Thursday, July 30, 2009

July 29th -- A Day In History

Check Out That Number --- 100! In our little part of the world, summer temperatures are usually in the 70's with a few hot days hitting 80, maybe 85. We have no humidity and it always drops into the 60's at night. We don't have air conditioned houses and a few of us have fans that are stored in the far reaches of the closets - they never get used. If air conditioning in cars were an option and not the norm, we'd have non of that (going with the NW preference of a larger latte cup holder would be our choice). We don't have buggy summers - we don't have lightening bugs, either (that's sad) but no large swarms of pesty summer bugs. We always have a slight ocean breeze to enjoy. Yup, in our NW corner, west of the Cascades, the summer weather is perfect and we like it.

We've had an unusual summer this year (following an unusually heavy snowy winter). Summer started a month early - we actually had summer start in June and not July 5th. I can count on one hand the number of rainy days in the past 2 months. We're on lawn watering & car washing restrictions. We hang out at the grocery store, just to cool off. We're in a drought -- unheard of for the rainy NW.

We broke the record on July 29th, the temperature for Bellingham was 96 - the hottest day in record keeping history ----- at our record keeping station it hit 100 degrees. No breeze, No lattes (hold the coffee, give me the ice), and No air conditioning. (Bellingham ran out of fans last Monday.) It Was Hot! But, I hear it's going to cool off today --- it'll only get to 94 degrees.

Tuesday, July 28, 2009

A thought for today.....

What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.
----Ralph Waldo Emerson

Monday, July 27, 2009

Take Note

I'm not sure where I got this little tidbit --- but, I had a dream last night........

Saturday, July 25, 2009

Hey, buddy can you spare a dime? a quarter?

This is a first (for me)! Yesterday was errand day - library, post office, Henderson's book store, lunch in town, etc., etc., etc. So, it's a dime here and a quarter there for the parking meter. I know -- Bellingham's meters are cheap compared to say New York City or San Francisco and we usually have lots of parking spaces to drop our coins into (unlike New York City or San Francisco). And I carry a roll of quarters in the car for such expenses. But, I don't carry a lot of memory cells and forgot to feed the meter at ONE of the many stops ---- and got caught with a $10 fine. It didn't seem to matter that I had left many, many minutes at the post office, the library, the lunch in town --- nope, all the meters are hungry and need to be feed - again and again and again. This was a first for me --- but as I get older I bet it won't be the last. Ah, where was I? Oh right, hey buddy, can you spare a gal a dime?

Thursday, July 23, 2009

Whatcom Falls

A photo shoot with Scooter to Whatcom Falls (9/08), just down the block from the house. Kewl!

Tuesday, July 21, 2009

HAPPY BIRTHDAY ANDREA!

Andrea Leda
July 21, 1984 4:34 a.m.
9 pounds 7 ounces 20.5 inches
Our little bundle of joy! We love YOU!

Saturday, July 18, 2009

Moon Over Baker


It took some playing for this PSE novice to learn the ropes, but I like the results. I took one of Scott's photographs & changed it into a paint format, add a background paper and then a collage mask/overlay. The journaling looks better in print - the mask is from V.Pearce.
This was fun!

Wednesday, July 15, 2009

Rock On!

Another class, another technique for photo enhancing -- although this photo didn't really need any enhancing. It was originally perfect (photo by Scott Mansfield)

Tuesday, July 14, 2009

This is the last of the tulips - I promise!


I did a montage of the tulip fields from our April photo shoots and used a scraplift (scraplift: taking someone's LO idea and making it your own). I just don't remember where I got the lift - sorry, but thanks.
(#3 photo on bottom is from Scott Mansfield Photography - the other 13 mine). I'm done scrapping tulips (for now - LOL)

Saturday, July 11, 2009

Learning something new.....

I'm taking a photo & frame editing class (via PSE6) from the Jessica Sprague site and having a blast learning new things to do to photos. This one is using TTV textures and overlays after creating a sepia effect adding a little bit of highlighting, plus a small brush stamp, title and WaLaa!

Tuesday, July 7, 2009

Blogging about Blogging

A recent scrapbooking challenge was to take a picture of your screen and scrap it. Obviously, I did my blog site, snapping pictures from my blog. A fun challenge!

Saturday, July 4, 2009

Happy 4th!

Photo by Scott Mansfield

An Ah-Ha Moment

Photo by Sara Mansfield of her hub-ba-hu-ba-hubby.
Layout by me.

Friday, July 3, 2009

More Trip pages

I'm now using that photo of me for my "signature" photo after some extracting, masking and brushing up in my PSE playgound. A page from our stop at the Pub at Cape Kiwanda -- a must every time we visit the coast.

Another Beach Walk Page

I'm getting some mileage out of these pictures.