Monthly Archives: April 2013

Joy Jar

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P1040284

Somehow I’ve missed posting my list of happy things for a couple of weeks. Life can get out of balance sometimes and little but important things can slip through the cracks.

  • a good day
  • Dune enjoying her stuffed Kong
  • April
  • peace and quiet
  • sweet and cuddly Dune
  • getting things on my “to do list” done
  • tulips blooming
  • getting internet access back
  • having a girls day with Dune
  • Zodiac being so good with the school kids
  • a double dog walk
  • tulips
  • starting our garden
  • happy Dune!
  • warmer days
  • grape hyacinths
  • walking with Cherri
  • cute Dune
  • sunshine
  • spring rain
  • cuddling with our cat
  • walking with Dune
  • beautiful music
  • finding one of Dune’s teeth
  • color
  • Dune & Zodiac together
  • sewing
  • a momma duck in our backyard again this year
  • Dune’s new blanket
  • Tillamook yogurt
  • walking the Jordan River Trail with Zodiac
  • 20% done with my Jordan River Trail goal for the year
  • planting my tomato starts in the garden
  • radishes, greens and spinach coming up in the garden
  • getting a haircut
  • strawberries
  • seeing “My Grandma Mary” in print
  • getting flights booked for my dad
  • a new pair of jeans (that are long enough)
  • a successful birthday party for my mom
  • listening to General Conference
  • getting Yakira’s book sent off
  • Clifford visiting
  • feeling more organized

Geneaquilts

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I came across this new (at least to me) way to visualize complex family trees. It looks very interesting. I’d love to put my puppies pedigrees in here to better see their relationships. All of them have at least one common ancestor in less than five generations. I’ve always wanted a way to visualize their relationships better. I think this might do it. I’m going to have to try this out soon.

Do you have any experience with Geneaquilts? Do you have any complex relationships in your family tree?

Here is a few links with more information:

Geneaquilts

Trellis Charts

Online Genealogy Newsletter

Zodiac’s Book – getting started

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Title page for Zodiac's Book

Title Page for Zodiac’s Book

As our time with Zodiac comes to a close, I’ve been wanted to get started on his puppyhood book. I have a template so many of the design decisions are already made. Beside speeding up the process of completing each book the template gives a continuity to the series. Today I picked a font (Hobo Std) and two accent colors (blueish green and yellow). The colors might get changed as the book comes together but they are a good start. I also picked out 19 “Z” words to describe Zodiac. Finding “Z” words was a challenge but I did it.

  • zaftig – full-bodied; well-proportioned
  • zany – comically wild or eccentric
  • zap – strike suddenly and forcefully
  • zax – a hatchetlike tool for roofing slate
  • zealous – ardently active, devoted, diligent
  • zeek out – (slang) to lose control of oneself
  • zenith – highest point or state, culmination
  • zephyr – thing of fine, light quality
  • zero hour – a decisive or critical time
  • zesty – energetic; active
  • Zeus – supreme deity of the ancient Greeks
  • zigzag – a course with sharp turns
  • zillion – an extremely large number
  • zingy – full of zing; lively; zesty; exciting
  • Zion – where the pure in heart dwell
  • zippy – full of energy; lively; peppy
  • zoic – relating to or having animal life
  • zonked – exhausted or asleep
  • zoom – to move quickly or suddenly

The next steps are to work on the text for each word and find and/or take more photos to help illustrate all the “Z” words. Zenith will be used to talk about Zodiac’s partnership, hopefully as a guide dog, so that one will have to wait. Also zero hour will be about putting him on the puppy truck so I can’t do that one either. But I hope to have the rest of the pages done by the time he returns to Guide Dogs for the Blind. Then I can put it on to a cd and it will be given to his handler while they are in training. It is lots of fun for them to learn about how their dog was growing up in the raisers home.

Zodiac will probably be in the truck in 8 to 10 weeks. With 19 words to do I better get at least two spreads done each week. So that is my goal. I’ll post them here on pupdate day to help me be accountable for that goal. Since I’ve already do so much this week, I work to getting one spread done for Friday.

Do you have a project with an upcoming deadline that you are working on? I’d love to hear about it.

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Book of the Week – visions of key west

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With my dad’s history and Key West on my mind, I went looking for this weeks book and I found “visions of key west – the folk art of ronny bailey” by Ronny and Stephanie Bailey. Here is what he said about his book:

This book presents a unique style of Folk Art. Ronny recycles salvaged wood and tin from century old Key West houses into miniature replicas of these same old houses. These 3-d houses fool the eye. Thru Ronny’s use of the original patina on his salvaged materials and great detail it is hard to tell what is a real house and what is his miniature reproduction.

I love his work. It is a wonderful way to keep the history of Key West and the lifestyle of the past. His sculptures are amazing. For more on Ronny Bailey click on the links below.

http://artid.com/members/rbailey

http://keywestproperties.blogspot.com/2011/01/ronny-bailey-key-west-artist.html

Do you or your family have folk art like Ronny’s that reflects the history and stories of your family? My grandma learned to paint in her later years. She mostly did landscapes and still lifes. Not sure if that qualifies but it shows me that I have creativity in my roots.

 

Key West – Underwater Swimmers School

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Underwater Swimmer School - class photo - Key West, Florida

First Underwater Swimmers School Class 1 November 1954

I’m working on a history for my dad about his 20 years in the navy. This is a huge project but right now I’m focusing on the years he was stationed in Key West as an instructor at the Underwater Swimmers School there. He is going to a reunion in May and he wants to take this chapter of his history with him. I’m struggling with getting this together and time is slipping by on me. I think it is the writing that is my road block. Writing is not one of my strengths but I don’t see away around it. Putting together histories for my mom is easier in many ways. She doesn’t expect much in the way of narrative. She is looking more for a gathering of documents, photos and letters. My dad wants something readable. Which is ultimately what I want to. I just feel very inadequate to write it.

I have lots of photos and documents. I have a few memories from my dad so far. I have a rough outline of how I want to structure the book.

  • Prologue: brief history of diving and scuba in the US Navy
  • Chapter One: organizing of the Underwater Swimmers School
  • Chapter Two: first class
  • Chapter Three: challenges
  • Chapter Four: successes
  • Chapter Five: ongoing improvements
  • Epilogue: maturing of the Underwater Swimmers School

To get moving forward I’ve made the goal to do some sort of rough text for the chapters, one each day, this week. I did some research today on history of scuba and the navy. Tomorrow I will work on chapter one.

What do you do to help you work through mental or emotional blocks? Do you have any strategies to help me move forward?

Pupdate

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Black Lab Clifford, Yellow Lab Dune and Black Lab Zodiac

a Dune sandwich – Clifford, Dune and Zodiac

It has been a few weeks since I actually got a pupdate post written. Zodiac and Dune are doing good. It looks like Zodiac probably won’t be returning to Guide Dogs for the Blind on the next puppy truck in May. There are 25 dogs older than him and the truck only holds 19 dogs. I’m glad to get a few more weeks with him.

We were a three dog household for the last three days. My sister’s career change, Clifford was here. The three of them had so much fun together. Clifford looks very like Zodiac so it takes careful observation to know who it who.

The other great news this week was an email from Yakira and Diane. It sounds like they are doing great. Here is some of what Diane had to say:

My orange tree is in full bloom complimented by the newly opened scents of my roses freezias and lilacs.   From many other gardens the sent of jasmine contributes to the spring ambiance.

Today Yakira and I took an absolutely delightful 5 mile walk.  This has been a bit of a struggle for Yakira but she is finally demonstrated a willingness to walk decent distances at an excellent rate of speed. Honestly I would call our walk today a 10.  Before to long I can see that we will be enjoying a routine walk of 9 to 10 miles.

I have recently taught Yakira to drink from a safe water bottle.  Our walks are long enough and the weather will be warm enough that she needed the compliment to her food rewards of, of course, a portion of her daily food ration, as well as teriyaki beef jerky from Costco.  My retired Guide, Bettyjo, enjoyed the jerky as a reward and so I anticipated that Yakira would also find this an excellent motivation when developing new behaviors.  I am looking forward to also incorporating apple slices into her food rewards.

I absolutely love giving Yakira water from the cute little 8 oz water bottles.  She is so cute that everyone who passes by while she is drinking uuus and ahhs about her.

Yakira and Bettyjo get along famously and the cats have come to accept her as a member of the family too.  It is really nice to see all of them getting along so well when we are not working.

I have to say that Yakira is the best shopper I have had.  We walked along the arcade here yesterday for the first time.  She did a really amazing job in stopping at each open door to determine whether or not the store was the one I was looking for.

Yeah for news from one of our puppies! Yakira sure has an awesome life with Diane.

Birthday Traditions

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lighting mom's 90th birthday cake

Iris’s 90th Birthday Party video

With my mind being on birthdays recently I started thinking about birthday traditions. A Google search brings up lots of hits on traditions for kids but not so many for grown-ups. As I think back in my life and can see how easy it is to let birthdays slip by without doing much to really celebrate the day. Some people are great at making sure they have fun celebrations in their life. Some families have well-developed birthday traditions. My family isn’t one of them. So this is an area I could use some work on. Maybe it comes from my family culture. My mom is very practical and recently my dad said that he didn’t know how to celebrate. It seems to me that birthday traditions don’t necessarily need to be fancy or expensive but it takes planning and effort to make sure they become traditions. I also think that sometimes birthday traditions need to evolve to meet the families changing needs.

Last year I had lots of fun celebrating by birthday 50 times during the year. I want to do more in the coming years to develop some good adult birthday traditions. With my birthday coming up in May it is time to start thinking about some new traditions. Do you have any suggestions? What birthday traditions do you have or wish to start with your family?

 

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Photo Birthday Card Book – preview

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I got the book done from my mom’s 90th birthday party today and uploaded it to blurb to order. After seeing the preview I might make a few tweaks before ordering. It came together pretty quickly. My biggest mistake was in not deciding what order to put the photos in before I started dropping them into the template. It took me a while to clean up the mess I made and start over. So I learned once again, that a little planning goes a long way.

It is kind of fun to take a project from idea to ready to print in just over a week. Not every project needs to be years or even months in process. Do you have a smaller project just waiting to become a reality? I challenge you to get started on it and see how quickly it really can come together.

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Book of the Week – Birthday Boy

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Since birthdays have been on my mind, I decided to look for a book this week about birthdays. When I found “Birthday Boy” by Tom and Marianne O’Connell, I couldn’t resist choosing it. Here is what the authors have to say about their book:

Marianne and Tom love celebrating all holidays and Skippy’s birthdays were always the best! Skippy partied at home in Sausalito, the “fake” house next door, at his beach house in Pajaro Dunes and Las Vegas.

Skippy biggest birthday was his 10th and he enjoyed it with 35 of his canine pals and their families. Marianne and Tom rented the Marin Humane Society dog park and Skippy worked the crowd like the champ he knew he was. The park’s life size bronze statue of Skippy only added to the festivities.

Tom and Marianne hoped and dreamed Skippy would live to be 17 but sadly that didn’t happen. But for every dog they say there is an angel and you can be sure Skippy and his angel will paint the town every October 21st for all the years to come.

Even if you aren’t into dogs this book has some great ideas that can be applies to other projects. I really like how each year lists some important events in the world and in Skippy’s life. It is amazing how a few photos and two short paragraphs for each year can tell so much about what is important. Even applied to a life history this approach would make a very doable history project.

Take a few moments and ask yourself if you have a project that this format would work well for. I bet most of us do. I’ve just thought of one. I want to put together a book for the dogs that we’ve raised when they retire. This would be a good way to do that. I know, another dog project, maybe that isn’t such a great example but I do think it would work well. Hopefully it will be many more years before any of our pups retire. But I could start each of their books now and add to them each year on either their birthdays or the anniversary of their graduation. Then they would be ready when retirement comes around.

Have you thought of a project? I’d love to hear about your ideas. Maybe your ideas will inspire someone else too.

Photo Birthday Card Book – template

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lighting mom's 90th birthday cake

lighting the birthday cake

Remember last week’s book of the week, “face BOOK“? Well it inspired me to take photos at my mom’s 90th birthday with the plan to put together a birthday card in the form of a book very much like “face Book”. I set up a spot at the party to take photos of all the guests. I brought a notebook for the guest to write a short message with a marker. I’ve set up a template for the book and now I just need to drop the photos in place. It is going to be a wonderful memento of my mom’s 90th birthday party.

If you would like the InDesign template for a 7×7 blurb book you can download it from my dropbox for personal use. These are fully editable templates from InDesign CS6. You can change the colors and text as you would like.

Celebrating Nine Decades Pages Template

Celebrating Nine Decades Cover Template

I’ll post a preview of the finished book soon.

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