according.to.kim

Blurb/Blogger PSA

I was just checking the forums on Blurb.com because I had complained about numerous problems with the Typepad blog-to-book slurper, and I noticed a few posts re: Blogger. It looks like it will still work if you have Booksmart version 1.9.8 (or earlier) but will not work if you upgrade to 1.9.9, so if you still have an older version of Booksmart on your computer and you want to slurp blog posts from Blogger in the future, DO NOT overwrite it with a newer version of Booksmart. The old one is not available for download.

Just thought I'd mention it.

Our Christmas, continued

After we opened all of our gifts and got right into using many of them, I really wished I had had a plan for breakfast, brunch, or lunch. Any of the above would've been nice! I thought about the overnight "wife saver" egg brunch that Neil's mom usually prepares at Christmas time. I thought, I should've done that! But it was much too late for this year. So instead of something special, we just snacked on whatever we had on hand. At least we knew we'd be having a big meal for supper and had that to look forward to.

We just puttered around for most of the day. Sophia made numerous pieces of jewellery with her new Girl Crush Jewellery Designer. It's pretty neat. Madeline and Sophia registered their new Reindeer Webkinz and played online for awhile. Madeline and Georgia spent some time watching their new Dora DVD and riding on both Georgia's bouncy inchworm and Madeline's animated plush horse she promptly named Butterscotch (she really does not care that it isn't the Fur Real one). Georgia also enjoyed her new baby dolls and board books. Sophia was extremely frustrated with the game of Perfection because she couldn't get all the pieces in before it popped -- on her very first try. Maybe Perfection was not the right game for her! She hasn't played it since, so I'd like to try it with more people putting the pieces in at the same time and see how she likes that. Sophia and Neil also spent some time flying her remote control dragonfly. I'm sorry to say the antenna on the remote control part is already broken, but it seems to work anyway. Neil also built some structures with the Tinkertoys we purchased two years ago and finally gave the girls. I realize now that they're more for us to re-live our own childhood because the girls aren't very interested in them. Not yet anyway. Perhaps never. We'll see!

Since Neil's parents and Laurel and Bronwyn are all in Texas for Christmas, Laurel suggested we should try to video chat again. We had tried two years ago when they were in Toronto and could not get it to work (except one time and I have no idea how we did it). The problem is trying to video chat between a Mac and a PC. Mac to Mac is slick and easy and I'm sure it's the same for PC to PC, but ne'er to two shall meet... or something like that. Until now. Yesterday, I found some recent information on this subject and was happy to see that someone else did all the legwork of trying different applications until he found one that worked. So this is my Public Service Announcement for anyone who wants to video chat between Mac and PC: Skype actually works and it's free. We quickly got video chat going and had a little visit with Neil's family in Texas.

In the late afternoon, we headed over to Neil's aunt and uncle's house in Regina for Christmas dinner. It was great to see many of our relatives on Neil's mom's side that we haven't seen for awhile. Another wonderful Christmas celebration with family!

Enjoy!

You may recognize these four dancing elves. (Thanks Jodi!)

Daily pic: 05 Dec 07

This is my book! It's called 9 states, 27 days, 8700 kms, and it's comprised of all my blog posts -- including all of your wonderful comments -- from our trip to Texas last year! It was such a great trip and I spent a lot of time recording all the details each and every day. I wanted to have a hard copy of all those words. The pages shown are from the day we left, December 6, 2006.

To do this, I used a service called Blurb. Blurb offers free software called Booksmart that can "slurp" blogs into book format. Isn't that cool? You can choose the elements you wish to include (text, photos, link URLs, and comments), do some of your own formatting if you like, and then order a hard or soft cover book! This one is soft cover and 60 pages. I arranged the book so each day of our trip had its own two-page spread and I only included the one photo I had posted on that day. (I have yet to do a photo album from that trip, but I still hope to do that someday. At least I have the journal now!). It cost me only $28.80 U.S. after a $7.00 discount on shipping because I had a coupon (I signed up last year and they send coupons once in awhile). I ordered my book on November 20 and it came yesterday.

FreeRice.com

This is awesome! You can have fun (and learn new words) playing a vocabulary game at FreeRice.com and for every correct answer you give, 10 grains of rice will be donated to the world's hungry through United Nations. It all adds up. How does it work? You can read about it here: Online game nets billionth grain of rice donation. For those who enjoy a little competition, my vocabulary level peaked at 38 today. I don't know if that's good or bad! What's your level?

Daily pic: 01 Oct 07

The girls love their Webkinz and are always eager to get on there to do their "dailies". Sophia and Madeline have to take turns (each girl gets to do all of the daily activities every other day) and they're very good about it. I must admit we all enjoy playing Webkinz games (except Georgia, of course). I'm looking at this picture and wondering why they have four pink t-shirts (in the dock at the bottom of the screen). Madeline probably went on a careless shopping spree. She does that sometimes. You should see how many toilets they have!

Doing it Digi! Lesson 4, Page 1

The entire 4th lesson was about making layered backgrounds using filters and blending modes. It's amazing what you can do. The result was an entire 6x6 "patterned paper" and you can see some of it on this layout. I also used the "diffuse glow" filter on the bottom right photo.

I enjoyed this BPS Doing it Digi! class very much and I learned a lot too. I should've created additional layouts, but didn't have time during the four-week workshop. I completed all four lessons though and I'm satisfied with the five pages I did make (to see them all, click on the "scrapbooking" category at the bottom of this post). I hope I'll find time to use all of this new knowledge in the not-too-distant future!

Goneshopping.ca

Check out www.goneshopping.ca for lots of cool and eco-friendly products. I love that it's Canadian too!

Doing it Digi! Lesson 3, Page 1

Still trying to stick with the "digital" theme of the class. That's my brother and me, circa 1974. Aren't we cute (in spite of our solemn faces)? This old photo in particular was a little damaged from a magnetic album; the adhesive stripes were bleeding through and were visible in the light areas of the photo. A few years ago, I carefully removed it from the album, scanned it, and made some small improvements such as reducing visibility of those stripes and boosting the contrast.

Doing it Digi! Lesson 2, Page 1

Another fun lesson in Doing it Digi! I didn't have much time to spend on this, so I just selected a couple photos I already had on my computer.

Doing it Digi! Lesson 1, Page 2

Doing it Digi! Lesson 1, Page 1

My latest Big Picture Scrapbooking workshop, Doing it Digi!, started Thursday. So much fun! For my first page, I followed the instructions to the letter as I didn't want to waste time or brain power trying to be creative. Sometimes it's more fun to just follow and take advantage of the work someone else has already done. The first lesson was quite simple for me because I'm already very familiar with the software required for this class (Adobe Photoshop Elements). Nevertheless, I learned a lot because I hadn't been using the program for digital scrapbooking per se (other than the Brushworks class I just took, but it did not cover the basics of digital scrapbooking like this class). Now I'm off to tackle page two...

Brushworks Lesson 2

This is the page I created for the second lesson of the BPS Brushworks class I was taking (see Lesson 1). Again, I learned so much about the cool things you can do with brushes in Photoshop/Elements. Since creating this page was more about learning techniques, it's probably not what I would've done if I had been thinking specifically about creating a page using this particular picture and story. When the lesson said to use a closeup of someone's face, I just picked a picture from the limited library of photos I happened to have on the laptop, and then I created the page without having any idea of what I wanted the end result to be. Still, I think it turned out okay.

Brushworks Lesson 1

In June, I signed up for a two-week online class called Brushworks from Big Picture Scrapbooking (there's another one coming soon if anyone's interested). In June, however, I had NO time to do it, so I downloaded the lessons and resources for later use. This weekend, I finally found the opportunity to start the class and complete the first lesson. I'm glad I decided to take this class -- I learned so much doing this one page! I've been using Adobe Photoshop Elements and Photoshop (at work) for many years now and I can do several basic things quite well, but I knew I hadn't even scratched the surface. This class certainly confirmed that. Those programs are amazing!

I hope to do the second lesson of Brushworks within the next two weeks, and then I'm taking another BPS online class by Renee Pearson called Doing it Digi which runs for four weeks starting September 6. I can't wait! I suspect I'll be a little extra sleep deprived in September, but I don't care.

I had sort of resisted the idea of digital scrapbooking because I love playing with paper, scissors, glue, stamps, stickers, brads, ribbons, punches... SO much and I love the true texture of those things, but I've been drawn to the digital form lately. I don't think it takes any less time to put a page together, but it's very convenient. All I need is my computer and a few minutes (well, lots of minutes) here and there. And I do love "playing" on my computer anyway, so that's not a stretch for me. I'd also like to try hybrid scrapbooking which involves combining traditional and digital elements on a scrapbook page. After all, I do have a lovely stash of scrapbooking products I'd like to use someday.

Daily pic: 20 Aug 07

Our summer vacation photo book came today and I love it! I'm delighted with how quick, easy, and fun it was to make too.

Now, I do feel a bit awkward and sorry about saying that to the general public because I made it using iPhoto on a Mac computer and I know most people don't own a Mac :-(
So, if you're interested in having a photo book printed, I've done some digging to find some PC-friendly alternatives:

• Chapters.Indigo.ca (added Aug 29)
• Costco.ca
• Flickr
• Future Shop
• Kodak Easyshare Gallery
• MyPublisher
• Photo Book Press
• Photoinpress.ca
• Picaboo
• Shopper's Drugmart
• Shutterfly
• Snapfish
• Viovio

And I'm sure there are more options than that!

Daily pic: 17 Aug 07

Madeline playing with her Webkinz pet on the computer before bed. Her favourite thing to do is give her pet a bath. Both Sophia and Madeline like playing computer games.

Friday was busy. I worked until noon, then Neil and I went shopping for school clothes and shoes for Sophia and Madeline. They both have to leave a pair of shoes at school. The clothes were mostly for Sophia as I'll go shopping in our basement for "new" clothes for Madeline. As for real shopping, as long as I can avoid taking the kids with me, I will! I'm glad they're still okay with me picking out their shoes and clothes. It's so much easier to shop without them and it saves time and money. (I can stay focused on the "two t-shirts for $10" section!)

Mid-afternoon, we picked up Georgia to take her to her 18-month immunization appointment. She had three shots:
(1) Measles, Mumps, Rubella, (2) Diphtheria, acellular Pertussis, Tetanus, Polio, Haemophilus Influenza Type b, and (3) Pneumococcal. The nurse commented that these shots go so much better with two parents there. I tried to distract Georgia while Neil held her. She didn't make a peep for the first one (which wasn't as deep) and only cried for a couple seconds for the other two. Georgia was weighed and measured too. She's 24 lbs (10.88 kg) and 32.75 inches (83 cm). That's 35th percentile for weight and 75th for height.

After that, we did a little more shopping before heading back to pick up Sophia and Madeline. They had hair appointments at 5:30 p.m. Madeline had a trim and Sophia had four inches cut off! It looks great. From there, we went to Walmart for school supplies. I would have bought them earlier, but Sophia wanted to help pick out her supplies. It was almost 7:00 p.m. before we got out of there and we still hadn't had supper. Neil and I hadn't had lunch either. Too tired and hungry to go home and make supper, we went to the new Wok Box "fresh Asian kitchen" on South Albert. It's good!

Photo keeping blues

Just a quick note to say I've decided to devote the rest of today to photo keeping -- organizing, backing up, purging, etc. -- even though there's so much else to do. It just has to be done. You know I love taking photos, and I love playing with photos in Photoshop and Elements, but I don't love the task of photo keeping because I have trouble keeping up and then it becomes overwhelming.

I would really like to make an online album of photos from our trip to South Dakota, but I have to work with older photos first. My computer is struggling to handle thousands of photos (the speed of everything is seriously reduced when I have my photo program open) and I need to deal with this problem first. I don't know how far I'll get with this today. I'm off today but back to work tomorrow. Wish me luck.

Daily pic: 17 Apr 07

My 1000th post. Posted from the farm.

Just for fun

Saw this on another blog and couldn't resist...

HowManyOfMe.com

There are 2 people with my name in the U.S.A. How many have your name?

Another really cool site dealing with the popularity of names is The Baby Name Wizard: NameVoyager.

Pretty as a painting

Brush Strokes - Crosshatch filter.

And some serious cropping.

I could play all day!

But I can't, so I won't.

I should go play outside. It's 19 C right now!

Happy Spring!