The husband was out of town on a business trip earlier this week, and I didn’t realize how desolate the house was without him until I spotted my toothbrush occupying the bathroom counter, all by itself.
Archive for the ‘Photographs’ Category
As Pictured Below: Lonely toothbrush
Posted in As Pictured Below, Family, Photographs, tagged business trip, home, husband, postaday2011, toothbrush on February 8, 2011| Leave a Comment »
As Pictured Below: Crosspatch
Posted in As Pictured Below, Photographs, tagged books, childhood, Crosspatch, iPhone, photograph, postaday2011 on February 7, 2011| 1 Comment »
As I recently outlined, this little guy is the reason that Lion’s Head Garbage Can can’t be named Crosspatch, even though I suspect that both represent the same children’s book character.
Childhood relic keeps on roaring
Posted in Home, Photographs, tagged childhood, children's books, Crosspatch, decluttering, father, garbage can, green stamps, home office, lion, mother, postaday2011, trading stamps on February 4, 2011| 3 Comments »
Meet Lion’s Head Garbage Can.
It occurred to me this morning for the first time ever — and I do mean EVER — how ludicrous it must seem for a grown woman to keep — and use — a garishly colored plastic garbage can in the shape of a cartoonish lion’s head. But I honestly cannot picture my office without it.
I’ve had him (and, I assure you, he’s a he and not an it) for as long as I can remember. I’m pretty sure my mom got him for me in the 1970s using trading stamps from the grocery store.
And just let me add here that everyone should have a mom who answers random text messages like “Did you get my lion’s head garbage can with green stamps?” with the same lack of surprise or suspicion that mine does.
Lion’s Head Garbage Can has been to college and made it through several moves. He has suffered the indignity of being stored in a closet for months on end. Tragically, his name is, indeed, Lion’s Head Garbage Can, which I can’t explain given my penchant for naming anything and everything.
I suspect he caught my eye, or my mom’s eye, because of my favorite childhood book: Crosspatch. I can’t quite remember what Crosspatch was about, although I’m pretty sure the plot revolved around a grouchy little lion cub. I apparently had grouchy little lion cub tendencies as a baby — my father claimed that my early grouchiness was the reason that he nicknamed me Bear.
But Lion’s Head Garbage Can can’t be renamed Crosspatch, because I actually HAVE a small stuffed lion named Crosspatch, which my mom recently rescued from my grandmother’s house for me.
So, here sits Lion’s Head Garbage Can, essentially nameless, but useful and loved, a somewhat ridiculous item that I cannot imagine doing without.
This is the best thing about paring down your possessions to only the essential and the treasured: You figure out the things that you simply adore, and you give yourself the physical and mental space to enjoy them.
As Pictured Below: Curiosity irritated the cat
Posted in As Pictured Below, Cats, Photographs, tagged cats, Gladys Kravitz, iPhone, neighbors, photography, postaday2011 on January 29, 2011| Leave a Comment »
The construction guys next door were making plenty of noise this week, and Yang’s inquiring mind wanted to know what was going on. Note that in his quest to see down into the yard, he has pressed his head against the glass so hard that his ears are flattened.
I live with the reincarnation of Gladys Kravitz.
As Pictured Below: Snow day
Posted in As Pictured Below, Photographs, tagged cold weather, ice, photograph, snow, TiltShift, TiltShift Generator, TiltShiftGen, tree on January 14, 2011| 2 Comments »
Ran this image through the TiltShift Generator app and played around a little with the blur and color saturation settings. Cool results, but I would give it up if all this snow and ice would hurry up and disappear.
Mysteries of the cake pop revealed
Posted in Christmas, Eats, Photographs, tagged Bakerella, cake balls, cake pops, chocolate, chocolate coating, Christmas, cooking, cracked cake balls, dipping cake balls, double boiler, food, food blogs, holidays, lollipop sticks, microwave, photograph, postaday2011, preventing cracked cake balls, sprinkles on January 11, 2011| 4 Comments »
I got cake balls right this year. I followed Bakerella’s instructions, for the most part, but I also scouted around on a few other food blogs to try to improve on my last effort.
I discovered four secrets:
- Chill the undipped cake balls in the refrigerator for a couple of hours to get them firm enough for dipping. If you’re in a hurry and decide to pop them into the freezer instead, prepare for cracked cake balls. I only used the refrigerator for this last batch, and I had exactly ZERO cracked cake balls. More than half of the previous batch, which all went into the freezer so I could dip them more quickly, cracked within an hour after dipping. Plan ahead and leave yourself plenty of time.
- Put the refrigerated cake balls on lollipop sticks before you dip them into the melted chocolate coating. This technically turns cake balls into cake pops. Go with it. Dip the tip of each stick into the melted coating before inserting it into a cake ball, then put the cake balls back into the refrigerator for at least five more minutes. The lollipop sticks make the coating process a lot easier, and, if you heed the advice in steps 3 and 4, they give you a more professional-looking product.
- Melt the chocolate coating in the microwave if you like, but hold it over simmering water in a double boiler to keep it thin enough while you’re dipping the cake balls. This will make the dipping process go faster, since you won’t have to worry about thickened chocolate that has to go back in the microwave every few minutes. Maintaining the melted coating at the same consistency throughout the dipping process simply results in prettier cake pops, too.
- After dipping the cake balls in the melted chocolate coating and letting the excess drip off for a few seconds, drizzle the wet cake balls with colored sugar or sprinkles — if that’s your decor of choice — and stick the clean end of the lollipop stick into a sturdy piece of Styrofoam (you may want to poke tiny holes in it before you start so the sticks will go in easily). This eliminates the flat spot and messy melted chocolate spread on the bottom of the finished cake balls.
I covered the business end of most of the cake pops with a small, clear treat bag and secured it with a small piece of Christmas ribbon, quickly tied into a simple knot (you can also just use twist ties). This made the cake pops fancy AND portable and helped keep them fresh for the better part of a week.
I won’t lie. These take forever and a day to make, and you’ll be cleaning chocolate smears off your stove and countertop and sweeping colored sugar off your kitchen floor for days. But well-made cake pops are beyond delicious and will impress the heck out of most people. Especially the 5-year-old princess fanatics in your life.
First 2011 food find: Little Debbie Banana Pudding Rolls
Posted in Eats, Family, Photographs, tagged alabama, artificial ingredients, banana, banana pudding, Banana Pudding Rolls, barn, brother, bubblegum, caramel, Chattanooga, childhood, children, chocolate, coffee, coffee break, cookies, Devil Squares, family, farm, farmland, food, Forrest Gump, freedom, friends, gas station food, grandfather, grandmother, grandparents, hay bales, husband, Kool-Aid, Little Debbie, Little Debbie Banana Pudding Rolls, Little Debbies, manual transmission, Mardi Gras, marshmallow pies, mississippi, Mobile, MoonPies, mother, Nutty Bars, Oatmeal Pies, peanut butter, ponies, pony, postaday2011, Publix, puppies, Shetland ponies, Shetland pony, snack cakes, snacks, sophisticated palate, South, South Mississippi, Southern, Star Crunch, sugar, Tennessee, tomboy, Twinkies on January 7, 2011| 5 Comments »
It’s good to have friends who help you maintain a positive attitude and healthy habits. It’s also good to have friends who urge you to make questionable choices every once in a while.
When I emailed a photo of a surprising food find — Little Debbie Banana Pudding Rolls — to a former colleague earlier this week, he responded immediately: “My professional advice to you is to buy two boxes of them right now. Why two? Because you’ll eat one box on the way home from the store.”
How could a girl resist?
I grew up eating Little Debbie products at my grandparent’s house in South Mississippi — my brother and I could always find a box of the treats on top of the refrigerator. I am the Forrest Gump of Little Debbie products, with a readily accessible running list of the different varieties taking up valuable space inside my brain. Ask me about nearly any of the company’s products, and I can run down a quick review for you. Here are just a few that popped into my head this very minute:
Devil Squares: Their substantial filling and sort of weirdly textured chocolate coating combine for a unique and delicious culinary experience that made me, as a child, feel slightly more sophisticated than my tomboyish habits generally merited. (more…)
New Year’s Promise: Do One Thing
Posted in Do One Thing, Photographs, tagged baby steps, digitization, Do One Thing, gift certificate, New Year, New Year's resolution, organization, organize, photo albums, photo scanning, photography, procrastination, projects, Real Simple, Scancafe on January 1, 2011| Leave a Comment »
Only one New Year’s resolution here: I’m stealing an idea from Real Simple magazine to “Do One Thing” every day to organize my life and home and make my environment nicer and prettier. This seems like a much easier way to tackle the mountain of “to do” projects that seem to accumulate daily. (And I must note that I don’t know if Real Simple says to “do one thing” or “do just one thing.” I can’t find any of the pertinent emails. You get the spirit of the resolution, however.)
It’s all about the baby steps. So, today’s Do One Thing is not to organize my photo collection. Instead, I will prepare a box of old picture albums for shipment to ScanCafe to be digitized, a task I’ve been putting off for months despite the fact that I bought myself a half-price gift certificate for this project last year.
As Pictured Below: Rare find
Posted in As Pictured Below, Christmas, Home, Huntsville, Photographs, tagged accessories, animal rescue, cats, Christmas, Christmas tree, collection, decorating, fireplace, golden, Hipstamatic, holidays, home, Huntsville, iPhone, mantel, New Leash on Life, New Leash on Life Marketplace, photograph, sparkly on December 23, 2010| Leave a Comment »
I have a ramshackle collection of holiday decorating accessories — when you don’t put up a tree due to extraordinarily inquisitive cats, you make do with whatever fits on the fireplace mantel. You also don’t buy many new items, since that mantel’s not getting any bigger.
I couldn’t let this golden burst of sparkle sit on the shelf, however, when I found it at the New Leash on Life Marketplace today. Only 25 cents, too, since all Christmas items were half off.
I’m not entirely sure it’s going back in the Christmas box after the holidays are over.
As Pictured Below: Furry weirdness
Posted in As Pictured Below, Home, Huntsville, Photographs, tagged alabama, alice in wonderland, animals, caterpillar, Huntsville, iPhone, photograph, sidewalk, TiltShift Generator, TiltShiftGen, wildlife on December 22, 2010| Leave a Comment »
I found this little guy (or girl) traversing my front sidewalk today. Given the usual behavior of caterpillars and beetles in my front yard, I expect him to be in my kitchen tomorrow morning, ready to scare the sleepy out of me at 5:45 a.m.
He could at least stay for a chat, a la Alice in Wonderland.
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