Art Gallery online

I am lucky. My dear Aunt is an artist. If I want a painting, I bug her. I have one of her originals in the living room. (Beyond the fact that I have photographs all over the place...) But I live in the middle of a culturally void area. It is a cultural black hole! If I wanted art, I would have to travel to find what I wanted for my home. But wait... there's this cool online art gallery/auction house, Park West Art Gallery, where you can find amazing stuff without having to travel to a major city.

There is an amazing amount of art to view on this site. Original works in different mediums (not just paintings) and a good range of pricing. It's not just online, either. There is a phone number posted for questions or ordering, and the Gallery location is on the site, as well. I know I feel better shopping for high value items from a place that is "real" and not just a website. Great site!

New Kitten

Here she is... Autumn. We are the biggest mushes going. What were we thinking. (I know what we were thinking... that the shelter wouldn't be able to take care of her for adoption and that if we didn't...)

Adopted again

The dogs were going nuts Sunday night. Our two dear Labbies usually don't bark. They're big dogs. They know they're big. They don't need to flaunt it. Sometimes, however, a neighbor dog (a silly little thing named Corona) comes over and runs around near the basement door. They know when Corona comes to visit and they will bark at her. I just figured that Corona was bugging them and told them to knock it off. They did. They've awesome dogs!

The next morning, C went down to let them out as she always does. (Our dear 9 yr old has jobs to do, and she does them... in exchange, she gets an automatic $10 deposited in her iTunes account each month. Good deal.) I heard a screech from downstairs and all I could think of was "sheesh... don't wake your father up!" I heard her thumping up the stairs. She whipped open the door. "Mama," she said, "there's a KITTEN in the basement!"

Holy crap. A kitten. How did a kitten get in the basement? Then I remembered. B had been in and out working on the Mavericks. When he does that, he often leaves the basement door open so he can carry things in and out, and so the dogs can come and go as they please. The little baby must've gotten in then and found a nice hiding place.

I went down with C, but the kitten had again hidden. I dug out the cat carrier and took it upstairs to clean up, and sent a reluctant C off to school. She was afraid the dogs would hurt it. I reassured her... kitten had already been there all night, and no harm had come to it. A few more hours would not be a problem.

Later, when B got up, we went down with the carrier and found the kitten rather easily. Friendly little thing. Ball of gray fluff. He picked it up, but found a nasty looking gash on its neck. Not fresh - not our dogs! Sigh. Then the decision. Do we take it to a vet or the humane society. If we go shelter, they'd put it down. If we go Vet, we pay (probably around $100) and are committing to another animal. (We already have 2 labs and 2 cats)

The vet fit us in at 2:15. (anyone surprised here?) Turns out the poor little girl had maggots in her neck. ICK!!! She's on antibiotics, worm pills, prescription food... she's around 6 weeks old and one pound. And she's NOT gray. She's kind of blackish brown. Very cute. Very friendly. She's in the basement in a box with food, water and litter for the next two weeks to heal and fatten up... then we can have her tested for feline leukemia. If all is well and she's not a carrier, we can bring her upstairs and introduce her to the other cats. (rolling eyes) That should be fun. C named her Autumn, since she found us on the first day of fall. Pictures to follow sometime today or tomorrow.

And they pay me

Well, I've started back with PayPerPost. I had stopped going there and taking opportunities because they changed the disclosure rules and I wasn't sure how it all worked. But in the time that has passed, they've made it easier and clearer what's expected, so I'm going to give them another try. The thing is, they actually pay. They pay, and they pay when they say they are going to. I do like payperpost as a company. They keep their promises.

I actually like that there is disclosure about sponsored posts now. The truth is, even if I'm getting paid a small amount to post about something, I only choose things that I can get behind. There's one on there now that I can't find any real info about. I try to follow web links, and I get no where, so while I'm sure I could whip something up, I won't do it.

Direct to paypal... they really do deposit directly to your paypal account. It's very nice. Very easy. I'm trying to save up using my paypal account as a savings account for a new lens. I'm really wanting a good 17-50mm 2.8 lens for my dear Nikon. The 50mm 1.8 rocked the wedding for me, but I want a fast, wide zoom. I think doing posts again will help me achieve that goal! There are folks that earn really large amounts of money writing for payperpost. I'll settle for enough to keep me in glass...

The kid gets the Nikon

The wedding was lovely. Expensive. Out of this world expensive for us. $400 for dresses that the girls will never wear again... $152 for a tux that the buttons popped off of (not one tux in the group held together for the day. Every one of them popped something, including the entire crotch seam of one pair of pants an hour before the wedding! The groomsman had to threaten the tux shop with wearing them to the church and reception so all could view the quality of their products. They were only going to give him $20 back! So... stay away from Sarno & Sons!)

I don't begrudge the bride her day, but ya know... do you have to pick the most $$ things for everyone else to buy? Anyway.... the service was beautiful. The bride's cousin is a minister, and she performed most of the service. She did a wonderful job. The photog was super nice, and when we got to the park to shoot, she handed C her backup camera and told her to go get the candids. When we'd arrived at the hotel that morning to dress, she was there, and C mentioned that her camera was a Nikon. Endeared her to C right away. C told her so, and when W the photog asked if she was a camera buff, C told her about her fair ribbons. Guess she figured that she shoots with my Nikon, she'd be fine with hers. C was beside herself with Joy. Check out the grin...

D200 with a 17-50mm for those who are wondering. C didn't even want to put it down to be in the pictures. That's my girl!! So, C just worked her first wedding as "second shooter" LOL. What a riot. She was totally in her glory!

L was the life of the party at the reception. She got out there with "the big girls" and danced the night away! She even picked up that cha-cha slide dance. The DJ proclaimed her the winner of the dance, and she's been telling us about it ever since! Good party. I sure hope this marriage works out for S. They seem very happy, and very well suited to one another. They're off to Vegas now. Here's to them!

Just want to get away

So, what reservation site do you use? I've checked out a lot of them, and most are OK. They all come up with about the same prices, but some are easier to navigate than others. I just found this one for Hotel Reservations that seems a bit easier to use than others. First off, it was super fast. I didn't sit around and wait while it searched for what I was looking for. Another thing I like is that there is a box on the side for search criteria, so if you want to change dates or number of guests, it's right there without having to go back and forth. It's also nice that there is an 800 number right there in case you have questions.

C mentioned wanting to go to Williamsburg, so I tried that. The site gave a whole range of different prices for different quality hotel/motels. Nice feature. When going with the kids, I'm sure looking for a different type of room than if I'm just going away with hubby!

There's also a section to look up complete vacation packages. Ok. The vacation package took a little longer to search, but not that long. Again, they gave a range of prices based on tourist level through more "luxury" level. Heck, for London, give me tourist - I won't be spending much time in the room anyway! (and anyone who knows me, or has read this blog, knows that I'm totally obsessed with going back to London and France "someday"). Nice feature - there's a map link right on the pages, so if you know where you want to be in the city (say, what tube station), it's right there.

I'd say their prices are no worse than any other service, but the ease of use of their site seems better. This one is getting bookmarked for the next time I can afford to go somewhere! (sniff, sniff, waaahhh. Not soon enough!)

Flower Girl Duties

C and L are going to be in my BIL's wedding this weekend. The photo is from the fitting. I am a little confused about the bottom of the dress. Is it supposed to be all gathered like that? Guess I'll see tomorrow when I pick up the dresses. L is very excited. She just told me that she's very happy to be in the wedding.

"Because I don't just have to sit there. A flower girl gets to have a basket and throw flowers without even getting in trouble."

No Sex? No wonder they died out...

Made a visit to Old Economy Village near Pittsburgh over the weekend. Very interesting historical site. Highly recommend it... They've preserved some of the original buildings, and have some of their furniture and art displayed. (I'll get some pictures up later)

The people living there were part of a religious sect, and their leader decided that to lead a holier life, they would be celibate. They did adopt orphan children, and often had indentured servant children, all of whom were treated well and educated... but to me, that one thing would be a big deterrent to joining the society. Even if you were already married, you were asked to live as brother and sister instead of husband and wife.

One of the items on display was a bed - with ropes and a straw mattress. The kids got to try it out and decided that it was not comfy. But, they did walk away with the knowledge of where the expression "Sleep tight" came from. They also got to pump water and hand wash some towels. This was the high point. (we didn't explain what celibate meant...)

C wants to see Williamsburg, and so do I. Guess we'll have to plan a trip.

Increasing Site Traffic

The whole concept of search engine optimization makes my brain hurt sometimes. I would love to make my cousin's site top of the list, but she needs to do it for as little cash as possible. She can't afford paid keywords right now. I found this site that helps you create static pages. I need to look into that a bit more and learn what they are and how they help. The site's service isn't free, but they do give a free trial.

Ah... ok. This would not be so useful to my cousin right now. I found the difference between static and dynamic pages. Most of her site is currently coded in html, and her pages are already static. However, this would be great maybe for work. I've noticed that our pages are .asp instead of html, and getting more dynamic every day. We just had an hour phone meeting yesterday to discuss how the architecture for the site redesign should work. The woman coordinating the redesign had actually taken a photo of the white board where she'd laid out the new pages, and emailed it to us. It took forever to get the boss to understand what she meant.

Now I have to go back and find out what our paid keywords are, and see how they are doing with driving traffic to our site. It's still a mystery, this while SEO stuff. It's not part of what I have to do, and for now, I hope it stays that way. I have too many other things to do. Increasing our ranking could be a full time job. But I will ask the woman who is responsible for it to check out the static pagebuilder site and see if it would work for us.

60 bottles of beer on the wall

I ended up being delivery girl - 700 mile round trip delivery - for my Aunt's birthday present to my father. 60 bottles of beer... and I cleared two book shelves - they became 60 bottles of beer on the wall. I was going out anyway with the bratty girls. Figured it would be a nice surprise for my Dad for his birthday. Eh - what's 350 miles. We did the trip in 6 hours. Not too bad. It's funny - if there's another person in the car that can drive, I get tired and have to switch. If it's just me, I have no problem haulin' ass across the state. The rest areas on the turnpike have Starbucks now...

Homeschool is working... so far

The lovely Miss L is really enjoying 'school'. She gets a little TV in the morning (Little Bear, Dora, Franklin) then we do some coloring worksheets (colors, shapes) some letters, and maybe some numbers. Last week we did upper and lower case A. This week we're adding B. She's actually using lowercase to write her name now. Yippee. She has snack, and play time. The best part is that she's really excited about it. She asked on Sunday if she could have some school. Sure... why not?

C is thrilled to be back to school. 4th grade. She's already done enough Accelerated Reader books to be done with her points requirements for the month. Last week, she found out that she'd been accepted into the Arts Masters program. The kid is over the moon. She gets to scoot out of class during "finish your work" time and do extra art stuff. "Real" art stuff. They're doing acrylic paintings on canvas right now.

Oh, and holy crapola... how did I EVER miss blogging about this... my dear C kicked ASS at the Allentown Fair! Cleaned up! She entered 4 photographs and got 4 ribbons. Three 1st and one 3rd. The kid hadn't expected to win anything. It was the best!

Naked Barbies Everywhere

My husband wanted girls. Well... he got them. Now, when he goes to take a shower, more often than not, he finds something like this...

Why is it that when girls are under the age of 6 or so, Barbie dolls always end up naked? It might just be that their little fingers can't quite manage to put the clothes back on those odd-feeling rubber legs, or figure out how to get the arms into a teeny little top that only has barely enough fabric to cover the unrealistically huge (and perky) breasts. At least they've started painting on panties.

L likes to play with them in the tub. They cavort with rubber ducks, the head from her Dora bubble bath bottle, and paddle inflatable kayaks (I guess if it's a bubble bath, she's in serious white water?).

So he's one male in a house of 3 females... the youngest being 4, and already hogging the mirror to brush her teeth. C is 9 and takes forever in the shower. We threaten to cut the hot water off. She's doing better. He's working on a 2nd bathroom.