Meet Willow...our new rescue puppy

We have a new addition to our household and her name is Willow...She is part Golden and part Brittany.

We found her while searching for a rescue pup through Petfinder.

We flew her all the way from a Texas Foster home with the American Brittany rescue society. The kids and I had to travel to Portland PDX to pick her up in 110* weather... but she is definately worth it! Such a darling girl! She is about 9 1/2 weeks old and learning some basic commands already...like you get too close to the cat and your nose will sting for a while!LOL...too cute!

You might have noticed that I also used the Orchid photo one more time...having such a good time with it. Hope everyone has a great weekend!

Orchids in July...

Thank you dear friends for inquiring on where I have been lately and if I have been creating...the truth of the matter is that most of my time has been spent at the flower shop creating bouquets and moving into our new home in June. I have tried to capture a few flowers to tweak on the computer just to keep the 'ole creative juices flowing...and this image of an orchid gave my muse just the right inspiration to be bold and playful!!!

Hope you enjoy!

Mind Wide Open... April entry...moments of hope

Gail Schmidt from Shabby Cottage Studio has a new blog http://www.mind-wideopen.blogspot.com/which features delightful monthly challenges...
This is my April entry using her image and my digital photos... roses altered to sepia...a butterfly and digital embellishments with the text "moments".

I haven't been able to create much lately but this challenge came at the right time and gave me just the right inspirational kick in the muse to get my creative juices a jump start.

I saw my first butterfly of the year yesterday, that resembled the one in the photo...it gave me hope of the Spring to come...

Hoping everyone is blessed!

Bird digi-collage...hoping for spring

...this is an altered digital photo of some apples that I snapped..I added many layers of textures, designs & frames over the black and white vintage image of the birds. Hope you like.

I heard the first bird songs of spring, even though we have been having a few snow flurries still...I know Spring will not be too far away for us now!

Some sad, sad news and a tribute to my mother

My wonderful mother passed away on Friday March 9. Her funeral was on Tuesday, March 17. We didn't realize it but the date that we picked was St. Patrick's Day. She was only 76 yrs.

She kept an Irish Blessing on her refrigerator for many years and it really brought her joy.

...this photo is of some "secret" stairs in my home town that I used to take to elementary school once in a while. While I was back taking care of the funeral arrangements for my mother, I had to stop and snap a shot, revisiting some of my childhood memories.

I offered to make the memorial folders for the funeral and on the back side of the folders, I added the Irish Blessing saying in her honor, over the photo of the stairs.

My mom...she had a great sense of humor, loved children, and always found the simple things in life to be the most rewarding... I will always miss her, but am so glad that I shared so many years by her side!

This photo started out as pink gerber daisies from the flower shop...I had fun layering and altering it to get to the point that you find here...I think eventually I would even take it further, with some 3D embellishments, maybe on a journal cover or something??!

The workshop is winding down now and the last step is the "in the studio" approach to making a fabulous finished mat for our photos. I am not able to access my art supplies right now so I will have to put this last step on hold until a little later and come back to it.
In the mean time I will be continuing on my own to explore this fun new adventure of digital tweaking...I feel that I am just really scratching the surface of what there is to explore and so for now, I must be content to keep my hands clean and out of my art supplies and on the computer keyboard keys!!!

spruced up with digi-bling...

...the last photo looked a bit haunting for me, so I added some bling to make it look more vintage & pulled together...
and it was cool including my own photo into the mix...
I think the wall clock gave the girl a frame and a theme to work with so that was fun...


...the digi-bling was from Roben-Marie from Paper Bag Studios ...http://paperbagstudios.com/shoppe/