digital scrapbooking and family fun
Since I’m on vacation, this message will be short and sweet!
Sometimes you have to get away from it all! Gotta Get Away is the perfect kit for scrapping those day trips, vacations, camping trips, hikes, fishing, or any other outdoor adventure you might have. This is one kit that is sure to please! Check it out! Be sure to purchase this kit this weekend at MDS when it is 20% off the regular price!
If you need some layout inspiration, check out the MDS gallery!
Have a great weekend!
If you have a beer, some sugar, butter, and self-rising flour, you have everything you need to make this ever so yummy beer bread. Seriously this bread is delicious!
I’ve only made this bread with Newcastle but I’m sure other beers will work just as well. In fact, I really want to make some with Guinness, but that will have to wait for another day.
3 cups self-rising flour
3 TBLS sugar
1 12oz bottle of beer, room temperature
Melted butter
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Combine flour, sugar and beer until mixed. Transfer dough into greased loaf pan and allow to rise for 10 minutes. Bake until a knife inserted into the center comes out clean (about 45 minutes). Before, pulling bread from the oven brush top with melted butter and bake for 5 more minutes.
We harvested our first tomato this week! It was pretty delicious if I do say so myself. I look forward to eating many more from our garden! As for the rest of the garden, it’s doing well. The peppers have come in nicely and the herbs have exploded. The eating is good around here. 
This week I have a Star-Spangled set of jumbles just for you! This word jumble set includes the following phrases: 4th of July, Independence Day; red, white, and boom!; celebrate: life, liberty, love; having a blast; fireworks and firecrackers; a cluster of Americana words; and the first line from the Declaration of Independence.
My sister’s family and my parents came to visit recently; it was a fabulous visit. We hung-out, shot some pool, made smores, went for a hike/bike ride, and rented a pontoon boat for a day on the lake. Overall, I was highly impressed by the children’s behavior because all schedules were out the window: bedtimes were “super-late” and the kiddos always rose early. I guess that’s what happens when they all share one huge floor bed!
The first highlight of the visit was when my nephew lost a tooth. We were sitting around the table enjoying our dinner. My nephew had just taken a bite from his corn on the cob when his mom said, “M. it looks like your tooth is bleeding.”
“hmm…,” said M. as he grabbed a napkin to staunch the bleeding.
“Wow, it’s really bleeding,” Pam continued, I’m sure your going to loose that tooth soon.”
I squinted across the table to get a better look at the bleeding tooth and then erupted in a laughing, “Tooth? What tooth? I don’t see a tooth! M. is there a tooth there?”
Between fits of laughter M. confirmed that the tooth was indeed missing.
“Well, is it stuck in your corn?” we asked.
“No.”
“Is it on your plate? On the floor?”
All questions received a giggling, “NO!” from M.
Then we all started to laugh hysterically once we realized HE SWALLOWED HIS TOOTH! What a conundrum for an 8 year old! How can the tooth fairy give you money if you don’t have a tooth to hide under your pillow?! We quickly came to a consensus that the best course of action would be for M. to write a note to the tooth fairy because she probably understands accidents happen. The note worked and M. received his money, and because all the kiddos were sleeping together, the tooth fairy left a little something for everyone. Isn’t she the sweetest?
Flash forward a few days. Apparently my son thought M.’s note worked so well, he decided he would be able to trick the tooth fairy with a note of his own. So before going to bed he sat down and wrote the following note to see if he could, “trick the tooth fairy.”
He’s quite the tricky fellow, isn’t he? Not only did he leave this note, but he also left the tooth fairy a math problem. Apparently he wants to make sure she can do math as well as collect teeth. Here’s the math problem…it’s a tricky one…
Much to the boys’ dismay the tooth fairy did not fall for the ruse, but the parents had a good chuckle.
Here are a few pics from the visit. Thanks to my sister for sharing her photographs!
First up – time for some smores!
My favorite outing during our visit was the pontoon boat. Unfortunately, my youngest did NOT want to get on the boat, he doesn’t like bodies of water, so Paul had to carry him on board kicking and screaming. After a few minutes on the water, however, he settled down and began to enjoy the day. We drove around, swam, ate, caught some zs and got a little lost on the way back. It was a gorgeous day:
The visit flew by and ended all too quickly, but I look forward to seeing everyone again soon!
I hope all of you USA peeps had a wonderful Independence Day!
We celebrated with a backyard B-B-Q, a competitive game of washers, a few fireworks, a skype video chat with family, and a quick run to town to see the city’s show.
We quickly realized we weren’t in Florida anymore when we saw the vast array of rocket fireworks we could buy at the firework stand. Wow! A person could quite easily, with a lot of money, put on quite a show at home! We purchased our modest collection of bottle rockets, roman candles, fountains, cars, planes, and the ever popular smoke bombs. I think I heard, “We could get this one, Mom” about a million times while we were in the firework tent.
To pass the time until dusk, we played a highly competitive game of washers which I lost both times…grrr. Father Paul threw three cuppers in a row to win both games!
Finally it was dusk and time to light the fireworks.
and because he’s 7 – a silly faced shot:
Once again the “no hearing headphones” were pulled out and shared by the boys. 
Picking out the firework to use next is serious business around here:
the little tank – the boys love this pic so I told them I’d include it -
The rocket launcher – aka – the splitting maul:
and my favorite pic….smokey boys!
After we finished our fireworks it was 9:15. The city show started at 9:30 so we thought we’d take a chance and drive to town to see if we could get close enough to see the show. We raced to town and actually found a wonderful vantage point!
That’s all for today! I’ll be back later this week with highlights from our family vacations!
This salad is one of our all time favorite meals! It is so easy to throw together at the last minute and it tastes delicious!
4 boneless skinless chicken breast halves
your favorite bbq sauce – Stubb’s Original for us
your favorite blue cheese dressing
1 head of romaine
1 avacado
2 – 3 tomatoes
Prepare chicken breasts and marinade for 30 minutes or longer in BBQ sauce. Grill chicken breasts. While chicken is grilling prepare salad by tearing the romaine and chopping the avacados and tomatoes. Once the chicken is cooked, cut it into bite size cubes. Mix chicken, romaine, avacado, and tomatoes. Drizzle a little BBQ sauce over the top and dress with your desired amount of blue cheese dressing.
cornbread
Hello, Digiland! This week we are having some more fun with pictures with a new series of Picture Play items! This set includes Picture Play Blending Masks, Picture Play Lighting Effects, and Picture Play Paper Textures! I’ve also created Picture Play Value Bundle 2. Get it this weekend for only $5.20!
For you designers out there, I’ve also released the Paper Textures in a CU version: Texture Pack 8! These textures are truly awesome! You’ll love them!
The blending masks are a wonderful tool to get a soft faded look to your layouts. I’ve created a new tutorial for using blending masks to show you how easy these masks are to use. Plus, don’t forget about the Picture Play and Introduction to Layer Masks tutorials! I adore using texture and effects on my layouts and I hope you do as well!
For even more awesome Picture Play layouts, be sure to visit the MDS Gallery.
To see how I created the example images for this week’s ad, check out this blog post at Penny’s Miscellany. It shows you how I layered up my images using Picture Play.
That’s everything for this week!
I wanted to share with you how I created the images on the Picture Play product packaging. I really enjoy playing around with layers, textures, and anything else I can use to adjust my photos, so here’s a peek at how I played with the ad images for Picture Play Lighting Effects and Picture Play Paper Textures.
First: Lighting Effects – Isn’t this picture gorgeous!? I wish I could take credit for it, but it comes from my sister. It’s a picture of my niece.
Here’s the original shot:
Here’s how I layered it up in Photoshop:
Layer 0 is the original photo
Layer 1: Black and white version of heart texture in Picture Play Lighting Effects set to Color Dodge at 76% opacity
Layer 0 copy: a duplicate of the original photo set to Soft Light at 100%
Layer 2: Color version of heart texture from Picture Play Lighting Effects set to Multiply at 62% Opacity…Then I used a layer mask with a soft round brush to erase the color from her face.
Layer 4: Lens Flare from Picture Play Lighting Effects set to Screen at 100%. I transformed the flare to fit the photograph and angled it so the flare comes into the photo.
That’s it!
Next Paper Textures: Here’s my original image -
Here’s how I layered it up in Photoshop:
Layer 0 is the original image
Layer 1: Paper 7 (color version) from Picture Play Paper Textures set to Hard Light at 43%
Layer 2: Paper 4 (color version) from Picture Play Paper Textures resized to fit the image and set to Multiply at 89%
Layer 0 copy is a duplicate of the original image set to Soft Light at 83%
That’s it!
The boys and I went to the bike trail yesterday for a little running, bike riding, and doggy play. As we were leaving this sign caught my eye. It’s so clever! Read and have a good chuckle!
We had another fun Saturday filled with baseball! I was so proud of both boys they did an awesome job hustling, fielding, and HITTING! Yes, Jackson had his first two hits of the season! Yeah!!! He was beyond thrilled that he hit twice in one game. After Jackson’s first hit, everyone went crazy: parents were cheering, I was screaming, and Jackson’s teammates were jumping up and down. When J returned to the dugout, he was greeted with high-5s and congratulations from his teammates. At the end of the game, Jackson was awarded one of the game balls! He is so proud of his accomplishment and so am I!
Paul had another great game. He played his favorite position, pitcher, for an inning, tagged out a runner, hit well, and snagged a difficult grounder when playing short-stop.
Here are some pics from the day:
I’ve been looking for a new camera the past couple of months to replace my well worn Canon point and shoot. Originally, I had decided to replace it with another Canon, but after some research I discovered and chose Panasonic’s DMC-ZS7 instead. I chose the Zs7 because of its highly rated reviews, high definition video, powerful zoom, and ease of use. When I’m chasing the boys around, I don’t have time to worry about settings, modes, etc. I want to point, shoot, and capture awesome images, and I must say that so far this camera has done just that! Of course not every picture turns out – I’ve had a few blurry ones in the mix, but overall I’m totally impressed with the power packed into this little camera. So far I’ve kept the camera in the iA mode (intelligent auto) because I wanted to start taking pictures immediately! I have not taken any pictures in low light yet – it is a weak point to this camera, but I hope to tonight, so I’ll post those pictures tomorrow.
I’ve taken a couple of videos and once I figured out how to get them off the camera, they look amazing. I used Picasa instead of the included software to download my first batch of photos/videos and then erased those items off of my card via the erase all images check-box in Picasa – MISTAKE! Long story short, by doing this I lost the ability to “find” the videos on the card with the Panasonic software on my computer. Once I reformatted the card, however, I was good to go. So note, you cannot delete items from your card via other programs. To keep everything working properly, you must delete your pictures/videos from the camera’s menu. I’ll try and get a video posted soon.
Here are some pictures I took on a walk the other evening. These pictures are straight from my camera. I simply re-sized them to post here….click on an image to see a slightly larger size.
Here are the guys walking to the creek:
Here is the creek:
Here is Ms. Gary doing her thing – I was REALLY FAR AWAY and thought this shot would NEVER work, but it did!!
Here are the boys goofing off in the field:
I decided to play with a shot to see how the iA would work – testing a dummy dof shot:
My little man in the tall grass. The boys had so much fun running through the grass. Luckily, neither picked up any ticks!
And my favorite picture – J totally hamming it up for the camera! How cute is he?! Once again I was at least 50 feet away from him when I took this shot. LOVE the zoom on this camera!
Other than my video issues which I’ve now figured out, I’m so pleased with my choice of the Panasonic ZS7!
Sorry, I’m so late on this one! I’ve been super, crazy busy!!!
Hello digiland! Time for some new Penny goodness! This week is filled with wonderful things that will help you scrap those big events, month in review, or other multiple photo pages in a snap! First up we have two new additions to the Bent Bunch family. Bent Bunches are the easiest way to get your photographs into a cluster and onto your layouts. Each Bunch comes with realistic bends, shadows, and are in three different formats. Bent Bunch #30 is the first of this new bunch. This bunch comes in template form for use with clipping masks in .PSD and .TIFF files. This bent bunch also comes as a .PNG file. With the .PNG file, simply place your photos below the frames, turn, and crop to complete the bunch. As an added bonus, I’ve added a flat version of the .png bunch as well. (300 dpi, 5 MB). Then you will want to see the enormous Bent Bunch #31! This bunch comes in template form for use with clipping masks in .PSD and .TIFF files.
Next is a new template that will help you to create pages quickly without taking away from your creativity! With 2 Pagers #28 contains one 24 x 12″ .psd and .tiff template and two 12 x 12″ .psd and tiff templates ready for your special photographs. These templates are set-up to use as 2 page spreads. Fill each space with photographs, paper, or elements to suit your creative needs. This set is great for scrapping birthday parties, vacations, holidays, and any event where the pictures tell the story. This set also comes with instructions for Photoshop users.
That’s it for this week! Don’t forget to stop by next week to see what other goodies are in store! As always, Happy Shopping!
I made these last week, and they were so delicious!!
1 box of brownie mix (13×9 pan) and ingredients to make the brownies
1 bag of caramel morsels
1/2 cup toasted pecans
mini cupcake/muffin pan and liners
line mini muffin pan with liners, prepare brownies as directed, while brownies bake toast pecan pieces, allow brownies to cool, top brownies with toasted pecan pieces, melt approximatly 1/2 bag of caramel morsels with 1 TBLS milk in microwave and drizzle over brownies. Allow brownies to cool completely before eating or they will stick to the liner.
a tall cold glass of milk!
