See you in a few days

Bye kittykat.I'll be home on Thursday. Just remember to meow real loud directly into Jimmy's ear and step on his face and swish your tail on his nose every morning so he won't forget to feed you and water you. If you're real good I'll give you a treat when I get home.
Love, mom
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Princeton by the Sea

More photos from Monday. Princeton by the Sea is a coastal town next to Half Moon Bay. It was 79 degrees which is very warm anytime of the year for that area.

Play it Forward

Have you seen the movie Pay It Forward? The idea is simple, when a kindness happens to you, make sure that the kindness doesn't stop with you...you Pay It Forward and be kind to someone else.

Well this is sort of the same idea but more tangible. I got the idea from Ragged, who in turn got it from Emily who in turn got it from___ and so on. You get the idea.

Here's the way it goes:
I pledge to send five tangible gifts to the first five people that decide to play along. These goodies will arrive by the end of the year. And they are surprises, so I can't tell you what they will be.

Here's what you have to do in return:
-Include a comment here if you want to play along; also e-mail me your address at madeline (at) retzlaff (dot) com.

-Return the favor: post about this on your blog, inviting five people to play along and sending five gifts to them as well.

Anyone up for a little fun? Any one wanna share some goodies? Then please, join me and Play It Forward!

October Orange

Fun, sunny day in Half Moon Bay, which is famous for it's pumpkin festivals.



California's biggest pumpkin in history.


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How to make the cow moo

Ah well, looks like I peeked everyones interest in how I made that animation on the cow 2 posts down! Well, as I mentioned about a month and a half ago, I've been struggling with the Mac switch over thing, but there is one good thing about the switch, and since I'm learning new stuff, I've dived right in and really learned new stuff. Especially in photoshop. And all my pc user friends out there, you can do this on the PC too. But you have to have Adobe Photoshop.

I started out with 2 photos:



Then I cropped them so they were exactly the same size.

Ok, now when you're cropping these images, it's important to pay attention to the details. You should be somewhat familiar with photoshop, too. That'll help. So this is where it can get a little complicated. If the mere mention of photoshop turns you to mush, you can fast forward to the end of this post for a link to Adobe's video tutorial. Visuals always help me and I wouldn't have been able to do this without the tutorial.

Now back to cropping your photos. In Photoshop (I used CS3), create a new document that's the same size as your original photos and add both of them in as 2 layers. I had the silent cow as my bottom layer and the mooing cow as the top layer. I made the mooing cow about 20% transparent and moved her around till she was exactly over the silent cow. Once I was happy with how it lined up, I cropped both of them then saved each layer in it's own document. Are you still with me?

So now I have 2 separate images but they match perfectly.

And here is where I consulted the tutorial on
Working with Image Sequences

follow those directions.
I had the silent cow play for .5 sec and the mooing cow play for 1 sec and had it loop forever.

Now when you're ready to save, make sure to resize the image and "Save for Web and Devices" in Photoshop and (this is important) save as a GIF rather than a jpg. jpgs do not animate. I used the GIF 128 Dithered option for the best image quality. In that save for web window, you'll notice there are play options on the bottom right and after you've selected to save as a GIF. Click on play so you'll have a preview of what it will look like.



So hurray! You've created your animated GIF!! Bravo!
(It took me nearly an hour so try to remain calm and have a lot of patience).

Think you're finished and can just pop it onto your blog? Ah, well, blogger wouldn't let it be so simple now would they? Here's the dealio with MY blogger. I download all my images to an FTP sight, that's why my blog is: www.willowgrace.com/blog rather than www.willowgrace.blogspot.com. I use a blogger template but some things are just a little different. So in regular blogspot, I think you will need to post the image so it doesn't resize on your front page: ie it stays the original size that you saved it as. That might mean that you have to save it smaller, like your maximum side should be no bigger than 600 pixels - but don't quote me on that.

So, there you go! A complete rambling and probably nonsensical How To Animate. I totally apologize for how i give instructions. I'm certain i made it sound more complicated than it really is, so those of you who know photoshop really should just click on the tutorial. It's fun and the effect is worth it!
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donkey talk

ok, i don't know what i'm doing. i've never uploaded my own video before, so please forgive me if it doesn't work or doesn't look right or isn't fancy. But here's some more animal talk. I caught him mid-sentence because I wasn't prepared and didn't have the camera w/ video ready.
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Talk to the animals

During our tour around Clear Lake, I made Jimmy and Drew stop at nearly every spot where we saw animals. And I would talk to each and every one of them. These were the friendliest animals because a lot of them walked right up to the fence and some even talked back to us.


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Cloudy Day at Clear Lake

Jimmy and Drew have been buddies since they were 12 and played little league baseball together. He was one of the groomsmen in our wedding nearly 17 years ago.But in the past 21 years since graduating from high school, they hadn't spent more than a few hours together. Sound kind of familiar? It's reminiscent to my visit to Alaska and rekindling a friendship with my high school friend, Linda. In our junior year, before Jimmy and I started dating, both Jimmy and Drew were in my American History class. That's the class that we all became friends. We sat in the same row, Jimmy in front, Drew behind him and me behind Drew. They called me The Flip. One test day, Drew was absent and Jimmy sat in front of me. That was the turning point in our relationship when Jimmy prevented me from cheating on the test. Oh yea, this isn't about me, but about Jimmy and Drew, huh? Anyway, after graduation, Jimmy and Drew kept in touch, but didn't see each other much aside from the occasional get together with other buddies, once every 6 or 7 years whenever we'd get back to the high desert or San Diego. Fast forward 20 years and Drew's parents found their own little hideaway in Northern California about 3 hours from us. Drew was here for the week to ride in the Konocti Challenge so we went to visit him for a couple of days. He took us to a few historical sights, showed us the scenic views from his ride the weekend before, took us wine tasting and brought us to a couple of really great restaurants like the Blue Wing Saloon and TNT on the Lake for great Mexican food right on the lake.

The Lakeport Courthouse built in 1871 served the county until 1968. It's currently a museum that houses many county records along with artifacts from the local Native Americans.

Jimmy and Drew check out some of the historical data. We were pleasantly surprised that we could freely browse through these old books.

In my previous post I probably wasn't very convincing about the fall colors. But as you'll see now, we were surrounded by autumn's beautiful bounty.
Walnut groves for miles and miles.

Ranch horse among the trees.

Clear Lake is about an hour north of Napa and the vineyards have steadily crept more and more north.


One of the wineries Drew took us for wine tasting was Ceago.
We don't really drink, but with a purchase they give you 5 tastings. Drew bought a bottle and gave me the tastings. I don't like wine and in general I don't typically like the flavor of alcohol. And Jimmy doesn't drink at all. So I started out skeptical and the first 2 tastes were bitter as I expected. But the 3rd taste, which happened to be the same one Drew bought, was actually decent. It was their "Del Lago" Muscat Canelli. I ended with that and forgo the other 2 tastings. After the tastings, we walked around the winery awhile.

Lavender fields at the winery.

Ceago has a dock to the lake. Clear Lake is the largest fresh water lake in California.

Enjoying the views at the winery.

Our last and most creepy visit for the day was to see the Castle near the northern shores of Clear Lake. It was originally a lake resort ill-timely built in 1927 just before the Great Depression. As can be imagined, there are rumors of ghosts that haunt the tower. Despite it's look of disrepair, it's currently used and operated by the Castlepoint Ministries.
After our long day touring the area, we headed back to his hideaway, had some dinner and the boys stayed up talking and laughing about who knows what for who knows how long. I hope we can make this an annual thing. We had so much fun!!
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Drive by shooting

On our way to Clearlake Thursday afternoon, we drove thru the east bay and the Napa Valley. Jimmy and I have never been to Napa together and the last time I was there was over 10 years ago.Autumn just might be the most perfect time to visit the Napa Valley. The trees and vineyards are glowing orange, yellow, red and green. ok, so maybe in this photo everything is still green, but it's an autumn shade of green, lol. We were ahead of the peak color change by a couple of weeks but it was still remarkable - like nothing I've seen before. I've wavered over which season is my favorite because I love summer activities and being on the lake and eating lots of fresh fruits and veggies but I don't like the heat. But our little autumn adventures this weekend may have tipped the scale towards fall a bit more. I said several times during our adventuring that "fall is my favorite season." If only there were a way to boat in the fall and not freeze my butt off.

Here are a few boats that might not be enjoying the views as much as we were:This collection of Navy ships in the east bay next to the Benicia Bridge has been nicknamed the Mothball Fleet. Over 75 decommissioned ships sit there waiting at attention. It's the largest single collection of ships on the Pacific Ocean. Some are in reserve for possible future use and others are mere ghosts or heroes from the nautical past.

In Napa, many of the vineyards decorated their entrances with pumpkins. No time for wine tasting, we had to be in Clearlake for dinner.

Napa bichon with her pearls and bandana. Must be a local, the Napa wealth with the laid back Napa style. LOL!

Driving thru a tree tunnel in St. Helena.
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Well hello October, aren't you beautiful

I've got a pretty busy month ahead and I'm looking forward to the adventures.

We went to the hideaway this past weekend with our good friends the Bowen's.Ok, now aren't they one of the most photogenic families you've seen?

It was too cold to take the boat out, but the kids still enjoyed getting into the boat even though it never left the garage.Miss A does her best Titanic impression even though she's never seen the movie.

Prince W got so excited he had a devilish little grin.

He definitely loved pretending to drive it. The imaginations of children...so awesome to see in their eyes.

Miss A pretended to row the boat, all the while singing the appropriate song, but Little W continued on his journey powering down that gentle stream.

After our garage boating adventures, we headed to Covers Apple Ranch for some lunch and a ride on the little train. Apparently the theme of the weekend was transportation.Here's the whole gang getting ready for a little ride.

Just about to go into the tunnel!

Interested in a little swim? Uh, no thank you. It may almost look picturesque, but I wouldn't even stick my big toe in that mucky water.

The ranch also has a few farm animals and the kids enjoyed feeding them some corn.

This last photo isn't in focus but she is just having so much fun that I couldn't resist.
Tomorrow, we're off again for another long weekend, first to Clear Lake then back to the hideaway with one of my dearest friends and her family.

My apologies to my bloggy friends, I'm very behind on catching up with your posts. We're only home for 2 days but I look forward to reading all about your autumn adventures next week. Till then I wish everyone a blissful, carefree, feel-like-you're-flying push on that swing.
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Boyhood haiku

He's always climbing
Only stopping for a snack
Dirt mixed with Oreos

submitted to One Deep Breath Haiku Challenge
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