My plan to sit in my new craft area and keep an eye on the kids outside, has been foiled by a four-legged creature like the one above.

Yesterday afternoon, around 3.30pm, in broad daylight (it's only 1 month away from the longest day in the year), a little guy (about the size of a Retriever) just like the one above decided to take a stroll through my backyard, climb up my rock wall, cross the street and disappear into the forest. How long he'd been roaming around Gallaghers Canyon is anyone's guess, but he came through the neighbour's backyard to get into mine (we don't have a fence just plants).

Last week we had our trash cans pulled apart by bears, and we think it is probably the same cub, without a mother who doesn't know how to hunt and so is trying for some easy pickings (human garbage and bird feeders etc).

Luckily the kids weren't outside, even though K had been out in the backyard on her own just a few hours before. Scary!!!

DSC_4901 NVan+eyepop, originally uploaded by Marina Garrison.

The weather here has been a little crazy, first continual rain then almost a whole week of scorching sunshine and now back to clouds, definitely not what you expect for Spring.

I took advantage of a warm spell yesterday to snap a quick picture of K in front of a Lily of the Valley bush next door as I wanted to try out Nichole Van's Essential Color Pop action for Photoshop. The results are quite nice but I had to tone it down a bit as the defaults were just too strong for my taste. I also used the eye pop (screen mode, selective mask) technique on this one.

Let me know if you like it!

At the top are my smart album "binders" which are divided into quarters and only containt the 2 star or higher rated images. I have also chosen to put my completely digital pages into their own album.

Underneath, I have my keyword tags "categories drawers" which enable me to find any photo (everything is tagged). You can use the Find, Find Untagged Items function to make sure all photos have been tagged at least once.

The imported keyword tags represent new photos that have been tagged in another application and where the given tag does not match an existing one in Elements. This doesn't happen very often but I check to make sure there are no photos in there every once in a while.

The printed/scrapped tag is given to an image once it has been printed for paper scrapping or scrapped digitally. This tag is so that I can avoid re-scrapping the same photo as it alerts me to that fact, although I can choose to scrap it again if I want to.

I've noticed a few misunderstandings on the LOMGroup at Yahoo Groups concerning Photoshop Elements which I've addressed there but want to address here too.

First is the myth that keywording/tagging in Elements 5/6 cannot be transferred to other applications. Wrong! Keywording/tagging is very easily transferred although Elements does not do it automatically (neither do some other popular programs such as ACDSee).

To write your keywords/tag info:
1. Select File menu.
2. Select Write Keyword and Tag Info to Photos.

Photos in jpg, tiff, psd format will then be written to with the new information in the IPTC keywords field which can be read by any other IPTC compatible program (Bridge, Lightroom, ACDSee, Elements, etc).

Second, if you have an older version of Photoshop which didn't ship with an organization tool called Bridge, there are some cheap/free solutions for you to keyword/tag your photos.

Free
Windows Vista Photo Gallery allows you to keyword your photos.
Mac users can use iPhoto.

Cheap
ACDSee Photo Manager is $50 and allows you to tag and sort your photos.
Photoshop Elements (around $99) also allows tagging (as well as editing).

There probably other solutions, but these are the ones I am familiar with and can be used easily/quickly.

So part of my office/studio relocation was to get a wide format printer. I have coveted one for a few years now, my first choice was the Epson R1800 but at $599 was unjustifiable. Then I spotted the Epson 1400, newer but still using dye inks instead of pigment, it's price tag only $299. After discussions with C about the importance of preserving memories for the kids (especially in light of his cancer) he agreed I should go for it and so I ordered it up along with 4 packages (10 sheets each) of 12x12 Epson scrapbook paper.

While the cost per page is $2.49 paper, plus ink, printer capital costs and electicity, it does works out to more than the $2.99 Costco charges. However with gas at $1.39 a litre and still rising, it costs me $5.00 each time I run into town to pick up a page if I don't have any other errands to run at the same time so there are some savings there. Plus in 2 1/2 months I'll also have a baby in tow so much more convenient to print at home. The Epson paper is also acid/lignin free as well as buffered (unlike Costco photo paper) and it is double-sided so you could print 2 layouts per page but how organized would you have to be to do that with chronological albums! However, the double-sided paper has already saved me money as I printed a page and noticed a typo so reprinting only cost the ink and not the paper (unlike Costco).

Today I finally got it set up and installed and I am currently in the middle of printing out my saved 12x12 scrapbook pages that I haven't sent to Costco yet. I have to say the quality is excellent. I haven't experimented much, just chosing the Premium Presentation Matte paper, but the color is spot on and the amount of detail you can see in the enlarged photos (i.e. 12 inches high) is amazing. Can't wait to try it out on some of my photos using some different kinds of paper.

Some of you have noticed a few changes going on at our house. There's the replacement cedars in the side yard, new pavers to go around the lawn, fixed up rock wall, blah blah blah....


Inside we are planning on moving the kids downstairs to make room for the new baby, give Craig a dedicated office (instead of the dining room table) and create a new office/studio area for me at the back of the family room so I can oversee activities both in the family room and in the back yard (again, instead of the dining room table).


I've already posted about my new toy (Dell laptop). Next to the laptop will be my Epson scanner and my new wide format Epson printer which will print my digital layouts 12x12 as well as my art prints and photographs up to 13x19 inches. These will sit on my new Ikea table, which will sit between two new Ikea cube bookcases and underneath my new Ikea tension wire with clips for hanging artwork and layouts etc. Opposite will be a second new Ikea table with the adjustable height legs which also allow you to tilt the table towards you. This will be the art/scrapping table. Flanked by two new rolling drawer units, one archictects unit (for superwide artwork) and the other for tools, paints, pastels.


I will post photos once the Ikea stuff arrives (supposed to be today) but in the meantime here is the plan:




Note: one of the rolling drawer units was a last minute acquisition and does not appear in the diagram.

I hate on-board flash photography, but sometimes you just have to go with it. This moment was captured first thing in the morning just as I happened to have my camera next to me and so I grabbed it and shot, no time to open the blinds/drapes to let in the light.

Tender moments between my two are few and far between so enjoy!

Today I went to a crop. This was actually my first all day crop (I've only been to evening crops because of childcare). I decided to go completely digital with my new toy and did my layouts using Photoshop Elements. As I just got my new laptop 2 days ago and hadn't finished loading everything or checked to make sure things were setup there were a few hiccups but nothing that prevented my working.

Scrapbooker Ali Edwards made an interesting post today at her blog, which included the following statement:

• What if you collected stories the same way you collect supplies?
• What if you did your journaling first, rather than last, in your creative process?
• What if you began paying attention to your life in a way that enabled the stories to free-flow from your fingers onto the page?
• What if you encouraged your kids (by example and through encouragement) to be the kind of people who grow up telling their own stories?
• What if you truly valued your individual story and life experiences and were brave enough to share them with others?

When I think about what scrapbooking means to me, it is about telling stories as much as capturing images, yet we rarely devote as much time thinking about what we are going to say as we do to preparing our images, choosing our supplies and designing our layouts.

I know that I often I rush the journaling or leave it off completely (intending to come back to it later). Ali's statement really hit home, scrapbooking isn't about the supplies, or even the design, but about telling stories through the use of words and pictures. I am going to challenge myself to do the things in the bullet points above.

Meet my new toy. It's not here yet but was shipped today. I'm finally going desk-topless with a 250GB hard drive in this toy (my current desktop is so old it's just used as a file server). I'm hoping this will be big enough to last 12-18 months when I'll probably want a new one :) although I can always use an external hard drive if I need extra space, in addition to the one I use for my backups.

I'm still considering the Apple Airport Extreme as a print and USB hard drive (for backups) server but will see whether I can manage without for the time being.

At around 4am this morning C came running into the bedroom yelling (as much as one can do when you hardly have a voice). At first I thought the house must have been on fire but no, it was a massive water leak. The line to the dishwasher that ran under the kitchen sink had broke and steaming hot water was escaping into the cabinet under the kitchen sink and spreading all over the floor.

Luckily C had been up getting medication when it happened or I dread to think what the house would have looked like by morning (and did I mention that we keep the computer in the basement directly under the kitchen! Yikes, we're moving that!).

Here is the third layout I've made as part of Jessica Sprague's Digi in Deep class. The LO shows the front covers of J's favorite 3 books which relate to his favorite 3 things in life: trucks, bulldozers and dinosaurs.