Canning time again

No journal pages today. After VBS I helped figure out how big to make the windows in our new dining room and exactly where to put them. After helping mark the boards, I headed to the garden to pick tomatoes. It didn't take me very long to determine that I would be canning tonight.



As I type the jars are clicking to let me know they are sealed. I would up with 20 1/2 quarts. I stopped to snap a few pictures as I was working them.



I thought I'd share. One more day of VBS tomorrow. I'm enjoying it, but it will be nice for it to be over too. I have to figure out how to make the angel ornaments and cut the parts before I leave tomorrow.

VBS Week

My mornings this week have been spent at Vacation Bible School. My niece is going with me and we are having a good time together. It doesn't leave a lot of time or energy for much else though. I'm used to older kids. The little ones require so much energy! That's me on the journal page back when I had lots of energy.

I did manage to finish up one journal page yesterday and then went on to do another simple one. On Monday we went to McDonald's after VBS. On the counter was this huge fake $100 bill with the president's portrait cut out. My niece told me that I needed it for my book. The girl behind the counter told me I could have it, so here it is.

Most of my journal pages get photographed here on the back deck. Our cat Harry is usually tons of help.

Today was a tomato kind of day

I had a request in a comment on the last post to give more information on how I made the "Jenga" stamps. I got the whole Jenga set for a quarter, so I've been using these great little blocks for stamps ever since. Any wooden or plastic block would work. The striped stamps used strips of leftover rubber from full sheets of unmounted rubber stamps that I bought. I just cut them to fit and stuck them to the block with double-sided tape. Another style of homemade stamps I've made use fun foam. The checked one you can see in the photo (last post) was made with fun foam. I did these the same way as the scrap rubber ones. You can also use the fun foam shapes.



Now on to the tomatoes. I knew I was going to have to pick them today and that before I could do that the branches that were hanging down over the tops of the cages and blocking the rows would have to be tied up. I got an old skirt that I've been trying to convince myself needed to go in the trash and tore it up in strips to do the job. We have our normal fifty or so plants, so it took me a while. When I was done my hands were a horrendous shade of deep green. I cleaned up and took a nap.



After dinner, I started washing jars and tomatoes. By the time I got ready to can it was after nine o'clock. I didn't finish until 11:00. Wound up with eight quarts. We usually can around a hundred quarts each summer. We'll see how the tomatoes hold up.

Blog surfing

I spent an enjoyable evening surfing some new blogs Tuesday. I saw Belinda's blog for the first time. What a treat! She takes part in Michelle Ward's GPP Street Team Crusades which I had somehow managed to miss also. What fun! Now I just need to find the time to follow all the links on the Crusade blog. They are up to Crusade (kind of a challenge) number ten, but you can join in on the current one and have your blog linked by doing one of the past ones. How cool is that! They all look like fun. Crusade No. 8 - Cheap Tricks is one I can for sure contribute to. On of my favorites is to cut an eraser with a serated knife and stamp with the resulting edge. You can see that to the left of the row of postage stamps above in red and black.



Another new favorite is to use a hospital wrist tag as a stencil. I like the row of tiny dots like you can see above the lady's portrait.



Another favorite is to make new stamps from the scraps from UM stamp pages. The tone-on-tone stripes at the top and bottom of the page above were done with a stamp made from a Jenga block and some strips. I used a different one for the writing part of yesterday's page.



The current crusade No. 10 is mail art. Too bad I was in too big a hurry last week when I sent some off to take a picture. That's what happens when you procrastinate getting things sent. I did enjoy the recipient's telling me that her mailman hand delivered it with a big smile on his face because he didn't want to bend it.

More wall building is in tomorrow's plans. I'm hoping that we will have some of them vertical by the week-end.

The Wall

I spent yesterday helping to frame the first wall in our new bedroom. It wasn't nearly as bad as I'd thought it might be and when it was finished I had a sense of accomplishment as well as sore shoulders and a bit of a sunburn. You'd think that I'd realize at this stage in my life that my fair skin burns even when the sun is hiding behind a cloud. I wasn't a tremendous amount of help I'm sure, but I did measure and mark boards and helped carry a few. It doesn't look like much in the photo, but this new wall will have two large windows facing Bay Creek. I'm starting to get excited about the prospect.

The bug is a photocopy of a dobsonfly. It spent the night in my bathroom last night. I thought I recognized it from my oldest son's 4-H bug collection. It was on the floor dead this morning, so I thought, "Cool, I'll scan it for my journal." I was checking online to make sure it really is a dobsonfly and discovered that the females can use those pinchers to deliver a painful bite. Who knew?

After I finished yesterdays post, I went to Big Huge Labs and made my first mosaic there. It won't be my last. I see now why people make so many of them. Fun, fun.

Beth found the link for me for the face generator. I'm looking forward to playing with that again.

I got up today looking forward to taking photos for the 07_07_07 Flickr group. 7,777 people from all over the world are supposed to take and post seven photos each. Being the over-achiever that I am, I wound up taking 148 photos. I narrowed it down to 28 photos to actually upload to a Flickr set. I still haven't picked which seven will get posted to the group. I took photos of our house, Bay Creek, our cows, our yard, etc... I didn't leave home so they were all taken close to home.

One of the photos I post will definately be this journal entry. I like the idea of promoting journaling to people who maybe haven't seen visual journaling yet.

I've been wanting to try a self-portrait stencil since I read a post from Mary Ann a couple of days ago. She's been doing portrait stencils and they look great. For a first stencil, I think it turned out pretty good. Unfortunately, it slipped when I was putting it on the journal page. The practice tries look a lot better. I'll be trying it in the journal again. I want to make one of a photo I have of my grandma with marcelle waves. I'll be making more I'm sure. I hope I learn to keep them still while I'm spraying the paint.

The self-portrait at the top-left of the journal page is one that I made online quite some time ago. You uploaded a photo and the web site gave you portraits as if they were painted by different artists. The only one I liked well enough to save was this one in the style of Modigliani. I'd like to try again with a different photo if I can find the site again.

Newest journal pages

I have a few journal pages to catch up with here, but I think I will just post this one tonight. Dial-up internet is so slow when it comes to uploading photos. All of the recent ones can be seen at the bottom of my Flickr art journal set. If I get a chance on DSL at my son's I may try to post them here too.

One Window to the World - 1,000 photos

I put my 100th picture of my kitchen window into my Flickr set earlier this week and just today the 1,000th photo went up in my One Window to the World group. We have 343 members from 38 countries on 6 continents.

It has been great sharing my view with others all over the world and even more so sharing their view also. I've learned so much from looking at these photographs, reading the captions and asking questions. I'm looking forward to the next 1,000!

Summer is flying by

I can't believe it's the fifth of July already. I spent a week taking down wallpaper, texturing and painting three of the walls in my computer room while trying to get over a summer cold. The cold is gone now and the walls look wonderful. The color is called paper sack and that's probably fitting since I covered the ceiling in the living room with actual torn brown paper feed sacks. It took me another two days to put my photo wall back up. I'm still not completely done. I picked this blurred photo on purpose because it doesn't show my family member's faces. I'm not comfortable putting them on the blog for all to see, but I did want to give you a peek at what the room looks like. I love sitting here surrounded by photos of all my loved ones.

I went for a walk yesterday evening with my camera. I've been wanting to take some pictures of the daisies that are covering our fields and those of many of our neighbors.


When I came home I put the daisies I picked into a vase and sat them in my kitchen window. I've been taking pictures nearly daily of this window for the last three months. You can see many of them along with some older ones here.

I've been terrible about blogging lately and only a little better about journaling. I have been adding lots of pictures to my flickr account, so if you'd like to see what I've been up to check it out.

I did get this page done this week. I started out to make a grocery list and started sketching my Blythe doll who was sitting next to the computer. The Free People catalog that I had picked up to support the paper as I wrote wound up getting sketched too and it seemed natural to put it on the journal page.



Today was the last day of school for the year. Yeah!!! I'm off to the zoo tomorrow with my son and his family. Hopefully I'll have more time and desire to do the things I like to do now that I don't have to go to work for a while. Summer is definately the best part of teaching.

Yikes, it's been a month

I haven't just been ignoring my blog. I've been ignoring my journal too. I can't believe that it's been a month since I've posted and I only have two pages to show. Actually on the day I did the second page, I also did three spreads in my White Book and I'll post those too on my White Book blog. I've been taking lots of pictures, mostly of my kitchen window. If you're at all interested they can be seen here.

I actually have several other pages in my journal, but they are just lists of the members for my Flickr: One Window to the World group. I wanted to have a list of the locations and member names and figured since I wasn't putting anything else in my journal I'd put them there. Hopefully, I'll get back in gear now that I've started journaling again. This reminds me of my old days of text-only journaling where every other page began, "It's been ages since I've written..."

If my hands are stained black and red...

it must mean I'm journaling again. I have been in a black hole of journaling lately. No excuse either since I'm even on spring break this week. Keeping up with my blog seems to be even harder since I did journal around the fifteenth and that's not been posted. I have been sticking things in flickr. To see what I've been up to go there and scroll down a bit.

Surfing the web again.

I don't seem to be able to tear myself away from the computer lately. There are just too many interesting things to see, especially in people's flickr photostreams.

I stopped at the thrift store on the way home on Friday and got a cool vest. It's all wool patchwork. It and a rayon skirt, five Fisher Price peek-a-boo blocks for my grandbaby (I keep adding to her collection.), six small stuffed animals to use in my Spanish stories at school, a small plastic doll chair and a McDonald's Happy Meal hamburger transformer came to $2.15.

New eraser stamp

I'm back to doing a little at a time. I saw the idea for an erasor stamp online and sketched it here, thinking I might carve one later. Instead I went right uptairs and carved the stamp. I used it to decorate a couple of envelopes and of course the next page in my journal which isn't done yet.

One Window to the World

Text on the red reads: One of the members of my Flickr: One Window to the World group posted a picture today of two of the most famous volcanoes in Mexico, Popo and the Sleeping Lady, as seen through her window. I just love the idea of this group and hope it catches on and a whole community forms world-wide, sharing their every day views.

I started the group three days ago and we already have 46 members and 27 photos. I'd like to invite all of those who read this to check it out and join in. We already have some awesome photos. I can't wait to see what we get over time.

By the way, if you do check out the group, I know there are a bunch of typos on the group page. I was tired and excited about starting the group when I typed it and I can't figure out how to edit it. If anyone knows how, I'd appreciate your help.

Parakeets

Well, I just got switched kicking and screaming to the new blogger. We'll see.

The lower left drawing was done by my sweet Madelyn. She is writing her name now. I need to have her write it in my journal soon.

More TV sketches

I had a post typed earlier and we got a pop-up thunderstorm. After loosing several televisions and a couple of answering machines to lightning over the years, I'm a stickler for unplugging stuff. So I lost the post and the train of thought.

My living room

I sketched a corner of my living room while watching a movie this week. I wasn't able to get much journaling done, but I did add a few sentences over several days.