Posted by Sally Cummings on Monday, January 4, 2016,
As promised, here is the wrap-up of 25 Christmas decorations in 25 days for 2015 - the second year I've taken photos of Christmas ornaments on my tree for each day in December leading up to Christmas.
A few ornaments still didn't make it into the final selection of 50 (25 last year, 25 this year) but I got most of my special ones in. The full photo set of inidividual decorations is on
Flickr.
It's a funny experience, posting about Christmas every day. If you love Christmas (and I do), it stretc...
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Posted by Sally Cummings on Tuesday, December 1, 2015,
It's that time of year again! I do love Christmas time - for the family memories, the nostalgic traditions, the seasonal cooking, and of course the decorations!
I've already put up the tree this year and have decorated it with my favourite ornaments collected over the years. Some I made myself, some are purchased, some are gifts, and some are family treasures. Nothing matches, and there is no overall theme to my Christmas decorating - everything I love gets thrown at the tree, and I give mysel...
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Posted by Sally Cummings on Monday, June 29, 2015,
In :
Technology
So an odd thing happened yesterday. One of my index cards was featured in
Flickr Explore, and it was a very interesting experience ...
I first realised something unusual was going on when I started getting phone notifications for 'likes' (favourites on Flickr) at a much faster rate than usual, and from people that I didn't know. There were just 3 or 4 to start with, and my first thought was perhaps I was getting spammed. I actually had a quick look at Explore on my phone, but couldn't see my p...
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Posted by Sally Cummings on Friday, June 26, 2015,
I popped into the city to run some errands yesterday, and as I'd heard of a new art installation called Prevaricated Frequencies by Victoria University's
Skunk Control in the
Flinders St station / DeGraves St subway art space, I decided to make a detour and check it out.
Although the sign had a start date of 24 June and a few pieces were already set up, they were still in the process of constructing some of the displays.
Skunk Control's Facebook page says the installation begins on 30 June, s...
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Posted by Sally Cummings on Wednesday, June 24, 2015,
In :
Creativity
I loved Snoopy and Peanuts when I was young. In fact, I still love them. So when I saw a sweet cross stitch pattern of Snoopy and his doghouse on eBay, I snapped it up.
I completed the stitching in January this year, and found a neat little blue photo frame that suited it just right - it matches his collar :)
The pattern had called for 14 count Aida fabric, but I decided to use 16 count instead. This reduced the design down to just the right size for a standard photo frame. The stitches were sm...
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Posted by Sally Cummings on Monday, June 1, 2015,
In :
Creativity
And with June, comes the annual #blogjune daily blogging challenge! I'm taking part again this year, and like last year I'll also be doing the
#ICAD (Index-Card-A-Day) challenge over June and July.
Sadly last year my Mum's health suddenly worsened, and she passed away at the end of June. Of course this brought an abrupt end to my participation in both challenges as I concentrated on spending time with my family, grieving, and finally administering Mum's estate.
I did create a few more index car...
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Posted by Sally Cummings on Sunday, January 18, 2015,
In :
Creativity
I didn't do a lot of crafting in 2014 - my emotional and physical energy was sapped, and it was an effort to engage my creativity. There were a few brief spurts, notably my short participation in
#ICAD last year, but overall I struggled to find the time or inspiration.
Towards the end of the year, I decided to change all that. It might sound like a cliche, but I felt like I was only living half a life when I had nothing creative going on. So I made a deliberate effort to make the time and oppo...
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Posted by Sally Cummings on Sunday, January 11, 2015,
I put my Christmas tree up early for a change in 2014. When I posted a
photo of it on Instagram in late November, I mentioned that I had more ornaments than space on my tree. My friend
Jo suggested that I post photos of individual ornaments each day, so that people could get a closer look. I thought that was a great idea, so 25 Christmas decorations in 25 days was born :)
Each day in December, up to and including Christmas Day, I posted a photo of an ornament on Instagram. Some were decoration...
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Posted by Sally Cummings on Sunday, June 15, 2014,
In :
Creativity
Another week of #ICAD (Index-Card-A-Day) has passed, so it's time for another round up of my week's creative efforts.
The second week was a little harder than the first week, as I hit a few creative stumbling blocks. I'm trying to do something different each day, and that will keep on getting harder as the challenge progresses. The central card in the above collage was the result of feeling frustrated at my own lack of technique (and sometimes imagination too).
But I'm persevering, because some...
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Posted by Sally Cummings on Tuesday, June 10, 2014,
In :
Professional
I love a bit of retro style, and these vintage library posters are fantastic! I think they could still be used today :)
And for the fiction buffs ...
There's a whole
Flickr album of these posters, collected by a library technician who goes by the username
Enokson.
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Posted by Sally Cummings on Sunday, June 8, 2014,
In :
Creativity
The first week of #blogjune and #ICAD (Index-Card-A-Day) has drawn to a close, and as promised in my
first post I have put together a round up of my week's #ICAD efforts.
I have found the Index-Card-A-Day challenge to be a lot of fun, but also surprisingly challenging. It's been a long time since I've put pen or brush to paper on a regular basis - and it showed! I felt quite clumsy on several occasions, especially when trying new techniques or media.
But that's the point really. It's about exer...
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Posted by Sally Cummings on Sunday, June 1, 2014,
In :
Creativity
It's June already! Which means it's time for the #blogjune (blog every day of June) challenge to commence once more :)
I've been looking forward to participating this year, since I missed it last year due to travelling through parts of Australia with very little internet access. This year is the fifth year of #blogjune, so it will be my fourth attempt.
If you're interested in getting involved in #blogjune, Con Wiebrands has provided some information and a
sign-up page, as well as a
list of the ... Continue reading ...
Posted by Sally Cummings on Wednesday, June 13, 2012,
In :
Technology
I have lots of photography and video apps on my iPhone. Most of them are free, though I've paid for a few too. They let me edit or play with photos or videos in ways that previously could only be done on a desktop or laptop computer - and sometimes in new ways altogether! Some apps try to do everything (crop, contrast, filters, frames, etc.) and others just focus on doing one thing well (panoramas, colour splash, stop motion).
WaterMyPhoto is a neat little app that does one thing well. It cost...
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Posted by Sally Cummings on Sunday, June 3, 2012,
In :
Technology
Last year my colleagues and I put together a fun library orientation program for students that involved treasure hunts, QR codes, animated videos and more. It was a great project to work on, and I've previously blogged about it
HERE.
As part of the online version of the treasure hunt, we used video clips that I created with an online tool called
Blabberize. They were silly, and they made students laugh - which was exactly the reaction we'd hoped for. They were also a hoot to play during the co...
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Posted by Sally Cummings on Sunday, October 16, 2011,
In :
Travel
The
ALIA Top End Symposium was on last weekend, and the following day I headed off to Alice Springs where I spent a week working at the
campus library there. So I have heaps that I want to blog about, but I'm going to start with an unsual experience I had in Alice this week.
My colleague Leonie took me on a tour of the uni campus - she was a great guide and introduced me to lecturers and staff all over campus. One of the highlights of my campus tour, though, was meeting a staff member called S...
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Posted by Sally Cummings on Wednesday, June 22, 2011,
In :
Food & Recipes
A colleague of mine recently took part in a retro dinner party, where all of the food had to be popular dishes from the 50s and 60s. We had a marvellous conversation on this topic, dredging up all kinds of memories of foods of the era that we'd seen in films or on television, but especially from our own recipe collections. It was this conversation that inspired us to make
blancmange this week :)
During our discussion, I reminisced about a set of old Weight Watchers recipe cards that my Mum onc...
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Posted by Sally Cummings on Friday, June 17, 2011,
I have no energy for writing a blog post today.
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Posted by Sally Cummings on Thursday, June 16, 2011,
In :
Technology
I love discovering fun online tools, especially when they're free :)
Dumpr is a photo and image editing tool that I came across at the beginning of the year. It has some really nice effects available. A few of the effects that used to be free are now part of their paid "pro" package, but there are still enough free ones to make it worthwhile checking out.
I especially like the Amazing Circles effect. It doesn't work well with every image, you'll have to try a few to find out for yourself which ...
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Posted by Sally Cummings on Tuesday, May 31, 2011,
In :
Travel
Alternative title: My first cyclone
Yes, I know. This blog post is ridiculously out of date (three months late!). But I couldn't just leave it languishing in my drafts folder forever, so it's time to finish it off and get it out there :)
Way back in February
I wrote about the formation of what was to become Tropical Cyclone Carlos. On the 15th of February, we watched the weather graduate from lots of rain, to tropical low, to cyclone watch, to cyclone warning ...
My last blog post left off on th...
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Posted by Sally Cummings on Sunday, February 13, 2011,
So, I'm still taking part in the Daily Image 2011 challenge on Flickr. I'm slightly surprised that I'm still going, and haven't missed a day yet. Even when the last thing I've felt like doing was taking a photo of myself, I've still managed to give myself a little push and do it. And I'm glad, because although I'm getting sick of the sight of myself ;) I'm really enjoying being part of this community activity and seeing the interesting photos being posted by all of the participants :) You can...
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Posted by Sally Cummings on Sunday, January 16, 2011,
Thanks to a intriguing invitation from
Kathryn Greenhill, I've started off the year by participating in the
Daily Image 2011 challenge on Flickr.
Daily Image 2011 involves posting a photo or video of yourself each day for 365 days, or however many days you can manage. You, or part of you, must appear in each day's picture. The details are on the
Librarians Matter blog, and on the
Daily Image 2011 Flickr group page.
I'm a sucker for a challenge it seems, although I try to keep it realistic ;) Da...
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Posted by Sally Cummings on Thursday, September 23, 2010,
Hello, did you miss me? ;)
I've been in Darwin for 7 weeks now, but the time has absolutely flown! I'll try to make this a quick catch-up, with more blog posts to come ...
We lived out of hotel rooms for the first 3 weeks, before finding and moving into a house here in Darwin. By Darwin standards, we were lucky to find a place so quickly! Of course, we're paying through the nose, but that's a given here. The house is close-ish to my work, it's got air-conditioning in every room, a plunge pool a...
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Posted by Sally Cummings on Tuesday, August 3, 2010,
When I first set up this blog, it was partly with the intention of using it to keep my family and friends up-to-date with my life when I moved interstate. Well, now it's finally time to start doing just that!
I arrived in Darwin last night. The weather is perfect. The serviced apartment that I'm staying at is great, and is centrally located in the CBD. Everything feels both familiar and unfamiliar. Love it!
Tim and I have had a crazy few weeks getting ready for this move. Unfortunately, Tim won...
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Posted by Sally Cummings on Wednesday, June 30, 2010,
In :
Professional
Well, today is the last day of #blogeverydayofjune
It's also my last day at work, having finished my contract at the Victorian Parliamentary Library. Again.
Although I'm ready for new adventures in new libraries in new places, I will always have the fondest memories of working with the wonderful group of people at "Parl" :)
I played tourist in my own workplace today and got snap happy. I hope you enjoy these photos of the gorgeous library that I've been lucky enough to work at for the last three...
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Posted by Sally Cummings on Monday, June 21, 2010,
I'm working on a job application right now, so don't have time for a full blog post.
Instead, I'm sharing this lovely photo uploaded to
Flickr by the
Victorian Public Records Office.
This is how the State Bank handled internal correspondence until 1974. It reminds me of the tubes used to disseminate "information" in George Orwell's
Nineteen Eighty-Four. Also, check out the shoes!
P.S. Let's not talk about how much time I spent on Flickr looking for a photo that I liked, when I could have been ei...
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Posted by Sally Cummings on Monday, June 7, 2010,
In :
Travel
I'm in the mood for sharing some photos :)
I've just uploaded to
Flickr a collection of photos taken on a trip to
Strahan, on Tasmania's west coast, in August 2006.
We flew from Melbourne to Burnie to meet up with a friend who was working there at the time, then drove down to the pretty township of Strahan. We went for a walk along the beach, explored the town and had dinner at the pub. I loved our accommodation at
Risby Cove - complimentary port! The next day we went on an amazing
Gordon River... Continue reading ...
Posted by Sally Cummings on Friday, December 18, 2009,
In :
Creativity
Sorry about the lack of a blog post yesterday - I was stitching to a deadline and ran out of time!
I've been meaning to post here for some time about crafty stuff - crafts that I currently do and crafts that I want to learn. That blog post is still in the pipeline, but for now I'll show you my latest cross stitch project of robots mucking around in a photo booth :)
(click on the photo to see a larger version on Flickr). The pattern was created by
Krupp at Mr X Stitch. I loved the design as soo...
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Posted by Sally Cummings on Saturday, November 21, 2009,
In :
Technology
If you've visited my site lately, you may have noticed a new entry on the left-hand menu. It's called "Tumblr" and it links to a
web page with my latest ten Tumblr posts.
In case you haven't come across
Tumblr before, it's a microblogging site, but it's quite different to that most well-known microblogging service, Twitter. With Tumblr, you can quickly and easily grab interesting things off the internet - web pages, photos, videos, quotes, blog posts, etc. - and display them on Tumblr with a c...
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Posted by Sally Cummings on Tuesday, October 20, 2009,
In :
Travel
Canberra is a city that seems to arouse strong emotions in people. Whilst a small proportion of the population may simply think it's 'okay' or 'nice', the vast majority appear to either love it or hate it. I certainly know plenty of people in both camps!
Me? I am firmly in the 'love it' category!
I lived in Canberra from 1999 to 2002. I moved there from Melbourne to take up a position with a large government department as part of their graduate program. I stayed for four years, working in a var...
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Posted by Sally Cummings on Friday, June 26, 2009,
The magpies are gathering in our street, and swooping season approaches. Help!
I used to look forward to spring. Who wouldn't? It's a beautiful time of year. But for the last 10 years or so, I have somehow ended up on the magpie hit list. Now every year I dread the coming of spring and the accompanying magpie nesting season.
Just in case I have some international readers, I should note that I am talking about the Australian Magpie. This is a particularly fearsome bird, quite large and with ...
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