A Family Collage

This is what happens when I take vacation time off and have no money to go anywhere.
I had been wanting to put a collage of frames together and last Saturday I thought I would start. Ha! Once I started I could not stop, I already had some frames put together and had them put away not really knowing where to put them so I decided to use a wall in the hall that proved to be just the perfect size.

I used twelve pictures that mean a lot to me and that in fact tell a story. Well isn't that what pictures do? Pictures tell a story and trigger lot of memories.

The top left corner and the bottom right corner images are of my daughter Nikki. Nikki is a great makeup artist, on the top image she put on heavy makeup and then added some stars to her cheeks, while on the bottom image she turned a picture of herself into a vector image which gives the cartoony look.

The second picture has my brother in law and mi chica celebrating a birthday when they were kids. This is a wonderful picture and it shows how pretty mi chica was when she was little. Right below there is picture of Diego and I sporting our cool sun shades and looking cool as ever.

The following picture I had it made last year and gave it to mi chica as a Christmas present. The collage has all of our seven grand kids in it. It will have to be updated next year as we will have three more making it ten for 2010.

Next, my daughter Nikki drew Diego when he was one year old, it was his first Christmas and he was wearing his Christmas outfit. I don't know why my daughter doesn't draw more often, she can do it beautifully and has a lot of talent.

Bottom left, mi chica's sister in law had a and old 5 X 7 family picture and we borrowed it. I had it enlarged to an 8 X 10 framed it and gave it to mi chica, she really loved the way it came out. The tiny frame has a picture of my dad when he was young. Pretty cool picture too. And right below my dad there's another drawing. This one was done by my little sister and it has my son when he was about six years old with ET. First time he watched that movie he was afraid but like every other child he eventually fell in love with the little extra terrestrial. My son is now 31 years old so this drawing has to be at least 25 years old.

Diego is in the next picture and right above him a picture of my three kids. Last but not least a picture of my mother in law on her wedding day. My mother in law left way too soon but I am sure she is one of those shinning stars above that has blessed mi chica and I with such a wonderful family.

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Coming Soon!

So, Michelle and I are starting a new business venture. As you my long time readers know I love taking pictures, so much that my camera travels with me everywhere. I have a small Panasonic camera I bought at work at a discounted price as it was discontinued. That was a little over two years ago. Unfortunately it's starting to look its age. After dropping it a few times and always being carried either in my pocket but mostly in the back pocket of my tote back the images are not coming out the way I would like them.

However, during these two years I have captured thousands of images with it and have published a huge amount of them in my Arizona... But it's a dry heat! photo blog. During the peak days of Bix.com I entered many of them in various contests and I had many top places including a first place for a sunset in Rocky Point, and some third and fifth places for cars I photographed at a local car show.

My dear friend ChrisJ has even taken some of my images and done some drawing renditions of them. Now Michelle on the other hand has a talent, actually she has so much talent that she doesn't even know what to do with it so I have taken it upon myself to explore it and exploit it -- lol. While I had taken to photograph inanimate things, she is great at photographing people. She is like a candid camera that captures good image after good image.

So, that's why I came with the idea of investing $100.00, the idea was to go buy a couple of frames then enlarge a couple of our images, frame them and then sell them. Well, the first hundred dollars only completed about four frames so I put another $100.00 dollars and that gave us at least six big pictures and some smaller pictures.

I started to advertise with all my family and friends and so did Michelle, I made it sound like we are doing something that has never been done -- lol and it kindda worked. A lot of my family members wanted to see them. Michelle and I have planned for an exposition to be held on the first weekend of April, I was hoping that by then I would have at least 12 frames.

Michelle held a party for her daughter Arielle last Sunday and since most of my family was here they wanted a preview. Needless to say the preview was a huge success, half of what we had sold on the spot and some wanted additional custom work. They will go ahead and let me keep them until we do the expo in April buy told me to make sure to put a SOLD sign on the ones that are spoken for.

To date I have spent a little over $250.00 but we expect to make a good profit once all the pictures sell. Before the month is over we will also launch a blog to showcase all the images that we have framed so far. Our starting price is $20.00 for a framed regular size photo. To our most expensive being $50.00 and then different prices in between depending on the frame and mat size. All the mats have been custom cut and color coordinated to complement the image, and so far we are working with 8 X 10 and 11 X 14 but once we get the funds in we will re-invest and explore with 14 X 16 and bigger.

I have asked Michelle to photograph some of the frames that are already done so we can post them, trust me you will be amazed that my $125.00 camera has captured such frame worthy images. At first they kept asking if we bought the images and framed them. "No, I was there and captured them myself" was my answer time and time again.

So, look for our new blog coming soon and tell us what you think. We are looking for feedback and critiques.

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Pictures

A lot of my family members and many of my readers are all avid amateur photographers. I for one can't go without having my camera with me for the what if there's a photo op. Pictures or in new age terms images since most of them never get printed on paper anymore are and will always be the best way to relive memories. Not even video captures as a photo camera does. It's like a camera captures and freezes the image so it can stand the test of time.

The old black and white pictures are shady, the ones with sepia tones look brownish and old, the first color pictures have turned orange, and Polaroids darkened but still the captured image is still there and when one of those pictures comes out a whole set of memories and emotions surface.

I have to laugh at the one where I am about two years old, it's an old black and white, I'm in my mother's arms, and wearing a little sailor suit. That picture hangs in one of my mom's house walls and every time I stop to see it my mom remembers that if they would put me down on the floor I would immediately start dancing. Ummm, me dancing... naw!

And how about the one where I am posing with my chopper 5-speed bicycle, or the one where mi chica sits on the grass and poses for yours truly. Yeap, memories, memories and nothing but memories.

Have you ever notice that going back to wedding pictures they can be among the goofiest pictures ever. There's the one where the priest is talking to us and my face just looks scared. Mi chica will always point that one out to me. lol She says that my face said "Oh my God, what am I getting into?" He, he, he, 28 years later I'm still trying to find out.

Yeah, pictures are the best way to remember your memories, although story telling comes a close second. I can see pictures by myself but I think it would be silly for me to tell me a story, right?

I cannot bring it here as embedding has been disabled but CLICK HERE for a good example of what pictures can do. Right now one of my favorite songs. Isn't it ironic, normally I saturate my posts with images and yet this one has none. Things that make me go hummmmm!

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Just a Sunset I Captured

I captured this sunset and I tried to come up with a new way of displaying it. this is not a new picture, I just reworked it a little bit.

Now that our home computer seem to be working I hope I can write about day #14 from our Mexico trip. That only leaves day #15 and that will finally be the end of the saga.

New Year's Eve Party

I know you were waiting to see some of the pictures from our New Year's gathering. Well wait no more, here are some pictures from that night.














Top Left: My older sister and I
Top Right: My daughter and her husband and their kids, and one in the oven.
Bottom Left: My daughter and two of my nieces.
Bottom Right: Mi chica and my daughter.

As I mentioned in the previous posts, we didn't have a huge gathering but still there were a good 20 of us, once again we had plenty of food and plenty to drink. We had ham, stake, rajas con cebolla y crema, shrimp, salad, salsas, smashed potatoes as I call them, and gravy, and to top it all off we had chocolate cake. Now you know why I am weighing 196 lbs.











Top left: My grandson and my son.
Top right: My grandson and I.
Bottom left: My sister and I
Bottom right: My daughter and my niece.


Me and my mom.