PSPU - senior lesson

One of the things I did not mention in my last post was that I was taking lessons through the PSPU yahoo group. I started in the spring and made it through the freshman, sophomore, junior and half of senior lessons before I had to take a break because of the slide show. I just recently went back and finished up the senior lessons (still need to take the final), but I wanted to show you the layout I made for the last lesson. Most of the elements on the layout were "drawn" by me in psp except for some of the flowers which I tubed from a photo. As for the background, the sky/cloud background and the bricks are patterns included in psp. In addition, the textures I used on the grass, mulch and patio were also part of the program. The elements, including the staircase, window, flower box, trellis, birdbath/fountain, birdhouse, table and chairs, were the parts that I made. I was very happy with how it all came out and really wanted to share it on this blog. Between PSPU and some other tutorial sites, I have learned quite a few new techniques and am anxious to get working on a new kit.

Catching Up: Slide Show, Contest, etc

I can't believe how long it has been since my last post! It has been a very hectic time. Most of May I was consumed in putting together a slide show. Let me explain. For several years I have been the parent volunteer in charge of my children's elementary school yearbook (some years by myself and some years with partners). Since this was my youngest's last year at the school, it was also my last year for the yearbook. Well, the yearbook went to the publisher in April (it came out awesome by the way!!), and about that time I was asked about putting together a slide show for the end of year awards ceremony and also the end of year party. Since I have been taking digital photos of the kids the past five years for the yearbook, I had tons of pics. In order to have a lot of pictures of all the students in the class and still keep the length of slide show to about 10 minutes, I had to "scrap" the pictures to include multiple photos on each slide. This became a HUGE job!! I will probably shortly write a separate blog entry on how I did the slide show and the lessons learned since I had such a hard time finding information online. Fortunately, the slide show was finished on time and was a big hit with the students, parents and school staff. (Yeah!)

So after the slide show was finished in the beginning of June, it was on to fixing some computer problems. My older son's computer has a very serious virus and we still don't have it running, but we have managed to salvage what he needed from the hard drive. Then it was time to try to get the wireless network printer to work again. It stopped talking to the computers after a short power outage in mid-May. Luckily, I was able to get that working in spite of the lack of help from HP technical support - who informed me it's out of warranty! So with the printer back up and running there was partial success on the computer issues! I also needed to catch up on some genealogy correspondence and postings, and I really, really wanted to get back to scrapbooking - both layouts and design.

Earlier in May, before the slide show completely took over, I posted a layout at SAS for their heritage layout of the month contest. I was absolutely thrilled to find out I won the challenge and got a gift certificate to their online store!!! So, I think on that note, I'll end this rambling and post the layout below. The kit used is LilyPond - a free a SAS welcome kit. The photo is four generations of my Evans/Shaner/Miller line. The man holding the baby is my great-grandfather, Harry Evans. Standing next to him (probably on a box to make her taller) is his wife, Minnie Shaner Evans. Next to Minnie is her mother, Adeline Miller Shaner. Seated in the front is Adeline's step-mother, Elizabeth Fritz Miller. The baby is Harry Evans Jr. and the little girl is Cora Evans. They are the older siblings of my grandmother.