Chickens

I'm baaaaack! That is how I feel after changing my blog to diverse views. I didn't like not seeing my header. Maybe I could have customized it some more, but the feedback was, everyone liked the old look best. I felt confident in changing because I knew I could easily switch back. Not the case! I did what the instructions said to "restore former template" and it didn't work. Thank goodness I had backed up my template. I had to call in the big guns (my son-in-law) to reload the old template. By that time I was so freaked out I was afraid to click anything! As usual, the "help" option was no help.

Mr. B and I went to dinner at the house of new friends. The connection we made when we met was discussing chickens. They have chickens in the backyard; I grew up on a chicken farm; Mr. B worked with poultry for a large part of his career. So you can imagine much of the conversation was .... Chickens. We veered off into compost, and one guest told us about her red wiggler worms. They make great fertilizer, she says, for a small amount of kitchen scraps. They have to be kept between 60 and 70 degrees so that means in the laundry room, an extra bathroom or a warm basement. But don't worry, she assured us they don't smell!

Here are pictures of the backyard flock. We all went out and visited them before dinner. And we left that night with a dozen eggs!

I'm linking to Little Red House for Mosaic Monday. Check out the website for other lovely mosaics.

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Take Time Out for Life

Isn't it amazing how ideas come? I was looking at online tutorials about digital art. This is the result. There are tutorial online that teach everything! I can sit in my recliner and learn! Here I made the background and imported the clock after I cut it out of another picture. There is also a texture layer here. I learned how to put the texture on without affecting the color of my picture. The quote is my own - a variation on time to smell the roses.

What do you all think about my new format? Is it just too weird? I can restore to my old format. Just to be certain, I backed up my template before I made the change. The comment window is still here but you have to scroll down after you click on comment. Please leave feedback so I know if anyone likes this. I can't decide!

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Blue Hydrangea Montage

I'm enjoying making these montages with flowers. Hurry up spring. I want to see real flowers again. 

It is amazingly warm for March in Connecticut. The forsythia I brought into the house is in full bloom. Both my rose bushes survived the winter and have small leaves. 

This blue hydrangea is in my front yard. I hope it has even more blooms this summer.

This is the background I created to put the hydrangea on. 

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All Alone in the Night

This is a beautiful view of the earth at night from the International Space Station. This was posted March 5, 2012 on NASA's website. Check for the Astronomy Picture of the Day.

Was anyone else amazed at how much electricity is used to light up the night?

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Sunflower & Goldfinch

This is created in Photoshop Elements using a background I created and two of my photos- the sunflower and the bird. To finish it, I used a Dry Brush filter. 

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Digital Art

Sometimes in an art show I see amazing things created on the computer. So I went searching for digital art and found many online sites that will let you create and then save to your computer.

After making the basic design I layered part of a photo over the colorful design. You can just barely see tree limbs. Over that I put a texture layer then erased some of it. The eyedropper tool in Elements let me choose a color from the design for the border.

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Further Experiments with Montage

You may have seem my other posts as I started to experiment with Photo Montages. Inspiration from Jo was my first effort. Then I tried a dark sunflower with Learning from the Internet.  Purple Hydrangea Montage was much more elaborate. 

Golden Montage was my last effort. 

This one, my Woods and Stream Montage is the result of my pushing myself to try something very different. After it was done, I realized the woods with the stream below look like all one photo when they are actually two photos taken at different times and places. I'm not certain how much I like this one. It may grow on me. But I'm glad I tried something out of my comfort zone. In order to learn, I have to keep trying new things. 

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