I know that we humans,

are like the rest of the natural world and that sadness, fear, frustration, or any other troubling feeling can not last. Nature doesn't create a storm that never ends. Within misfortune good fortune hides.

 
 
This is my entry for the Cloud Echo Challenge.  You can learn more about them here at Chrysti's Blog or here at Susan's.

Oh, it's good to be back~

How has everyone been?  Our computer finally died and it took us a while to get back up and running.  In the meantime things have settled down some. 

Last night we had Kiah's parent/teacher conference and it went really well.  He has been doing so much better~ better behaved, doing his homework more independently, and listening the first time. We have been giving him Synaptol, Omega 3's, magnesium, and some melatonin to help him sleep better.  Now if I can get my husband to get on the regimen since he suffers from ADD also and has all of his life.  Yes, it proves to be quite an adventure doing anything with my fam.  The boys with their ADD, granny with her dementia and me, I am no saint myself.  I suffer from anxiety so bad I don't drive.  So yeah now that the HIPAA privacy policies are no longer needed and everything is out in the open. 

I have had the luxury of getting out a couple times this past few weeks and had a blast  at our annual Halloween party.

     Beginning of the Party~                       

As I digress~

     Hiking Sierra Azul Open Space Preserve~

      Have you ever seen a bird like this?  Look at his beak~

    I just about ran into this spider after I was freaking out and running around crazily because I swear I felt      something crawl in my shoe.

                                      Natural Bridges State Park~  

            

I finished up all my ornaments for the 2 swaps I am in.  Now it's on to planning my son's Baseball Party, finally being able to participate in Julie Pritchard's Texture Town, and hopefully getting more listed in my sorely neglected Etsy store.
How 'bout you what have you been up to?  What crafting plans do you have for this holiday season?

Love is in the air and apparently strep throat too.....

Well, it is officially summer here.  Kiah's last day of school was Thursday.  The prior Saturday he started complaining of a sore throat, but I didn't really think anything of it since he is prone to allergies.  So we went ahead and took my sister and her boyfriend out to Santa Cruz.  It was the cutest thing seeing them go down the boardwalk hand in hand.  Her in her scooter and him in the wheelchair.  Ahh, young love.

 Kiah was not better by Monday; still a sore throat, a tummy ache, and a slight fever.  I set him up for an appointment early Tuesday.  He wanted to go to school even though he felt crappy because he didn't want to miss the last three days of seeing Nina, his 2nd grade sweetheart.  It turned out he had strep throat.  Go figure.  As soon as he took the first dose of antibiotics he started to feel better.

I am amazed at how many people commented on the giveaway.  Thanks to everyone who stopped by and a special thanks to the people who decided to follow.  You all made my week.

I am taking another one of Susan Tuttle's workshops.  I haven't had much time to do it, but I did do a couple pieces. The bokeh texture was made from some pics I took of bubbles purposely making them out of focus.The stained glass and Venus de Milo photos are from morguefiles.com.

She had a lesson on adjustment layers .  I never messed with adjustment layers before.  I made the above photo's background more pink by messing with the photo filter adjustment layer.

Next time I have some vintage finds to share.  Hope everyone has a good week!

 

  

  I absolutely adore this picture of Kiah.  I want to get it printed out huge on a canvas.  He looks so serene and peaceful.  We all went out to the Campbell perk ponds for the kids fishing day.  I even dragged my mom out there.  Kiah and Chris caught 4 fish, and were so proud of themselves.  Since they were freshly stocked we were able to eat them, which we can't usually do in San Jose.  I think Kiah enjoyed spending time with his dad.  He has been on his best behavior the last few days.  At first I thought it was because Halo Reach was coming out.  You can always tell when a new game is going to come out, 'cause Kiah will start being demonstrably good and whisper sweet nothings in my ear.  But no, Halo is not coming out till September- Thank God, and he is still being good.  Knock on wood.

  This weekend I also finished my poetry quote bag and journal.  I must have been disillusioned when I thought the tote bag was going to be easy.  Ha!  Maybe it was because I haven't sewn anything since I was a teenager and even then I didn't actually sew.  I just cut out the pattern, forgetting to cut out the darts, then cried to my grandma, "can you fix my mistake".  Besides the fact, that is was hard to make and almost had me breaking down in tears.  I love the way it came out.  It is too cute.  I haven't had the chance to take any photos of them yet, but will try to post tomorrow.

My brother came over on Sunday and fixed my photoshop.  I couldn't be more happy, I was getting so frustrated with it.  All he had to was uninstall and reinstall, I knew that would probably fix the problem, but I was scared I would mess it up even more if I started to screw with it. 

Miscellany.....

These are some miscellaneous photos that I never posted before for various reasons.  Dang photoshop is not working again.  I am scared to do anything because the computer is so dang sensitive.

Susan Tuttle just released a book, I am dying to win a copy.  If I don't, I will surely buy it.  I have taken two workshops with Susan and learned so much.  You can purchase the book on Amazon or you can try to win a copy here on her blog.

 

Wish I was a geek, so I could find out what's up with my computer

Well, I was able to finally upload my pics from the last couple weeks, but my Photoshop Elements is refusing to work again.  It worked for five minutes this weekend and now nothing.  I just upped the ram on the computer praying that would help.  I have no idea, what to do.  I guess it has a mind of it own, or some sort of secret conspiracy is going on.

Skye Hardwick is having a giveaway on her blog.  She is giving away her new Workshop Workbook.  You can check it out at http://theworkbookworkshop.com.  Her pics are amazing.  I wish I had pics of Kiah that gorgeous.  You can also check her out on her blog Soulographer.

Hope everyone has a good week!

I love vintage goodies

Found some really cool goodies today at the flea market.  They were all from the cutest elderly lady.  I got some vintage buttons, a large flower frog, a 1925 copy of Peter Pan and Wendy, and some little vintage hor d'oeuvre picks with abalone and polished stones.  I'll post pics of the other items tomorrow. 

We took Kiah and his friend to the creek by our house.  There were these beautiful yellow flowers and tons of gnats.  But the kids had fun and I got some good pics.

My photoshop elements actually worked long enough for to me to mess with a pic.  I swear it only worked because we were going to be walking out the door in a couple of minutes.  But I was able to quickly do this.

We will see how my computer will work this coming week.  I want to upload photos but am scared it will just up and die on me.  The Geek Squad guy said it can go at any time.  So I have been using my phone for most of my internet posting.  I apologize  in advance for the spelling and spacing errors.

Till next time

Sometimes I wonder if I will ever lead a life with all the pieces in the right place....

It has been one of those months.  You know the ones where no one listens, everything goes wrong, and when you finally get a smile on your face you start your period.  We have had a lot of problems this month with my Grandma's social services and social security.  Which is really stressful because we had her work in on time and they are still giving us troubles.  I am so grateful for the assistance we do receive for her, if we didn't have it we would have to pay for everything on our very limited income.  That on top of everything else has made it a hard month.

One of the hardest problems this month has been my computer problems.  My photoshop elements isn't working and I can't upload pictures.  So I have been having to use my camera phone.  This picture is the one I am going to use for the Echo group and this was supposed to be my echo but all that other stuff just came out. If that is what the picture prompted out of me I guess I will go with it.  Next week I am going to team up with Becky Dorcsh for the Dim Challenge.  I hope I have my computer working better by then.  My camera phone takes okay pics but is not the same.

Art by Chrysti

Ilka's Attic

Is time on my side...

I have been in mourning the last couple of days. No computer, means no photo editing, no nothing. I have my phone but it's not the same. Plus I think I am getting a texting thumb from commenting on flickr using my phone.

Chris was too cute and actually took me out to take pics, with no strings attached. Except that he was going to fish, which was fine as long as I didn't have to wait forever in the cold for one more bite. He took me to this little nature preserve just out of San Jose near Morgan Hill. It was perfect. I got some really good pics, I think. I haven't been able to upload them yet. We went over to this other little park where people can water ski in this little strip of Coyote Creek. Pretty crazy I didn't know you could water ski in there. I was ready for the cops to come and haul them off to jail. Got some more good pics, took a couple of videos of Chris catching some fish, got hassled by some teenagers, saw a beautiful sunset, and then made our way back to the car. I felt good because we walked a couple of miles. Then Chris decided to re-up whatever calories we burned by going to all you can eat sushi at our favorite place The Sushi Factory. Smart I know. My hips are still yelling at me.

With all this extra time I have joined a couple art groups. The first one is The Artistic Mothers group at Trudy Callan's blog. I am also going to team up with Becky Dorsch for the Echo group put on by Susan Tuttle and Christy Hydek. I have actually had a lot of crafting mojo the last couple of days. Made a couple cards, layouts, and some really cool flowers made out of ripped up pages of a Boho magazine.

The pics above were taken and edited last week. As soon as I can upload I will share pics of our trip and the cool little flowers I made.

Till next time.

Here are some recent photos I have worked on.  The one a the top has received over 100 views and more comments than any other picture on my flickr page.  At the moment I have over 2,100 views to my page.  I never even imagined I would have that many views.  It blows my mind.

I am totally jonesin' for my Photoshop  Elements.  I haven't been able to work on anything for a couple days.  Thank God, I was able to get Kiah's class yearbook page done before it crapped out on me.  But now I am able to pay more attention to my blog.  I want to do a give-away of some vintage goodies, but don't know if I get enough responses. I was so pleased to see that Anita from  Iowa Junk Gypsies
commented on one of my posts.  That totally made my day.  That was my first real comment.  Thank you Anita.  I glad my story made you smile.  Does anyone else read my blog?  I would love to know.  Would anyone be interested in a giveaway?

Hope everyone has a good weekend!

These are some straight out of the camera shots from forever ago.  I am disappointed because I recently had APS film converted on to a disk at Walgreens and they turned out horrible.  When I had them printed out in 2005 even at an 8x10 they looked fine, but the images I got on the cd are so grainy.  I even kept the the film in protective cases for the whole time.  It is really irritating because I spent $120.00 on 17 rolls of  25 exp.  film and they said there is nothing they could do. 

I've been wanting to post but have been so busy lately, I can hardly catch my breath. Okay maybe I haven't had time because I have been playing with Photoshop Elements too much.

P.S. I can't believe it- I reached over 400 views on my Flickr page. Woohoo!!

You're more than just what you do for others.....

I read somewhere that what stresses us out the most is that we don't take the time to do what we truly want to do. I am terribly guilty of that. Something in my human nature makes me always forget about me. I blame it mostly on pure exhaution. It is easier to just go along with what it is that makes everyone else happy, then to deal with their fits when you want to do the opposite. One of my resolutions for the new year was to make more time for me to do what I truly wanted. Time that I can use to rejuvenate my soul.

One thing that rejuvenates and inspires me is art. But most of the time I wish I could break free from thinking so much about how I should be doing something. I want to just get lost in the process of creating. Forget about it looking perfect.

Another thing that gets me going is learning new things. When I heard Marah Johnson from Creative Imaginations was teaching a class at Scrapbook Island, I knew it would be a perfect way for me to do my thing for a couple hours. I turned my phone off and got lost in my element. Marah is an excellent teacher. She was very easy to learn from and she made the class really fun. She taught really cool techniques for products like Glimmer Mist and Alcohol Inks. Plus tips on using up the supplies you already have. I took a pic with Marah but I hate how ir turned out. I look like a frumpy crazy lady. I tried to took make it look better by applying textures, but oh, well. Here goes to not trying to be perfect.

After taking this class and participating in Susan Tuttle's wokshop my ideas and mojo are definately flowing. And I am feeling rejuvenated enough to start this week in a good mood. I have a conference with Kiah's teacher tomorrow to see if he may need extra help such as rsp or tutoring.

Chris and I need to decide whether we want to pay the $500 deductibe to get out passenger/side door fixed. While we were at the library last Thrusday somebody smashed into our car and just left. The irony of it was Kiah wanted to go to the book store, but we told him we were going to the library because it would save us money. Kiah being his materialist self didn't like that idea but we held firm, no we were going to the library. Well maybe we should have listened to him, we would have saved $500 by going to the damn book store.

It is all in how you look at it........

I figured I should add a note to people who don't know me personally. I love my granny and I tell her that a 100 times a day. It may seem like I am making fun of her, but I am truly not. I am finding the humor in our day to day lives. It helps me immensly to be able to retell the stories and make other people laugh. Having my granny move down here so that Chris and I could take care of her was a big decision. We didn't know what we were getting ourselves into. It has been especially hard for Kiah. Before we moved her down here he had only meet her twice briefly. It is hard for him to understand why this adult acts like a child or why she takes up so much of my time. Awwww, I just got a Valentine from my boys. They do still love me. The moral to this story is we always help family no matter what and always look for the funny stuff that happens during the day to make our days brighter.

I started this blog as a way to share my artwork, photography, and vintage finds. Now it has become my way to unstress. Here are some photos that I recently manipulated on Photoshop. I love how I can totally transform my normal photos into artwork. If you ever get a chance to take a workshop by Susan Tuttle I highly recommend it. She is a regular contributer to the Stampington magazines and a amazing artist.