I Love Jigsaw Puzzles

My grandkids gave me two new jigsaw puzzles for Christmas so after I got all the Christmas decorations put away the first part of January I got the first one out.  Whooee was it difficult but I managed to get it together after a few days by concentrating on each color of wildflower then only had green background to fill in to finish it.This second one looks like it was maybe a representation of the Macy’s Christmas Parade in New York with the balloons floating down the street.  It was really easy and went together in one afternoon. 

My granddaughters both love doing jigsaw puzzles like I do and last summer when they visited for 5 days we put 3 different puzzles together and were working on a 4th plus sewed their 4-H projects (pajama pants) before they had to go home. The grandsons don't enjoy doing puzzles as much but I am going to have to work on converting them I guess.

I have heard that doing all sorts of puzzles keeps your brain active and found the following on this website.  “Jigsaw puzzles are excellent brain training and co-ordination improvement tools and are quite fun!”  My 91 year old mother does one or two Sudoko puzzles each day and she swears it is keeping her brain in good shape and she just may be right too as she is still very sharp and doesn’t forget much plus keeps up on current events around the world.  It is a good thing to love to do puzzles and I enjoy Sudoko, jigsaw puzzles the paper kind and online and slitherlink puzzles (follow the links to online games.)  See, it is not wasting time to do puzzles but may even help your brain too.

Until later,
Lynn

Quilt Guild Border Challenge Round Three

Here is the third quilt I had to add a border to for our challenge.  This is quite striking looking as it is so wanted to add a border that would not detract from it.  Remember the challenge rules are to keep using the two main colors in the original block so knew I needed to use reds and blacks.
I decided to sort of echo the first border of black fabric with the red triangles in the center of each side and red triangles in the corners.  I did add 3 triangles on each side as it was just too much black with just one triangle.  They sort of make it look like houses but don’t quite match up to the bars in the previous border all the way across though.

We have one more exchange to make with one more block to add the last border to before we get the quilt block back that we made and has been traveling to different people to add borders and are to finish it by the May meeting.  We are to keep everything secret until the big unveiling at the May meeting and that will be very hard.  It is always so exciting to see what everyone did for the annual challenge and this year will be fun to see how the quilts turned out that you worked on.

More later,
Lynn

I Must Have A One Track Mind…Or Maybe Two

I seem to have trouble thinking and doing more than one or two things at any point in my life.  Right now I am concentrating on weight loss and learning about my camera (Canon EOS Rebel T2i)  and Photoshop Elements 11.  I have found a way to combine the two things I am focusing on and do them at the same time.

Update on weight loss – I am approaching a 25 lb. loss and am thrilled.  I spend time each day planning and cooking foods to keep on plan.  Before joining Weight Watchers I cooked higher fat/sweet/starch foods and have had to re-learn how to cook and find new favorite recipes to make lower point meals.  (Weight Watchers uses a point system that calculates using the fat content, carbohydrate content, fiber content and protein content to figure how many points foods contain and members are given a maximum number of points to eat each day.)   It is getting easier and quicker to make meals for us and am getting a few new recipes I can fall back on when I can’t think of what to fix for dinner. Since it is so cold outside I walk on the treadmill most days and walking everyday on the treadmill in our bedroom has gotten less boring too as I have been watching a DVD titled “Learn Photoshop Elements Today!” from the editors at Photoshop Elements Techniques magazine to help pass the time and to learn the program one tool at a  time.  It was one of the free gifts for subscribing to the magazine and this alone is worth the price of the subscription.   It is a great DVD with videos on all the tools, how to use them, what they do and showing examples of the tool being used.  It is very easy to understand and I find I am gradually learning about the program as I walk away the miles.  I even plan to watch it more than once to learn all the nuances of the program as this brain of mine doesn’t always remember everything the first time around. I found I can place my laptop computer on my treadmill and watch a few videos during each walking session.  There is a lip of plastic that overhangs the little shelf and this keeps my laptop from falling off as I walk.  I think it is just a design feature on the treadmill but it works great.  Actually walking on a treadmill can be boring….very boring and watching these videos has been a good distraction for me, plus I am learning something at the same time.

I want to sew but just manage to get to my sewing machine infrequently if at all.  One of these days I will be changing focus so stay tuned.

Lynn

Meadow Lark

Nebraska State bird is the Meadow Lark and we had a couple dozen of them in my flower beds and in front of the house one cold day last week.  They were rooting around in the flower beds close to the brick of our house where the snow had melted and must have been finding insects or seeds then they would hop out into the lawn…back and forth they went for quite sometime.  They were fascinating to watch and decided to snap photos of them from inside my house. 

I put my zoom lens (55 - 250 mm I believe) and started snapping photos in the sports auto setting.  They didn’t seem to mind me but I was real careful not to move much either.  I also took some in manual settings so don’t know which one this was and have not taken the time to look up the settings on the photo .  I am thinking manual as the grass in the snow is blurry behind the bird and I set the f-stop low so it would do that on some of my photos.  By the way I was shooting the photos through my dirty windows – that could be some of the “smudgness” too.  I didn’t do much to this photo in Photoshop Elements 11 but lighten the bird a bit as it was just a tad dark and give it a bit of sharpening.  I have to laugh as I probably took 40 photos of the birds and liked only 3 or 4 so it is good that it was not film like in the “old days”.
 
Enjoy,
Lynn