Saturday, March 31, 2012

Pretty Little Pansies, and Some New Effects in Picassa...


Just some little pansies on the window sill...

using a new effect in Picassa

...I love the way it changed the flowers...

but then it left these black lines at the top and bottom

 it's called cinemascope...




here i cropped out the black part...


Here it is with an effect called HDR-ish

I have no idea what HDR-ish stands for 

When people use intitials for things, half the time i don't know what they are talking about

like "IMHO"

what the hell does that mean?

turns out it means
"In my humble opinion"

it looks to me like it's saying 

"I'm a Ho"

I'm a little on the autistic spectrum, and quite literal

Anyway, got sidetracked...

 here is the HDR-ish effect



Same photo, except with a white border
but no effects 

doesn't even look like the same photo as the ones above, does it!?


This is the pansies at night with the overhead light on ...
no effects...

a little dried lavender from last summer on the side...


Another view of the pansies, with an added border
just added a little 'fill light'
 

here they are with the CinemaScope effect...


I'm intrigued with some of the new effects in Picassa...
they're kinda fun to mess with

Picassa is  a fairly simple program to use
you can just go online and download it to your computer, and it's free..
 
I'm a simple blogger, and i need a simple and easy program for photos
 i don't feel that i have the time or the patience to learn photoshop and any other really fancy programs, 
 mean if i were younger, and didn't work, and didn't want to garden, and paint, and do other stuff on the weekends...
 i would definitely try to take time and learn photoshop
especially after seeing what some of you guys can do with photos

  i use my iphone for all my photos...

as you know, some of them aren't that great
but some of the pictures are ok enough!

So that's all for now my sweeties...


the end

 

Wednesday, March 28, 2012

Where Do I Put It ???


 My friend Karan, found this incredible light fixture, and she knew i would love it, so she saved it for me...

obviously i was staging the photo by leaving the glass of water in it.... geesh
I talk about her alot, i know... She's the one with the cutest shop ever,
 and i love her 

This is at her shop now...


it had this awful dark blue velvet fabric on it... and dark brown wood...

check out what can happen with an old beat up chair that is stripped and recovered...


this is at her shop too, and  i could have this at a really really good price....


do i get it, to replace my cupboard...


or just be happy with what i have?

you can see the little cupboard on the left




Anyway, i have this amazing light fixture, 


and i don't know where to put it... 
cause i have a small house and too much stuff!


so i propped it up in different places in the house...


here it is crammed on my bedside dresser 
i would have to get rid of something to make it work here...

it has light like candle light, so i like the idea of it in the bedroom

i prefer to be seen by candle light or pitch black these days...

i'm like Bridgett Jones in "the movie Bridgett Jones Diary"
i don't want anyone, including me, having a daylite view of 
 my jiggly bits...  !


here it is sitting all wonky doodle on the mantel, but i like my two sconces here too ... 
it does look pretty with the rose though... hmmmmm


Here it is on the little corner cupboard thingy i pulled  from the dump
 in the dining room...


 So where do i put it???
or, even though it is amazing,
should i just give it back to her...

 there are so many cool, beautiful things in the world you can have...
what does one keep, or get rid of

when are we finally satisfied?




Ok, so let's change the subject...
let me show you my living room this weekend... 

you can't even walk in here...
ted's brother and his friend are here for the weekend to make music
these old guys still rock, let me tell you...



that's why the fixture was wonkydoodle on the mantel... i could barely cross the room without tripping on a guitar to try it out...
so i just did the quicky prop up, not trying to make it all straight or anything...


and here's is a really cool thing Ted's brother Charlie showed me that you might not know about...
He showed me this little lens you can get for your iphone type phones


It's a fish eye lens!!!!

you glue this little circle with a magnet around you phone camera lens, and then the lens just attaches to the magnet... 
you can get a view of the whole room, it really works great!


I would show you how the camera works by taking a photo,
but my house is so trashed i can't even deal with it all right now... 

plus it looks like Armeggedon outside, it's about to storm, and i am SCARED of storms!


So anyway, I think i'm gonna keep the light fixture, and MAKE it work... cause it's so cool


but the hutch... what do you think???
get it or let it go.....?



...the end...


Wednesday, March 21, 2012

Isn't it Fabulous!


The wisteria is in bloom!


I just walk right out into the parking lot at work
 and go straight to the fence where it is dripping in purple and violet 
and i bury my face in the soft scented flowers....

doesn't everyone do that?


and that's all there is to my little story about wisteria

...the end...


Monday, March 19, 2012

Do You Think I Should Drop Some Sheep in this Meadow ?


Ok, Sheep or no sheep? 

I kind of like it plain... but i could paint a couple of little sheep in this meadow,

if a painting has sheep in it,  it sells!



kinda like this little meadow painting...


It's soooo springy outside, oh my gosh, it's heavenly...
the quince are blooming...



and the stinky bradford pears...

when they are in full bloom they smell like a polecat... 
whatever that is...

not my favorite tree, but it was here when we moved in...

and it is pretty when it blooms


trying to mulch and trim and get the yard all tucked in and tidy for spring

I also wanted to show you the flea market chippy frame i put around my rose painting
it doesn't fit perfectly, it's just a little small on the sides

 so i just propped the frame up against it...

for $10.00 I'll make it work!
I love old frames,

they're even pretty empty,  without any painting!





Ok, so here is me trying to make my little hall bathroom look like this one i found on Pinterest...

just look at this heavenly color and oh my gosh that vanity and mirror!


why does this color look so bad in here?????


What the !!!???

I will NEVER figure out why a wall color looks so good in one place
and so AWFUL glow in the dark hideous in another!

I repainted it back the same green ... for now... grrrr...

anyway that's it from around here in ADD land...
how many different things did i just talk about?

it's Monday and i'm back to work


...the end...


Friday, March 16, 2012

Dining Room, From Order to Chaos to Order, for now....



I thought it might be kinda interesting to show ya'll the progression of my dining room, beginning with when i first moved in this house 5 years ago, until now...

mostly because i'm tired and BORING and have nothing else good to talk about

Here is the now....
well, except for the mirror..
 
Here is the actual now, because i stole the mirror and put it back in my bedroom
 
one of my signature blurry photos
from the dining room looking into the living room...


 ok, in the beginning....

here is a photo of the dining room of the former owner ... she had a black Target table and chairs.... and i liked them!  
She had the house so neat and tidy, and i was enchanted with that, since the house i had before was kind of chaos...
sorry for the crappy photo, this was when we were thinking about buying the house
 Sooooo, i copied her, and bought the exact same chairs and table!
I loved the color in here and the kitchen, it was so warm and cozy...
you can see i added curtains and made a few changes, but kept the same look overall...

Then i found some cute white chairs... and an old vintage mantel... 
couldn't afford to cover the chairs, so i draped fabric all over them... just dreaming of redoing them
i just propped the mantel up, cause i was thinking about it

...for 3 months... 

 we are now moving from order... to chaos!




This is when i discovered blogging, by accident!
Somehow i happened upon 
The Old Painted Cottage blog 
and saw the MOST AMAZING MAKEOVER EVER!
and Jennifer of The Old Painted Cottage, did design consultations


So i hired her!  
It was not that expensive at all
I sent her photos, and she gave me a plan
She said paint the living room dining room and kitchen all the same color,
get a seagrass rug and a chandelier 
and about a thousand other things 
like get some Ikea white slipcovered chairs 
she knew i was on a budget
she sent me links to stuff
it was soooo worth it...

She said the colors i had now looked Tuscan!
I was horrified!  I am so NOT Tuscan, not that there is anything wrong with Tuscan style, it's just not me!


 so i painted over my beloved Terra Cotta with this boring color
"Canvas Natural" by Ralph Lauren

It sure looked great in Jennifer's house, so i just did it, 
but i was sad to paint over that yummy warm color...

I  got a seagrass rug from good old Lowes 
glued some fabric on the chairs... yes, i did say i glued it... 
i'm such a ho for a quick fix

painting of hydrangeas in progress on the mantel


Here i took my gingham fabric and made pretend curtains...
  I just tacked them to the wall...





Next i painted the little Target table white, and got these gorgeous French chairs from my friend with the cute little shop

"Fetch"

  i got rid of the mantel
stole the mirror from my bedroom,
 (which was a plastic gold mirror i painted white)... 
and got a chandy online for around $150.00 bucks...not too bad for the price...


hmmmmm... i'm thinkin this is kinda pretty!
Jennifer's plan is all coming together, things are beginning to be more cohesive...
bottom line, it's worth it to pay for help !

Of course in the meantime i was pathologically reading all of your blogs and learning like crazy about great ways to do stuff!

and decided to start my own blog, because i was doing stuff too!



But Alas... my 24 year old son came to live with us for 

 SEVEN MONTHS... 
(that's another story for sure)

and well...... those sweet little french chairs, 
 you know how kids will just smush themselves into a chair without pulling it away from the table, because it's waaaaay too much work to pull the chair out! 

 and you know how i said "be sure an pull the chair out, before you sit in it, because these chairs are a little delicate" 

and you know how kids completely DON'T listen to anything you say???

and if you're talking to a 23 year old boy, and your sentence dosen't have some combination of the words,

food, beer, girls, pizza, or money in it

he sees your mouth moving, but that's about it?
RIP, TEAR, GASH... 
that would describe what happened to the cane in the chair

Whatever... i'm over it...
He's a person, and the chairs are things

In the meantime i found these other caned chairs at Habitat for Humanity, and wanted to use my gingham fabric that i love... 
cause i love me some big gingham checks
they were ugly brown, 
so i painted them and put the fabric on them
and found this table on craiglist, which was real wood, and not particle board,  
and sanded off the ugly brown top and painted the bottom white...
and hung my painting in an old chippy frame from the flea market...
and put my mirror back in the bedroom

and here is the dining room now... 
blurry photo and all

when i look at the photos in this post, i really like the room better with the pink chairs and the mirror
I still have the chairs, but have to repair the broken cane on the one... 

 did you know that the cane on these chairs is hand woven, 
and each of those little cane holes costs about $1.00 to fix, and that there are 8 million little cane hole knots there... 
what i always really wanted were some of those Rachael Ashwell dining chairs

can i afford them?  uhhhh...NO!  
$398.00 each

so this is where we are right now...


and ... of course you know, this will change again soon...

because i like the photo with the pink chairs and the mirror better

and...

that's the way we girls roll


...the end...