TGI Friday-5

Labor day weekend... the last weekend of summer! Where are we going to spend it? AT THE BEACH! We went jet-skiing for an hour. Everyone drove but me. I HATE those things! When I turn I want it to TURN... not think about it, maybe it'll turn... soon I hope... it'll get around to it... maybe now, hmmm... maybe not...


Chris and I had a nice run down at the beach. Look at my little guy... not so little anymore. When did that happen?!!!


Nothing like doing nothing... Here's Jim and the kids playing video games and unwinding from a busy busy day.

I wanted to get a back to school picture of Chris, but I was told, "no way!" He starts school at 6:45am. I'm so glad he's a morning person, or we'd have some nasty morning battles.

I hope everyone had a great week back at school!

Friday-5

Welcome September! Wow, this year is flying by! Checkout the ticker at the top of the screen. I've almost made it all the way to Woodsfield, Ohio!... and it's only taken me 9 months longer than I thought it would. Slow and steady wins the race... not that I've ever won a race... Mary, watch for me! I'll be there in only a couple more weeks, hehehe...

This week I started a new digital class called "Me: The Abridged Version." As part of the class I took the VIA Survey of Character Strengths from University of Pennsylvania's, Authentic Happiness website. Here are my top-5 character strengths:

Industry, diligence, and perseverance
You work hard to finish what you start. No matter the project, you "get it out the door" in timely fashion.

Judgment, critical thinking, and open-mindedness
Thinking things through and examining them from all sides are important aspects of who you are.

Curiosity and interest in the world
You are curious about everything. You like exploration and discovery.

Self-control and self-regulation
You self-consciously regulate what you feel and what you do. You are a disciplined person.

Honesty, authenticity, and genuineness
You are an honest person, not only by speaking the truth but by living your life in a genuine and authentic way.

Cheryl said that if she saw these character traits on a bio at eHarmony, she'd give that person a pass. Well... even to me I sound boring. Maybe I am boring?! I think I'll have to work on that!

Weekly Sports Report

A sports report with no photos? Yep! It's a bummer being stuck at work while everyone else is playing.

Jim had almost every Monday and Friday off during the entire summer. He's been surfing, A LOT! Sometimes Chris goes with him, sometimes he's running with his cross country friends. Oh wait! I do have a photo! Here's Chris running through the forest at XC camp in Big Bear.

Poor Cheryl... she is on soccer overload. She had college soccer training M-F, she had two college scrimmages last week (they lost both), the Quakes had practice two evenings, and she had four games this weekend with the Quakes(they lost 2, won 2). She said that she needs a day off. Cheryl has another busy soccer week... practice with the Quakes, training at college, and a BIG college tournament in Santa Clarita next weekend.

On another soccer note: GALAXY WON on an amazing shot from this guy! Galaxy is in 2nd place in the western conference. It looks like they will finally make it to the play-offs!

The new blog look

They say white is the new black... what to you think?

I like the clean look. I still have a few more tweaks to make before I'm totally happy, but I really like it so far.

TGIF!!!

What a week! Jim and Chris were gone, the van broke down, and work is crazy! I had to run/walk home from work one day because Cheryl was at work and couldn't pick me up. Welcome weekend!!!

No time to put together a Friday-5 this week, but I do have a share. We are painting the house... FINALLY!!! Right now the house is all one shade of gray. I want to go brown to match the roof, but the association we live in regulates the colors we can use. We have about 15 shades of beige to chose from and they are arranged in sets of three (dark, medium, light). Here are the medium and light from two different sets; one set painted beside each window. We plan on using the dark from the set to paint the front door. Which set do you like?

An adventure with fabric flowers

I joined a challenge at Color Me Daisy where we had to make a card with handmade fabric flowers. I started over the top with this flower:



This flower ended up HUGE! I couldn't see using it on a card.

So, here is TAKE-II. I cut these cute little flowers with my die cutter. I gathered them with a running stitch around the cut center circle and finished them off with a brad.


Doesn't it make a cute card? Is it a challenge winner? I hope so! {grin}

Brush Abilities - Day 9

Let's start with some RACE RESULTS!

First Chris: Chris came in second in his age group with a NEW PR of 19:31! He came in 28th overall out of 619 runners.

I also finished second in my age group with a NEW PR of 23:28!! I was the 18th woman across the finish line! There aren't any photos of Chris this race, but there is a nice one of me.

Chris thinks it's embarrassing to have a photo of an old fat guy wearing a fanny pack passing me... but I'm pretty sure I was passing him... hehehe...


Today in the PSE class, we started with a scanned leaf and turned it into a brush. VERY COOL! Here is the leaf brush stamped in different colors.

Brush Abilities - Day 6, 7, 8

I've been keeping up with my class and working on my homework faithfully every day! Day 6 was test day... I got 100%, hehehe...
The project that I'm sharing today took two lessons to complete. Day 7, we created the tag and inked the edges. Day 9, we added the stitching.

Here is my project a little inked and stitched tag! I didn't even have to thread my sewing machine!

Brush Abilities - Day 5 - Friday 5

Today's PSE class was on clipping masks. I've done clipping masks before so there was nothing new to learn today. I decided to combine my class post with the Friday 5 post... well, actually I have more than 5 to share today! All with clipping masks added! hehehe... These are all photo from the Barcelona vs Galaxy game last weekend:

The game was held at the Rose Bowl. We got there 3 hours early and tail gated in the parking lot with some friends. We set up right next to the VIP tent and oggled the people getting their catered lunch. Here is Mauricio Cienfuegos in the black. He came over to say "hi" to the kids.

Here we are in the stadium with over 93,000 other people! We are hoping for a great show!

Here are both teams lined up. Messi is standing right next to Donovan, and Beckham is all the way on the right.

Here he is!!!! The GREATEST soccer player in the WORLD!... LIONEL MESSI!

Followed by the GREATEST soccer player in FRANCE!... Thierry Henry! You can see Beckham in the photo too. He's on the right.

What a FUN GAME! We (Galaxy) never expected to win, but at least we weren't creamed!... afterall, Barcelona are the European Champions. The Galaxy played great! Too bad they can't play that well all the time.

What are soccer photos without one of Becks?

Brush Abilities - Day 4

Today's lesson was on frames. I already learned about frames in my last class, so I didn't learn anything new today. I did do the lesson and built a frame around this cute birthday photo of my niece.

Brush Abilities - It's a Doo-Dad Day

It's day 3 of my photoshop class, and today we learned how to make these quick little sanded doo-dad's. It was fun to learn how to make my own elements. My new skill of the day was using a circle selection and alt-shift to draw perfect circles!

Brush Abilities - Day2

Today I was asked to name 4 things that made me smile today (I was asked at 9am). Here are my 4 things:
1) The coo of the morning doves
2) Patchy blue sky
3) Big rain drops (Yep! It rained today!)
4) Wearing my new shoes for the first time

On to today's PSE brush class. The class was about text on a frame. This is to be used as a wall hanging. The only thing I learned today is ctl-shift-j is used to justify text.

I replaced her quote which was:

It is not part to master all the tides of the world, but to do what is in us for the succor of those years wherein we are set, uprooting the evil in the fields that we know,so that those who live after may have clean earth to till.


... with a quote of my own choosing (another one from Steve Prefontaine). Here is my project:

With some nicer colors, this quote would make a nice wall hanging in Chris's room. Do you think it will motivate him?

Everyone have a great Wednesday!

Happy Anniversary - Part II

Look what I found as my desktop wallpaper when I fired up my laptop today! The kids did this on their own. Cheryl and Chris took quite a while figuring out how to use Photoshop and how to save a desktop image. Aren't they the sweetest?!!!

Brush Abilities - Day 1

The brushes class started today! YAHOO!!! There was so much free brushes to download today that I'm just getting around to doing the lesson now. I even learned how to use a couple new tools like (Edit->Stroke and Edit->Fill Layer).

The first half of the lesson left us off with a stamped butterfly with offset outline.

The second part of the lesson added more butterflies and patterned paper.

So, that was our lesson for the day using a butterfly brush and one piece of digital patterned paper.

The class is two weeks long, so I'll have more tomorrow! Thanks for checking in!

NOTE: Create the outline.
Create and select a new layer. Control-Click on image to select (or draw a selction rectangle). Menu Edit - stroke outline selection. Set width to 5px

To change color of the outline. Menu edit - fill layer, check box preserve transparency.

Stamping - click on brush and play with menu items

Happy Anniversary to US!

We've been married 24 years today!
The three things I love best about Jim are:
1) He's friendly and easy going.
2) He shares in the cooking and cleaning.
3) He loves me and the kids.

Love you, Jim! Happy Anniversary!

It's Blog Hop Time!

Welcome to the Scrapbook Deals for You blog hop! The Summer challenge is to create a layout, card or project using a sketch. There are a lot of sketch sites out there.
I picked this sketch from Ali Edwards. I love her clean, simple style. I used one of the photos that I created during the Photoshop class and created this layout! I really like how it all came together!

To see the whole blog hop list, go to the SD4U MB.

Friday-5 : Obon!

It's the end of July already! I can't believe that summer is almost over. It's Friday and it's an early Friday-5 for a change! Today I'm sharing some photos from the last weekend's Obon.

Here's my mom and all the kids, decked out to dance!

... a little dancing action. There was a good turnout... three circles of dancers!

Here are the BIG kids, Chris, Cheryl and Hana, getting ready for the Fan Dance.

Jim decked out, LOL!

On the way home!
Cheryl is not going to be happy with me for this one, hehehe...

I hope everyone has a GREAT weekend!

Crafty Share

It's been a while since I've done a papercraft share. As I was downloading photos from my camera tonight, I came across photos of the two cards that I made for my mom's and dad's birthdays. Here they are:


I used copic markers to color the images. I'm not quite ready to break out the coloring books, but coloring with these markers is a lot of FUN!

Stay tuned! Coming this weekend is the Scrapbook Deals for you Summer Blog Hop!

Happy 5-Friday!

We are now officially in the middle of summer and this is the time of year where we usually go to Kauai. I love Kauai! The air has a wonderful sweet smell, it's beautiful and green, and I have family there. It's a great place to rest and unwind... eat and be lazy... hike and swim... Here are five of my favorite shots from summers past.

OC Fair 5K - Opening Day

We finally have the results from the OC Fair 5K! Chris and I both have new PRs!
Chris's time was 20.10. He came in 3rd in his age group and 21/625 overall (19th in men) that means only two women came in before him.
I came in at 24:03 (that's more than 5 minutes off my old PR). I came in 2nd in my age group, and 87/625 overall (23rd in women). The first place woman in my age group beat me by 2 seconds...

Unfortunately, they gave prizes to only the top three overall finishers, or Chris and I would have ended up with prizes :o)

This is the only photo I have of the race. You can see me pretty clearly. Chris is just to the left of me in the photo wearing an orange shirt and orange hat (you can just see the top of his head and a little of his shoulder).