Farmer's Market and National Scrapbook Day

I'm a bit behind...again! Almost everyone in my family is sick, including some late night croupers. Poor J was really miserable during the night and croup does get scary. It's much easier to triage the symptoms and give advice for someone else's child than it is to decide for your own! She is still feeling punky but improving thankfully.

Last Saturday I went to the farmer's market near here and I wasn't able to get anything because I wouldn't be home for about 8 hours. The first thing I saw were these mushrooms. The lady was amused that I was taking photos of common mushrooms, so she held up this for me to take a picture! :o)

In the flower stalls, I enjoyed seeing the graduated colors of these German Statice.

I don't know what these are called but they look related to phlox. I know several readers are avid gardeners - any hints?



I took this to show what wheat looks like to my kids. I should have bought some, but didn't think until afterwards. They seem me grind the wheat berries into flour but I don't think they totally get that it is a plant first.

Sweat Peas are always delightful, but you can see they don't tolerate the heat.

Even onions can be beautiful in the right setting with morning light! But the biggest surprise of the day was finding a vendor who sold Quark which is a bit like cream cheese, but generally softer and a little milder. It is fantastic when used for cheesecake and my German friends make bread rolls and pizza dough with it. I really like it but this is the first time I have seen it in California. I used to get it from a farm down the road from my folks. It is very healthy with probiotics like yogurt and I am excited to try it in baking or on our bagels. I won't be able to go back this weekend, but will try next.

So, Saturday was National Scrapbooking Day and I was invited by Dana, a friend at church to come to a Creative Memories crop with her. It has been FOREVER since I have scrapbooked! Dana and I know each other in passing as she is also a homeschool Mom and my D is friends with her kids. But, we hadn't gotten a chance to really talk and get to know each other. So we did nothing but talk all day on Saturday! :o) We don't have too many pages to show for it but we did enjoy some time out to relax. Michelle was the consultant. If you finished a page, you put this in front of you and periodically they had a give away. If you had it in front of you when that happened, you got to pick a prize. I didn't win anything but had a lot of fun anyway.

There were tables with ideas and products and all these great pages hung on a line across the room. We also had opportunity to sit in on some demonstrations. A yummy lunch was provided too and since my consultant Sonia "retired", I was glad to get back and connected with scrappers. I have scrapbooked with Sonia since moving here 9 years ago, so I felt like I was "cheating" on her by scrapping with other people! LOL

This year I am learning to scrapbook digitally. I need to do some posts about that in the future. After reviewing several options, I decided to stick with using Photoshop Elements 6, which I already had for my photography. It's easy to use and I have had a lot of fun. The next step is that I will get a 12x12 print done at Costco to see what they actually look like off screen before progressing too far ahead.

Do any of you scrapbook either traditionally or digitally?