jiminy crispies!

A parcel of absolutely loveliness arrived in the post, via a burly brown UPS truck.

Want to guess what it ... *voices rises to a squeak* ... was!??

Adobe Design Suite CS Flippin' 4!







*gaspchokedie*

I started using Photoshop by the equal influences of my sister, Sara, and my online RPG addiction. She learned how to use it in her photography classes in college and when we would help her in her studio a few years later (2003, I think), she taught me how to do some simple things. I honestly can't remember, but I don't think I was terribly enthusiastic at the time. I think we were using Photoshop 5 or so then.

At the same time, I was doing Harry Potter roleplaying online, writing like a crazy girl. On those forums, they always have all of these generic avatars and signatures, that they just pass around and find free on sites. However, when I switched my roleplaying site, the new site, MH, had a quantity of Photoshop users, who would make custom signatures with models that represented our characters. It was so fun to personalize each character that one day I sat down on Sara's horrible, large, chunky black PC and conjured up my very own signature, using Ashlee Simpson as my model.



There it is. I just logged into my ridiculously old Photobucket account and found it.

I personally think that it was a good try for my first creation. I guess it was an omen of sorts. After that, I used Photoshop all the time. I downloaded it our family PC and trucked away at it, from . Five years later I can use Photoshop, as well as Illustrator, have made graphics for a band, Chamber of Commerce, realty, a small newspaper, an ad booklet, the Green Bean Coffee Cafe, three different websites for the Green Bean, a website for KC Elrod Photography, and of course, graphics, photography and photo editing for Sara Wise Photography, in which I am a company partner (of sorts). I went from the really old, beige, whirring PC, to a pretty white iMac named Johnny, to my new iMac, the silver & black beauty named Ernie. I've had Photoshop 7, CS, CS2 and now...

CS4.

And that is my story. Kind of like a rags-to-riches thing. Lol, it's so epic written down.

Say goodbye to the crappy, old, slightly not-so-legitimate Creative Suite 2... *waves*



Btw, want to know something really awesome?

I got that whole suite, which consists of about 9 different programs (which I intend to learn and use to their greatest potential), for $600. "What?!" I hear you say, "I thought Photoshop cost thousands!" Well, you're kind of right. I was eligible for the educational discount from Academic Superstore.

Buying it straight from Adobe, with no discounts, just Photoshop is $699. The whole Design Suite is $1799. I saved eleven hundred dollars.

So, anyways, isn't that awesome...

peace out,
caroline

p.s. i promise i'm not bragging, peeps. ;-]

the shiiiindig

We had a super fun, albeit windy, fall party/birthday party for Christina on Saturday. I made a video, so I don't think I need to say much more than: Happy Birthday, Christina! Thank you, everyone who came. :)

oatmeal cinnamon-raisin scones

Oatmeal cinnamon-raisin scones are... *quickly searches handy thesaurus* ... scrumptious, mouthwatering, delectable. Yum. Another Baking Illustrated recipe.

1 & 1/2 cup old fashioned rolled oats, or instant oats
1/4 whole milk
1/4 heavy cream
1 egg
1 & 1/2 cup unbleached, low-protein flour, like Gold Medal (not King Arthur. If you use King Arthur, make sure to add a tbsp or two more milk)
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
1/3 cup sugar
1/2 tsp salt
10 tbsp unsalted butter
1/2 cup raisins

I didn't have whole milk or heavy cream, so I just used 1/2 cup half and half, which seemed to work just as beautifully. Also, if you don't have unsalted butter (is an advocate of salted butter!), you can use salted, just remember not to put the extra salt in.




Spread the oats onto a cookie sheet.


And toast in the oven at 375, until lightly browned and fragrant. Let cool. Prepare a baking sheet. It says to use parchment paper, so if you have some, go for it. I had no problem with a naked pan.

Turn up the oven to 450.


Mix together cream, milk and egg in a medium sized mixing bowl. Set aside 1 tbsp for glaze.






Put flour, baking powder, cinnamon, sugar and salt in a food processor, fitted with a blade. Pulse until mixed, about 4 or so one-second pulses. Chop up the butter into small pats and dump on top of the flour mixture, then pulse about 14 one-second pulses, or until its the consistency of rough cornmeal. Mm.

Pour into separate, large mixing bowl. Add oats and raisins, keeping 2 tbsp of oats behind for use in dusting workspace. Pour in liquid mixture and fold together with a spatula until it forms these lovely mashy clumps. Then, the fun part... make sure your hands are clean, then dig into it yourself. I love squishing food with my hands: ground beef, mashed potatoes, frosting, if it's mushy I like to mush it. Anyway, back to the recipe. Knead it in the bowl, until it's in one cohesive mass.



Then, if you have one, use a 9 inch round cake pan. Sprinkle the bottom of the pan with half of your set aside oats, plop the ball in the middle, and squash it evenly into the pan, until it is flat. Then sprinkle the top with the other half of the oats, pat them, and move on with life. You can use a dough scraper or a brownie cutter or a chef's knife to cut the pie-like dough into eight parts. Taking the parts out may be kind of tricky, depending on the consistency of your dough. If they take a bit of smushing to come out, just reshape them.

Place them on your prepared baking sheet, 2 inch apart. Get out your 1 tbsp of cream/egg mixture and brush it onto each wedge, then top with 1 tbsp of sugar. By that I mean, start with 1 tbsp and use it for all of the scones, not a tbsp each. Which might seem obvious to you, but I found myself wondering what the book meant. o.o

Stick them in the oven for 12-14 minutes. They will look DELICIOUS and make you begin to hyperventilate, from the mouthwatering aroma of autumn cinnamon, and wholesome, hearty oats... but don't burn your face off trying to take a whiff from the oven, like someone silly. Not me. I wouldn't do anything so silly.


Wash dishes while you're waiting. It's a clever time-passing trick. Take pictures of your faucet, it really boosts your dish-washing energy levels.


This is how mine looked. *drools*



They were perfect. Fluffy, but dense, oaty, cinnamony, raisiny, and the glaze was delicious on top.

I strongly advise you to make them. Bake them. Eat them. Have some tea or milk or coffee. You'll feel like life is even more worth living. Honest. But you really should eat them outside, on a table in the yard, with a table cloth and a little vase of flowers, and your bestest friends or family with you. On your best china. That is what you should really do.


p.s. i wrote these instructions down by memory. do not come after me for vengeance if it goes wrong somehow, because i forgot to mention that the main ingredient is a cup of shrimp w/ heads. :D

project green bean

This Sunday was Project Day at the Green Bean! I made this video... Just a fun documentation of the day.

Wish that the quality wasn't so crappy... :(

lots of different things

I've started sewing again. I have two projects: a patchwork quilt made from half muslin (love), half vintage scraps we found in the attic, plus some other patterns... and the second is a soft book that will be absolutely cute - when I finish it someday. XD I've finished one page. I love sewing... I have about 20 more squares to cut for the quilt (cutting is so tedious) and then I can sew it together!! So exciting.


We washed our new trampoline today. We got it off of Craig's List for pretty cheap and it's really nice.


Who wants to guess who it is washing the tramp? Me or Quinn, Quinn or I?

heheh.


We had milk and lovely homemade chocolate chip cookies for tea today.
mmm.

and then everything went daaaark

The power went out on Saturday night, just as we were finishing the second season (or 'series' as the Brits say) of House of Eliott. It was kind of sad, because we were almost really interested in what was happening.

But then we got out candles. I love candles. I was rather giddy. And then I wasn't sleepy, so I read more of Benjamin Franklin's Autobiography by candlelight. Ev'rs'a historical. That's how they said "ever so" in London in the 20's. Aren't you glad?

Speaking of Ben's autobiography... I really dig his 13 Virtues.


this was another crappy pic that I fixed up... tried to make it look kind of oldish. :)


This one is focused on my fingerprint on the jar in which the candle is sitting.

wallpaper

Yesterday I spent nearly all of my time learning Adobe Illustrator, from tutorials, playing around, to watching graphic design videos. It was really, really fun, and I learned loads. I also realized that Illustrator is not, in fact, a completely annoying and hard-to-work-with program... instead I'm just so swift with Photoshop that being awkward in Illustrator seems horrible. (Btw... don't you dig the word "swift?")

Anyway, after really getting to know the pen tool (awesome), I started making a big canvas of stuff I was learning. The first thing I did was the swirly stripes of colors, then the text, then the... dot dot dot. It was really fun and empowering. I'm posting it here... Anyone who wants it as a desktop can totally have it. :)


(click to enlarge. it's 1680 x 1050 pixels, which is the dimension of my screen...)

i'm grand

Hi there. How are you? I hope you're good, because I'm grand. Yesterday, as we were coming home from Quinn's Taiji class, I kind of felt sick, so when I got home I sort of... just went to bed. At 7:30. It was a weird occasion. So, in the middle of the night, I woke up and the first thing I thought was "pity I didn't wake up at dawn, dawn would be fun, must be kind of early if the stupid roosters haven't crowed me out of my warm snuggly bed through the closed window." So I pondered on what time it could be. I could heard Dad snoring, so it was before 6 am, because he hadn't gone to work yet.

Then an idea occurred to me. What if it was like 11:00 or something horrible like that. So I decided to get up and brush my teeth, because I hadn't done that before hitting the sack. As I passed M&D's room, I saw the digital alarm clock, blaring, in red neon, "11:54."

All I thought was, "aw man." So I found out Mom was just going to bed, we talked for a bit, I got something to eat, did homework for a while, and listened to Coldplay. I like Coldplay a lot... I happened to be learning about poetry and rhythm in American Lit., which Coldplay uses constantly. :D Anyway, then I went back to sleep an hour later and slept til 9:30... I slept nearly 12 hours. And I'm likin' it.


This is an example of what might happen if my hair and a brush get together. And for anyone who doesn't believe me when I say my eyes are GREEN with a little brown, here's some good proof.


Rain has been pouring down all day long. It's awesome. For tea we decided to make scones again, but we didn't have the same recipe, so we looked up one online, but it wasn't the same. We were also out of sugar, so we used some cinnamon sugar we had stored up. However, the dough was so STICKY that I couldn't knead it or do anything with it. We ended up globbing weird gooey lumps on the cookie sheet. They turned out yummy, though. :)




This is a pic of my tea. For a random fact of the day, I used Lightroom setting "Kate" on it. :) Sara inspired me to name my presets after TV show characters. I picked LOST. I'm going to save something yummy for Sawyer.


Raindrops.


I have a trick. A secret, amazing trick. When I take really, really bad pictures, like this one, all I do is ... use the KATE preset! Translated into normal-person-language: turn it black and white, hit the contrast wayyyy up and just pretend that it's really classy.

See, this is the original:

I actually TAKE really crappy pictures, most of the time. Just happen to be a tasteful cheater. :D Now you know my secretest secret.

i read banned books!

Today we had a rather unsuccessful trip to Town. There was a to-do about leaving behind library cards and deposit slips, but I would say that I am glad that we went, because I got these three shots, which I like.

Apparently it's Banned Book Week... So I got a sticker!




So, as for the list... There was a list of 100 banned books. I've read about six that were on that list, including the Harry Potter Series (love!), To Kill a Mockingbird (was really good), the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (awesome), all of the Roald Dahl books (British genius!), and a few more that I can't think of. :)



I keep laughing out loud at this picture. Every time I see it. These are the kind of books that really could be banned, and the world would not mourn... but if that were the case, I would not have laughed half so much today! I DIG those shorts!

randomosity

A random post:


Did you know that those silky soccer pants with the white stripes down the sides are actually made of knitted nylon, and all of those little holes are made like you would make a button hole. I find this very fun and interesting.


Pretty cracks in a tree.


This shot was supposed to be of my boots (that greenish blue blur back there) but I didn't realize that when I sat the camera in the grass that it was set on Macro... Cool anyway.


I take this picture every fall. There is something about the light and long shadow that you don't see in the summer.

chris & jennifer's wedding

Yesterday I shot a wedding with Sara & Casey - it was a pretty fun day (at least I had fun). I'm going to throw together a slideshow/video this week (yay) but for right now, I just wanted to post three of my favorites (that I shot). Jennifer, the bride, was really sweet and pretty.

pop goes the sunset

For tea today Quinn made us popovers. It was another recipe from Baking Illustrated and they were very good. Popovers aren't sweet, they are kind of like cream puffs without the cream. However, they were delicious with some butter and jelly. Also, popovers are supposed to "pop over," as it was, kind of pop up like hot air balloons (that's what the book said)... only one brave popover "popped" in our pan, but whatever. They were still good.

Sara was with us as well, which was very lovely. :)






This was the bottom of the one that actually popped. It was completely hollow inside. :D




This is a funny coincidence, however... Speaking of cold toilet seats in my last post, I noticed that there was a draft post from last year, called "chilly loo." I thought this was kind of funny so I checked it out, and below is what it reads. I wrote this around the EXACT same time last year and it applies just as forcefully this year. Yay!

- - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Hallo, everybody and you crazy autumn fall season-thing, you.

At first I was really excited that autumn was on; what's cooler than the trees turning color and bringing out new jeans and shirts and sweatshirts and feather comforters and stuff? I'm sure a load people are or were hyped to find that, apparently overnight, the air had cooled down, along with the sun. Certainly I had been looking forward to those chilly days with a little wind and watery sunlight, after a long, muggy summer. That is, I was until...until...

Until I got a shock from sitting on a cold toilet seat.

And that pretty much ruined everything. All my memories of chilly loo seats, the shocks of cold air after getting out of a hot shower, cold feet on a freezing tiles, getting out of bed in the morning to a cold room, having cold ears and a cold nose...

- - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Amen.

There was a lovely sunset again, tonight.



Isn't that breathtaking?

apples, beauty, tea & the chilly loo

Today I have four things to say, all of which are rather different.

1) Honeycrisp apples are.... AMAZING.




2) I think my hair (color, mostly) is gorgeous -- and I don't really think that that is being conceited or immodest, because I had no hand whatsoever in the color of my hair. To love your natural looks is like to give your creator props. Why is it, then, that if a person is to say that "I think my hair is gorgeous," then they are often looked at like they are being so immodest, and yet, if someone is to color their hair and then say that they think their hair is gorgeous... people generally think nothing of it, because, well, duh, of course they do?! Society is such a weird, weird thing.

Anyway, I had this random idea to set the camera on macro and just take pictures of my hair. So I practically put the camera lens to my head and snapped away. These are my favorite.








3) Mom has decided that we will have a designated tea-time. I am very, very excited about this, because there is always this time, after lunch and before dinner, when we get just starving and have no idea what to eat. So we're going to bake goodies ahead of time and then eat them around 3:00 pm with some tea or milk.

Yesterday was the first official tea-time, but today was the second official, which is sometimes almost better than the first. We ate the last of the scones, which were just as delicious room-temperature (which means COLD in our house... at the moment... see (4) for more details...) as they were straight from the oven. Okay, a little less delicious, but still fantastic.




And in case you are wondering with more than a little consternation: "Why is there any CRUMBS left on her plate from those DELICIOUS scones?!? If I had a scone I would eat the whole thing?!" Well, you may rest easy, because I just left them there for the dramatic purpose of the picture. *grin* They quickly disappeared after the shot.


4) The toilet seats were cold today. Need I say more? *fear*