Category Archives: Visualizations

Frugal Christmas: Family Photo Christmas Tree Ornaments

We have had the same Christmas tree ornaments for years now. The gold ribbons were made as such 10 Christmases ago. The red ribbons came to be five Christmases ago. The golden stars and beads were collected one after the other.

This year, we have added something new.

Handmade, homemade Christmas decor.

(Practicing frugal Christmas would have enabled me to afford a Sony Vaio for my husband but that would have to take a back seat for now)

We made handmade paper stockings last week.

This week, we made and hanged these:

Family photos as Christmas tree ornaments.

These make the tree and the special event itself even more special. Isn’t it that the first Christmas was about a family who had nowhere to go? Even so, Mary bore a son who was in fact God’s son.

Anyway…

Here was how these family photo Christmas tree ornaments were made:

Read more »

Frugal Christmas: Handmade Paper Stocking Tree Ornament

For another Frugal Christmas post, I present “Handmade Paper Stocking Tree Ornament”.

Here is my post about Personalized Christmas Gift Tags.

My two younger children did these, two for each of them. When we were looking at these ornaments when we hung these, I thought the paper stockings look old-fashioned when put side by side to newer and more modern designs of tree ornaments these days.

Materials:

  1. red construction paper
  2. white paper scraps, preferably Japanese paper
  3. craft glue
  4. Scrapbook embellishments

I just instructed the kids about what they should do and they did these quite well. Another post will be dedicated to the instructions and tips.

For now, we sit back on our (almost) modern furniture and enjoy the crafts hanging on the tree that they made.

Yes, there is going to be another post about another handmade paper ornament that they have done.

Cropping Your Photo

One of the wonderful things about modern technology is the ability to take as many photos as one can. Coupled with this, one can choose to photo shop the photos for a more effective presentation.

I have so many photographs I have taken that I have put in my blogs. Lately I have subscribed an account with Flickr named GreenBucks.

With my photos, I try to present these as naturally as I have taken these. Of course, there were times when I have to darken or lighten the photo but the most used application for me would be the crop tool.

Imagine presenting a photo like this:

One can see the birds perched on the edge of the roof while looking at something below it.

If I zoom the photo a bit, then crop the part I want shown and resize the photo in a smaller size for easy loading, I will get this:

So, which is the better photo?

Our Empty Lawn

I am not an avid gardener. In fact, it was just a few weeks ago when we started to have a little garden with some herbs planted. I have a packet of seeds and two plant troughs ready to be used.Now is the right time to do this for the rains are aplenty and the weather is quite cool.

I was convinced by my husband to have these planted instead of flowers so that we can use these for our own consumption, however long the wait will be.

Lately, we have been discussing, or I have been convincing hubby to have a roof fitted on the front lawn. No, not the corrugated iron type but something like plastic or maybe fiberglass. Then we can put some garden furniture under that roof and spend some time there, instead of just always being cooped inside the house. That would be a wonderful place to have our homeschooling lessons when the mornings are cool. Afternoon would not be a good time because we have the afternoon sunlight there, like the one in the photo below.

This is a photo of the empty lawn with my younger children (my son in the photo and youngest daughter not in the photo) playing outside when the weather is cool. The lawn/space not big but it is big enough for some garden furniture.

So if we are not able to put that roof above the empty lawn, we can opt to use outdoor furniture covers for the furniture as protection from the heat of the sun and the rains.

New Theme

weekendsnaphot_button1.gif

Second day of our three-day weekend break.

We just stayed in. We were supposed to go to a car show but the children preferred to stay home. We were supposed to go to church late in the afternoon but hubby has slept and we didn’t wake him up.

After dinner, hubby changed my blog theme:

greenbucksinfo-new-theme.jpg

A refreshing new theme for Greenbucks.Info which I think I will have for now.

He also changed the other GreenBucks blog’s theme. There was a lot of tweaking here and there for this other one.

greenbucksteacherjuliecom-new-theme.jpg

 

I hope everyone feels refreshed after the weekend. This Monday is a holiday today and we will enjoy this day by going to a children’s party in the afternoon. After I work with two of my students.