Tag Archives: country living

Catching Up with a Freebie

Yep, we are back from Louisiana and I got some gorgeous photos!

But, just like I thought, I have a lot of catching up to do. Plus, I just went out of my mind over the weekend and signed up for two more store and am working on trying to get into two more. Watch me burn out ladies little by little.

No, I probably will thrive on it all!

More about the new stores in future posts. I will introduce them one at a time.

Most important I want you all to see this layout-not because my layout skills are so great-though I am not embarrassed by them. But, this layout has my little fella in it–the grandson. The photos are not over a month old so I am doing good right–not too late in getting them scrapped? I used my Whispers of the Forest kit for this and really love how the cardinal and butterfly work in with this layout. You can click on it to be taken to a larger size in the gallery.

I have a nice little gift for you all too. It is a template I made. Before we left for Louisiana, I spent an afternoon making templates for the store blog and while I was doing it I made a few for you all. Hopefully, I am caught up on my templates at the store blog for the next five weeks, so I can afford to share these with you ladies.

Here is a preview of the template:

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Drat, gotta get that image fixed to match the blog!

Hot Water Woes — Free Hybrid Ornament

edited to fix download link—sorrry!

Another thrill about living in the country, when the hot water heater goes it is a 50 mile round trip to town to get parts. Hubby has made that trip now about 4 times if not more and we still don’t have hot water. It would not be so bad if the water that came out of the faucet were not soooo cold! Last night, I decided I just had to have a bath so got out the big pans and started heating water. This past summer when I did that it took just one batch of heated water to warm the bath water to acceptable levels. Well, last night it took THREE batches of warm water to do it. I expect ice crystals in the water it is sooo cold!

On the positive side, I am not expected to cook. On the negative side, I am not expected to cook. In weather like this a warm meal would really be nice. Of course this happened when we are experiencing the coldest weather we have had in two years.

Moving ON

Today my ornament is the give away for the DigiScrapStation Ornament Express. It is a hybrid ornament and real easy to make. You just need to print out the pdf given and then follow the directions on putting it together. Here is a photo of it–for mine I put a photo of Clio in the center, for yours of course, you put your own photo. The download link is below. If you missed any of the other ornaments from the DigiScrapStation Ornament Express check them out on our blog at: http://digiscrapstation.com/blog/ A new ornament has been given away each day of December.

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Rain!!

WE had rain!! almost two inches of rain fell in the past 24 hours here in parched Central Texas. It has not been wise to burn trash, throw cig’s out of car windows or to even use the welding torch out in the pasture. It was so dry we had to give up on our elephant ears this summer and barely kept the zinnias growing.

But, it rained!! It is fun to say that it rained as it makes me feel oh so good inside and fresh. The rain is gone now, but maybe it will remember it’s way back to come back again.  When I went to the mail box this afternoon the wind was blowing so hard I wondered if my glasses would come off. We have a cold front moving in and just maybe that means that the hot dry summer is over. Ninety degree heat in October is really pushing summer into the wrong part of the year. We also, might just start getting a little more rain with the colder weather.

Moving ON

A GOOD tech support report! I finally bit the bullet and called HP tech support over the scanner again. Last time I called we worked on it for 3 hours and then I had to go as I had company at my door. But, I really wanted that scanner to work. So I called again today. After looking at the clock and deciding that if it ran more than two hours, I could call hubbie on the cell phone, I dug out the ticket number given me from the last call. After waiting for just a short period of time, I got Daphne on the phone, gave her control of my computer and watched her work. It is just so much fun to watch someone take over your computer from half way across the world. (I knew this was coming so I cleaned up a bit on the desktop first.) She went here and there deleting files and searching and deleting more files til finally after about 45 minutes she restarted the computer and THEN installed the software that was being difficult before. AND IT WORKED!! It only took about an hour and a half and my scanner works now!! To celebrate I created some distressed folded and worn papers to scan in and created a new product for the stores.

They are five folded and worn overlays to give your papers that great aged look. The edges are a little messed up and they are not quite 12 x 12 as you need to be able to show the edges when working with layouts. I have noticed the the new thing lately seems to be stacking stuff. This will work great for that. This is beig uploaded to my stores right now as I type this in. You can find it in my stores at DigiScrapStation, Divine Digital, and ScrappersZone.

I created a layout with one of these on a photo of Clio to see how it would work on photos instead. It’s really subtle but I like it.

By the way, you can get this kit, Old Juniper by participating in my Ad Challenge at DigiScrapStation. The link will take you right to this month’s challenge. In the layout, Clio is being all fierce and protective of my purse. I think she was waiting for me to leave so she could smack Dayton a time or two. When I have been gone for an hour or two and come back I find tufts of hair on the carpet like they have been having a wrestling match. Clio is always waiting for me on top of the freezer which means she won the coveted positon. The two of them just don’t share sleeping spots at all.

 

Its Dark Out There! (CU Freeibe also)

Its Sunday and as always I fogot to take out the trash before dark. Now if you live in the city that is not a big deal. You got those huge street lights and all the neighbors lights and there is also your own porch light. Oh and it is only a few steps out there to the trash can. And, let’s not forget that you can take out your trash on a daily basis and not have to wait til the last day to take it out all at one time. All you have to worry about is stray dogs getting into the trash cans.

But, well, here out in the middle of nowhere-things are a lot different. There are all kinds of critters that would just love to string our trash out up and down the fence line. Plus there is the fact that we are only allowed so many sacks of trash each week, so we make sure to fit it all into one big trash sack. (Well, we also have the cat litter double bagged in another sack, but lets not talk about that OK?)

It was after seven when I remembered that the trash had to go out. Of course, first thing this morning I woke thinking trash day. But, who takes out trash first thing in the morning the day before? When I looked out the window a few minutes after seven it was DARK –gee that happened fast. Just last week it was staying light til nine o’clock. But, I bustled around and got all the trash collected and got it all bagged up –had to untie it twice as I found more items to go into it. Then it was on with the socks and boots–did I mention it was dark out there and there are snakes that come out at night? Finally I was ready. I had my boots on underneath my mumu–yes I wear a mumu most days. I had my hunking, huge, redneck flashlight that lets me see for a mile and I had the cats’ attention big time. Their eyes were big as saucers when I opened that door.

I’m sure I made a comical sight with trash bag in one hand, huge flashlight in the other and mumu and boots. But, hey, I got the trash out. I took two trips–wanted to be sure I did not trip and I was able to run if I had to. But there were no boogie men out there, no snakes, just a little bunny hop-i-tee hop hop. He high tailed it out of there when I flashed him with my super-duper high-power beam. Whew, trash is out for another week.

MOVING ON

What got me so distracted from taking out the trash today was this project I started working on. Now that the store is going to sell Scrap Services and Blog stuff we need to determine which products of ours we can use for this. Not ALL Commercial Use stuff is friendly to Scrap for Hire or Web Graphics. Some designers prefer you not to use their CU items for that. So I’ve been digging through my Commercial Use Folder — believe me there is a lot in there –and I have been sorting. Whew, those Terms of Use documents are so vague and they really don’t tell you much specifically. They do say to contact the designer if you have questions –so I emailed a bunch of ladies and got a few answers that way. But, I am still working on it all.

Partway through this sorting, I posted at DST about it inthe designer section. Nicole Vars, of DigiScrap Warehouse, told me that she was making a chart for her store designers to let the customer know about their TOU’s. What a great IDEA! Well, before you could peel a potato, I got busy and sent my store designers a questionnairre and now we have us one of those chart things. It is not completly filled out yet as some designers have yet to get back to me with their answers. But take a loook–

http://digiscrapstation.com/store/termsofuse.html

There it is in Yes and NO terms what the designers will and will not allow. It would be totally awesome if the other stores would do something like this too.

MOVING ON

Ok, now for the CU freebie. Gee, two freebies within two days of each other! This one is a set of four edges–well one of them has a little more than just edges. You can use these to distress your papers real easy. If you don’t want the edges and distressing to be black you can do one of two things. 1) Lock the transparent pixels by clicking on the little square in the top of the layers palette and then fill the layer with the color you want th edges to be. Or, 2) you can go to Adjust Hue/Saturation and lighten the layer up some, click OK and then go back to the same tool and then you can change the color of the egdes that way once they have been lightened . When you get the colors changed, then you can use the Blend Modes to make them work with what you have going on with the paper. Sometimes I use Color Burn and sometimes I use Color Dodge or Screen. One will darken the edges the other will lighten the edges. So here is the freebie:

Edges

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