My summer time continues to be somewhat erratic and so today I’m just going to share a simple post with some recent photos of what’s been going on.

My sister in law sent me this picture this morning of my brother’s arm. He’s the one that lost the recent tumbling match with a boulder. This makes me glad of who I’m not.

Tay and mom conversing in his typical fashion of late.

Rescuing a baby bird - another Tay find.

Keeping cool at the pool and with water balloons.

Enjoying Arizona nights.

Cid coloring her T-Shirt. (Never too busy to strike a pose.)

Tay coloring his.

And last but not least more pool side fun with the bubble blower and new sun glasses.

When I began blogging nearly two years ago, (yipes can it be that long already?!) I wasn’t really sure what the point or purpose was. I’d watched my hubby develop his blog and it was fun, plus he kept at my heels about joining the blogging world. But I wasn’t sure what it would be for me just that I’d probably figure it out once I got my feet wet. Which I’m happy to report I did.

The first few months were fun and addicting and I networked like crazy meeting some wonderful friends, many of whom I still blog with and correspond with today. I found that my primary purpose of converting my files and collection to digital format got lost quickly in the fun of daily articles and interaction. By year’s end I had subscribed to so many fun blogging buddy’s blogs that it took me several hours to get through reading all the new articles in my reader. I had to step back.

The next year I found myself maintaining relations, joining in fun carnivals and weekly themes, even creating some of my own projects. The growth was fun and my blog was gaining all kinds of fun comments, readers and popularity - according to rankings on sites like Technorati (who even made a personal pit stop on this post.) But pretty soon I started questioning what I was doing again and why I felt so different. I’d run a decent gamut on crash course blogging 101 from carnivals, to memes to traffic groups, and more and I frequently shared my answers as I found them.

Now, nearly two years and 500 posts later I’m reflecting on my blog’s life. I’m slowing down with my writings, letting personal projects and series slide into obscurity and caring less and less about the many awards, rankings and promotional stuff. In fact, I’m pretty much a Monday-Wednesday blogger now with rarely a post on other days. My hubby’s blog, which I really enjoyed reading, has remained nearly inactive for almost a year now. Many fun friends and their blogs have quietly disappeared. Yet at the same time many friends and family are just wading into the blogging world trying to decide between private or public blogs. And still others are in the thick of all the millions of social networking and ranking sites that crop up daily or have multiple blogs now selling things, etc. Somehow I can’t help but wonder where blogging will go in the next 2-5 years.

One thing I predict and have tried to sell my husband on is the bridge between the blog and book publishing. With so many great tools available today for desktop publishing and do it yourself publishing, it’s so easy to send your entire blog out and get a beautiful, bound BOOK in return. This is cool. It’s more than just a journal, more than just a scrapbook of pictures; it’s a combination of the two in a powerful and professional way. Historians, scrappers and journal writers have a gold mine here when they see the potential before them. But I want more.

I want my hubby to develop a report program of sorts. You see, I’m not content with just printing all my stuff in a book by year or some other general criteria. I want the power to enter a key word, time frame, etc. for a specific printed work. The hardest part is already done, the content already in place. I just want a tool to go extract what I want when I want it for the purpose I want it. Is that too much to ask? For example, I want to be able to print a scrapbook of just pictures and articles for our NY trip last summer but I don’t want to go sort it all myself, compile it and then send it to one of the many publishing options. I want to print my own book of just my articles on a specific topic like motherhood or life coaching, etc. Or how about taking my digital files I’ve created by category and burning them onto a CD to sell/share or put into a published book? The potential is there, it’s just untapped.

So is this where the blogging world is going? I don’t know, but it’s a trip I’d like to take. Maybe it would breathe new life back into my motivational sails and get me sharing more tips, files and fun things like I used to. Who knows? Of course, maybe I need to stop looking for excuses or magic pills too. *snort* All I know is that this blogging world is sure a wonder.

Technorati Tags:
Scrapbook Sharing Potential Blogging

I’ve decided what my favorite hobby is. It’s creating. I love creating things. New recipes, crafts, graphic arts and especially anything and everything with my computer. I wish I had more time to just sit here and create.

While at the beach this summer I enjoyed a wonderful afternoon with my daughter collecting seashells. I didn’t want to deal with the fuss of figuring out how to clean them well enough to take them home only to sift through the broken ones and wonder what to do with them anyway. In the end most would get thrown out. Now, if I were my grandmother I would collect enough of the same type to make fun things like jewelry boxes, rock people and jewelry. But I’m pretty impatient and need more immediate results. So I made shell art instead. At first the kids weren’t sure what I was doing but as I got it going they all joined in watching and collecting. A few even made some of their own. I took a picture which is easier to bring home than a bunch of smelly shells on a plane and came home to the second wave of creating on my computer. I’m thinking about using it for some greeting cards or stationery.

When I sat down yesterday to work on some scrapbook pages I found myself spending more time designing layout elements than putting together pages. I love creating things with my own hands. Here’s some of what I came up with:

You can’t see it with these small images, but the papers have really fun textures and designs as do many of the frames. Now, if I could just bridge the gap in printing and program quality conversion I’d be hooked. In the hour I spent scrapbooking, only a few minutes went to putting a few pages together and the rest went into coming up with design sets and elements. Oh the things I could do with just a little more time to spend at my computer! What’s your favorite hobby?

Technorati Tags:
Scrapbook Sharing Potential Inspiration

So it’s Monday, December 18th. You have a few things on your list done, but maybe you’re stressing over those last minute gift ideas or holiday cards. Here’s two tips that may make your life much easier and both are free, easy and quick.

Slide
Picasa

Create a slideshow to drop into your blog, e-mail or webpage for the holiday greeting card. Slide is the answer with code to copy for a blog and links to use for sharing. Voila - you’re done in a few minutes and it looks so professional and neat with themes, etc.

Create a gift CD of pictures as the perfect gift. Picasa is a free tool from Google that not only organizes your photos and make quick edits and effects fun and easy, but it also makes creating a gift CD as simple as one click! It makes quick work out of the gift CD.

Now smile really big because it’s only Monday and you still have 6 days to Christmas which is plenty of time to incorporate both these ideas!

Technorati Tags:
Scrapbook Sharing Organizing Positive Impact Inspiration Balance Holidays

Next year, don’t think you can take on the year’s scrapbook DVD in one or two days. Leave yourself and entire week. Further, don’t start the project on the week you want to mail it, do that the week before. Everything always takes longer than you think it will, but this dear will take many times longer than you remember.

Read this next year sometime in November and you’ll have one more thing to add to the list of things you’re grateful for. *wink*

Don’t you just love it when your memory and expecations are a little hazy? LOL

It seems that days come and go all too fast in this crazy world . You mean to go do fun things with your kids or companions but time seems to slip by. You try to make up for lost time by fitting in a vacation or two where you pack your time and events in to a small window. For the most part it’s rewarding but I’m convinced you could do a documentary proving why Disneyland isn’t the happiest place on earth just by listening to the crying kids and yelling parents at every turn.

I’m learning how enjoyable the spontaneous moments of fun really are. This is the key, in my experience, to have fun without the equalizer of frustration. Last Friday when my in-laws were in town we decided last minute to go to the a baseball game. It was a blast! It wasn’t a huge thing, but it had a huge impact of fun. It was nice to be able to say we just did something instead of talking around it, about it or giving our kids one of a million excuses or reasons why we were saying no. It’s also fun to see the happy surprise when my daughter brings me a game like UNO or any of the countless others and asks me to play and I instantly say yes instead of “In a minute” or worse the standard “later.” It’s the little things that matter most.

So pick up a deck of UNO, run to the zoo or have a picnic outside just for the fun of it. You’ll be surprised at how much enjoyment can be found in the simple pleasures we keep thinking we’ll get scheduled.

I should be cleaning my home and doing laundry, but blogging is so much more fun.

Last night I sat outside by my pool and started dreaming of what I want to do to my new yard. This morning I pulled out pictures of our first home and yard. I got a little carried away scanning and scrapbooking the pictures. Now it’s lunch time and I still haven’t gotten anything else done, but it always makes me feel good to get a few more cobweb projects done. It was also a real confidence boost to remember my gardens and yard from the past.

I never considered myself a green thumb. I grew up on three and a half acres of which at least half was yard and garden. My mom loves flowers, trees and vegetables. She planted one of everything I think. Someone told her she couldn’t grow pears, but she has two pear trees that produce more fruit each year than she knows what to do with. She gave me confidence and support as I tried to duplicate any of her efforts. I’m coming to realize that my mom gave me a lot more skills than I gave credit for. Gardening and putting up the produce was just a natural part of life for her and consequently for me. Now I’m learning how unique that is in today’s world and I’m grateful for the knowledge she passed on to me. While I may not be an expert, it would appear that I did develop a bit of a green thumb.

First Home Transformation

My First Yard & Gardens

Technorati Tags
Family Scrapbook Gardening

This summer was a milestone for my family. I have one brother and three sisters, all of who are grown now with kids of their own. Getting together at this point becomes quite the production. In fact, this year was the first time it was called a family reunion. I’m still not sure how I feel about that, but that’s another post for another day. Suffice it to say that I’m grateful to have a better or more pleasant association with the term. Even the outdoor movie was met with success.
As I have some family and birth parent family members who read my blog I’m going to attempt to upload the scrapbook pages I did of it here. I figure if it doesn’t work I’ll just bug Blake. ;o)

Enjoy! 2006 Pope Family Fun