Fun with Photoshop ;o)

Hello!!! It appears as tho I have been away for awhile by the last date I posted here on my blog but I've been around...including having fun with my niece and nephew;o)

I have been self-teaching myself on the amazing Photoshop CS program as time has allowed -- wow!!! I have soo much more to learn but here are a few pics that I have 'altered' using PS. What FUN!

This is my beautiful niece out in their flower field at the farm -- I wanted to have both color and black and white in this pic. She was sitting in her car seat and I was able to 'erase' the car seat from the pic as well!

This is my nephew Jack (see the license plate?!) making a trip around the flower field looking for just the right flower to gift to his Mom ;o) In this pic I thought it would be fun to just pull out a few of the colorful flowers as well as Jack & his license plate in color. I also burned the edges and added the text.

Here is Ava with her Grandpa -- not much done to this but added a heart and text ;o)

Here is one of my faves to date -- this is Jack waiting for the 4th of July parade to start -- and using the PS program I 'sketched' it -- how cool is that!!!??

I want to get pictures of the punkin patch taken too -- and post them about the same time of year as I had posted last years growing season pics. So stay tuned for those!!!

~TFL & Enjoy!~

Custer State Park ~ Buffalo Roundup

My DH and I had a very enjoyable weekend out in the beautiful black hills of South Dakota about a week ago now -- I wanted to share with you a few snapshots of the event.

If you ever have a chance to go to the Buffalo Round Up I would encourage you to do so -- it's not like you can see this just anywhere ;o)

In this first picture it was about 6:30 a.m. in Custer State Park as the sun was coming up -- you can see the little red spots or dots too - those are the tail lights to cars in front of us making their way to the Buffalo Round Up too!

I couldn't let this go without a picture - these 4 coyboys/cowgirls were sitting in front of us for the big event - it just looked soo neat with their hats on that I had to snap their picture!
Here is a portion of the buffalo as they are rounding them up and getting them towards the final destination of the park.And there is a little gate there they are all pushing towards in the picture - that takes them into the corral where they will draw their blood, give them their shots and sort them for auction as well as the group that will return back out to the park for another year.

Another HUGE highlight of the trip was staying with our friends, The Techs, while we were out there. Michelle and I met on SCS (where else is there more awesome people?!) and we hooked up earlier this summer when we were out at Sturgis, SD for the big motorcycle rally. So when we headed out to the Buffalo Round Up we for sure wanted to get together again! They have the most awesome guest house where we stayed for the weekend ~ if you are planning a vacation to the Black Hills be sure to contact Michelle for your lodging...it's the BEST!

Michelle and I were also able to sneek in some stampin time too with her son and Mom who came out to play all day with us!! Check out her blog for the projects we did - Pop Up Card, Punkins & Gourds, Tiles and more tiles!!

Michelle also showed us how to make the Stationery Set Boxes which are just fab-U-lous!!!

Our DH's got some 'guy time' in too -- they went ATV'ing thru the black hills - that is something my DH thoroughly enjoyed and is still talking about!

Thanks for such an awesome weekend Michelle!! I can't wait to do it again ;o)

PPP Friday night highlights

What a fun time had by all!! We had perfect weather for our Punkin' Pickin' Party on Friday night and Saturday! Here are some fun pictures to share with all of you from Friday night ~ I'll be sharing some more from Saturday tomorrow!This was just the start of Jack's pile -- he ended up choosing a few more to take home too!


Here is Jack trying to carry his own punkin' out of the patch ~ but he did end up needing a little assistance from Dad ;o)

Here is Jordan proud of his big find! Notice his punkin' socks?? ;o)
This one was just too cute to pass up on a picture - he was tired and had to sit down to take a break from lookin' thru the patch!

~TFL & Enjoy~

Dressed up for Fall Fun

Here are a few pictures of our place as I decorated for fall and our punkin' pickin' party ;o)

I absolutely love fall and all things about it!!




~TFL & Enjoy~

Punkin' Patch Peek #2

Hello!

So it's now the end of August ~ where did the summer go anyway?? Tonight I snapped some pics of the punkin' patch! How fun it has been to watch it grow, grow, GROW (and weed, weed weed)! lol ...I know, people have looked at me a bit crazy when I say that I have weeded the punkin' patch ~ but it looks soo much better AND I can peek at the growing progress at the same time ;o)

Remember my last post of the punkin' patch in July? HERE is a link to that so you can see just how much the patch has grown since then!

As you can see now, the vines have now taken over the entire space ~ I have a pair of scissors that I use to keep the vines trimmed on the four outer sides - that way when I mow by them its nice and even and it helps to keep them contained! I have just recently started trimming some of the vines down in the patch - where its nothing but vines I trim up to the last bloom and I am thinking that will help the nutrients go to the different pumpkins, melons and gourds currently growing.

Nope, this isnt a black and white picture ;o) We are also growing 'ghost pumpkins' - which grow white in color ~ cool huh?

This is just another variety of pumpkin ~ this one is a bright scarlet French pumpkin and that is because of the shape and deep 'grooves' it will end up with - short and round. I think I have also heard this referred to as a cinderella or princess pumpkin too!

What a pretty deep orange color this one already has!!


Chirp! Chirp! The birds are going to love this one next year once it drys out and we can make it into a bird house! These are called 'birdhouse' gourds ~ see why? How fun!!! Don't ya' just see some stampin' opportunities here too?? Yep!

These will also be fun for fall decorating -- and maybe fun when they dry out and turn into a little natural musical instrument too!!

Of course, we have watermelon too! I am personally not a big fan of it but others are so why not try growing some of that too!!

The cantaloupes are well on their way as well! We should have plenty of these to share as well as I am not a fan of eating these either -- I really am not a fruit fan at all!!!

Humm...so what could these be? If you have hung with me thru this entire tour of our patch I thought it would be fun to turn this into a 'blog candy' question!! Nope, I won't send you punkins' and stuff...but rather other fun stampin' related stuff!! So the first person to post with the correct answer to what these are will WIN WIN WIN ;o)

Thanks for joining me on the tour today ~ I'll be posting more pics as we get closer to the pickin' of punkins' season ;o)

~TFL & Enjoy~

Vacation Memories

I just wanted to take a moment and share with you some pictures of our latest trip to the Black Hills of South Dakota this summer -- we had an absolutely wonderful time! It was the best weather in the 17 years my husband has been going out there -- no rain and wonderful temps! Yes, we did go out for the Sturgis Bike Rally but we love to spend time away from the mass chaios of the bike scene too!! We had fun one afternoon just taking pics of the scenery, including the buffalo in Custer State Park.

I love photography and taking pictures - especially now that the digital era is here - if the picutre doesnt turn out just delete it!!! ;o)

Oh and last but certainly not least - I had to take a picture of "The Purple Pie Place" which is located in Custer, SD -- my huband loves his sweets! We found this place which makes home made pies and sweets -- Dean stopped in and left with TWO pieces of pie ;o) So if you are ever in the area stop in to entertain your sweet tooth!!

Punkin' Patch Peek

Hello All!!

It's early in the punkin' growin' season but I thought I would snap a few pictures just to show the progress! I should have taken some when the mounds were just mounds before they started to grow! I can't believe how much they have grown in just the last few hot days! Wow!


We have planted all sorts of different varieties from little pumpkins to big pumpkins to white pumpkins to gourds to watermellons...so it will be fun to watch this patch progress!
Here are just a few close ups - the blossoms have really popped the past day!
And...one last picture to show you - this is a huge thunderhead to the south of us tonight. It was just beautiful on our side (north side) but on the south side of this beast it was raining buckets with high winds and golf ball sized hail. WOW!

I'll post pictures of the patch as we progress thru the summer!! I hope to have large yields and we will have fun having the kids come out and pick their own out!

~TFL & Enjoy~

Baby, It's Cold Outside!!

Cold but pretty! I snapped these pictures on Sunday after going down the lane to get our Sunday papers out of the mailbox. It was just foggy/frosty enough over night that everything was coated white!

Our poor little truck that we decorate for the seaons looks soo cold and alone! You can check out the fall pictures of our truck back on my blog from, I believe, Fall 2006 - boy does time fly!

Ok, back to trying to stay warm out of the elements today!!

~TFL & Enjoy~

~ Fun Family BIA Blast ~

My little cousin Annie is had her graduation party this weekend.

My Mom and I *snuck* in to her house last Sunday afternoon while she was away and took pictures of her cat and dog so my Mom, her Aunt, could create a collage picture frame gift for her ~ ~ ~ It turned out supah' cute ;o) I also took the opportunity to snap a few pictures of the rest of the family -- Mom, Dad and brother doing silly things that our family does. It was just a blast taking the pictures but even more fun putting this brown bag album together!!

I, of course, had to use my bind-it-all machine again for this project *wink wink* Here is the front of the album (yes -- there really is a spiral under 'neath that ribbon!)

This is a simple 'brown bag' album. This album is done with the normal size brown bags you would buy at any store. ((In earlier posts you have heard me *er I guess 'read about' me* talking about the little brown tea bags --- I didnt use those for this project.)) Just simply take a brown bag and fold it in half. That 'pouch' then becomes where you can insert a tag or something of that sort.

Throughout this album I used the Stampin' UP! Timeworn Collection Relics Paper as my 'theme' paper -- it worked really well! I cut those in squares and just randomly mounted them to each side of the page using my ATG adhesive gun. *LOVE that adhesive by the way!* I personally mounted all of my paper squares to each page and then used my bind-it-all to punch the holes and spiral bind the book. THEN I started to insert my pictures and decorate the front and back covers. The reason I prefered to do it this way is then I knew for sure where the spiral would be and I could work around it with no problem. Otherwise I may have attached a picture too far over into the 'binding zone' and ended up with 'holes' in it --- make sense? Doing it this way worked out great for me personally.

Like I mentioned before, this was intened to be a silly book -- and that it was so the pictures are fun!

We took some sticky post it notes and cut them into a mustache and gotee and started to color them in and then placed them on Annies picture on the wall and Tom colored them as I snapped his pic --- *messin' with his baby Sistas' picture ya' know* lol

When I developed some of the pictures for the album I had them done in 'Sepia' and some in 'Black and White' while of course others were done in color. That gave the bag album a different effect in itself.

This is the back of the album. I used the Cricut to cut out the Sun. I printed out the saying "The future is so bright it burns my eyes" on my computer and printed it out on Only Orange cardstock and then cut it out with my oval cutter.

Here are the tags that I did that actually slipped into the openings of the bags. I used a total of four bags for this book -- thus four openings. (I didnt post all the picutes of each of the pages of the book here, just a few to give you an idea of the what the book looked like)

So each brown bag would have 'four pages' technically. So this book had 16 pages from beginning to end.

I matched up funny sayings with the pictures for that page that the tag was going in. The base of my tag was done with a large Sizzix die. I then mounted it to another piece of cardstock and cut around it to make it larger to 'fill up the bag space'. I then added ribbon and cord to finish it off. I printed out each of the sayings again on my computer -- in Word using two columns and different fun fonts. I used my SU! Cutter Kit distressing tool around each of the sayings just to add a bit of texture before mounting them to the tag face. Here are my sayings, including the one on the front & back covers as well as one from I used on the inside pages --

Crazy is a relative term
in my family

I know you are but what am I? You’re not the boss of me! I’m telling mom! Mom said! I called it! It’s mine! I dare you. Get out of my room. Can I have a bite? He’s touching me!!!

Families are
like fudge… mostly sweet
with a few nuts.

Life is a great big canvas and you should throw all the paint on it you can

We do not remember days, we remember
Moments

Life isn’t just the front page – it’s the comics, too

The future is
so bright it
burns my eyes

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Annie loved this little gift -- she has the sense of humor that the rest of her Dad's side of the family does too ;o) She even took it to her graduation party and had it sitting on her table with the rest of her treasured belongings from growing up. I had many people come up to me at the reception and tell me what a fun and awesome book it was -- and ...?how did I do that? ... how fun!!

~TFL & Enjoy~