Pay It Forward & Linen Headaches

  • October 18, 2007 4:53 PM

First off, I’ve been seeing these Pay It Forward Craft swaps all over the blogosphere and have hesitated to sign up…until today. When I saw that Uncommon Grace had an open slot on her swap, I signed up. Now I get to pay it forward…It works like this: I receive a craft from Grace, and I get to make a craft for three of you.

Here’s the required explanation:

I will send a handmade gift to the first 3 people who leave a comment on my blog requesting to join this Pay It Forward exchange. I don’t know what that gift will be yet and you may not receive it tomorrow or next week, but you will receive it within 365 days, that is my promise! The only thing you have to do in return is pay it forward by making the same promise on your blog.

So, leave a comment if you’d like to participate!


Now for the linen headaches. I bought some linen a couple of weekends ago to play with and I got inspiration for a purse from the new Patchwork and Quilted Gifts book I got. The problem is that the book shows the pattern on a quilt, and it wasn’t too easy to reduce it to purse size, and work with thick, slinky fabric like linen. I think I have a plan on how to finish it now, but it has been giving me headaches. You can see the pattern in the book and the small linen piece I have so far in the entry photo.

Singaporeans in the House

  • October 15, 2007 8:12 PM

We had an absolutely, wonderful weekend with house guests this past weekend. Meow Kiat, a good friend from graduate school, brought her family from Singapore down to Atlanta to experience the South. We spent the weekend catching up on stories about our classmates, visiting some sights, playing Wii, and eating a wide variety of food.

 I posted a few photos from their trip on Flickr.

If all Singaporeans are as much fun as these three, then I really need to go visit Singapore. Meow Kiat, her sister (Mun Mun), and their mother (Madam Chan) were active (playing more Wii than I could keep up), funny (Meow Kiat has a great impression of a southern accent), interesting (introducing us to fried anchovies and spicy red pepper and shrimp paste), adventurous (trying our cooking and fair food), sweet (lovin’ on Clover), etc.

I hope they had as good of a visit as we had having them here. Now we just need to get some more of our old classmates to come visit us.

Here’s some of the tasty foods we experienced:

Mun Mun and Madam Chan try fair food
Mun Mun and Madam Chan Try Fair Food

Thomas eats fried apple pie
Thomas has Fried Apple Pie

Tasty Spring Rolls
Delicious Spring Rolls at a Vietnamese Pho Restaurant

Thomas made Spicey Blackened Catfish
Thomas Makes Spicy Blackened Catfish

Fun Monday: How I Met My Mate

  • October 14, 2007 9:45 PM

This week on Fun Monday, Janet asked to hear how we met our mates. Being that today is the 6-month anniversary of our marriage, what a great opportunity to share the Match.com ad that originally introduced us. Plus, I promised on National Delurking Day to post this…

First, let me give a brief background. If a girl puts an ad on an online dating site, she has to sometimes filter the responses heavily. I received messages from all types – even some that I could tell were mass emails sent to everyone. So I came up with a list of requirements:

  1. The guy must be older than me, preferably around 4 years. That would mean I was 24 and he would be 28.
  2. The guy must have a college degree. I was applying for masters degree programs at that time, and I wanted someone who could understand what I was going through.
  3. He could not be military. I lived about an hour away from a military base so this ruled out a lot.
  4. He must not list his salary – I just thought this was conceited.

So then I receive this response from a guy who said that I turned up as the #1 person in his list week after week and he finally decided to respond. Here are the highlights from his ad.

image

I checked out his ad – he failed 3 of my 4 requirements, and he looked kind of arrogant in his photo.  I do not like chaos; I am not a thrill seeker, and I didn’t eat much foreign food then.  And we won’t even get into his lack of grammar skills…  I put his email in the Do Not Reply folder.

Luckily, a few months later, we crossed paths on another online site – this time a friend’s online journal. He recognized my username and matched my profile, and talked with the mutual friend to introduce us. We did, and the rest is history.

If you’d like to read more about our adventures in meeting online, I documented it in an earlier Fun Monday post. Feel free to check it out.

Yellow

  • October 11, 2007 5:50 PM

Here’s a couple more photos from this past weekend when we went bicycling near the Chattahoochee River. I took a ton of shots, but I really wasn’t happy with most.

Here are two I did like though: (click them to see them bigger in Flickr)

Thomas on the Trail Bee

Bright Eyes

  • October 10, 2007 9:12 PM

I keep seeing this particular photo effect used in the blogs I read, but I wasn’t sure how they were doing it. I figured I’d need the real Photoshop to recreate it, but with KA’s tutorial, I was able to do it with Photoshop Elements.

So, this is an example of eyes with Color Dodged Eyes (actually, I went with Linear Dodge for the extra effect).

Bright Eyes

And for comparison, here’s the photo without the eyes modified.

image

If you click on the photos, you can see a bigger version in Flickr – that might show the eyes clearer. The blogs I see this effect in seem to use this on photos of cute little kids with big shiny eyes. It probably looks a little cuter, and less freaky on them. I’ll have to keep practicing.  This photo is from when we were bicycling this weekend – Thomas doesn’t just wear a helmet around town for fun.