The trip day by day...

We're baaaak...!
I had plans to blog during the trip, but the only day we had wifi access was the first night at the hotel. I'll get you all caught up now. We are recreating (more or less) a camping trip that Jim and I took about 30 years ago. Our next stop on the trip was the Avenue of the Giants, Humbolt State Park. The smell of a redwood forest is so wonderful... different than any other type of forest.

We stayed at the Burlington campsite. We were one of 4 groups in the site. It was wonderful! We did a lot of hiking and I learned what poison oak looks like. Jim got tangled up in some, but turns out he must have the same immunity to the stuff as his dad did, because he didn't come down with a rash.



The trees are really BIG and BEAUTIFUL! We got some rain over night, and it rained steadily all the next day. We decided to setup of rain and stay put in Humbolt for another night. The trailer is great. It kept us warm and dry.



On our rainy day, we passed on hiking and went on a drive to the coast to the furthest west point in the continental United States... Cape Mendocino. Then it was on to Ferndale to walk through the cute Victorian village and have some lunch.



Oh, I tried a different type of journaling for this trip; visual journaling! Here is my Avenue of the Giants page. You can see the trees with poison oak. The tree with the face is from our campsite, and you see our campsite in the rain. I have Ferndale, the beach and the wild road to get there. Here it is...



Now I just need to add some color to it to finish it up.

Stay tuned for more camping adventures!

On our way...

We are on vacation... just me and Jim... no kids and no Jena. Jena would have loved to come. She gets so excited when Jim brings out the trailer... but where we are going, they are not very dog friendly, so she had to stay home.

We didn't leave this morning until after 6am, so we got caught in the morning rush hour traffic. Then we got stuck in afternoon rush hour traffic in San Francisco. With all the traffic, we didn't get as far as we wanted to and had to stop for the night at the Travelodge in Ukiah. After a good night's sleep we will be on the road again for the Avenue of the Giants!

More Snowmen

You've all seen this one:



Well, there's more!



The lady next door always hosts Christmas Bunco, and gives us all a snowman mug from Target as a gift. I thought I would give this set of cards to her this Christmas.

Here are some close ups:









Thanks for letting me share!

September Card Club Kit Reveal

Welcome to the Club Mojo September card kit reveal! We have 10 ladies in the club this year... 10!!! These are all wonderful ladies who I've had the good fortune to meet at Scrappin' Mojo.

It's time for our Club reveal. This month's kit was put together by Kim! I LOVE the rich Fall colors in this kit! Wait until you see all the talent and inspiration!



I bought a new stamp set from Stampotique called Birdy Up that I've been dying to ink up, so you'll see these cute little guys incorporated into my cards this month:



This first card doesn't use the birdy stamps. This is a cute stamp from MFT Stamps. I think this little girl is so cute! I'm entering her in the "So Charming" challenge at Crafty Creations:





This first birdy and rolled roses go great with the cute doily that Kim sent us in the kit:





Now this cute chicky is so cute, it makes me smile :oD





The flowers and trims on this card were all from the kit. Lots of fun fall colors here:





One last card... I just love the cute papers in this kit!





I used up almost every scrap of this kit, I love it so much!
That's it for me this month! Be sure to checkout the creations from the other ladies:

Beth - bethiejs.blogspot.com
KimP - Mojo Card Kit Reveal
Diane - mumblebeedesigns.blogspot.com
Terri - jazzyscrappertidbits.blogspot.com
Mary - justanotefrommary.blogspot.com
KimO - Mojo Card Kit Reveal
Jan - Mojo Card Kit Reveal
Niki - ellenaspaperhouse.blogspot.com
Stella - http://myscrapbliss.blogspot.com/

Thanks for dropping by!

Strathmore Card Class - week 1

It's been a while since I shared something crafty. This week started a 4-week long FREE card class over at Strathmore Paper Website. This week was a lesson in pen and water color. I was going to draw a Christmas ornament, but decided that a coffee cup was easier. I was surprised how fast this was to finish... the card and envelope in under 30 minutes.







Thanks for looking!

Not Cooling.... yet...

Cooling Trend!

Hot Hot Hot!

A Girl needs her Accessories

The next step is to setup my Galaxy Tab for travel journaling. Up to now I've been using a traditional paper journal with colored pens. That works, but I still need to type my journaling in when I get home to post to my blog or to create a photo book. It's better to just type it in to begin with, right?

So the first off I need some ACCESSORIES... like a keyboard. I can't journal using the virtual keyboard. That thing drives me nuts! I need a real keyboard that I can touch and goes click, click, click when I type. It was easy finding a keyboard. I just jumped on Amazon and here is what I found. It's cute... it makes my 7" tablet look like a micro-mini laptop... and better yet, it fits in my purse!



Next I needed a journal app. This was a lot harder.. I tried searching for "journal," "diary," "notepad," and "Word." I tried several of the top rated ones and even one called "Travel Journal." As with my experience with other Android apps. They didn't all work well; some didn't work at all; some didn't work with the bluetooth keyboard; and some didn't allow me any way to get the text off the tablet for blogging or photo book creation. Finally in my frustration I loaded a non-free app called Write.

Write is designed for students to take notes in class, but it works perfectly for what I wanted in a journal app. I can start a new entry or add to existing entries. It works great with the new bluetooth keyboard, and it has built in sharing with the Blogger app. It doesn't have spell check though... none of the apps that I tried had spell check. Spell check must take up too much memory on a tablet.

The last thing I need... in the words of Tim Allen... is MORE POWER! On our camping vacation next month, I don't know how much availability we will have to a power outlet. So, back to Amazon and I found this little cutie.



It also doubles as a flashlight, so it's perfect for camping. And BONUS... it's PINK! I tried charging my tablet with it, but it only charged from just about dead to 50%. I'm going to get one for Jim's iPad too, but I'm going to get him one with larger capacity... and his can be blue :oD

The last thing I need is a File Manager. I can't stand not know where all my files are! I need to be able to move them, copy them, delete them, and rename them... In other words, I need to show this android device who's boss. So I found one called, not surprisingly... File Manager.

File Manager let's me control the what's and where's of the files on my tablet. What more can a girl ask for.

So I'm all SET! Bring on the week long camping trip... I'm ready!

More Android Fun...

FUN?!!!... Frustrating is more like it...

I figured out that Android Apps are a "free-for-all," and not all of them are free. I've tried many apps trying to figure out how to stream line my work flow. I'm getting into the Six Sigma process design, haha.

Anyway, the only things I use my Galaxy Tab for is 1) Reading eBooks 2) Posting on my Blog.

READING

Reading eBooks was a no brainer... the Kindle app took care of it all. It even works with most of my library eBooks. I have the Overdrive app for the library eBooks not borrowed from Kindle, but I haven't had to use it yet.

BLOGGING

Posting to my blog was not so easy. I tried many apps... different cameras, different photo editors, different journal apps. Some paid for, and some not... and many many apps that did not work or only partially worked. Thought I would like one app to do it all, no such thing existed. I needed a camera app, photo editor app, blogger app, and other apps that I didn't know I needed until I tried them as you will see if you keep reading:

I several different cameras... the popular Zoom FX, Paper Camera, and others that add special effect or borders. But, I keep going back to the camera app that came with the tablet. It's easy to use. I can zoom in and out using the volume buttons, there is a timer, burst mode, and I can record video with it. It's has everything that I need in a camera, plus it saves my pictures to my SD card instead of tablet memory. The other camera apps have been removed from the tablet.

I have tried many many many different photo editors until I settled on Aviary. It's easy to use. I can fix the image quality, add frames, crop, add text, and it can share with Blogger. That's what I need 98% of the time. One of the editors I tried was the very popular Instagram app. I like my pictures clear, bright and colorful. Near as I can tell, Instagram is for making your pictures look old. They do have a great community, but I can't have my family going to multiple sites to see what I want to show them.... I think that's just rude.

The last thing I needed was the Blogger app. The Blogger app lets me create a new post (with text and pictures) and publish it to my blog. Simple, straight forward and easy.

Now I can post simple text and pictures to my blog! Hooray!

So here is my blogging process:

1) Take a picture. I can use the camera app or take the picture through Aviary.
2) Edit the picture in Aviary.
3) Select sharing in Aviary and post straight to Blogger.

THE NEXT STEP

There are some fun apps out there that let me "play" with my pictures. Here are my favorites:

Instead of posting an entire line of photos to my blog, I'll post a collage of photos. The first collage maker I tried was Photo Grid. It did everything I wanted, so I didn't even try any other app.

InstaPlace along with InstaWeather are fun they let me add some stylish text over the photos marking the place, time and weather. However, they require wifi to work. So even though I have GPS location turned on, it still won't tag the photo without wifi. A total bust for camping. I added the InstaPlace information on the camping photo in the post below after I got home (no wifi in the campground).

So here is my blogging process if I want to use any of these extra apps:

1) Take a picture. I can use the camera app or take the picture through Aviary.
2) Edit the picture in Aviary.
3) Save the picture to my SD card.
4) Open the picture in the app of choice.
5) Edit the picture (create collage or add location text)
6) Save the picture to the SD card.
7) Post the picture using blogger.

I hope this helps anyone who is trying to get some basic use out of their new android device.

Test new Android app

How do I get rid of the virutual keayboard? I'm using the blue toothe keyboard. Hit ESC o to remove the keyboard. Spell check? I need spellcheck! ARRGH!

At least I figured out how to post a photo!