Photoshop!

Well, tons has happened, yet again, and the blog has gotten somewhat neglected as of late. Last Saturday, I graduated from A&M with my Master's in Curriculum and Instruction. I am so relieved to be done, but an itsy bitsy small part of me actually kind of wants to get my doctorate. Now, not enough to go back to school anytime soon, but seeing all of those doctorate students getting hooded kind of got me thinking. To be perfectly honest, I will probably never get my doctorate, but for one short instant I thought about it. :)

For a graduation present, my parents got me Adobe Creative Suites 4 (and I should be getting a free upgrade to CS5 since it was released right after they bought CS4). I haven't had much time to play with it, seeing as our last week of preschool was this week (a whole other post about the end of preschool), but this evening I've been playing around with the help of free tutorials. So, without further ado, I bring you the only the picture I've touched up and watermarked (just for fun). Hopefully I'll learn more and more and will soon be a "pro" at this.

Before

After

Did you know that Adobe has it's own format to save pictures in? It took me FOREVER to try and figure out how to post the after picture... It is really easy, though... Just change the way you save it to a jpeg file and it's done. Have a wonderful weekend! I'm off to hit the hay... it's been an emotional day.

Mary, Mary Quite Contrary...

How does your garden grow?

For some reason this nursery rhyme just popped into my head while I was out checking on our growing garden this morning. It is looking really good and I can not wait to start getting fresh veggies to eat. We already have jalapeños and tomatoes that are growing our a lot of our bell peppers have begun to flower, but no fruit yet. One of our squash/zucchini plants has taken off and the other two are moving at a slower pace. The green beans amaze me! Alan set up a ghetto trellis for them to climb up and most of the plants have begun to do just that, all on their own. Here are some pictures to document the growth, sense everyone is just so interested... haha.

Baby Jalapeño 

Cherry Tomato

Squash or Zucchini 

Proof of our ghetto trellis

Winding it's way up the twine

Close-up - it amazes me that it just curls 

around the string on it's own

Another close-up of a green bean plant

In other news, only 4 days until I graduate! I can't believe that in just a short time, I will officially have my Master's of Education. It's crazy to think that after all this time in school, 18 years (including 1-12 grade, undergrad, and grad school), I will finally be done! My dad and grandparents from Texarkana will be traveling down Friday afternoon, and my Granny will come for graduation and dinner and then head home that evening. I'm so excited to see everyone, but am sad that my mom and sis won't be able to come. PGisd decided that prom needed to be late this year, so that is interfering with graduation. 

Well, I'm off to go paint. We're trying to get the master done before family comes down. I'll post before and after pictures once I'm done.