A Few Thoughts On My Photos

Several people have asked me where I find my photos. Well, I've answered that on a post here. Check it out. But I will elaborate on a few things. One question is how or why I select the pictures.

That's a bit tough to explain but I'll try. First of all, pink is a qualifier. Second, roses and/or flowers are another qualifier. Then it goes on from there.

I do not like orange in the least bit. I have a Liz Claiborne blouse that has orange in it but it has other colors overpowering it. I love that blouse, but actually, it's too small at the moment but I hope to someday be able to wear it again. (Don't we all say that?) Anyway, it's absolutely stunning and when I unpack it from the garage attic—someday in the future—I'll photograph it and show you. So not liking orange determines that I'll rarely show much of that color. It brings a truly negative feeling to me. I don't really know why but I have a suspicion, and no, I'm not revealing it. Nothing traumatic or tragic.

Then, there's what I am doing at the moment as another qualifier. If I'm trying to buy a new sofa, then I'll look all over the internet at sofas or rooms.

There's also the feeling that one photo might bring to me. Perhaps just something in it will haunt me until I put it in my folder for photos, which I call "Unfinished". Then when I've Photoshopped it a bit, it goes into the folder on my desktop called "Pinks". It is then uploaded to Photobucket. Perhaps a froufrou lamp or an ottoman or just the photographer's skill in doing a great photo shoot. Laundry on a line is another thing I love, along with lace and terrific views out a window and windows. Sometimes it's as simple as seeing a Mac computer. When I see a Mac than I know that person is intelligent. :-) As only intelligent people buy Macs. :-) As they say: I have to kiss a lot of frogs to get my prince—meaning photos.

I also don't show the upper- or high-end homes much. While we all love to see exquisite homes, there aren't many of us that will ever have those. I'm one of those and that doesn't bother me one bit. They're still fantastic to view. But I prefer "normal" everyday homes. It seems more real to most of us. I think we all prefer reality to fantasy. I do! I don't dream big.

I'm really a simple girl; although, a lot of people would disagree with me. They truly don't understand my heart or what makes me tick. I have very few "best friends" as I'm very picky. I have a lot of acquaintances. That's a huge difference in my book. Hubs is my bestest friend and I can tell him just about anything and know it's safe.

As a simple girl, I love simple things like decorated bottles, beautiful rooms—this does not mean elaborate or expensive. Just beautiful. Most rooms I see on a regular basis are what I call "couch potato" rooms. The television is directly across from the sofa and all the chairs in the room face the television also. That would never happen in this house. All the chairs are grouped for conversation. I talk to people. (That doesn't lend itself to me being able to pronounce the name of the latest middle east despot but I don't care one whit as their names are unpronounceable anyway.) I don't have them over to watch anything, especially since we have no television. We read a lot! I'm an avid reader of fiction books.

Another darling home in the French countryside.

This caught my eye very quickly.

More froufrou for you to see.

I don't know why but these walls look pink to me so here they are. Like this room a great deal but I'd do something more with those lamps.

What's not to like about this bed? Lovely!

How do the people in this country drive on the streets? They are so narrow and the buildings and flora are right on the street.

You knew I wouldn't resist this pink door, right?

A darling European kitchen. See, we chicks are so different even when we're from different countries. However, is that knife holder making a statement from the woman of the house? ;-)

Lovely vintage, rustic birdhouse.

Pretty wallpaper border.

Yep, yet another getaway for ya. Hubs has been wanting to buy one of those large umbrellas. I just may let him next year. Then I'll throw some netting over it and sit outside under it. I don't do sun! My granddaughter and I are exactly alike with the same pale coloring. My only coloring? Age spots!

I wish I had found this old cupboard. Adorable.

Cute eye candy.

You know this isn't anywhere in the U.S., right?

I could vacation here...if I didn't have to fly to get there.

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Another Rant

I see a lot of women with copyrights on their photos. I'm not at all territorial about my photos. If you want to use any of them, even my personal ones, you have my permission. It's a form of flattery. I wouldn't put them out in the public domain if I didn't want them looked at and used. As I said, I'm not territorial. But...

I see some out there from other sites—and I'm talking graphics sites here—and women/bloggers are putting their "copyright" on them. They cannot be your copyright if you get them from a graphics site to use and put your name on them! How ridiculous can you be? And then you complain about someone taking your photos to show how beautiful your products are??? Puhleeeeze! How ridiculous can it get? Be flattered that someone considers them beautiful enough to use them. Rant over. ;-)
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Another cottage in Carmel. I think this is a bakery.

Lovely textured and colored window probably in France or Italy.

Urn holding a gorgeous plant.

A sweet cozy outdoor room.

When I saw this little lace dress with pink ribbons on it, I immediately thought of a blessing dress for a little girl.

I would love to have this to display in my home. It just touches my heart in a number of ways.

A lady finger dessert with roses thrown in. Yuuummm.

Just a little bling thrown in for ya, chicks. :-)

A mailbox? Cute, whatever it is.

Every time I see baskets like this I want some, but I know I'll never get them.

Another upscale sun room not many of us can afford. I can appreciate it though; it's gorgeous.

I do love these chippy old boxes for putting on patios and porches though.

I think a pink plastic bucket like this would be just fine for a bouquet of roses.

While I wouldn't want to live here, I'd sure love to visit and have lunch on that dock. That would be fun.

Now, have a cupcake and enjoy your own life!

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A Story About the Life of a Marine's Wife

 This is a mosaic of my laundry room.

I've updated my tutorial on the new blogger interface here. This one is about blogger wanting you to upgrade for more storage space and telling you that some photos and/or posts will be deleted because you're using too much space. You really need to read this tutorial. Go to the bottom of the tutorial for a bit of advice on what other options you have.
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As I've stated before, my hubby is a retired Marine. We've lived in the Western part of the U.S. most of our lives and I can't imagine living anywhere else. When he had to go overseas twice in our years in the Marine Corps, it separated us for a whole year. He was on unaccompanied tours, which means that our kids and I had to stay stateside. Since he was in nuclear weapons, he wasn't allowed into Vietnam or any war zones for which we were grateful. But it was very difficult being without a hubby for a whole year and only communicating by letters and through short wave radio contact. By that I mean, I'd go through a local ham radio operator via a phone connection here in the U.S. and hubs would go through a ham radio operator where he was. That way of communicating left us with no privacy; the ham radio operators heard everything we had to say and we'd both have to say "Over" when we were through talking so the other person could talk. So you cell phone users have no clue how it used to be. Very inconvenient to talk personally about situations at home if need be. "Love you. Over" doesn't quite convey its message! Personal things took weeks to resolve if a situation at home had to be addressed through letters. Yes, letters. There was no instantaneous email at that time. And with 2 kids there was always something.

Anyway, the first time he went to Asia, I stayed with my parents in San Jose. The second time he went overseas I decided to go back east to Pennsylvania to be near his family so they could become better acquainted with their grandchildren. Our kids were their first grandchildren. Hubs has 7 sisters and 1 brother. Hubs is the second oldest. With all those kids you'd think they'd have scads of grandkids. Not true. There are only 15 and that's kind of small for such a large family.

Anyway, we settled into the town next to them, just about 15-20 minutes apart but I didn't see them but 3 or 4 times that year. It was a small town, at that time probably 11,000 people and today the population is at about 13,000 people so it's not had a lot of growth in 40+ years. It was difficult for me because it was a place where people were born, lived and died in that same town, sometimes never leaving its local boundaries. We were newcomers, Californians and well-traveled besides. You had to be just a few certain ethnicities or you didn't fit in, very different from California where there is such a glut of just about any ethnicity you can find. My kids struggled. And if not for one of their teachers being an ex-Army man I doubt they would have survived. He went out of the way to help them fit in. I don't remember his name but he was very kind to them—the new, strange Californian arrivals. We were viewed very differently, especially when we talked.

Now, Californians for the most part don't have a regional accent. But that part of the country has a very, very specific accent. It's a tri-state accent I can pick out of a crowd anywhere. I can tell if you're from that part of the country. A sort of SE Pennsylvania, Maryland, New Jersey tri-state area accent. Very distinguishable for us from the Western part of the U.S. Hubs sounds nothing like his brother or his sisters! I have no clue how he didn't develop that accent but he hasn't. The only things he pronounces funny—to me anyway—is saw and water. Saw sounds like sol and water sounds like wooder. I've kidded him about it for 51 years!

This is getting kind of long and I have another story to tell concerning this but I'll leave it for another time, but I shall reference this in that blog so you can read both if you miss this one.
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An easy-to-make outdoor shower. I think I’ll try to get Love Bunny to make one in our backyard just for fun.

A cute quaint stucco cottage with a couple of pretty espaliers against the front entrance.

Beautiful shades of blue, especially that bowl on the table.

Smile. Just some pretty papers in a pretty pink bucket to delight your little peepers.

What a bedroom this would be to have!

Looks to be a beautiful residence in a large city. I love that they fly the American flag. I thought the other flag might be a Texas flag, but it isn’t. Probably their “heritage” country flag.

Go ahead and sigh; I know you’re loving this home.

This almost looks like a beach house but I have no idea where it is. Pretty though.

What a beautiful entrance to both houses this is. I’d take the lower one though because I hate climbing steps now. But I’d sure love to have those others for my neighbors though. ☺

Beautiful pool and spa.

This looks to be in another country. Notice they didn’t go buy an expensive umbrella; they just tied up a tablecloth or sheet to each other’s houses to shield them from the sun in their common area. Peaceful co-existence.

A pretty little garden with roses to greet you at the entrance, tipping their little heads with delight as they drink in the sunshine. Grand performance!

A sweet vintage cabinet someone adapted to their bathroom needs.

Now, I want you to notice the tiny dimensions of this bathroom. A typical bathroom in a typical sub-division house hallway. BUT with a tile floor adding the biggest pizzazz I’ve ever seen to it! Stunning!

Another example of tile adding pizzazz to a bathroom.

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Linking with Savvy Southern Style

Kitchen Cabinets Knobs

The kitchen cabinets are needing more pizzazz. Why, you ask, would I be so concerned about them when I would eat every meal out if I could because I hate cooking anymore? Because I'm a woman, that's why. At a certain age, we would prefer to eat out, being lazy in our older years. I know there are women who just love to cook for their families for the big holidays. I ain't one of them! I'm sure there's a self-help group somewhere for them. I'll look into it if requested!

So, I decided to use some decals I made a couple of years ago of my own pathetic little rose. I think I used the wrong sealer and they sort of crackled. I did the top cabinets—all 9 of them—trying to convince myself they would be just fine once they set and dried. NO luck! Never fear; I am never without decals in this house, purchased or made by me.

So I took them off and replaced them with some I had in my stash of decals. I like these much better.

Here are a few different angles so you can see them better. It's difficult photographing them up this close with the flash, but I get much better photos with my flash than without when inside this house.

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Random Thoughts:

We have 2 kids—a daughter and a son. They were born 11 1/2 months apart. Hubby had her potty trained and broken from the bottle while I was in the hospital having Keith. Yes, you can believe that; she was potty trained at 11 1/2 months.

While giving birth to Keith I almost died, but I didn't realize he didn't know this until this year when I mentioned it while we were all together for the blessing of Caroline, our newest addition to the family. It was just a casual mentioning of being in the hospital for 11 days and not seeing him for 9 days because of how sick I was. He was shocked. I never thought much of it and just never mentioned it to him I suppose. I had uremic poisoning.

But this isn't about the birth of him; it's about how I don't usually talk about one kid to the other. It's just how it's been in this family. Hubby and I keep our counsel to ourselves about our kids. But to think I'd never let our son know how sick I was when having him was a bit surprising even to me. I just don't pit one against the other. They're both mine and loved equally.
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Recently I read where the government is mandating work places be given rooms for mothers to breast feed their babies. I think having a private "mother's lounge" would be fine, but does that mean the child is in the building and readily available? Let me tell you about my niece.

M works for a think tank in Washington, D.C. They are providing a room where mothers can pump into a tube that goes down to the nursery through the walls (not hand carrying!) and is available for the child. No contact with the child, just some person puts it into a bottle for him and he eats. What is this world coming to when mothers won't stay home to be with their infants and give them the personal attention they deserve? I was just astounded at this revelation. Institutionalized babies. Horrible. Human beings are a precious resource!
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Pennies are made at the rate of 1,000 a second. The U.S. mint took more than 2 years to produce its first million coins, but today can make that many in 45 minutes.
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The greed of today.
We talk all about the greedy evil bankers but they wouldn't have been paid all those millions if we hadn't been willing to buy the fantasy they were selling. So don't blame them; blame the people who were so greedy they thought they could buy anything they wanted. All of this got worse when we were willing to believe all that popular culture was feeding our desire for more and more stuff. It's one thing to see sports and movie stars in their mansions in a rarified world and we thought if they have it I should be able to have it. We bought that we felt we were entitled to. We thought we could buy what we wanted. This caused our values to change. Things don't matter; people do. And that's just one of the reasons we're in this situation today.
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I hear people regularly say they have issues with something. It's not an issue; it's a problem or opinion. Calling it an issue tries to give it a "lofty" feeling. Call a spade a spade here and get over it.
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To see the condition of the human heart, you must look first to where scientists will not admit to looking at all. It's that simple. ;-)
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