Twiddling and Tweaking

Over the last couple of months, I've been messing around trying to get my flicker photos over onto smugmug, and into the "galleries" I wanted them to be in. I threw together a simple banner for the top of our photo site, and started trying to get descriptions moved over...which is a major pain, since I have to do those one by one. I've not gotten very far on the descriptions, but had to basically rebuild my whole site all over again, once they came out with a "new smugmug".

BTW...If you would like to visit our smug mug site, you can do so by going here.  It can also be accessed by clicking on the puppy photo of Peaches at the top of the left sidebar of my blog.

I have to say, I like the new smugmug better, cause it was fairly easy to redesign things so it looked like I wanted it to...with my own background and everything. It also made me decide to redesign my banner, so it was better looking and I came up with the one above.  It's still pretty much a "simple" banner, but not quit AS simple...more updated and nicer looking (in my opinion) than the simple one I had before.  LOL

I've managed to get the site pretty much organized (as in the photo's mostly into all the different galleries I wanted them in) but still have lots of work to do, getting the descriptions moved over.  I'm afraid I'll be at that for years at the rate I'm going.  LOL  I like smugmug much better than the "new" flicker, cause I hate photos all running together...I prefer space between them, so while you CAN run them together with smugmug now...you also have the choice to have less cluttered pages with spaces between the photos, so I'm happy.

I've not really spent LOTS of time working on the site, just some here and there, twiddling and tweaking my way to where I am now, but I've also not had LOTS of time to dedicate to it, so it's amazing I've got as much done as I have.

Since I was messing around in photoshop, building my banner for smugmug, and I liked how it looked so much, I used that same general idea and changed the banner on my blog!  Gotta go here to see it, if you want to...for those of you reading this in your e-mail or a reader.  I tried several different photos...they just weren't working, even the one I settled on didn't "work" with my blog background at first, till I did some tweaking.

I still am not tired of my blog background (what can I saw...I'm boring like that, takes me a LONG time to WANT to change some things LOL) so didn't want to change it...and yet I needed a photo with the right colors in it, so it would work with the background.  I finally gave up, when I dropped a slightly pink tinged photo into place, and LOVED how the tree branch looked.  There were some peachy/oranges in the photo, with a touch of pink, so (once my brain kicked in...which did take a little while) I changed the colors in Photoshop of the pretty late fall foggy sunrise I caught last year, and made it look more pink so it would go with my blog background better.

When I was done tweaking, there was a little more graininess to the photo than I liked, so I twiddled with it a little more in Photoshop, and while it's still got some "noise" or something to it, it's better, and good enough to use, least until I find another photo I want to try dropping into the banner, to see if it will work better without having to "twiddle" with it to make it work.

I also have managed to get DH's background photo changed on HIS blog, so it was a photo we took HERE, instead of still one from our farm in Nebraska.  I can't say I'm as happy with it, it seems a bit busy to me, but it will work for now anyway...he seems ok with it.  LOL  I may even work on a new banner for him, similar to my banner (different photo of course), but we will see how things go.

Needless to say between all this, and canning and everything else that has gone on, I've been a little busy.  I have managed to get a little relaxing reading in now and then...after all I need to actually RELAX from time to time, but not near as much as I did this last winter!  LOL  I can't complain though...it's still fun to play in photoshop, even if I don't get to scrap anymore.

Speaking of canning, my Mom has been over here two days this week, helping me can tomato's!  First we canned some spaghetti sauce with some tomatoes we were given by an Amish friend, then we canned some tomato sauce with some of Mom and Dad's tomatoes today.  Hopefully we keep getting tomatoes, cause we still want lots more sauce.  Course we will also be starting apple sauce soon, cause Mom and Dad's apple trees are loaded this year.  Still lots of canning coming up, to say the least!

Now that the twiddling and tweaking has slowed down (hopefully) on our smugmug site, not to mention my blog banner, I'll have to get back to work on copy and pasting the photo descriptions over to smugmug from flicker...that is when I have time and want to be on the computer.  Canning up produce comes first, with everything else getting fit in around that.

Lots going on here still...just not anything majorly different or interesting, so I have more to blog about. LOL