You know your getting REALLY old when your retired neighbor (female, and not a very young one at that!) comes and digs your path for you!
We were all snuggly and warm in our pj's and just taking it easy, and since Howie knew the warm air was coming tomorrow and would melt some of the ice, he didn't bother rushing out to shovel the driveway.

The highlight of our month (besides the excitement of Inauguration Day) was when we got together and lunched at The Cheesecake Factory. I decided not to waste all those calories on the cheesecake dessert so just took one bite as a taster. I discovered I do like cheesecake after all!

KPertiet Cabana White paper
Grid idea from Planet Earth ad

23rd thru 28th January click to enlarge

I have been taking photos each day but haven't posted them individually yet.

Howard received this cute bouquet of fruit for his birthday.

Snow and a brand new President. It was my 6 month checkup point at the clinic so wasn't able to watch it :(
I burned some more Afternoon Tea Brit programs to DVD. (Ballykissangel )

  

I had more fun  working on these family pages of my family.  Fabric, paper and my sewing machine all seem to work for me.  This is my sister Pat, probably in the mid nineteen forties.  
I'll post more when I have nothing else to photograph!

Inauguration Day

As everyone was heading south on I-95 to Washington D.C., to be a part of the inauguration, I was going the opposite direction to Baltimore.

There was something eerie driving through to my appointment with so little traffic. The clinic waiting room was stranger yet with so many empty seats.

I go several times a year and it's normal to spend the whole morning or afternoon sitting in one waiting area after another, never had such a short wait before.

A sure sign that almost all of Baltimore had emptied out to the District of Columbia. Mind you, I'd love to have been right there with them watching the swearing in!

Altered Book

Another page from my altered book. Playing with a photo of my sister 1981. I suppose most of my pages would be considered hybrid - besides heap of paint and collage, I also used a lot of photoshop.

Because of my poor hearing, everybody sounds as though they're squawking a foreign tongue on the Internet, this headset keeps me in touch with most of the cyber speaking world.
I have another wireless headset for the T.V. that is nice to wear as I pop into the kitchen to make a cup of tea, and don't have to miss any words spoken on my favorite show.

Altered Book of a 1981 Brit Trip

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Pages from an altered book I did several years ago. The book was about London and I made it to place photos of the trip back home in 1981. I took daughters, Linda and Lauren to meet their British side of the family.

I was surprised that they were surprised to discover how many cousins they had who were around their age.

Trust the art schools to go against tradition!

For the graduation ceremony at MICA (The Maryland Institute, College of Art) in Baltimore, we wore a velvet beret for graduation instead of the usual mortarboard. That was many years ago.

But, I mean, come on, I only get to graduate once and was so looking forward to throwing my hat up in the air—or is that the Navy who does that?

Anyway, because we're artists now, and artists don't know what the words convention or tradition mean—we throw that all back, we have to wear those round velvet blobs that didn't even cover my bad hair day—what the?

I still occasionally wear the beret in combination with another felt floppy hat though.

Just a glimpse at this forty or fifty year old culprit that killed my favorite knife!  

I have to take some of the blame since I was the one who bought it, and worse yet, used it.  I've learned my lesson! 

A very old knife

The knife sitting there came from Woolworth's on Oxford Street, London.  It was 1957 and we'd just got married.  We were living in an apartment on Edgware Road that wasn't fully-furnished so I had to go buy kitchen gear.  Along with the usual pots and pans, I picked up two knives.  

The second knife had to be thrown out a couple of years ago.  I used to get a razor sharp edge with one of those old sharpeners that shaved away the metal.  Unfortunately, it eventually ate the blade up to the spine.
  

This one shown is made of a harder metal so I couldn't use that old sharpener on it (thank goodness).  It cuts like a charm if I work the steel as I use it.  I've yet to find a reasonably priced knife as sharp as these in this many years.

We can no longer visit our first home together, because of the Westway A40. So many homes and buildings were torn down in this area of London  the A40, an elevated highway, could be built.

In 2005, As I watched the news about a terrorist bombing, this area was shown, because it was part of that terrible day.

I'm always rummaging around flea markets and antique shops looking for bits and bobs. I picked up this porcelain glove mold for my necklaces—they made it top heavy at one point.

My sister gave me the bracelet just before I left England, and it went into a zippered travel bag with other costume jewelry. When we got off the boat in New York, they said we couldn't carry our own bags off the ship because of a union thing.

The porter rushed us through the large crowd when suddenly a large divider split us up. It only seemed like a few seconds—he handed us our bags and was gone.

Mine had been slashed. A large decorative hair piece was broken, but nothing was missing.

My first impression of the U.S. had been tarnished.

Books I'm Reading

This week I’m into learning iPhoto.

Katrin Eastmann’s Photoshop book on masking and compositing is still within my reach at all times, and I'm re-visiting my old friend, "The Journals of Dan Eldon".

Are we glad to have our second car back in front of our house where it belongs. After 30 yrs, we lost this spot to new neighbors. Rather than confrontation, we decided to do as animals do and reclaim our territory! How long does this take?

My husband took a liking to this perpetual calendar by Park Sherman Co., when he found it among some stuff in his old home. How old is anybody's guess, but I thought Howard was using it as a paper weight until I started this one-photo-a-day thing and noticed the date. He changes it by hand every day!

The first week 365 Project

Project 365 Week 1

I Love David Carson's work - this is cheap knock off!

Little bits of the past week - some pictures were too crisp or bright for the grid so I blurred or desaturated them a little - how crazy is that, when I normally spend quite a bit of time in Photoshop getting them to look as best as I can!!  

This project for me, at this time, is mainly about learning to take pictures and recording a little bit about my day.  I'm sure as the year goes by, things will change.

KPertiet_CabanaWhite
Fonts:
Helvetica
Baskerville

After a spending a good afternoon in one of those big stores where you can never find a thing, and when you do finally find someone to ask, discover it's all the way back at the end of the store you just came from!  After spending hours doing this, there's nothing that makes me more irritable than having to force my poor feet to stand yet another hour at the kitchen stove!

At these times, Trader Joe's little demi-meals are marvelous for easing the nerves.  I try to keep little packets of these in my freezer at all times.  This curried rice was very tasty and quick - that's what I like when I'm tired. I cooked some thinly cut pork chops and made a salad so the meal was on the table in a jiffy 

The Fifth Day - The Tree Comes Down!

Howard had all the ornaments nicely in little rows and piles for me to pack away. I especially liked the ribbons all in a row!


What a great bunch of colors and textures for me to practice my camera on! I worked on my DOF for a while!

The Fourth Day - The water finally runs free!

Finally!! I can use the dishwasher without the water backing up over the counter and seeping into the under sink cabinet and soaking its contents! I was fed up with the green stuff oozing out of the air vent, the dishwasher stinking like crazy after the water at the bottom went sour (I cleaned that one twice), and tramping up the stairs to empty buckets of water so I could get on with rinsing the dishes I'd just washed.

I stayed up half the night working on the stopped up drain, and this morning when I got up, the water flowed down the pipes like a charm! 

I don't think any of the professional stuff was getting to the cause - I figured it was just sitting in the brand new elbow of the waste disposal and not getting to the real plugged up mess that was further down in the pipes. It needed a little coaxing to reach the blockage, but not so much as to dilute the stuff.

At least I got one shot of the lighted tree even though I still have a long way to go, photographing lights.  I played around a little to capture the lights with the help of several guides this evening, and planned to continue practicing the following night, but in the morning I saw the tree had been taken down and put away! 

My own fault because I gave Howard the go-ahead several days ago.  I'm glad I played around a little, while they were up though - I'll start earlier next year.

The Third Day - Photography 101 for the Umpteenth Time!

Last year I started the photo course over at twopeas.com I learned quite a bit about my digital camera, but unfortunately none of it stayed in my head!

I decided to take it again this year, but this time I printed out the lessons and put them in a binder so I could carry it around with me.

I'm not sure how many times I've taken Photography 101, But I do know I'm getting worse - especially with these digital cameras and the zillion buttons I have to learn. I do love them though so I'll just keep plodding on!

Doing dishes by hand these days!

We haven't been able to use the dishwasher because of the blocked up sink - I don't mind doing the dishes, but having to tramp upstairs with the water after I wash them is getting to be a little tiring!

Hello New Year

New Year’s eve is special to me because in 1956 at the exact moment the New Year came in, was when Howard ask me to marry him! We were at a military club, the Douglas house in London, and all the drinks at the bar were free.  I said I was going to start at the top of the drink list and see how far down I could get before the New Year.  I couldn’t understand why Howard was just holding onto one or two drinks all evening but later he told me he didn’t want to be drunk at midnight when he had planned to propose to me.