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*