'tis the season

Best Shot Monday question - how do I keep my wits about me during the holidays?  Hmm... well, I focus on others.  Like my friend's guinea pigs.  The best photo shoot companions ever!  They sit still, and love the click of the camera.  I plopped them on the dining room table, with the fibre optics Christmas tree as a backdrop, and poof!  instant Christmas photo.

I plan out my December to make sure I can fit in as many relaxing evenings with friends as possible. I'm not always hosting, and they're not always hosting. A dinner for four, or an evening with 30 - it's all good just as long as it's easy and fun. I don't do a tree because I don't find it easy or fun. I have a couple evergreens on our property, so I'm good with just leaving them be. Santa Baby can slip the sable directly into my hall closet instead of under the tree. :)

The other things I do are: shop during the rest of the year and wrap & mail before December hits.  I have little patience for malls to begin with, and a mall filled with impatient people doesn't exactly fill me with the Holiday Glow.  I also have to wrap for extended family so I get it done earlier so I don't start grumbling about it all.  As well, I have a lot of clients wanting cards made and photos altered, so I want to leave time open for them too!  As for being outside in the wonderous snow, I prefer watching someone else shovel my walkway, and preparing some hot chocolate for him (my Charlie Brown, my husband).  I snuggle with my puppy, and sit by a fire (we're lucky enough to have a real wood-burning fireplace!)  The more I can stay off the slippy ice & snow the better.  Hey, we can't all be Snow Bunnies!

Surfin' the Net, finding textural gold!

Kim Klassen Cafe

So I’ve stumbled upon a fellow Canadian, and a prairie girl to boot, who does amazing things with Textures in Photoshop. I must admit, I have not been at the computer forever, due to all the crap that 2010 has been, and my focus is totally off – I’m running every way but loose. However, all that being said, I think I will concentrate on Kim Klassen and her Cafe in the coming months. These Textures and what they can do for the average photo are just too cool to not play with!

Thought you should know about them too. 

So I played around with a photo I took of Ji-Sun at her wedding to my brother-in-law, Harrison. 

Who could get a more perfect model?  She's just stunning.

Then I took out the 'unwanted' elements in the background.

Then I added two of Kim's Textures, and played with the levels and saturation.

 Then I added a subtle border to the edge. 

Love it!

November already!??

Where the heck did September and October go?  One minute I was dealing with bronchitis and the next I was in MN to visit my sister (above) and her family & friends.  This shot was taken on the last day there after visiting JKL Gifts (KA's new pop-up store) at Snuffy's.  We had bacon cheddar cheese burgers and chili cheese fries and a malt.  It was great!  But more importantly, the trip was great.  I was able to spend another Hallowe'en with Andrea's kids, connect with friends and spend some good one-on-one time with Andrea as well.  And talk about a busy household!  There wasn't more than 20 minutes in the whole 10 days where we inserted a little down-time.  Only to be interrupted by laundry.  I really do wish I lived closer so I could spend more time with all of them!

As for the studio, not much is happening right now in the creative department.  Just back from one trip and on to the next!  I'm hoping to have more Craft Fairs to attend (the last one was a success - yay me!) before the snow and cold makes me refuse to leave the house.

I don't like Mondays (tell me why)

It's been a rough couple weeks around here, and it's not looking much brighter.  Mum & Dad are of the age where their friends are getting sick and some of them have recently passed away.

Last week my sister came up from Minnesota and we attended JTMM's funeral.  Over a thousand people attended, and my Dad was an honourary pallbearer.  It's all too unreal - Jim has always been there, and now suddenly, he's not.  I painted this large abstract landscape during this last week, and although I've titled it '103 Miles to Chicago' it sorta reminds me of the autumn mornings when Jim & Dad would go out hunting.

This morning brought more news from Mum - another life-long friend is in the hospital, along with a new friend who had a mild heart attack, and my favourite Auntie needs to have an angiogram.  (sigh)

 I'm heading off in two days to Minnesota to spend a week with my sister and her kids, and in the thick of things up here preparing for my trip I've gotten a whopper of a headache and have been kinda grumpy for the past couple days.  The snow on the ground today didn't help either!

But then, just as I was planning on grumbling some more, the lady at Staples re-did my botched print order for free, along with two extra pages!  And then the guy in front of me at Starbucks bought me my Chai - and apparently does this all the time - lucky for me I was behind him in line.  So although there is a lot of clouds lately, there is also a silver lining (every once in a while).

Riverbend Community Centre Craft Sale

Riverbend Community Centre
Craft Sale

Saturday, October 23, 2010 ~ 10:00am – 4:00pm

19 Rivervalley Drive SE Calgary Alberta

A wonderful variety of homemade crafts; as well as gift based home businesses. Concession sponsored by the Heritage Lions Club; drop by for a snack or lunch. Admission is free ~ advertised to all of Calgary media Donations accepted for the Calgary Interfaith Food Bank.

Kennedy Ink will have a table at the Riverbend Community Centre’s Craft Fair.

I will have a variety of art available, as well as some photography, and if I get my act in gear some cards as well. Come out and get some Christmas shopping done early!

Michelle
Kennedy Ink

http://www.google.com/profiles/KennedyInkCreative  check out all my creative explorations!

consolidating

In my studio, and in my business, I have a lot.  I find I get attracted to new techniques and new tools, and after I acquire them I forget about the old tools & techniques... so I go back to those and forget about the new... I think you see where this is going.

Time to consolidate.  I have the ability to do anything, I just don't have the time to do everything.  Which is a hard lesson to learn.  But with too much diversity comes too little production, what with all my resources spread so thin.  Now I just have to decide what goes and what stays.  No.  That won't be easy at all.  (sigh)

and so it is

Here we are at the end of an Indian Summer, waiting for the Globe Thistle to shed the last of the tasty bits the bees like to get at.  I must admit I'm feeling a little prickly myself.  We had an awesome Garage Sale on the 18th of September, and that night I came down with 'something' which turned into a cold, which became bronchitis.  I'm still coughing and sound like an old lounge singer who smokes a pack a day... and I'm half expecting pneumonia to be next on the list.  So far my antibiotics aren't kicking this bronchitis thing to the curb.  I've had to cancel a number of plans as well.  Just me and my dog napping on the couch leafing through magazines and ripping out pages to keep.  At some point, I expect I will start to not feel like a pile of poo, but I haven't gotten there yet.  So there you have it.  I'm as prickly as a Fall Globe Thistle, but still super cool.  :)

end of season mulch

Finally!  The weediest spot in our garden was attacked by my brother-in-law in early August.  A few blades of grass crept back in over the last month and a half, and were finally eradicated by my husband.  To add to the no-weed look I like, he put down landscaping cloth and then went to buy bark-chips.  End-of-season bark chip selection is not top knotch - we got black... which looks a lot like dirt.  Oh well.  At least there isn't any chance of grass growing under that bench!  Next year I'll put a few pots on the broken bench and have flowers cascading down off of it.  It'll be so pretty!  Thanks for all your hard work Ty & Austin & Scott!

'puter games

Who knew playing typing on the 'puter (or a placemat in this case) could be such fun?  L came up with this idea and Scott jumped on board, and then E and my sister got in on it as well.  Pretty soon there was the Coast Guard against a Secret Society bent on taking over the World!  I missed out on most of it because I was busy working (on a real computer, not a wooden placemat) while all this imagining was going on upstairs.  Never a dull moment when the niece and nephew are in town!  Even Maggie (our dog) got in on it (she's in hot pink on the back of the sofa basically ontop of Scott).

family visit

L and her other Aunties

As a favour to my brother-in-law I sucked it up and drove with my sister and her two kids to Vernon to visit the other side of the family.  Kidding!  I love those kids & getting to spend more time with them is a blessing, so I actually jumped at the chance.

It was nice to see the other side of the family again.  I've known K (the woman looking at me taking the photo) since I was 18, and met her sister B shortly afterwards.  So we were all friends and my sister knew her mother-in-law before she even met her future husband.  It's a tangled web we weave, and I wouldn't have it any other way.

L was just enamoured with J, who is K's little boy.  And E visited with his much older cousin S, who was incredibly tolerant of all the little ones and their lack of understanding about personal space.

We laughed, we cried, and A got incredibly sick, and then the kids got a little ill, and I even managed to attend a scrapbooking class and visit an old friend.  It was a great start to the summer visit, and as a little payback, my sister helped me get my studio back in order from the renovations.  I know, I know.  It's been a long time coming!  But having my appendix removed, and then myomas removed, and then a 3 week vacation to Sonoma, and then... well, you get the idea.  I didn't do much this summer in the studio.

I did make up for my lack of actual work by taking a boat-load of pictures.  Here's a couple more from my time in Vernon.  I hope I get back out there next summer.  What a fabulous little town!