So...
I totally broke up with Twitter for Instagram.
Because let's face it, pictures are pretty and words are, how do I say it... NOISY.

My life is noisy.  I wanted less info.  More pretty.  I like pretty.
Plus I like taking pictures with my phone.  A lot a lot a lot.  Enough to make my poor big camera all sad and abandoned.  Doesn't help that it is still fighting with my computer.

But back to Instagram...

When I saw this little photo challenge come through my feed I thought it would be fun.  An interesting way to start the new year.  Some structure to the picture a day 365 (or 366 this year) plan that I start every year, then eventually, often quickly, quit.

Some days I absolutely loved it.  Thinking of different ways to interpret the daily prompt.  Other days I groaned as things like mailboxes, on day four, filled my feed.  Really?  Mailboxes?  Lots of mailboxes?  The paranoid part of me did not want to snap a pic of mine, because who knows what murderer is one step away from a Dateline story as soon as they know where I live.  Because all he was waiting for was a pic of my mailbox to carry out his evil plan.

Then there was the inside of your fridge day.  Ugh...  Until I found kindred food friends who had things chilling, like my beloved almond milk, Cholula, and Sriracha.  Less murdery.  More hungry.

I am fairly certain that I have never actually done something for 31 days straight.  It might be a small accomplishment, but for this A.D.D. quitter, it is a big deal.  As for the February challenge, I make no promises.  But this happy January grid is off to be printed and maybe even put in a little scrapbook.

Unless I quit before that project even starts...


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Edited to add a little how to for the above collage.  A little overly complicated how to.  Because I rig stuff.  I know just enough about a lot of things to get by.  But not enough of one thing, to make it easy.  This would be easy in Photoshop if I knew Photoshop.  But I don't.

So here you go:

I knew I wanted it to be square, so I mapped it out on a piece of paper.
To break it down, I knew I needed nine 4x4 boxes.  I spread out the white boxes strategically.

Then each day I added the text to the photos with the Phonto app.

I made the 4x4 collages with the PicFrame app.

Then I uploaded the nine 4x4 collages to Picnik (R.I.P).

Next, I sent it back to myself, added the January 2012 text with Phonto (totally hate all of the Picnik fonts).

Then I sent it off to be printed as a 12x12.

So you have it.  My seemingly way too many step process to make a big old collage.  Good luck!

Feel like jumping in and snapping your way through February?
I am going to be using the fun prompts thought up by my friends Erin and April.
Join me!

I am a kid of the 1970's.
Many of my favorite childhood memories are wrapped up in adventures ventured in my parent's blue VW bubble top camper van.

 Jiffy Pop on the stove, curling up with dozens of books under my Winnie the Pooh sleeping bag, up in the loft,

our dog Daisy, campfires, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, Dinty Moore stew, the orange canvas Coleman tent, swimming, hiking...

Memories are made camping and road tripping.
Happy, magical memories.

So once in a while I troll Craigslist, checking out prices on VW buses.  Dreaming of owning our own.  Knowing that we had two too many kids to make it a reality, and the fact that I know ZERO about fixing cars.  But I still kept dreaming.

My bucket list has many realistic and a slightly few crazy things on it.

One is to own a VW bus.
Now I can check it off.

 I headed off to VW Surfari, wrote a check, and picked up my dream.
He showed me all of it's features, how everything worked, how tricky the ignition was, how different it was to drive than a normal car, then sent me on my way.

For this glorious shoot with DrewB.
More to come.
(I KNOW!!!!!!!!!)