Cosmos & Digital Scrapbooking & Charlotte Peters Show (Issue 128)

& an old pseudonym & memories & an old Hummdinger photo

I created a new website page for Cosmos with my study notes. It has not been my friend over the years. I love “cottage” flowers and this is one of them, but it does not love me or my garden space. I have tried several years now, especially since I hear so many folks talking about what a great flower it is and how easy it is to grow.

Here is the YouTube video. I eventually gave up on my Cosmos ever really blooming this year and pulled it up a few days ago. Realizing I had only spent a quarter on the seeds was the tipping point of my giving up on it. I absolutely did NOT love in my garden, but I share a snippet in the video of the flower farm we went to this year and it was so lovely there. I do not think I have the right sun vs. shade or kind of soil and nutrients this so-called-easy plant needs.

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I learned that BMSB is the abbreviation for the full name of the horrible stink bugs that have invaded our patio again this year. There were literally a few hundred that were captured and put into a pickle jar of vinegar. We learned a few years ago that this is the way to best kill them. It’s nasty looking through the glass, but it works. We keep the jar setting out and every time we see another one, we pop the lid off and knock in the bug. BMSB stands for: brown marmorated stink bug. I think I’ll just call them stick bugs. Nasty things. They do not bite, but when you capture them in your palm to throw them in the jar, the walk their legs tickling your skin and creeping you out.

That brings up the questions: what is “marmorated.” Here’s the answer: "Marmorated" means having a streaked or marbled appearance. I won’t remember that.

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That brings me to window cleaning. We spent the weekend cleaning the windows in our house. Every time I tell people that we did this, they tell me that I am inspired. So here is your inspiration to get out and clean those windows!

October is our tradition to clean all the windows of the house inside and out. First, the weather is cooler now so the windows do not streak. Second, soon we will be stuck inside during the cold months looking out and our windows will be pleasant.

He does the outside and I do the inside. He sprays it with the water hose, then rubs it down with a cloth on a stick and soap and water, spray rinses it with the hose, squeegees it, and then hits it with window cleaner. I work on the grooves that the windows slide in which are horribly difficult to clean, and he often ends up helping me as we open the window, and then I hit the window with window cleaner.
The fun part, as you know, is the poking and pointing at the window to each other as we try to figure out some spot one or the other of us sees and which side of the window it is on. It is team work and coordination for sure. Then there is a thumbs up and on to the next window.

The windows now look SO great and they are bringing me joy! Life is about the little things.

I am SO glad that we got it done the first weekend in October so now we do not have this disheartening task facing us anymore. I hope to get out and about when the Autumn colors appear soon.

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Digital Scrapbooking

I was delighted to see Rachel Jeffries mention me in her recent post called “My Thoughts on Creativity as we celebrate Digital Scrapbook Day.

My thoughts on creativity as we celebrate Digital Scrapbook Day

I absolutely love the style of Rachel Jeffries and Lynn Grieveson ‘s design style. I enjoy using their digital scrapbooking designs. These two have almost been digital scrapbooking as long as I have. I consider them in the same “digital scrapbooking generation” as me. I wrote a long time ago about the years for which generations, but I’d have to look that up again. There are still a lot of “goodies” a/k/a excellent designers still in the digital scrapbooking world that have been around for a long time.

DSD was last weekend, so the sales have now ended, as well as the blog hop, but follow them as they are always sharing sale items.

Rachel’s post mentioning me and the beginning of Digital Scrapbooking Day history brought back a lot of memories. I preserved the history of DSD and iNSD on my website here. I helped to launch it in 2007. I think I was asked to help because of the large amount of followers on my blog.

Rachel let the “cat out of the bag,” as the saying goes, that my pseudonym for privacy back in the day was “Hummie” at “Hummie’s World.” There are lots of people who know that, but many, many more-of-a-majority of people who do not associate my real name with my old identification. I had a large following back then, but when I closed down that website and pseudonym, most people did not make the jump to the new “real” me.

That nickname was dubbed to me by complete strangers when I first joined Yahoo Groups to chat about Survivor, the reality television show. It was a group that shared Survivor spoilers and it was great fun! I remember that the spoilers almost always came true and the fun part was in trying to figure out how a contestant would get from their current standing to wherever the spoiler ended them up at. Then it was a great shock and surprise to see the unexpected path from this point to that point. So although we knew some spoilers, we were still surprised.

Grandma playing the washtub in “The Hummdingers" band & her sister June at the mic.”

Survivor first started in April of 2000, and that sounds about the right time when I had my first social experience online. We were much more careful of our privacy back in the beginning of internet days than we are now, so I did not even want to share my first name. However, my email address showed up in the posts of “hummdingertub,” which I created to honor my Grandma and her charity and novelty band called “The Hummdingers.” That email was already taken, so I decided to add “tub” to it because Grandma played the washtub in the band.

The folks asked me my name and I replied that I did not want to share my name. Then the folks asked me “What shall we call you.” My response was a long silence as I pondered that question, and during that silence, someone piped in that they would start calling me “Hummie” which was short for my email address. And it stuck. It stuck so long that in 2007 I ended up creating my domain name with the name. In fact, it stuck so long that it was still being used when I shut down my website, I guess, in about 2017. Then it continued to stick thereafter when people learned my real name and could not stop calling me by the name they had already known me by. And here in 2024, Rachel brings it up again, so I suppose it still lives.

I still want to get back into digital scrapbooking. I love the hobby. I want to get back to doing new tutorials and inspiring people. I find so much joy is watching others learn and get excited about being able to create something new. However, I have made a promise to myself to refrain from certain hobbies until I finish what I call my “Winter project” which is labeling all of the family photos that I have finally scanned in. When (not if) I get that done, I plan to get back into the hobby again. I have no idea if I can be a leader with it again or not, or whether my efforts will be futile, but I want to try.

For those that do not know, ALL of my old digital scrapbooking (Photoshop & Photoshop Elements) tutorials and class lessons are still online at my current website. I took a long time to preserve them for digital scrapbookers and moved them all over out of my now-closed forum onto website pages and YouTube. It is all completely free. If you know someone that could benefit from them, please pass along the link. The various classes are in the “tutorials” drop down menu. I note at first glance it needs to be updated as some of the old links are not working and are no longer used, but the bulk of it is still usable. Oh, and I am reminded that I won’t miss all the techy parts of installing, upgrading, maintaining, and backing up a forum on a website. Never again will I do that! It worked well for the period of time in history, but there are much easier ways to do the same now.

I’ll start my “Winter project” soon and be sharing interesting finds as I go through my family scans, just as I did last Winter. I think others enjoyed those posts. I have two more planned plant/flower videos and posts to make before I switch over. I also have several plants with photos in folders. I am not sure if I will try to put those up thereafter, without videos, or leave that for next Spring.

It is also my goal to transcribe the voluminous minutes from the Hummdingers (all of which are scanned in), and compile the photos and what few videos I have into a website page and/or a YouTube video. I paid a good amount of money to obtain a video of them playing on the Ted Mack show in Texas and received copyright permission to share it online. Just to show a tidbit of what is to come when I get to that project, above is a note about their performance on the Charlotte Peters show in 1957.

Here’s another snipped of the same page mentioning an additional performance on the Charlotte Peters show, adding the additional information that it was on the St. Louis television station K.S.D.-TV. Look here: Wikipedia information on the Charlotte Peters show. Very interesting. Again repeated, very interesting! Look who her substitute was! And look who her son was! And look why her show was canceled! I wonder if any of those show videos have survived and where they would be.

Oh wait! A link to a YouTube episode! So some clips did survive. Hmmm. Anybody know where I might ask to see if it has been archived?

Until next time, I hope you enjoy your day.

Cheryl