Tea With Stephanie

is finished I cannot upload photos. For some weird reason my current poor windows XP machine decided that all USB devices should stop working. My new Windows 7 box is nearly done, we just need to finish adding applications and get all my files copies over to it.

I have many photos to share especially of my garden and my dining room. My garden is very much a work in progress and makes me happier nearly every day. Today I weeded out my front garden bed and even moved a tree/bush to a better spot so it will be happier.

This morning at about 9:45 I was woken from sleep by a very loud crack of thunder. About 5 minutes later it started to rain. It nicely cooled the air and gave a drink to my garden. Treanna was slightly terrified from the sound as she was very much asleep before the thunder. Alaric of course was like OOOH I thought I saw a blue flash first! The heat has made it difficult to get to sleep before the house has cooled off.

Today I did something that absolutely terrified me but has needed to get done. After my computer was rebuilt my entire contact list and calendar was not there. Devin was not quite sure how to get it transferred over and frankly didn’t have time. So we have put off getting my phone/handheld resynced to the computer via Outlook. Well after doing just a bit of looking today I figured it out and got it to synchronize. It went just fine with only one small hiccup. The hiccup was the loss of all my pictures on the phone. I had taken a ton of pictures in the Colossal Fossil exhibit at the science center. Now I have none. I think the last time my phone ran out of battery life was actually when I lost them. However I now have space to begin taking more pictures.

So I need to take pictures of Treanna with her Bella Sara card portfolio, pictures of Alaric with his Transformers 3D cards, pictures of my flowers, and pictures of my chair project.

BTW if there is anyone who finds this who would like to trade with the kids please drop me email. Both Treanna and Alaric have several doubles of their cards and are looking for more people to trade with. So far we have found just someone for Treanna locally and in Ohio.

I am writing this blog post on my regular desktop computer. I have a good start to things being back in their places. To be sure things are upgraded and I still have many more programs and things to get set up. For some odd reason my calendar and contacts did not transfer well. I don’t want to lose them off my handheld so am holding off a sync until I figure that out.

In addition I was finally able to get my organic strawberries. The store has been out the last few times I tried to get them. So with a rain check in hand I bought 4 pounds of organic strawberries. Last night they were had with Tillamook oregan strawberry ice cream and dark chocolate syrup. This morning they accompanied crisp waffles with a light dusting of powdered sugar. I am so glad I discovered that my egg slicer would slice strawberries, it makes nicer slices than I could ever do on my own. The strawberry slices looked quite lovely on the waffles dusted with the powdered sugar. Of course to wash it down I made a single mug of Irish Breakfast with a splash of milk and a dash of sugar.

A friend recently gave me some very yummy jams and jellies and I made scones earlier in the week to try them out. Very tasty indeed. I currently only opened the peach and cherry jams but they were wonderful. Also in the basket was some blackberry fizz concentrate. I have been having it all afternoon with some lemon-lime seltzer and it is very tasty and interesting. I think I will like it very much. The other thing of note in the basket was some apple walnut chutney. I like a lunch I have had at a couple of tearooms called a “ploughman’s lunch” which consists of a cheese thingy, a cold meat pie, some crusty bread, some chutney and a green salad. I would love to do this for myself for lunch I just don’t know where to get the cheese thingy. I currently cannot even remember what it is called. I could probably eat this daily for a week or 2 before getting tired of it or running out chutney.

For the final little update on the chair saga. All 5 of my school type chairs now have upholstered seats. After picking up sanding discs for the sander and a large pile of paint samples we made a decision. I shall sand all the chairs and then primer them. Then we shall paint them in Laura Ashley paint in a lovely light beigish/brown color called Wicker Chair. I could not locate a sample of said color online or I would share it. I now have a grand total of 1 chair sanded and ready to be primered. I am continuing the search for a better dining room table though one of my wonderful sisters is going to give me one that would be perfect to sand and paint to go with the chairs.

Finally we have blogs again. After too many numerous problems that started before we left for Las Vegas our blogs are working again. I am working on uploading pictures from Vegas and other things. Lots has been happening in the last month. My girl turned 10 years old, we made some more progress on the house, I have started baking Christmas cookies, I have a new scone recipe to post, not only did our area flood but it also snowed. That is just a small sampling of things to post about. I have at least one post to do just with clothes along with pictures. I have some places to link to with projects I am contemplating doing and I need to update the links of places I read. I know I have at least 1 new book I have read if not more.

To start here is a picture of our house in the snow.

I have a few photos uploaded to my gallery already but more still to come. Have a good night, more to come. 

Devin linked to a free image manipulation called paint.net on his work blog (e)mail insecurity.

Well I discovered that I do not have photoshop on my computer like I thought I did. As I was helping clean up some pictures for my friend S I needed it. Since I remembered Devin talking about paint.net I went to the blog post and followed the series of links to find the download. Even with me needing to download the "whole" package which included the dot net framework that paint.net was installed on it only took a few minutes to download on our DSL line. It was installed and I was manipulating a picture under 5 minutes later.

So far I have not found anything I don't like. Being somewhat familiar with a variety of other photo manipulation software made this very familiar. In fact it was somewhat easier for me to use as I did not have all the menus and stuff to wade through. For the most part I do cropping and some light adjustment. Other than that I don't do a whole lot of photo manipulation. This time however I was cleaning up a baby picture that was about 50 years old. I had to clean up the black smudges and various white marks on it. It was a lot easier to use than I remember photoshop to be. I think I am very happy with the program and definitely suggest it to others who do not need a high end professional photo manipulation software.

To get paint.net go to http://www.getpaint.net/  and download the complete package with the .net framework unless of course you use .net framework already.

I have used Mapquest many times and had no problems. When just trying to use it this evening it failed to provide any satisfaction at all. Apparently it no longer will let you just enter in a starting address and ending address. You have choose the nearest "location" which is really just some advertiser. I could not find any way at all to get it to just give me driving directions. Mapquest has now lost all of my use. I will not use them again.

 Luckily maps.msn.com worked just fine and so I now know where I will be going. Of course it will be even better when I can pull up the map on my new cellphone. I now have a Cingular 8125. I love the phone. However dealing with Cingular was a pain and after nearly 10 hours collectively on the phone I am sure that our account is still broken. I am waiting for another bill to verify that and hope that just 1 more phone call with them will solve it. I don't really want to switch carriers but at this point I am frustrated with their customer service.
 

It appears that our blogs are working again! Which is nice. I have missed blogging. I will try to post some more meaningful content later this week.

I am sure a few of you are wondering why the blogs were not working earlier? Devin updated the server and it broke! Fatally so! Luckily all the data was salvageable and so now after much pain and effort it is working again.