Saturday, December 31

The Penny-Pig

...in her natural habitat.


She has a couple of pig-type nicknames we call her because of the pig sounds she makes and because she'll eat until she explodes. Plus, check out those ears. We love our Penny-Piglet.








- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Tuesday, December 6

Test Post

I'm using Blogpress from my phone, so this will be short. I want to try posting to 2 blogs at once. So, how about a few new screenshots of my iPhone apps.






























Yes, I have a LOT of apps.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Wednesday, November 30

Getting to Know Siri - iPhone 4S Fun

So, as I announced on Facebook a couple weeks ago, I got my hands on a new iPhone 4S. I was so excited to check out the new camera and updated features I'd heard such great things about. I still can't believe my PHONE has an 8 megapixel camera! And that's front AND back camera! It also has a flash which can be set to auto. LOVE!!!



The kid in me, though, really just wanted to get to know Siri. I'm sure you've seen the ads about her, right? If not, here it is...


This is the kind of futuristic shit we dreamed about when we were growing up in the 80's, right? Joel and I have had lots of fun coming up with tasks and questions for Siri. Here are a few examples of my questions and her answers.

Me: Siri, do a search for Rischa Heape.

Siri:

Gee, thanks for the new nick-name, Siri. Joel now calls me Orrery. *smirk*

Me: Siri, do a search for R-I-S-C-H-A. (spelled out)

Siri:

Switzerland? WTF?

Me: Sing Happy Birthday to me.

Siri:

After a failed attempt at another silly question...

Me: Who made you?

Siri:

My Siri is a smartass. I love it!

Me: Kock, knock!

Siri:

I now call my iPhone "My Precious". I have way too much fun with this thing. I loved my 3GS, too, but the new features on this thing just have me swooning. <3

Tuesday, November 15

iPhone Screenshot

Why did I not know about making folders for the apps on my iPhone before? If you knew, why didn't you clue me in? I love that it's now organized!




- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Sunday, November 6

Sew Out of Practice

Sewing has never been my strong point. I know enough to get the basic stuff done. Even the basics can be forgotten, though, when it's been a couple years. So when I got my Singer out I knew there would be a practice sleeve that I made mistakes on. Oh, I forgot to mention what I wanted to make? I have several of those ceramic coffee cups that I use quite often. So I wanted to make a sleeve for them. Coffee Cup Sleeves are to keep you from burning your hands when you pick up the hot coffee. Like the cardboard things they stick around the Starbucks cups. I'm sure you knew all of that, but just in case there are a few non-coffee drinkers reading I might as well explain. So yeah, I made mistakes. I learned from them. My second one will be better and better still, the third. Here are the crappy cell photos from my first try.

I know; Not very straight on the stitching and maybe I should've used something other than white.

Yeah, yeah....the button MAY fall off. LOL I need to watch a YouTube video or something.

It's reversible. Like the polk-a-dots?

So there's my practice sleeve. It'll do, Pig. It'll do.

Thursday, July 21

Email Etiquette

Hello lovely people! Rischa is out for the day, so I, The Email Police, am filling in for her. Nice to meet you! Are you ready for a lesson in email etiquette? No? You'd rather just go around sharing your friends, family, clients, coworkers, and future enemies' email addresses with the world until they're on so many spammers' lists that they have to change their addresses and refuse to give YOU their new one because you're so important you can't take the time to learn and do it correctly? Okay, but don't blame me when you get that error email because your friend has blocked or bounced your emails. Muhahaha!!!

(Tape is from Pugly Pixel)

Have you ever received an email from someone where you have to scroll and scroll and scroll through hundreds of email addresses to find the actual content of the email? Yeah, it's annoying. Don't be one of those people! Clean up your emails before forwarding. It's easy....just highlight and delete everything except the intended content that made you think, "Oh yeah, I bet so and so would get something from this". 


Once the email has been properly cleaned, here's what you do next. Yes, more instructions. You're a big girl (or guy)....you can do this! Trust me! If I can do these things, so can you. After a little while you'll wonder why everyone doesn't do it because it's so simple. If you need to copy and paste my instructions into a personal note, please feel free to do so until you get the hang of things. 

First an image for the visual learners out there. Click this image to see it larger and read the instructions included inside the image. You may right click and save if it helps.

First, I want you to add a new contact to your email address book. I can't be too specific here because I don't know the instructions for EVERY email client out there. I use Apple's "Mail" email client. Do a quick Google search for "How to add contacts to -insert your email client here-" to find out how to add contacts if you don't know how.  In the "name" field you should type, "Undisclosed Recipients". In the "email address" field you should type in your own email address. Then, next time you send an email to more than one recipient you'll type in, "Undisclosed Recipient" in the "To" field. 


Next, you'll want to make sure your "BCC", or "Blind Carbon Copy" is visible in your email client. Once you set this option you won't have to go through this every time you send an email. Again, I can't (ok, I could, but I'm not doing ALL the work for you.) give specific instructions for every email client, so you'll want to do a Google search for "How to make BCC visible in -insert email client's name here-". Once you do this you'll start adding the multiple email addresses into this field each time you send an email to multiple recipients. 


I know it's sounding like a lot of instructions for a simple task at this point, but keep in mind that you won't have to set things up every time. You'll only have to set up the "Undisclosed Recipients" contact once and the same goes for making the BCC field visible in your email client.


Now that we've got that all straightened out, let's talk about a few other annoying or just, plain rude activities. 

1.  Signing others up for things at web sites. If you think I'd be interested in a web site, that's great. I appreciate you thinking of me. Thank you! (That's not sarcasm....no, really) However, please send me the link and tell me why I'd be interested. Signing me up for something by using my email address without my permission is rude. It's like giving out my phone number to random strangers. It also makes my email address vulnerable to those pesky spammers. 

2. If you send me an email with just a link I'm going to assume you've been hacked and the email has been sent by the hacker and the link will cause me all sorts of trouble. I don't click links in emails or on Facebook unless I know for a fact that it's legit. When I get an email and all it contains is a link it seems suspicious. If I receive an email with a link and a personal note from you, a person I know and trust, I'll open it. 


That's your lesson for today my super sexy blog readers. Thanks for stopping by and thanks to Julie Prichard for the nudge to write up this blog post. 

Friday, June 24

Read To Me, Ma!

I'm laid up in the bed with a heating pad, a bad back, and a brand new book when this cuteness happens...


"Read to me, Ma!" <3

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Friday, June 10

Test Video and Quicky Journal Page

Joel bought me a new HD video camera for our anniversary (June 19th = 12 yrs) and gave it to me early. It has a Time Lapse function on it for when I want to make art and video the process. I decided to test it out with a quicky Art Journal page to see what settings I should use. For this video I set the frame rate to every 2 seconds. I think next time I'll try every second to slow things down a bit. I know the journal page isn't anything to write home about, but it served its purpose and made a little statement for me at the same time.



Art Supplies used: Liquitex White Gesso, Resist Crayon, Cheapo Watercolors, and Kimberly 9xxB Pencil on Strathmore Mixed Media Journal.


Tuesday, June 7

My Desk

...looks like this right now...



Scary, right?!

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Monday, June 6

Vlog for 6-5-11 & Photos

First up I have a vlog from today. 

Who's up for a drinking game? Every time I say, "Umm" during this vlog take a drink or a shot! Okay......GO!



Now for some photos from my walk with Sheldon...



....and here are some photos of Mam-maw and Mom working on the quilt I mentioned in the vlog.



....and just for fun here's a photo of my Mom's mute dog, Andy, who constantly keeps his tongue hanging out of his mouth. Weird, but adorable! (Photo courtesy of Kolby)


All of these images were taken with my cell except the last one, which was taken with Kolby's cell. I DO take photos with my other, REAL cameras, but these are more convenient at the moment. Maybe I'll get around to uploading the others at some point. I have some good shots of my neices, my brother, and Mom.

Thanks for stopping by!
xoxox,
Rischa

Sunday, May 29

Journal Page 5-29-2011: Improvise!



Supplies: Strathmore Mixed Media Journal, Golden and Liquitex acrylic paints, Portfolio water soluble oil pastels, Faber Castell Pen in black, Sequin Waste, torn book pages, & Adirondack Color Wash spray ink.

It says: "Life doesn't always turn out how you plan. Your happiness depends on how you IMPROVISE!"

I have to remind myself of that sometimes.

Wednesday, May 4

This Love

I don't know why I didn't blog about this before, but a while back I colored a frame of a video for "Drawing This Love". You go to the site, put in your information, and they give you a frame to color. You can use whatever style or medium you'd like as long as the background color is blue. It doesn't have to be plain blue, as you'll see from the video. Here's their video with some colored frames added. My frame is number 698. You can pause it when it gets to that number to see mine.



Really cool idea for a video, right?

For my frame I used Caran d'ache Neocolor II Water Soluble Crayons. Those are my favorite art supplies. They're so fun to play with.

Thursday, April 28

Vlog 3 for 4-27-2011 - Random Dullness



Let me just tell you, this vlog has been SUCH a pain in the ass to get uploaded for something that really didn't even have an interesting topic. I tried to upload to YouTube from 7pm yesterday until 3am this morning. It finally uploaded to YouTube, but not after having to export out of iMovie first. I don't know why that mattered as it didn't the 2 times I vlogged before. So before I was done with everything I ended up uploading to both YouTube and Vimeo. Vimeo gave me trouble, as well. That seemed to be par for the course yesterday.

Of course, my stupid complaints aren't even significant enough to mention what with what's going on in all of the states effected by the tornadoes yesterday and within the last few days. I spent the entire night awake worried about my son, who's visiting my parents in GA right now. I feel for all the people that have lost loved ones, homes, or entire towns during all of this. It's such a scary thought to know that it could happen to any of us at any time.


Monday, April 25

Vlog: Books, Pancakes, & WIP's

Another Vlog! In this one I ramble about current Works In Progress, books I'm reading, magazines, collage papers, and even pancakes. Sheldon also makes another appearance.



I hope you all had a Happy Easter! Or if you don't celebrate Easter, Happy Sunday!

Friday, April 22

My First Vlog!!

I did it! I finally made a Vlog! For anyone who doesn't know, a Vlog is Video + Vlog. So anyway, I've been contemplating the idea for a while. I jumped in, though, when I saw that Willowing was doing them. She's committed to the challenge of doing a vlog every day in April. Although, like me, she started late, too. I don't know where the idea originated. Anyway, here it is...



I hope you enjoyed my first vlog. I enjoyed doing it, although, it's a bit uncomfortable being in front of the camera. I'm sure I'll get used to it if I continue.

Thursday, March 31

After The Storm


It has been raining all week. Not to mention storming, complete with tornado warnings/watches and all day weather coverage on all channels. Now, though, it's Thursday night and all is clear going into the weekend. Yay! It didn't quite clear up before causing a little destruction, though.

Here's our neighbor's tree, minus one large limb.

Just because it rains doesn't mean everything is washed clean. My poor Hydrangeas were doused in mud during the heavy rain fall. I'm happy the petals are still intact, though. Those winds were harsh, so I was surprised.

The rain has been great for my Chrysanthemums. They're growing incredibly fast. Hopefully they'll be blooming in no time.

My Double Knockout Roses are blooming so pretty. There are new blooms every morning.

...and guess who did NOT enjoy the storms at all!

He was scared, but he was a good boy and held it all morning while it poured and stormed outside. No messes! Yay!

I hope anyone reading this is having pleasant weather. Thanks for stopping by!

Friday, March 25

Skinny-Mini E-Course

I haven't been very creative this week, unfortunately. I tend to not be creative on the weeks Joel's out of town. I did just sign up for another round of the Skinny-Mini eCourse given by Kim Klassen, though. I started it during the last round and didn't get through all of it before it was over. So I resigned up to finish. It's totally free and she's a great teacher. It's for Photoshop Elements, but she shows you how to do the same in CS, so it's good for both. Here are a few of the images from that.





All photos were taken by me with a Nikon D70. So far these are the only lessons that have been posted, so I'll show the rest later. I believe the March Skinny-Mini session is closed, but she has one every month I believe, so if you're interested just keep a watch on her site.

Wednesday, March 23

Hydrangeas

They're still alive and beautiful! Okay, so it's only been a few days.



Hydrangeas are my favorite flowers. I'm not exactly known for having a green thumb, though, so place your bets now on how long they'll last. I'm extremely determined to give these beauties a long life. Wish me luck!

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone