CatWalk Winter Blog Hop 2012

January 28, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Welcome to my little ole blog! I suppose you swung by looking for a Quick Page??? Yes?

Here’s my contribution. I hope you like it. If you do I love to hear it. Comments & feedback thrill me to the core :)

You can click the image above or download it here: http://www.box.com/s/xa2j0dmozu33h1he4p1f

Next Stop on the Gorgeous Blog Hop?
The stunning page by Andrea

Thanks for dropping by.

Credits:
Renewal by Aja Abney available at CatScrap.com
Chill Out Bits by Erica Zane available at CatScrap.com
Chill Out Papersby Erica Zane available at CatScrap.com
La Belle Époque Digital Kit by MellyBird Designs available at CatScrap.com
Reflection Papers by Christine Chodil available at CatScrap.com
Winter Alpha by Paula Kesselring available at CatScrap.com

Filed Under: Scrapbooking Tagged With:

Mac Digital Scrapbooking Organization

January 15, 2012 By Leave a Comment

A few months back I switched from a PC to a Mac.  On my PC, all of my digital scrapbooking supplies were meticulously tagged & catalogued in ACDSee.  The fact that I would lose hours and hours and hours of my hardwork, not to mention the ability to find any paper or element on my hard drive was a tough pill to swallow.  But the pull of the Macbook sucked me in and I took the plunge.

I’ve tried in the last 6 months to find a system comparable to ACDSee, even trying the Mac version of ACDSee, which was very different.  There are tons of great ways to organize on your Mac, but nothing I’ve found is similar to ACDSee . . . and I really liked that interface.  I know a lot of you do as well.  Somehow in my quest I recently stumbled upon the following Apps in the Apple App store (these are the apps for the computer, not the Ipad or Iphone.)

LEAP is $19.99 and DEEP is $9.99.  Both I thought to be reasonably priced.  They both work on a “tagging” system to organize but are a bit different from one another.

Once you open LEAP it’s similar to your finder window.  It has the familiar search button in the top right.  The first column on the left displays tags and the 2nd column displays a folder listing.  The large window on the left displays your search results.

 

 

The 1st green drop down menu lets you specify where exactly you’d like to look on your computer.  I store all my digital supplies on an external hard drive under a folder entitled “digital kits”  the folders are then broken down by store or designer, then further by kit.  I don’t separate kits, this makes it easier for crediting.  When I search for an item, I want it to only search the “digital kits” file, and I sometimes simplify it even more and only search by designer.  The more specific you are, the faster the response.  It takes quite a while longer to search all my hard drives for tape than it does to only search my supplies.

 

 

You also have the ability to search by only a certain file type.  You can’t view the actual .abr files ~ sorry.  the .abr folder will show in the search though.

 

This is a really important step.  In order to search the contents of the folders, you need to tell Leap to search all files, or “go deep”.  If you don’t do this during a search the program will only skim the top level of files (basically the folder names)

If you haven’t tagged all your files yet, you can still search all of your supplies.  For example, I searched for all files that have the word frame in them.  I set the search to go deep, I’m only searching in the folder “Creashens” and I’m looking for all file types.

If you look in the 2nd pane, you can see that it also tells you which folders show results and how many in each folder.  For example, there are 22 frames in the “Count on me” kit.  If I were to click on that folder it would narrow the results further.

 

 

To open a file straight from leap, just right click with your mouse and click on open with.

To add tags to your files, click just below the file name where it’s circled in the photo below.  Once it’s tagged you can use those tags to identify files in both LEAP and DEEP.

 

You create the tags so they can be as detailed as you’d like.  If you have a red flower with a button center, you can add multiple tags ~ “red”, “button”, “flower”.  Try to think ahead of tagging as to how you would be searching for them and tag accordingly.

 

 

You also have the ability to tag multiple items at once.

 

All in all, I’ve been very pleased with this app.  I haven’t even scratched the surface of what it’s able to do.

 

 DEEP TUTORIAL


 

Another really cool program I found from the same developers is “DEEP”.  Deep uses the same tagging system as LEAP.  The negative of it is that it doesn’t have the ability to tag multiple items at once.  What it’s VERY cool for is searching by color.

Deep calculates the range of colors used in each of your images by analyzing the pixels and calculating the most popular colors.

In my example below, I searched for files with the words tape below.

 

 

you can also search by tags.  If I select the blue below and want to find elements of similar color, I merely click on a swatch and it pulls up only elements and papers that have that color in it.

   

 

I have been over the moon thrilled to find these programs.  They’ve filled the one missing link I’ve found since my move to a Mac.  Hopefully this has been helpful and has opened your eyes to an affordably, Mac organizing option for your digital supplies.

 

 

Filed Under: Scrapbooking Tagged With: , , ,

Happy Birthday Trev

December 31, 2011 By Leave a Comment

My little brother would have been 28 years old today. We all miss you so much.  This year I’m a bit too overcome with emotion to say much more.

Filed Under: Growing Up

Is there anything sweeter than a puppy?

December 17, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Oh my goodness, what were we thinking?

Wait . . . we were thinking Merry Christmas Tez!

Meet our newest addition Penny:

Penny joins Roscoe as a 4 legged Williams.

She was also a gift for Mr.  Roscoe.  He needed a friend.  Roscoe at 2 years old has more energy than the Williams can get rid of.  After multiple walks a day, tons of play time with the kids, he’s still super rowdy & when he comes inside he doesn’t mellow out.  He’s still a puppy himself and a HUGE puppy at 80 lbs.

He needed a friend.  As much as we love him, we can’t be with him as often as he’d like.

Everything has changed since this wild furball showed up.  They wrestle & Play all day long.  Within days they were terribly attached to one another.  She cried literally ALL night long in her crate for a week.  I had them separated because I figured Roscoe would want some sleep.  In desperation I put their crates together and she darn near sleeps through the night.

Roscoe has totally mellowed out.  In the evenings when it’s family time, he’s pooped out and just chills.  He used to have to much energy to chill for family time.

Miss Penny is still rowdy though:)

One of the things that has been most surprising to me is how gentle Roscoe is with her.  He played a bit rough the first 2 days she was here, only in the fact that he stepped on her a few times.  He was never aggressive or mean with her, he just wasn’t used to playing with someone little.

She jumps all over him chewing on his ears or tail.  If he isn’t in the mood to play he just tries to ignore it, but after a bit he’s usually playing back.  Even though teeth are involved I’m amazed that no one complains or gets hurt.  I wasn’t raised with dogs, so this is all new to me!

I tried FOREVER to convince Hot Hubby to get a friend for Roscoe.  He’s not much of a dog person and it was a big concession for him to get 1 dog, let alone 2

His grandfather had 2 dogs named Penny growing up.  After he conceded to having her, he spoke up that he would love to name her Penny.  Even though I hated that name for a dog, I had to concede.  Everyone calls her Penny, I lengthened it and call her Penelope Ann :)  That way her name is still Penny.

As I said I had been trying to convince Hot Hubby that Roscoe needed a friend forever!!!  I’d even been actively looking at ads for months.  We live out in a small town about 30-45 minutes from civilization and often have to drive even further.  Every ad I called on had expensive puppies and were quite a ways a way.  I called on one ad and the lady was 3 miles down the main road!  She was out of our price range though (especially because we didn’t have a price range, because hubby hadn’t even agreed!)

For some reason, people feel compelled to talk to me and share with me all kinds of details.  This breeder got chatting on the phone about how she’d been in an accident, was in a lot of pain, was homebound, etc.  She explained that she’d been trying to make a flyer and put it up on the board at the local grocery.  Being the soft heart that I am, I offered to help her by designing the flyer and placing it around town.  I also told her about an online site to advertise in addition to the paper and offered to put up the ad for her.

I basically helped her with the other puppies, and she gave us Penny.  (I wanted to call her Rosie or Sadie).

After she offered to give us Penny, I came back to Hot Hubby and basically explained how God wanted us to have a puppy :)

How could he refuse?

She is WELL loved by all.  Especially Roscoe.

Filed Under: Family Fun

A prized possession

November 15, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Came across this tonight and just sat back & thought.

Lil Miss Thang is 8.5 years old this month.  That .5 is SUPER important.

So many times in that 8.5 years she’s stopped me dead in my tracks.  I marvel at her.  She often says things that are well beyond her years and I have to catch my jaw before it hits the floor.  She comes up with some really amazing ideas & creations and she’s determined to see them through. See the bird trap post.

When Hot Hubby came across her “resume” tonight, he decided it was definitely one of his most prized possessions.  I agree.

She was 6.5 when she whipped this up and in first grade.  She came up with the project & wording on her own.  How she even knew what a resume was is beyond me.  But here is the resume of a first grader.  I’ll translate:

RESUME

Garbage can business

earring store owner

mustard sniffer

sweeping floors

Gum chewer

nose blower

flower picker

hair putter upper

lunch lady

bottle opener

fish store (owner)

ticket seller

Filed Under: Family Fun

Bubble Wrap

October 2, 2011 By 1 Comment

Wild Child is my tough guy.  He’s tough on the outside and soft on the inside.  Physically it usually takes a lot to rattle him.

Multiple wasp stings took him down yesterday.  The were hysterics and screams.  We had no idea what was going down and where to fix it.  We knew from the shrieks and the points that it was somewhere on his foot, so I just plastered baking soda everywhere.  It usually does the trick for bee stings. It didn’t help.  He was in a lot of pain and it took awhile for him to clam down & relax.

About an hour later he decided that a wasp injury wasn’t going to keep him down, all he needed was to pad his foot and then he could jump on the trampoline.  He does all of these things on his own . . . if we hadn’t looked out and saw him on the trampoline, we would have assumed he was still resting on Mom’s bed.  Nope, this is what we saw.

And then the ribbon he had used to rig it all up (because they never use string ~ they always go straight for my scrapbook ribbon) fell apart.

And this guy had fun chasing him into the house trying to get his bubblewrap.

Who ME?

Filed Under: Family Fun

Homeschool Mother’s Journal 9/30/11

September 30, 2011 By 3 Comments

The Homeschool Mother's Journal

In my life this week… I still haven’t decorated!!!!  We’ve been here six weeks and there still isn’t a picture on the wall.  We’re buckling down this weekend, and finishing the last of it.  I PROMISE myself.  We finally picked up the rug from getting a good scrub (hopefully) and maybe that’ll be just the kick in the pants we need.  I’ve just been waiting on all the homey touches to take pictures and post about the new house.

In our homeschool this week… We had a standoff with long division.  Wild Child uses Aleks as his math curriculum and it introduced a new topic without any advance warning.  Long division hit him squarely in the chest and he didn’t do well with the assault.  I tried about 20 different ways to explain and teach but it still ended in tears.  He wanted to keep going but I knew it wouldn’t be productive so we shelved it.  I also took the opportunity to talk in depth with him about where the tears were coming from & how he was feeling.  Math has always come effortlessly for him and long division made him feel stupid.  My poor boy.

Helpful homeschooling tips or advice to share… Give yourself permission to walk away.  As a new homeschool mom a couple years ago, i insisted we work through obstacles no matter how difficult they were OR how the child & I were responding.  It didn’t matter if there were tears or raised voices, it needed to be taught & learned so darn it,  we were going to do it.

I’ve learned that we don’t HAVE to do it just because it’s on the schedule.  If someone isn’t responding well, we have the luxury of taking a break and regrouping.  Chances are after that break we’ll both be in a better place and it will be tackled!!!!

I am inspired by… Mom’s that live behind the lens.  Seriously, I don’t want to live behind my lens but I hate that days go by and I realize I haven’t picked up my camera in a week.  Then I honestly get panicked that I will not be able to record those memories and those days are gone :(  Think I need a chill pill?

Places we’re going and people we’re seeing… Nowhere & no one.  It’s nice :)

My favorite thing this week was… working in my homeschool planner by Debra Bell.  I love, love, love it.  It speaks to me on so many levels.  *SIGH*

What’s working/not working for us… Staying home.  We have time for the academics of homeschooling.  *GASP*

Questions/thoughts I have… We’ve moved to a new community in a very small town.  How do we get plugged in for my 8th grader.  There are no homeschool groups or co-ops for her age.  Any ideas?

Things I’m working on… Did I say already that I’m working in my planner & trying to decorate?   I’m also working on TRUSTING the Lord.  I also designed this SUPER amazing passport.  Download it for free :)

I’m praying for… A dear friend who in addition to my mother-in-law is also battling cancer.  Those two are constant in my mind & prayers.

A photo, video, link, or quote to share…

I found this photo and asked Doodlebug if she would don a “13″ shirt and be in a family portrait.  Without a second thought, she said NO!  With passion.  I told her I’d be very disappointed as I’d love to add this to our photo library.  She said I should learn to live with disappointment :)

Filed Under: Homeschool

Passport Free Printable

September 28, 2011 By 5 Comments

I spent 2 days designing this bad boy. I wanted something that the kids could keep track of where we’re visiting in our literature. Also, I wanted a portable map, so that when we’re reading on the front porch we don’t have to tromp upstairs to the big map. Plus, i wanted something fun like a passport. So I created this (photos are poor quality because, it’s night and I didn’t want to get out my mini studio ~ sorry):

Tomorrow we’re going to take “passport photos” and paste them in.  The template is in black & white ~ so you’ll have to color them in.  I don’t want anyone else to have to waste 2 days creating these, so here’s the link to download them for yourself.

My brain works well for the creative part ~ but the technical part stumped me :)  It was trial and error to sort out how to get them back to back & facing the right direction.  I’ll let you sort that one out for yourself with your own printer.  I printed the sleeve on cardstock (a whole other battle with the printer) and we’re going to laminate the cover.  I’ll probably end up using a few strips of packing tape.

The files are pdf and in a zipped folder that will probably take a bit to download.

Enjoy.  The Link: http://www.box.net/shared/vsvzx5t9xm0rh6x7kl0j

Filed Under: Homeschool

Thirteen

September 26, 2011 By 1 Comment

She turned 13 on the 13th.  They say when your age coincides with the date of your birth, it’s supposed to be the best year of your life.  I hope it’s true.

She’s amazing.  Truly.

We’re having normal, teenage issues ~ but considering what a great girl she is, it hasn’t been bad.

I love the time I spend with her, but I need to carve out more.  I’m more and more aware that the time is fleeting.

I adore this girl.

See the necklace she’s wearing? Her brother’s bought it for her.

She has a new chore around the house and she’s loving it :)

Filed Under: Family Fun

Catching a Bird

September 25, 2011 By 1 Comment

She has been trying to catch a bird.  She has been outside patiently trying for THREE days.

She’s rigged up traps with string ~ full of berries & nuts to draw them in.  She hides behind a bush working on her schoolwork with one eye on her trap.  Did I say she’s been there for THREE days?  We tried explaining to her that the best way to catch a bird is to put salt on it’s tail.  She’s sticking to her traps.

She made a slip knot amongst the berries & nut, added a stick for weight, and holds on to the other end behind the bush.  If a bird were to land, she simply pulls the string and snags his foot.  i never asked her what she was going to do with the bird if she caught one, because I never thought it would happen.

Turns out she got a bird.  Not in one of her traps, but word must have spread because one of the kitties caught one for her.  She was able to save it from the kitties and gave it food & water that it actually ate & drank, but he didn’t end up making it.  She was devastated.  Very devastated.  I almost wanted to buy her a bird.  I refrained.

So now she’s back to trapping.

Filed Under: Family Fun
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