Mystery Novel 2

I finally finished the outline of what I have so far. There is a character who keeps coming up 'off stage.' In other words, he is mentioned but we haven't met him. And he would have been an important person to the victim. I think this might be my key to open the door into finishing chapter 24--my heroine needs to talk to this man and find out if he knows something. How is he involved? That means I need to have him show up at least once earlier on, so we can get a 'feel' for his personality. He is good at what he does, but somewhat abrasive and full of himself. He could be nothing more than a red herring...or a major character behind the plot to murder Mrs. Woodall. I need to work on his motivation, if there is one there. Like all my books, my characters do more writing than I do...so we'll have to see what Mr. Norm Salinger has to say.

Scanning old photos

I wasn't a scrapbooker when my kids were little, so there are events for which I don't have a lot of photos. I think I already posted about taking pictures off a video screen. I found a collage I'd made of the kids that has some Halloween photos on it. I scanned it and I'm going to try to cut and paste photos from the scan to use on album pages.

This is one of the images--my son at age 1. I had to use the cloning tool to fill in the corner of the picture, because it was overlapped with another one. I have always loved these images of Michael and I wish I had a gazillion of them!

Another Gettysburg Page

I 'scraplifted' this page idea from someplace else because I liked the way the original had half color/half b&w for the photo. I used the eyedropper tool in my photo program to draw colors from the photo to make the circles in the background. Here is a link to information about thsi historic battle site: Gettysburg National Military Park Virtual Tour Stop#10- Little Round Top

Mystery Novel

I am trying to write a mystery novel. I've written horror novels and historicals (the latter for kids), but I wanted to try my hand at a mystery because I enjoy reading them. Not one of the heavier ones, though. I believe the type I'm writing is called a 'cozy,' mostly because the really gory stuff happens 'off camera.' I had no idea how hard it was going to be. I have a little over 200 pages written. I'm going back over it and finding too many loose ends I have to fix. I know aobut 99.9% what the ending is, but I have to make everything else mesh so that it works. I have a reading comprehension problem. It's hard for me to keep track of things with lists, charts and diagrams. So I've started typing out a chapter-by-chapter synopsis of what I have so far. This is helping me to see some of the points I've missed, or gotten wrong. I hope to get back to the book very, very soon. Right now, it's all a jumble to me. But I need to get the damned thing written and published. I need the money.

2 seconds of scrapping

Today I was so busy trying to get rid of clutter in the living room that I didn't do much in the creativity department. I had already done most of this layout, but I added the bee-hive today. I'll put journalling on it when I get a pen. I dressed my 3 kids (now I have 4) as bees, using poster board, markers and felt--all held together with staples, LOL! Oh, and btw...the living room looks good!

My mom's vegetable soup

My mother makes the best vegetable soup in the world. Even people who don't like vegetables like this soup, because it has a nice, mild flavor. We especially like it with Premium Saltine crackers. Here is the recipe:

Grandma McNally’s
Vegetable Soup

Grandma says: “Start with a soup bone and I watch for chuck roast to be on sale and use that for the meat. Boil the bone and meat. Put in jars and refrigerate overnight...this enables you to take all the fat from the top. Then cut up 2 ½ cups celery, 1 large can diced tomatoes, 2 med. onions, 2 med. carrots, ½ head cabbage, 2 med. potatoes. Salt and pepper to taste

Put cabbage and potatoes in last 20 minutes to half hour. Just cook it all up. If the broth doesn’t seem strong enough, I sometimes add some beef cubes or granules. Cut up the meat and put it in at the last minute. Enjoy!

What I do, myself, is buy a chuck steak and cut the meat off and freeze it. I just keep adding the meat to a bag. Then I boil the bones for several hours. I do this several times over several weeks until I have 4 mayonnaise jars of broth. Take the broth and the meat out of the freezer about 2 days ahead to let it thaw in fridge. You can do it with just 2, but I like to make a double-batch because there never seems to be enough, it is soooo good. I also just throw it all together, I don't wait to put the cabbage or potato in.

Delicious!

A layout I did for a contest

I entered an on-line contest with this layout. You had to use specific colors. It's fun to manipulate the reds, yellows and blues with number codes and end up with a certain color. I'm not sure what that's called. I used Scrapbook Factory Deluxe for this. The little guy is my son Jamie, then aged 4--about 15 years ago!
The prize is probably a scrapping kit. I'd like to win anything at all, since this is the first time I ever entered an on-line contest of any kind!

Regrets

As an avid scrapbooker, I regret that I didn't pick up the hobby when my kids were really, really little. I'd have taken a lot more pictures! I'm rescrapping Halloween pictures from the 80s and early 90s. I wish I had more pictures of the littlest one dressed as a dinosaur, or my daughter in her gorgeous orange-and-black witch's dress, made by mommy! I would have taken tons of pictures of the three kids (before the 4th came along) as bumblebees!
Digital cameras are the best. You can take unlimited pictures and load them right into your computer and make as many copies as you want. As it is, I actually have taken pictures right off the TV screen from old videos. Alas, with four kids, it wasn't always easy to use the video camera, either. The sideways photo here (I didn't realize I hadn't rotated it, sorry) is of Jamie, age 4. Wish you could see the machine-embroidered "Jurassic Park" logo I did on the front of his shirt--which I also made myself.

New Bathroom, under $50

My daughter and I are going to be switching my office for her bedroom. The office, after October 1, will be a small apartment for which she will be paying us rent. She wanted the bathroom down here to look nice, and has just redecorated it for less than 50 bucks. That's what I call creative! She found some animal print and bamboo accessories on sale and has made the room look very nice. Her younger brother is forbidden to use it now, LOL! Pretty soon, I'm going to have to figure out how to fit the computer table, sewing table, various bookshelves and a ton of scrapbooking things--not to mention roughly 20 albums--in a room about 1/3 the size of this one.

First Day of High School

My son just came in and said, 'hi,' then proceeded to ask if we had anything to drink. It was his first day of high school. I am hoping it will be a fun, interesting and productive year for him. He struggled with some of his subjects last year. This year, I plan to make him flash cards and study with him each night. (Due to my own health problems, studying was no better than sporadic last year.) Flash cards, I think, are a way of cutting through all the malarky in text books and getting to the facts. Mnemonics (don't know if I spelled that correctly) are a creative way to remember things. I'm curious to see what subjects he'll be studying, and it will be fun to come up with mnemonics for them. You know, like "My Very Educated Mother Just Served Us Nine Pizzas" reminds you of the planets in our solar system. I don't suppose I can do that for math, but he can go to extra help for that subject, if he needs it.
I made him scrambled eggs and an English muffin this morning at 6 a.m., but I told him that was only because it's the first day. He can make his own breakfast just fine. I did not get out the camera to take his picture at that hour of the morning. It was enough to make sure he had his shirt on the right way.
I'm off to ask how his day was. If I get anything more than 'fine,' I'll be happy.
:)

Scrapbooking Gettysburg 3

Well, here's try #2. I think it came out much better this time. I turned the template around so that it only took up part of the page to leave room for a title. Frankly, this is more work than I want to put into a scrapbook page, but the results are nice. I used the 'dropper' icon on my Photopro and picked up the color in a pair of jeans in one of the photos. Then I flood-filled a blank paper. I copy and pasted it to Scrapbook Factory Deluxe then inserted the text in gray.

The dropper icon is really cool, because you can draw color right from a photograph, then make a background paper that matches perfectly.

Scrapbooking Gettysburg 2

I was trying to make a mosaic layout, but I didn't do a very good job cutting the templates, LOL! I'm going to do journalling in the circle in the middle, I think. There would usually be a photo there. These are cut from store-printed photos, so it was hard to make them 'fit.' I think it would be easier to use photos you've printed from your computer. Then you could maneuver them and make them the right size.
That weird picture on the left, that is just under the picture of the big house, is part of a gnarled old tree on the field of Picket's Charge. My son took that one. It was the only photo I could finagle to fit in that spot, LOL!
The two guys in the bottom left photo are my husband and Doc, standing near the site of the first shot fired at Gettysburg. Doc and L/D said it took them a really long time to find the marker for this, as it is well-hidden between the bushes.
Later today, or tomorrow, I hope to finish a better mosaic layout! This time I used a ruler and will have better templates. Plus, I'm going to use photos I've downloaded from my digital camera (or is it uploaded? I never knew one from the other). The next version should look much nicer!

Scrapbooking Gettysburg

My husband, youngest son Nick and I just returned last Sunday (July 28) from a wonderful weekend with friends in Pennsylvania. After spending the night at their house, we drove to Gettysburg (about an hour from where they live). My friends, aka Doc and L'il Devil, along with their two sons, gave us what L'il Devil (better know as L/D to me) called the "Quarter Tour." ("It's better than the Nickel Tour, but next visit, when we have more time, you'll get the Silver Dollar Tour," sez L/D.) As frequent visitors to Gettysburg, they know a lot about the history of that area. We learned things they don't teach you in history books.
And they love to go ghost-hunting! If ever there was a place that could be haunted, it is Gettysburg. The image above right is a plaque showing a soldier who died in battle. Amos Humiston was found holding a photo of the three children shown on the plaque. (Humiston's image was later superimposed with the children's image, and the photo distributed to various media). Frank, Freddie and Alice became known as "The Battlefield Children." Public concern about war orphans led to the opening of an orphanage known as "The Homestead." For a decade, it was a stellar example of child care. But, sadly, cruel and corrupt people overtook it and it closed down after just a few more years. It is said that ghosts of children who suffered there still haunt the place, now a Bed and Breakfast. We were lucky enough to enjoy a night there. The place is like your grandma's house, with a cluttered parlor full of interesting things, narrow staircases, beautiful old furniture and wood floors. Are there ghosts there? I'm generally a skeptic, but I know what I see and hear my own self. Someone knocked on my door at night and when I went to open it, no one was there, and no one had had the time to walk away--the place is quite small. I heard latches moving up and down in the night--further investigation found no one up and about. I do have to say that I never felt scared. If there are ghosts, I believe the dead will never hurt you. The image above left is my husband and L/D's youngest on Little Round Top. It is hard to look over these battlefields and not be moved to remember the more than 50,000 men who died there in just three days. I have about 100 photos I hope to scrapbook soon. Alas, not a ghost among them!