Blogger and Other Things that Aren't Working for Me

So if you've been following my blog for any length of time than you already know that email and I are often at odds with one another.  It's a fact I've come to accept, but I've never been happy about it.  Aside from my email woes, I've never had too many problems with other electronic aspects of my life, except for an occasional glitch here or there...and the fact that I can never spell occasional correctly the first time!

Anyway, last night, after having dinner with our kids I was sitting on the couch watching a show when my phone alerted me to some voice-mails.  No biggie, I get voice-mail messages all the time, but when I listened to the 3 on my phone they were all wishing me a Happy Birthday.  Sounds good right...until you factor in the fact that my birthday was almost 5 weeks ago, and the messages were left for me in early December but were just now showing up!  Ugh!

Then today, I was looking at my blog and debating on putting up another bird pic post, when I noticed I had 9 comments on my last post.  I thought it must be a typo since I had only received a few email alerts that I had comments.  Lo and behold I've been missing comments left and right it seems because I'm not being notified by Blogger that they are coming in.  And better still...gmail in its infinite wisdom has decided to throw a bunch of emails into my junk folder for no apparent reason.  Thank goodness I decided to see what else I'd been missing, there were tons of them in there that are NOT junk!

And, I've been pinning a bunch of images I took in France over on pinterest, but I'm not sure that people can see them because I normally get email alerts when people repin stuff.  So maybe Pinterest isn't working for me either?!

Who knows, but aside from the woodpecker above coming to the feeder more regularly, things seem to not be working out around here.  I think the lion above can relate...he looks a little cranky too!

If you want to see more of my France pictures, I'm adding more to Pinterest each day, in my board entitled Paris Perfection.  Feel free to click HERE to repin them or to follow along.

Driving Me to Drink

So creating 350 images with borders and ready to print for the printer is no easy or quick task!  I've had my rear end stuck to this office chair for the past few days/weeks and I'm starting to think that at any moment it might become a permanent fixture the next time I get up!

I have ventured out, I had to or I would have completely lost my sanity.  But it's been to places like the chiropractor's office, to take the dogs out, or to get something to eat when I actually remember to eat.

After so many days of constant interaction with my newest friend Photoshop, I forced myself to pick up the camera and head outside for a much needed mental break.  And as I wandered around our backyard in my too short sweatpants and big bulky coat, I took a moment to decompress and look around for something, anything to shoot. 

My neighbor loves it when I am in the middle of a working frenzy...she can always tell because my hair looks like I haven't brushed it...because I haven't, and you never know what I will be wearing.  If I had to describe my look on these sorts of days, I would say that it's somewhere between crazy cat lady and eccentric millionaire, sadly without the millions.

She never questions it though, but often phones me when I go back inside...maybe to see if she needs to call the loony bin?!  Either way I appreciate the phone calls as they give me another chance to avoid working for a bit.

While out on my adventure this afternoon, I was treated to a visit by a lovely woodpecker.  The original photo is at the top of the post, but I preferred the image with a little texture added.  One of my goals for our upcoming trip is to visit a few flea markets and find some great old French ephemera to use as textures.  I have quite a bit already, but you can never have too much.

For both of these images, I actually used other people's textures, but I prefer to use ones I've sourced myself.  Plus I just love the look of beautiful old documents, postcards, and letters from by gone eras, and hope to frame some of the pieces I have one of these days.

Woodpeckers are often as elusive as good ephemera, and they like sitting high up in the trees, making them difficult to capture without lots of cropping.  Still, I love to hear their distinctive calls and the tap, tap, tapping on the trees as they hunt for insects.  This little guy was happily flitting from treetop to treetop looking for the juiciest worms, ants, or whatever he could find.

It's amazing how stepping outside for just 20 short minutes can give you the oomph you need to come back inside and keep working.  And now that the sun has set and it's too dark for picture taking, I am using a different secret weapon...I'm enjoying a nice cold cider... Strongbow to be exact.

I still have 24 more images to create and although I'm a complete lightweight when it comes to drinking, I decided to grab a hard cider left over from Thanksgiving and sip it slowly while I work.  The crisp apple taste pares well with photo editing I think.  ;-)

Don't forget that there is still time to use the 10% discount I am offering on any gallery wrapped canvas available in my new shop.  And should you prefer something from my photography website that isn't offered yet on Low Tide High Style, you can simply shoot me an email and I will have that created for you instead. 

The code for 10% off is LTHS10

Enjoy your evening!

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