked identical. Therefore, no post.
But here we are at Week Five - which was a "choose your own" hot-spot. And I chose the one thing that has been bothering me the most lately - the excess virtual clutter on my computer! I was just getting way too many gigabytes for one girl and knew I needed to let some go. The beauty of this kind of clean-up is no mess - nothing to sell, donate, or put out at the curb on Tuesday morning.
I started with my email in-box. It went from this:
See how far down that scroll bar is? I had about four screens worth of "stuff" just sitting in my in-box!
To This - aaaaahhhhhhhh - white space! As you can tell from the calendar, I did this on Monday. I'm happy to report I've kept it clean! My in-box still has white space!
After the e-mail folders, I moved to my "C" drive (the internal computer drive). I try to keep as little personal stuff on this drive as possible because the computer actually belongs to my employer and I have to give it back if I ever leave. Still, just like with physical "stuff", virtual "stuff" does seem to accumulate where it doesn't belong!
On the "C" drive, specifically "My Documents" I started with 6.5 GB of data in 1296 files, 179 folders. After some ruthless deleting and transferring my online class files to my external drive, I ended with 4.5 GB of data in 409 files, 140 folders. I even defragged the drive!
Next stop - Kay. or "K" drive - my external hard drive. She houses all my photos, digi scrap supplies, online class materials, completed albums and digiscrap layouts. In other words - my life. Everything important to me. I use ACDSee to tag and organize all this virtual wonderfulness. But when I lost my first beloved external hard drive last year, although we were able to recover all the files, all of my tagging and organizing was gone. Gone! Countless hours of work vanished into thin air.
I never had the heart to go back and recreate all that work. Which also means, I really haven't done much digiscrapping in the last year. In fact, my last art journal layout coincides with the loss of all that tagging. So Kay was in dire need of some love and attention. I have spent the last three days tagging with kit name and author and starting to tag with categories. It is a long and tedious process and right now I'm still in digi kits. I haven't even touched photos yet.
I have also been ruthlessly deleting digi products that I know I will not use (I used to download every freebie that came along - kept Kay fat and happy). As a result, Kay has lost some virtual weight, going from 150 GB down to 134 GB. Not bad for a few days work. Wish I lost weight that easily! Where is the button that deletes fat cells???
Final stop on my virtual Spring Cleaning was my Google Reader. With Shimelle's Blogging for Scrapbookers class, my Google Reader subscriptions had soared to well over 200. I had been slowly deleting throughout the course, but was still at 175 this morning. After about an hour, I am down to 75 blogs in my reader - which is still 25 more than I usually allow at any given time (I have to keep this in check as my time for blog reading really is limited). But I've added some great new blogs to my "tribe" folder and will continue to cull what is left in the BFS folder over the next few weeks.
Now cross your fingers that my computer's virtual loss of excess fat will help it gain some energy. The sluggishness of late has been infuriating! :) What about you? Do you keep your computer on a healthy weight limit? Or does it prefer to be fat and happy? If you go the "save everything" route, how do you keep it all organized so you can find files when you need them?
But here we are at Week Five - which was a "choose your own" hot-spot. And I chose the one thing that has been bothering me the most lately - the excess virtual clutter on my computer! I was just getting way too many gigabytes for one girl and knew I needed to let some go. The beauty of this kind of clean-up is no mess - nothing to sell, donate, or put out at the curb on Tuesday morning.
I started with my email in-box. It went from this:
After the e-mail folders, I moved to my "C" drive (the internal computer drive). I try to keep as little personal stuff on this drive as possible because the computer actually belongs to my employer and I have to give it back if I ever leave. Still, just like with physical "stuff", virtual "stuff" does seem to accumulate where it doesn't belong!
On the "C" drive, specifically "My Documents" I started with 6.5 GB of data in 1296 files, 179 folders. After some ruthless deleting and transferring my online class files to my external drive, I ended with 4.5 GB of data in 409 files, 140 folders. I even defragged the drive!
Next stop - Kay. or "K" drive - my external hard drive. She houses all my photos, digi scrap supplies, online class materials, completed albums and digiscrap layouts. In other words - my life. Everything important to me. I use ACDSee to tag and organize all this virtual wonderfulness. But when I lost my first beloved external hard drive last year, although we were able to recover all the files, all of my tagging and organizing was gone. Gone! Countless hours of work vanished into thin air.
I never had the heart to go back and recreate all that work. Which also means, I really haven't done much digiscrapping in the last year. In fact, my last art journal layout coincides with the loss of all that tagging. So Kay was in dire need of some love and attention. I have spent the last three days tagging with kit name and author and starting to tag with categories. It is a long and tedious process and right now I'm still in digi kits. I haven't even touched photos yet.
I have also been ruthlessly deleting digi products that I know I will not use (I used to download every freebie that came along - kept Kay fat and happy). As a result, Kay has lost some virtual weight, going from 150 GB down to 134 GB. Not bad for a few days work. Wish I lost weight that easily! Where is the button that deletes fat cells???
Final stop on my virtual Spring Cleaning was my Google Reader. With Shimelle's Blogging for Scrapbookers class, my Google Reader subscriptions had soared to well over 200. I had been slowly deleting throughout the course, but was still at 175 this morning. After about an hour, I am down to 75 blogs in my reader - which is still 25 more than I usually allow at any given time (I have to keep this in check as my time for blog reading really is limited). But I've added some great new blogs to my "tribe" folder and will continue to cull what is left in the BFS folder over the next few weeks.
Now cross your fingers that my computer's virtual loss of excess fat will help it gain some energy. The sluggishness of late has been infuriating! :) What about you? Do you keep your computer on a healthy weight limit? Or does it prefer to be fat and happy? If you go the "save everything" route, how do you keep it all organized so you can find files when you need them?
Thursday, April 7, 2011
i.Scrap - the Enough Installment
I took this photo as part of the Unravelling eCourse last Summer. Some of you may remember it from this post that I made.
I chose this photo because it was a big part of my self-discovery and life lessons last year.
She is me. No make-up, messy hair, flushed and sweaty from the gym. Just like this, she is enough. She is worthy of love, respect, and appreciation.
Sometimes she forgets that she is worthy. She yearns to learn, grow, share, be heard, feel gratitude, practice kindness, love without hesitation, create, make a difference, and leave the world a better place than she found it.
I am struck as I think about it by the dichotomy I see in myself. One minute bold, brash, ready to change the world - the next timid, hesitant, afraid of rejection and ridicule. Self-assured versus self-doubt. I am convinced that this is a universal human experience. That we all come to grips with who we are and what our purpose is at different times. I'm still struggling, still figuring it out. But - I am enough.
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