Rene Marker

A lot of the scrapbookers that I know that use PS or PSE save their layered files in TIF format and have been for quite awhile. Most of them say they are smaller files than the PSD.

My bed sits up high (almost too high for me) and Peyton has a hard time jumping up on it. When she jumps she goes straight up instead of leaping forward. She has been able to jump on to the bed so I know she can do it. But evidently when it gets in her mind she can't do it, she won't even try. She has no problem getting on any of the furniture, just the bed. So a couple years ago I bought a Rubbermaid 2 step molded plastic stool and taught her how to use it to get on the bed. It has nice wide steps and I use it when I need to reach the top shelf in the closet (dual purpose item 🙂 ) Like Gerry I had to place her paws on the steps and helped her get up to learn how to do it. Took less than a week, maybe 4 or 5 days. She can go down it as well but only does that in the middle of the night when she has to go to the bathroom. Otherwise, she jumps off the bed. Silly girl. When it is dinner time, she jumps straight up in excitement. Her head goes past the top of the counter... she is a small dog with the top of her head about 13 inches from the ground.

I have a jigsaw app on my tablet. But there is nothing like holding the pieces and making them fit for a real jigsaw puzzle. My carrier does not roll up. It is heavy cardboard with flaps that open and has 2 sections that can hold the pieces not used yet. Those sections sit on top of the puzzle and keep everything in place. It also has a handle to carry it. It is 25Hx30Lx2D inches in size. It was perfect for Dad when they were in Florida since he worked on the puzzles on the coffee table which wasn't big enough for a puzzle. And, those trailers had limited space so he could just close it up and put it behind a piece of furniture until he wanted to work on it again.

I've kept a few of my favorites but the rest I donated to a local thrift store. I have a closet with shelves that I put them in when I'm done. When the shelves get full, I donate. Then I learned last summer that when the library has their annual book sale in August, jigsaw puzzles and games are also included. I was too late to donate but one of my genealogy friends (actually a 3rd or 4th cousin), has a friend that loves to do them but has a limited income. So I ended up selling her friend 20 puzzles for $10.00. 50 cents is the cost of a puzzle at the library sale where her friend usually would get puzzles. I still ended up donating another 10 to 15 puzzles to the thrift store.

J is for Jigsaw Puzzles. Dad passed away in June 2016. When the holidays came around later in the year, beside being in my seasonal depression, I was feeling very down about my first holiday season without either parent. I saw jigsaw puzzles at Wal-Mart and picked one up thinking it would keep my mind occupied. As I was working on it, I felt completely at peace. My dad also did jigsaw puzzles at various times of his life, quite often when he was in Florida for the winter. He'd start a puzzle and work on it a little every day. I even bought him a jigsaw puzzle carrier for Christmas one year before Mom passed away (bought one for me as well). He would put the puzzle on it then if needed, it could be put away without tearing it apart. I ended up buying more puzzles in 2016 and every year since then I spend the month of December working on puzzles as much as I can. This photo is just a few of the ones I have stocked up on. As I see puzzles I'm interested in doing, I buy them so right now I have around 12 to 15 in a box. There are times I will pull one out and work on it at others times of the year as well. I definitely have too many hobbies...Scrapping, Counted Cross Stitch, Genealogy and Jigsaw Puzzles.

On the main page of the forum, look under the "Let's Talk" Forum and you should see a sub-forum called "Affinity Stuff". There are tips and tricks posted there as well as questions.

And 2 other layouts from this time period. In 1982, my parents and her sister/husband were going to rent condos in Hilton Head for a 2 week period in June. The first week they had the kids join them. There were 3 of us kids. The 4th one couldn't go as he was attending Boys State for the State of Ohio that week. 2 of the 3 kids were married and 1 of the couples had a 20-month old daughter. The other couple was expecting their first child. I was single. We spent a lot of time on the beach since our condos overlooked the beach and the Atlantic Ocean. One day several of us went to Savannah to do some touristy things. It was my parents and I, my 2 cousins and 1 spouse. Mom's sister and her husband, the grandbaby and the other spouse stayed back in Hilton Head. Kit unknown. These were some of the first pages I did back in 2008.

I'm using ages 24 - 30 for this month, the years 1980 - 1985. At the age of 24 (since I turned 25 later in 1980), I made a trip with my boyfriend and another couple to the Kentucky Derby. We decided to go maybe on Wednesday and plans to get a motor home fell through. So on Friday, after we all got off work, we headed out and hoped to find a motel. Needless to say there were none in the Louisville area and we kept going south on I-64 and ended up finding a room in Elizabethtown, Kentucky. It was also well after midnight. We got up early the next morning and headed back to Louisville. We paid to get in the infield (nothing like it is today). Lots of people and unless you were lucky enough to get a space by the fencing, you really couldn't see much. However, Jim let me sit on his shoulders and Darrell let Jodi sit on his shoulders. But I will admit, I still didn't see much of the race. (Note: I finally got to see the race a few years ago on YouTube!) We had decided to head to Mammoth Cave National Park which was south of Elizabethtown on Sunday, so after the race, we headed south again. Sunday morning we got up and went to the park. After touring there, we headed back home. A side story was this was the year of a filly named "Genuine Risk". I bet a couple $ on the filly to "show" meaning if she placed 1st, 2nd, or 3rd, I would win money. My other bet was a horse owned by Jack Klugman (the actor) to Place (finish 1st or 2nd). Sadly, that horse finished 3rd. However, Genuine Risk won... I got $18! Jim made fun of me making that bet but he had to eat those words later as he ran out of money on the way home and couldn't buy our dinner... so I did! It is only fitting that I post these this week since the Kentucky Derby is this Saturday, May 3rd. And, wouldn't you know, it was on May 3rd in 1980 as well! Templates by Scrapping With Liz (Daily Life Templates). Kit by Bella Gypsy (Hold Your Horses) which is retired.

I love chocolate but never been a fan of the "boxed" chocolates. My preference was Reese's Peanut Butter Cups, Hershey's Almond Bar, Hershey's Milk Chocolate Bar and Hershey's Kisses. Being from Ohio, homemade "Buckeyes" were always around somewhere. "Buckeyes" are peanut butter and chocolate balls. My mother and several of her co-workers (all teachers) would get together in December and make lots of different kinds of candy and each would take their share. Some of the candies they made were Buckeyes, hard tack candy and chocolate covered cherries. I can no longer have chocolate so have had to find something else when I'm wanting a candy snack. On one of my trips this year, one of the stops for the tour is at Hershey's Chocolate World in Hershey, Pennsylvania. That's going to be a hard day for me!!!

Angela has a YouTube channel that she has videos of her scrapping. She doesn't use Affinity Photo to scrap but uses Affinity Publisher. But it does have a lot of the same features as photo.

Yep, I use that quite often especially if I have several effects on one layer that I want to use on another one. Personally, I don't like to select all the layers and do one shadow like Carole does in her videos. She still has to tweak some of them so doing them all individually is my preference. Having shadow styles is nice though because I can just click on that, it applies the settings and if I want to tweak it I can. That's how I do it in PSP as well. Use my presets and if I have to make adjustments, I do. The one thing that I really like about Affinity drop shadows is that you can adjust the settings at any time. With PSP, once you apply the settings, if you don't like them you have to delete the layer and start over (well, as long as the shadow is on another layer).

I noticed earlier today that there were a bunch of spam posts on this site that were about "robinhood accounts". Just can't get away from spam... it is everywhere! Editing to add that a quick google search shows that Robinhood is an online Commission-Free Stock Trading & Investing company based in Menlo Park, California.

You can save settings for drop shadows. If you look in the forum here called "Let's Talk", you will see a sub-forum called "Affinity". In the sub-forum, I created a post that shows how to save your drop shadows in Affinity. They are called "Styles". There are several default styles in the program as well. I also picked up some free styles from a YouTube channel called "Affinity Revolution" that has a freebies available with a free class they offer. The class has several mini-lessons and one of them was on the use of styles.

I have to say thanks to Susan for the idea for the letter I. This was one of the letters I was not sure what to highlight for the longest time. I is for Iron. Specifically, cast iron Irons. These have been around as long as I can remember. Mom used them as doorstops and I've continued this use to this day. I'm not sure but one of the doorstops may have belonged to my grandmother but given to Mom after her death. I just know there have been 2 of them in this house as long as I can remember. Not pictured is a cast-iron doorstop in the shape of a dachshund that lives in my bedroom. I couldn't get a good photo of these irons in their normal place since it has no natural light or an overhead light (and I can't get down on the floor!) so I moved them elsewhere for the photo. They are HEAVY... A little history: Cast iron "irons". American country irons flourished from 1850 to 1950. The most common early irons were cast in one piece and weighed from five to seven pounds. In the nineteenth century, they were found in every country home and were heated on cast iron stoves. They are commonly called "flat" or "sad" irons. "Sad is an archaic word meaning "dense" or "heavy". Cast Iron History Cast-iron doorstops were made from roughly 1820. Most found today were likely made in America sometime between the turn of the last century and 1940.

Chocolate cake with Chocolate icing. But I couldn't have that cake now with chocolate not being something I can eat anymore. But then, the last time I even had a cake was 2008.