Daily Treasures and some fun Apps

Where does the time go?  It's good that it's February already -- we are that much closer to spring!  And speaking of spring, this was one of my daily treasure photos that I posted to Instagram recently.  I was very delighted to see seed packets in the store and I had to take a photo of them!  Then I added to it in an app on my phone called Rhonna Designs.  It wasn't a free app, but it lets you do lots of cool effects.

 

 Last Friday the late afternoon sun was out, and I took a wonderful walk to enjoy the rare bit of sunshine. The photo below shows two trees glowing in the sunlight, but then I added a bunch of extra texture and color with an app -- I think the one I used was DistressedFX.  Lots of cool stuff on that app as well.

On Sunday, Chicago got hit with quite a blizzard.  It was also the first day of February, and my cousin made a calendar in which the February page was a wonderful explosion of lovely colors.  I used an app called DXP to blend our snowy backyard tree with her calendar page, and the result is this fun treasure!

 The photo below was of the full moon rising in the blue light of dusk, with tree skeletons in the foreground.  But I played with it in a fun app called InstaBlender and came up with this fun abstract.

 I worked on Saturday, and was perusing one of our books when I found this poem by Vachel Lindsay.  I memorized this poem in grade school, and haven't seen it since, but snippets of it have been floating around in my head.  It was fun to see the full poem and realize that I had remembered a good bit of it!

 Today it was time to begin work on my Valentine bookmarks.  Here's two versions -- both a little rough, but I think I can tweak the design and come up with something by Valentine's Day.

Wishing you sunny days and warm nights!

Connection over the week-end

If you have been following my posts, you know that my word for 2011 is "connection".  I met with my spiritual director a few days ago and she helped me hone in a little more on what that might look like in my daily life.  One aspect is connecting with God even when things aren't going the way I want them to.  Looking for God's "fingerprints" in my life, and trying to see how I can bless others in the moment.

I had a chance to practice that over the week-end.  I accompanied my husband and several of his family members to visit his sister, who is very ill (terminal).  As much as I wanted to support his family, it meant 9 hours in the car in one day, and that on top of my first full week of a new job -- I just wanted to spend time at home.  But I went with "connection" on my heart and a desire to watch for God's blessings in unexpected places.

The scenery was actually pretty, and the driving conditions were good.  I had a chance to play with some iphone apps and came up with the following pictures:

Between playing with my phone, reading and knitting, it was a relaxing and fun trip.  (My husband and his brother were talking over old times, having not seen each other in over 10 years.)  I was glad for the opportunity to look for and find evidence of God's presence, even on an arduous car trip. 

At his sister's house, things were even better than we imagined.  His sister rallied, and got out of bed and seemed to enjoy all the company.  I fully expected to be relegated to a hallway while the brothers and sisters went in one or two at a time.  She seemed truly blessed to see all of us (even me!)  And her son was there with his very nice (understatement!) camera.  He showed me some of the bells and whistles and even let me play with it. 

Although it was a very long day, and we arrived home exhausted, it was a day of connection!  I'm glad I showed up with that mindset.  It made a difference.