Day 202: March 25, 2012

Grace is really into volcanoes and bought a volcano making kit with some birthday money.  Here she is mixing the plaster to pour into the mold to form her volcano.

Day 79: November 23, 2011

The kids helped me make three of the four pies we had for Thanksgiving this year.  We put the dough together and then they "helped" me roll it out and make the crust look pretty.  We made two pumpkin pies and one apple, my mom brought the tasty chocolate pecan!

November 22: Day 319

I swear I'm going to run out of ideas for indoor night photos really soon. I circled the house six times before turning on the hutch lights to get this photo. The focus is on the beautiful china tea cup David brought home from Buckingham Palace for me when he visited London last year. I love the bokeh from all our crystal in the background. So pretty and is making me super excited for some Christmas light bokeh next month!

Photo Stats:
Exposure: 1/250 sec
Aperture: f/2.0
Focal Length: 50 mm
ISO: 1600
Flash: Off

November 10: Day 307

The almighty apple. My family only likes the red varieties and so I'm the only one enjoying the green Granny Smiths that were on sale this week. Too bad for them!

Photo Stats:
Exposure: 1/160 sec
Aperture: f/2.5
Focal Length: 50 mm
ISO: 1600
Flash: Off

October 9: Day 275

Recently I have become much better at admitting my weaknesses and focusing on my strengths. Cake decorating is not a skill I possess, however I am quite good at mixing up a store bought cake mix. I made up for the store bought cake mix and made homemade frosting (which I am still using up...one cake and 26 sugar cookies later...). Remembering the great Pink Birthday Cake Disaster of 2008 my multi-talented husband volunteered his cake decorating services to decorate Ethan's basketball cake. I baked the cake in a glass bowl which worked surprisingly well.

I'm glad my husband is man enough to decorate his son's birthday cake. I think this photo is incredibly hot!

Photo Stats:
Exposure: 1/250 sec
Aperture: f/2.8
Focal Length: 28 mm
ISO: 16000
Flash: Off

April 17: Day 100

For Day 100 I thought I'd try and do something fun. Since I was only home for a couple hours this afternoon and the kids wanted to make cookies during that time this is what you get. I set up the camera on the tripod, set the timer, and we measured our ingredients! Ethan dipped his hand into the peanut butter jar and smeared peanut butter all over the place. Grace dumped sugar all over the counter. The kids helped roll the dough into balls, none of which were equal in size, and then Grace smashed the cookie balls with a fork (doesn't everyone do that with peanut butter cookies?). Making cookies with kids is certainly messier and the results are less then perfect, but they taste great and I can only pray that I'm fostering an interest in helping me in the kitchen! Click here for the World's Best Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Cookie recipe...seriously yummy!

Photo Stats:
Exposure: 1/100 sec
Aperture: f/3.2
Focal Length: 67mm
ISO: 800
Flash: Off

April 11: Day 94

I hate taking photos at night. I was going to take a photo of the board game we played tonight and totally forgot, so once again I was stuck with roaming the house at 10pm with my camera in hand trying to find some inspiration. I walked through the house three times before I got the idea to open the refrigerator. Aha! Yogurt! So there you have it.

Photo Stats:
Exposure: 1/100 sec
Aperture: f/2.0
Focal Length: 50mm
ISO: 100
Flash: Off

March 23: Day 75

Grace helped Oma make a batch of Specalaas, a Dutch bar cookie that's super tasty. The dough is really thick so you have to mix it by hand with a wooden spoon. No modern mixers in this old recipe! The results are worth the elbow grease.

Photo Stats:
Exposure: 1/160 sec
Aperture: f/1.8
Focal Length: 50 mm
ISO: 400
Flash: Off

March 7: Day 59

Tonight we hosted our 9th Annual Oscar party, complete with all the traditional food: brokkies (sp?), hummus & homemade tortilla chips, brownies, licorice, popcorn, and fruit. Instead of chocolate covered strawberries I made some world class lemon bars. Mmmmm. If you didn't make it to the party you totally missed out!

Photo Stats:
Exposure: 1/100 sec
Aperture: f/2.8
Focal Length: 66 mm
ISO: 400
Flash: Off

March 5: Day 57

Apples in a bowl. Pretty classic. This bowl was given to me by my Grandma Kathy and I can't remember now which family member passed it down to her. I know it's an antique but I have no idea how old it is. It's been my fruit bowl for the past several years because I really like it.

Photo Stats:
Exposure: 1/125 sec
Aperture: f/2.8
Focal Length: 63 mm
ISO: 100
Flash: Off

February 24: Day 48

Today's photo doesn't have a great story behind it. David asked me to make hot chocolate this afternoon (I think we were both feeling the cold rainy weather today!) and I took a picture of my cup of hot chocolate. I confess that I did have to wipe the crumbs off the counter first because I thought they might detract.

Photo Stats:
Exposure: 1/60 sec
Aperture: f/21.8
Focal Length: 50mm
ISO: 400
Flash: Off

February 20: Day 44

Grace and I baked a cake today. Partly to celebrate Opa's birthday (too bad I can't mail you a piece!) and partly just for fun. I had a coupon to buy a cake mix for $.13 yesterday and I let Grace pick out the flavor. She chose Cherry Chip. She helped me mix it up and then she chose one of the 11 cans of Betty Crocker canned frosting (don't judge...they were free) from the pantry. She chose Rainbow Chip frosting and we made "polka dots" with the leftover pink Cherry frosting from some sugar cookies. Tasty stuff.

Photo Stats:
Exposure: 1/125 sec
Aperture: f/2.0
Focal Length: 50mm
ISO: 200
Flash: Off

January 27: Day 20

Life is like a bowl of jelly beans. So many flavors, not enough time.

Photo Stats:
Exposure: 1/100 sec
Aperture: f/2.0
Focal Length: 50mm
ISO: 200
Flash: Off