Happy New Year!

Yes, this is a picture of adorable me. And the furball on my shoulder is Marty, the rabbit, dressed up in a cat costume. Honest, LOL!  Hmm, maybe it's time to go get an eye checkup!

We’re saying farewells to 2009 and also the first decade of the new century. In looking back, we had days of joys and sorrows, dreams fulfilled and disappointments, health and sickness. As ever in life, the moments and milestones were a mixed bag. And we wouldn’t have missed it for anything! We experienced it together, with faith that the good times would outweigh the bad ones. And they did!

Tomorrow will serve up a new year and a new decade. We’re ready for another chapter in our life journeys!

May 2010 bring you happiness, health, and prosperity, sprinkled with some rip-roaring adventures along the way for a little excitement.  And don't forget to cherish the joys in everyday moments and savor the times you spend with your friends and loved ones.

{{{hugs}}}

Homebuilding - Foundation Finished

Are you ready to see some more snapshots of our homebuilding project? By the middle of Christmas week, Builder Mike and his crew ran out of materials to complete the west side wall of the foundation.

More blocks and mortar were delivered to the site.

The final wall was quickly completed. Then waterproofing was applied and the drainage system was installed before Christmas day.

On Monday of this week, the driveway and garage areas got backfilled with gravel.

Without getting our feet muddy, we now had a clear pathway to investigate the cavernous crawl space for the first time.

The next phase will be framing! Stay tuned for another progress report next week!

Photoshop Elements Tip - Orton Effect

Now that things have settled down a bit after our recent house sale and move, we have more time to play with our digital images and discover new web resources for information.

For example, Texas Chicks Blogs and Pics provides some very nice tutorials. One technique really caught my eye: the orton effect.  This effect is named after photographer Michael Orton, who blended two images of an identical scene, but with difference exposures and sharpness.

rustic red barn near Mt. Lebanon Shaker Village, NY

The photo I took of this red barn is lovely. But application of an orton effect gives it a nice surreal quality.

rustic barn with the orton effect

Using an adjustment layer, I also desaturated the image to give it an antique feel.

rustic red barn with orton effect and slightly desaturated

I hope that this gives you a little inspiration to try the technique out on your photos!

Merry Christmas!

Joy to the World, the Lord is come!
Let earth receive her King.
Let every heart prepare Him room.
And Heaven and nature sing!

This special Christmas image is a present to my blog visitors!
I created it using one of my vacation photographs of a pine tree in western Colorado.
It is digitally enhanced with a distressed floral background overlay and star brushes.

The Knee Replacement Saga - Six Months Later

hiking on Grizzly Ridge, Purcell Mountains, British Columbia

Ah, my husband took this picture of me in 2004. I remember this hiking stroll in the Canadian Rockies very well! It takes your breath away to be immersed in such beauty! It is amazing that I got my left knee to behave 28 years so that I could experience glorious joys such as this hiking trip. In fact, it was amazing that I even lived after getting hit by a Mack truck in my youthful 20s! Multiple fractures healed, but the knee was never the same after that. Eventually, it all caught up to me. I knew it would. It was just a matter of time.

As many of you know, time finally ran out for me. I had a total left knee replacement on June 23. The recovery and therapy months were hell. No doubt about it. I had lots of pain. Sometimes, it was excruciating. I cried a lot. I did not want to be me. Poor hubby was beside himself, watching me struggle, endure, and cry. It was a journey that I did not want to take. And I am still mad as all get out that I had to have the replacement. There’s no going back, once you have (essentially) an amputation. There are going to be worries about possible infections and another replacement later on.

Let’s now fast forward to six months later. I am walking and getting around pretty well. The bone-on-bone pain before the surgery is long gone. I still have some moderate swelling and residual pain above and to one side of the knee. The nerve damage is still there, and I get stabbing sensations where the nerves are trying to regenerate. I am told that all of this is to be expected. I wonder if I will ever feel “normal” again. And, will I ever get to the point of forgetting that I have a huge hunk of medical equipment buried in me? I rather doubt it.

But I can accept it all at this point because I CAN WALK! And I can do some stair climbing. My stamina has returned to almost normal levels now. My ability to walk on uneven ground is improved. I can pretty much do what I need to do at this point in my life. Given what is going on with Washington politics these days, I also am relieved that I had the surgery before any governmental interference.

I am thankful for the care and expertise of my surgeon. His service charge was WAY too low, by the way. I am thankful to medical technology, so that I could have a state-of-the-art titanium knee made just for women. I am thankful to my former employer and its contribution to my medical insurance premiums (which I earned as part of my compensation). I am thankful for my insurance company (Blue Cross/Blue Shield), which didn’t give me one bit of trouble in paying the medical claims. I am thankful for the hospital staff, except for the poor excuse of the day nurse on the orthopedic ward. (Santa should deliver a whole truckload of coal to her house, thereby trapping her inside so that she can’t take her bad attitude out on other patients.) I am thankful for the therapy staff that got me moving again.

I am thankful for my sweet hubby and his tireless devotion in taking care of me. I hope to reciprocate someday if he ever has to go through a similar recovery. And, I am thankful for the emotional support from many of my blogging friends during the past six months. I’m blowing kisses to all of you!

We did a small road test last month up to Kentucky, and I did pretty well on that excursion. We’re looking at 2010 travel brochures that are now getting stuffed in our mailbox. Will I ever do wilderness hiking again? Probably not. I’m glad that I did it while I could, LOL! However, sweet hubby and I have many more traveling adventures ahead of us, and this bionic knee will help keep me walking and experiencing new joys.

P.S. And YES, I am thankful that the surgery is over!  Onward with life! 

Homebuilding - A Rising Foundation

The house foundation has been progressing over the past week and a half.  First step was pouring the footers.

Then the blocks, sand, and mortar mix were delivered.

Blocks started to get stacked.

And the blocks kept rising, clearly showing the footprint of our new home.

Foundation work should be completed this week.  It's going to get exciting from here!

An Undecorated Christmas

Because of the hurried, unexpected sale of our country home and move last month, we didn’t decorate our rental home for Christmas this year. After getting tuckered out, we weren’t up to all the holiday work too! We went the easy route, LOL. A gorgeous poinsettia takes center stage on the fireplace hearth; a few needlework ornaments rest in a basket; and one of our teddy bears is wearing a red stocking cap. That’s it!

As a result, I don’t have pictures of Christmas decorations to share with you this year. I have been enjoying the season vicariously by visiting my blogging friends. Thank you to those who have posted and spread a little holiday cheer! To reciprocate, I invite you to look back at our Christmas decorations of 2008.

Blog Tutorial: Changing Minima Template for Wider 2-Column Layout

From the very beginning of my blog’s creation, I have liked the simplicity of Blogger’s Minima two-column template. This template version also allows the user to decorate the computer screen sides with one of the many pretty backgrounds available on the internet (or one of your own).
But I have longed for an overall format width the equivalent of a 3-column blog, so that I could have a wider main column. There are times that I want the flexibility to showcase special images in a larger format.
Look at the difference between the sizes of the first image versus the one below. As a reader, which size photo would you like to see? Would you like to change your blog format too? Well, read on to find out how I accomplished this task!

My personal photo, altered using multiple
textured image layers from Shadowhouse Creations

Prepare a new picture insert for your header, with an image width of 900 pixels. If you use a web link to a decorative blog background, replace your background to one designed for 3 columns.
Go to Layout, Edit HTML tab. As a safety precaution, copy the entire template coding and save it in a Word file. (Or create a separate blog for format testing purposes. You can always delete it later.)
To widen the header width, look for this text in the html language:
#header-wrapper {
width:660px;
margin:0 auto 10px;
border:0px solid $bordercolor;
}
Change 660px to 900px.
To widen to outer wrapper, look for this text in the html language:
#outer-wrapper {
width: 660px;
margin:0 auto;
padding:10px;
text-align:$startSide;
font: $bodyfont;
}
Change 660px to 900px.
The next step is to change the main column width, so look for this text in the html language:
#main-wrapper {
width: 410px;
float: $startSide;
word-wrap: break-word; /* fix for long text breaking sidebar float in IE */
overflow: hidden; /* fix for long non-text content breaking IE sidebar float */
}
Change 410px to 660px.
The last change to make is to widen the footer, so look for this text in the html language:
#footer {
width:660px;
clear:both;
margin:0 auto;
padding-top:15px;
line-height: 1.6em;
text-transform:uppercase;
letter-spacing:.1em;
text-align: center;
}
Change 660px to 900px.
Preview your new template. If you are satisfied, then click on Save Template.
The last adjustment to make is to upload your new header picture with the wider format.
The revised template will now allow posting of images that are a maximum of 640 pixels by 640 pixels. (I found that to be the optimum size to go with the revised main column width of 660 pixels.) For these larger image sizes, upload your image on a photographic storage website like Photobucket. (You can adjust pixel sizes in Photobucket after file uploading, if you prefer.) Then insert the photo in your blog post via a direct link, rather than uploading it into your Picasa web album.
So there you go! The above steps are certainly not cast in stone. These are merely the adjustments that I recently made for my blog, thanks to some online research. If you want to tinker with the pixel sizes to suit your tastes, then give it a whirl! And, if you totally mess things up and want to go back to a standard 2-column Minima template, then reinsert the original html language that you copied earlier.
I welcome your feedback on these instructions!

P.S. I did more exploring to figure out why my properly scaled, wider photos were being resized by the Picasa uploader back down to the 400 pixels maximum width.  This quirk was requiring me to do a web link to Photobucket to obtain the larger format image size in my posts. I did not know that Blogger had an updated post editor available.  It allows upload of "extra wide" photos.
To make the change, go to your Dashboard's Settings/Basic tabs. Scroll down to "Select post editor".  Choose "Updated editor" instead of "Old editor".  Problem solved!

Ta-Da! New Blog Look!

For those who have followed my blog for a while, can you see what I exciting changes I made today? After a little investigating and testing, I figured out how to widen my main column and make the total overall width equivalent to a three-column blog. Now I have the ability to show bigger photographs!
I could not figure out how to make Picasa uploaded pictures in a wider format than 400 by 400 pixels. So I’ll be posting bigger formats via Photobucket.

I hope you like this change!

Additional note: Some of you have expressed interest in getting a wider main column on your blog. In the next few days, I will work up a post for you that explains how I adjusted the html language.

Homebuilding - Ready, Set, Go!

Are you ready to see the beginning of our homebuilding adventure? Above is the streetlight that is on the corner of our property. And shown below is our lot! The villa section of the subdivision is located on a hill. Our little plot of land backs up to a beautiful wooded section of a common area. You might spot in the picture a band of silt fencing to prevent soil erosion down the hill during the construction phase. The two large trees in the middle were destined for removal because they were too close to the house footprint.

We knew that Builder Mike was getting serious when we saw the power pole onsite and waiting for installation on the day we signed the contract!

And as soon as there was a break in the weather, they got going on the clearing work!

Tree cutting was on the priority list.

A timber pile was placed near the front of the lot, ready for pickup and recycling.

Look at this huge stump! It is always sad to take down such beautiful trees, but it had to be done for the safety of our new home.

Stay tuned for more news as Builder Mike makes progress in the groundbreaking!

The Red Kettle

We are not taking on elf duties this Christmas season at our local Salvation Army’s distribution center. After all the packing and moving activities, more standing and walking would not be good for us. So we are putting extra money in the kettles this year, every time we pass them.

If you see a Salvation Army kettle in the days ahead, please consider putting some of your spare change or a few greenbacks in the bucket. This is a wonderful organization, and they provide services all year long within your community to those who need it most.

Thank you!

First Snow!

Look at what greeted us this morning! Our first snow of the new winter season! Here was the view from the deck of our temporary home. Temperatures have warmed up and it’s almost gone now, but it was pretty while it lasted.

Grey Havens - A New Beginning

Bilbo Baggins: “I think I’m quite ready
for another adventure.”
(Lord of the Rings Trilogy, The Return of the King)

Now that we have bought the lot for our villa home and signed the contract with “Builder Mike”, construction will commence!

Our new Grey Havens will be located within a recently developed subdivision and just a couple of miles away from our previous country cottage. It be in the villa section, where homeowners are not responsible for yard work. There are several floor plans and outside designs to choose for a villa home. The architect is Jonathan Miller, who specializes in charming traditional styles. Below is the architect’s conceptual drawing of the design we chose.

One of these home styles has been completed so far, and this is how it turned out.


Our cottage will have the garage located on the right-hand side. There will also be a walking trail built on one side of our lot, winding down off the hill to the entrance drive and clubhouse. With no basement, we will be adjusting to about 40% less space than our previous home. But it will be cozy and beautiful, situated on a lot that backs up to woodlands. It is the "retirement home" that we have been waiting for!

So get ready for news about our building activities and adventures in the weeks and months ahead!

December - A Look Ahead

This month is going to be zippy! And happy! Santa arrived early for us with the sale of our country cottage last month. Today, we purchase the lot and sign the contract with the builder for our new villa-style cottage! Construction will start immediately. If all goes well with the weather, our new “Grey Havens” will be finished by the end of May!

We are making appointments and meeting with various suppliers this month to pick out appliances, cabinets, lighting, etc. There are a lot of decisions to make, but we’re ready! We have wanted to get on with this phase of our lives for the past three years. So bring it on!

We are now comfortably settled into our rental home and recuperating from all the hard work of packing, moving, and unpacking essentials needed for the next six months. My knee is improving, but it has residual aches and pains associated with nerve damage and swelling. I greatly appreciate everyone's concern about my healing! I am getting around well, but I don’t break any speed records, LOL! I just take it slow and easy, making sure of my footing at all times. We’ll be getting back to the fitness center this month, and routine workouts will help me improve further.

Also on the health front, sweet hubby is going to have a routine colon test, and I will have a bone scan (for osteoporosis). We have a couple of other doctor checkups scheduled this month too. We are pretty healthy and intend to remain so!

We had a lovely short trip to middle Kentucky last month. No other journeys are planned for the near term. We intend to hit the traveling trail next spring. In the meantime, I will be immersing myself in self-taught photo editing lessons, in-between the oversight of our cottage building activities. And I will doing more blogging too!