My life...just not on the road I expected (but it's still dang good).

The Season Opening.

Blackberry season just opened up at our house.

 

Which means that every morning at 6:30am, Annie is out in the backyard picking her breakfast.

These blackberry bushes started growing over our fence and are trying to take over our backyard (as you can see).  Josh keeps trying to cut them down - but whenever he does, I freak out and tell him that he's ruining blackberry season.

So he's given up for now.

And despite the blackberry stained fingers, clothes and teeth (we do lots of extra brushing during blackberry season) I look forward to it all year.

Oh, and that frame is also available at Polka Dot Potato.

Right now...

Right now I'm working and just overheard that Ross has Cole locked in his room and is refusing to let him out until he repeats the words "I Cole, am a princess flower-bottom."

I'd like to go and save Princess Flower-Bottom, but I have work to do.

I love him.

I love him.  I love him.  I loooooooove him.

He's been gone most of the summer, but he's home now.  I forget how much more settled I feel when he's around.  I don't know why that is.  Maybe it's because I've never known adulthood without him (I had him when I was 19).

We talked for a long time the other day.  He's so grounded.  The concept of a solid, grounded teenager is just so foreign to me as I was such a flaky, insecure, irresponsible teenager.

He told me that he sometimes feels like I make rules for him based on the mistakes that I made as a teenager without taking into consideration that he isn't on the same path that I was on at 16.  He's right.

But that's a hard thing to let go of sometimes.

It's a hard thing to want so many good things for a person's life, but to know that you have to step back a little in order for them to pave their own way.

It's a hard thing knowing that he'll be out on his own in two years.  What if he doesn't pay his electrical bill?   What if he doesn't study for his finals?  What if he drinks too much one night?  What if he gets his heart broken?  What if he eats too much fast-food?

I just want so badly for him to avoid my mistakes.  I just want it to be easier for him.  I just want it to be less painful.

Although I got my electricity turned off a couple of times in college...and I still turned out ok.

Thanks for the talk Ross, you are seriously one of the coolest people I know.

And totally off topic:

1. The border I used on the photo above is available as a brush over at Polka Dot Potato and is also available to print directly onto your photos at Scrapbookpictures.com.

2. Ross is not really a cowboy.

3. Even though I am no longer designing stamps for FontWerks (Creative Imaginations launched their own acrylic stamps, so all of my future stamp designs will be released through CI) the stamps that I designed for them (FontWerks) are still available.  And you can find those ever elusive Flitter stamps here. 

4. I am teaching 10 Reasons at the Scrapbook Connectionhere in Grants Pass (my hometown) this Saturday at 9:30am (541 474 4404). 

5. Have a great day.

Grandma Jo's.

Just a warning...I went a little crazy on the editing for a few of these (much more than I normally do) but am all over Pross Crocessed #1 and #2 (at about 10-20% opacity) and Old Skool, from Totally Rad Actions.  They just came out with a brand new set of actions too, which I'm going to get as soon as my life slows down enough for me to download them.

Grandma Jo got a little pool (and she's the only person I've ever seen convince Annie of getting into the water.)

Courtney Lee.

 

Tater-Tot (Taylor).

Grandma Jo.

Coley.

Yannie.

And Baby Brooke (who's four...but the nickname stuck).

 

Kids with all their teeth coming in just cracks me up.

Misti (my sister-in-law) couldn't figure out why Taylor was sticking rocks in her eye and up her nose...

Oh, and Me & Ross (nice face Ross).

All the women in Josh's family are amazing cooks...I just take pictures though (I did cut up a few cucumbers and a tomato...and brought some hot-dog buns).

Grandpa Tom.

And Josh Downs (I probably won't ask him to take his sunglasses off next time.)

I love him, but I feel like his mouth is in a perpetual state of motion.

And I love these little lovely girls too.

And I really love this girl (even if she's not that fond of me).

I shot everything with a 24-70mm.  Oh and I had to reduce the number of posts on the front page of my blog because it was taking an eternity to load.  So if you're looking for older posts, you can find them in the archives section in the left hand column or you can just keep pressing the little arrow at the bottom of each page.

They're home.

Ross, Dillon and Cole were in Idaho with my Mom and Uncle, visiting my Aunt Kelly and her family.

My Mom called the other night to tell me that my Uncle Donnie was driving Ross and Dillon home on Friday but that she was going to stay for awhile longer with Coley.

Friday night at 7:00pm, the boys called and asked me to meet them.  I loaded up Annie in the car and told her that Ross was coming home.  She got all excited about seeing Ross and then paused and asked "Is my Dillon coming home too?"

 

Then my Uncle Donnie said that he had something for me in the back of the truck...

And it was Coley.

   

Taking the week off.

 

Taking the rest of the week off from blogging - I've got a couple of different deadlines looming and need to give them my full attention.

If you have sent me an email...no, I am not ignoring you and yes, I will respond eventually.

If you live outside of the US and ordered a kit from me recently, I'll just apologize now for the box you may recieve (I ran out of boxes and had to mail out some of the kits in leftover Christmas boxes with pictures of snowmen on them.)

ETA: I shot this picture of Annie with my 50mm (I was standing in the river).

Have a great week.

More stuff.

I also added to the Antique Cream collection (imagine that).

And my favorite thing releasing at this show might just be the last four images here...

They're 12x12 page protectors with built in pockets.  The designs are printed right onto the page protector.  You just cut your photos to size (2x2's and 4x6's), slip them in the pockets on both sides of the page protector and you're done (although you could certainly add rub-ons and other embellishments too).

I won't be at the show (too much going on here at home) but if you're going...have fun.

CHA Summer 2008

Just wanted to share my additions to the Narratives Bloom collection that is releasing at the CHA Summer show (shipping in Sept. and Oct.)

My favorite thing is the die-cut paper below that looks like old doiles (I've been trying to get this paper to market for over two years now - so excited to finally see them).

 

And (for the first time) I've got acrylic stamp sets through Creative Imaginations...

 

If you are a retailer and would like the Catalog pages for my CHAS 08 release, please email me at karencrussell@charter.net and put in the title "Please email me your catalog pages".

Will post more stuff tomorrow.

The rest of the weekend.

 

After Josh and the kids got back from fishing Saturday morning, we drove up the road a bit to a place that had horseback rides.

Ok, it's a lousy shot but in my defense, I was turned around backwards, trying to ride my own horse while holding onto the rope of Coley's horse, taking a picture.

It was Josh and Annie's first time on a horse.  Josh loved it, but Annie wasn't too keen on the idea.

And then all us girls took a nap while Josh & Coley went fishing (again).

After fishing & naps, we hung out at the cabin for awhile.

 

Cooked dinner (that's a plastic face attached to the tree).

And then we walked down to the creek to go fishing (yet again).

And then we walked down to the store to get some ice cream.

Played cards out by the campfire.

Read a few stories and hit the sack.

Josh and Coley went fishing at 5am again the next morning.  Me and the girls slept in.

And we went to breakfast (Courtney was counting mustard packets) before we packed up and headed home.

Answering a couple of questions:

1. I took all my lenses with me - but didn't use anything by my 50mm the whole trip.

2. I don't consider myself good enough at shooting fireworks to give any advice on the subject, but here's a good article I shared with the gals in my online Photographers' Workshop.

The 4th.

Josh threw together some last minute plans for our 4th of July weekend (it's crazy, but sometimes, our last minute plans turn out to be our best plans).  He rented a cabin for a couple of nights up at Union Creek.  The cabin wasn't ready until 3:00pm, so we drove up to Crater Lake.

And though I've said that I only coordinate outifts on Christmas day and when we go to the pumpkin patch...I do it on the 4th of July too.

It's gorgeous up there - but these two and their fighting and complaining was about enough to send me over the edge, as was any conversation about Junior Rangers (they have a Junior Ranger program up at Crater Lake that sounded like a cool thing for the kids to do - but they wanted nothing to do with it), marshmallows (I would have never brought the dang marshmallows if I knew that Courtney was going to ask "When are we going to roast the marshmallows?" 14 million times) and laundry (Josh and I had a little argument the night before because I keep telling him to leave my laundry alone - but he keeps washing & drying it anyhow, ruining my clothes and I still wasn't completely over it).

Yes, I realize it is odd to argue with a man because he won't quit doing the laundry.

 

And Annie still wasn't feeling good.

That's Cole in time-out (and since there is nothing that Cole dislikes more than Courtney's singing and dancing, she decided to perform a little number right in front of him where she was sure he wouldn't miss it).

I know it looks like Cole is about to fall off the 'time-out wall', plummeting 2000ft. into the lake below, but (as wonderful as that sounds) there's a patch of land on the other side of that rock wall.

And when we got back, the Hammacker House was ready for us.

We had dinner (that's a blueberry).

The kids fought a little more.

We played catch and the kids took turns with my camera (not sure who took this shot).

And spent the rest of the evening goofing off outside (I wish this shot had turned out better).

And much to Courtney's delight; roasted marshmallows.

And then we headed up to the Fireworks show at Diamond Lake.

Where my kids complained about mosquitoes, the temperature and how tired they were.

And though we didn't get the best seats in the house (the fireworks were going off behind a bunch of trees), it was still a pretty cool site.

Josh took Cole & Courtney fishing the next morning at 5am.

They got back later that afternoon (everyone went to bed in their clothes the night before - hence the same outfits).

And as much as I hate to post dead fish pictures, Coley is pretty proud of these (they came home with three fish - Coley caught all of them - although Josh says that technically he caught one of these because both his and Coley's hook ended up in the same fish).

The quarter (Josh's idea) is meant to show a size comparison.

Will post more pictures from the weekend tomorrow - and I promise to post a bunch of pictures from my new CHA Summer 08 release on Thursday and Friday.