We all have our favorite music. But when it comes to Holiday music, I have found that people have very strong preferences.
I have seen perfectly innocuous Gene Autry Christmas compilations drive 20-somethings up the wall after a mere two play-throughs.
Alvin and the Chipmunks can set people off even faster.
I used to collect unusual Christmas music. I guess I will have to figure out how to use Spotify or some such app or service to recreate my special collection of tunes. But in the meanwhile I want to share these musical treasures with you!
https://youtu.be/vel_EF8S9FY
Or maybe the Andrews Sisters
Those songs always make me think of being a little kid and listening to my older brothers’ and mother’s music.
But being a child of the post war baby boom I especially love Greg Lake’s Father Christmas.
https://youtu.be/JPm6CheT6rs
and then there is
And So This Is Christmas
will always stir emotions for me.
This one truly bridges time periods and is now poignant beyond words.
https://youtu.be/n9kfdEyV3RQ
So whether you are a Boomer or not, Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas.
https://youtu.be/nH9RyySpkU8
If Christmas music really isn’t your thing, you can always go for this one that may pass as Holiday music if Leonarad Cohen and Pentatonix are more your speed.
No matter what music fills your December, may it bring a smile and enrich your celebrations.
Transition Happens
Though I do not ride horses, I’m back in the saddle again. Sayings such as this just seem to be appropriate for Tucson dwellers. This time of year re-emphasizes my sense of place on the globe. I’m quite conscious of living in the South Western United States. As I raked the decadently well-watered grassy patch in our backyard yesterday, I wore shorts and a sleeveless top. Sunny and mild late fall here in Southern Arizona is strikingly different from the cold, snowy lead up to Christmas that was usual in my childhood in Northern Indiana.
My fall fog has lifted and though I’ve received disappointing news about the Holidays, my outlook is better than it has been in quite a few weeks. My s-daughter and son-in-law and their twin girls will not be coming to Arizona for Christmas. Living 2500 miles from grandchildren is difficult. My b-daughter cannot come from just this side of the great white north for Christmas because she is the most recent hire where she works and cannot take additional time off at Christmas. I’m hoping to see her in January for her birthday, but this is not a sure thing by any means.
As a Later Born Baby Boomer who is done nesting this year has been an extended rite of passage for me. It has been wonderful and horrible all at the same time. Moving my daughter to her first home across the country with her significant other after her college graduation was a fun adventure. And I reconnected with old friends that I decided to look up as I was passing through Chicago. That was wonderful. A quick trip through Northern Indiana, where I grew up, to visit family was not so fun. The declining health of my two remaining siblings, who are 9 and 18 years older than me was apparent. A 40 year old nephew of mine passed away. Our dogs who were like family were swarmed by Africanized bees. One survived.
Hubby and I began the next, not at all well planned, phase of our lives that included a road trip to his old family farm in Tennessee. That stop was followed by a horrible experience with old friends and a previous spouse’s current spouse who threatened me with violence and later became violent with Hubby while we were visiting Hubby’s old home town (not in TN.) That experience limited out ability to visit our grandchildren which was heart-breaking, and for me that sad shock it was also coupled with my finding out, when attempting to track down my brother who is closest in age to me, that he had been in a VA hospital for the last 6 months. A visit with my eldest brother who recognized me but was not really able to carry on a conversation capped off my understanding the family of my birth no longer existed.
Thank heavens our visit with our daughter in Minnesota was wonderful as was the trip to and from NY that I took by myself to attend a blogging conference when Hubby and I parted vacation ways in MN. He continued the last leg of road trip solo and I traveled by train to a blogging conference on the East Coast with a quick trip back through Indiana to follow up with my brother in the V.A. hospital.
A new puppy and a trip to “Mexican Riviera” filled the fall with activity that kept me from falling too far into the depression that decided to visit me this auturm after several years without it showing up rounded out a year filled with travel and learning. This has not been the year I had planned it to be. My book isn’t finished and my sites are not where I had planned for them to be.
There is a lesson to be learned in all of this. I just haven’t distilled it all down into a single bit of truth I can carry forward with me as yet unless it is: Transition happens.
Seasonal Headers for My Blog
I love playing around with graphics even if I’m not a Graphic Artist by training. In my soul I am an artist so when I play with images I am a graphic artist, no? So last I was in an artsy mood and got a bug up my butt to do something. I have been a little bit antsy from staying at home with the new puppy so now that I have moved my desktop computer into the family room so I can keep an eye on little Guy and work with a bit more power than my iPad provides, I was absolutely itching to create. I decided this site looked too “Summer.” And Fall is definitely here. We’re supposed to only get up into the 80s today and down into the low 60s at night here in Tucson! Yes!
INFRASTRUCTURE
I use the Feather theme by Elegant Themes which allows me to easily upload header images which are called logo images, for some reason I cannot fathom, by Nick Roach, the guy who creates these WordPress themes that I use on my stand alone WordPress installation through the hosting account I have with Host Gator. It works well through the Firefox browser on the 2009 upgraded large screen iMac that I have.
PREVIOUS IMAGE REUSE
I started out by searching my computer for the layered graphic I created for the header I was using up until last night.
I found the single layer version of the image that was a .png file, but I could not find the layered ArtText file in which I’d created the image. Grrrrr. I hate it when I skip over such a basic step as saving a copy of my creation in the native format of the program I am using. Art Text allows me to export images as various types of files. I chose to export a .png format with an alpha, or transparent, background.
ART TEXT STEPS
So when I am using Art Text I remember to do this:
And not this:
So because I had not done this second action, I could not rework the original image and just replace the dragonfly with the bat. So I had to recreate the image. I can never leave things alone when given a chance to change them, so I altered some elements of the image. I replicated the overall feel of the image but made a few changes. You can see the Art Text tool bar showing some of the layers at the bottom of this image:
As you might have been able to tell, I do the logo image and the text as individual images both of which I export as .png format images.
LAYERING IMAGES AS LAYERS IN GIMP
Once those two images are created using ArtText, saved as an ArtText file .artx and exported as a .png, I open them in GIMP. I create a blank transparent image in the size that I want the new image to be. It looks like this:
Then I insert one of the images as a layer:
Then I add the second image (of the words) and position it to the right of the first layer image and save it with the title I want:
THEME INTERFACE
Then, finally, I save this image in a format that my theme’s GUI (graphic user interface) can recognize and upload it.
MANY WAYS TO CREATE IMAGES
I use ArtText because it a very functional and easy to use logo, icon, and button creator. If your were greatly skilled in GIMP or Adobe Photoshop you could do all this in one graphics program. I had to get something out quickly once and bought ArtText and learned to love it. GIMP is Open Source, which is not the same thing as free, but there is no cost to download the program, and it is available for most platforms. Since I don’t have a lot of money to support the project, I promo it whenever I can, such as in this post to help the project. You can also donate money. If you regularly use an open source product, giving back as much as you can is the proper way to support it.
LESSONS LEARNED
Save or export as many versions as you will want at the end of the process immediately upon creating any sort of file! That is the most important info to take away from this post.
I now have a header image that I can alter for Thanksgiving, Christmas, Winter, Spring and so on. I wanted to alter the header as a way of keeping a site fresh but familiar while reusing elements of pre-existing projects to save time and energy. Wheels are wonderful, but there are no good reasons for reinventing them.