Harvest Moon

A Harvest Moon is used to describe the full moon that occurs closest to fall's equinox.

I enjoy gazing at the moon as much as anyone else, I'm not too excited about the shorter days.

237th

Happy 237th birthday, America! You look great for your age!

Thank you for growing and changing as you get older. Last week, I believe you had a wonderful growth spurt by ruling that DOMA and Prop 8 here in California is unconstitutional. Keep growing, changing and learning. It's what makes you become a better and stronger country. I'm so proud of you right now.
photo credit: From SFist taken by zoxcleb.

4.22 Blooming

took these with my big camera. there is a big quality difference between cell phone pics and a dslr. and while it was fun and creative post-processing these in photoshop, it's much quicker and easier to let the camera do all the work sometimes. ultimately i need both in my photo documenting journey. :)

Amazing Beauty

San Francisco Friday

On Martin Luther King Jr Day, in front of the Museum of the African Diaspora, they had chalk out on the sidewalk for children of all ages to leave their artwork on the sidewalk.




All of them celebrated peace, unity and love. Messages that Dr. King would have approved of.

At the center of non-violence stands the principle of love. -Martin Luther King, Jr.

I have decided to stick with love. Hate is too great a burden to bear. -Martin Luther King, Jr.

Love is the only force capable of transforming an enemy into friend. -Martin Luther King, Jr.

SD29: Life is full of amazing beauty

Dahlia at Buchart Gardens in Victoria, BC, Fall 2004.

Played with some new and old photoshop brushes and digital downloads today.
Butterfly from digital designers.
Quote from Ali Edwards for Creating Keepsakes but no longer available.
Corners from Inobscuro. I can't find a working link, boo.

SD21: Summer Solstice

Happy summer everyone!
We are enjoying the 1st week of summer at the hideaway. The wild lupines and wild lilac in our yard are in full bloom!

Happy Mother's Day

Celebrating the women who have touched the hearts of children.
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I'm a cheater

I've been trying to decide what photo to include in our Christmas cards and I realized that we didn't take many photos of the two of us together. So I created this:It originally looked like this:Yup, Photoshop editing at it's best. It's pretty obvious since we're both standing in odd poses. No one would actually stand that way if they were taking a photo with another person. But I don't care, I like it enough. I'm hoping to finish up addressing the cards and putting them in the mail by the end of next week. We are off to the cabin tomorrow evening which allows me uninterrupted time to myself to watch a movie or veg out watching commercialized TV while sealing envelopes.

But before we head out to the hideaway, I'm going to see Phantom of the Opera with my SIL in San Francisco tomorrow. I've never seen it and it is one of her favorites. A classic theatre production. Should be fun. But i have to sort of dress up. blerch. We may see the Nutcracker before Christmas, too. When she was in ballet, she always performed in the Nutcracker. Jimmy begrudgingly went, as a brother often is required to do. But we won't force him to go this time. We haven't seen it in 6 years so it seems like we're due to go again.

It's been a good and busy week. As all of December seems to be. Busy, that is. Not necessarily good the whole time. It depends on how stressed out I get because of how far behind I inevitably get. Went to my 1st Christmas party on Monday. A little get together with one of my crafting clubs. Did a bit of Christmas shopping Tuesday and Thursday. Went to a fun Pampered Chef party on Wednesday. One of the recipes they demonstrated was a festive cranberry bark. I'm planning on making it for a cookie party next Sunday so I'll share the recipe when I make it.

Not quite up to my Christmas crafting mojo that I had last year. I'm feel rather scattered regarding the tasks I have at hand. Yet not at all panicked or stressed about my lengthening to-do list. However, I actually pulled out the Christmas decorations this year. I don't have much, but they are on display. Last year, I didn't even bother. Aside from whatever I happened to make, like the button tree, my house was barren of Christmas cheer. Now...lol, my house is just a mess! Which i'm hoping to clean some of it up before we leave in the morning.

Hope you all have a good and productive weekend.

Cheers!
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Happy Easter

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Creative Everyday

It turns out that I enjoyed doing the daily photos and want to continue challenging myself each day in some fashion. As I wondered what I would do now, I was led to this website via Andrea, another one of my creative and talented bloggy friends. My personal "Creative Everyday" would include photography, cooking, arts and crafts, traveling, reading, writing and...I know this is stretching but it's my challenge, my way...playing Rock Band. Which, btw, I found out that my TMJ is related to wearing the guitar strap around my neck, not the actual playing of the guitar. Hurray, I'm back in the band!

So I thought I would start myself off with a month of doing something creative every day. It's the beginning of February so it's a good time to start. I won't be able to post every day but I'll backtrack and show my daily creations.

Yesterday, February 1st, so Day 1, I spent most of the day shopping w/ Phin then we went to see Sweeny Todd. Lawsie mercy that is a lot of blood. And they kept the theater so stinking cold. But I swear they HAD to keep it cold otherwise the entire theater would have started puking from how graphic it was. Not my favorite Tim Burton film. but it was fun seeing it with Phin because we were laughing so much because of how Over.The.Top the blood was. And we joked about it the rest of the night, especially at dinner. After I came home, I planned on making a birthday card for my sister in law. But I had just finished checking my mail when the phone rang and it was my cousin-in-law Andrew. And we talked for 3 hours. So technically, I didn't get to create anything, but talking to Andrew about the most bizarre things and shopping and going to the movies with Phin was, in my opinion a very creative day.

Day 2, today, I spent most of the day celebrating my sister-in-law's birthday. Since last night I didn't get off the phone till 1:30am and had to leave by 9am, I didn't make my SIL a brand-fresh-new card. I had to take from my stash. Which was this:but since I didn't create it today. So it doesn't count.
Instead I played with Photoshop:February = hearts!
Oh, and I've played Rock Band about an hour so far today, too.
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6 of 7: suburbia

Typical San Jose neighborhood.
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5 of 7: spring in a grocery store

Don't be fooled, it's cold and windy here and the rain is coming back. We need the rain and cold is relative, so I'm not complaining.
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Nevermore

Raven in Yosemite.
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How to make the cow moo

Ah well, looks like I peeked everyones interest in how I made that animation on the cow 2 posts down! Well, as I mentioned about a month and a half ago, I've been struggling with the Mac switch over thing, but there is one good thing about the switch, and since I'm learning new stuff, I've dived right in and really learned new stuff. Especially in photoshop. And all my pc user friends out there, you can do this on the PC too. But you have to have Adobe Photoshop.

I started out with 2 photos:



Then I cropped them so they were exactly the same size.

Ok, now when you're cropping these images, it's important to pay attention to the details. You should be somewhat familiar with photoshop, too. That'll help. So this is where it can get a little complicated. If the mere mention of photoshop turns you to mush, you can fast forward to the end of this post for a link to Adobe's video tutorial. Visuals always help me and I wouldn't have been able to do this without the tutorial.

Now back to cropping your photos. In Photoshop (I used CS3), create a new document that's the same size as your original photos and add both of them in as 2 layers. I had the silent cow as my bottom layer and the mooing cow as the top layer. I made the mooing cow about 20% transparent and moved her around till she was exactly over the silent cow. Once I was happy with how it lined up, I cropped both of them then saved each layer in it's own document. Are you still with me?

So now I have 2 separate images but they match perfectly.

And here is where I consulted the tutorial on
Working with Image Sequences

follow those directions.
I had the silent cow play for .5 sec and the mooing cow play for 1 sec and had it loop forever.

Now when you're ready to save, make sure to resize the image and "Save for Web and Devices" in Photoshop and (this is important) save as a GIF rather than a jpg. jpgs do not animate. I used the GIF 128 Dithered option for the best image quality. In that save for web window, you'll notice there are play options on the bottom right and after you've selected to save as a GIF. Click on play so you'll have a preview of what it will look like.



So hurray! You've created your animated GIF!! Bravo!
(It took me nearly an hour so try to remain calm and have a lot of patience).

Think you're finished and can just pop it onto your blog? Ah, well, blogger wouldn't let it be so simple now would they? Here's the dealio with MY blogger. I download all my images to an FTP sight, that's why my blog is: www.willowgrace.com/blog rather than www.willowgrace.blogspot.com. I use a blogger template but some things are just a little different. So in regular blogspot, I think you will need to post the image so it doesn't resize on your front page: ie it stays the original size that you saved it as. That might mean that you have to save it smaller, like your maximum side should be no bigger than 600 pixels - but don't quote me on that.

So, there you go! A complete rambling and probably nonsensical How To Animate. I totally apologize for how i give instructions. I'm certain i made it sound more complicated than it really is, so those of you who know photoshop really should just click on the tutorial. It's fun and the effect is worth it!
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updating

Hope you all have a wonderful weekend. Mine will be full of activities. Tomorrow morning, heading to the favorite scrapbook store for a chance at a 30 second shopping spree then going to Paper Source for their grand opening event. Sunday going to the parentals for dinner.

Wanted to give you an update on my attempt-to-better-health journey. I haven't blogged about it much but I'm almost down 2 sizes. My weight is evenly distributed - I'm not a pear, apple or cone shape. I fall more into the hourglass category. So even though I can't wear any of my 'big' pants anymore, I don't look like I've lost as much as the numbers indicate. This happened to me the last time, too. (7 years ago already). It wasn't noticeable for a long time till suddenly it was dramatic. Strangely enough, I'm really not telling anyone I know in the real world, except those few who read my blog. I think it's because the last time I was on this journey, it made some people uncomfortable. Like they couldn't eat in front of me or they had to change their way of eating or cooking when they were with me. It also made me uncomfortable whenever I would eat something that they deemed bad for me. I know how many points/calories I've eaten and how many I can afford for this meal or that snack. Trust me, I calculate everything to the 1/2 point. So if I'm eating a cookie, I know the caloric/point value of it and it's accounted for. I still eat ice cream (the low-cal kind) , chocolate and potato chips (always portioned out), Mexican and Hawaiian food. But I admit that I miss pizza.

On another note, since I admitted that I'm an aggressive driver, I've been driving a lot calmer lately. I really just like to get to wherever I'm going Now. So maybe I'm really more of a speed demon rather than aggressive. Because I always signal, I'll let people in if they signal and will move out of the way if someone wants to go even faster than I'm going. And I don't talk on my cell phone while I'm driving because I know that I can't possibly concentrate on driving fast, watching all the other cars around and hold a cell phone to my ear all at the same time. But what weighs on my conscience more is the gas issue. Since I drive an SUV, my gas mileage isn't ideal to start with. I try to get around 22mpg, but if I'm feeling a little lead footed, I'll only get around 19mpg. Yup, I need to slow down.

Those of you with blog readers have noticed that I've been updating my blog a bit. Just adding labels to past posts. That organizing thing I like to do. My apologies for any confusions. It'll probably happen a few more times till all of my old posts are properly labeled. Just as a little warning. :)

Happy Mother's Day

Pop Art Madeline

Having fun with photoshop today.

Stumbled upon an artist's flickr site and she gave details on how to do it yourself so I had to try it myself.

Here's the original pic, next to the finished project:

A Good Friday that Happens to be the 13th

Knock on wood (LOL), this superstitious day as gone without a hitch, so far. I did have one frustrating phone conversation with the bank, but otherwise, it was a good day. I went to my weight watchers meeting and surprisingly yet happily was successful at the scales. I admit that I was concerned about my frivolous weekend in Seattle, but I also bumped up my activities and didn't give in to every single indulgence. (Note to self: don't wait to eat till your starving then go to Jack-in-the-Box). Continued the afternoon with my weekly walk at Stanford with my girlfriend Eve, the warm sun behind our backs. Now enjoying the evening, planning on quality tv time and crafting.
Tulips for sale at Pikes Market.

Reminiscing

It's hard to believe that it's already Thursday and I've been home for 3 days. My visit was waay too short and I wish I was able to spend more time with my cousin. I had a great time with her, every moment was cherished!The above view of Seattle was taken from Beacon Hill.

Moi, enjoying the tulips.

Me and Jimmy at Tulip Town. Windblown but happy. :)

This is Pacific Medical Center, which sits atop Beacon Hill. Amazon.com's global headquarters is here.

Cherry Blossoms on Beacon Hill.