Orchids, orchids, and more orchids

We have had one heck of a winter - too many bitter cold days, several too deep snows, and just too many gray sunless skies.  Well, it is March and we finally had a nice sunny and warm (60's) Spring day so my husband and I decided on a spur of the moment visit to the Missouri Botanical Garden in St. Louis.

Of course, I had to take my camera with me just in case there were some new spring buds.  We walked into the Welcome Center and there were signs all around announcing that, "this is the last week of the Orchid Show".  We were ecstatic!  I knew I was going to get some great photos of the orchids!

There was a docent in the showroom who spoke with us about the orchids.  They change the arrangements every day, taking out the orchids that have finished blooming and replacing them with newly blossomed plants.  The Garden has a huge nursery where they tend to the orchids year round and one of the orchids dates back to the late 1800's.  I had a better understanding of how special this flower is after taking photographs and talking with the docent.  

Here are some of those photos.

These are posted on my Flickr page too.

I decided to use some of these photos in a digital layout for Digital Scrapper.

Credits

Layout by Donna Juergens

Pretty Powerful Paper Video Tutorial by Barb Brookbank

http://www.digitalscrapper.com/shoppe/Pretty-Powerful-Paper-Video-Tutorial.html 

Font:  Bookman Old Style

Happy New Year (and a belated Merry Christmas)

Since my last post, we swiftly passed through the holiday season and here it is already the middle of January.  I just want to wish everyone a very HAPPY AND HEALTHY NEW YEAR!

We had a wonderful holiday with a lot of fun family time.  We were so excited that my niece, her little boy, and our eldest daughter were able to join us this year.  I took some photos of my great nephew and posted the layouts I made with those photos here on the blog.

I'm having a blast working on my digital scrapbooking layouts as a member of the Digital Scrappers Creative Team.  I'm learning a lot about posting on websites, linking kits and even more about designing so this endeavor is keeping me busy.

Just last week a lot of our country was hit by a record snowstorm created by the southerly  shift of the Polar Vortex.  Schools, churches, and some businesses were closed, the roads were treacherous, and the temperatures outside were dangerously low, so most of us stayed inside.  

We captured a few photos of the snow around our house.  We did not lose electricity in our area so it was nice and cozy inside our house.  The schools were dismissed the whole week long - pretty unusual for our area.  Now the temperature has risen and a lot of the snow has melted.  It was pretty while it lasted.

New Digital Scrapbook Pages

As part of the responsibility as a Creative Team Member at Digital Scrapper, I am contributing layouts to the gallery on that website.  So, in the last several days I have put on my creative thinking cap, looked through some photos and made a couple layouts using pictures of my great nephew.  He is growing soooo fast and getting cuter every time I see him.  Hope you enjoy these newest entries on my blog.

Credits

Digital Scrapper Art Play Palette Family Kit by Anna Aspnes

http://www.digitalscrapper.com/shoppe/ArtPlay-Palette-Family-Kit.html

Credits

Digital Scrapper Christmas Wishes Kit by Kristin Cronin-Barrow

http://www.digitalscrapper.com/shoppe/Christmas-Wishes-Kit.html

Creative Team at Digital Scrapper

I am soooooo excited!  This week I found out that I was chosen for the Digital Scrapper Creative Team.  I am so happy to be a part of this team.  

To quote Darcy Baldwin from Digital Scrapper, "Our Creative Team creates pages for challenges and other Digital Scrapper promotions every month".  I'm excited about this because it will challenge my digital design skills and will give me the opportunity to display some of my digital scrapbooking work on a great website.  It was through Digital Scrapper that I first learned how to use Adobe Photoshop Elements to design "digital" scrapbook pages and that was in 2005.  I've learned so much since then and hope you will check out this website once in a while to see what the Creative Team is up to.

http://www.digitalscrapper.com/blog/creative-team-announcement/

Above is a link to the announcement on the Digital Scrapper blog.

 

It's About Time

I know - I know.  It's about time - right?  Yes, it is about time I made another post on my blog.  It's been a busy summer and fall and time got away from me.  But I'm back at my computer and looking over about six months of photos - so today is the day.  

Late this summer we took a trip to South Dakota and Montana.  Just love to ramble along in the mountains and high plains.  It sure is cowboy land up yonder.  We did a lot of exploring - Badlands, Black Hills, Custer State Park, Devil's Tower, Glacier National Park to name the biggie's.  We took our time and saw many things, met some new people, and traveled with family to Glacier.  It was a lot of fun and a lot of pictures were taken.  Here are some of my favorites.

I took this photo on the walk to the Mitchell Prehistoric Indian Village in Mitchell, South Dakota.  The color of the water at the lake's edge was really interesting looking. The indian settlement nearby dates back 1,000 years and it is an active archeological dig site. Very interesting place.

These were the most unusual cloud formations I have ever seen.  We camped in a gulch in the town of Deadwood, South Dakota and every evening we enjoyed looking up the gulch at the sky.

This was a shot of one of the streams near Glacier.  I loved the crispness of the green tree against the blue water of the mountain stream.  The photo below shows the vastness of the Black Hills. I'll be putting more photos of this trip on my Flickr.  Check back soon.