Enabling- More Textures

I got a "please take my survey" from PhotoBucket. In the process of being surveyed I found out they have a search feature (duh!).

So search I did!! I found an image of this wonderful texture group from Princess-of-Shadows. I did a Google Search to figure out where, exactly, this was available for download.
(btw- go to Google.com and see what they've done to their header... it's Beatrix Potter's Peter Rabbit! How cute is that?)


This is the image that caused tonight's madness. Get this one here-


And this one came up on the search too-

(WARNING: If you want to do a PhotoBucket search for this texture package image DON'T include
the word hardcore. It said you needed to be 18 to proceed... I didn't proceed. Scary!)
























What about this one by resurgere? Isn't it delicious?-

But the bonus winner for this night's Googling is Design Reviver's blog entry 200+ Textures, Brushes, and Fonts. What a gold mine!

So there you are... enabled! Have a texturing fun time!

Apricot Jam

This is my third batch of apricot jam and I just had to get out my camera and record the goodness. I wish I had smell-a-vision-blog so you could smell the sweet fruity air in my kitchen. I got this recipe from Jens Alfke's blog. It was exactly what I was looking for, one that didn't use a boat-load of sugar and didn't require pectin (which goes for $1.99+ at my local market). I loved his wit in writing.

The recipe is easy (the proportions are):
1 cup apricots
3/4 cup sugar
1 1/2 tsp lemon juice



You mix this together and let it sit for 2 hours (I usually end up getting distracted and it sits longer, but no harm done).

This is what the yummy goo looks like after sitting.








So now we turn on the heat and start cooking... and stirring. Bring it to a boil. It will start to foam. You need to skim off the foam.
(This is an important step here. On the first batch, I started skimming off the foam and then when it stopped foaming I added it back in. Well, that isn't what the recipe said and now I know why. That batch is not as jelled as I would like it to be.)
A little trick here, if you add 1/2 tsp butter it will reduce the foaming drastically. Jens says to save this foam for syrup. Joanie says mix about 1/3 c syrup and 2 tsp butter, heat and dip your pancakes in... yummy!! Pancakes are finger food aren't they?






OK back the jam-truck up a minute. When the jam starts to boil, set your timer for 25 minutes. That is how long you will need to cook the jam. Remember, no pectin, more cooking. I find that if I stir it every couple of minutes I do fine, but if you want to stir more than that have at it!








Now sing the song..."Just keep cooking, cooking, cooking, ah-ha-ha!"

Pretty soon your timer will buzz and your jam should be reduced almost by half. (See the line on the inside of the pan?)









This is my favorite part (but I'm going to make you go over to Jens blog and read how to get your jars ready and about the apricot kernels and rings and all that stuff). Ladle the hot jam into clean jars. I use a wide mouth funnel that used to be my mom's. She was the one who started me on all of this 36 year ago. If you slopped any jam on the rim of the jar, wipe it off (the funnel prevents that mess and speaking of mess, you notice that I have the jar in a flat bowl and the funnel is right up next to the pan to reduce clean up later... always thinking!) Place your lids on the jars, tighten and then invert the jars. Jens says this sterilizes the lids. I like his thinking.












Well, maybe this really is my favorite part... eating the jam, said the Little Red Hen.













Now this is the finished product. Ready to be stored safely in the basement (I just love having a basement!!!) It will be a lovely treat.










I've also put up 14 quarts of apricots. Not always a big favorite at my house.















And I dried a bunch. They just seem more tasty and tempting this way than in the jar.
Notice the fuzzy whiteness?... yeah, that isn't mold, but apricot skin fuzz. Tasty!






(And can I just say one more tiny thing? I sure wish that Blogger was wysiwyg!! I go back and forth a dozen times with a post like this to get everything just where I want it. There has to be an easier way!!)

The Bane of Gullible Dogs...

Animal behavior cracks me up! You know the kind: the cat that goes straight up the drapes, the dog who scratches for traction on a wood floor, tail and bum tucked low for speed, the dog who is running so fast he is at a near 90 degree angle on the backs of the furniture... all of this leaves me weak with laughter!

Yesterday I stopped at Sonic for a Dr. Pepper so today I had the cool Styrofoam cup, lid and straw and I just refilled it with my own sub-standard ice, (I LOVE Sonic's crushed ice!!) and DP. For some unknown reason I squeaked the straw up and down, you know the sound (especially if you've ever watch Toy Story).

Harley was in on the back of the couch in the front room... his favorite place to watch the world outside. He came to investigate the noise.


I made more squeaking noises. He wasn't sure about that and ran away. But it didn't take him long to pick up on the fact that this was a game! So I proceeded to chase him all over the house squeaking.

Then he did my classic, well-loved dog behavior. (This dog has some serious hops!) He leaped onto the "old" brown couch, turned on the speed and ran the gambit at a 45 degree angle along the backs of that couch and the "new" couch, leaped to the top of the love seat, bounded off onto the carpet and scrambled up the stairs. By this time I was weak with laughter and collapsed onto the love seat! What a funny doggy!


We played a little more and then he went to his "happy place" in Papa's arms. He knew he was safe there and that the mean noise couldn't get him anymore.

Textures... of all sorts!

Today has been all about textures for me! It started out with a little perusing over at the js.com forum. JeanneD (it sounds so first grade to me!) gave us all a heads up about some fun textures. I've wanted to fool around with them a little more. I love the look. I went and collected the 14 FREE textures and then played for a little with some photos. First I tried a photo of myself... (I may try again) but ended up using one of my CA poppy photos from last April. I am very pleased with the way this turned out.


Having accomplished this bit of fun-ness I needed to get moving and do something with the fruit that is coming out of my ears! Last week I spent a couple of days making red currant jam (I refuse to filter the juice and make jelly!)

But this week is the beginning of the apricots. Last evening Gordon & I went and picked two big boxes of apricots off our loaded tree. This afternoon there were enough ripe apricots to make jam. Now I'm not a sugar Nazi, but when the recipe on the pectin box calls for 2 cups of fruit and 4 cups of sugar (no, I didn't mix that up... 2x1!) I just can't abide that. So I Googled apricot jam recipes and found this very delightful and cleverly written recipe by some dude named Jens with more realistic ratios of 1 fruit to 3/4 c sugar. I used Jens recipe.

The texture part comes in here... the apricots start out somewhat firm, get a little gooshy as I chopped them up, then went to a wonderfully slimmy stage as the sugar was mixed in. As it started cooking it starts to foam (1/2 tsp. butter solves this problem quite well. Last week I had to keep taking partly cooked jam out of the currant mixture because it just kept getting bigger and bigger and wanting to boil all over my stove... but I foiled it with quick spooning. I like the butter idea better.). The longer it cooks the more syrupy it becomes with chunks of apricot-y goodness floating in the mix. Now it is residing in 8 pint mason jars waiting to be opened and spread on hot toast this winter!

At the same time I was cooking the apricot jam I was texturizing with strawberries too. (Have you ever realized how bumply strawberries are with all of those little seeds?) I bought a flat on Saturday for family dinner and not too many got eaten. I used the aforementioned pectin (with half the amount of sugar, thank you very much) and made freezer jam. I used the potato masher to squish these up, then because it was looking a little lumpy, I put half of them in the blender and whirred them minimally. Gordon helped again with stirring and ladling into containers as both jams got finished at the same time. (Not such good planning on my part.) Now there are also 7 pints of strawberry-goodness in the fridge waiting to "set up" before being moved to the freezer.

So that is what my tactile and visual textures are all about "this day"!

Later... more playing...

As Promised... digital goodness!

As promised, I took some time this morning before going to pick up Camille and her friend, Alissa, at the airport to take a photo of my new grown-out hair. But am I just going to slam it up here without playing around with it in PhotoShop first? (This is where I hear a resounding *NO*!!!)

I went to Jessica's website to search for some of her digital goodness (she really is the goddess of Photoshop!). I used several of her techniques.

These are the steps I used.

1. Open photo in PSE6 and adjust color and saturation levels.
2. Applied the PSF (PhotoShop Friday) on photo sha-ZAM. (overlay @42%, screen @47%)
   
3. Used the eyes-pop technique, also a PSF. [A little erasing here too since I have squinty eyes ;) ]
   
4. Used the technique learned in Digi-in-Deep Lesson 3 to fake a depth of field and blur the background. (It goes something like this as I remember... Jessica's instructions are much better, but, there you are!) Using the magnetic lasso tool draw around person.
   Ctrl +J to put it on its own layer.
   Select background layer, apply Gaussian blur set @ 23
   Go back to the background layer and soften edges using eraser tool and a soft edge brush set at 35% opacity.
5. Finally I added a vignette from KeepDesigning.com and changed the color to a brown and the opacity to 83%.
   

First Blog Anniversary

I can't believe that it was a year ago that I started my blog. So much has happened in this last year. I thought it might be fun to list some of the highlights (and perhaps lowlights as well)

• Indexed/arbitrated almost 25,000 names at Family Search (which has given me a wonderful way to participate in family history)
• Traveled to the east coast, the west coast and the south coast (TX) to see all of our grandchildren.
  
• Discovered Jessica Sprague and her PhotoShop coolness in digital scrapbooking. (see below my very first experience with Jessica and her PSF)
• Taken 2 AWESOME classes from said Jessica and LEARN SO MUCH!
• Read and/or listened to Harry Potter books, ummm, more times than I want to admit (Harry helps me do so many things!)
• Had a new grandson and granddaughter arrive. Plus one almost grandson.
  
• Grown my hair out! I'd had the same hairstyle for 18 years. It is now chin length, photo coming soon.
• Adopted an dog. He's getting better behaved every day!
• Posted to my blog 61 times.
• Attended BYU Ed Week and BYU Women's Conference (always a wonderful treat)
• Studied the scriptures and gain more spiritual insight.
  
• Gotten a year older...
• And so many other things I just can't think of them all...
  

~Spencer and baby Riley~
My first Jessica Sprague experience (actually done 13 months ago) Photo taken 6/19/07, 'Shopped 6/21/07

I've considered giving my blog a face lift, but for right now I am happy with the look I have, I am up to my eyebrows in early fruit and just don't have the energy to read all the blogger cheats to learn how to do something cool and exciting!

Thanks to all of you who've made this journey with me. I look forward to many more years of blog-dom.

Rock Solid & Immovable

On Tuesday dear hubby asked if I would like to do something together “this day”. When I suggested that we hike to the Timpanogos Caves he was very enthusiastic. So after checking them out online and getting the proper attire for the day we headed north about 20 miles to the American Fork canyon to the trail head for the caves.
Happy Hikers at the start

Timpanogos Caves is a National Monument that was established in 1922 but the first of the three caves that make up this monument was discovered in 1887 by Martin Hansen.


We purchased our tickets for the cave tour (at the top of the trail) at the bottom of the trail (a smart marketing plan!) and started up the mountain. It is an excellent paved trail about 8-10’ wide and very well maintained. They have points of interest along the way. For $1 I purchased a little booklet that described each of these points. We hadn’t gone up the trail very far before Gordon realized that this hike was way over his head! At the ¼ mark he turned around and went back down to the bottom to wait for me to complete the trip (he had LOTS of company!)















Above- Daisies growing from a rock. Right- American Fork Canyon



With that every present “How-hard-can-it-be?” attitude I continued. I’ve never made a solo hike before and it was actually very pleasant. I didn’t have to worry that my short legs were slowing everyone down or that I was walking too fast for someone else. I stopped at each of the points of interest and read the description.

Root pinched and bleeding but hanging on.

Almost immediately I was aware of how close I felt to nature and our loving Heavenly Father who created this beautiful world for us. I grew up with an appreciation for rocks (sounds silly, I know) and I never cease to be amazed at how plants can grow seemingly right out of the rock. THIS is what made me come up with the title of this post. I was mentally composing as I continued my accent. Here are these trees; giant pines, cedars and firs, that have all woven their roots so deeply in the rocks that at times I could see that it hurt. But there they were nonetheless- Rock Solid & Immovable. This was so poignant to me, given the re-visited grieving I’ve been through this last month. Again I see the wonderful lesson that if we are planted firmly on the Rock (The Gospel of Jesus Christ) that even though the storms rage, the floods come, etc. we will still be left standing when the storm is over.















Above- Almost to the top and still smiling. Right- cave entrance.



I continued up the trail with a renewed appreciation for all of the flora and fauna I came across. My kids always know that there will be photos of critters and flowers when I am out with my camera.




Above- Chipmunk and lizard
Left- More wildflowers
Right- Baby pine, hanging and climbing.















I have visited Timpanogos Caves once before, when I was about 8 years old and we came to Utah to hear my sister, Ann, sing in the Tabernacle at General Conference, but I remembered little of that visit. I was excited to see all of these wonderful creations with my 55 year-old eyes. I wasn’t disappointed with what I found at the top! (I just wish I’d put on my glasses to properly see my digital photos and realized that they weren’t as in focus as I wanted without the flash & on the smart ISO setting. But seeing as how I returned with 184 shots, maybe that’s ok!) These formations are amazing taking thousands of years to create.



Top left- Stalactite and stalagmite meet in the middle, Top right- Helictites; Bottom left- Drapery formations also called bacon formations; Bottom right- The Heart of Timpanogos





After exiting the beauty of the cave the journey was only half over! I still had to navigate my way down the mountain. See the arrow? Yeah- that's where I needed to end up! By the time I was half way down I was hit with the Jelly-Legs Curse and looked around for Malfoy (or Crabbe and Goyle or even Harry Potter!)











I eventually made my way down, enjoying the scenery from the opposite direction and in the fading light toward evening.

I found Gordon waiting at the bottom. He'd killed time in the visitors center and drowned his sorrows at the snack bar with a double cheeseburger!

We continued our trip by taking the Alpine Loop that snakes its way from American Fork canyon around the back-side of Timp, past Sundance and ending up in Provo Canyon.


Will I make this hike again? YOU BETCHA! but not until my muscles stop hurting from this trip!

A New Family Member

You just never do know what is going to be waiting for you in your in box when you get up in the morning! Monday I got a lovely surprise. Cindy, my *sister-niece* and family historian/keeper of all digital photos, forwarded me an email from a heretofore unknown Caraway cousin, Joyce!! I am nearly euphoric! (Joyce found Cindy through Ancestry.com when she responded to a photo of Fleming Caraway, our grandfather.)

Some might wonder why so here are the answers:

First, and foremost, I LOVE family! I just do!

Second, I have a dearth of known cousins. On my Daddy's side most of the cousins are so much older than I am that there hasn't been any contact and the Caraways are a non-communicative lot. Sadly there are only 4 cousins on my Mom's side and they are equally non-communicative.

So now we have Joyce. The emails have been flying hot and fast through cyberspace! What wonderful instant-gratification. I look forward to learning more about this wonderful cousin.

Did I mention how much I love family?

Another Sweet Baby

One of the wonderful blessings of having non-biological family is all the more people to love! I've written previously about this marvelous blessing. But now I get to do it again.

Desi & Camille 6/2005

Camille and Desi have been best friends since they were in kindergarten! They are another example of sisters-by-choice. (Can anyone ever have too many sisters?) They've enjoyed each other at school, church, many sleep-overs, not as many separations (Desi's family has travel a lot with her dad's job as an imagineer with Disney). Camille was Desi's maid of honor when Desi and Alex were married 4 years ago. AND *Auntie* Camille was there when Desi's first baby, Emmalie was born 2 1/2 years ago. Again, I say, we love our non-biological family.

On Monday morning at 6:21 Emmalie was joined by her little brother Blake Alexander. I got to go do Grammie-duties (really hard) sleeping at Emmalie's house while the rest of the family were at the hospital. What a joyful day to have little Blake (his Grandpa's name-sake) join this sweet little family.

New Baby Blake with his Mama

New Baby Blake with his Mama & Papa

[I uploaded all the photos at 300 dpi so you can right-click and save]

Sisters... a great blessing.

Camille flew to California on Wednesday to spend 10 days with Rebekah. This is a tradition that was started almost 10 years ago. Because my daughters are so far apart in age, 12 years, I so appreciate Bek's willingness to extend that hand of sister-ship to her younger siblings. Without that, there would be little or no sister/sibling relationship. I appreciate Camille's willingness to make the effort to spend part of her summer there as well. There is just nothing like a sister!

And I should know!

I have reflected this week back to the time when it was little Joanie who was going on the California Zephyr from Keddie, CA to Provo, UT for a summer visit with my sister Sue. Mom would take me to the railway station at about 5 in the evening where I would get on the Zephyr (ALONE) for the 12-14 hour trip to Provo. I was only 11 the first year I made that trip. (What a marvelously safe environment we lived in then!)


I loved the "Vista-dome" cars where I could sit up in the top and see all around. I usually spent most of my time there, sleeping part of the time, but mostly looking out and watching the world go by.

In 1966, when Cindy was born, Mom went down to Livermore to take care of Sue and Cindy and I got left behind to stay with Helen & Bud Wilson (I thought it very unfair that I had to stay and go to school!) On Friday Helen took me to Twain and I rode the Zephyr down the Feather River Canyon to the Bay Area to meet my first little niece. It was love at first sight... a bridging of this half generation to find a niece AND a sister.

I did a quick Google search to come up with
these awesome photos of the California Zephyr in
the Feather River Canyon. My, what a trip
down memory lane!

But I digress...

The post started with me talking about sisters. This is not the first time I have referred to the wonderful family in to which I was born. I was so blessed to come to a family with two parents and two older sisters(8 & 10) who loved and adored me. I count this as one of my greatest blessings!

In April while I was on Grammie-duty with the Flynn boys I got a chance to spend the day with my sister Sue. She and her little dog, Chica, drove down from Livermore to Yosemite Lakes Park, where the Flynns live, to see me. We had a lovely visit talking over old times, family history and *family-history*! When the boys returned from school Caden played the photographer and took some photos (he's only 8!). I am so glad that we have this photo to remember our happy day.



After the cookbook and other stresses of June I've just kind of hibernated (In July? What's up with that?) I finally got motivated yesterday to try my hand at some scrapbooking. Jessica had a PhotoShop Friday for photo sha-ZAM. It prompted me to go looking for this photo that I've been wanting to scrap. I combined it with the SWC (Sprague Weekly Challenge) over at JS.com and came up with this very pleasing creation. Nothing fancy, but a happy memory safely saved away.