Cups and Saucers!

As I was browsing through the tableware at Goodwill  I almost screamed with delight when I saw this tableware. It is the same as my grandmother’s tableware! I love it. The minute that I laid eyes on it I felt as if I were back in her kitchen.

Her small, pink kitchen with the light grayish/green table and green chairs very similar to the one below. I loved it but I didn’t get it when she passed away.

Photo from Kitchenchairs on Bogspot.com

I can almost taste the hot chocolate she made for me in those cups. She made it with milk that she warmed on the stove top. My grandmother never had Nestle Quick; she used unsweetened Hershey Baking Powder and added sugar. This unusual and different mixture was soft and silky, warm and filling.

It filled me with more than warmth and nourishment. It filled me with memories. Memories of a grandmother who loved me and loved to cook. To her, cooking was a way to show love. She made everything from scratch because she was brought up on a farm. When my grandmother was older and my grandfather had passed away, my mom would often drive the hour to her house to stay with her for a few days as needed. My mom took a microwave and left it at my grandmother’s house but she never used it. She continued to use her  beloved stove, pots and pans to cook with. My grandmother was born in 1914 and passed away when she was ninety-two. I will cherish these cups and saucers and pass them along to my daughter.

A Vision

As I was sitting at my table at work yesterday in the dull gray warehouse, I opened a box that had a large piece of crumpled white paper as a space holder. Poof! A vision was born.

I immediately grabbed the tape dispenser and put a piece of tape on the back of my big crumpled white paper and stuck as high on the wall next to me as I could.

The important thing here is that there are no windows on this wall. A wall that is probably twenty-five feet high maybe and one hundred feet long. Just dull gray concrete. The dry wall portions of this room that are behind me only go so high. The rest is darkness with all manner of cables and wires running to different places. As I look out in front of me I see industrial printing and sorting machines and to the  right shelves four sets deep of papers, boxes and all sorts of related items. At the very end are bay doors that are opened once in a while for a truck to load or unload. So there are no windows and not a lick of color anywhere.

So  I after I found my one piece of white paper I was on the hunt for more. I ended up with three pieces and had them all stuck on the wall. That is as far as my vision got at that point even though I knew it was going to represent a window scene. A desperate need to somehow be connected to the outdoors.

First my supervisor who sits behind me wanted to know what on earth was on the wall. Then slowly over time more people drifted over as there work or questions brought them by and they all wanted to know what on earth was that on the wall. I would have been thrilled if even one person had guessed giant spit balls! But no, not one person could come up with anything. That is until the plant manager walked right by and said, “it’s obviously clouds.” Yes!!! I was so excited. I gave him the two fingers from my eyes to his letting him know that we are on the same wave length. So there is another living, breathing human being with an imagination working there. I was afraid that I was completely surrounded by Zombies.

Over the course of the day there was much discussion of my clouds. Maybe certain people in the front office wouldn’t like them being there. Really? It’s a concrete wall! I’m sure not hurting it. Front office will say you should have been working. Hmmm lets see it took about five seconds to make and I’m not a doctor working on a patient. And they don’t know if I did it on my break, or during lunch or before I clocked in.

Then I scrounged more things to further my “view.”  I did this as I was going about my work. It’s a very laid back work place. I have to go pick up stuff out of boxes to bring back to my table. I have to take boxes to the huge recycling box. And isn’t recycling a huge deal nowadays? So I’m recycling as well as creating art. I found a cardboard lid that had green on the edges that could have been grass. A blue plastic bag that could have been a lake. And some strips of plastic that would have made rain. One person in particular said the plastic strips would be ugly. Ok then. Yee people of no vision.

So I came home and proceeded to make a small version of a similar scene that I will mount onto cardboard and hang by my table with Command tabs. So below is what I ended up with and then the next one is what I did with it in Photoshop. I might actually print that one, frame it and hang it by my table.

Just a few pics

 

 

Removing Unwanted Objects From Photos

This is the original photo that I didn’t want to see the leash in.

So I used the patch tool, the spot healing tool and the clone stamp tool in Photoshop to remove it.