Fun ETSY finds!

Tonight I'm bored. I don't want to do anything and am going to bed after this post, but found some cool things on etsy that I wanted to share with you! Who knows, it might be just what you are looking for. Do you realize that Christmas is less than five months away now? AAAAAAAAAARRGHHH!
So here's some ideas -either for yourself or that really hard to buy for family member or friend!
A vintage Disney radio! Found it at the shop of 'walkingchick'

http://www.etsy.com/view_listing.php?ref=sr_gallery_15&listing_id=13182442

At BettyNinjafinds
http://www.etsy.com/view_listing.php?ref=sr_gallery_16&listing_id=12246024


And how many of you remember these? I had one, same color!! I remember laying on the couch on the wooden porch when we moved to Oklahoma (I was pre-teen!) and listening to AM stations during a hot summer night until my mom would make me come in. And we had an old fashion wood frame screen door then. It was the coolest thing. Why? Because we had just moved from San Francisco and out there we were not allowed outside without parents, especially at night. Moving to southern Oklahoma opened up another lifestyle. Smashing watermelons in the street and just eating them without utensils (much to the shock of my mom!) and hide and seek as the sun went down. Just great memories! And sleeping with the window open. Wow, times sure have changed.

http://www.etsy.com/view_listing.php?ref=sr_gallery_17&listing_id=10692785
I about died when I just found this! I think my mom made this one! hahah! At CollageArtist's etsy shop!


http://www.etsy.com/view_listing.php?ref=sr_gallery_19&listing_id=12531926
And lookee here....just what everyone needs these days! A pocket picture making manual...teehee!

Quick meal under $25

Avocado, Spinach, Rotini and Ham Salad with Feta Cheese


It used to be we could title such things for under $20, but with the way prices are rising on everything across the board, what could have been made for around $15 to $20 even six months ago, is not true today.
But depending on where you live, shop and what brands you use, it might still be possible.

I didn't just want to post food photos without sharing the recipe on this one. I made this Saturday for my husband, my brother and anyone else in the family who wanted some. That included my youngest son.
My husband probably had a double portion. We like to use platters in our family, so imagine this meal can feed 6 easily. Plus there was some leftover for the next day's lunch.
The idea of this meal is it is filling, quick and healthy.
Oh, did I mention it is delicious?

Your shopping list:
Organic Girl Spinach (the very best!!!)
A bag of Sweet Butter lettuce
3 or 4 avocados - yummy!
2 or 3 tomatoes (everything is general, because you may want more or less depending on how much salad you choose to make)
1 large Vidalia Sweet Onion
1 Box Barilla Rotini pasta (you can leave the pasta out)
A bag of pre-cubed ham
1 can of olives, I used medium pitted Lindsay brand
And the final key ingredient is Feta Cheese, crumbled.
And dressing. I chose Wishbone Robust Italian, my husband prefers Blue Cheese.


As for creating the actual dish. Well, that's up to you. While the pasta is cooking, do all the prep work, slicing and readying your avocados, then tomato and onion. Put your ham cubes and olives into separate bowls so when you get ready to layer the spinach and butter lettuce on your plates or platters, you can just start building your salad. Before adding your feta cheese, it's time to season. Black pepper, salt, garlic salt. Then add your cheese and let everyone pour their own dressings on.
I promise you will love it and feel like you've had a full meal.
If you make this, be sure to post comments! I want to know if this is a hit!
Enjoy!

Red and purple flowers

Found these lovely flowers near the Universal Insurance building that was once the public library. Shot between 8:30 and 9 a.m. today. It's nice to see such color!


And I will be adding some to my etsy shop!

Wow! Another Treasury West feature!

I'm featured again in another Treasury West, this time it's my Serenity image in "Take your shoes off stay awhile" by Jenscloset! One of my favorite photos. And aqua is one of my favorite colors. To some it borders on seafoam green, others turquoise, but the range is still my favorite! At the end of this post will be some links you can copy and paste to visit the treasury, jenscloset and my etsy!


As you can see here. I had these ready to post just in case I didn't have anything else to post. I made this necklace this winter at a local bead shop. You should try making jewelry if you like things like this. It's therapeutic and really takes your mind off tedious problems. Really, who has time to think of problems when trying to design jewelry and thread beads?!


To visit Jen's Closet: http://www.etsy.com/shop.php?user_id=5754469
The Treasury, the link is only as good as long as the treasury is up: http://www.etsy.com/treasury_list_west.php?room_id=17407
And my etsy shop:http://www.etsy.com/shop.php?user_id=49499 You can also click on my photos at right to take you into my etsy shop at any time. Have fun!

In a Treasury West at Etsy!

Well, landing in a Treasury does happen more often for me than I ever expected, but it had been awhile since I haven't time to visit etsy lately.

So I was tickled to come home from work today and find this photo in a Treasury West, featured by Maritere at TotArt, http://mariterecr.blogspot.com/, a wonderful collage artist and photographer! Thank you so much!

I love it when the general population likes my work, but even more so when another photographer is inspired. One of the wonderful things is that in turn they inspire you and you make new friends. Be sure to check out TotArt's blog. It's wonderful!
Thank you again! There's a picture here of the one in Treasury, and then the other is a diptych I made in that series. I have several, just too lazy to go resize them for the blog! Enjoy!

Peppers but not pineapple

Of course, lemon water on a 100 degree day is a must!


I saw Rachel Ray grill some fresh pineapple. So I go to Wal-ville and get the very last one they had! I come home and get it ready for dinner. OK, wait, there it is all chopped up and I thought, I need photos for The Photo Trade group over at nectar and light/flickr, so I start shooting and darn if the card didn't fudge up on me and give me reader error, and the photos are 'poof' I guess. So mad!
The photos were awesome!

So tonight, I decide to try again for some interesting shots. This time, it was anaheim peppers stuffed with sharp cheddar cheese and wrapped in maple bacon and put on the grill for quite awhile. Yes, some of the cheese melted out, but the peppers were perfect anyway! While it was outside on the grill under the watchful eye of my husband, I was inside cooking up some delicious portabello mushrooms sauteed in butter and also a pan of blue crab/cream cheese wontons! Oh yes!!
So, while I really wished the pineapple photos had survived, I'm happy with these. Not as much as the pineapple, but oh well.
Oh yes, and the pineapple was awesome with some Ginger Pear dressing on it!
One other tidbit. I hate plastic in my kitchen, but I do have some. Like the plate the peppers were shot on. I love the combination of the blue and green. But give me glass any day.

Little things

Imagine my delight when I spied a few teeny peaches hanging on a tree in my alley this morning. Of course, they are past their prime, but perfect for photographing just as they were displayed by mother nature.

I am having fun with these images, layers and textures and diptychs!

Hope you like them! And don't be afraid to post a comment.
Happy Friday!

Landscapes I love

In my efforts to organize all aspects of my life, I'm rediscovering some photos I love. Now to find the negatives. This is one of them. I want it HUGE over my bed. Lots of reasons. It's of the White River in NW Arkansas. I love the sunglare, though I'd probably love this image even more if it was shot in very early morning with some fog haze. I love fog! Don't think that I ever disclosed that here. Hah!

But anyway, my husband and I met in Arkansas. This photo was shot on a vacation a few years ago, I think three...when we returned to visit his mom's grave (she's not from there either!) and do some genealogy research on my ancestors who are founders of the NW region there. Of course, when we met, neither of us were 'from Arkansas' and I was totally unaware of my ancestry back then. Though my mom would rather claim anywhere but there. She was born in Benjamin, Texas, lived a time in New Mexico, but then spent most of her life in California. Anyway, if I'm not careful, I'll end up writing a novel here.
Back to the photos, and yes, I've had a glass or two of wine. Yummy! Riesling, something or 'nother.

If you've never been to NW Arkansas, you are missing out on some gorgeous country. Lots of great landscape, history and culture.

Well, enjoy this one. Have more scanning to do.

Vintage Camera grab

You'll notice I didn't clue in that my photos featured the most adorable Miss MM! That's because I have had some unusual traffic to my blog and I'd just as soon not give any heads up. These are all SOOC and I love the graininess of the images. I figured, vintage couch, vintage camera, and the light was perfect to give it that old-fashioned appeal. No flash used to add to that old film feel.




And this one is so cute...she got tired of the camera and there it was headed off the couch!

A photo, yes, really...

Little Figurines...
Something I did a long time ago then added a texture last night. Whimsical. I should create a little story about him, heh?


Nothing fancy and I'll be back in a bit with some new pictures of one of my favorite little people!

I love this art!

And yes, for what it is worth, this post is worthless without a photo! I saw in Ty Pennington's magazine a really cool bedroom. Very deep blue, but it was the painting that was displayed on the wall over the bed that I fell in love with. Created by Civil War artist John Paul Strain, the piece is a home in a field. And yes, it has a mysterious Civil War feel to it. Well, I had to Google to find out more about it. On the artist's site, there's a whole page what he went through to create the 5-foot by 5-foot piece. It's awesome. Which brings me again to changing my mind for what I want to hang over my bed. Of course, I need to discover the image I want to use, which means traveling to shoot it and then through creative textures, I may come up with something. I just can't make up my mind! I've had so many ideas and none of them are getting done. It makes perfect sense to do something like this since I love landscape photography. I've got two thoughts, one is just an open highway 'to nowhere' since my husband and I spent so much time on the road just traveling when we were younger, especially U.S. Highway 50, or making a quick trip to Arkansas to photograph the old Grange hall out in the country outside of Springdale, where we first met! Ummmm.... really liking that idea!
But anyway, head over to the artist's site and read about it. Fascinating!

TriCoast and JOY St. Claire textures...

OOPS! For some reason I had Joy St. Claire and Jessica Claire combined in my post! The textures are Joys!
If you haven't figured it out yet, I love textures! And thank you to all the wonderful people who share their textures! People like Mike Fulton of TriCoast and Joy St. Claire, both offer their texture sets for sale, so if you are interested, check them out and buy them! So worth it! The first image has two overlays from TriCoast's Carribbean Collection set! This is one of my favorite photos to play with. I will be soon making them available as full press greeting cards. If you want to order a set, just let me know and I'll move a bit quicker with getting them ordered. You can order them in box sets from me or individually. I'll be adding them to my etsy shop.



This one has a wonderful overlay from Joy St. Claire, also a great photographer!

Blog annoyance

So, the word of potty meat comes to mouth. Heck I don't even want to say the S .... P ... gimme an a and an m..but someone was rude enough to post such in my comments. So I have set my comments to moderator approval so I can avoid that in the future. Wish I could delete it.
And another annoyance which is that I want to change my layout again, yet if I do, then I have to start all over adding all my widgets I guess...links to my etsy shop and blogger friends. And the other thing is I wanted to add a youtube post but could not figure out how to and then when I tried to add it to the side, it wouldn't let me..pyzam isn't user friendly. Darnitt!
Any thoughts? And I can't believe no one posted so they could get a free carnival image from me!

Giveaway and Hell's Kitchen!

So I am in the mood for a giveaway. Nothing fancy, just a small 5x7 image from my carnival series. Of course, it is a surprise, but a recent post so that might give you a teeny idea! All you have to do is post why you enjoy visiting my blog and if you like my carnival images! I'll pick someone - you can't post anonymously and you can't be related to me -- but I'll contact you and get your mailing address.

Now on to the really fun part...Hell's Kitchen! This was the first year I watched it, probably because there was no 24 to follow ..don't get me started...but, my husband and even the kids loved it! So I was bummed last week thinking I missed the finale, then discovered by watching it online that tonight was really the finale! Yay! Wow, I was rooting for both of them! Heck of a show. I can easily see P. getting hired on by the Chef at one of the restaurants. And more than likely Corey will become Christina's right hand. Is that just not the coolest! To see two women so stinking competitive from the onset turn into such great teammates and friends?! That's kind of like the photography world, very competitive, yet, in as time goes on and we grow more comfortable with our abilities, those same
competitors' can become our dearest friends!
So here's a big Yay to all my photog friends!

Patriotic pretty darn cute

while I can! Fourth of July is a very short holiday so I make sure I get all the photos possible of my family! Lots of fun!

JulY fOurTH

Flag fun!bbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbb

Happy Fourth of July!

I really like Fourth of July!

And I've mostly been lucky enough to live in a community that really goes out for it. Or nearby to one.

Last year on my myspace page, I posted photos from Marlow's parade in an online slideshow. Not sure what to do this year. We're heading to the parade this morning, then coming home to spend the day cooking, cooking out, and just having fun.
Tonight, we have our choice of two fireworks shows. Duncan or Marlow. So who knows?!
No matter what, it'll be fun! Happy Fourth of July everyone!
Oh and you have to go visit this link! The cutest photo I have seen in a long time!
http://flickr.com/photos/bulldogsrule/2632534554/in/pool-sockmonkey