Happy Fifth Birthday!

Charly's birthday party was on the 28th and it went really well. 3 boys came, 2 from church and one from school. One of the church kids and the one from school didn't get along well at times, but kept away from each other for the most part. At one point the school kid punched the church kid because he took Charly's toy. Starting fights already, I know! Other than that, it was a nice party. The cake was good, the company was good, and the party was about 2 hours. I made a slideshow so you can see most of the pics. I let the kids run around with Charly's camera, and they took some photos, but Nate has the card for that camera with him and he's not here at the moment. So I will get those pics up soon. :) Here's the slideshow:



I've entered a design contest at Inspiration Lane. The winner gets to sell in their store, which is a pretty popular store. We will have to complete 4 challenges, and along the way we'll be given tips and tricks to help us grow in our craft. I thought my challenge one entry was really good, but of course there were things for me to work on, namely staying within the assigned color palette. To my eye I did that, so now I have to figure out why what the contest judge saw doesn't match what I'm seeing. In case you're curious, here's my kit: Springtime, Kiddo!



I made a Photoshop brush that makes it look like I've sponge painted on the paper. So I let Charly make her own ladybug :)



She chose the colors and colored it in herself, though I did select the image and make sure she couldn't color too far outside the lines.

The challenge was due by 11:59 pm this past Saturday, and I wasn't able to really start working on it until Friday. Then no matter what I was doing my computer would freeze. I couldn't do anything in Photoshop, I couldn't do anything online, I couldn't even edit an Excel spreadsheet. Praise the Lord we still had our tax money in our account so that I could go to Best Buy and pick up a new computer. We're so blessed! You can find it HERE if you're interested. So then I got PS loaded onto it and was able to make the kit Saturday. Even though I was trying to learn a new operating system, and set up, and keyboard and all that, lol. This is my first Vista computer, and I hate to admit it, but so far I don't mind Vista. It's not so bad. :) And so far the computer has been able to handle all that I've thrown at it, which is awesome!! But we'll see how long that lasts. *-)

So that's about it for now. I'll update more later. After this post, I will be updating the Project 365 blog with pics from the 2nd half of Feb and the beginning of March. Yay!

-S

I love computers, but only when they behave.

So I have to vent. And you're here, so you get to read. And by the time someone actually reads this the problem will probably be resolved. My husband's computer is, well, misbehaving. SVCHOST is taking up 98 - 100% of the computer usage. I googled this little problem, and have so far done every suggestion I could find to fix it. And still it persists. It started right after Java updated. Which was right after (if I remember correctly) I watched House online at Fox.com. So since I chose to watch House online, I'm blaming the malfunction on Java updating all by itself. That was something I didn't choose, see how this works? So his computer is crawling slower than my friend's 8 month old. And I'm supposed to run a virus scan of hundreds of thousands of files, at a crawl, which is like, two files a second, maybe. Yeah, so I've put off running the scan while trying to find the source of the problem first. I was hoping some program was trying to auto update and causing the computer to go all wonky. And that's about all I know how to do. My husband is probably reading this blog right now, from some desert not here, and wondering why he left me in charge of such precious cargo. Sorry honey, I didn't install anything, I promise! Aaaack!! Thanks Heidi for watching Charly tonight so I can have this wonderful opportunity to yell at the computer. Yay me!

I get to wake up in about 6 hours and go to Womack to have an allergy test done. I get to sit there for a few hours while they prick my skin with all kinds of yucky stuff and wait to see if something magical happens. Then they can tell me I'm allergic to something common that I can't avoid and I should stay on the same allergy medicine I'm already on. Cynical? Yup. But maybe I'll be able to take a nap while I'm there. Sleep, during the day, what a concept! Which is why I am up at 1:25 in the morning yelling at the computer and blogging about it in turn. I used to use Myspace as my outlet for useless chitter chatter and mundane details about the life I live. Now I can do it here! And I bet you will all check in every day to see what new mundane (is that an oxy-moron?) things I get myself into.

Well, I ended the SVCHOST process using Task Manager, and probably messed up the computer more, but it's allowed me to start the virus scan. At least for a little while the scan can move quickly. Until the SVCHOST comes back online, which it does. It's like some kind of computer zombie. Maybe I'll ask my hacker friend what I should do...

Goodnight all, I'm probably going to go to bed :)

-S