by Talmadge House

Photoshop Elements 6

My newest educational book arrived this past weekend, Photoshop Elements 6 The Missing Manual.  I’ve been using this software and getting through it by the seat of my pants or by getting so frustrated when I can’t figure out how to do the things I want to do.  Life and photo editing are much easier when you learn it the “right” way.  This book isn’t your typical dry catalog or computer book (snore).  It’s perfect for us non-techie people who are trying to learn Photoshop Elements.

So no more hair pulling or barking at my husband for not being able to help me quick enough, I’m learning this photo editing beast.  The Missing Manuals is a series of learning manuals for gosh I think almost anything.  If you click on this link you’ll be taken to their website where you will find all sorts of “missing manual” books.  I’m sure they have written one for a program that is making you go bald too.

My featured picture is of Mikey and the budster chilling by the boat last weekend.  It was edited by me and I added a Karen Russell Overlay.  I like it!  Trying to figure out how to add and use actions . . . I’ll surely post a picture with the result of it.  Actions are very very cool!

by Talmadge House

Frog Dreams

Haven’t we all dreamed of odd things that don’t seem to make any sense to us.  Or having dreams of all these weird things that don’t seem to have relation to one another.  Well I had one of those dreams last night and here’s how it went ~

I was preparing my home for a showing when the door bell rang.  Upon answering, it was a man who had previously looked at my home and said he’d like to buy the house but that he had to do some repair work around the house.  I told him that he could do that once he purchased the home but he was insistant to do the work right then and there.  In my dream I went along with it, but in real life I would’ve sent him off to pound salt (LOL).  So here he is inside my home with his saw, drill and tool belt making all these changes to the house.  Meanwhile I’m thinking that this other couple was suppose to be putting a bid in on the house and i’d prefer to sell to them but didn’t know how to get this guy out of my house.  I go upstairs to the masterbedroom and I see all these frogs on the floor.  There were big momma and poppa frogs and also baby frogs, all hopping around.  I hear the guy coming up the stairs and I tell him he can’t come upstairs because it’s a mess and we have frogs all over the place.  Then all of the sudden the frogs were dead (all of them)!  So I’m quickly picking them up and putting them into the trash.

The End ~

Okay, well I’ve never dreamed of frogs before so I googled what frog dreams could possibly mean.  It’s an array of things.

1.  frogs represent the alter ego/the darker side that we all possess.

HA!  So what about my alter ego?  My alter ego is a good one!  I have a dark side?  I will never tell LOL

2.  a potential to change or to do the unexpected.

Well this one could be related to the big change that is bestowed before us with moving.

3.  The frog may be a prince in disguise.

OOOO . . . a prince?  I thought I already had my prince?  🙂

4.  The frog may suggest you need to do some cleaning.

Are you kidding me?  No way!  Ask Mike about cleanliness around our home.  LOL

5. The frog may mean you’ve been jumping from one thing, person, or idea to another.

Well hmm . . . could be truth to this one with relation to my hobbies.  I have limited time for hobbies and I have a lot of them and don’t know exactly which one to work on when I have the time.  I therefore get confused and don’t do any.

6.  You are taking major steps toward some goal.

True ~ moving from our first home

7.  You need to take the “leap” on a risk.

Well yeah I would need a “frog” to tell me this.  I’m a conservative person and think long and hard before taking any sort of risk.  So it may be telling me to go ahead and take the risk of moving into a bigger home to accommodate our ever growing business.

Interesting non the less!

by Talmadge House

What happens on the Day before Memorial Day?

Well in our lives we spend the entire weekend celebrating Memorial Day OUT on the boat or just hanging ON the boat IN the marina with all of our friends.  Here’s a glimpse of our day.

Mike got the dink in the water and everyone knows this is Scottie’s boat.  He was all paws when he saw it go in and pitched a doggie anxiety fit for a ride.

Then there was Cosmo (our friends sheep dog)

Who perched himself way up high for a birds eye view of our odd bunch here –

Scottie was also curious of the odd bunch and why all the racket that awoke him from his breezy afternoon nap.

Then there was fishing and of course your apt to find multiple people throwing a line into the water to see what today’s catch will be.  Our very good friend Mike Malone –

Also our friend Mark and his iddy bitty catch that Scottie just had to get a lick of.  He’s so gross but crazy mad for fishing!

And look who paid us a visit, Crystal (my sister-in-law) who does not visit often, decided to pop in along with her boyfriend (Mike) for first time introductions.

And of course myself and Mike were amongst the crowd of activities.  I had to hand the camera over to my other sister-in-law (Carla) for this pic . . . thank you Carla!

Then Jeff Fox’s weather report held true.  Look what started rolling in on us.  I didn’t get a pic of what transpired but let me just say we got a mad amount of hard poring rain and hail.  YIKES!

Now we turn to Scottie sniffing his way

over to this . . . steamed clams.  He LOVES clams and not only does he eat the clam itself, he will lick the juice from the shell and chews off the leg that’s commonly left on the shell.  He’s a true boating dog!  By the way the collar Scottie has on is a new collar made by me entitled “The Picnic Series”.  It’s blue, yellow and white plaid.  Perfect for this weekend and dang cute I might add!

All in all it was a fabulous day relaxing with friends and family.  Memorial Day itself we are having Bridget, Jeremy and Isabella down on the boat for the day.  So I’ll have pics from this also, stay tuned.

by Talmadge House

Happy Birthday Little Peanut!

Scottie celebrated his 12th birthday this month!  Wow how fast time goes, our furry baby is getting older by the second and is like 80 years old in human years or something crazy like that!  I won’t get into how sad this whole thing makes me which will in turn will keep this post short.  A show of hands who prefer shorter posts . . . Mike I know you have your hand raised and better lower it if you know what’s good for you 🙂  Anywho, Scottie got his birthday bowl of vanilla ice cream.  This year I light a candle and put it in the ice cream of which he curiously but yet cautiously checked out and quickly realized it was not something he should have his nose close to.  He also got special walks, playtime and snuggle wuggles.

by Talmadge House

Laptop Bag by booq

I have not posted in a while so I figure I just post something that first came to my mind. I have had a new smaller MacBook for Thought Out for a few months and decided to get my third BOOQ bag. These bags are the best, the other two lasted with out wear and I recommend them highly. That is it for now and I look forward to this smaller bag in a few days.

Boa slimcase S90
Laptop Sleeves by booq

by Talmadge House

National Scrapbooking Day

A lo ha fellow scrapbookers!  Yesterday was National Scrapbooking day so I’m hoping all fellow enthusiasts joined me in celebrating by scraping your hearts out.  Here’s a layout I did of meself with more of Jenni Bowlin’s April kit.  Doesn’t this layout make you think of sherbert?  I think another layout is calling me today or perhaps a mini album {I heart mini albums}

Layout inspired by Lisa Dickinson.

by Talmadge House

Monkey Playtime

Waahoo!  I made the entry deadline to Jenni Bowlin’s April contest.  She’s hosting a contest where you scrap with her April kit and you then get a chance to win one of her May add-on kits.  Emmm yummy!  Don’t we all like getting something free and even better yet when it’s pretty?  Listen I’m not only excited for the chance to win but am downright ecstatic that I scrapbooked something.

This picture of Scottie was the first picture taken with my new 50mm f1.4 lens that I got for my birthday.  He was exhausted from our monkey playtime so off he went to puppy-dog dreamland.

by Talmadge House

A Strool Through the Park

Here we are at Tuesday’s Unwrapped again, it’s uncanny how fast time flies!  Our home has been on the market for ten days and we’ve averaged one showing per day which is pretty good in this market.  I feel quite a bit of stress since this whole house hunting and selling has breached it’s way into our humble, yet busy days of living.  It seems that anytime stress pokes it’s head out, us humans tend to lose sight of what we stand for and what our original goals were.

I for one get my mind wrapped around something, get all worked up, cranky and my type A personality takes over.  I left the house all balled up, cranky and ready to lash out on anyone who merely looked at me the wrong way.  It wasn’t until I left the office early (for a showing) changed into my shorts, t-shirt and flip flops, packed a cooler of water, thin mint cookies and a frosty paw for Scottie and made our way to the park for some much needed tranquility that I was able to calm down.  It was breezy and a warm 90 degrees while walking with Scottie in the park overlooking the river and we heard the church bells chime.  I listened to the chiming while we continued to mosey our way through the flower gardens and cherry trees and felt an immediate sense of comfort and tranquility.

This was well deserved down time today with my biggest fan at my heels (well okay he’s always in front making sure he’s sniffed the path that I’m about the walk on).  Thank God for all things beautiful, simple and tranquil!

by Talmadge House

Aggregators vs Email?

Without further ado this post is dedicated to Mike who has been poking at me for months to explain to our readers how to easily subscribe to our blog posts.  You have two choices of subscription:  RSS feed or email, either is a time saver for all of you.  For those who crave thorough tutorials and even those who like to learn new things this is worth reading.

RSS FEED:

Though quite well-known amongst bloggers, it shouldn’t go without lauding:  Aggregators.  There are bound to be a few dozen of you who don’t know what you’re missing out on.  This post is for you.

If you find yourself tediously entering and re-entering the URLs of your favorite blogs throughout the day, just hoping that someone has posted a new entry, read on.  You need an aggregator.  I currently use Google Reader.

Google Reader is a free, online service that allows you to organize and monitor your favorite blogs.  When you are logged into your account, you are able to see when new entries have been posted on each of the blogs you ‘subscribe’ to.  Subscribing to blogs is free and many blogs have a “Subscribe in Google Reader” or “Subscribe to this Feed” button in their sidebar to make the process even easier.  Rsssymbol Otherwise, you can click on a blog’s RSS feed icon in your browser’s address bar (usually looks like a little square with three curved ‘sound’ bars radiating outward – example to the right).  The RSS icon will take you to the blog’s RSS feed, where there are usually some subscription options, including Google Reader.  Here is what my RSS feed page looks like.

There are many similar services to Google Reader, such as Bloglines, My Yahoo, NewsFire, and many others.  I’ve only ever used Google Reader, so I’m not too familiar with the alternatives.  All such blog-subscribing services are called aggregators (or feed-readers, rss readers, news readers, etc.).  Using an aggregator is an absolute life-saver if you’re following a long list of blogs on a regular basis.  An aggregator enables you to compose a virtual daily ‘personal newspaper’ of all of your favorite blog ‘articles’ (aka rss feeds or posts) which you can read one after the other right there under your account — or you can click on a link to each post if you prefer to read new posts in their original setting within a blog (my preference).

A lot of info?  Let me just say it is totally worth looking into.  The time you spend learning your way around Google Reader or another aggregator will easily pay off in spades.  One hour learning how to use an aggregator could easily gain you three hours more free time in the next week or two alone.

Visit this awesome video for a visual on this topic.

I must give credit for most of the RSS Feed content to one of my bloggy friends, Heather Bailey.  Why reinvent the wheel right?

EMAIL:

For those of you who don’t read a lot of blogs or just purely have no interest in aggregators you have the option of subscribing via email.  This means you’ll receive an email from our blog anytime we post something new.  All you need to do is enter your email address into the “GET OUR STORIES” field which looks like this and is located on the right column of our blog page.

Once you enter your email address and click on the subscribe button you’ll see a window like this:

See the word in green?  You must enter the text exactly as you see it into the field provided.  Once you’ve entered the text you will see a window like this:

Read the message inside the window above and follow the directions and shortly thereafter you’ll receive an email that looks like this:

Once you click on the link inside your email you’ll see a window like this:

This means your mission is complete and you’ll be receiving all of our new blog posts all nice and dandy right into your very own email box.

by Talmadge House

Love isn’t just for the smart of talented

but for all the amimals God created. (Sarah Wonders)

I sit here tonight after having taken our beloved cat Pele to the vet for treatment of persistent diarrhea even after two different antibiotics and a food change.  With great reluctance we were back for re-evaluation and I knew in my heart it was a bigger problem than first thought.  Pele has been diagnosed with diabetes and will be admitted next week to make sure his organs have not been damaged and to then regulate him with insulin to keep him living healthfully.

The last couple of months has been full of vet visits so with this post I felt it was time to share with all our readers the loss of our other cat Wilbur.  It’s taken quite some time for me to post about it but felt it was time to share.  Wilbur was taken to heaven on Friday, March 20th due to several complications.  Any of you who own pets know the pain we went through to make this decision and that we still feel with her absence.  Wilbur has been with me since she was a wee little kitten (16 years), I loved her immensely and likewise she especially loved me.  I’ll leave this post with the last words I ever wrote about Wilbur on one of my scrapbook pages of her.

“She loves attention and pretty much mine only and cries when she wants the attention.  She loves to sleep in the direct sunlight. She gallops like a little pony when she runs.  She’s got the biggest and prettiest green eyes I’ve ever seen.  Love you Wilbur”

Rest in peace my little pony, mommy misses you more than you’ll ever know.