Adventures in Cooking Update

It's been awhile since I shared some of our cooking adventures. Here are some of the things we tried over the past month or so. I have included links to the recipes where available, many of these are easy and most are healthy.

I have been wanting to try cooking scallops for some time now. The September 2010 Cooking Light Magazine had this recipe for Seared Scallops with Farmer Market Salad and it was delicious and easy to make. Although large scallops are a bit pricey and we could only find them at Whole Foods, so we won't probably have them too often. Mike thinks they are a bit fishy, but I loved this. Very simple and great with fresh corn, tomatoes and basil.

I didn't care for our last rib recipe much, and discovered this recipe for Honey Chipotle Glazed Ribs on MarthaStewart.com. The sauce was the perfect mix of sweet with just a slight hint of spice.  

To go with the ribs we made Red Potato Bliss Potato Salad with Blue Cheese, Bacon and Chives also from MarthaStewart.com. The tang from the blue cheese was perfect.

Mike found this recipe for Chive Parmesean Potato Chips on MyRecipes.com we have made it a few times recently with mini burger sliders and hot dogs. It is pretty easy to make if you have a slicer to slice the potatoes.

Even thought it isn't quite fall weather here in Arizona, we have been pretending. We made this Chicken Chili in the crock pot the recipe was modified slightly from a crock pot cookbook we bought at Costco. This was so good we are having it again this weekend.

To go with our Chicken Chili Mike found a recipe for Jalapeno Corn Bread on foodnetwork.com. I think it is this one we made. It was very very good and I can't wait to have it again.

We had a lot of leftover tomatoes and basil one week, so I cooked some pasta, and diced and sauteed tomatoes with chopped garlic, fresh ground pepper, shrimp, torn basil in olive oil and added mozzarella cheese chunks toward the end. It was a quick easy dinner thrown together from leftovers.

Golden Corn Salad with Fresh Basil from the September 2010 Cooking Light Magazine. We made this as a side salad with something else and ate smaller portions and saved the rest for leftovers, but this is really hardy enough for a meal sized salad.

Motherlode Layered Cookie Bars from Picky-Palate. These took a little time to make since you are making 3 of the 4 needed cookie doughs from scratch. But they were oh so worth it. I cut them up smaller than she suggested and we also kept the edges which were still yummy. I took in a bunch to the office and they were devoured. 

Happy Friday!

Photography Class Assignments

I have had my DSLR camera for almost 5 years. I never learned how to use it, and with a kit lens. auto mode, and a lack of knowledge, a DSLR will not take better pictures than a good point and shoot. I have plenty of proof of that. 

So when I heard about Maggie Holmes photography class for beginners I decided it was finally time to learn how to use this thing.

The 1st assignment taught us about ISO.  I realized I had never adjusted the ISO since opening the box. No wonder the poor light pictures were so awful.

The second assignment taught us about shutter speed and aperture. I am still trying to work through the correlations of F Stops and Shutter Speeds, but it is really starting to make sense. 

Shutter Speed Assignments

Aperture assignments

My kids weren't cooperative models, so I had to resort to things I could control better. Maybe they will be my guinea pigs on the next assignment. Time to get into Manual.  I am excited

Making Me Happy

Pretty happy with my shopping trip to Kohl's last night. I needed some things for our upcoming vacation and had a 20% off coupon. All but 2 things I bought were on clearance and the other 2 were on sale. So I got 7 pairs of shorts/capris, 6 shirts, a pair of shoes, a purse, sunglasses, a scarf and a watch for just over $150. I call that a score. Since I hate clothes shopping, that makes me happy. And it was done in just about an hour.

Love it!

I was home on Monday sick with an yucky bug and Mike had taken the boys out so it was quiet. I was sitting in the chair feeling awful, but then I looked out the window and saw this dragonfly just resting on a leaf. Well what is a girl that is taking a photography class to do? Grab the camera of course....

He was pretty cooperative, even with me trying to change my settings and figure out how to do that best with the zoom lens. He even scratched his nose at one point, too bad I didn't get that.  I also played with some flower photography here...

I'm pretty happy with these straight from the camera shots. I am excited to go to full manual this week in my class. I'll share some photos to date tomorrow from the class, it is amazing what you can do with a camera when you begin to learn how to use it.

Don't you love days where it all just clicks creatively? I have had a couple recently. I really wanted to update a the banner that was hanging on our patio door for awhile. We decorated for fall over the weekend and I was inspired to finally get to it, but at first I was stumped with exactly what to do, then it started flowing.

Then again tonight, I planned to just watch Glee (which was recorded on the DVR in my scrap room). I didn't plan to do anything crafty. Then I picked up the Jenni Bowlin Limited Edition Vitange Halloween Kit that I am pretty sure I ordered the last one of....

and before I knew it I was singing along with Glee to Empire State of Mind (New York) and creating something I love.

I can only share peeks right now, because these are may be future DT projects. But I love when creativity hits and you can just jump on it. Don't you?

Something else that is making me happy this coming weekend, Bazzill.  If you live in the Phoenix area this Friday and Saturday is the Bazzill warehouse sale. I haven't gone in a few years, but I plan to head over and see what I can pick up. I'm sure I'll at least get a pizza box of cardstock (not like I need it). Click on the link for the info.

Happy hump day!

Collage Tutorial at ScrapTiffany and a Freebie

Today I am hosting the Tuesday Tutorial over at ScrapTiffany. Join me and learn how to make a collage like this one that I now have framed and displayed in my entry way with all my fall decorations, and read below for a freebie download of 2 photo collages you can use today.

In addition to making a picture collage that you can use in lots of ways, I am also talking a bit about using actions, and adding some digital elements to enhance your photos. 

And just for fun I am also sharing some digital templates to make the both sides of the 8x8 collages that I used in this layout:

Each side gives you 11 photos. That's a lot of photos to pack on a page. The templates are PSD files and can be used in Photoshop Elements or Photoshop. 

Photo sizes for each side in inches (width x height):

1 - 4x3

6 - 2x2

2 - 2x3

2 - 4x2

Here are the links for the download:

8x8 Photo Collage Side 1

8x8 Photo Collage Side 2

Each layer is named by the picture size. To use the templates:

1. Select your photos
2. Crop to the size noted in the layer title in the layers palette
3. Drag the photo to the template
4. Move over the photo layer for placement
5. Click both the photo layer box and your added picture to have both selected
6. Right click and merge the two layers. This will allow you to move any photo's around if you want. 
7. When all pictures have been added, select all layers and right click to flatten the image
8. Save as a JPEG for printing
9. Have fun.

If you use the template I would love to see what you did. Leave a comment with your link and I will check it out and share it here.

Thanks for stopping by today.

A Peak at Fall Decorating, Weekend Stuff and ScrapTiffany Monday

It always makes me smile when we open up Nicholas's back pack and find his weekly report with all this happiness and lots of good praise. He loves school and I love to see him doing well. And I guess Mike is picking up on photos I like to have, because he took this one Friday afternoon on his phone and sent it to me.

Mike and I both stayed up late Friday night playing. So we weren't really thrilled when our dog Mandi had an accident and threw up in the bed at 5 a.m. She's been sick and we think the medicine is bothering her tummy. Our poor sweet girl.

The upside is we got out early to do some planting.  The heat this summer has been awful, and our plants suffered. It was still in the 110 range over the weekend. After spending a fortune over the years to keep all kinds of flowering plants in our courtyard, we gave up. We planted Lantana in the pots and at the base of the fountain. I swear those things are like weeds and will grow in any kind of situation, at least they have color. So here's hoping to saving a few bucks at the nursery.

Our little herb garden bit the dust by July too. I planted a new one with some basil, rosemary and cilantro. I'll see how it goes. We also decorated for fall. I love my little scarecrows.

I'll share a few more fall decoration pictures later this week, but here is a glimpse of one arrangement I have around the house. 

This week's assignment at ScrapTiffany was to use 4 photos on a page. I tend to use 1 to 2 photos on a page, but I have been trying to use more recently. So this was a good assignment

I cropped down 4 standard 4x6 prints to 4x3.  I put new Recollection's border punch to work. I picked it up at Michael's for $5.50 after the 50% off sale and Friday's 5 hour coupon for 15% off entire purchase. This was my only scrappy purchase that day, since my shopping mission was to find fall decorations. 

I also used Studio Calico's Mr. Huey's Mist on the chipboard. I love that navy, and that white I'm pretty smitten with that one too. All 10 colors are a must have whether you like to mist or not (because you will want to after you get your hands on these)!

Check out the rest of the design team's work over at ScrapTiffany today and Friday. Lot's of good stuff.

Check back tomorrow for ScrapTiffany's Tuesday Tutorial. I have a freebie to go along with it.

Giveaway Winner and ScrapTiffany Reveal

Thank you so much to everyone that signed up and voted for my Dad's company in the GE contest.  I appreciate you taking the time to check it out. From the comments Random.org picked the following winner of a $25 Studio Calico gift card:

Random Integer Generator

Here are your random numbers:

13

Which makes the winner....

 
 erin m said...
Thanks for bringing this to our attention Michelle! I wish your Dad & his partner the best of luck in this contest. Such a great opportunity to help ALL of us out. I will pass the contest website on to my husband too. He enjoys learning about alternative energy & conservation.
September 13, 2010 7:58 AM

So it looks like Erin may be shopping with me on reveal day (midnight, the 28th) over at Studio Calico. October kit sneak peeks went up tonight and they look delicious.

Erin, please send me an e-mail at: (michelle(dot)colormedaisy(at)gmail(dot)com, with your address info and I will have your Studio Calico gift card sent to you.

Again, thank you to everyone who took the time to vote. If you haven't voted and want information and links it can be found here.

Our ScrapTiffany challenge for the week was to scraplift someone. Recently I saw this layout on Rebecca Keppel's blog (my fellow ScrapTiffany teammate), I wanted to do a similar theme for my layout and used this layout from Nicole Harper as my design inspiration.

I also really wanted to use the stamp on the left that I recently found in my stash. One of my many nicknames for Jackson is Peanut Butter Pie. It was his first nickname really.  I called Nicholas Pumpkin Pie when he was born it came from one of my two favorite pies. So Jackson had to be nicknamed after my other favorite pie.

If you take the ScrapTiffany challenge to scraplift someone this week, send it to Tiffany to share with us.

Weekend Update

Another one bites the dust.

The weekend was filled with down time. We needed it. We had a bit of a rough week last week. We had an appointment for Jackson that was frustrating and we were dealing with the emotions of that. So we needed some down time and took it easy.

We watched silly movies, that did not get good reviews, but provided some laughter...

Mike, Nicholas and I read magazines on the patio....

Finally getting to enjoy a cooler early part of the day....

We played outside...

We ordered pizza, went out for Mexican food and got KFC grilled chicken take out.

We took naps. We (me) had a pedicure/manicure.

Sometimes you just need these things.

I only scrapped for an hour. It was all I wanted to do. I felt like reading, enjoying my family, watching movies, playing with my new camera lens, sleeping, and organizing my photos. I have 2 packages arriving this week with scrappy goodies, so I know I will want to immerse myself in all that pretty paper again next week.

I did have fun with that one hour. I did my ScrapTiffany challenge for the week. However, Tiffany is having a bit of trouble with her internet, so I will have to wait to post my layout until she can get the DT reveal up. Here is a peak for now:

Since I can't share the ScrapTiffany layout yet, here is one I did last week to document Nicholas's thing for blowing me kisses, which of course I love...

Using the Studio Calico Summer Camp kit, EK Success Label, Jumbo Star Border and Martha Stewart Starburst punches. 

Hope you have a great week!