Wednesday, August 29, 2012

Why Tumblr sucks….

Pinterest is usually pretty cool about Linking sources. They state in their policy that there is an etiquette to be had for giving credit for someone’s stuff. But thanks to tumblr, my image can be posted with no source and then immediately lost in cyberspace and duplicated a thousand times leaving no direct trail as to the author. For example, on pinterest the other day I saw my image sourced as coming from here:

http://masonjarsandmoonlight.tumblr.com/post/20851841006/on-the-steps#notes

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which sources nothing except that they’ve gotten it on someone else's tumbler. So they link back for instance to :

http://queenmaryam.tumblr.com/

http://nooraab.tumblr.com/

http://singing-soul.tumblr.com/page/19

http://elmesc.tumblr.com/page/23

But they don’t even link the direct page, so you get infinite stream of someone's tumbler page and no way to find your image if you wanted to persay send a nice email to someone reminding them to Link sources.

And then, no one who see’s the pin on any other social media has a clue of where it came from.

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WHY should it matter so much?

because linking sources creates feed. Feed creates business. Business feed’s poor young married people who did this as a job.

So you say, My fault- I should have watermarked my images.

It’s true, I should have. But I still hate to compromise an image with a watermark slapped across it. You can’t fully appreciate it.

so people a few reminder’s at the end of the day:

 

1. watermark your work

2. site your sources, give credit where credit is due, on facebook, blogger, whatever….seriously, it’s important!

Tuesday, August 28, 2012

RAINY AFTERNOON NAPS

 

Juneau has been and outdoor doggy since we’ve moved to our new place. It breaks my heart because I  love her company during the day but it was super important to Charley and I wanted to respect that. I’ll admit, it’s been a much easier to clean, hairless environment. Today it was raining buckets (or cat’s and dogs). Downtown flooded, and there was juneau staring mournfully through the cracked shades of the back porch. Even Charley cracked under such a pitiful stare. We let her in for the afternoon and she happily curled up beside us on the couch while we drank our morning coffee. She spent the afternoon watching the rain from our bedroom window and sleeping. There’s nothing like a sleepy cuddly puppy to let you know, ”hey, this universe is all right.“

 

 

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Saturday, August 25, 2012

PEARL’S VIDEO

 

I’d forgotten that I’d never posted this.  Pearl put together a little video from her listening party using my photos. Brings back good memories!

 

Goodbye room

Here are a few pictures of our bedroom in North Charleston. The bedroom was the only place we painted and no small feat because of the vaulted ceiling. I can’t stand dark walls and every wall of the condo is dark and bold. The light fixtures take  special light bulbs that aren’t even over 30 watts so I was dying for some light. I picked out a nice light putty grey that Charley swears is just plain ol white (but this is coming from a man who once asked me how to mix yellow). The halls are still cherry popsicle red with hideous yellow light bouncing off them. They give the trim a weird color cast and the short trip down the hall feels like walking down someone's throat.  Everybody’s got different tastes I guess.

BEFORE :                                                                              AFTER:

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…I actually like that our duvet cover is wrinkly. It just looks more inviting to me like that. Perhaps it’s because I’ve spent the last year ironing someone else's sheets. I also love the minimalist look without having all those decorative pillows to throw somewhere before bed. (Our little scratchy red pillow just goes in the middle somewhere or in the chair. ) This is a must for us because Charley hates throw pillows. He tolerates them in the other rooms but I mostly have to put them away in baskets. He’s right, they aren’t functional..but I can’t curb my desire for a little extra color.

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I love charley’s side of the bed because he always reads cookbooks or writes ideas down for work with his glasses on. We don’t have any bedside tables so we just used an end table and I have a basket on my side. The little plant we just recently picked up at IKEA and it makes me super happy to see it chilling anywhere. It’s like a little pop of (fake) life.

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We have my desk and a little reading corner set up and it’s been a great little spot for hiding from the sounds of the xbox blaring. I popped a few temporary items in the frames and Alice the pink chair has been waiting patiently for us to use her again at my parent’s house. Now that she finally made the journey to our new place, it’s time to turn around and take her back. Thankfully Alice seems to enjoy traveling and people reading on her with a cup of coffee.

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Last but not least, we’ve enjoyed having a walk in closet. Our old closet downtown was teeny-iney and I always felt guilty for high jacking most of it. Also newly acquired from ikea are those wooden hangers, acquired to fulfill a lifelong dream: having matching wood hangers. I hope to slowly accumulate a few more, but something inside of me just squee’s for joy when I see my things all lined up and neat. I realize that there is therapy available for this.

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I get the same feeling when I see the linen closet….I’m actually just overwhelmed that we have a linen closet.

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lastly, I couldn’t resist to show off my wonderful case of bedhead.

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Friday, August 24, 2012

zombie scruggers

what started as a quick picture to show the annoyance of bangs after they’ve grown out….fully morphed into emo bang zombie. You may laugh Smile

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Moving, again.

The last bowl in the cabinet, the linens in the closet, the last box unpacked after a few weeks of hot weather and heavy lifting. We were finally settled. Enjoying our new spacious place and then….the sound of tires shrieking in a sharp turn. Let’s change directions! We are about to move again. Why?

The past few months charley and and I have been talking about where to be. He wants to learn and grow and be a part of a food community..but career wise he wanted to move outside something Corporate. He wanted to be back on a team again-  a small bond of cooks working towards something. He wanted to push himself to learn even more in the realm of pastry and desert which is why he felt a craving to be back in the fine dining setting. The pressure of dinner service and the push for an elite menu- pairing tastes for an experience. It ultimately drove him to apply to a new job when it poked up on craigslist even though it was in the dreaded town of Columbia.

You see, Columbia in terms of food…it’s struggling. Charleston has the visitors and the reputation, but Columbia has more family folks, southern and wanting their grits served up just like mama used to make them. Of course it’s got Saluda’s , Baan Sawan, and Motor Supply and a few other wonderful places but certainly not the vast selection of Charleston..hence why Charley was less than fond of the idea of returning.

So Charley got invited to interview. We drove in together, I thinking we were visiting our family. He went on the interview in secret not wanting to get my hopes up. For as much as I love Charleston, my friends and family are in Columbia and I’ve been wanting to move back for a long time. Turns out, they loved him, he loved them. It seemed like a great opportunity.

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On the drive back we had to figure out if we were going to do this. The pro’s and cons were overwhelming. On one hand, we had a new space, we had just moved, it was going to be expensive, we both had jobs. On the other hand we’d be near our friends, pushing ourselves towards something new and potentially renting someplace with a yard ( Juneau’s request demand).

At one point charley looked over and said, “ decision aside, I really just want to be lazy.” u78tg

I nodded. I didn’t want to have to pack and unpack and move and sweat and find things again. I didn’t want to scour the internet for hours looking for the right place to live. I didn’t want to face the insecure feeling I get whenever I look at job boards and want ads.

Charley finished, “ I think that’s why ultimately I want to do this. I don’t want to be lazy. I want to push myself as a chef.”

So we decided a YES

and after making that decision we felt totally and wonderfully at peace about it. Right now I am beyond excited to see where the next year takes us. I can’t wait to invite my friends over or go have a coffee with mom and dad.

We hit a little despair as we faced all the different things we’d have to tackle. Our employers were sad to see us go. We had to work out arrangements with our current landlord. We had to tell Zachary (the roomate) that he’d have to move along his plans a little sooner. (We’ll miss playing x-box while you guzzle milk, bud. ) (We won’t miss your demonic cat).

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Since then, things have really started to fall into place. As of today we’ve found a definite place to stay. I’ve been cuddling with Juneau and whispering in her ear “it has a yard, it has a yard!!”. I cannot tell you how excited I am about it or how much I think it is God, orchestrating things up there. I can’t tell you how many friends have said to me: I’ve been praying about this. And guess what, it’s happening. Boom, answered prayer right there.

On that one final puzzle piece to solve, I feel more at peace now that I will find something for my Job. Sometimes it feels so hard for the creative people to find jobs in the real world. We’re all airheads who want to dance in the wind and color on stuff right? well, actually if someone wanted to pay me to do that, I’d jolly well take it. Perhaps that’s what someone’s supposed to do when they have a degree in “general education”…which quite literally means I was educated generally and not at all in the sense of being qualified to teach (which so many have remained confused about). I would love a normal 9-5 job where I get paid a normal amount instead of all this scrounging and guessing. Perhaps I’m to outside the box to be a 9-5 kind of girl but we’ll see what the Lord brings. I’ll be especially happy if I can work on my art and photography in the meanwhile.

ps. I’ve enjoyed my drafting desk not having a computer on it so I can actually use it! I can’t wait to set up an art room when I get to Columbia.

 

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Sunday, August 12, 2012

woman vs. iron

In my project list for a while now has been fixing our living room tables. We inherited these pretty little things from Charley’s mom. They are from Italy and I truly love their sleek lines. The only thing that really bothered me was the little scrollies in the middle. Incredibly picky of me, I know, but I feel like that little detail makes the tables look patio-furniture-ish. For me, it kills their lovely modern vibe that that compliments the marble. So for a year I begged and begged Charley to let me knock those suckers out. I think it felt taboo to him to ruin something in good shape. He finally agreed one day. I did a happy jig. I waited another year. Then insanity hit me late at night to tackle the task. The great thing about having all that time is that we were absolutely decided that I could knock them out- no hard feelings. (We also checked with his mom to make sure it was okay with her too!)

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SO I grabbed a hacksaw and several hundred blades, popped in The Two Towers and got to work

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nothing was more satisfying than sawing and hacking away at a piece of metal with some battle noises in the background.

Actually satisfying isn’t the right word

Painful, strenuous , slow going. Any of those will work.

By the end of it I figured most of my stress and anger had been freed for the week.

I was utterly surprised at how hard it ended up being.

four saw blades later, halfway through the movie

and

it

was

still

attached.

I literally growled at it and attacked it again (after refueling with these: )

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I figured out that it went a bit faster if I incorporated some prying in between. Also pushing super hard on the saw slowed me down because I lost energy faster. Slow and steady won the race in this scenario (although it still made me feel like a woman hacking away in brute strength).

A little later I did finally get through. I ended up sawing through about and inch of metal where the top was connected on either side.

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Lucky for me some of the sides were not melded so I could pry with my 4-in-one tool to loosen those.

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and then VICTORY!! one side out. four to go.

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I have so far to go, but the next step will be filing down and smoothing out the iron with this guy so I can prime and paint it black again to prevent rust:

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The one side looks pretty good. I left it looking like this :

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the other sides have been partially sawed but are still attached.

and then realized that I lost sleep over this….something must be wrong with me to care so much about little inner scrolls on a coffee table.

Friday, August 10, 2012

Sunny table

Is this table not the sunniest most cheerful thing you’ve ever seen? At a wedding I shot last week, my friend was getting ready in this beautiful home. I only had  a short time but I would have loved to have captured some of the rest of the house, a gem in the woods. It was lived in, homey and lovely…and complete with two little happy dogs. The table itself was a piece of history, passed down from the great grandparents. It’s hand hewn look wasn’t recreated in some factory, it was the real deal.

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the kitchen is open

We’ve lived for the past year sharing a half-sized fridge with a roommate and a 2x2 counter. We hadn’t really realized how little we had been cooking, but the motivation levels for cooking where way down. Hense are head over  heals in love with our new kitchen, our normal sized fridge and the huge expanse of counter and cabinets. Charley is back to his usual exploratory self and we’ve both hit this point of “FOOD! oh yeah remember that stuff?! wow!!”

This past week Charley bought a carbonator and has been experimenting with everything…I mean Everything that he could potentially carbonate. Milk, grapefruit juice, blueberry juice, whiskey, as well as making whipped cream and meringue.  It’s the same one that they use at Starbucks for your whipped cream but he’s decided he likes hand whipping way better. When you whip eggs or cream, you are slowly building up the molecular structure as air is folded into the mix. By the time you have hit peaks, it’s solid enough to sit in a refrigerator and hold it’s form: an important factor when you’re creating desserts for a restaurant. The carbonator instantly adds air but the fluff will only last for about a half hour and then it deflates. When he made a lemon meringue pie, the meringue had dissipated completely after revisiting it in the refrigerator. He felt like the carbonator has it’s uses in making cappuccinos and such but for traditional desserts he’ll stick with a good old fashioned whipping.

 

 

Last night he experimented with our leftovers. He had made olive bread earlier in the week that had gone a little stale. It’s a rich bread that comes out super moist from the olive oil with and has oive chunks in it. Toasted it make awesome croutons. Tonight he cut it into cubes and made a bread pudding from it. He served it on top of a cauliflower mash with our (also leftover) steak on top. The pretty red sauce is made from roasted red peppers and rhubarb.

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Our new place unfortunately doesn’t have a lot of natural window light and it was already dark outside, so I’m not in love with this photo but I thought I’d still share.