This Just In

When we bought this house, there were a few trees that had been here since time immemorial (even here when I was a child, and that was 30 years ago).? The overgrown cedars in the front of my house were messy, and they impeded parking in the driveway.? Whenever it snowed heavily, it would collect in the very tops of the trees, damaging them, as well as leaving them a misshapen, Dr. Seussical mess.? The sap screwed with the shingles on the roof.? Clearly these shrubs gone wild needed to be dealt with.?Saturday was the day of reckoning.? My dad was over mid morning, chainsaw in hand.? You can see the results of his handiwork below.? As I said elsewhere…Dads are those people who will do a $1000 tree removal job and accept a quart of home made apple pie filling as payment.? Thank you Dad!

I love the way my porch and living room have so much more light.? I love how it opens up my yard and makes it bigger.? I love that my dad also removed a pesky Japanese Yew tree as well, and will recycle it into beautiful Christmas wreaths this year.? Hello, gladiolas this spring!

As you can see, I created this slide show with Picnik.? I love them for so many reasons; for photo editing from anywhere, they are wonderful.? They have a lot of really neat things I use to make wonderful photo layouts for my blog, all free; it’s nice to not have to haul out Photoshop all the time, especially if I want to do something fast.? Their premium services are really inexpensive too, and they offer all kinds of really nice features, like photo cards, scrapbook pages and lots more for the holidays, and the Queen Mother, which I am truly, madly, deeply in love with, the Photo Collage.

Check them out if you get a chance, and get the premium service…it’s worth every nickel.

S.