Well, I finished the kit I had been working on and started working on another. I had put together a mini-kit for the store's monthly collaborative several months ago. Then my EHD crashed, taking my mini kit down with the crash. I thought I had found it and tried to restore it through Mozy. Well, I got part of it back but not all--I think I restored the working file and not the finished product. I never was able to restore the thing in time to have it in the monthly collaborative kit. So, last night I pulled out what I had and began working with it to make a whole kit. I worked on it some more this morning. I think I've finally come to the conclusion I don't like the color scheme. It's supposed to be a garden-type color scheme, and while all the other colors go very nicely with the greens, they don't necessarily seem to go all that well with each other. There were 10 colors in the color sample and I really only feel I can work with 8 of them. 2 of the colors so closely duplicate 2 other colors that you can't tell them apart unless you zoom in on them and really study what you're looking at. Finally, I just decided to do away with the 2 duplicated colors, working my way down to an 8 color palette. Anyway, I have about 75% of the papers made as well as a bunch of ribbons. If something doesn't break here with my mojo for this color scheme, you'll find a big freebie here soon.....
In the process of working with the kit above, I've found myself disappointed in some overlays I've purchased from various Commercial Use designers. I've been working with floral papers and trying to fill in the design, as opposed to just flopping it onto a colored bg paper and blending it in. I've tried floral prints from two different designers, both of whom have been designing long enough to be "experts". I expected top quality. What I got was NOT that. I don't have the steadiest hand in the world and I don't have a tablet. So, I'm trying to fill designs with the magic wand selection and the Edit/Fill Selection command. That only works if the design is "closed off". In other words, if the petal of the flower is just sketched in, and the petal is not complete closed off, the color will bleed right into the rest of the design. I was working with one cutesy daisy pattern and I liked it so much I decided I'd delete the parts of the flowers that I couldn't color. Well, what I had left kinda looked like someone had been playing "he loves me, he loves me not" with those daisies. I gave up and scrapped the whole thing when I realized that some of the centers of the daisies were not "closed off". I looked at the design carefully and decided I just could not get away with deleting the center and treating the petals as if they were just blowing in the wind. So, for this project at least, I just wasted money and time working with products from those "expert" designers..... They're kind of off my list of people from whom to purchase. Sorry 'bout that but I don't have sufficient funds to be buying stuff I can't use.
Joe succeeded in getting another ticket for The Lion King, so we will be taking Will to see it tomorrow afternoon. I sure hope he enjoys it. That ticket was anything but cheap! Joe and I have been together and living in Vegas for 6 years and this will be the only show we've ever seen together. I've actually been here almost 30 years and it will only be my third show! I'm getting excited about it.
Like thousands of other people, I am a reader of Confessions of a Pioneer Woman. Her blog is always interesting to me, her photography is excellent. One thing some people may not know about her yet is that she is an excellent cook and generous enough to share some killer recipes on her blog. Last week I made her Asian noodle salad and it is just excellent and a very tasty way to get some vegetables into our diet. (That reminds me--I need to make another batch of dressing as Joe has sucked up all the dressing and only about half the salad so far.) Thursday evening I made some sandwiches using a recipe from her site. Very simple and simply delicious. Tenderized Round Steak, cut into strips against the grain, fried with onions in butter. Drop in some Worchester Sauce and a little Tabasco, serve on some nice deli rolls. I think Joe said he spent about $8 on the meat and so far we've had two dinners and two lunches from it. There's enough left for one more sandwich and Joe has already requested that I make it again. He had a sandwich in his lunch last night and loved it, reporting happily that it was just as good cold as it was when I served it warm for dinner Thursday. Finally, I got the bug to bake cookies. I admit that cookies are really not my thing. Lately, baking hasn't been my thing. In fact, lately, with Joe working 5 nights a week, cooking in any form is not my thing--I exist on Ramen. Anyway, I found a recipe for Oatmeal Cookies on Pioneer Woman's site. So, I thought I'd give 'em a try. Wow! Those things are the best Oatmeal Cookies I've ever tasted. The dough was supposed to be refrigerated and then sliced and placed on the cookie sheet. I wasn't up for all that, so I just used a mini-ice cream scoop and dropped them. They took a minute or two longer to bake than she recommended for the sliced dough, but they are sure yummy. Unfortunately, it only made just over 3 dozen and Joe is eating them 4 and 5 at a time so I expect they'll be all gone very soon. I will warn you that you need to be sure to walk your dog for miles or have a treadmill that is in working order when you use her recipes. Lots of butter and other fattening stuff which, of course, just contributes to the yumminess of it all.
So, I think I may have discovered a "cure" for the blood pressure headaches I've been having. When it became necessary for me to switch over from my previous medication to a new one, since the doctor didn't say anything specific, I just assumed the dosage would be the same. 180 mg every 12 hours. Well, I've proven THAT just doesn't work. The pills do bring the blood pressure down, but can't seem to keep it down for a 12 hour period. In fact at the end of 12 hours, it's up high enough for several hours that I have a headache. I'm going to give them a shot at one pill every 8 hours. I tried it with one pill this morning taken 8 hours after I took one last night and no headache! In the meantime, I'll e-mail the doc and make sure I'm not killing some part of my body by doing this! But, we have 200 of the new pills and I sure don't want to throw them in the trash if I can make 'em work.
Joe had an experience last night. He led a woman to Christ in his taxicab. It was pretty cool. Maybe that's why he's driving a cab? Anyway, he did get a cab last night and he made decent money as well as earning a spiritual reward so it's all good. Now we just need to see if he can do it again tonight!
When Joe heads out for work, I'm going into the office. I have never been there on a Saturday before, but I had such a lousy headache yesterday afternoon that there was just no way I was going to work. It took me hours to get my bp down to the level that the headache faded. So, I've got things that need done and I'm gonna go in for a few hours today. Really doesn't make much difference to me these days. Even if Joe has the day off, he spends a lot of it in bed and I'm here designing or whatever. So, I may as well get a couple more hours on the clock and a couple more necessary tasks completed.
Gotta run now. Have a great day!
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