Scrappin' without Scraps

Some seaonal recipes

Finally it has turned seasonally cold here in New Hampshire.  A week ago today I made a rather harrowing trip to Burlington Vermont in what they said would just be flurries.  A life long New Englander like me should know better but I must admit it caught me by surprise.  And judging by the cars off the road and the fact they closed I 89, I guess I wasn't the only one.  It took me an extra two hours to get there but at least I was in one piece.

So in honor of the flurries predicted for tomorrow....two chilies and a soup to warm you up plus a wonderful dip for apples.  Just click on the title to download a printable recipe card.

Darn Good Chili

Credits: Awakening by Corrine Nielsen of Funky Playground Designs; fonts are Antique and Augie

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Cheesy Chicken Chili

Credits: La Cremerie  Fraise by Katie Pertiet at Designer Digitals; fonts are Augie and Quigley Wiggly

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White Bean Soup

Credits: Fiesta Ole by Elizabeth Lane at Scrap Outside the Box; fonts are Offshore Banking Business, Times New Roman and Augie

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Praline Dip

Credits:  Carrie Stephens of Fishscraps from the July DigiShopTalk kit; Scrap Girls recipe stamps; fonts are Willing Race and Kristi

Once Upon a Mattress

Credits: Template by Mary Canavan as a DSD freebie; Autumn Celebration kit by Scraphead free for DSD; fonts are Codex and Tempus

Holiday Gift Ideas for Photography

For anyone on your gift list with a digital camera, here are some gift ideas.  Or maybe I should say everyone since you will find ideas for cellphones, compact cameras and even SLRs.  And when you count cell phones, just about everyone has a camera.

In no particular order....

Jelly Lenses let you do some interesting special effects from your compact digital camera or cellphone.  A lens with repositional adhesive that you put over your camera lens to give you some cool effects – starburst, diamond or heart.  $5.99 each or $17.97 for all three from The Container Store

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DiCAPac Waterproof/ Underwater Case for Compact Cameras

This is a great idea and much safer than a plastic bag – a waterproof pouch for your camera.  I’m not sure I have the gumption to test it but they say is is waterproof to 16 feet.  Even if you don’t planning on shooting underwater, this would be handy for beach trips, skiing (water or snow) or taking your camera anywhere near water like the beach, water park or even your local bath tub.  It comes in a couple of different sizes for different cameras  $33 to $35 depending on size.  I found it at Amazon but you might also try your local camera store.

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Photography Classes

At your local camera or scrapbooking store or online.  Panasonic is offering Digital Photo Academy which offers courses in many cities throughout the US.  Any brand camera will do and there are three levels.

• Beginner - 3 hours 15 students max- $50
• Intermediate - 4 hours 15 students max - $65
• Advanced - 8 hours 15 students max  - $150

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No classes nearby?  How about a Photography Book?

Understanding Exposure: How to Shoot Great Photographs   by Bryan Peterson

Complete Digital Photography by Ben Long

Perfect Digital Photography by Jay Dickman

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Wallet Pix  I haven’t seen this in person but the concept intrigues me…a credit card sized digital photo album. The flyer from Bed, Bath and Beyond showed one so maybe I will vetnure out to see it later this weekend. $29.99

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FxFoto Software

Need some easy to use photo software?  I may be a bit biased but this is what I use …FxFoto Creative Edition.  Order the CD ($65.95) and you will get ten digital scrapbooking kits and templates.  Or order the download  version for $59.96 (without digital kits).  Either way, the software is intuitive and quite powerful.

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In the category of maybe not very exciting but definitely appreciated…

a stack of DVDs or CDs   

Backing up photos is always a good thing – encourage it by giving CDs or DVDs.  And if you need DVD burning software, here’s an easy to use free software for burning DVDs. Final Burner Free

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Going over the river and through the woods to Grandma’s house?  How about a memory stick/flash drive to bring all your photos along? They are everywhere, even in our local grocery store and have huge amounts of storage -  you can get 4GB for about $40 now.               

One hint – get one where the clip or key ring is on the drive part not on the cap.  Take it from me, you don’t want pull out your key ring only to find the cap is there but the drive is missing.  Not a pretty sight.

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Lastly, the LCD screens on camera take a real beating especially if you carry yours around in a purse or pocket.  A screen protector is a great and inexpensive idea - Giottos 1.5" LCD Protector with Microfiber Cleaning Cloth is a great gift for cleaning and protecting that screen.  Find if at a camera store or at well known NYC store B&H Photo for $7.50 or so. 

Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving!

Scouting for Food

Every year in November the Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts in our small town work together on a huge town wide food drive.  Bags are hung on the mailboxes through out town and then a week later, they are collected, counted and boxed up for the local food pantry. The work has sort of un-officially divided between the Brownies/Cub Scouts and the Cadettes/Seniors/older Boy Scouts - the little kids hang the bags and collect them.  And the big kids staff the sorting area which is what the three of us did this morning.  It's an amazingly well run operation - here's the room all set at the church hall. We were there really early as you can see by the light....not the best part for Teen and Tween.

and then the bags of food come rolling in.  This was the first batch through and after that it was too busy to take photos.  Bags just kept pouring in and we'd seal the boxes and load them on a truck.  I have no idea how many we did but we were there until noon when the second shift arrived. After the day is done and the truck gets weighed at the dump.  It'll be interesting to see how many pounds of food were collected!

I'm on the Photojojo blog!

After I posted about the Photojojo blog and their recent post about Circle Cutters for photos, I decided to send them a little comment with a link to my Circle Cutters post.  Was I ever surprised when I got an email back from Amit Gupta the founder of Photojojo!

Neat, Susan!   Amit

and then.....I'm on the on the Photojojo blog!   

Wait, People Already Knew About the Awesome-ness of Circles?   

I'm am so honored!  They even used one of my examples of digitally matting and adding digital elements before cutting.  You have to know, Amit, that you totally made my day! Thanks!

And for all of you digital scrapbookers, Photojojo wrote;

Alright, so we might be a little behind the times. But we want to thank Susan for helping us get up to speed (and giving us a fresh dose of inspiration, with her scrapbooking blog!)

And, we wanna say, if there’s any other scrapbookers out there who want to fill us in on other cool photo-y/scrapbook-y things, then let us know!

So what are you waiting for?

Circle Cutters

Many of you know that I love the Photojojo blog.  They always have fun ideas for things to do with your photos and the blog is well written and fun to read.  But their most recent post had me chuckling all day.

Square is Out, Circle is In — Circle-ize Your Photos with the Circle Cutter

Now scrapbookers have been doing this for years.  And this started a long time ago for paper scrappers.  In fact many paper scrappers own lots of tools to cut photos in all sorts of shapes. So I find it a wee bit amusing that they are now selling a circle cutter.

Now if you'd like to combine paper and digital and circle cutters, here's an idea,  Why not digitally mat or ink the edges before you print it?  I have a couple examples below.

First,  crop your digital photo in a circle.  Now cut some digital paper in a circle for matts.  I added some digital stitching, shadows, flowers and staples.  Or add a stamped or ink edge.  Now print your photo  and use the circle photo cutter to cut it out.  Saves you a bunch of time cutting photo matts plus of course, digital items can be used over and over.  Very cool! 

 

Credits: elements and papers by Corina Nielsen at Funky Playground Designs; stitching by Christine Nash at Scrap Outside the Box; stamped border by Penny Springman

Once Upon a Mattress

Tween just finished doing Once Upon a Mattress - a very funny musical based very loosely on the princess and the pea fairy tale.  She played Lady Mabelle a sill french lady in waiting whose response to everything is "yes".  Of course, the writers created some very funny lines around this and since the play reolves around love and marriage you can imagine it was put to good use. 

and I caught one of the pages checking out the audience...

 

First Name Basis

One of the interesting things about living in New Hampshire is the presidential primary.  For those of us in the granite state, it actually began a year or two ago when candidates first started showing up to test the waters. 

Like every year, the road sides are decorated with campaign signs and more seem to crop up every day.  Since I drive a lot, I always find the distribution of signs interesting. There seem to be more democratic signs as I head north but maybe that's just my imagination.

This year, however, I’ve noticed that most of the campaign signs only bear the first name of the candidate whereas in other years, the last name would be emphasized.  I guess most of the candidates have unique or recognizable first names.  By now we all know who Hillary and Barack are, not to mention Rudy and Mitt.  Having a common first name like Susan, I kind of feel sorry for John (McCain, Cox and Edwards), and Mike (Gravel and Huckabee).  And even though there is only one Chris, Joseph, Duncan, Dennis, Tom, Bill and Ron, all of their signs use their last name.  Maybe they don’t want to be confused with anyone else you might know by that name.

Maybe it is a reflection of how informal our society has become.  Not that I want to go back to white gloves and hats but somehow I can't imagine any of the previous presidential candidates running with only their first names, can you?

Wow DSD was Amazing!!

Wow - I think the first ever Digital Scrapbooking Day was pretty amazing!  Of course, being one of the Co-coordinators I might be just a wee bit biased.  So you can ask the other Co-Coordinator, Angie Pedersen if you want...

I don't know about Angie but my fingers are pretty tired.  It was way cool to see all the events going on - chats, scavenger hunts, tennis (Really!), a photo contest  wearing your DSD shirt, journaling challenges and more.  And of course, lots of sales. 

Anyway I just wanted to thank Angie Pedersen for making this day happen.  And all of you digiscrappers for making DSD wonderful! 

Mark your calenders for the first Saturday in November of 2008 for DSD #2!!

By the way, in case you were wondering it is just Digital Scrapbooking Day - no National in it all.   There's more here Why There's No National in Digital Scrapbooking Day