Then and Now Photo post

I attend a "Survey of the Bible" class each Thursday.
We have made it to Joshua chapter 5 as of today.
It is slow going, which matters not to me.
Oh wait I forgot to say we have been meeting for two and a half years and have just now made it to Joshua.
Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, Joshua!
Divide 5 books over 2 years, multiply that by the remaining 61 books, divided in a likewise manner and I think I will be about 64 when we get to Revelation.

Well over 7/8 of the class participants are in within this age, if not older and I love it.
Each first Thursday of the month we have what we call an eatin' meetin'.
Meaning we meet, study and eat!
My class buddies know I will always bring something colorful...usually a vegetable.
And, more likely than not it will be considered "healthy". Luckily I am a good cook so they put up with my food nazi ways.

Okay...that combined with my photo assignment of the day led me to these next pictures.
The assignment from The Joy of Love was Then and Now.
I thought to myself as I was making my dish that the cilantro was in a then and now situation right then and there. It had gone from growing in my garden to chopped wonderfulness in my salsa!
Then:


Now:

This concoction is a simple salsa made with a can of rotel tomatoes, cilantro, garlic, salt, pepper, cumin and a squeeze of lime. Also in the dish, some simply saute'd shrimp cooked with the same spices, and a a quarter of a finely diced red bell pepper.

Then I decided to stir it all around.

See, the thing is, I had 3 avocados which were ripe and ready for using which made me think of using them in a "salsa" of sorts. I waited to put the avocado in until just before serving so it was nice and bright and healthy looking. hee hee. (no photo of the final product sorry)
Someone actually did peer over my shoulder today as I was cutting and say...uh huh just as I thought...something healthy, looks good.
HA!!
I am also desperate to use my cilantro and save it from frostbite!!!

Woohoo, dish for eatin' meetin' done and photo assignment done too!!
But then I came upstairs and logged onto the internet for posting my photo and realized once again that the assignment is to capture moments of those you love!
And as much as I love cilantro and avocado, it just didn't fit into the photo stream. I would have looked like a heartless loser compared to all those cute baby to child and puppy to dog photos.
So, it was back to square one.
Then I remembered a tattered and well loved book the kids and I had come across a few days ago.
It was a little bound book made by my oldest child when he was about 6.

An idea hit me and I went to his room in search of a recent drawing.
I then combined the two for quite a successful then and now!

I like how his little people haven't changed all that much, but the subject matter sure has!!
All those dynamic lines are weapons being shot.

That page there says my mom does different things. Maybe this is laundry??

Here are a few others carefully written in his choppy boy writing.
My mom loves the color green.
My mom always loves me.
My mom is best at loveing my family.
My mom has lots of dress's.

Oh, there is one other I simply must share with you.

We laughed and laughed!
That says... my mom is nice.

I ask you...do I look nice???
And that other blue figure there is little brother.
He doesn't look like I have been being nice to him either!

I am happy to say every other picture of the book shows bright smiling faces... less we all feel the need to drag him off for evaluation!
But the very last page in the book is my absolute favorite.
It simply says...
My mom is so smart.
She even knows times.
Ahhhhhh ha ha ha! I wish I could say that I do.
Math is not one of my talents, unless fingers or a calculator are involved.

The sweet innocence of youth.

I am sure I had impressed him with an amazing 2x2 problem, or 1x1.
You know the simple ones that you can use your fingers for!!!

We are hoping for snow around here.
I will keep ya posted.

I like pie too!!

I have begun to take photos of many assorted things through the day as they present themselves, never knowing if anything really good will come of my efforts, or if anything better will come along. (That is why you get bubble gum chewing birds.)

So many days when evening comes along, I am sorting through lots and lots of bad pictures hoping for something to post.

For that reason I say to you...don't judge me that my picture today is of my hair color chemical mixing.

I mean, when I took the camera out to record this, I felt certain nothing else good would come along and I needed something to post!!!


You may wonder... why post it if you have taken photos of other things?
Well, why not? I have taken the time to take 'em, why not post 'em, strange as they may be.
And, I also thought...what if I like this hair color and can't remember what I bought, then I will have this image to remind me.
And I do like it. It is subtle and most people probably won't notice the change, but I do and I feel so much better about this color situation. Whew!


I headed outside today in the brisk wind, and I mean brisk (24 degrees, wind chill around 18, that is brisk for us here in TEXAS!!) to go fetch the mail and came across my neighbor walking her teeny- tiny, itsy-bitsy dog. I mean, I don't even think this dog is an entire handful.
I asked her if I could take his picture and of course she agreed.
Here is little Darby.
I actually took the time to change all of my settings before laying in the road to capture this bitty little thing, ignoring the quiet sniggering of my neighbor as I talked quickly and nervously through it.

In a perfect world, the leash would be removed so as to not draw our eyes out of the picture. Just pretend for me okay?

Face into the wind, eyes watering from sun and chill.

But, smiling???

I am including this one in hopes that you can see how little he is.

Maybe 9 inches tall to the top of his fuzzy ears!

And my last shots for the day are to fulfill my February photo challenge assignment.
Day 2: How they look!

I think it is amazing how kids can contort their bodies into strange and impossible ways and do all sorts of things.
So this is my version of how she looks... folded up doing homework.

I couldn't resist getting in a little closer so you could see what she is writing.

I like pie.
The last one..."I like to be right."
Ha ha ha, don't we all.

My new lens was delayed because of the weather. Bummer!

I hope you aren't bored with photo posts and will stick with me through this learning my camera portion of my life. It is pretty important to me!
Catch ya tomorrow!

Photo post

Well, I find that I signed up to receive daily email prompts for a month long photo project.
I did this late at night without thoroughly reading what it was actually all about!
I just thought, whoa...cool, a photo a day project this will help me find inspiration.
And it might yet!
However the point is to record the ones you love in the month of February.
Well, since it is not my M.O. to display the ones I love here, this will be quite a challenge!
I might just make it a personal project and post here if it ends up being something usable.
Okay with you???
Today's project was capture "the things they do".
So here ya go on that one.
This is my big boy with his fingers flying away on the keyboard at about 9:13 this evening.

Yes, I do know the exact time because I had just been in harassing my middle child to take his picture too, and it was 9:11 and I specifically remember telling him that he had 4 minutes to lights out!!

So there!




You see this??

It is my still very sick computer that my husband is now on one week later and still no full solution status.
Looks like something out of Tron!
I did not choose this bells and whistles computer with the fun lights, though secretly I have come to enjoy it!

I just wanted someplace to check email and do a little blogging.
I don't need anything special.
No, I don't! Now I am back in the position of jockeying for time on this old beast.
I am so very thankful that we have "backup" and I don't have to be completely disconnected from the web!


I really, really liked my tan boots in the snow picture from last week and felt equally compelled today to share this rainboots in the clover picture.

Don't look too closely as I am pretty sure that is not at all clover!

I found a button on the photo program that I had lost!
LOST, and now it is found. Not the new program with a book that I need to read. No, the program that was accused to causing my nice new blue light computer to crash...program!

It lets me mess with the colors, intensity, saturation, and contrast. It does a full over the full photo job and is fun to play with!
I bet you noticed that you got a visual dose of this tool at work today.

Here is one last photo today!
I call it "lichen".

Is that even lichen? Or, maybe it is moss?
I don't know, whatever I just like the look of it and wasn't sure if anything more interesting would be seen in my lens today.

Speaking of lenses, my new one should be here tomorrow!!!!!
Did I tell you I got a new lens? I can't remember!

Hey, I got a new lens! Remember all those earrings I was making?
Well, I made and sold and saved and finally decided to spend, on a lens.

It is a 50mm f/1.8, know any more than you did before???

When it gets here I will take a picture with it and you will be amazed and hopefully I can explain why I am so excited to have it.
I mean, I hope you will be amazed. I hope I can take a picture which will cause you amazement.

Hey, ya know what else??
I came across and amazing deal on Food Network magazine and ordered that too.
It seems like it was around 10 bucks for the year!
Oh, I love me some Food Network and hope to have that arriving soon so that we can have some fresh food ideas around here as well.
I commit to preparing at least one recipe from each issue and blogging it!
I commit to it, right now.
I think I better slow down on all these commitments and get some laundry done!
See ya tomorrow!

P.S.
For Rachel

Squeamish photo post

I saw a bird chewing gum today!!

I know that sounds crazy, trust me I know!!
Here is what happened.

I was driving out of my neighborhood, headed out to do errands!
I had to stop by the bank, go to Sally to choose a new color, go to Sam's to pick up various and sundry exceedingly large items and to visit a friend who is home-bound.

I had a few other things that I probably could have done and will probably wish tomorrow when it is pouring rain that I had done, but it was more important to me to spend my "away from home time" today with this friend.
I basically only have 5 hours when I leave from home to accomplish all that needs to happen or bad things will occur.
Bad as in, little doggie left in a crate bad...need I say more??

Wow, what was I typing about??
This is my brain folks!

Bird, large bird...got it.

He was quite a large bird, which is why he caught my eye as I was driving by.
I stopped, put my van in reverse...hoping that the extra movement wouldn't scare him off, and backed up.
I had put my camera in the van today in hopes that my friend may have something interesting to photograph at her house. I put the van quickly in park and leaned over to get my camera bag while talking quietly to my new bird friend asking him not to move.

He swiveled his head to check me out.

I was so nervous about him leaving that I was a mess trying to get all my settings right on my camera.
I stopped talking to him and began confusingly talking to myself.

"Check the ISO, okay checking the ISO...oh no...it is very cloudy is 100 gonna be enough, oh it is already on 100 I am gonna just leave it there so that I can check the next thing, what is the next thing....uhhhhh, uhhhhh, oh never mind what is next how about is he in focus."
I put the camera up to my face and clicked.

and clicked and clicked.
And began my dialog to myself again.
"Oh no, he is so far away there is just no way he is gonna be clear enough especially with that stinky plant there. I wonder if that plant is a male or a female?? I know I can crop the picture but if I could only get closer then I could see if it were focused better. If I take the time to change my lens will he fly away?? I am gonna change my lens, careful now Jennifer, don't drop anything, be gentle, changing the lens don't leave birdie, stay there and let me take your picture beautiful birdie. Okay there we go lens is changed now to try to focus again, hurry hurry hurry he is gonna fly away and all will be lost"
click click click
Some time when I was changing my lens must have been when he dropped his bubble gum.

Just look at him there staring curiously at it!

I tried to focus even better, though shaking with anticipation of a good shot. I should have just calmed down and taken a big deep breath and focused on getting it right.
I was just so scared that he was gonna fly off.
I know now that one great shot would have been better than 15 not so great ones.

Living.
Learning.

The next time I looked through my lens this is what I saw!!

Whoa! He has got some of that really stretchy gum!!!

The kind you can just pull and pull and it doesn't break it just gets longer and longer.

Click, click, click!
I started to get nervous about how this looked, me parked at a wonky angle in front of my neighbors house taking pictures with my telephoto lens. I gently capped my lens and stowed my camera back in the bag.

I then removed my foot from the brake...
(because when you are rushing to take a photo of a gorgeous red tail hawk {my son who is supposed to be doing his math homework but is stalling and looking over my shoulder informed me of this fact} it is important to put your vehicle in park and keep the foot on the break, you know just in case that park gear on your van decides to stop working on the last day of the month)
... put my van into drive and went along my merry way.

And you know what else besides gum chewing hawks happened today??
Sally was personally there to talk me through the whole professional haircolor process and gave me a coupon for free highlights.
I bought 12 things at Sam's and it all only cost .37 cents.
My broken leg friend miraculously recovered and skipped to the door to greet me, then we ran out the door to go make snowmen!

If only I had taken the time to notice as I was taking the first photo,

a little squirrel leg and tail with a large bird of some kind standing on it the better to disembowel it, I may not have continued shooting and had to make up some sort of story to make this a bearable thing to write about.
Disembowelment of any sort tends to make me squeamish. I can't even do the holiday turkey!!

And furthermore...
Seeing him enjoy his ultra stretchy gum did not make me want to have any.
In fact, I don't think I will be chewing any pink bubblicious for some time now.

Ha, who needs inspiration for photo taking when there is so much just right around the corner from my own home!!

Photos

Hard finding inspiration today!

I have 4 minutes til I have to walk out the door, so this will be quick.

I asked my son to let me take some pictures of him where there was sun and shadow.

They were a good use of time experimenting.



It is clean the hamster cage day, today...so here is Storm being babysat by Daddy!!


I had him for awhile but handed him over in favor of the camera!

I just love a colorful game controller held in the hands of a little girl!


Done.
Whew!

Saturday photo post

I got my new Gimp 2.6 book in the mail. It is the book which will teach me how to use the photo editing software called Gimp. That stands for something, but don't make me try to recall it!!

I began to read it and got immediately overwhelmed!
Part of it is because I don't speak computer and part of it is because our computer is still very unhealthy and I have a strong suspicion that it will be awhile before I can actually load the program back on it...if at all.
We will worry about that later.

I decided since I wasn't quite discouraged enough with my fish photography I would go out again today to get another dose!
I began by feeding them so that I would be sure to have fish there to take pictures of.

I had quite a time adjusting my exposure levels as the fish swam in and out of the reflections on the top of the water.
There must be a perfect time of day to do this. (must remember to research this)



Funny, what I like most about this one is the happy little floating leaf!



Hey, this one isn't too bad! I like the water rings.


Oh, ho...is that fish we see!?!



Well, I will keep trying!

Granola Bar Trial

I met a buddy of mine for lunch today and she very graciously allowed me to take some photos of her... just for practice.
If, however I published even so much as an eyeball from our spontaneous "session" she would more likely than not, unfriend me...and I don't just mean on Facebook either!!

Excuse me...I simply must go feed Shelby.
She saw me carry in and open a new bag of food and has been incessantly whining for 17 solid minutes now. I probably shouldn't give in but it is only 11 minutes until her "official" supper time and frankly...I CAN'T CONCENTRATE!!!!

Isn't she cute though? Those ears are just something else!!

This is my official photo of the day. I entered her in a contest and needed a photo to submit. The photo was supposed to exhibit the dog following a command.
HA!
So, this is her (not really) doing the command "Wait!". She is to stay at the top of the stairs until I get to the landing and then on the landing until I get all the way down. More often than not she is a few paces behind me hoping I won't notice her progess.
If I firmly state the command at the outset, she is usually good to follow.

Okay, now on to our topic of this post.
Granola bars
I mainly want to say...
...this is sooooo doable!
I have spent a lot of money on granola bars and will probably still, but it is nice to know that this is a viable option.

I am going to talk you through what I did and why, but know this at the outset, I don't have a recipe to give you as I was winging it to begin with.
I am still going to experiment with different combinations of ingredients and might just get back to ya on that! Or I might not.
I am not making any rash promises.

I began with a cup of finely chopped nuts.

Don't tell my kids, but hiding under those innocent peanuts are also sunflower seeds, cashews, pumpkin seeds, and a few almonds.

My next ingredient was dried fruit. This is a blend of cherries, blueberries, and cranberries.

Oh, my...this is what really makes them yummy to me.

I diced the fruit up as small as I could, especially since I also doubled the amount (about a 1/2 cup this time) from my first trial of this recipe. I knew it would be a point of contention.

It was kindof a hassle cause this fruit is sticky, but chop I did.
Just to let you know...
...every single one of my kids proclaimed that this batch had WAY too much fruit in it.
My husband heartily disagreed!


This recipe came to an abrupt halt when I turned around to see the sun shining through the jar of Lyle's Golden Syrup!!

I sang out to me...."AAaaaaahhhhhhhhh"
I simply had to snap a few shots of it and decided on this one of Lyle, and a few of his friends.

Then I got back to my chopping.

I will admit to you that I laid each of these chocolate chips on its "flat side" to aid in my chopping progress, and I wasn't disappointed in the result. These are the rather large, rather strong, dark chocolate chips that I favor. Please, especially if you are a regular chocolate chipper, just skip this chopping step!

I then stirred all of the fruit, nuts and chocolate together in a bowl. I wanted to make sure the fruit got unstuck from itself and that everything was evenly distributed.


Next I measured out just under 1 cup of peanut butter.
I guess, really I should say I shclur-plopped a hearty amount of peanut butter in my large glass measuring cup and hoped it was enough. This went into the microwave for a little bit to get it nice and melty.
I then added enough syrup to equal 1 1/2 cups in the measurer.
Hmmmm, funny measurer is not a real word!!

My dear middle child, who happened to be close by was the pourer guy.
Hmmmm, look at that pourer isn't a real word either.
It stressed him out mightily because he didn't want to add too much!

This lovely golden liquid is simply cane sugar syrup.

Other ooey gooey liquids you might choose are honey, or brown rice syrup.
I don't much care for the big taste of honey unless it is pared equally with butter and slathered on a homemade biscuit straight from the oven, and I couldn't find brown rice syrup.
I did come across some a few days later at a specialty store and may still try it.

I think a little dash of vanilla is always nice in something, so that got stirred in too.


This mixture got dumped into the nut/fruit mixture and stirred until it was all combined.

Oh, look at that, I forgot to tell you that I added about 3 cups of oats and 1 cup of a crispy rice cereal from the organic aisle.
See how I was hastily scrawling out the recipe as I added things in.
This is really, really good to do in case something doesn't work out or taste right.

Next up, my little munchkin took to rolling the mixture into my large bar pan.
It is important to really pack it tight.

I really should have given in and turned the kitchen light on at this point, but am so, so very stubborn. It was almost 5pm in the evening and the sun was setting...really I need to better know my limits.

We put this in the oven @325 for about 10 minutes.


Once they were cooled, I attempted to cut them into beautiful rectangles of granola goodness.

I ended up with strange and odd shapes of granola goodness, (and lots of crumbles) which got layer in a tin between layers of wax paper.

Here are my conclusions on the matter:
1.This is a quite a little amount of work, but only because I am trying to please 5 different mouths. If it were just me I would dump all those fruits and nuts in whole and enjoy a hearty lumpy bar.
2.Though my kids thought it was too much fruit, my husband didn't even realize fruit was in it. I won't be altering the fruit amount by much, but will probably bump up the chocolate to mask it even better.
3.These are a little too peanut buttery for me personally. I am going to try less PB and more syrup.
4. The total cost of a batch of these was right around $3.00. The syrup and berries were high dollar. However a comparable box of bars (meaning without preservatives and corn syrup and other assorted ick) would be closer to $10.00. That is a huge chunk of change.
5. I have lots more research to do on this matter and look forward to hearing from my foodie friend who probably has the perfect recipe right at the tip of her tongue to share! You know me...I seem to not really be able to learn something until I have gotten in there and had a little failure first.
6. While these aren't a failure, and are yummy...they aren't perfect!
7. I should have just made chocolate pie. I make really good chocolate pie!!
8. I didn't really mean that, the point was to have a handy breakfast food and every one knows chocolate pie is not a handy breakfast food.
9. Don't try to eat chocolate pie with your hands, by all means use a plate and a fork!!