Pie Perfection

 
   On my birthday, instead of a cake, I had a birthday pie. Home-made pie is one of my strongest weaknesses. Strongest weakness...that doesn't sound right. Anyway, I would choose pie over cake any day. I had plans of making a chocolate chip pecan pie, but ended up making a chocolate meringue pie instead. I love the little peaks on top of the meringue.

 

   One day, my sister-in-law, Chrisy, told me how much she liked meringue. The only problem was she normally didn't like whatever flavor was underneath the fluffy top. When I made pie, she would "scalp" the meringue off the top and pawn the unwanted bottom off on someone else. So one year for her birthday, I decided I was going to make her a meringue pie. It was quite a creation. At the time, she said she liked it but now she claims that it cured her of her meringue obsession.

  

    

 

Part 2 - Growing

   Here is the {late} second installment of my birthday prelude pictures. These are some of my favorites that I had to steal out of our collage frame.

   Apparently I used to be quite the camera hog when I was a little girl. I was looking at some pictures in one of our albums the other day and couldn't even hardly find a picture without me in it. It's funny that now I am quite the opposite. I avoid the lens side of a camera like the plague!

 

  

 

 

  

  

Can you see the mischievousness in his face?

  

 

  

   Growing up, me and my older brother David were very close. At least I'm told I followed him around everywhere and tried to do everything he did. I was quite the tom-boy and succeeded most of the time. Since it was only the two of us, I'm sure he enjoyed his little tag along, although he never admitted it.

   That last photo is one of my favorites. We were penning cows with Daddy. Being able to go with Daddy and work cows is the best memory I have of my childhood. We never did have much, but I wouldn't have traded those times for anything in the world.

Little Me - Part 1

   The beginning of this week, in honor of my coming birthday, I will be sharing some pictures of me as a baby and growing up. Through the years, one of my favorite things has been to look through our family photo albums and see how we have all changed as we've grown up. I'm thankful to have so many wonderful memories from my childhood.

 

 

 

A Sunshiney Day

 
   Today was such a beautiful day after such an unusually cold winter. For some reason, when the weather starts turning springy after the winter, people tend to start putting up windows, cleaning out cobwebs and getting a good ole case of spring fever. Today we had our first case of spring fever and worked on cleaning out our shed.
   While transferring some boxes from one shed to the other, I passed a flower bed and spied a cheerful yellow flower peeking up. I have forgotten the common name for these, but they are a type of daffodil. I was very excited to see the first one of the season and hope to see many more. There are also some narcissus bulbs that are blooming now. I love these types of bulbs.

   Bulbs have to be my favorite type of flowers. There is practically no maintenance required, especially with the old varieties that were grown around plantation homes. They multiply quickly and bloom year after year. I'm glad spring is almost here and soon gardens will be bursting with fresh produce and beautiful flowers.

A New Project

   One thing I really enjoy is cooking. Not that eating has anything to do with that. I'm kidding, it totally does. What can I say? I was born and raised in the south. I hope to occasionally share some of the recipes that my family loves and new things that I try out. So to start that project off, today I want to share the recipe for Pepper Poppers. These things are delicious!

You will need :

        ~ 18 jalapeno peppers
        ~ one 8 oz. package cream cheese, softened
        ~ 1 cup grated cheddar cheese/pepper jack if you like 'em hot
        ~ about 1 chopped green onion
        ~ 18 slices bacon, cut in half
        ~ barbecue sauce
        ~ toothpicks  
        ~ rubber gloves!

Please, whatever you do, don't fail to wear rubber gloves when preparing these peppers. You might be tough. You might not think you'll rub your eyes. Trust me, it's worth the trouble to find some!

   Preheat oven to 275 degrees

   First, slice the peppers in half lengthwise and scrape the seeds out. Try to keep the stems on the peppers and cut them in half also. In the end they look very nice this way. Next, either in a mixer or by hand combine the cream cheese, cheddar cheese and green onions. Fill each jalapeno half level with the cream cheese mixture and wrap each half with bacon. Secure the bacon with a toothpick. Rub peppers with barbecue sauce. Place on a baking pan and bake for 1 hour or until the bacon is done.

   If you don't like bacon, these can easily be made without it, but in my humble opinion they are not nearly as good that way. We use Sonny's sweet barbecue sauce from Sam's Club and it really adds to the flavor. Also, I bake mine on a cooling rack so they are not sitting in the grease that cooks out of the bacon.

   The original recipe, which is not quite the same as the one I use, came from The Pioneer Woman Cooks cookbook by Ree Drummond. I received this cookbook as a Christmas present and unfortunately haven't been able to try very many recipes from it yet. The ones I have tried were delicious! Most definitely not low-cal, but good all the same.

Craft Day

   Today is an official sewing day. Since I'm off of school for Mardi Gras, I'm using the opportunity to do something I normally don't have time to do. The pattern and fabric have been sitting in my closet for a while, so I'm really excited to get them out and sew.
   Me and the boys have also done some art lately. Today while mama was fixing  lunch she spilled the tooth picks, so the boys got to make tooth pick pictures. They got a little carried away with the glue!

 

  

  

  

  

Snow Day!!

   I couldn't believe it when I woke up and heard everyone in the house talking about it snowing outside. Sure, the weather man said it probably would, but when is he ever right? I looked out my window and saw what to me looked like the equivalent of a blizzard. It just doesn't do that around here. Laying back down, I pulled the covers closer around me. Eventually I crawled out of bed, bundled up in a massive amount of clothes and went outside to check it out.

   I know these two pictures don't have an actual subject. I liked them because it was snowing and you can actually see the snow in the pictures. {So I guess that makes snow the subject}
   After me and the boys walked around some, we grabbed a few rakes and a shovel and set off to make some snowmen. Mamma challenged me to make one bigger than me. She said  if I did she would come see it.

 

   I didn't quite make it, but she came anyway. I didn't think it was too bad for my first snowman ever. Especially considering that I live in Louisiana and it's only supposed to snow every ten years. By the time we finished, the snow on the ground was completely melted. My little man looks like he's doing a cheerleader pose.

   The boys worked together to make a cowboy version Daniel Boone snowman. We had so much fun freezing!

 

  

 

Happy Thursday!

   I had decided not to post today. It was an extremely long and aggravating day at school today. I had a headache. I just wasn't feeling it. Then it was supper time and we had -- breakfast. Occasionally we will have breakfast for supper and it never fails to amuse me. I think it's funny every single time. It also happened to be delicious.

 

 That's an omelet, by the way, fully loaded with red and green peppers, ham, and pepper jack cheese. Very yummy.

Shallow Depth-of Field

   For about the past week, The Pioneer Woman has been posting lessons about shutter speed, aperture, and depth of field. After her last discussion on aperture, she challenged her {massive amount of} readers with an assignment. The assignment is to use the knowledge about aperture to create photos displaying shallow depth-of field and submit them to her Flickr group. She frequently has assignments and contests and always has good prizes for the winners.

   Inspired, I went out today to take some shallow depth of field pictures of my own. Pictures with shallow depth of field are one of my favorite kinds to take. I actually have to make myself change the aperture off of wide open. Here's a look at some of the things I came up with.

 

  

  

  

  

   The contest goes until February 15th so go take some of your own and enter the contest. You just might win! To see all submissions and enter go to: www.flickr.com/groups/pwphotoassignments/
   Leave a comment and tell me which of these photos you like best. If you don't really like any of them you can say that, too. It's okay, critical criticism can be a good thing.

Cleaning Day

   A few days ago, I faced the facts and confessed my love of chocolate. I would now like to say that I am not to blame for this addiction because I come by it quite naturally. My mom also loves chocolate. Together we could really do some damage in a candy store.

   Tonight she made some "healthy" double chocolate brownies using whole wheat flour. I was scared to ask what else made them so "healthy". Sometimes ignorance is bliss. She made them in a mini muffin pan, so they were almost bite-size. As they cooked, the smell of chocolate drifted throughout the house. I was somewhat skeptical, but when mama pulled them out the oven and popped them out on a plate, I had to have one. Self discipline has never been one of my strong points. With a glass of milk in hand I grabbed a brownie and gingerly took a bite.

   Smiling, I told her, "These are pretty good. They're a little...grainy"

   She replied, "Just imagine your eating a little broom and it's sweeping through your intestines cleaning them out. Fiber does that, you know."

 

Hmmm. Thanks Mom. Just what I wanted to in-vision as I enjoyed my slightly gritty brownie.

My Favorite Lens

   Some time last fall, a photographer friend of mine was telling me about how he started using this lens. He had been having it for a long time and never used it. It's the same lens I've seen many photographers use: The 50mm prime. He told me how wonderful the lens was, and how he was learning so much by using it. Strangely enough, these were the same things many other photographers were saying. Personally, I thought they were crazy. Who could possibly enjoy using a lens that didn't zoom? I told myself there was no way I would ever use a lens that didn't zoom. Ever.

   Previous to this, I had asked another photographer friend about different lenses and which ones he liked. He said he had a lens he wasn't using at the time and that I could use it if I wanted. It was the 50mm prime. I tried it a few times, but always went back to my old lens. It zoomed and I liked it. So I put the 50mm in my camera bag and kept it there quite a while.

   Then one day, for some strange reason I decided to try it again. I don't remember what it was I photographed, but I remember thinking that couldn't possibly have been the same lens I had tried before. This lens took good pictures! I started using it more and more, and the more I used it, the more I loved the pictures I was getting. Not that all my pictures were great. They most definitely were not. But they were getting better.

   After Christmas last year, I was able to get my own. I got on Amazon.com and ordered a Canon EF 50mm 1.4. Today may be the first time it has come off my camera since. Next to my camera, this is my favorite purchase technology wise.

  

   Now I'm one of those crazy people who uses a lens that doesn't zoom and loves every minute of it.

The Veggie They Missed

   In case you haven't already guessed from the title of the blog, I LOVE CHOCOLATE. As in, I can't imagine a world without it. Well, maybe not quite so drastic, but very close. That and a camera. Back to the main point. I really, really like chocolate. The best part is that I can justify myself to some extent by telling myself it's good for me. They do say there are lots of anti-oxidants {whatever those things are} in some types of chocolate. I'm not making this up you know.
 

 

   I'm really not that picky about my chocolate either. Although dark chocolate is my favorite, just about any kind will do.

 

 

   But the good stuff is even better. One time I had a small pack of Ferrero Rondnoir chocolates.I only had a small pack because I couldn't afford a big pack. They were so good. It was a totally chocolate version of a normal Ferrero Rocher only without a nut in the middle. If you haven't tried them, you need to put that on your list of things to do. Unless of course you don't like chocolate like our wonderful pastor.  Who ever heard  of such a thing. If he only new what he was missing.

  

   This chocolate bar had the best of both worlds because it had dark chocolate on the bottom and milk chocolate on top. Not only did it taste good, it was pretty too. And no, I didn't eat it all by myself. There were two little boys who were most happy to make sure I didn't eat too much.

 

Arts 115

  
  Recently, in college, I was able to take a digital photography class. It was really fun and my photography skills were constantly challenged by the many projects we had to accomplish.  We would go on field trips and focus on a certain aspect or type of photography. The focus of one field trip was depth of field, one was abstract, and one was motion. The hardest project for me was our abstract assignment.

   The top picture is the best abstract of all the ones I attempted. Somehow it just came out right. Although trying to see things as abstract was very difficult, the way it stretched us to look at normal things in a different way was worth the effort.

Little Things in Life

   A few weeks ago, I was taking pictures in the woods behind our house when I came upon this pretty little mushroom. I don't generally use such words as pretty to describe mushrooms, but for some reason this one caught my eye. Maybe it was the color. Maybe the soft, velvet look it had.

   Whatever the reason,  I thought it was worth a picture...or two. I love finding small things like this that are normally overlooked in the busy lifestyle we live. It makes me so much more thankful for God's beautiful creation he allows us to enjoy.