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The days of crouching and crawling around on the ground is coming to a close for this year. It does pay off though, along with a lot of patience, it can be very rewarding. Everything is my own work. Pin, paperclips, sequin, polaroid images. Carole's corner punch, and lifted corner script. The background paper is from from another photo I took on the same day, lightened.

We'll make it a surprise....400 people showing up on her doorstep. SURPRISE! Where's the bathroom?

Autumn is here. The picture was taken by my granddaughter Victoria in Harper Valley, WV. I'm still having fun. Not sure what I will do for Winter.

Cross-posting this from the 1-2-3 Challenge which asked for 1 sequin, 2 Polaroid and 3 paperclips. My details are on the 1-2-3 Challenge page and also on Facebook. Introducing my great grandson Jonah James born June 20th.

Few Robins will over winter, providing there are sufficient berries for them. The great majority of them migrate. At the moment they are passing through, but it's now coming to an end. As they migrate they do flock, sometimes in great numbers. I'm still putting out blueberries for them, (apples, grapes that have gone over too) as there are very few insects for them now. You'll be surprised what they can find under the leaf litter. It's in the Spring, when they are passing through I have the largest flocks, around 200 plus, will descend out in the trees. I'm prepared for them, as they will go through 6-7 apples and other fruit in a day. They will leave on mass in a few days. Those that stay will remain for the summer, rearing 2 clutches, depending on whether it's is a good season for insects. I heard a Robin out in trees today, the photo was taken on the 8th Oct. They are not in their breeding plumage now, and you have immature Robins, which can make them a little difficult to ID, if you don't know what to look for. The only little birds I have now are the Juncos. There's one on the ground in the photo.

Ah, this worked out nicely for one of the new great grands this year. I didn't really do a layout for Jonah, Logan's little brother, born June 20th. He was GG #4 and we're also welcomed Raja as GG #5 when I did the Sketch Challenge. I found neat sequin photo corners from Elif Sahin at Pixelscrappers. The clips from my stash labeled LF-Choose-to-Shine were originally copper but I changed them. The Polaroid frames are all part of a vintage collage. The fonts are Bungee Inline, Cabin Sketch and Brush Script. The background paper is from a Marisa Lerin Kit called "Touch of Delight." The photos all came from the Paolucci family. Ilana is my youngest granddaughter, with my Laurey as her mother.

All Components are from Creative Fabrica. The Cat one had Christmas lights that I change the color of the bulbs to orange for Halloween.

And here is my Spring use of the pspimage I created.

@Sue Thomas The days of crouching and crawling around on the ground is coming to a close for this year. It does pay off though, along with a lot of patience, it can be very rewarding. Everything is my own work. Pin, paperclips, sequin, polaroid images. Carole's corner punch, and lifted corner script. The background paper is from from another photo I took on the same day, lightened. Love your layouts.

You are absolutely right! I'm planning for next year. I have doubled my garden space for flowers in the last couple weeks and even going to try and grow some vegys. And I want to get out into nature like I used to. The studio is still a favorite place to get lost in and I have lots of projects I'd like to do in there. It has taught me a lot about observing light. But, winter is the time for indoor photography. Most of the flower photography was out doors this year, a nice change(some indoor stuff for later extraction to have as elements). It's a short time period and I tried to make of the time I had. On another note: The weirdest thing happened at the bird baths late this afternoon. We had 6-8 what I thought was robins come and drink and bath and they were there for sometime. they had the rusty chest and a white ring around the eye, the ring was very noticeable so we thought it might not be robins and because I've never seen that many in one spot. I didnt know if they hang out together like the waxwings do. There was even more in the trees. I looked in my bird book and it said they were migratory (and that some overwinter as well) so we thought maybe they migrated as a group and just stopped by. Must do a bit more research on that.

I think it just went off-topic as an answer/comment to something else. ?

It's saves time scrolling through each video.

For easier reading. I simply can not resist adding word art. The background paper is taken from the same photo used in the background paper on the main page. Changed the colour, overlay, etc.

And many people just let things grow and never tend to them. I've had some plants put in by a company that did landscaping work for me. There is a lovely yellowish plant they put in a few years ago that I fell in love with and had them put a couple more in after taking out the hydrangea that ended up being too much for the area. My neighbor does pruning for me and has kept the original gold mop cypress to a nice height. I asked the landscaper this summer what plant a different neighbor across the street has as it looks a lot like the gold mop cypress. It goes to the roofline and pretty much hides the windows. Turns out it is the same thing I have... gold mop cypress. They have never pruned/trimmed it in all the years they have had it nor have they done anything with the shrubs by the house. The only thing that gets trimmed is a shrub that is by the stop sign and road sign in their yard. And all that gets done is cutting the weed that grows up the middle of it to the same height as the shrub. I wish I was able to do yard work but unfortunately I can't. With arthritic knees and allergies, it just doesn't happen. Thankfully I have a neighbor that is willing to do it. I pay him for it just as I pay him to mow the grass and collect the leaves in the fall.

Love the touch with the dog in the background, perfect expression on his/her's face.

All Components are from Creative Fabrica. The cat one had Christmas lights that I turned orange for them to be Halloween deco.

Template 200 by Lady 22, AKA, Bourico Casper. November 1, 2018...visiting my home State. This fellow flew to this spot on the boardwalk and we were standing right there. He (she) stayed a long time and enjoyed posing for photos.

If that is ever to happen I'm in too!!!!

That is interesting, about the heated baths. I appreciate a professionals opinion, other than my own. Between the heated bath, dirt baths, and a buffet, your birds get the luxury of a full spa treatment. Whilst giving you immense pleasure observing them. Who needs retail therapy, when mother nature provides all the therapy anyone needs for free.

What an awesome shot! These are the ones, well, not the EXACT ones, but ones just like it that were at my baths. By the way, that is a really nice bath you have. I even see the junco. I'm tempting Mother Nature by leaving my baths out this long. I'm trying to keep them out as long as possible for the birds, they seem to be using it more than I would have expected. Hope we dont get a sudden freeze. Thank you for sharing this photo and for information on these guys. I'm told their song is really pretty. I've probably heard it but didnt know which type of bird sung the song. Some, like the Merlin are distinctive. the one that fools me the most is the blue jay, I heard they are mimic birds, some pretty odd sounds come out of them. I never get tired of crows and ravens and love the magpies, as they seem to talk a lot. they are the tabby cats of the bird world.

Yes, they are downloadable for Diamond members. or as a diamond member you can view the videos within the campus at any time.

Susan, I have now posted it on Facebook, for much better viewing.

I should have asked about how the q&A works before I went to my first one. I did not know we were allowed to save them for help later on. Do you download them or what?

For each Q&A call, Carole lists the content of each Q&A. I copy and paste each months content into a word document. for easy access.

Where is this List of contents of the Q&As?

MARY!! You did an excellent job, but spring flowers in October??? We have a plant here called Autumn Crocus. Its called Colchicum. See pic. looks like the spring crocus.

Susan, inexperienced or not, it is quite a common mistake. Especially when planting trees. Many people forget or do not take into account that a 6inch sapling will grow to possibly to 100ft tall, and spread branches. Same goes for flowers. It is amazing how plants will adapt to their location, twisting, turning, stretching to reach for the sun.

OK. I worked with that multi layer described in February 2023 Q&A. this is what I came up with. I know it is fall, but this is summer.

Susan I can only repeat what I replied to Cristina's comment. If nothing else, some of my pages may inspire you and others, to do something similar.

This font isn't one I would have chosen myself. I can see that it would appeal to some for a particular Halloween project. Halloween has never appealed to me, probably because it isn't that popular at home, certainly not when I was growing up, as it is in North America. I wanted to participate in the challenge. I edited some of the letters to my liking, added leaves from another font. The letters A and E, I resized, moving the letters before them closer, by changing the text to character shapes. Inner bevel. Photos were taken yesterday. Background paper is a photo, 2 overlays, and a texture.

The poem is the the first two verses of ‘Haunted Houses’ by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (full poem at https://poets.org/poem/haunted-houses) The background is a paper I made. The central image from freepik and the ghost are Caroles ghosts picture tube.

I love that background effect.

I already did a Halloween layout for the theme of this month. We don't have a long tradition of Halloween festivities, nowadays it is more common, but it doesn't appeal that much to me. The grandkids are in the States and they of course participate. If I was there at this time of the year I would take a lot of photos, but over here no.... The Witch Mystery font however is a nice one and I used it for this layout featuring the "Windmills of Kinderdijk" (Netherlands), a Unesco World Heritage Site. Funny enough my cousin, who came along, and I, have never been there! We have both live not very far away from Kinderdijk, but as it is with things that are nearby we never got there because we thought: oh we can always do that. So last week we went to see those mills for ourselves and had a great day with fantastic weather and being offseason it was not congested as it can be in the summer. We didn't have to wait to take the little boats that ferry you along the 19 mills that are there. I have photos of the inside of one of the mills that we could visit, may I use those in another layout. Oh and all the mills dating from the 16th century and up are still in working order. They are designed to pump the water out of the canals to the river to keep the land dry and the other way around. Nowadays there are 2 pumping stations that do the same with electric machinery and the mills are a backup system. For this layout I used template Lab 12-11and 4 of the photos I took that day. When we arrived, it still was a bit hazy and I used one of the hazy photos as a background, copied it and the used the blendmode Burn which made it more like a silhouette, but not as black. Then an overlay called Windy Pastels (Inky deals) with the blendmode Difference. I was trying different overlays to get something interesting and I like this result, it gives a sort of painting effect. Some embellishments from my stock and the other font is Aura.

I'm late to the show but here's mine: My basketball teammates in Utah...Bryce, Grand Canyon.

I posted this in the Oct working on posts but forgot to post it here. It better be a really good party because full moon is the 28th. I guess if you are ghosts and sprites etc a few days is no problem. LOL

I checked out that tutorial which looks like fun. I really like your version. How cool that you got mentioned!

My poster to everybody be ready; ) I used here only my fractal and a fine font

Did this one back in 2016 after watching a Corel tutorial. (It was before the wonderful Spooky master classes that Cassel offers.) I changed it up a bit in 2021. Corel even gave me props on the original! I was as excited as a kid on Christmas morning.

Spooky 2 masterclass is my favourite Halloween masterclass.

Halloween is something I don't celebrate. It's not new to the British. All hallow's Eve comes from many Pagan traditions. Introduced in to America by the Scots and and the Irish, who then commercialized. I used a photo of a Welsh Church and churchyard, used effects photo effects time machine, added the cats and lady, added glow to them. Bats and a moon.

Great minds must think alike. The second image was a freebee from Tiny Turtle Designs and the green sunglass wearing scarecrow is from a screenshot of a VRML model I made.

Today I was visiting a garden center, a very big one and they had already opened their yearly Christmas show. There are always many displays of different winter scenes with little villages, snow scenes etc. Among them were a couple of Halloween scenes that I took photos of. So the background of my layout is my photo with a cobweb overlay, some ghost tubes, the freebie for this theme, and 2 skulls. I didn't change the colors of my photo because I think it came out nicely; the cobweb was white and that was a bit too white so I made it a bit darker with the saturation and lightness.

September sketch I just made windows out of the sketch Nevada mountains Moon, Sycamore Eagle, Forte Sea on Lake Michigan

I'm in too. But on Saturday 21 Oct. some of my grandkids come to visit me. One of them is ICTer. He will watch my laptop. He might restore my laptop to factory settings, cause my 'Thefonthing' is put down by Microsoft. A PC virus crept into it in the spring. Now they think it comes from there. Or do their computers think so? He said over the phone that that is the best thing in these situations. Then it will take some time before I get everything back on track.