Oyay! Oyay!

If I were a town crier I'd be ringing my bell loud and clear!  Because you see, my blog will be one year old on Monday 20th June.

And I am organising a  

BLOG HOP 

to celebrate.  

This is my way of saying thank you to everyone who has been part of my journey.  I have some amazing participants lined up, a surprise or two, and am I excited ?  Yes I am!  I hope you will make a note of the date and join us for some fun!
Thank you to Robert Needham, Town Crier for Colchester, Essex for permission to use this photo. 

I'm also celebrating progress in other areas too.  In my last post I named 10 things I wanted to achieve in the coming weeks.  I have ticked off Project 365 and these photos are now sorted and downloaded onto my Flickr site.  Yay!!

Thank you to anyone who left a comment on my post.  I was truely grateful and encouraged and have visited each of you to thank you personally.  But the Google Gremlins were about... grrrrr!  After writing a comment I would be signed out..... I would sign back in and repreat the process only to be met with the same problem.  I can't tell you how much time was wasted and it got so bad that I actually gave up.  And I don't give up easily!  But I did get to see what other people listed as their 10 things and loved the ideas and the sharing.  And I also found out something pretty special, but more about that next time.... 

Another of my intentions was to start a art journal.  I love using all kinds of media so this seemed a good place to experiment and work on pieces that are small enough to complete.  There's no point in starting yet another project that remains unfinished!  And so I bought this book.  There are no techniques or instructions, just 1000 images of completed work.  But a great souce of inspiration which will naturally flow into my other creative areas.


By the way,  has anyone else had Google sign in problems or is it just me? 
Enjoy your week, what ever you are doing.

10 things on the 10th

I posted here about things I want to change within the next 5 years.  That is a very generous time frame because realistically I want it to be more like 5 months.  But who’s counting?!

Then Shimelle suggested posting 10 things on the 10th of the month and I got thinking. ....  life has felt very chaotic and busy lately.  Things have been neglected because of the on-going building work and spending time with my Mum following her operation.   I have now started my new job and slowly, slowly, I am gathering my breath and trying to catch up.  And so, I am going to set myself 10 goals this 10th day of the month.

I am giving myself to the 10th of next month to complete this, that's 4 weeks.  So let’s start:

1.     Sort out my photos.   Since December these have been simply downloaded off the camera onto the computer.   Usually I sort each download into various albums and have a system that works for me.  I take lots of photos on a daily basis so this will be a huge task.  And best not left any longer!

 2.     Project 365.  Yes – I am still doing this even though my Flickr album only contains 30 photos this year.  This means I need to download a photo a day from February to now.  I once got behind with this before and made a mental not NEVER to do that again as it was so frustrating and difficult to catch up.  Some lessons need repeating!

3.    Start an art journal.  This is more pleasure than pain.  Something I keep saying I want to do, and now I have set myself a target.

4.    Finish knitting a bolero for my newest granddaughter.  I keep starting projects and not finishing them, and you know how fast babies grow.  Wren will outgrow it before I finish if I don’t get it done!

 
5.    Complete my Journal Your Christmas album.  Yes – you read right!  I know I have said this before and again I will be taking it to my monthly group.  But this time I plan not to be distracted.  The trouble is I see other exciting ideas and put the JYC album aside.  Not this time, because I really do want to finish it before I start another album.  And I have others earmarked so I have motivation.

6.    Start using my Wii machine again.  I did use this regularly for a while and enjoyed the fitness games and exercises.  I need to increase my physical activity and this suits my lifestyle right now.  In the future I hope to be able to get out more.   I love walking and gardening but for now things indoors are more pressing.

7.    Plan something for my blog birthday on 20th June.  I’m still thinking what I might do.  Watch this space!

8.    Plan a holiday or short break away.  A change of scenery would be very welcome.

 9.    Organise my work space.  You know how things accumulate and increase in piles?  At least it saves the need to dust.....

10.    Add a texture to a photo.  One of my plans this year was to experiment with Photoshop Elements and become more familiar and confident with using it.  Not so!  I have used textures before by layering and I even started taking photos specially to use as textures & effects.  Remember I said I download my photos into albums?  ‘Textures’ is one of them  and this is a photo I previously experimented with. I am setting this as my final challenge and hope I can remember how to do this.
Incidentally, if you don't have Photoshop, 'Picnik' offer a range of special effects, lots of them free and fun to play with.

 
I am looking forward to coming back on 10th of next month to celebrate my achievements, and I really hope I can do all these things.  Especially organising the photos.  I wonder what 10 things you would choose?