A thing of beauty is joy forever; its loveliness increases; it will never pass into nothingness -John Keats

Mosaic Fun!

Set up a Flickr account today to try my hand at making a photo mosaic of various random photos from 2007 - what fun!

Photoshop digital layout

Learning how to put together a digital scrapbook page is quite a challenge for me! I would love to take a Photoshop Elements 5.0 course with specific focus for scrapbookers but I have not yet seen any such course offered! I guess practice and experimentation is the only way I'll learn! Maybe I can find something on line ....?

Playing with Photoshop to create "vintage" feel

Believe it or not, there were many steps to create this photo. Most of the color has been washed from the photo, creating a dreamy like photo of my neice Chloe and I, taken this past June in England. Note the slight coloring of the frames of my glasses, jacket and greenery behind me. This was super fun to create.

Playing with Photoshop Elements

I received a "Computer Tips" magazine from Lyden for Christmas and decided to apply some of the lessons from the magazine and what you see here is the finished product!

Christmas Day 2007 has come & gone

Photos from top to bottom: Kids with their Christmas Eve Gifts (new pjs); kids playing the new card game "Set" that Rachel received from Lyden; Andy trying to crack the mystery of the puzzle Tyler received from Rachel (everyone had a go to no avail); Christmas Dinner.
























After the Christmas Eve service at our church, Tyler and Rachel came home with us and slept over. My mom and Scott had breakfast with Jeff & Silvana and stayed there until about 2pm and then came over for dinner. Scott brought his dog Keisha with him and usually she's pretty good and well behaved but she decided to relieve herself on the carpet, in front of the tree! Scott was mad at the dog, saying she knew better. He figures Keisha is annoyed at him because he's not taken her out to the dog park since he returned from Thailand in early December. Scott's excuse is that it has been "too cold" but it hasn't been - it has been rather mild, but it is cold to him, when compared to the warmth of Thailand.....

Christmas Carol

After grabbing a quick bite to eat, my mother and I went to see the Christmas Carol at the theatre Friday evening. The play adaptation was marvellous - it was really well done. I had seen the play a few years ago but it bore no resemblance - this year's story adaptation, set, costuming and "special effects" were terrific. Who doesn't love this Charles Dickens classic?

An excerpt from an essay found on the web sums the story up rather nicely - to read the entire article, go to: http://books.guardian.co.uk/departments/classics/story/0,6000,1673562,00.html

"Dickens valued morality, but what he really worshipped was merriment - the buzz of making other people happy, of making a moment glow, of dancing a jig for no particular reason. The greatest tragedy he could imagine was an existence devoid of excitement or playfulness, a biding of time on the way to the grave. Fun, for him, was the only compensation for death, the dismal inevitability of which preyed constantly on his mind. Scrooge's triumph is that he stares his own corpse in the face, and, instead of despairing, defiantly resolves to enjoy the gift of life to the full. He is galvanised by a thousand volts of goodwill. Witnessing his transformation, we realise with a pang of regret that we are hard-hearted too, and that it might take a thousand volts to transform us likewise. We cling, miser-like, to our self-protective anxieties, our emotional meanness, our pointless inhibitions. Perhaps we're all waiting for the Ghosts of our own Past, Present and Future to burst through our defences, seize us by the hand and shock us into joy. Until that day, we revisit A Christmas Carol and watch this alarming miracle happen to someone else."