All Gibbs

I thought it was time to do a little  photo shoot with Gibbs

He said we should start with a profile shot

Next he chose to paws (pause) to contemplate the meaning of treats.

Ok, time for the big finish. 

Wow, that was exhausting

Something to laugh about

This is rather long and I didn't even watch the whole thing but there were some that made me laugh. Hope you enjoy it if you choose to watch

All in a days work

(These donuts are not from the store I work at. I forgot to take a picture so this picture came from snappygoat.com)

Yesterday morning they paged our department saying there was a call for bakery on line 1. I answered the phone and this was the conversation

Me: Good morning bakery, this is Ann speaking
Customer: Do you have a lot of donuts left
Me: yes
Customer: Could you set aside a dozen for me? I'll be in in about a half hour.
Me: There's quite a few there and we haven't been that busy so there will still be plenty left
Customer: I know but they're for work and I want to make sure I get what I want.
Me What kind would you like?
Customer: Do you have any sugar twists?
Me: I don't really know, I can't see the trays from where I'm standing.
Customer: They've done this for me before
Me: I'm not saying I won't do it, I'm just saying I can't tell what's on the trays from here.
Customer: Well can't you go out and look?
Me" (biting my tongue) hold on
Me: Ok, so what did you want
Customer: I want 6 sugar twists
Me: I'm sorry we don't have any of those left
Customer: Do you have plain glazed.
Me;  No we only have the glazed with coconut
Customer: I thought you said you had a lot left.
Me: We do have quite a few but just not those. We have white cream filled, raspberry, lemon, apple, cinnamon rolls, croissants and cake donuts
Customer; Give me 4 white cream and 2 bavarian
Me; we don't have any bavarian just the white

She finished giving me what she wanted and we said good bye.

Now I will admit I was a tad short with her but only because she was a bit snippy with me and this whole thing could have been avoided by calling and ordering them the day before.

Any way about 15 minutes later one of the managers came back to tell me she called and complained and said that I treated her so badly she didn't even want to go back there to pick them up. They told her if she still wanted them they would have them waiting at the front of the store for her.

I'm normally very nice and polite to customers but this lady just really pushed me past my limit.

Mel and Sue

Happy Retirement Mel and Sue. Enjoy

In case you're wondering who Mel and Sue are, I have no idea. I just made the cake. Sorry about the glare. I took the picture after I put it in the plastic container.

My excuse

I've said it before and I'll say it again, I'm no gardener. I don't have a green thumb. The only thing I can grow really well is weeds. So if I were to need an excuse for why I do not pull the weeds that grow in abundance throughout my yard it would be so that I can take pictures of them.

And then if I were to need an excuse for why I didn't pull the weeds after I took a picture of them it would be because I was busy doing an edit on the picture.

After that I'm pretty sure I'm out of excuses. And yet, the weeds remain.

Second choice

Since the best Gibbs would give me was this...

I had to go to my second choice. Meet cabbage dog.

He's been on the blog before although it was a long time ago. I was playing with the light box yesterday and he sat ever so nicely for me while I snapped away

True story

There was a little gnome who followed me home. Now he sits under a tree and watches me. The end.

Before and after again

Life has been very ordinary and mundane so today is another picture from my walk and the edit I did to it.

These daises are for you

Before

After

Before and after

I almost skipped posting today but at the last minute I decided to shut off the tv and pull something together. I dug through the pictures I took on my walk Monday and chose this picture.

I started by making some adjustments to the lighting and the color. Then I cloned out the power line. When I was satisfied that I couldn't do any more there I dug in my folder full of textures and started layering. This is the final picture and I'm quite pleased with the way it looks

The essentials

1. bottle of water
2. reading glasses
3. samsung tablet
4. kindle fire
5. stylus 
6. cell phone

I suppose I could have added a healthy snack to the picture too but I wasn't hungry at the time.

From my walk

Monday morning I set out around 6:45 for a walk. It was 69 degrees and perfect. I walked for an hour and I'm pretty sure my fitbit is not counting acurately because it said I only walked 1.9 miles and the steps were rather low too. I walk pretty fast so and I know in the past when I've taken the same route I've had more steps.

A little collage from cell phone pictures I took while I was walking

And because I can't leave well enough alone I did some playing around with the collage to give it an bit of an artsy look.

I get by with a little help from my friend

Which comes in handy when you don't know what to blog about.

Original picture of Gibbs sitting on pool steps

After I did some editing

A most splendid day

Yesterday morning I started the day off with an early walk before the heat hit. When I got back home Gibbs and I went to the deck to see what was going on in the back yard.

A rabbit that lives under our shed was returning from it's morning stroll

A chipmunk was cleaning up seeds on the ground under the bird feeder. He was sharing with a feathered friend but it flew away before I took the picture.

These two seemed to be having a bit of a quarrel. I tried not to eavesdrop.

And Mr Gibbs contemplated the possibilities of an afternoon swim.

Let them eat cake

Yesterday was a cake day at work. It wasn't necessarily a piece of cake though. I had 3 cakes that I had to do. One full sheet and two half sheets. It wasn't until I finished the third one that I thought to myself, you should take a picture of this to use for a blog post. So I did

One of the cakes I did was ordered for 11;00 am. I figured I would get started on it after my first break which is at 8. About 10 minutes before I was ready to go on break a woman comes to the deli counter and says she's there to pick up her cake. The deli manager told her I hadn't started on it yet. Apparently she thought that since she was in the store early for other things she was just going to get the cake then. Um, hello. If you want it at 8 order it for 8.

Two for two

I haven't killed my tomato plant either

I only have the one tomato plant and I put it in a pot rather than the ground because of the rabbits we have around here. I had it sitting at the bottom of the deck steps until I noticed that it looked like someone had been nibbling on it. I moved it up on to the deck and the rabbits haven't gone up there to get at it. It doesn't seem to be growing too fast but I hope I get at least some tomatoes off of it

Took a chance

I've told you before I have no green thumb. Still I like flowers. I spotted some clearance plants at Walmart last Saturday and bought one.

I repotted it in an old planter from a past victim and plopped it on the steps to the deck. It's been 5 days in 80 degree weather and it's still looking pretty good

Today is the first day...

...of the rest of my life and failure is not an option.

Last year I did so good at losing all that weight and working on getting myself healthier. I foolishly allowed myself to indulge last December (just for the holidays). I've been struggling ever since to get back on the right track. I've seriously disappointed myself by gaining almost all of the weight back.

This week I put my foot down and on Sunday I started up again with tracking all my food with my fitbit. I have to keep telling myself I want to lose the weight more than I want the bad foods.

Since a picture of me drooling over chocolate cake and cookies I give you Mr. Gibbs instead. He's sporting his doubtful look so I think I need to prove him wrong.

We're having a heat wave

Yesterday it reached 91 degrees here. It may have been higher but that was the last temperature I saw. I was busy doing assorted things that I've been putting off yesterday and didn't take any pictures but I have a few I took at the beginning of June.

Green leaves make me happy

And I like raindrops on leaves

tweeking

I know I already showed you my craft stick frames but I added a little bit to them. Plus I took them in my handy dandy light box so the pictures are extra nice.

The brown one I just added the jute twine flower

And the blue one I added some seashell and starfish buttons that I had in my stash

DIY Light box

It's easy to make your own light box for taking pictures of various small items. I made one a long time ago but ended up throwing it out because it was always in the way.

Yesterday I made a new one. Pay no attention to the mess around it. My craft room is in desperate need of cleaning.

All you need is a cardboard box, some tissue paper or in my case I used parchment paper and tape.

The front that you see here is the top of the box. I cut the flaps off then cut out 3 sides leaving a 2" border. I covered those cutouts with the parchment paper and taped them in place. Then I slid a piece of white poster board in curving it up towards the top back providing a seamless background.  Put lights on each side and one facing the top of the box and your good to go.

This time I'm able to fold it flat for easy storage

The whole project was a real hoot

This one was taken in the light box. Not bad huh?

One thing leads to another

It all started with painting those craft sticks for the frames I made. I used a piece of paper to paint on and it looked like this when I was done.

I liked the way it looked so obviously I took I picture of it. I mean why not. When you don't have a lot to blog about you'll take anything you can get.

When getting the picture ready to post I decided as long as I was there I may as well do some playing around.

I layered on a few other pictures, found a couple pictures on snappygoat to add then threw in a texture file to finish it off. 

Thought for the day

Morning has broken

On Monday mornings even though it's my day off, I give one of the girls from the store a ride to work. She doesn't have a vehicle and she didn't have a ride for Monday's. I get to drive down a nice country road and last Monday I got to see the sun come up.
These pictures really don't do it justice. I pulled over three times and unfortunately I only had my cell phone with me

As I was taking the pictures the old Cat Stevens song popped in my head.

You gotta eat a lot of popsicles

If you want to craft with Popsicle sticks you can a) eat a lot of Popsicles or b) dig through your craft stash and find the craft sticks that you bought ages ago and never used.

I chose b. First time around I painted after assembly but then I got smart and painted first. It takes 16 sticks to complete this project.

Since I had regular size sticks and the larger ones I made both sizes. Handy dandy Popsicle stick frames that are now holding things I found online and printed.

The larger one on the left has a pretty crappy paint job because that's the one I painted after I put it together. Also I discovered that I originally had it backwards. The way you see it here is how you are supposed to display it. I on the other hand was thinking it was supposed to be like this.

I suppose you could technically display it either way. However, you're supposed to add additional decorations to it which I haven't done yet because I'm not sure what I want to put on it. I thought maybe flowers but I'm not quite sure.

The party's over

Today it's back to the same old routine. Oh well, it wasn't all that fun any way. I mean all we did was hang out in the yard while someone took pictures of me. Of course someone was pretending to take pictures of a clothespin wreath she made last year

If we weren't doing that I was totally bored while someone played on their computer and totally ruined a perfectly good picture of me. I mean really, was that necessary? After I was nice enough to pose for her and everything.

I'll have to have a talk with that boss of hers and let him know not to bother giving her any more days off. She just wastes them.

What a hoot

Sunday was a lazy kind of day. We had some rain. It didn't rain all day but it was just the kind of day that was good for hanging around the house doing whatever makes you happy. And so that's what I did. I played on the computer, in my craft room, with my camera and did nothing that could be considered necessary.

I took a picture of a wood cutout of an owl up against my window screen

That alone looked kind of cool but you know me. I couldn't leave it alone.

This is the last day for having fun and tomorrow I have to go back to work. Four days goes by way too fast

My apologies

I know I told you that when I came back I would have all kinds of stuff to show you but it didn't happen. I had to settle for taking pictures in my yard and that was pretty boring.

I did however buy  myself a spiffy new pair of cheap sunglasses. They were kind of fun and crazy looking and totally out of character. They kind of match match my fitbit band so I'll be walking in style now.

Then some artsy fun of me modeling my new shades.

I would show you the original picture but I think there is something wrong with my camera. It put all kinds of old lady wrinkles on my face. Maybe I have a defective lens.