It was a good week for friends. By the end of the week I will have eaten out with eight different friends (not eight times, however!) My photo is on the left, Nancy's on the right.

(Note my friends' dog who looks just like the flag on their porch!)

Tonight’s the night of the altered house blog hop hosted by Rinda who sent all of us a great little baggie of supplies to make our house. Here’s
mine:
 

I had a great time creating this. Since a scrapbook album
about all the homes I’ve lived  in and owned is soon to be in the works, I
wanted to make a house that I could use on the title page or cover of my
scrapbook. I’ve been collecting papers and embellishments for this project for
a couple of years. I keep all the materials for a project in these project
envelopes. 

Since the colors Rinda sent me didn’t really work for this
project, I started with the wooden heart that was in the bag she sent me, and
pulled papers, charms, and other possible embellishments from the project
envelope.
 

Then I went through my stamp collection and looked for
stamps that might be usable. As soon as I saw the Technique Tuesday quote, I
knew I’d include it on the house. I also knew I wanted a key and a timepiece.
 

I loved the printed canvas and thought it would be good for
the roof.  Then I chose two papers,
one patterned (Graphic 45) and one plain for the house. I stamped a scrap of
patterned paper with a wood grain stamp and then stamped the quote over that
and cut it out. As I put the elements together, the bottom half of the house
seemed “empty” so I stamped the abstract squares and found the two tiny
scalloped stickers in one of the sticker collections in the project envelope. I
cut a piece of chipboard for the door and covered it with patterned paper. I
had a die cut tree I wanted to use, but it just didn’t seem to fit. In my box
of chipboard I found the perfect little tree—just the right size. I covered it
with paper and distressed it with Tim Holtz’s “peeled paint” ink. Almost every
piece has been distressed with one of five different distress inks. After
looking at the house for a while, I decided to add the stamped bird to the
tree. It completed the visual triangle of three red items: the heart, the door,
and the bird. I must say, I’m quite pleased with the final product.  

I didn’t want the bag of goodies from Rinda to go to waste
so I used them to make a card. The only thing I added was the darker flower and
the pink cardstocks.  
 

Thanks, Rinda, for hosting this great blog hop! Here's the next stop in the blog hop: Cheri at Nights Dream.

If you get lost on the hop, you can find the complete list at Gallo Organico. Have a great time!

I never gave much thought to retirement before I left my job. I knew it was time, and I knew I had plenty of hobbies and friends to keep me busy. (How busy I really didn't know!) After spending a school year alone at home, I was unsure what to expect when Tracy retired this year. But it couldn't be better. Yesterday was a perfect example of how it should be. We had nothing on the calendar and the weather forecast called for nearly 80°. I suggested a bike ride since we had just had both bikes tuned up for the season. 

We threw them in the back of the van and drove to the Finger Lakes. Starting at Keuka Lake we rode the outlet trail to Seneca Lake. It's a great trail—sometimes two bikes wide, sometimes a single tire wide, occasionally paved. Of course we had to stop for photos along the way.

There are the remains of four mills along the trail which used to be a railroad bed.

A view of the trail with the fisheye setting on my Canon digital Elph.

I think this is a trillium. Tracy has an iPod app that identifies birds, now we want one for wildflowers.

Playing with perspective in a field of dandelions.

The town of Penn Yan where the trail starts (or ends). Round trip the trail is about 15 miles. 

And for sticking with me through a long photographic post, here's an invitation to a blog party hosted by the fabulous Rinda. It starts tonight at 10 pm Pacific time. It's an international event so come along and party with us. Here's a sneak peek of my project.

Hope to see you there!

My friend, Nancy, and I decided to participate in the Team-up Thursday photography challenges hosted on Mental Inventory. I'm not quite sure how I ended up there a few weeks ago, but I've been reading the blog for awhile. Once Nancy got home from vacation, I proposed getting together and posting on their Flickr group. For now, we're following along with the challenge posted on the blog, but evidently we can choose our own word as well. This week's word was fruit. Here's our diptych, mine on the left and Nancy's funky organic banana on the right.

(I really wanted to change the color of the text and lines in the template. I know I've done it before using the "fill layer" command, but I could not make it work today. Anyone have any suggestions? I'm guessing I'm just not clicking on the right tool.)

I've said it so many times this week, there really wasn't any other choice: