Affective Artistry Blog

Sound exciting? Actually, it is. My roses are doing very well and while browsing favorite photographers I saw an image of a rose laid across piano keys and thought I’d try my version of the shot. Lately I’ve been very into black and white but recently saw an image where they brought out the color of a tree against a black and white background and I may try that technique. I’m thinking a red rose would be the most dramatic but I also have white, yellow, orange and pink out there.

I’d have to say my favorite color of rose is white with red being a very close second. For my photograph, red will be more dramatic so I’m hoping one of my red roses is in good shape for what I’m after.

It’s interesting what the different color roses represent. My favorite rose, white apparently stands for “innocence” and when given to a sweetheart means you think they are “heavenly”. It stands for romance. My second favorite, red, obviously means “love”.

Speaking of roses, I’m expecting a flower delivery any day now. The husband ordered them for my birthday. It’s a bit early but it was sweet. 1800flowers.com (Proud Sponsor of the American Rose Society by the way) has a great selection of roses. With the meanings there on their website, any guy can find the best combination of roses to send. Guys need that kind of help sometimes, don’t they?

I’m waiting for the best time to take my photo and I’ll post it here when I get it just right. I’m thinking I’ll use a warm filter and perhaps a soft blur. I just wish I had some champagne to add as a prop. All this writing about roses and champagne, I’m thinking I need a night out.

It’s 1 o’clock in the morning and I’m sitting here watching the Brady Bunch. Too much caffeine today I guess, luckily I have tomorrow off.

I love this cartoon. Click on the duck over there on the right to see all of the cartoons. This one was one of my favorites.

Last week I bought a ring at an online auction that I ended up with for a steal and it got me thinking about starting now for Christmas shopping. My parents anniversary is coming up too and they had a few things that looked like they would make good gifts to send out to them. That’s what really got me thinking about just doing the Christmas shopping online this year. If I start now and spread it out over the next 4 months it wont seem like a huge chunk out of our finances in December.

I actually like online shopping. Today for example, I considered driving all the way to Borders for a couple of books on photography that I wanted. I had already searched the library (online of course) and they only had one of the books I was interested in. Borders may or may not have even had what I wanted and I’d have had to wait until the kids homework was done, spent the money in gas…. got dressed (you get the picture). I found the books I wanted online and don’t mind the wait on shipping. So why not Christmas gifts?

Considering the rush on black friday, it makes more sense to be prepared. Black Friday Online has a ton of information and has actual circular info that you wont find anywhere else this far ahead of time. And it’s free. I rarely get out on black Friday so I’ll be watching their online specials that favorite stores like Best Buy will be putting online before the big shopping day. That’s where you’ll find me, online in my pajamas.

I’ve decided to go ahead and set up a room for portrait photography. We have a decent sized storage room with high ceilings that should suffice. Ebay has some decent buys on backdrops and I’ve ordered a couple of books on portrait photography. If I spend the winter gaining more experience expect to see quite a few shots of the kids on here.

If you register with the intent to spam my blog you may as well not even bother. First of all, comments are moderated and I have to approve one manually before it gets posted. Second, I look up each and every email and user name and if I find it listed anywhere with a relationship to spam and/or advertising you will be deleted. I am the only one who will be doing any advertising on here and only companies that I approve of. Considering I am very picky you can be sure that any link you click from here will not lead you to a site that will be damaging to your computer or take it over, as the last attempted “users” link did. I use Askimet for spam and 99.9% of any spam comments are immediately filtered and don’t see the light of day, the few that slip through I delete myself.

The only registered user’s I’ll allow are friends and people who appear to have legitimate email address. Just FYI.

My mustang is gone. I’m not exactly happy about it but it was needing work that didn’t quite fit in with our schedule. It was such a fun car to drive. I told my husband that mustang was my mid life crisis vehicle. Something I could put a little money into and have my fun red sports car. Considering all that was needed it would have taken an Auto Loan to do it, mainly for the engine but after that the only other thing it really needed was a new top.

So now I’m missing my mustang and looking at different cars online that I’d love to replace it with. I’m a few years away from doing that but Apex Auto Loan has quick and easy online approval and an Auto Loan Calculator.

I’m thinking Jaguar. (I’m also thinking I’d better think cheaper)

..was absolutely exhausting. We did the trade show and it’s taken me almost 3 days to recover from all the walking. (swollen knees and all)

We took our daughter this time and she had a ball. The kids have been to Vegas plenty of times but it’s been a few years for her. (yes, I’m one of those who takes their kids to Vegas, deal with it :)) It made it more fun watching her have fun and see things she hadn’t seen before (or in a while). While we were in the trade show she spent the day with grandma. They would swim and have lunch and visit the gift shop. At night we would relieve grandma and go have dinner and check out the strip.

Sad news though. They are closing the Star Trek Experience in the Hilton. I couldn’t believe that when we found out. When we got there there were a ton of Trekkies, everyone dressed up and all. We figured there was a convention going on and we were right. The first night we were headed out to the valet to get the car and go driving and find something cheap for dinner when I realized I’d left my camera up in the room. As I was on my way up there, the husband called and said he was standing right next to Robert Picardo at the valet. I had missed seeing him by about 2 minutes but the husband and daughter were able to talk to him and shake his hand. Funny thing is, neither of them recognized him from Atlantis, the one show we watch more than any other. They recalled him from Voyager. When I got down there and said, “yeah, Woolsey on Atlantis, right”? my husband slapped his head and couldn’t believe that he didn’t put that together.

Since my daughter wanted to do the Star Trek rides we did and it was while we were getting her caricature painted that we learned it was closing. So we had one last meal at Quarks and I had one last Warp Core Breach:

It’s fruit juice and about 5 ounces of different rums as well as dry ice to make it very cold and produce the fog.

Yeah, large enough for 2 but he only had a sip and I did manage to finish it off.

We’ll miss it.

Pay attention to everything that is going on in the economy and debt looks to be the national past time. With homes being foreclosed on and credit card companies being the only ones to come out on top with all those minimum payments being made it looks like many people are finding themselves in a hole that just gets deeper and deeper and deeper with no end in sight. Sadly, too many people are putting luxuries on their credit cards figuring it makes more sense to pay it later or pay it off in those “minimum payments”. The problem with that is the assumption that they’ll be able to make even the minimum payments without knowing what their circumstances will be in the months ahead. And that minor fact that you end up paying 3 times for whatever it was you just had to have when you do pay it off in minimum payments.

A Debt Relief program like Freedom Debt Relief can help people with an enormous dept problem if it’s beginning to look like bankruptcy in the only way out. With bankruptcy you destroy your credit reputation but if you manage your debt you can get out of the debt cycle and learn to manage your money and credit in a way that will benefit you for life.

…and I didn’t manage to break the website. Out of all of the options out there Joomla seemed to have the most to offer with regard to content management. Soon I’ll have E-Cards available. I’m still looking into extensions to add to the site but for now I’m through. It took me 3 days to figure out as far as I got so the rest will have to wait.