Category Archives: My Life

Shutterfly Booked – Arrived

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There was a bright orange box sitting by my front door today. It was from Shutterfly. It is always fun to have a book arrive and get to see the hard copy of what I created on the computer. I’m happy with the results. Since it is 8″ x 8″ inches it is bigger than Blurb‘s 7″ x 7″ book that is a favorite of mine. Another difference is the cover is glosses while the Blurb cover has a matte finish. I tend to lean to the matte but there isn’t anything wrong with the glossy. Overall the Shutterfly book seems to be of a good quality. So if having complete control of you design isn’t something you care about Shutterfly seems to be a good choice. But I’ll be sticking with Blurb and their PDF to book workflow because I didn’t like not having the control that I’m use to having when doing a Shutterfly book. I will keep them in mind for other projects though.

Candy Class at the Gale Center

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If you have followed my blog for a while you might remember when I did this class last year. This year it was much smoother. I planned a project that was much more adaptable different ages and that helped a lot. We had more than 50 people tonight. It is fun to see all the different ways they designed their project. The main project was to cover an initial with candy but since there wasn’t any registration ahead, we had some other shapes if we didn’t have enough of the right letters. I also like exposing new people to the possibilities of creating beautiful things with candy. There is something fun and happy about anything made of candy. Maybe that is why I like it so much.

My Joy Jar

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I had so much fun doing something every week last year for my 50th birthday that I decided I wanted to something this year but of a different sort. I think the seed got planted when I was doing research for Gift Idea #49 – Memory Jar. One of the ideas was to put slips of paper in a jar as things you want to remember happen each day. The next piece came when I was listening to a talk by Dieter Uchtdorf called “Of Regrets and Resolutions”  One of the things he suggests we decide our own happiness. And I believe he is right. I think these two ideas combined somewhere in my brain and the “Joy Jar” was born.

I took an old canning jar that I really like and added some ribbon and tags in the happy color, yellow. I also collected a bunch of yellow tags and pieces of card stock to write my joyful moments on. My plan is to post a list of my Joy Jar moments each week (hopefully on Saturdays) for the rest of the year. So here goes my first list:

  • bright sunshine
  • Yakira is in phase 6
  • seeing Zodaic and Kai romping through the snow in the backyard
  • Bill and Zodiac playing
  • taste of good ice cream
  • how good heat feels after being outside on a cold day
  • eating pomelo
  • Zodiac’s cute little face
  • 99 countries visited my blog in 2012
  • a brand new year (2013)
  • eating Lindor chocolates
  • visual image of Lotus (a puppy in training) wearing ankle socks in pink and yellow because his raiser thinks his feet are cold
  • Zodiac’s joy
  • aurora borealis
  • thinking of our trip to Alaska
  • homemade pizza
  • being back inside our warm house
  • cuddling with our cat, Gandy
  • Tillamook yogurt for $.59 each
  • seeing Zodiac and Gandy looking out the window together, Gandy in his tower and Zodiac with his front feet on the bottom part of the tower and his body underneath.

I had fun doing this. I’m looking forward to the coming weeks. What has brought you joy this past week?

 

 

 

This Week’s Pupdate

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Yakira – photo by Lisa Thompson

I was so happy to see the number 6 by Yakira’s name on this week’s phase report. She made it through the holidays without missing a beat. On not so good news the other puppy from our club that was in for training has dropped off the report so he must have been career changed this week. I’m always sad when I puppy doesn’t make. They always have a good life ahead of them but it is still disappointing when they don’t have what it takes to be a guide dog.

On the home front Zodiac is doing really well. Thursday was his 10 month birthday. He is starting show more and more maturity. Just in time for a new puppy to join the family. We will probably find out when in the next week.Zodiac really enjoyed having Kai with us for a few days. He was better than I expected. Kai is growing up nicely.

Zodaic in front of the “official” puppy portrait wall

I finally got Yakira’s official portrait back from Pixels. The wall has seems kind of bare the last few weeks. I got it done before Christmas but the exposure needed to be tweaked because the lighting on Yakira wasn’t as bright as on the other puppies and she just looked like a black blob. They redid it for me but I told them I didn’t need it before Christmas. I still remember many years ago when we I was a picture framer and how crazy things got during the Christmas season.

Liebster Award for TellingFamilyTales – Part 2a

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Liebster-Blog-Award

Liebster-Blog-Award (Photo credit: dont ✗ kaysiao)

So for this part of fulfilling the requirements for a Liebster Award I will be answering the questions that my nominator (Mom of  Maybe someone should write that down. . . ) put together. Here goes:

1.  If I weren’t blogging about this stuff I would be…

. . . lets see, probably taking a nap.

2.  Who are you named after?

family tradition says that I’m named after my dad (Ray) and my uncle (Lynn).

3. I would like my epitaph to read as follows:

that I made the world a better place because of how I lived my life.

4.  Favorite quote:

this is a tough one, I’m not sure if I have a favorite quote. There are lots of sayings that I really like but not sure that I can attribute them to a single person. My current favorite that I’m trying to live each day is “Find Wonder & Delight”

5.  Something I will never understand is…(no fair using “Math” I’ve had a lock on that answer for years)

. . . how anyone can be mean to a puppy.

6.  If  I could run around all day everyday, dressed any way that I pleased I would wear:

a comfy pair of jeans and a big sloppy sweatshirt.

7.  What class do you wish you had paid more attention to in school?

I can’t remember ever thinking that. Maybe I just didn’t pay enough attentions to even know that I was missing out on learning something. I sometime wish that I was better at learning languages but I’m not sure that paying more attention in class would change that.

8.  Do you write full-time?

I’m not sure I even write part-time. I don’t consider myself a writer. I only do it because there isn’t a choice.

9.  What’s your dream job

playing around with new and creative projects and getting paid for it.

10. Where is your dream Writer’s Corner?

my dream (non)writer’s corner would be a comfy window seat with just the right amount of sunlight and gorgeous views of mountains and/or the ocean and/or a pasture with horses grazing.

11.  What’s the craziest thing you have ever learned about your family?

That years ago it wasn’t uncommon to reuse the name of a child that died young. It seems crazy to me to think of more than one child with the same name.

Now I can check one more thing of my to do list. The second part of this requirement will be coming soon. With any luck, tomorrow.

Liebster Award for TellingFamilyTales – Part 1

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Liebster-Blog-Award

Liebster-Blog-Award (Photo credit: dont ✗ kaysiao)

Last month Mom (also know as Kassie) of Maybe someone should write that down. . . nominated this blog for a Liebster Award. Not unsurprisingly I didn’t have a clue what a Liebster was so I had to look it up. Liebster is a German word meaning dearest. I’m thinking it should be renamed to the Yakira award because Yakira is a Hebrew name that also means dear or precious. Anyway I’m getting sidetrack. The basic idea behind the Liebster is to promote small but hopefully up and coming blogs. To accept this award there are four requirements.

  1. post 11 things about myself
  2. answer the questions the nominator made up and create 11 questions for the blogs that I will nominate for a Liebster
  3. link the 11 blogs I choose to nominate
  4. go and tell the nominees that they have been nominated

I’m going to tackle this task list in four parts so stay tuned for me to fulfill all the requirements. I’d like to procrastinate posting 11 things about myself but it doesn’t make much sense to my semi-orderly mind to go out of the order above, so here goes.

  1. I was born in Hawaii (yes, I’m a Navy brat)
  2. I’m the youngest in my family (I have two older sisters)
  3. I’m much taller than average (over 6 feet)
  4. I love all flavors of ice cream (except maple nut – it’s a childhood thing)
  5. growing up my dad told us that we were tall because we ate spaghetti
  6. I played the flute in Jr. High
  7. I won the gold medal in high jump at the state track meet when I was in high school
  8. my basketball team went undefeated my senior year of high school
  9. Starbursts and Skittles are my favorite candies
  10. I once did a multimedia (slide show) project in college that was just photos of hundreds of Skittles
  11. I used to own a custom picture framing shop with my sister

I’m so glad I survived that step. It wasn’t nearly as painful as I imagined. Check back tomorrow for the next task, answering Mom’s 11 questions.

Shutterfly Book

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my 50 for 50 book cover

I received a free 8×8 hardcover book coupon for Shutterfly recently and decided I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to try it out. I’ve never even been the Shutterfly site before so things were a bit rough to start. After a few false starts I figured out how to get a book started and upload photos for the book. Even though I choose their customized book path I found myself wanting more control over what I could do. But then I’m used to have complete control over my projects in Adobe InDesign. I spent 4 or 5 hours putting together a 20 page book. Having done it once it would probably take about half that time the second time around.

I was able to export it to a pdf but as you can see from above (and below) it has a watermark on each page. The link below will take you to Shutterfly’s preview of the book.

I can see how Shutterfly would be a good option for many people. They have lots of ways to share your photos and they are geared to really put together projects without too much thought on the customer’s part. I can’t see me ever using them as my primary source for books though. I’m too picky about wanting things the way I want them. I’m looking forward to getting the book and see what it looks like. I’ll post again after in comes.

Click here to view this photo book larger

 

50 for 50 #50 – Time Capsule

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inside my time capsule

The year has gone by so quickly. It has been lots of fun doing something almost every week to celebrate turning 50 years old. I think I will miss it. But I’m excited to been done – that I’ve accomplished the goal I set out to do a year ago. For my last thing I gathered together a bunch of small items I had kicking around and photos and images clipped from magazines over the last couple of years. I thought about getting a something fancy to put my time capsule in but a decided in the end on an empty peanut container. There is nothing archival about it but there isn’t anything of historical value in my time capsule either. My plan is to open it in 10 years. I guessing it will be very interesting to see this odd collection of items when I’m 60 years old.

my time capsule

outside of my time capsule

Pupdate – Yakira & Zodiac

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Yakira – photo by Lisa Thompson

I was concerned that with the Christmas Holiday, Yakira might not move on to phase 5 this week but she did! If you are interested in what Yakira is learning in phase 5 go to this post on Casey. Two of Yakira’s littermates, Yancey and Yasmine showed up on the phase report last week. They are now in phase 1. Her sister Yumi was recently dropped from breeder evals and should show up soon. That just leaves Yuma out there somewhere.

It has been an interesting week here. We were puppy sitting Beacon for Christmas. Our new club leader took him on Wednesday for an evaluation. Zodiac had lots of fun playing with Beacon most of the time but sometimes it seemed that Zodiac was done playing and Beacon wanted more. Even though they are only a few days apart in age, Zodiac comes across as much more mature in most ways. Zodiac was exhausted when Beacon left and so was I. We will be puppy sitting Kai starting tomorrow until next Wednesday.

Bill & Zodiac on Temple Square

Tonight we took Trax downtown to see the Christmas lights on Temple Square. It was a good socializing opportunity for Zodiac. There were a surprising number of people doing the same thing we were and Zodiac did great. He can be a bit distracted by wanting to socialize with people but he did very well tonight. We couldn’t find his head collar so he had to do it on his own, with just the flat collar. He really is starting to grow-up and gain a lot more self-control.

Zodiac on the Trax train

 

Pupdate – Yakira, Casey, Puppy Club and #7

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Yakira – photo by Lisa Thompson

Yakira is continuing her stead pace through training. She is in phase 4 this week. Keep it up sweet girl, we are cheering for you.

Guide Dog News, a quarterly publication of Guide Dogs for the Blind, in its News of Our Graduates section listed Casey’s handler, Carrie as this years recipient of Reach for the Stars Scholarship. Congrats to Carrie on this accomplishment.

Our local puppy club has gotten too big and this week was our last meeting together. We meet at the Cold Stone in South Jordan to see Frosty and the other candy windows along with enjoying a tasty ice cream treat. It was a wet evening but lots of fun.A new club is being formed and we will be part of it. It is going to be fun to see what it takes to organize a new puppy raising club. We need to pick a name for our club. Any suggestions?

Right now the new club only has 5 puppies but more our expected soon. It seems that GDB has too many puppies in the kennels and they are looking for raisers. So we decided yesterday to apply for our next puppy, #7! He/she may be a co-raise with my friend Lisa, but we decided it was a good time to add another puppy to the household even if she decides now is not the best time to co-raise a puppy. So puppy #7 could arrive, by plane, in just a few weeks.