This is my neighbor’s pug, they just moved in, as if to taunt me, coz i want a pug sooo bad. So here’s my wordless prayer, ‘i want one tooooooo’

Visit other WW’ers here

Yes, I’m a Christian, but that doesn’t mean my mind is not open to alternative treatments.. I love EFT and BSFF, stuff like that. Anyway, I thought I would try self hypnosis and then getting my hubby to read me stuff i had written. The first time he read it, you could say I wasn’t in a trance, hehe. All I did was argue with him in my mind. ‘You’ll never smoke again’… me: eeeyeah right, watch me! stuff like that…

but the second time i was just sort of listening instead of arguing with him, and it was about stuff like cooking and cleaning, stuff i never do basically…

So since this time I have done the dishes TWICE simply because I wanted it clean!! but I must admit that it may have backfired a bit, in that a mess may drive me nuts now, but i still feel no desire to do anything about it so in the end, i just added to the list of things that drive me nuts.. i’m not sure if i should try the hypnosis thing again…

This is how I conquered the Lomo effect in Photoshop, it’s a combination of a couple other people’s tutorials and an idea of my own which I’ll tell you right up front. I googled for two days trying to find a Lomo filter that I liked that made EVERY picture look good, and found that they turned alot of pictures whacky colors or too light or too harsh and such. So my idea is not a one click wonder, but rather a two step process that takes a little bit more work for each picture. first of all you want to make sure your ruler is set on percentage so that this will work for different size photos.. go to (edit/preferences/units and rulers) and set rulers to percent. *note* if you are using an indexed color picture change it to RGB.

Step 1.
click on (Image/adjustment/levels) and adjust the arrows until you like it… do this yourself for each and every photograph until the colors pop out with a richness you like. this is basically my secret, seperating the color levels adjustment from the automation process like this..

Step 2.
Go to the Actions tab on the right and click the little arrow to the right and ‘new action’ and start recording. Name the action ‘lomo’ or something meaningful like that.

1. The first thing you want to do is create the vignette that Lomos are known for. We’ll achieve this by doing a freehand circle lasso around the photo. It doesn’t need to be perfect, and to prevent hard edges, we’ll set the feather to 100 px before drawing the circle.

2. Once you have set the feather and drawn the circle, invert your selection. (Select/Inverse)

3. Create a new layer. (layer/new) name it ‘black’ to be simple about it. switch your foreground and background colors to black and white.

4. Make sure you’re working on your new blank layer and use the Paint Bucket tool to fill the layer with black.

5. Deselect everything and duplicate the black layer. (right click on the layer down on the right menu and select ‘duplicate layer’) Change the ‘blend mode’ on one of the black layers to “Overlay” and the other one to “Multiply”. (right click, blending options/blend mode) put the multiplied layer on top of the stack, and the overlayed layer right underneath. Adjust the opacity on these layers as you see fit.

6. Create a new layer. Name it ‘white’. switch your forground and background colors. Select the gradient tool (it might be hiding under the Paint Bucket tool). In the options bar up top, select “Radial Gradient” (fuzzy bubbley looking one) and make sure that you have ‘Foreground to Transparent’ set as your gradient type. you should have a white gradient that gives way to transparency.

7. Click in the middle of your photograph and drag a straight line to the furthest edge of the canvas. This will throw down a round white gradient right on top of everything. make sure this layer is on top, if it’s not, just drag it up on the right hand layers menu.

8. Change the blend mode for your new white layer to “Overlay”,(right click/blending options/blend mode) and bring the opacity down to 25 percent or so, or whatever you think looks best, could be more…

9. press the square at the bottom left of the actions tab to stop recording and now you have a set of lomo actions that you can use repeatedly. you just have to do the levels to get lomo color for each photograph, then hit your lomo action bar that has the name ‘lomo’ if that’s what you called it, and press the play arrow underneath.

i also post adjust my black layers and white layer, to darken them or lighten them for each photograph as well.. anyway, hope this helps y’all.. happy lomoing!!

credits and downloadable actions for what I just said are in the read more section, but remember you have to do the color levels yourself, and I have made the black vignette and white layer fairly light and usually manually adjust later…

download my actions here: Elaine’s Lomo.atn

credits:

http://user.fundy.net/morris/?photoshop21.shtml

http://www.brainsideout.com/weblog/archives/2004/10/19/wounded_knee_a_distressed_photoshop_tutorial.php

http://www.istockphoto.com/article_view.php?ID=190&Page=1

Terribly sorry to all the THOUSANDS of people.. gak.. that were using my radio blog, not so much sorry to the people who were linking to it..hehe… it has been sucking up my bandwidth to the tune of a gig a day.. i have had to increase my web package once already but this time i’m just tearing the durned thing out of there.. now my site will be some what less entertaining alas..

butterflies.. how are you out there? I was thinking about you the other day, my hubby was saying we should move to new zealand he’s about to be out of work on Jun 16.. times they are a changin’.. don’t know what we are going to do.. but God has given me peace..

well I chickened out and downgraded my website package to 500 meg. haha.. from 3 gig to 500 meg, but that’s ok.. at least I still have it all in place.. a friend of mine offered to help me, but i didn’t want to leach off of her unless I absolutely had to, take up her webspace.. so I’m still here!
and I will be officially trying to see if i can make money from my new business venture on sunday, so say a little prayer for me.

I really don’t know what I will be.. but maybe some things I’m starting to know what I want, like I would like to do something I actually LIKE to do for a living, and if I ever have a friend again it will be one where I can talk about MY freakin’ problems over coffee not just listen to THEM yammer on for a jillion years. And I want to be a Jesus freak not just a mediocre Christian. And I don’t want to be on a diet for the rest of my life, obsessed with food. I want to live in a place where the people are real, but it’s still got tons of shopping, and the weather has to be reasonable. I would like to own a little house one day, but not too little. And it goes without saying that I want to be healed, whole and happy. These are mostly wishes that are between me and God. For instance I don’t wish for my husband or family to love me more because that would be.. well I don’t know what that would be. ok, I wish it.
I want to be peaceful so that I don’t need vices. I want the personality that God has planned for me, none of this bad girl crap. I want to fill my days with productivity that pleases God and at the same time pleases me. I want a business, not a job. Tho if the right job came along, that might be nice too, but only as a desperate measure. I want one of those electric scooters that look like a vespa and travel in the bicycle lane. I want a comfier bed. speaking of which, I’m going to sleep now.

Sometimes I have no passion for anything but passion. I have only 3 things. I love God, I trust Jesus, and He heals me. Things may be totally whacked out in all appearances, but I have those truths that stand like stonehenge in the middle of a desert. Perhaps the greatest of those truths is that I trust Jesus. The emotion of love can waver and I can only take it as an accomplished fact because God is so lovable. And the fact that Jesus heals me COMES from the trust. Didn’t Jesus walk around saying ‘your faith has made you well’.. I think my trust in Jesus is the greatest of the three. How do I trust in Him? As my saviour.. from everything bad.. as my healer from all ills.. as my comfort, my shelter, my strong tower.. the lover of my soul, my best friend. How do I trust my Jesus who has taken up residence in me, to become one with me and make me like Him.. I trust Him with my everything. Where do those old thoughts come from? that God is far away, and blesses irregularly, rarely.. Oh I don’t know.. I want those thoughts gone. I give myself to Jesus, mighty God. the bright morning star, beautiful, God among us. Things don’t look good but that doesn’t matter, because it is written ‘let the weak say ‘I am strong”.. I don’t know what to do, I’m at a loss without God stepping in. I have to trust Him to step in, and if I don’t trust Him right then I have to trust Him to make me right. This is what it is to be held. what’s that song? to have the sacred torn from your life, and you survive. oh that’s funny, i was writing about it and it just came on. I’m listening to it now. Sometimes you have been suffering for so long you think it would be atypical or strange, or fearful for God to change it, heal it. But God will take you to wonderful places even if you are afraid. Because there are only wonderful things to be gotten from God. He’s all good, all great, all wonderous. Who cares about childhood catholic thoughts about God being afar off and stern.. we only care about the revelation that God himself has given us, about His love and sweetness. oh His sweetness, it makes me want to cry. I wish we could get closer to God. I wish there wasn’t the barrier of self. The barrier of worldliness. I only wish to be with God. what’s that song from ‘love actually’? ‘All I want for Christmas.. is You.. make my wish come true.. all I want for Christmas is You..’ I would like to sing that song to God and have Him grant me my wish, to witness His beauty every day, to feel His love always, to live in His mighty power. I happen to be slightly drunk at the moment.. one would think that drunkeness would take one AWAY from God, but I’m sitting here pining for closeness to Him. Pining for a life lived at one with His love. I’m feeling schmoozy romantic for God; He’s all I want. So I’m writing this lovey dovey blog post to Him in hopes that He’ll read it and take pity on me. Take pity on a heart that beats only for Him. I’m a shell without Him, He’s my everything. I wish I could have written one of the love letters in the bible, but I don’t have the words. 26 letters is all I got, to tell you how I feel about you, I try to express with adjectives of thankfulness.. that’s a cute song too.. How can we sing to God when we can’t hold a tune? How can I write a poem when I don’t understand iambic pentamater? What can I do for You God to give You a little sugar? I love You God, I thank You Jesus for coming down to save us, for dying, for taking on our sin.. You did it all, for us.. I am what You make me. I owe it all to You. How can I ever give anything to you? I want to be your friend, you know, all squinchy like moses, so that you would like my friendship.. that way I would be giving my friendship to You and You would like it. Dear God, hear my prayer, feel my longing for you, bless me, favor me, have mercy on me, bow down and meet me here. I know I’m not a good Christian, but love me anyway. Save me in spite of worst case scenario. Because You are a great a wonderful God, so kind and tender. Hear me Oh God, I love You so, I need You so, don’t deny me You presence in my life, always. Come to me, sweet Lord. I will gladly give up the worldly self to be with You.

Sometimes when the emeny just comes on like a flood you have to just throw yourself at God an rest in Him. I went to bed at 8:30 last night and just wouldn’t move when God gave me His peace. I’m up at 3:00 am, now I have to take my meds and go to bed. but I’m just relaxing here and trying to hang on to the peace. I trust that God will heal me and take me into a wonderful life with Him. why? Because He said so. Sometimes I think it’s not happening because I don’t have enuff faith or some such, but I trust God in spite of that, because He promised. I may be scared, I may be double minded, but God promised, and His promises are yes and amen. He will take away the fear and double mindedness. He is going to heal me and make me safe, and make my dreams come true. I trust God. It may take Him a while, but He’s workin’!

I had to go for a job interview yesterday. I was freaking out totally with a huge ‘I CAN’T, I DON’T WANT TO!’.. and I was telling hubby I was praying for God to take that away, and hubby says ‘it doesn’t work like that, get ahold of yerself’.. I said ‘it DOES SO work like that! I’m totally dependent on God!’.. and hubby had to watch God come thru for me and enable me, so he had to admit he was wrong, hehe. So by the time the interview came around I was thinkin’ ‘I can do this, no problem’.. ha! why? Coz of God! I can do all things through Christ Who strengthens me. God even healed me of something that would have prevented me from doing it, like the night before the interview, a gentle healing. I was watching a sermon on sunday by this woman who yells her sermons passionately, and she was saying ‘if what you are dreamin’ ain’t IMPOSSIBLE for you, then you ain’t dreamin’ right’.. I was thinking that was about right, coz I was putting out these job applications by faith! It was totally impossible and dependent on God. But God came through! He is so awesome and takes such good care of me in such a glorious manner! I’m so happy because I know that God will take care of me and enable me. I have felt so unable for so long but we’ll see what God has to say about THAT!

By the way, God was with me thru the LA trip even tho I was a total flibbertyjibbet on camera and will probably end up on the cutting room floor. I almost lost my boarding passes on the way back, but other than that I didn’t do anything too messed up. I had fun and it was so nice to meet my ‘diet’ friends. It was a real nice way to celebrate getting to goal. Even tho I’m quite a bit over goal weight right now hehe my bad.

My God is an awesome God He reigns. I’m so happy to be in His hands. Sometimes I wonder why things take so long, or I get frustrated that faith is a seed that has to grow, or that I have to WALK into the promised land.. sometimes I wish the promised land would just fall at my feet. But I think God gets frustrated right along with ya haha.. He yelled at me once to trust in Him. Like things would be moving on alot faster if I wasn’t such a booger head. aaah well, I think eventually a Christian should be able to leave fear as a thing of the past, and rest in God’s care. How many times did Jesus say ‘fear not!’.. alot o’ times I think. Anyway, I’m off to go and sit in God’s lap for a while.. talk to y’all later.

I’m getting real nervous about this trip to LA.. A good part of me is like grrr arrgh, I’m yer huckleberry! yeehaa! bring it on! coz I am walkin’ into the promised land with God and I’m all hyped up about that.. but there’s the other part of me that has been in the wilderness for a long time and wonders what the heck I think I’m doing!! I’m a home body! I’m unable.
I want to be able to say to God ‘Here I am, use me!’ and go to LA with that spirit. Knowing that He will meet me with His back up. I’m growing more excited than scared even as I type this.. the strength of the Lord is growing in me.