Well, friends are going to help me find places to get appreciation for what I have to offer the world. I'm really tired of posting things and never hearing any reply because I'm on a site with fiction writers. and maybe people who don't want to read anything long, unless it's a story. Non-fiction just isn't their thing.
M
March 20, 2011 | Permalink | Comments (1)
My brother is adorable in the first row of the Lutheran Church choir he and were in when we were six, seven and eight. We wore little white cotton half length robes with large red crosses at the neck and down the front. I'm sure my mom sewed them for us.
Singing was my passion that age and what I remember are the robes and singing. I don't recall being aware of my brother on Sundays Now, my mother, that's a different story.
Seems my brother wanted more than anything to be a pilot even then; our father was in the Air Force. We'd been dropped at the base theater to see movies on Saturday for a couple of years and I'm sure that we'd seen the war time movies about the Air Force and planes in WWII.
Mom lived in terror that some Sunday in the middle of the quietest part of a really ritualized service, my hold up his hands and close one eye as if shooting a machine gun, and eh, eh, ehehehe would ring out and fill the sanctuary as he imagined shooting down an enemy plane. He never did and we moved again when Daddy was stationed at a base in the southern part of the state.
October 25, 2010 | Permalink | Comments (0)
Since last Tuesday, the evening of my scrapbooking class at Michael's Arts and Crafts, I've been working to first, get all my yardstick (paper) out of filing cabinet drawers, next, out of hanging file holders, and third, upstairs to my cleared off dining room table.
The most important thing I learned from last week's class is to clear either the dining room table on the main floor or my desk made of a door perched on elf storage or a two drawer filing cabinet in the basement. The desk in the basement has too much stuff on it, so I brought it all upstairs a little at a time. Carol, my teacher, took me to the storage section of Michaels and made some suggestions about what to use. Luckily, I'd quit buying things that didn't work and concentrated on getting everything, more or less, in one place.
The last time I really scrapped was in 2003. Journaling wasn't a big aspect of making scrapbooks, then, or at least not the one's I saw. Not much more than the four or five w's were included on a page. There were all kinds of embellishments and so many different things on pages that I simply would not begin to make that kind. My knowledge of all the new materials that began to hit the market in 2003 and 2004, the money it would have cost to purchase them, the color theory and skills were simply out of my grasp although I liked the artistic things that began showing up in Scrapbook and card making magazines.
So, I did what I always do, I switched back to my painting and began doing color exercises with oils which I found I didn't like (bought too many), acrylics I had, and began learning something about mixing colors, and what contrasting, analogous, and monochromatic color schemes are.
Cardmakers weren't too interesting in design; they have a different mind set for doing cards, and it just didn't work for me. I'm one of those people who want to do a card once, and give it to someone else to reproduce it. I think it's why I like scrapbooking so much better.
Over the last six years, I've made a short film, done a lot of photography, and began gathering all the photos I have in the house into the basement, purchased water tight holders for negatives and slides, all of which have information on each page that explains what the photos are.
I began a Heritage album with copies of photos that go back as far as 1867, I believe, but had to give it up since the organization of photos wasn't even started.
Then, came the organizing of my photos, family history pictures I picked up at my brother's home in 2009, bought storage containers for all and began sorting them into decades, then months, etc. I emptied all the 5 x 7" photos from their acid booklets from Walmart and put as much as sI could get into acid free storage boxes from Michaels. All of this cost a great deal of money, so it was done a little at a time and not all at once. I get bored if I have to keep working on the same thing.
I learned a great deal from making my little film about collecting, sorting, purging and organizing photos using the internet and Iphoto on my Mac Mini computer. I used what I learned there to do my own photos. I've been driven by the fact that the 80 and 100 year old photos were beginning to deteriorate from being in the acid environment. My goal was to get everything into acid free storage, which I did.
I made sure the cardstock I had was moved to the basement where there is little sunlight. I'd lost paper from fading in the 90's and was determined not to have that happen to the expensive papers I bought. The biggest mistake was purchasing papers I loved but didn't really have any specific layouts in mind for them. Much of it was purchased in 2001-2003 and the best thing I did was buy it in sets of three papers of the same colors. That way I can make a 2 page layout pretty well, I found out last week.
So, the photos are done, then done some more, then more and I'm still finding photos and copies of them mixed in with acid memorabilia from the years 1960-2010. I got rid of whatever made me sad or angry and kept what made me laugh, smile or feel good or was a good learning experience.
All of this coincided with my work in therapy where I organized my journals into chronological order and began painstakingly figuring out where everything began, who or what happened. Clearing clutter, organizing, and purging was and is a result of this work.
Three months ago, I saw an ad for a Scrapbooking class Michaels was having on Scrapbooking. It was four weeks long and looked really good. I kept the brochure tacked up in my computer area and called periodically. Sure enough, once Michael's moved to a new location across the street, got up and running, they offered the classes on two nights.
They are fantastic for me and absolutely perfect. Just like the writing class I took this year at Lighthouse Writers on writing memoirs. Right time, right people, right teachers and right classmates. Right size and location. There's actually a book that accompanies the class for only 10 dollars. When I opened it and read through it, it's about using fine art knowledge to design scrapbook pages; art caught up with the scrapbooking world for me! Talk about exciting! Nothing I've done lately gets me as excited as my next class. I've got a teacher who knows her stuff, and uses it, is more helpful than I could ever have imagined. What I learn and can use each time I go is exactly what I need. It helps that we got into this at the beginning. There's only two people in my class and the teacher so there's lots of time for personal attention, which I need for a bit.
That leads me back, full circle to organizing the paper I have. After five days of work, they are all arranged in order, prints and solids, which I didn't. It was good to know about papers. Now, I can figure out what to sell on e-bay and what to keep.
It's really interesting to realize that everything is connected. Like the body, one thing contributes to another part's healing or growth. This class is bringing everything together for me that I have been working so hard to bring together for so long. I'm able to experiment, enjoy, and have fun, now, when I couldn't when I came this way before. It's happening in keeping my home clean, my kitchen counters cleared, my refrigerator shiny and pretty. I'm cooking and experimenting more, getting out with people more, and learning so much about the world, and them, and me.
I love the creative process and how it works. Even though on the surface it would seem nothing is happening, it is indeed true, "there is never a time when nothing is happening." And, it would seem that everything is done in baby steps or as my friend Gary would say, "One bite at a time."
Mission accomplished! Job well done. Now, with much rubbing my hands together in glee, I can use it all. Really use it.
Have a great week folks.
Love you,
Lyn
.
October 17, 2010 | Permalink | Comments (0)
Since last Tuesday, the evening of my scrapbooking class at Michael's Arts and Crafts, I've been working to first, get all my yardstick (paper) out of filing cabinet drawers, next, out of hanging file holders, and third, upstairs to my cleared off dining room table.
The most important thing I learned from last week's class is to clear either the dining room table on the main floor or my desk made of a door perched on elf storage or a two drawer filing cabinet in the basement. The desk in the basement has too much stuff on it, so I brought it all upstairs a little at a time. Carol, my teacher, took me to the storage section of Michaels and made some suggestions about what to use. Luckily, I'd quit buying things that didn't work and concentrated on getting everything, more or less, in one place.
The last time I really scrapped was in 2003. Journaling wasn't a big aspect of making scrapbooks, then, or at least not the one's I saw. Not much more than the four or five w's were included on a page. There were all kinds of embellishments and so many different things on pages that I simply would not begin to make that kind. My knowledge of all the new materials that began to hit the market in 2003 and 2004, the money it would have cost to purchase them, the color theory and skills were simply out of my grasp although I liked the artistic things that began showing up in Scrapbook and card making magazines.
So, I did what I always do, I switched back to my painting and began doing color exercises with oils which I found I didn't like (bought too many), acrylics I had, and began learning something about mixing colors, and what contrasting, analogous, and monochromatic color schemes are.
Cardmakers weren't too interesting in design; they have a different mind set for doing cards, and it just didn't work for me. I'm one of those people who want to do a card once, and give it to someone else to reproduce it. I think it's why I like scrapbooking so much better.
Over the last six years, I've made a short film, done a lot of photography, and began gathering all the photos I have in the house into the basement, purchased water tight holders for negatives and slides, all of which have information on each page that explains what the photos are.
I began a Heritage album with copies of photos that go back as far as 1867, I believe, but had to give it up since the organization of photos wasn't even started.
Then, came the organizing of my photos, family history pictures I picked up at my brother's home in 2009, bought storage containers for all and began sorting them into decades, then months, etc. I emptied all the 5 x 7" photos from their acid booklets from Walmart and put as much as sI could get into acid free storage boxes from Michaels. All of this cost a great deal of money, so it was done a little at a time and not all at once. I get bored if I have to keep working on the same thing.
I learned a great deal from making my little film about collecting, sorting, purging and organizing photos using the internet and Iphoto on my Mac Mini computer. I used what I learned there to do my own photos. I've been driven by the fact that the 80 and 100 year old photos were beginning to deteriorate from being in the acid environment. My goal was to get everything into acid free storage, which I did.
I made sure the cardstock I had was moved to the basement where there is little sunlight. I'd lost paper from fading in the 90's and was determined not to have that happen to the expensive papers I bought. The biggest mistake was purchasing papers I loved but didn't really have any specific layouts in mind for them. Much of it was purchased in 2001-2003 and the best thing I did was buy it in sets of three papers of the same colors. That way I can make a 2 page layout pretty well, I found out last week.
So, the photos are done, then done some more, then more and I'm still finding photos and copies of them mixed in with acid memorabilia from the years 1960-2010. I got rid of whatever made me sad or angry and kept what made me laugh, smile or feel good or was a good learning experience.
All of this coincided with my work in therapy where I organized my journals into chronological order and began painstakingly figuring out where everything began, who or what happened. Clearing clutter, organizing, and purging was and is a result of this work.
Three months ago, I saw an ad for a Scrapbooking class Michaels was having on Scrapbooking. It was four weeks long and looked really good. I kept the brochure tacked up in my computer area and called periodically. Sure enough, once Michael's moved to a new location across the street, got up and running, they offered the classes on two nights.
They are fantastic for me and absolutely perfect. Just like the writing class I took this year at Lighthouse Writers on writing memoirs. Right time, right people, right teachers and right classmates. Right size and location. There's actually a book that accompanies the class for only 10 dollars. When I opened it and read through it, it's about using fine art knowledge to design scrapbook pages; art caught up with the scrapbooking world for me! Talk about exciting! Nothing I've done lately gets me as excited as my next class. I've got a teacher who knows her stuff, and uses it, is more helpful than I could ever have imagined. What I learn and can use each time I go is exactly what I need. It helps that we got into this at the beginning. There's only two people in my class and the teacher so there's lots of time for personal attention, which I need for a bit.
That leads me back, full circle to organizing the paper I have. After five days of work, they are all arranged in order, prints and solids, which I didn't. It was good to know about papers. Now, I can figure out what to sell on e-bay and what to keep.
It's really interesting to realize that everything is connected. Like the body, one thing contributes to another part's healing or growth. This class is bringing everything together for me that I have been working so hard to bring together for so long. I'm able to experiment, enjoy, and have fun, now, when I couldn't when I came this way before. It's happening in keeping my home clean, my kitchen counters cleared, my refrigerator shiny and pretty. I'm cooking and experimenting more, getting out with people more, and learning so much about the world, and them, and me.
I love the creative process and how it works. Even though on the surface it would seem nothing is happening, it is indeed true, "there is never a time when nothing is happening." And, it would seem that everything is done in baby steps or as my friend Gary would say, "One bite at a time."
Mission accomplished! Job well done. Now, with much rubbing my hands together in glee, I can use it all. Really use it.
Have a great week folks.
Love you,
Lyn
.
October 17, 2010 in Food and Drink | Permalink | Comments (0)
My parents were married in 1939. Dad was in the Army, which became the Army Air Corp and then the U.S. Air Force, I am proud to say. My brother and I were born in the midst of WWII. Daddy helped open up basic training bases in the southwest and some in Texas. They moved 27 times in 23 years, most of it during the war when they were transferred every three months. Mom was packing to move or unpacking after a move for every one of my first five birthdays
We lived in MA and TX, mostly and daddy retired to our hometown in the fifties. My parents got along well at first but were too different in temperament to really make it work.
They married, divorced, remarried and divorced again. Mom remarried and my step-father was different from daddy, but had many of his characteristics. He loved her, but once he had a bad heart, it was really stressful. Mom, as a widow, was an primitive oil painter who, with the right marketing, could have sold her paintings for amounts in the upper hundreds. She was prolific until she lost too much of her sight and dedicated herself to taking care of the children of her church.
Daddy was a reporter, writer, photographer and would have been able to reach more of his potential in those areas had he not been abused nor become an abusive alcoholic. My dad was an artist with words and a camera. He wrote poetry until shortly before he died and was still revising one piece. My mom was a farm girl and he was born in a city in PA. She was raised as a boy and knew how to fix machinery, cars. Daddy wanted a wife who was creative in cooking and mostly he just didn't want to be around my mother or us. When we visited Mom's relatives, we had very little in common with them and the men made fun of my father. So, it's no surprise things didn't work out for them. It's ironic, to me, how little my parents and we knew about who we really were nor how little we knew about each other for so many decades; we all had a great deal in common.
October 17, 2010 | Permalink | Comments (0)
Well, after giving it some thought, my first love was food. It was food that led to my having my first human, male love, Tim. I still have a picture of him. Agnes Cotton Elementary in the 50's and he brought great lunches with fritos and cupcakes and such. I had brown bag lunches of, you guessed it, balogna sandwich and an apple.
He and I would get together on the playground at lunch and exchange parts of our lunches. He took the balogna sandwiches and somehow I got the fritos or potato chips and or a cupcake.
He outranked the cupcakes the day he fought another boy, for me, on the playground. I have no idea why anymore. He's still cute as a bug in the picture I have of him and I've never forgotten him or his cupcakes.
See, I told you it was food.
M
October 16, 2010 | Permalink | Comments (0)
Here are the prompts for this meme if you'd like to take part
Day 01 – Introduce yourself
Day 02 – Your first love
Day 03 – Your parents
Day 04 – What you ate today
Day 05 – Your definition of love
Day 06 – Your day
Day 07 – Your best friend
Day 08 – A moment
Day 09 – Your beliefs
Day 10 – What you wore today
Day 11 – Your siblings
Day 12 – What’s in your bag
Day 13 – This week
Day 14 – What you wore today
Day 15 – Your dreams
Day 16 – Your first kiss
Day 17 – Your favorite memory
Day 18 – Your favorite birthday
Day 19 – Something you regret
Day 20 – This month
Day 21 – Another moment
Day 22 – Something that upsets you
Day 23 – Something that makes you feel better
Day 24 – Something that makes you cry
Day 25 – A first
Day 26 – Your fears
Day 27 – Your favorite place
Day 28 – Something that you miss
Day 29 – Your aspirations
Day 30 – One last moment
October 15, 2010 | Permalink | Comments (0)
film10215 October 2010 @ 3:26 pmThe 30 day Meme - Day 1 - Introduce yourself
I've set a goal, Such, to write every day for a year. God bless you girl for posting this meme. I'd gotten so far behind I thought I'd never catch up. 20 days I think it is. Thanks for the prompts.
Hi! I'm M Lyn, to distinguish me from the other Lyn,
I'm divorced, have no children, however, taught 14,632 in Middle School for 32 years, most of which was as a classroom teacher. I have one brother. My mom died last year and my dad in 1992, I believe. My family and I are not close.
Loves dominate my life, I suppose. There's my friends, who mostly are my family, of sorts. I'm retired and nearly 70 now although most people don't know if I don't tell them; came from good genes. TV, movies, musicals, abstract art, painting, scrapbooking, photography, nurturing friendships, and almost any other artistic endeavor. Films and the creative process are my passions as well as writing.
I get obsessive about things from time to time. Marlon Brando and Elvis Presley were my first obsessions as well as movie stars and films almost all my life. Kevin Costner was my next crush and used as a vehicle to learn to use the library, magazines and microfiche in 91. Queer as Folk was next in early 2003 and still affects me. Now, my passion is becoming who I most really am, authentically.
Luckily, I learned to say no in the last decade I taught and to stop bringing work home in the sense of trying to save all the children. I learned I could save some. And to save me.
I'm creative and love people who are different. Everyone is unique, and I am and am drawn to those who are more unique than many.
M
October 15, 2010 | Permalink | Comments (0)
Missed my biopsy on my cervix. Woke up when it was time to go. Slept until it was time to go.
30 Day Meme
Day 01 – Introduce yourself
Day 02 – Your first love
Day 03 – Your parents
Day 04 – What you ate today
Day 05 – Your definition of love
Day 06 – Your day
Day 07 – Your best friend
Day 08 – A moment
Day 09 – Your beliefs
Day 10 – What you wore today
Day 11 – Your siblings
Day 12 – What’s in your bag
Day 13 – This week
Day 14 – What you wore today
Day 15 – Your dreams
Day 16 – Your first kiss
Day 17 – Your favorite memory
Day 18 – Your favorite birthday
Day 19 – Something you regret
Day 20 – This month
Day 21 – Another moment
Day 22 – Something that upsets you
Day 23 – Something that makes you feel better
Day 24 – Something that makes you cry
Day 25 – A first
Day 26 – Your fears
Day 27 – Your favorite place
Day 28 – Something that you miss
Day 29 – Your aspirations
Day 30 – One last moment
O
October 15, 2010 | Permalink | Comments (0)
| Sun | Mon | Tue | Wed | Thu | Fri | Sat |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | ||
| 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 |
| 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 |
| 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 |
| 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 |
