Feline Friday: Feets!

 I've always thought that Lily's best feature is (are?) her little white FEETS. She wears four white socks, no two quite the same. When she was a rambunctious kitten, they were actually more like four white running shoes! Now that she's older and more "refined", her white socks are still adorable.

It seems she's always posing her FEETS in the cutest positions! Every evening (no lie), I'm running to take pictures of them, much to Spouse's dismay. I just can't help myself! Take a look and I'm sure you'll agree that they're the sweetest little FEETS in the world!

Look at how the white parts are touching! This is kind of a new pose as she usually tucks them all the way under.

And here's a pose I like to refer to as The Baked Potato. LOOK AT THOSE FRONT FEETS!

She's clearly working her angles here! This is a girl who knows how to get what she wants!

And, lest you think only the front two feets get in on the action....LOOK AT THE BACK FEETS!

This level of CUTE is just ridiculous!

Happy Feline Friday, friends!

Have a great weekend and stay safe out there!

Mystery Negatives

As I've been working through the photos I inherited from my grandma, I ran across an old envelope of 3x4 negatives. I assumed they were of our family, but when I finally got around to examining them more closely, I didn't recognize anyone in the images. In this post, I'll share the quick and easy way I got a better look at these negatives so that the mystery could be solved!

I placed them all into a pocket sheet protector, this one for wallet-sized photos. Any such pocket sleeve will do. The idea is to not have to handle the negatives, keeping them free from any oils or debris. Once safely in the sleeve, I opened up a blank Word document on my desktop computer so I would have a bright white screen to backlight the negatives. I don't have a lightbox, so this is the next best thing...and much easier than holding the sleeve up to a bright window!

 

I taped it in place, then with my phone, I took a quick photo of each of the negatives. I wasn't looking for perfection here -- just a clear enough image that would enable me to hopefully identify the people.

Once I had a digital image of each of the negatives, I dropped it into my photo editing program (I still use Picasa but there are obviously tons of options out there). In Picasa, there is an "invert colors" option. A quick click resulted in a decent rendition of the images:

It's amazing how much easier it is to identify a photo than a negative! Once I had these new images, I still didn't recognize the people so I shared them to a family Facebook group. Sure enough, one of my cousins recognized the little girl who happens to be our second cousin. I located her via Facebook and sent her the negatives and some better prints a few days ago. Now she and I have re-connected via Facebook, which is also a good thing!

I've also got two additional batches of photos I've identified in similar ways and am currently trying to track down extended family members via Ancestry who might be interested in them. Old photos and negatives are too precious to just toss. It's worth the effort to get them back to their proper place.

Janet

Time to Re-Group

 Blogging friends -- if you are still out there! -- it is time for me to re-group! The store where I teach stopped offering classes in mid-March when things started shutting down. Since then, I've been busier than ever making kits to sell online and am just now truly coming up for air.  Our dining room (and my craft room) has pretty much looked like some version of this since March.

Recently, I made a list of all the projects I've completed since this thing started and totalled it up. No wonder I feel like my head is spinning! I have designed 23 different kits (cards, scrapbook pages, tags, treat bags, etc.) and made 1020 kits to sell since March. That has kept me crazy busy with almost no let-up but I'm thankful I love what I do and can contribute in some small way!

But now... I've finished up all of my Christmas-themed kits, which is a huge relief. Christmas is our busiest time and is always a huge push for me. Now I'm truly enjoying a bit of free time to re-group.

Over the past few months, I've worked sporadically on my family history albums, trying to carve out a few hours here and there. I am pleased to report that I'm making noticeable progress! I've worked my way up through the generations to my parents and am now working on their section of the album. 

 

   Many moons ago, I wrote about setting up Life Binders for my parents and grandparents, an idea I picked up in a genealogy class. These 3-ring notebooks are just a temporary holding place for memorabilia that might eventually make it into the scrapbook. It was a Life Binder that helped me save the wedding invitation in the photo above plus a related newspaper article and a lot of memorabilia from my parents' lives so I could find it when I was ready for it.

I've been inching my way through these binders and have emptied my grandparents' binders and now my mom's, placing the memorabilia into an appropriate section of the family history binders. It's been a long time coming and it made me kind of giddy to empty another binder! Seriously, if there is one piece of advice I could offer anyone just starting to sort through a mountain of family history, it's this. The Life Binder will be your anchor.

Using the information from my Life Binders, I set up sections in my family history binder for highlights of my mom's employment...

...and also her many hobbies. In later years she enjoyed painting so I found a way to incorporate some examples of her artwork. Of course, I have many of her actual canvas paintings in various places around the house.

I still have several sections of my dad's Life Binder to work through, but I'm now  ready to start working my way through the photos I have from my parents' first few years of marriage, my birth, and beyond.  Although working on my parents' section of the album has been sad, I am really glad to get started documenting their lives. And I am excited to work on my own story. I've often wondered if I'd ever make my way to 1961 when I was born...and suprised to say that I'm almost there! 

So here's to re-grouping...coming up for air...and tackling a few of these important projects on my list.

Stay well, friends.
Janet

 

 

Feline Friday: New Friend!

 The squirrels have entered their busy season, scurrying to and fro to search for and dig nuts in our yard and garden area. They've even been digging in my patio pots...grrr!

 

As I've previously reported, Lily is much more "engaged" with the outside world these days and now enjoys watching the wildlife in the yard. She was recently thrilled to meet a new "not-of-my-species" friend!

 

 Look how they're almost touching paws! 

 

 

Credit to Spouse for taking these super-sweet photos!

Feline Friday: Where's Lily?

 As I've mentioned before, Lily has become much more active since her surgery back in July. Instead of just lying around all the time, she seems much more curious and engaged now.

She's back to her old tricks! I was unloading the dishwasher recently and left a cupboard door open, as usual. I returned to close it, only to see a glimpse of a striped tail quickly disappearing.

 Going....

 

 

 Going...GONE!

I waited briefly while she pivoted for her somewhat ungraceful exit. LOL

Of course, these little forays into the cupboards mean that I have to pull out everything to wash it. I'll remind myself that at least I got a couple of cute pictures!

Feline Friday

 Hello, friends! 

How is everyone doing? Anyone sick of this pandemic? LOL 

I, for one, am really feeling it these days. As an introvert, I can honestly say I don't mind all the social distancing one bit but as someone who also has a tad bit of health anxiety, I am ready for this to be over. I am thankful that so far, we have stayed healthy. My heart goes out to all who have been touched by this public health crisis.

Don't you just wish you could be a cat, obvlious to all the current events? Lily is certainly not affected by these crazy times! 

Here are a few places she was spotted this week:

Although the birds aren't coming by as frequently, Lily still gazes demurely out the window from her perch on the cat tree!

 

Here she got so tired of waiting by the pantry door for Meowmy to serve lunch that she just plopped down!

It's been so nice that we have had the windows open this week! Here she is partially sitting on her scratchers in a pose that Daughter calls The Split-Level. 😀

Cue the JAWS music! Lily can always be spotted lurking near food -- especially when there are dairy products to be had. Clearly she hoped to snag a little lick of that excessive butter on Meowmy's toast. Stress-eating, anyone? LOL

Hope everyone has an enjoyable weekend! Here's to brighter days ahead!

JP and Lily

Feline Friday

Well, Lily went back to the vet this week for a re-check of her rear end. I won't go into the details (as my mom would have said, "It's not dinner table conversation") but suffice it to say something is not right. In spite of this problem, she's FELINE good and continues to be active as I've reported in recent posts!

I love how she's got her teeth around the bar of her carrier here! 

 

 I took her to the vet three weeks ago for this same issue and she was prescribed a 10-day course of predisone. The tablets are liver flavored which means she gobbled them up with gusto! But after 10 days, the problem persisted so back to the vet she went.

This time, she got a high-powered predisone shot which should correct the problem within a 10 days or so. If that doesn't happen, she'll go back and they'll try something else. I have no idea what that "something else" might be.

The great thing is that this week, she didn't have to be sedated for her visit. It's been YEARS since she's been at the vet without sedation, so I was very proud of her! Nevertheless, she was quite happy to be home and especially thrilled that our return coincided with her 3pm food drop from the automatic feeder.

 

 So we're continuing on and doing fine...just want this little problem to be resolved! Hope everyone has a happy Feline Friday and a great weekend! Stay safe out there, kitties and humans!