Can a Glass of Juice Have a Good Side?

Or maybe the more appropriate question is, can it have a bad side? Or, perhaps, the best question is, when do you go on vacation Kara because if you're worrying about the sides of a glass of juice (yes - I know - round objects...sides...) you need to get out of here soon. Well the good news is my vacation officially begins today. I don't leave for a few days, but today was my last day at work for almost two weeks. Looking forward to Royal Wedding watching in the wee hours of the morning. Let's hope storms don't keep me up until that time as they did last night (hence the evening glass of juice...I don't want to get sick before vacation so I vitamined up tonight).

Today in Picture Inspiration Tracey challenged us to fall in love with the objects in our kitchens. I haven't spent nearly enough time in my kitchen lately. I was enjoying the reflective surfaces tonight.

My "vacation" started with some beautiful art arriving in my mailbox from a few different art swaps I've been in. It's so cool to connect with artists from all over the world through these tiny art pieces. So much fun!

I'm not going to promise to actually get posts up every day while I'm on vacation. I'll be taking pictures, creating lots of art, and writing/journaling every day - just not sure I'll get them posted daily as I need a bit of disconnect time. Don't worry - I'll catch up on everything when I get back if not a few intermittent posts along the way.

Muddy Dog and Snoozing Cat

More rain today - I really do expect Noah to sail down the street any time now. Speaking of sailing, life is being taken over by lots of preparation for getting the heck out of dodge. Still loads to do and one of the first times I will be leaving without feeling as if the ball of string that is my life is tightly wound up. Instead, that ball of string has got threads hanging out everywhere. Not how I prefer things to work, but no way to change that.

The rain has left a very muddy dog. You see that all the rain isn't putting down her desire to go outside.

Dippy is practicing our royal wedding viewing posture - lying on the couch under a blanket just like I did when I was little and Charles and Di got married and my sister and I got up at the crack of dawn to watch the wedding. It will certainly be a fun way to start vacation - watching a beautiful event.

I hope you're having a good week and staying dry.

Testing the Blogger App

Just playing around with my droid and the official blogger app. May get some use out of this on the trip.

Dippy gave me a bit of a scare this morning but he seems to be himself tonight. I am still worried about him, but hopefully he is okay. More rain on the way tonight. Stay dry.

Have you seen Noah?

The picture isn't great - but how great of a picture do you need to see that my pup is COVERED in mud. This morning was one of those mornings when, because the rain was just rolling over the roof in waves, you just wanted to pull the covers up over your head and go back to sleep. The day never got above a gentle gray tone of light. And...you guessed it...more rain is on the way tonight.

Stay dry!

Easter Weekend

I think I'll do this in reverse order. Today was supposed to be lots of work...and I did get lots done - just not the work I had intended. Hopefully I'll be able to get things done this week as I've lightened my schedule for my upcoming vacation. This morning started early. Was awake so went to Easter sunrise service in Richmond with my dad. When we got home, this woodpecker was hanging out on the birdfeeder. Drove home after that - with lots of leftovers from yesterday in my bag - yummy!

Spent quite a bit of time in the studio today.


Most of these pieces had been started prior to today so it was fun to finish up so many of these to get mailed off.

Yesterday was our family Easter dinner in the evening. Dad and I got up early and took the pups out to play.

I love how happy she looks in this photo~

Sometimes, the photo just doesn't quite capture it - and Lindsay's actions here were hilarious. We had given both dogs brand new balls before going outside. They had each kept their own ball for 10 or 15 minutes while dad and I played fetch with each dog independently. Then, we started mixing it up a bit and on the first or second toss, Sammy came up with Lindsay's ball. In this shot, Lindsay is expressing her extreme disappointment in Sammy keeping her ball. This standoff lasted for about 2 minutes before I finally got Lindsay distracted to something else.

Grandpa is cow sitting at the moment for Sammy's breeder (their barn burned). The cows were kind of a funny adventure. As long as they didn't move they were fine, but if they moved all the pups took a bit of a step back.

Love hanging out with my dad and our dogs!

Mom and I spent the morning cooking and creating. We made two "fun" things - Peeps Nests and Candied Bacon. The bacon was NOT a hit with the family (most wouldn't try it - although those that did said it was good). Many of the Peeps Nests got eaten.

Peeps Nests were pretty easy to make. We melted chocolate, coated the pretzels, dropped pretzels into "nest" shapes onto waxed paper and then added Peeps and malted milk eggs - using extra chocolate if anything wouldn't stick.

The bacon was thick cut hickory smoked bacon that we cut in half. We then baked it in a 400 degree oven, turning once, for about 10 - 12 minutes. Take it out of the oven, drain off the grease into a bowl (dispose of or save for some other use) and add brown sugar and chopped pecans. Return to the oven and bake another 10 minutes or so (as soon as I smelled the sugar turned caramel we called them done).

Remove from pan and place on paper towels to absorb grease. Drizzle with or dip into chocolate and let set up on waxed paper. Store in an airtight container.

I also colored Easter Eggs - fun!

During the day I got my hair trimmed and took Lindsay over to my aunt and uncle's house to spend a little time. She is going to hang out with them while I am on vacation so wanted her to see them with me around for a few before she spends a while with them without me.

As always, we had too much food. But, also as always, time with family is a wonderful thing.

Ashley with big brother Andrew

Aaron with his girlfriend Connor. Aaron's computer was on the fritz so we spent some time getting it all happy again.

And finally, Friday night I got to mom and dad's around 7:30. We had a nice visit and dinner and my sister Susie stopped to visit as well. It has been a long week - a VERY long week. Was nice to step away for a couple of days. I am very excited that my team met their deadline and all of our classes go out on Monday - definitely a good thing. Anyway, I did take a couple of photos on Friday, but just have to keep recording how big Sammy is getting:

I hope you had a lovely Easter weekend!

Studio Time

Today was packed from beginning to end with meetings. We started with our staff meeting at 8, went straight into a consulting meeting, then into a marathon five-hour vendor meeting, and then into another meet up with the consulting team to be ready for tomorrow's day of meetings. It was a day with a few surprises and a comment by one of the vendor's presenters that just left me speechless. He said that what we need to do when we admit students to college is determine that they are prepared to learn how to think.

To think that people view my profession as having sunk all the way down to bringing in students who have spent, at a minimum, the first eighteen years of their life without ever learning how to think is disgusting to me. I don't believe it - but his statement went into the room and met so little resistance that I'm not sure if others in the room might have agreed with him. My parents taught me how to think, speak, and stand up for myself from the time I was a very, very young girl. I learned more from aunts, uncles, brothers, sister, and teachers about how to articulate my ideas, synthesize information, and make sense of the world. To think that I hadn't yet learned how to think by the time I graduated from high school would disgust me. And, I don't think times have changed that much. ... In the words of one of my instructional designers...anywho...on to more fun and enjoyable topics.

I went to the mailbox today - as I have since the Postcard Swap began - and found my tenth postcard awaiting me! So, in no particular order...the ten postcards I received (forgive the photo quality - I'm pretty tired tonight - just trust me when I say none of them are fuzzy in real life...each one is an incredible work of art that I love...

This one is constructed on what I would guess is a recycled envelope - truly cool!

I brought home two boxes of historical photos from my folks house...need to get them unboxed and do something cool like this card from Sweden with them...

This one from the English Riviera would be an instant favorite because of the stars, but I truly wish you could feel this card and see really close up how many layers are on it - love that the stars are stitched - gotta fire up that sewing machine someday.

The first card I received, cool paint blot from right here in the US.  Very pretty and was such a perfect reminder that spring was here as I got it very close to the first day of Spring.

Doesn't this just make you smile?

This beautiful card from New Zealand came in an envelope with a stamp of Prince William and Katherine on the outside. I went giddy at the stamp - you should have heard the exclamation at how pretty the card inside was. Love it!

So may cool layers and techniques on this card - it had to have taken forever to assemble all the different parts. And...it came from just up the road in West Lafayette!

 

Love this cool photo turned into a card. The sender indicated this was shot in her "mini studio" - a plastic box turned on side with two spotlights - the product is amazing!

This card - from beautiful Canadian lake country - is getting me so excited for my upcoming vacation to Canada and Alaska! The poem begins..."If it's wild to your own heart, protect it. preserve it. love it. And fight for it, and dedicate yourself to it." The poem goes on and is absolutely beautiful.

And, last but certainly not least, (by the way - these are NOT posted in the order in which they were received...it's random ... like my brain tonight), is this beautiful card with loads of layers, an awesome blue paint color, a beautiful quote and ... it's made on a piece of cardboard and arrived safely without an envelope! Love the courage and faith in our postal service :-)

All ten are gorgeous. The thing that impresses me about them is ... not only how different they are...but how cool the use of the different resources and techniques is. Especially love those that turned something into something else. I'm not a good "art-cycler" - these little treasures will inspire me to do better. Here are all 10 together in my star card holder - their home - at least for now.

Finally tonight...spent some time in the studio just drawing and doodling. Finally did another Diva Challenge - and of course this week's is Easter inspired. It was fun but who knew an egg would be so hard to draw.

Have a great Easter weekend. I'll be snapping shots all weekend, but not sure I'll post every day. Will definitely try but my Internet access is going to be a little intermittent all weekend. See you Monday if not before.

I love Easter (candy)

Okay - I love the Easter season in general. Springtime is beautiful. The spiritual significance of the season is incredible. Baby animals, flowers, trees budding out...all are such wonderful reminders of the most important things in life. And ... Easter candy is just awesome! I love almost all kinds of Easter candy ... jelly beans, just about anything you stuff in a plastic egg, and especially Reese's Peanut Butter Eggs.  Okay - so really - I hate Peeps...although I do love the creative things people do with Peeps. So, since I am too tired tonight to even lift my Nikon, I grabbed my ever present Droid (and snapped this shot with the Vignette app) of the open bag of Reese's eggs sitting here beside me as I work more tonight (because the ten hours I put in at the office just wasn't enough today).

Vignette is a pretty cool Android app. I've been experimenting with all of it's special features and effects. The photo quality still seems wonky to me, but I've got lots more playing to do before I figure out all the bells, whistles, and best settings. I do suffer from iEnvy from time to time and the cool images created with Instagr.am on the iPhone are a continuous source of frustration for me - I just want that app on Android. Assuming this app firmly grounded in the iCulture is going to stay there - I will keep trying to find the best replacement for Droid.

Getting ready for D(elivery) Day

My team coordinates the delivery of more than 100 online courses for our college's statewide library of online courses. Our delivery day (D-Day) for summer semester courses is this coming Monday. This week is one of our five to ten busiest of the year. I'm really proud of my team for pulling together and working hard to get all of these courses out by the delivery date - or that's our goal anyway. We're making some really good changes - the little details - in the releases this semester.  Things that people who don't work with these courses ever single day will never notice and never understand how important these little changes are to making sure we can tackle the bigger stuff in future releases because we're not having to deal with all this little stuff.  Things like making sure file names reflect versioning information so we're not sitting together and hand comparing which is the most recent version of a syllabus and new banner images that don't have to be updated every single time the publisher decides to change the cover art of the book.  Imagine having to deal with that for 113 different courses with more than 200 different course developers (some work in teams).  Oy vey!

I decided we needed a visual representation of what was done and what was yet to be done so Becky - our awesome Executive Secretary - made a color coded "tote board" out of post-its. That's what you see in the photo above.  We moved six or seven courses to the done column before we left today and our newest instructional designer sent email at the end of the day that will give us a GREAT start to the day tomorrow!

Otherwise, it was a rocky day - from the weather to the work. Storms rocked Indiana - and a lot of the midwest - all night last night and through the day today. We're under a Tornado Watch now that will last until 3 a.m.  We're in for more rain the rest of the week. Lots of muddy paw prints around the house yet again. And work was, well...work. I hate it when it's work and not fun. The best thing about my job is that - even when it does feel like work - I get the chance to do it with great people who I like a lot.  However, I'm more than ready for my upcoming vacation! I don't know about you - but Friday can't get here fast enough this week. Looking forward to seeing the family since it's Easter weekend!

Dippy Doodle

Dippy has just been all cuddles and snuggles lately. He was relaxing on the back of the sofa tonight so I grabbed a shot. Hope you're off to a good start to the week.

More Spring Flowers

I experimented with my ISO settings today to capture a couple of images of the new flower indoors (above) as well as the flowering tree outdoors (below).  The flowering tree has always faded within just a week, but this week despite some pretty heavy wind and a pretty grey, icky day yesterday has stayed really pretty for a whole week so it's going to stay nice for at least a few more days.

Hope you had a great weekend!

Lindsay's Hatred of ALL things Pretzel

I have intended to go to the Binford Farmer's Market since just a couple of months after I moved to Indy. However, I had never made it until today. It wasn't terribly exciting this morning as there was very little produce - however loads of good baked goods as well as the yummy soup mix shown in the photo here. I also went to Trader Joe's for normal groceries and grabbed some yummy new Pretzel croissants. Funny thing is, when I was eating dinner and Lindsay was seated next to me to see if she'd get any I gave her a bite of the pretzel bread, not even thinking of how she dislikes normal pretzels (won't even sniff at them more than once if she realizes that's what I'm eating). She took the bread and ended up spitting it back out. Such a silly dog.

Also bought and installed my new computer today to replace the PC that died last week. Normally that would be photo worthy in my life but I've realized a new windows machine is just no longer noteworthy in my life. Hopefully now I can get back to work and getting things done at home.

TGIF!

TGIF! Have a great weekend!