Clarine

Here is a Japanese Beetle. You can see what they do to the leaves of the raspberry plants. I've heard/read that they love flowers too, but they only pester my raspberry plants. I have found a few in my blueberry bushes too, but, thankfully so far only a handful of beetles on them.

That is a pretty beetle. Kinda looks like a Japanese Beetles that I find in my raspberry bushes. They are destructive so gotta keep them under control. My husband found this moth when he went by it while mowing the lawn. I got a few pics of it snapped and then a bird came and snatched it away. Now that would have been a great photo.

That is a very beautiful moth. Thanks for sharing it with us. We have the hummingbird moths around here and it too is pretty colorful.

I also watch the KP factor on 2 different sites. I live straight west of Minneapolis so there are opportunities to view the Northern Lights. Last May, and then again in Oct, I was out to capture the lights. In May, my husband and I went out to see them, our first, and when I looked up into the sky all I saw was light wispy clouds. No color at all. I was disappointed there was no color. But I took a picture with a dslr camera/nice lens and wow, was I ever surprised to see the color pop up on the LCD screen on the back of the camera. I was hooked! In Oct when the lights were to be KP 5 again, I was out to find them. Neither time did I see the lights dancing tho. The lights were forecasted for our area the past few nights. I stayed up till about midnight (4 nights in a row), going out every 20 minutes to check. I didn't see anything tho, which was a little disappointing. Perhaps if I would have gone out at 3:00 am I would have been seeing the same lights Carole was looking at. I will keep trying.

I don't make waffles much anymore, but if grands ask for them we have fun making home made. They love measuring, dumping and stirring. And then of course eating them. If I end up with a few extras, I freeze them for snack on another day. I usually heat them a bit and then add peanut butter and my homemade blueberry jam. (I have a nice blueberry garden.) I printed your recipe Carole. I am interested in your crepes recipe if you care to share. Thanks much, Clarine

Beautiful!!! And so appreciated by those families. Thank you for doing such loving work.

She is perfect. Totally a living doll. 🙂

Many many years ago my mother-in-law made little white gowns for the preemies in a local hospital. Some got to wear their white owns home. Many others were sent to Heaven in their little white Angel gowns. I always wanted to follow in my Mom-in-law's footsteps and help her sew the gowns but no time back then with 3 kids and 3 parttime jobs. Now, she is in Heaven too. Maybe one day I will check into it. I love the octopus idea. They are just too cute. Bless all those volunteers!!!

Your little Sonya is a dolly.

The End 🤩

This the reason for my subject choice. In a few months we will celebrate our daughters arrival day. It's so fun to see her with her little "mini me" daughter. Little Emmy already has many of her mom's mannerisms.

I am having a heck of a time finishing the project with the templates assigned. So, I am trying to finish with Day 1 templates that seem to work best with the photos I want to use to finish my story.

They are glitter shoes. They have been handed down to four different sisters before the family passed them on for Emmy. And now they will get passed to the next little girl in the family. 🙂

Our little granddaughter is growing so fast. She is such a joy to hang out with.

In her new swimsuit, her daddy took her down to the water. At this point in time, she did not like her bath. So the lake was not her favorite. She preferred to sit with her momma and just watch the commotion her big brothers made splashing and giggling.

Page 2 done. 🙂

I did my magazine cover. It looks like it is cut off. Here's hoping once I submit it the photo, frame and everything else magically is all present.

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.

I get my grandsons (age 3.5 yrs & 6.5 yrs) once every few weeks. They love to bake with me, so lots of learning about measuring. Cracking eggs is their most favorite task, along with stirring. Being taste testers and getting to pour their own glasses of milk is the "icing on the cake." They also like to play with dry rice or barley and a funnel, spoons and measuring cups. What is spilled is easily swept up and discarded. We do play card games and simple board games. They are counting and adding as we play. And when they tire of that I bring out scraps of paper, the kids sized scissors and glue sticks. They love making their own creations, some of which end up on my fridge, while others make it home to show mom and dad. It is fun to teach them new words as we chat while we play. One other thing we enjoy doing together is playing outside. We can take a walk around the block on these fall days and find many different colored leaves. On a larger piece of paper they draw and color in a tree trunk and then dabs of Elmers school glue pastes the leaves where the artist feels they should go. Add a few clouds and a sun and wha-la, a masterpiece.

Thank you Ann. I will check that out. I like to learn about PSP. I have been using it for many years but never have blocks of time to sit and learn all that it can do. As I get closer to retirement, I am excited to get more chances to dive deeper into it. The lessons are a great start and awesome teaching tool.

Hi, I did find a few there but none really suitable for what i was trying to create. I also took Carole idea of finding frames in the Creative Content on the home page. I downloaded the package, but do not know where they ended up as no more new frames showed up the Picture Frame file under image. I thank you for the suggestion and one day I will work on finding and adding a few more frames to that folder. 🙂

I got this far and then couldn't find a frame saved in any folders and after trying to find and save and use a brand new frames (and still no luck finding them in a folder) I gave up. Not only did I not conquer finding/using a new frame, I lost all the layers I had up to this point so I couldn't do the shadows. I know it's time to give up when my bums gets sore and my legs start to fall asleep. I have enjoyed getting reacquainted with the program and relearning how to use layers. I don't do scrapbook pages, but I do do a lot of editing the many photos I take. It was really nice to see many of the familiar and beautiful faces that grace the pages of the forum. That just feels good!!! Thank you Carole for doing such a marvelous job teaching us how to use PSP. You are a delight to have for a teacher. 🙂

This was my fourth attempt to finish this assignment. When I went to the file folder to find and add the next element, it would shut the program down. After the 3rd time, I ended up restarting the computer. Finally, it went pretty quickly/smoothly and I finished. If you can check out the frames on each of the photos, you can see that it is not a solid frame. Using the flood tool, I had to click each spot to get the white to attach, and as you can see, the white still did not fill in on all the spots. Not sure why this happened, but it was consistent thru all 3 prior attempts as well. But in the end, I liked the camo effect so didn't mind that it didn't work as it should have. My grandson will love that I did this assignment for him.