34/365: Rum Cake

Arrggghh Matey's! Time to make some Rum Cake, because we are having a Super Bowl Shin-Dig tomorrow and what better to serve than a sweet, buttery, tipsy cake? I even bought a Bundt Cake pan today for one of the cakes.



You see that Captain Morgan's Spiced rum bottle? Well, after making two of these things, the bottle is empty (and no, I didn't make myself a nice mixed drink while I was baking. In reality, just licking the batter off the mixer beater was enough to give me a little buzz).

The other cake:


And I can't post stuff like this without providing a link to the recipe:
Bacardi Rum Cake Recipe - you know you want to make one now!

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33/365: Scrapping Night

I spent some time this evening with pictures from October 2007 and created my Calendar page for that month. I haven't scrapped in a couple of weeks, and I got to use some Felt Lace for the first time!




Maybe I'll get some more time tomorrow evening to finish up the journaling and start on a new layout.

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32/365: Rite of Passage

Following the genes of her parents, Erica has been "blessed" with too many teeth. Both Scott and I endured braces as adolescents, so it didn't surprise us that she, too, would go through the same Rite of Passage.

The process started Monday, with X-rays and teeth molds. Remember those molds? Guncky, gritty, sticky, clay-like substance they put in a tray and then into you mouth. The top mold always set off that gag reflex. I remember it all too well. Nowadays, the materials set in one minute and they have flavors.

Today, Erica had her Brackets glued on. Again, I had to suffer through banded braces. The orthodontist had the brackets set on the top row of her teeth to start.


Next step: 4 teeth need to be extracted and then the wires go on. They estimate she'll be in the braces for two years. That's the amount of time I had them in, and they were worth the pain and hassle. That's what I continue to tell Erica.

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31/365: Snowy Commute

I have been making a concerted effort to take my camera "wherever I go", which includes taking it to work. Today, with 5" of fresh snow, it was slow going on the highway, except for the semi trailers who were passing and kicking up snow.

When the sun came out, I had to take a picture - but I was very safe - I didn't even look in the viewfinder - I just put the camera lens to the side of my face and snapped away. I didn't even adjust the settings. Thank goodness for autofocus! Here are the two pictures I took.

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30/365: Violin Practice

I have violin lessons on Tuesdays, and I hate to go into them "cold", so I made sure I practiced this afternoon. I haven't been as consistent with my playing since December, due to holidays and an erratic lesson schedule. Now that I've settled into a regular lesson schedule, I'll find time to play every day.



I started playing in 3rd grade and took a 22 year "sabbatical" starting in college. I did retain my basic skills, but I'm sure my fingers were much faster in 1986. But not a big deal - I still enjoy the process of creating music through my violin again.

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29/365: Late Amaryllis

I bought the Amaryllis bulb with the impression it would bloom, you know, for Christmas. For a while, I thought I had wasted $10 on something that resembled an onion. But look at it now.



I don't have a macro lens, nor do I claim to have any skills with close up photography. I think these are just OK when compared to other pictures I have seen, but I am happy with them, and I did enjoy taking the pictures. And I am enjoying the flowers during this cold winter season (yeah, we are due for more snow tonight. great.)



Thanks for looking!

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28/365: New Year's Dumplings

Tomorrow, we ring in the Chinese New Year. As with many holidays, we celebrate with special foods, and for New Year, this means dumplings and noodles. Normally, I buy frozen dumplings, but with help from Erica and Brian, we enjoyed homemade ones.



More pictures are on my personal blog.

Thanks for all of your kind comments, and Happy Chinese New Year!

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27/365: Suprised and Stunned

Brian took a shot to the chest during today's indoor soccer game. I just happened to snap this picture right after he was hit. He shook it off and was OK, although after the game he said he wanted to throw up after being hit.



Difficult exposure - he was in the direct sun and the background was very dark, which I lightened up, but there's some noise. Oh yeah - I forgot to reset my ISO settings from last night, so that added to the noise. Oh well.

Some other random shots from today's game:

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26/365: Tea Time

I am hosting our ladies' book club discussion tonight, and since Chinese New Year is just around the corner, I am serving tea in my cute Chinese tea set. I figure the tea will be a nice compliment to the decadent Rum cake I made yesterday.



I love the cute koi painted on the cups - they were the reason I purchased this particular set. The sad thing? I purchased the set in China 2 1/2 years ago, and tonight will be its first use. I guess we need to take more time out to steep tea and enjoy it with our friends and family.

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25/365: Grain Elevators

Trying to keep with the theme of Technology, today's pictures are of the large grain elevator that I drove by today coming home from violin lessons:



The company that runs the facility proposed building an ethanol plant in the adjacent fields. I'm fairly certain these plans have been scrapped. It is still an impressive facility, though, maybe the largest in the county.

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24/365: Kitchen Technology

This week's Project 365 theme at 2peas is Technology, so I decided to take pictures of the technology used in the kitchen.

Brian is now old enough to procure and even prepare his own food. He was getting some milk out of the fridge when I snapped this. He was happy because I didn't take a picture of his face (he tends to blink anyways).



Brian can use this modern marvel of kitchen technology, the microwave. I recently tried to recall how we used to re-heat leftovers before the microwave. I think we put everything in the oven! I do remember our first microwave - we received it as a "gift" for renovating the kitchen back in the early 80's. What a boat it was, and not very effective. I didn't think it was very "high tech" back then, but I can't imagine a kitchen without one now.


I know the picture is blurry, but that was the best I could do without dragging out the tripod!

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23/365 - History in the Making

I was unable to watch Obama being sworn in as the 44th President of United States live, so this is my commemoration of this historic event:



And while the word Hope has been used throughout his campaign, I pray President Obama puts his Trust in God and is guided by His hand.

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22/365 - That's the Appreciation I get

Erica has been complaining all winter long about the winter coat she has been forced to wear. She outgrew last year's coat and refused to wear the bigger coat I purchased several years ago (PSA - NEVER buy in advance) because it was too "poofy". I offered up one of my spare fleece jackets (it was the least poofy thing in the closet), and I have been on the lookout for something on sale.

Yesterday I found a nice Columbia three-in-one jacket that didn't cost an arm and a leg. We went to the store today and she approved (Hallelujah!). We purchase. We drive home. Then what does she do? She separates the inner fleece jacket from the outer shell and wears it. It looks *just like* the other winter coat she has been complaining about.

I took her picture and she wasn't happy about it. She thinks I am the meanest mother. Too bad.



Gotta LOVE this age.....

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21/365: New Toy for Scott

That's an air compressor. So he can add air to the car tires without traipsing out to the gas station. I think he just wanted one for the manly factor. Apparently this model has enough capacity to run air operated tools, and hopefully it won't turn into additional "toys"!

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20/365 - You Sunk my Battleship!

That's what I said as Brian whupped my tushie in a game a Battleship this afternoon!





It's no longer bitterly cold outside, but as a result of the cold front / high pressure system leaving our area, the clouds have rolled in, giving us another gray winter afternoon. Thank goodness for fun board games!

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19/365: Hit by a Coyote

Scott encountered a crazy coyote on the way to work this morning. He appeared from the East and crossed the Northbound highway without being hit, but wasn't as lucky crossing the Southbound highway. That's where he ran into the Corolla's rear wheel. Apparently dazed, the animal ran back to the East, crossing the Northbound highway again (without harm). The impact damaged the hub cap, and on the close up, you can see remnants of his fur hair.




Fortunately, Scott wasn't hurt and the damage to the car seems minimal (certainly much less than the time I ran over a deer in the convertible!).

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18/365 Frosty cold

The thermostat read minus 12 degrees Fahrenheit this morning. That's really cold. The cold temperatures, coupled with our crappy, cheap, drafty windows result in the formation of frost on the inside of the windows.




Did I mention the crappy, cheap windows? Oh, yeah. I did. At least I got some cool pictures.

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17 / 365: Tire Tracks in the Snow

We received 4 inches of snow today, so here are the tire tracks into the garage. I took one picture, then applied different Levels settings.

In PSE, I moved Black slider slightly from left to right. Even this picture shows more of the tracks' detail than what was really visible to my eye, but I think it represents a good balance.

How to make the fresh snow dirty. I moved the Black slider more to the right, close to where the histogram started to climb upwards.

I'm not sure which picture I prefer - the first one is more realistic but the second one is more dramatic.

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16/365: A Nasty Trojan

I got delayed a bit because of this:



Fortunately, the anti - Malware program I downloaded cleaned things up. But the scan took over two hours. That's what I get for not using an anti-virus program.

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15 / 365: Gooey Marshmallows

Our after dinner desert. Yum.

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White Balance Preset

I also posted this on my personal blog, and since it is photography related, thought I would post here, too.

Today's photography lesson - using the White Balance Preset on my camera. I even read the manual for the instructions on how to do this. I used White / Black / Grey / RAW Grey Card I had (taken out of my How - To - PSE 4.0 book by Scott Kelby).

Picture of the card, using Auto White Balance. Ugg - This has never been the D70's strong suite. Yeah, it is supposed to be white, black, grey and light grey.


Still using AWB, a picture of my CK magazine that arrived in the mail:


Then, I set the White Balance Preset, using the RAW White Balance section (a really light grey), then took the pictures again, with far better results:

See, the colors are right!




Now, setting the WB preset can take time and sometimes you just don't have time. This is why I shoot in RAW and adjust the WB in my Post processing step. In fact, I had to adjust many of the other pictures. I'm pretty sure the AWB has improved on the latest Nikon cameras, so I'll enjoy it when I finally buy that D300.

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14/365 - Peanut's Burial

After 2 1/2 years as our pet hamster, Peanut passed away of (presumably) natural causes last night. We buried him underneath the Hawthorn tree in the back yard this afternoon:





Although the kids were sad, they realized that Peanut lived a full life (the average life span is 2-3 years). His burial place is next to Nibly, our first hamster who experienced a much short time with us (~ 6 months).

Here is a previous picture of Peanut, taken back in October:

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13/365 - Haircut

I got a long overdue haircut today. Coco, my stylist, cut over 4 inches off - my last haircut was in March! It may be another 9 months before I get it cut again, so I took my picture. Next time, I'll get a before shot, too.



EXIF:
Exposure: 0.013 sec (1/80)
Aperture: f/2.8
Focal Length: 58 mm
Exposure Bias: -1/3 EV
adjusted WB, exposure, levels

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12a/365 - Bonus Picture

I loved the look of the clouds this morning as I drove into work. Here's the light post I parked under.

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12/365 - Lunch at the Candy Kitchen

Scott and I enjoyed lunch at the Candy Kitchen, a charming restaurant on Main Street. The restaurant / candy shop was refurbished last year and the owners retained much of the original details of this turn of the century (established in 1901) soda shop.

I've taken pictures of the floors (lovely mosaic tile), benches and lighting fixtures before:


The temperatures climbed into the high 40s today - you can't beat that in early January!

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11/365 - Rascal Waits for Her Daily Petting to Start

As I use the hair dryer every morning, Rascal expects me to give her a good head scratching. Here, she hears the whirl of the hair dryer motor and waits for me to start. As a 15 year old cat who basically sleeps all the time, I think Rascal enjoys the attention. Not to be morbid or anything, but Rascal could "kick the bucket" any day now, so I also enjoy this time.

I took the picture with my daughter's coolpix S210, because trying to hold a hair dryer AND look through a heavy camera / big lens doesn't work. I set the compact camera on High ISO setting, which allowed me to take the picture without the flash, but did result in a lot of noise. The noise doesn't really bother me, though - it kind of adds to her "elder cat-ness".

EXIF:
Exposure: 0.022 sec
Aperture: f/3.1
Focal Length: 6.3 mm
ISO Speed: 1600
Exposure Bias: 0/10 EV
Flash: Flash did not fire, auto mode

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10/365: January Calendar Art

Compliments of my son, Brian:



I would have received the calendar as a Christmas gift, but since the last day of school before vacation was canceled, I received it yesterday. The calendar is a great addition to my office walls.

EXIF:
Exposure: 0.013 sec (1/80)
Aperture: f/3.2
Focal Length: 62 mm
Exposure Bias: 1/3 EV
ISO: 200
Adjusted WB and levels. My camera really doesn't handle Auto WB very well.

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9/365 - Getting Started - Erica's Breakfast

After two weeks of lounging around the house, the kids had to go back to school today. Erica started her day off right - a nice bowl of Honey Nut Cheerios, enjoyed at the kitchen island while sitting on that John Deere stool:

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8/365 - Start.... Ready, Set, Go

On the TwoPeas Board, weekly photography topics have been posted to accompany Project 365. This week's topic is called "Start... Ready, Set, Go", with the following instructions:

This week's challenge is to take a photograph that signifies the start of something; it could be a race, a goal, a day, or a relationship...however you choose to interpret it is up to you!

In that vein, my picture today includes items I start my day with:


Yeah, that's just my stuff - and I can't live without it!

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7/365: The Start of Something.... well, just not right

I had another picture taken for today's Project 365 selection - a fairly mundane one of the boys playing the Wii. (One of the concepts around Project 365 is to capture the "every day" aspects of your life - kids playing video games certainly fits that concept).

But instead, we have this stool - a stool that Scott purchased at a Wal-Mart wannabe store (you know, the small town store that only exists because the real Wal-Mart is 25 miles away). A stool destined for the GARAGE, not the KITCHEN. [I'm not knocking John Deere, either. John Deere is a very nice company that makes nice lawn equipment - emphasis on the LAWN part]

The stool is in the kitchen because the kids have taken a liking to it and its functionality - it allows them to sit and eat at the kitchen island. So until I go out and purchase some more appropriate stools (I'm thinking two), the vinyl-chrome-clearly-doesn't-match-the-rest-of-the-house decor stool is going to stay in the kitchen. Yee-Ha!

I guess it's incentive for me to find some decent stools, quickly. I'll definitely take a picture of the replacement stools. (And maybe JD in his real environment - the GARAGE)

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