Ways to save!

I’m not unaware of or unaffected by the present state of the economy and I know that this isn’t the time to be asking you to spend money on non-essentials. On the other hand, when times are difficult it’s more important to connect with friends and take time out for ourselves. In order to help you do that we’ve come up with a couple of ways to save on the registration fee for the upcoming AnnTheGran Community Circle.

1. Bring 3 and you come free! Yup, just round up 3 friends and you can come for free, or get together with three friends and divide the saving among the four of you.
   
2. Oh, you came to the Community Circle last year? That makes you an alumna (or alumnus!) and you qualify for the $60 alumni discount.
   

Now there is a downside: you mayn’t combine discounts. Choose the one that’s best for you. If you're unsure about how to take advantage of either of these discounts, contact support@annthegran.com and put "Community Circle Registration" in the subject line. 

Now about digi-scrappery . . .
I’ve enjoyed seeing a few of you getting into digital scrapbooking and visiting my "other home" at Gotta Pixel. Stacy has been writing some really terrific tutorials to help you get started. I have several graphics programs: Photoshop, Elements, Paint Shop Pro and others that I use with photographs, preparing graphics for embroidery digitizing, web site design, etc., but for scrapbook layouts I use a simple program called FotoFusion. All of the layouts in my Gotta Pixel gallery (I'm ScrappyStitcher" there) and FotoScraps gallery (and I'm PurpleCow there) were created with FotoFusion. Recently I spent a few days in Atlanta helping a few embroidery friends get into digital scrapbooking with that program. Now these are women who have worked with computers and graphics for embroidery and web site design for years and who have several of the graphics programs I have, so they’re all very bright and no slouches in the art department. Yet, they needed a little help getting started. Believe me when I say a “little” help. Once I got them started they just took off. Anyway, that got me to thinking that maybe there are some of you who would like to get into digital scrapbooking but you’re a little intimidated by the software and might feel more comfortable with a simple scrapbooking specific program than with a complicated graphics program. FotoFusion is a simple program to use and the learning curve is nearly flat. You can download and use the program for as long as you like before purchasing. The only difference between the trial version and the registered version is that you can’t save your layouts in the trial version. There’s a video demo on the web site and a really friendly and helpful support group on Yahoo.  Stacy wrote a tutorial on using quick pages on her blog a couple of months ago and I thought you might enjoy a mirror tutorial for the same thing done with FotoFusion. I’ve created one in PDF format so you can download and print it. Just click here if you’re interested. Oh, BTW, there was an acronym that we used in my first machine embroidery group when we recommended something: NAYY, which stood for No Affiliation Yadda Yadda. I have no affiliation with FotoFusion other than being a happy customer. NAYY

Points I’ve been pondering

All of my life until the past few years the term “off the wall” meant wild, wacky, unconventional, etc. and the term “off the hook” meant freed from danger, obligation or blame. A few years ago I began hearing people say “off the hook” when they obviously meant to say “off the wall,” i.e. “That party was really off the hook.” At first I thought these were misguided errors. Lately, however, I’m hearing people all over the place saying “off the hook,“ meaning wild, wacky, unconventional, etc. I’m not resistant to change, so my question is: now that we’re apparently saying “off the hook” instead of “off the wall,” what  are we saying when we want to say what “off the hook” used to mean, freed from danger, obligation or blame and, just as important, do we say “off the wall” anymore?

I’ve been watching a series about the British monarchy on PBS. So far I’ve watched episodes about the queen’s visit to the United States, the queen’s birthday and, today, about the opening of parliament and the queen’s visit to Estonia. That last episode was of particular interest to me because Bill and I will be visiting both London and Tallinn, Estonia, in the spring. Anyway, I’ve noticed that wherever the queen goes she’s carrying a purse.  Being a person who never carries a purse if what she needs to carry will fit in a pocket or tucked in a sleeve, I couldn’t help but wonder what in the world the queen of England could possibly be carrying in that purse. Finally, this morning, I Googled “what does queen elizabeth carry in her purse.” I’ve found that Google is surprisingly responsive to very specific questions like that and I was not disappointed this time. I was whisked to a web site that answered that question for me.  So now I know. And if you want to know, too, you can visit the site.

The acronyms “ATM” and “PIN” have become such common parts of the ordinary conversations in our daily lives that I’m thinking that either people have forgotten what those acronyms stand for or, perhaps, never knew in the first place. As all of you who are reading this know, ATM stands for Automated Teller Machine and PIN stands for Personal Identification Number so people who say “ATM machine” or “PIN number” are actually saying “automated teller machine machine” and ” personal identification number number.” Just saying . . .

Well, this one isn’t something I think about very much but here it is anyway. Here in Orlando Who Wants to Be a Millionaire comes on right after Good Morning America so sometimes I get hooked into watching it. Then a contestant will miss as question like “People buy a surge protector  for protection from unexpected surges in electric current, water flow, air pressure or buyer's remorse” and the contestant answers, “water pressure.” That’s when I slap my forehead, roll my eyes and decide it’s time to get to work. Want to bet he calls an ATM an ATM machine? Big sigh . . . .

Yeah, I know, I spend WAY too much time in my own head . . .

Speaking of acronyms, as I seem to be doing today, and that first machine embroidery group, one day I was reading the digest and I saw someone referring to my web site as ATG, as in “ I found the design I was looking for on ATG.” At first I didn’t even realize that the person was referring to me and then, when I did, I said to myself, “Wow! I’m an acronym! Who knew?”  And with that I leave you for this week. Take care of each other until next time. TTYL