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Maniacs challenge this week was diamonds. How could I resist??? I made an alphabet(caps only for now) using a CF font called "Diamonx." I added my diamond that I had made into a tube by hand since I wanted to able to move them around. I used the vectorpaint script with a brush from my stars stash. I also converted the script to a raster a blurred it a little. I also blurred the stars a little. The background was used so that the letters would be visible and is from a picture that a used a FF filter and then a multiply blend mode. I have been following FF on FB and am finding some really nice filters.

I live in the states and have always celebrated Thanksgiving the traditional way, but for the past 8 years we have had to change the way we celebrate it. We have several snowbirds in our family now that leave early December for their warmer state home and so we now celebrate ThankMas. It's a combination of Thanksgiving and Christmas. I have 7 siblings and with all their family members and a momma we have a pretty large group, so we all take a turn to be host. Yes, we do the potluck thing and play games, open gifts and laugh so hard we cry over the silliness of things. We have a blast. For my own immediate family, (husband, 3 kids and their families we total 15) we find a weekend day that everyone is free to meet and we grill chicken and steak with lots of sides. That is what works for us.

Besides enjoying the mild weather we had this week I have been playing with the enormous amount of supplies from Anna Aspnes. First it took a while to sort through the whole bunch and watch the videos. She works with Photoshop and not all the techniques from the videos is 100% appliable to Paintshop but most of the supplies and PSD files can be used. I tried to make an artsy layout with some of the papers/overlays/ brushes and 3 of my photos from a walk in our woodland park this week. I'm not 100% happy with what I got but wanted to show it anyway before we start with the calendar workshop which will take most of my time in the coming weeks. I used a lot of blendmodes on the different parts of the layout. It certainly is another way to work and I'll have to do more of this.

My last playing until the workshop beginning on Monday.

Hopefully, I can get one more afternoon on the lake.

Great photo and great weather for a hike!

Fantastic colors and the chapel makes it interesting too!

Diamonds in the sky. I have been playing. I took this moon photo this morning and added a diamond circle around the moon with a cass diamond picture tube chain.

This week we had very mild weather but also rather humid. One morning when I saw that the garden table was moist which provided a nice backdrop for the vibrant cyclamen on it.

That is the Skytop Tower [click link for more info] which is a fire tower beacon in the Mohonk Mountain Reserve, and it can be seen for miles in each direction. After climbing all 100 stone steps to the open-air platform at the top, visitors are able to see six states on a clear day: New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Vermont, Connecticut and Massachusetts.

Here's my Week Forty One for Sunday Oct 20 - My two daughters and I did a day trip to Mohonk Mountain House resort in Ulster County on Wed Oct 16. It is a huge hotel and recreation complex constructed in the early 1900s by the Smileys, a Quaker family from Maine. There were originally 2 beautiful quarries, Mohonk and Minnewaska, which they owned and they eventually added 17,000 acres to preserve the land in perpetuity. The family still operates Mohonk as a resort though the two hotels on Minnewaska burned down. This is probably one of the most famous areas to be photographed in Ulster County, NY. You can see the hotel in the distance on the left. My daughter, Debbie, took this photo when they were hiking.

This week, like all the other weeks have simply flown by. Mother nature never disappoints. From one day to the next her mastery of applying her palette to the landscape and skies above, is an ever changing wonder. I was lucky enough to get another afternoon out on the lake in the kayak. A glorious 21c. Hopefully I will get at least one more afternoon on the water before the kayak goes away for the winter. An old chapel hiden away amongst the trees. Before the dam was constructed back in 1965, I believe, the chapel was over a mile away from the shallow South Saskatchewan River. Over the years, and as the lake rises, the chapel is nigh on the lake shoreline. You ahve to pay to look around the chapel, and Hitchcock's hideaway cabin. I havd found access to it via the shore.

Spooks/Halloween. You know it's not my festival, nor my time but I use APO and it works by random time to time. This time APO created a picture which I present you. Red spooks made by APO, white ones and spider's net created by Carole, red bricks-texture from my PSP.

I made this following a tutorial in the Beginners Workshop which is now defunct. If @Cassel think it's okay for me to share it, I will.

Thanks, @Christina. The font is Castle Combe.

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I only have a very short answer, we do not have any variation of Thanksgiving at all! However there is a religious link; on the first Wednesday in November there is a church service where thanks will be given for the harvest. The produce will be brought into the church and there is a festive display of all the grains, apples, pears, potatoes, beef, etc. Everything is then distributed amongst the people in need. It is thought that this probably is the background for Thanksgiving. The first settlers brought it to America and Canada.