POTD Day 20 Peace

This is one of my favorite spots at our house. Even though the posts are a little too close together for the optimum hammock location, it is better than nothing.

There is a nice shade and breeze in this spot and I love being able to take a break from projects and sit in the hammock with some iced tea and a good book.

So this is my peace spot...at least for now.

I took this picture with my Fuji Finepix f50 on our back porch with no flash. I edited it in GIMP 2.6 for color, light and then added the fuzzy border.
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Nine Years Ago on In My Words...Cell Phone Free Zone

POTD Day 19 Feet

These are my feet during this last summer when I was having an issue with one of them cracking pretty badly.

I tend to go barefoot whenever possible and my soles can get pretty dry so when it happens, I am forced to treat them and then put a sock on. Normally I would put socks on both feet but since I was just running around the house, it was cooler to keep one foot "nak3d"....LOL.

This happened after a week of camping where it was super dry and I was in sandles the whole time. Even while we were there, I had to treat my foot once and wear socks with my sandles which was kind of weird...LOL.

My sister in law gave me some really good stuff to put on them and I am hoping that this year I will be able to avoid the cracking, bleeding and pain by being a bit proactive about it.

I took this picture in our kitchen with my Fuji Finepix f50 with the flash turned on. I edited it in GIMP 2.6 for color, light and then added the fuzzy border.
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Seven Years Ago on In My Words...Thanks To Everyone

POTD Day 18 Magic

I am always amazed when I see spring starting to break through the ground. Here we are only in the second week of February and all sorts of things are shooting up.

I am afraid that they will get surprised and end up dead because of a late freeze but perhaps nature knows better than I do...

This is a little bed we have in the front yard in between a couple of boulders. The irises have been there for a while but a lot of the rest of it is transplanted stuff from my SIL's yard. While I was out there taking the pic, I did go through and weed out anything that wasn't supposed to be there and tried to make sure nothing was getting too crowded.

I took this picture with my Fuji Finepix f50, no flash. I edited it in GIMP 2.6 for light, color and then added the fuzzy border.
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My blog that details out the projects being done around the house called The Bamboo Lagoon.

POTD Day 17 Vegetable

This was a little dish I stirfried up tonight. I had zucchini in the fridget I needed to use up.

I sliced it up pretty thin, and put it in the wok with some olive oil and garlic and started stirfrying since I knew it was going to take longer than the shrimp to cook. I thawed some raw shrimp and removed the tails.

Once the zucchini were mostly cooked (still al dente), I added the shrimp, fish sauce, sugar, grated ginger, lemon juice, ground white pepper, and chili paste. I cooked it for three minutes more (which is the bare minimum for fish sauce).

Shrimp and the zucchini were perfect. It was a great meal and healthy too!

This image was taken before I added the other ingredients with my Fuji Finepix f50 with no flash. I edited it in GIMP 2.6 for color, light and then added a fuzzy border.
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Last Year on In My Words...Soup And Tea

POTD Day 16 Create

Two of our nieces are expecting this spring, one right after the other. One is having a girl and one is having a boy.

I decided as soon I heard they were expecting that I would be making a baby blanket for each of them. I started the one for the neice having a girl first, since she is due first.

I decided to do a granny square blanket because I haven't made her one like it before. I wanted to use bright colors, but also use black so that it would have an old fashioned feel to it.

My post from POTD Day 5 is just of the squares as I was lining them up to see how the pattern would work.

This picture is from while I was still working on it (I am done with it now), I had it mostly connected, but not bordered.I took it in our living room with the blanket on the floor with my Fuji Finepix f50 with no flash. I edited it in GIMP 2.6 for light, color and added the fuzzy border.
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Last Year on In My Words...All Connected

POTD Day 15 My Drink Of Choice

This fountain sits in the plaza of our town. It has been here forever and it provides a water source that has a ton of history.

I wouldn't call this my drink of choice to actually drink, but it is a unique drink of choice and it is a place I have drank from many times. There is a second, less noticable fountain farther up in the park, but this is the one that all the tourists see and sample.

The water has a lot of minerals in it and is very bubbly. It doesn't taste good, but supposedly has many heathly properties. The research into the benefits of the water and living near the springs is very encouraging...

I took this picture in the sunlight with my Fuji Finepix f50, no flash. I edited it in GIMP 2.6 for color, light and added the fuzzy border.
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Four years Ago on In My Words...Flashback

POTD Day 14 Heart

These hearts are from a display I walked past on a errand/exercise trip downtown a few days ago. All the little store fronts had Valentine's Day displays of some sort and this one was pretty cute.

Valentine's Day this year involved a evening play (that I will post about later). It was great to see the season start out. I am excited for the new group of plays being done this year. Always something new to discover!

I took this picture through a plate glass window with my Fuji Finepix f50 with no flash. I edited it in GIMP 2.6 for color, light and added the fuzzy border.
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Last Year on In My Words...Mister Scary

POTD Day 13 Perfect

This is the perfect lunch or dinner. I don't usually do rolls, but on occasion it is just the ticket. Some good edamame and a hot pot of green tea almost always compliments this. Finding really good sushi is kind of hard when you live 3+ hours from the coast.

Most of the sushi restaurants around here are actually run by Korean families, but that is okay because that means not only do you get good sushi but you also get good Korean food too!

This picture was taken at the restaurant I treat myself to when making the trek to the grocery store.

This picture was taken with my Fuji Finepix f50, no flash but with the macro enabled. I edit it in GIMP 2.6 for color, light and added a fuzzy border.
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Six Years Ago on In My Words...Musubi

POTD Day 12 Out And About

I had to go shopping for a gift for a 4 year old and her mom told me she would like books, so I decided since I already had to go to the local library to pick up some stuff, that I would also shop at a bookstore downtown and I would also get in an hour of walking as well.

This shot is the view looking down into the plaza of our downtown area. The christmas decorations are down and the spring/summer ones are up. The day was unseasonably warm. There were hockey players at the skating rink, and all the ducks were at the upper pond because they were working on the lower one. I was hoping to catch a glimpse of our park deer but none were about.

I found a few benchmarks, got a good walk in, some pictures for my POTD project and both errands done. Overall, pretty efficient use of my time!

I took this picture with my Fuji Finepix f50 with no flash. I edited in GIMP 2.6 for color, light and added the fuzzy border.
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Seven Years Ago on In My Words...Caching It High

POTD Day 11 Mistake

I don't know who made this mistake but it is a doozy and it is one of the things on the "To Do" list for the house. I already have the fasteners and the joist supports for it...it is just a matter of getting under the front porch deck and knocking it out.

There is also a lot of trapped moisture under the porch, so I also have all the stuff to put in some ventilation holes with covers. I won't be able to paint them to match the house until the temp warms up.

At some point in the future the porch needs to be redone in some way but for now, even without the joist supports, it is pretty darn stable and safe.

I took this picture while under our front porch with my Fuji Finepix f50 with flash. I edited it in GIMP 2.6 for color, light and added a fuzzy border.
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Eight Years Ago on In My Words...Family Reunion

POTD Day 10 I Am

Waiting...

My cousin gave me this amaryllis flower for my birthday in November. At the time, it was just a bulb with a plastic pot and a compressed clump of potting soil. It sat on my table for a while because I wasn't totally sure what to do with it. I was showing it to my sister in law when she was over and I realized that it was starting to actually grow (probably because our house is warmer than the store was).

It was time to get it going for real. I think I was hesitating because the instructions said it needed 75-80 degree temps and direct sun, which in the middle of winter, our house is never up to 75 degrees and there is no permanent place in direct sun for plants in the house. I decided to go for it anyhow...and when I have a chance, I put the pot in the sun on the floor in one of the rooms.

I took this image in our bedroom with my Fuji Finepix f50, no flash. This pic was taken a while ago so now the the stems are about 18 inches tall but still not in bloom yet. I edited the picture in GIMP 2.6 for color, light and added the fuzzy border.
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Three Years Ago on In My Words...Shutter Sisters For July

POTD Day 9 Details

This is the finished drawing from the Chinese New Year 2014 Festival demo that Yeh Fei Pai did for us. I wrote a bit about it in this other post.

He was working with his son during the demo and they both signed it. As he was drawing each of the eight horses, he explained their representation to us. It was really interesting. Both of them had great senses of humor too which made the demo all that more interesting and entertaining.

He is a pretty well known artist and his work is showing in a few different places. He is known for the celestial horses so his visit during the Chinese New Year celebration was ideal for this Year of the Horse!

I took this picture with my Fuji Finepix f50, with no flash. I edited it in GIMP 2.6 for color, light and added the fuzzy border.
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Six Years Ago on In My Words...New Art

POTD Day 8 Water

This picture was taken in the middle of the wading pool of our city park. The wading pool is a shallowed out area of the creek that runs through the park. I was looking down stream right near the "waterfall".

When I was a kid, my cousins and I would spend our entire day in this park for the whole summer. We would do chores in the morning and then make a lunch and head to the park. We would return home around dinnertime.

Our activities in the park would vary from day to day, but we would almost always eat our lunch at the lower duck pond. We would then pick from a number of things. Some days we would climb the big slide and take it over as a castle and turret to defend. Others, we would spend the day in the trails above the park (where I would inevitably get poison oak). Sometimes we would walk in the creek all the way up to the upper duck pond or even to the swimming hole.

I took this picture earlier in the year with my Fuji Finepix f50 with no flash. I edited it in GIMP 2.6 for color, light and added the fuzzy border.
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Eight Years Ago on In My Words...Happy Fourth Of July

POTD Day 7 Utensil

This is one of the beautiful Chinese brushes that Yeh Fei Pai uses when doing his celestial horses. He did a demonstration drawing at the 2014 Chinese New Year Festival we went to and it was amazing to watch. He did a drawing of 8 celestial horses and it was so appropriate considering that we just started the Year Of The Horse.

Apparently he came to the festival a few years ago and promised to return from Taiwan when the Year Of The Horse came around...and he did. He learned his trade from his father and is now teaching it to his son. His son actually worked on the drawing with him during the demo, filling in background, and shading. It was so cool to see them both.

They had great senses of humor too, and kept talking the entire time they were going through the process explaining some of it to all of us, and keeping the audience engaged. The weather outside was cold and rainy so it was fun to come in, have tea, each a few fortune cookies and watch their artistry. In a couple of days, I'll be doing another POTD that shows the finished drawing.

I took this picture with my Fuji Finepix f50 with no flash, but macro enabled at the end of the demonstration. I edited it in GIMP 2.6 for color, light and added the fuzzy border.
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Six Years Ago on In My Words...Kanda's Grabs

Reading For Research

Saw this cool article on NPR and decided I wanted to check out these books. I have had a couple of children book ideas for a while and even took a children book writing class last year and thought that these books might be good research material. I immediately added them to my Goodreads "To Read" list and put requests in for them on my library card.

So far 5 of them have come in and today, I went and picked them up. While I was there, I picked up a couple of books that have been made into movies that I want to read before I see the movies.

I plan to read the children's books tomorrow and take notes in my writing notebook. I'll take the books back when the last two come in, and hopefully I might have one or both of the "movie" books done too. I am also in the middle of a couple of books on my Nook so there is no lack of reading material on my plate....LOL.
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My Reading Blog is located at http://mishkabook.blogspot.com if you want to check it out. I need to update it but plan to get on that in the next day or so!!

POTD Day 6 C Is For

...completed! It is not too often that my To Do List of the day is actually all crossed out! Mark your calendars...LOL. What was lovely about this one was that it always required a bunch of errand running but still I managed to pull it off.

I think normally I just put way too much stuff on my To Do list and it is just not possible to get everything done. Like today's list for instance is already way too big, but that is okay, it keeps me motivated! Now if I could just get caught up on my POTDs...haha.

I took this picture with my Fuji Finepix f50 with no flash but macro enabled. I edited it in GIMP 2.6 for color, light and added the fuzzy border.
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Two Years Ago on In My Words...Productive

POTD Day 5 Square

Two of our nieces are pregnant right now. One is due in late March and the other in late April. I am working on baby blankets for both of them.

These are the squares for the blanket I am making for the one that is due in March. The blanket I made for her first child was a different pattern, so I thought I would make her a granny square one this time. I wanted to do bright colors on a black field for two reasons. Bright colors and contrast are supposed to be good for baby brains, and then the black field is reminiscent of the old style granny square blankets you would see.

I tend to do solid colored squares because they are just faster and less complicated, although I have done a few blankets with variated yarn so the squares were multi-colored with no additional effort on my part...LOL.

When I have a multi-colored blanket, I like to stack the squares in order of the pattern so that when I start to connect them, I am able to keep track of the rows. At this point, I have 6 of the 8 rows connected (you can't see this in the pic because I hadn't started connecting them yet). Once I finish the 8 rows, I will start connecting the rows to each other and then finish off by bordering the whole thing.

I took this picture with my Fuji Finepix f50 in our dining room with no flash, but macro enabled. I edited it in GIMP 2.6 for light, color and adding of the fuzzy border.
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Three Years Ago on In My Words...Finished The Blanket (this one was for another niece)

POTD Day 4 Childhood

This picture is of my sister and I on the front porch of what we call the 3rd St house. We lived in this house for a few years. It was a rental, but I would guess it is probably the first house that my sister has memories from. We had a big yard with a garage in back and like many houses in this part of our hometown, there was an alley that ran behind it.

Our hometown is very safe, even more so when we were kids, so we played all over this neighborhood, riding our bikes through all the alleys. We would find honeysuckles and blackberries to snack on. I have memories of eating apples and pears off the trees, and playing in the sprinkler in the front yard and then laying on the warm sunny sidewalk to warm up and dry off.

I remember climbing this super high cedar tree down the street and making forts all over the neighborhood with my friends. We lived in this house when Mt St Helens blew, and all of us kids would wear hankerchiefs over our faces (which I am sure did nothing to protect us from the ash)...LOL. Now that I am an adult, I am sure we irritated some of the neighbors cutting through yards and making noise, but it was still a fun safe childhood that I wouldn't trade for anything.

Our dad had a screen printing setup in the garage and I was his number one assistant. We also had a darkroom on the backporch that he would develop and enlarge images for the silk screen. Our grandma lived with us in this house until she married our grandpa. She had a little room off the kitchen, my sister and I shared a room, and our parents had a room in the front of the house. The livingroom and dining room were open to each other with some built in cabinets. It was a craftsman styled house with a huge front porch and pillars. I have driven by it recently and it is updated quite a bit and the yard is now fenced in front as well.

This picture was taken in the late 1970's by one of our parents with their manual 35mm Pentax camera. It was then scanned in on our HP printer and edited in GIMP 2.6 for light, color and adding the fuzzy border.
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Nine Years Ago on In My Words...In A Pinch

POTD Day 3 Something Orange

I have been buying a bag of clementines each time I go to do a stock up at the grocery store. I try to eat one a day if I can. They are quite refreshing.

So when this POTD came up, it seemed logical to go with the obvious choice in this case. They just looked so perfect!

The clementines are lovely and they provide vitamin c and other great benefits I am sure. I am fond of tangelos and tangerines as well but seem to have a harder time finding them.

I took this picture in our dining room with no flash on my Fuji Finepix f50. I edited in GIMP 2.6 for color, light and then added the fuzzy border.
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Last Year on In My Words...New Hike

POTD Day 2 Favorite

Oh my gosh...Norikane is one of my favorite artists, and I only discovered him a few years ago. I had gone to a fundraiser at a local gallery when we were in Japan and saw this piece and fell in love. For me, a lot of the time, art is about the story and when I saw this print, I just felt there was a story and I loved it.

We actually now own 5 or 6 of Norikane's prints and they all make me smile, each one with a story, which I think is kind of just his style. This one is called Miyajima-2 and I thought that the shrine torii with the water beneath just was so cool. I wanted immediately to know what the story was. This link explains part of it, if you are interested.

I took this picture in our office in our house in Japan with my Fuji Finepix f50. I edited it in GIMP 2.6 for color, light and added the fuzzy border.
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My other posts about Norikane's works that we have.

POTD Day 1 You

Staying with my theme of not posting my face on my blog, I have once again a pic of my feet. This one was taken on a geocaching hike to a lake near here.

The water in the lake (which is an irrigation lake) is super low because we are in a severe drought. This allowed me to walk along the lake shore at a level that is not normal and see some really cool rock formations. My feet are on one of those cool looking rocks. I love taking pictures of texture in nature and this trip really gave me a lot of opportunities.

It gets really muddy in the clay here when it rains so I was glad to get this hike in before we got any rain.

I took this picture with my Fuji Finepix f50 with no flash. I edited it in GIMP 2.6 for color, light, and then added the fuzzy border.
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Two Years Ago on In My Words...Geocaching Craziness