For my guy

Dave bought a tent

2 minutes to put it up. . . time him. . .

Done!

OK, this actually isn't a tent. . . it's half of a tent, and no the color is not off in these pictures, Dave is actually pink. . . (from the softball tournament, not from my flicks to the forehead) 

This was Dave's genius idea for any future outdoor events we attend. . . a little shelter for his fair skin.  Forget sunscreen, that's too much work.  ;)

Now we need some kind of event to go to . . . outside our living room.

Scarlett is awesome

Great Grandpa told us last year that we couldn't call it living if we didn't view or play some sort of softball/baseball game in the flesh as much as possible.  Of course he said it much more poetically or at least more succinctly than that sad recollection, but either way you hear it, he was right.  It was fun watching Scarlett play in the tournament again this year.  I don't know what we're going to do about it next year, since she's graduating. . . well we'll figure it out later, for now, here are some softball highlights.  Scarlett rocked!

Miley took a break from asking to go play on the playground and enjoyed some softball too.  She also found a new love, pepper sunflower seeds or 'bird seed' as she called them.

idling

Finding things, or time, to post on the blog has become almost impossible. . . but here I am for a second to tell you I have nothing to add.  I just needed a place filler for today, and here it is. . . in honor of all my lost fonts here are two games to entertain yourself. . . on the internet. . . go on try them!

Kern Me  and  Cheese or Font

a little spring cleaning

It's busy in my head.  Time to sort it. . .

- Preschool - It's time to register for the fall and I'm conflicted.  I think Miley isn't stressed by school so much anymore, but after going with her this week to observe and help I could see why she was. . . or maybe why I would be, it's loud, lots of snotty kids coughing on everything, and lots of repetition.  Yeah, I was so not supposed to be a teacher.  The kids were friendly enough, and were very interested in how old I was.  ;)  After much discussion they came to the conclusion that I am 12.

- when I grow up - I'm not a tv watcher, or at least not the kind that just flips through channels looking for something to watch, but recently I've stumbled across two shows that have the jobs I would say I want to be when I grow up. . . American Restoration and Face Off.  The latter is on SyFy and is a reality competition show dealing with special effects make up artists.   Their stuff is so cool.  The first is about a business in Vegas that restores anything and everything.  I would LOVE to do either job.  In fact when Dave saw American Restoration he looked and me and said that's what I should do.  Yep, in another life.

- clean sweep - We feel we need to do a clean install on our computer to dejunk this beast.  Dave is a junk app collector, and I collect projects which call for a billion fonts, pictures, bookmarks, music, videos, and images.  We're a little bogged down.  ;)  You'd think it would be a simple process, but everything has to be backed up just in case there is something I need somewhere that has to be transferred back.  I absolutely HATE losing things. . . anything, anywhere.  It drives me crazy, so this process is not so fun.  Inevitably something will get forgotten, like my address book.  Hon, did you back that one up?  Yeah so after a reinstall with only a little bump, I realized I only backed up a portion of my fonts.  :(  That is about a billion lost, but probably for the best.  Time to spring clean anyway.

- waiting -  Yep, we're still waiting on news from Africa, just thought I'd update you with that non-update.  We're good though.  I'm actually not bothered by this waiting, it will be another matter later, so I'm enjoying this one as the non-stressful precursor to it's evil twin soon to be experienced.  Good news; we have been approved for an orphan immigrant visa, the much publicized I-600 form.  Thank you US State Department.  In the meantime, my bedside reading is a stack of international adoption books.  My mind is reeling with info.  Maybe more on that later.

- questioning -  Dave's sense.  I question this a lot.  ;) Last weekend we spent a nice morning/afternoon at a softball tournament.  The same tournament that we attended last year with disastrous sun BURNS as our happily ever after.  This year I came extra prepared and passed out the sunscreen and drinks to stay hydrated.  Dave only put it on his neck, and his neck still got burned some. . . but his forehead and face are pinkalicious.  This redhead is not a quick learner.  I feel the need to flick his pink little face to help him remember for next time.  ;)  Hmm, uh, I also got a sunburn on my hands and behind my ears.  Weird.  Since it was a weird scalding, I don't think flicking is necessary on my part.

- time travel -  Daylight Savings is officially a pain.  Miley and I have not adapted to our lost hour.  We get up late, we go to bed later, we eat our meals at our usual (now late) time.  We're not programmed for this.  We're moving to Arizona.

- independent living -  Kiddo has to do EVERYTHING herself, well except the things she doesn't want to do and then it's the puppy dog eyes plea for help.  I'm all for independence, but she is so sllllllooooooowwwww at it as well.  I'm being patient.  Only growling slightly as I wait for her to finish every last button before she can go to bed. . . which I tell her is just me pretending to be a lion and has nothing to do with her frustrating me.  ;)  Today she needed to pick out her own clothes, which she does often now.  Today it was pink on pink on pink.  I don't buy her pink clothes, shudder.  Those come from others and she is now LOVING the pink. . . not just a touch, head to toe pinkness.  I cringe.  She even asked for a hair bow today.  A hair bow?  I don't buy those either, but we have them, thanks Brit.  ;)   More pink.  :(

- something is definitely wrong -  Speaking of pink, I may be unwell.  I am not a pink person, as you probably know, and yet I'm working on redecorating Miley's room and I actually have two pinks in the design.  I found the cutest fabric, which I loved cause of the flowers and the red, but it also has that nasty little color in it, that I am sad to say looks really cute and I'll have to use more of it in the room.  I'm feeling nauseous, but not as much as I thought I would.  I'm even thinking about painting one of her walls or something on her wall in pink.  Something is definitely wrong with me.

- Scrap deadline -  I've been busting my butthh0oumuop'0.fyfmjbhmetmnkty trying to get our scrapbook for 2011 done.  The 40% off photo books was good until sometime this week, but I couldn't remember which day in particular.  Should have paid attention.  So I got it done, uploaded, late one night and decided to leave it until the morning to figure out.  One day and a dollar short.  Expired that very night.  Should have toughened up and finished it then.  Now it's sitting there waiting for the next sale to come around.  Oh well.

- you lose it -  I used to be able to type super fast.  No really.  It was put to good use in college, writing for the newspaper, and in work.  My boss bragged about it to everyone (I was a secretary).  Since leaving college I haven't done a lot of speed typing. . . I've lost my gift.  :(  Found this out attempting another project. . . So I decided I was tired of trying to find recipes in my disaster of a binder/pile/mess.  I pulled them all out, organized them by course and set about to type them all up in one place.  Oh my aching fingers.  This was a dumb plan.  I'm only halfway done and I'm feeling a serious need to throw in the kitchen towel.  We can eat out so we won't starve, and I can cook an egg without a recipe.  Easy mac anyone?

- out of time-  I'm busy in real life too, so I don't have time for any more musings today.  Thanks for stopping by and eavesdropping in my head.


* - unsupervised - So after re-reading this post it seems Miley had to add her two cents when I left it for a minute.  I guess she thought I was working so hard on the scrapbook that it needed extra emphasis.  I didn't want to delete her contribution.  There you have it.

animated

So here is the way that I've used Photoshop to create the animated cards of late. . . for your information I am using Photoshop CS4, but it should work the same on the version you have as well. . . I have no experience with PSE so it may not apply to it at all.

I'll be using a number of pictures that will flip through to show you the basic setup and you can play around with it from there.

First I opened all my photos and copy pasted them all onto one frame, check the layer palette in the pic, you'll need to familiarize yourself with basic layer workings to make an animation.

You will find the animation menu listed under Window, click it.

It will pop up at the bottom and have one slide in it.

The arrow shows you where the new slide button is located, it looks like a page turning.  You will notice after you click it that it has the same picture as the first. . . this is where the layers will come in.  Check your layer palette, the top layer with the eyeball showing is what will be in the slide.

While the second slide is highlighted. . . see it's blue, click the eyeball off of the topmost layer (which was the flowers), and it will reveal the second layer.  That picture should show itself in your second slide.

Before we add more slides lets take a second to talk about time.  At the bottom of the little slide you will see 0 sec. and a down arrow.  Click the down arrow and pick out a time you want your slide to show.  Every slide you create after you set this number will have the same time, but you can change them all individually later.  I chose 1 second.

OK, rinse and repeat.  Click add slide, go over to your layer palette and click the next eyeball. . . do this until all your pictures are on the slides.

All my pictures are shown on the slides.  Usually I have all my eyeballs turned off and add eyeballs when I add slides, so I don't know why I did it in reverse for this walkthrough, but it works either way. If you did it the way I described your last slide will be your first or bottom layer.

Now check out the cool little button next to the add slide button it looks like disappearing squares.  It blends slides together.  So with the last slide selected I clicked the blend icon on the bottom.  The menu pops up and gives you some options.  I wanted my last slide to blend with the previous slide and I put in the number 2 for how many slides I wanted it to create in between to blend them.

Now let's see what it looks like. . . select the first slide and push the play button on the bottom.  It will play it in a loop forever, until you click on something.  Now you know what it will look like and can adjust timing on the slides.

It spent too much time on my blending slides so I pushed those down to 0.5 or 0.2 seconds.  Oh and I make my last slide a little longer too.  Other buttons on the bottom, include a garbage can to delete a slide, you know, if you don't like the blending slides or need more or less of them.

We're ready to save it.  File, Save for Web & Devices.  Make sure you click Save for WEB & DEVICES, though yours may not say devices, same difference.

The presets will work, just make sure it says GIF at the top (white arrow) and you can decide if you want your animation to loop forever, or just go one time until the page is reloaded (black arrow).

Are you ready for the tricky part?  Do you know the dimensions of your blog posts?  I did cause I custom adjusted it, but you can check it out in the html layout section (if you're using blogger).  I didn't make a step by step for that. . . . OR you can guess.  The thing is, your animation has to remain it's original size or else it won't animate.  You know when you click on your picture in blogger and tell it what size it should be. . . well original size is the only option for an animation here.  So let's guess shall we. . . test a size and see if it works with your blog, but don't close your photoshop file until you are sure it will work.  Mine is around 700 pixels, but I find that it cuts off the side due to padding when I put in 700, so I go smaller.  Now click SAVE!

Name it, and make sure it remains a .gif.  That will keep it animated.

It's already been saved as a .gif, but if you want to keep this piece of work in play, I'd suggest SAVE as, a psd file.  This won't keep the animation portion, but it will keep all your layers and you can set it up again or differently without the initial setup work.  Just an precaution when you're figuring things out.

In blogger you can upload the animation just as you do a photo.  Don't worry if it places it in your post and changes it's size.  Just click it back to original size and it will be animated once more.  Publish and enjoy!

Hope that helps!  Have fun animating, and if you find out anything cool let me know!

Uhhhhh ok

So things have seemed to be pretty busy and I was going to blog about that, but I don't have pictures of the minutia or even the big stuff, so instead I'm going to post what I do have pictures of. . . the kid of course.

Being sick all of February really threw our routine into a rut. . . a laying around watching movie after movie kind of rut, which turns out is hard to break with a routine-lovin 3 year old.  It was painful, and I still get the daily, 'can I watch a movie now', plea, but here are some of the things we've done to break the power the TV had over us.

A little color theory experiment. . . two colors of paint in a bag, squish together, tadaaah

Miley calls this playing 'Glow'. . . the dogs even had fun doing it, the dozen of times we've HAD to do it.

Miley really wanted to go to the jungle.  I don't know.  I convinced her the backyard could be pretty wild.

She was quite the tour guide in the jungle (for the dogs and I), and had to wear her boots for the adventure.

More paint.  Kid loves paint.  This masterpiece is a canvas to hang in her room somewhere to be determined.

A very princessy tea party.  Her guests were all well behaved, though she did have to reprimand them when they tipped over into their food.

Craftiness to use as March-like decorations.  We put cotton ball clouds at the ends of her rainbow and she questioned the reason for this. . . I don't know why we put clouds on the ends of rainbows.  Weird.

After a lesson about being thankful for water, this kid could not have been more excited when she spotted a little watering can at Target one day.  It was love at first sight and has been put to good use, watering plants and weeds alike.

So it turns out that kiddo is old enough to play real actual games.  Weird.  We pulled out Candyland the other day and she was super lucky twice in a row.  Dave was devastated.  Then I taught her how to play Old Maid, and she rocked that one too, though she thought being the Old Maid was awesome and the point of the game.  I didn't correct her on that one.  We tried out Go Fish yesterday, and once again she won.  Seriously, I don't let anyone beat me.  Just lucky I guess.  Her luck has worn off with Candyland though, I'm the current title holder.  Wahoo.  I need to buy some more games, cause that one is gonna get old.

The busyness continues, so that's all I have time for today.  Hopefully normalcy will set in soon and I'll be back to blogging regularly.

It's your birthday!

celebrating platypi

It's Platypus Day!  Let's learn something shall we. . .

The platypus is among nature's most unlikely animals. In fact, the first scientists to examine a specimen believed they were the victims of a hoax. The animal is best described as a hodgepodge of more familiar species: the duck (bill and webbed feet), beaver (tail), and otter (body and fur). Males are also venomous. They have sharp stingers on the heels of their rear feet and can use them to deliver a strong toxic blow to any foe.

Platypuses hunt underwater, where they swim gracefully by paddling with their front webbed feet and steering with their hind feet and beaverlike tail. Folds of skin cover their eyes and ears to prevent water from entering, and the nostrils close with a watertight seal. In this posture, a platypus can remain submerged for a minute or two and employ its sensitive bill to find food.

These Australian mammals are bottom feeders. They scoop up insects and larvae, shellfish, and worms in their bill along with bits of gravel and mud from the bottom. All this material is stored in cheek pouches and, at the surface, mashed for consumption. Platypuses do not have teeth, so the bits of gravel help them to "chew" their meal.

On land, platypuses move a bit more awkwardly. However, the webbing on their feet retracts to expose individual nails and allow the creatures to run. Platypuses use their nails and feet to construct dirt burrows at the water's edge.

Platypus reproduction is nearly unique. It is one of only two mammals that lay eggs.

Females seal themselves inside one of the burrow's chambers to lay their eggs. A mother typically produces one or two eggs and keeps them warm by holding them between her body and her tail. The eggs hatch in about ten days, but platypus infants are the size of lima beans and totally helpless. Females nurse their young for three to four months until the babies can swim on their own.  - National Geographic

I think we prefer the blue-green kind that wear fedoras. . . yeah, much cuter.  Miley's hair in this picture. . . not so much.  ;)  Happy Platypus Day to ya!