Looking down

Thematic Photographic 305

August break

Both Carmi from written inc and August break  have a theme this week of looking down.  I normally don't do much in the way of photographing with looking straight down.  One of my health issues is balance problems which I have had to deal with since I was a kid.  If given a choice I went up stairs on all fours and down stairs on my bum until I was in third grade.  Given that extent of a problem I became terrified of heights.  I don't look down unless I have to. 

However after looking at the other posts for these challenges, I decided that I didn't have to climb to any height, I simply had to look down.  Fortunately last night the kittens that have caused me to look down and  watch every step; attacked my feet and shoes while I was taking them off and it came to me to photograph them.  They were being awfully cute.  

This morning Wyatt came in to play; I watched from above and it gave me a new perspective.  Even though some of the photo is kind of fuzzy; I really liked the effect and I think I will try to use this perspective more often.

Finally the kittens in a quiet moment.  Even if they were in the middle of the floor at least they were still and I didn't have to dodge them as they ran under my feet.  Peace at last.

☺☺☺Enjoy☺☺☺
Johnina

See the beauty

 I named my blog young-eclectic-encounters because I have many different interests and experiences to share.  Although I do tend to be easily bored and have a little ADHD you will find that there will be common threads throughout my posts.  As I mentioned in my last post I have been working on improving my health and have found this to be a fascinating subject, so there will be lots of these.  I am also a lover of good books, as I have learned much from them, both lessons from life and information to improve my life.  Most of what you will see is my artistic strivings.  I draw, paint, art journal, quilt, design my own clothes, but my first love is photography so you will be seeing lots of photos.

My description for my blog is "See the beauty- a survivors art journal" more than anything else learning photography has made me really look around to find the beauty that surrounds me.  It has kept my spirits high, fought off depression and generally kept my life hopeful and moving forward.  The photo above is a good example of seeing the beauty around me.  I saw these beautiful roses on trip just out running errands.  I enjoyed them then and am enjoying them now having captured their beauty with my camera.  But, guess where I found them?  They were part of the drive-thru at Burger King. 

How much do we miss of this beautiful world when we go about our daily lives?  Did this person in the car even notice the roses? Think about this over the next week, notice, share you observations in the comments or write a blog post about the beauty that surrounds us and share it in the comments, too.  One other thing I have found is that when we share the beauty of this world with others we help to make this world a more welcoming place and we humans much more cheerful.  So join me and encounter this world it's many beauties and pass the word.

Enjoy

Johnina

Rose Garden

A work of art is the unique result of a unique temperament.
Oscar Wilde

In my last post I gave you one of the reasons why I have been missing from the Internet and in this post I will give you another one.  This is more personal.  Those who have followed me know that I have multiple health problems and they got to the point where between the instability of the Internet and my health deteriorating combined to make the Internet experience more frustrating than I could handle.  I did however miss the friendships and the relationships that I had formed here which is why I am back.  Thank you all for your support.

While I was away I did continue to take photos and edit them.  I did not do as many as I had done in the past as my health would not permit it.  The roses pictured in this post are a few of my photos that I had fun editing.  Hope you enjoy them.

Serendipity stepped into my life once again when the Internet went down as it gave me the impetus to improve my health.  I did much research and have been able to make some lifestyle changes that have done much to get my on an upward spiral of improving health.  More on this in a later post.

In the meantime I hope you enjoy the beauty of the roses that bloom in my front yard.

  

Enjoy

☺♥☺Johnina☺♥☺

Washington's Waterloo

You might be wondering why my post titled Washington's Waterloo starts out with a photo of my daughter Emily.  Well, Washington's last battle that he lost was a throat infection from which he died.  Well Emily has the same kind of infection  that he did.  She has been in and out of the hospital since last Thurs.  The doctor told her that if it wasn't for modern antibiotics she probably would have died.  Personally I think prayers and the well wishes of her friends and mine and a priesthood blessing had much to do with her getting better.

  She was extra ordinarily sick and it came on strong and hard and fast.  What started out as a sore throat at the beginning of the week and turned into a life-threatening infection by Thurs.  She went to urgent care who sent her to the ER.  They admitted her put her on antibiotics, steroids, and morphine and put her in isolation and the waiting game began.  Where they going to do dangerous and possibly life changing surgery, see if just the antibiotics worked or something in between?  She did improve on the antibiotics and they sent here home Sunday morning only for her to deteriorate and end up back in the ER that night.  Different hospital- different doctor who lanced the abscess and drained it.  Emily said it was really gross all that pus being pulled out of the abscess in her throat, but she is now on the mend and home again.  Her cousin John turned into an angel as far as she is concerned for his concern and help even though he had many kids at his house including a six week old baby.  She has had many people help her and pray for her including people she did not even know.

  As her Mom and  being a continent away (she lives and goes to school in Utah and we live in Georgia) I can't think of words of thanks for her recovery and those who helped make it happen.  She is still going to need help for awhile and I would again ask for prayers on her behalf, prayers of thanks and prayers for those who are helping her so they will not get sick and they will know the spirit of joy in her service.

As her mother I have once again learned that you can't ever take for granted the ones you love.

Lolit posted this on her facebook wall and how true it is:

'There are 5 things in life you cannot recover:

A stone... after it's thrown. A word... after it is said.

An occasion... after it's missed.

...The time... after it's gone. A person... after they die.
Life is short. Break the rules. Forgive quickly. Kiss slowly. Love truly. Laugh uncontrollably and never regret anything that made you smile.
Enjoy Life!!!!'

Enjoy

☺☺☺Johnina☺☺☺

Bright, Colorful New Year

“There are two ways to live: you can live as if nothing is a miracle; you can live as if everything is a miracle.”  Albert Einstein 

I got up New Years day to this beautiful sunrise.  I woke up feeling pretty good and having slept better than normal.  What a delightful way to start the new year.  I intend to keep up this peaceful,but bright, colorful start to my new year.  However as I was taking out the power lines, I realized that I wouldn't have this beautiful sunrise without the clouds, not all may go smoothly but look at the beauty that is in the world because of what we would normally perceive as a bad omen.

I have lots of raptors who nest in the surrounding woods and they were particularly active that morning, flying overhead, dive-bombing, riding the winds.  I was trying to capture them, but was having very little luck, so serendipity stepped in and they flew across a rainbow.

Over the past several weeks I have been thinking about a theme for my goals for this next year.  This past year I have found reasons behind my health problems and have worked at correcting them, with improvement in my health.  This past Thanksgiving and Christmas were the first ones in years and years were I was not hospitalized.  Hooray for me!!  We were even able to have a real live tree with out it making me sick.  Nice for the whole family.

Now that I have started to get better by correcting health problems; I now need to heal the damage caused by these underlying health problems.

Seeing this rainbow first thing on new years day almost made me cry; a confirmation of my main goal for the year.  For many years a rainbow has been a symbol of healing to me.  My oldest daughter got very sick when she was six years old.  Her digestive system shut down and the doctor had no idea why; she just got sicker and sicker.  She started to look like the starving children with skinny arms and bloated stomach from lack of abdominal muscles.  There was another girl her age with the same problem.  Our Bishop had us carry Sarah to church ( she was so weak she could not cross the living room without collapsing from exhaustion) and the other family to bring their little girl also.  He then asked for a special day of fasting and prayer for these girls as he was inspired that they would not live till the next week so he asked for the fast to take place the next day.  The next day there were two rainbows in the sky.  One for each of the girls.  Sarah got up and ate and asked if we could walk down to Mr. Lees a little 5 and dime about 3 blocks away.  She wanted to go spend her money that Grandma had sent her.  Amazingly she she was able to do it, when the day before she could not cross the living room.  My miracle child.

Rainbows are also one of those things of beauty that is dependent on rain ( a commonly perceived bad weather display).  But viewing this rainbow certainly gives me hope for healing in the year to come.  Join me in my new journey this year.

Johnina ☺☺☺☺☺

PS Sorry this took so long to post we have had lots of things going on here, then blogger went down on me and I couldn't post.  Everyone is back home safe and blogger is now working so I'm back.

Brownies for breakfast

Actually these brownies were made for dinner not for breakfast and having brownies for a meal brings back two very different memories and two very different trains of thought.  One of the memories which inspired the Halloween decorations comes from one of my all time favorite movies 'Practical MagicSearch Amazon.com for Practical Magic' with Sandra Bullock, Nicole Kidman, Stockard Channing and Diane Wiest.  You see they never quite fit into the town they live in; a town their family has lived in for generations; because you see they are a line of witches and live their lives their own way.  Anyway when Sally and Jillian's parents  die and they move in with their aunties, they are taken into the house and promised chocolate cake for breakfast.  When Sally's husband dies, she moves back in with the aunties and in order to try to be normal tells her girls and the aunties there will be no chocolate for breakfast.  Later when Sally goes to rescue her sister Jillian from an abusive boyfriend and brings her back home; the aunties invite her to have brownies for breakfast; which they had been doing all along.  I always thought that the aunties were pretty smart cookies, sometimes it takes a treat to comfort and to get over the rough spots of life.

There are several themes that run though this movie and even though I do not believe in witchcraft the movie is pretty wise, sometimes funny and sometimes touching.  And in the end the neighborhood women band together to save Jullian from her nasty old boyfriend, showing that in the end we are all more alike than we are different.  I've been watching as I've been writing this blog and it's been delightful.  Even if I had the brownies for desert last night instead of dinner it did serve to cheer me up.

The other memory associated with Brownies for dinner happened when we had 5 kids still at home and I was trying very hard to improve the way we were eating.  I had given up on the diet of the week threw the scale out and decided just to eat healthy, exercise and not worry about the weight.  Amazingly I lost the baby fat from 5 pregnancies and kept it off for many years.  When I tried a new recipe, at first I would make sure there was enough of the rest of the dinner so if someone did not like the new item they didn't go to bed hungry.  We found some good new recipes and some real disasters, some I had a hard time gagging down.  About this time I got a computer program cookbook software that gave nutrition info on the recipes so I could adjust my recipies and make them healthier and be able to get a nice mix between taste and health.  While I was doing that I made an AMAZING discovery. my stroganoff, my corn chowder and my brownies all had the same nutrition, same calories, same fat, same vitamins, same protien, same carbs.  And they were all dinner size portions no tiny brownie- this was a 1/4 of an 8 x8 pan.  So when nobody liked the dinner we throw it out and one of the three big kids would make brownies for dinner.  It made trying out new recipes fun we either had a hit or we had brownies.  

Since I knew it had the same nutrition as my stroganoff and we only did it maybe once a week.  I got to the point where I no longer felt guilty about the brownies for dinner.

Brownie Recipe

3/4 cup cocoa

2 cup sugar

1 cup margarine

4 eggs

2 teaspoons vanilla

1 cup flour

1 teaspoon baking powder

Stir together sugar and cocoa.  Add margarine and stir well.  Add eggs, one at a time, mixing well between each egg.  Stir in remaining ingredients mixing well.  Spread into greased 9x12 pan.  Bake in 350*preheated oven for 25 to 30 minutes.

View from my kitchen window

January Goals

To start out the new year most people make these grandiose goals for the next year. I personally like to make monthly goal, smaller more manageable goal. I have found that if I have a general idea of what I want to accomplish for the year, for example improving my artistic talents; then the monthly goals become more specific such as I have been doing the last several months on my blog. Keeping it on a monthly basis also allows me to revise and redo without feeling guilty about messing up my goals for the year.

My two basic goals this year are to continue to develop my artistic talents and to develop healthier habits. With my artistic talents I am going back to my Dec. goals and revising them somewhat. With being sick and the hospital stay and visiting family; I did work on my goals somewhat but not enough. My priorities changed; with little energy from being sick I decided that I needed to make my family my first priority while they were here. I'm glad I did I love them all dearly and they certainly should be my first priority. However my energy level was way down so basically that's all I got done. I did do enough editing that when asked how I edited a picture I couldn't remember how I did it; so now I'm adding writing down as I go so I will remember. I've already learned from the sunrise picture above that even with knowing exactly how I edited a picture; each picture still needs to be edited in it's own way. I wanted the sunrise to look more like the waterway picture, but in following the same steps the sunrise looked horrible so I went back and revised and really like the new version so much better .My health goals for this month is to add lots more veggies to my diet. Last month I changed what I ate when I got up at night. I often get up and get the munchies and sometimes I get up in pain and have to eat with the pain killer pills and I was eating the wrong things and gaining weight. With a few simple changes at night and cutting back on the sodas and ice cream I've lost 10 pounds in the last 3 weeks and that was over the holidays. Pat on the back for me.


Photo edits:
Sunrise-Picasa 3- Crop, color temp set toward the red slightly, glow, signature
Photoscape- film effects, cross process, gradient border
Waterway- Picasa 3- Crop, Signature
Photoscape- Catoonize, cellophane, gradient border