A Few Photos From Christmas Day

What do you get someone who has everything they want?
Brandon had a couple of surprises...

We have a budding photographer in the family. Actually, we have more than one because I have several grandkids who love to use the camera.
Caleb finds an Elmo present from Mommy and Daddy!
Hey- I finally surprised Karen. She's really hard to surprise.
At the end of the evening, Caleb kept saying to me, "cheese." I thought he wanted me to bring him some. Karen said no, he wanted his picture taken!
This was his pose. He is a cute boy. And he really likes grapes from Grandpa!

Jump over to Laura's blog to see another cute boy. I especially love the bottom picture on this post! And, Happy New Year!

Photography Tips and Tricks

Because I'm so super busy at work and have little time to do anything but work, I have no explanation as to how I found this article, since of course I have no free time to peruse blogs or other items of interest online. I was most intrigued in the tripod solution, so I checked it out myself and it works! Look at this, and then read about it below (item #5) from David Pogue.

This article was printed in the NY Times on December 18, 2008

From the Desk of David Pogue
Pogue’s Photography Tips and Tricks
By DAVID POGUE
It's a crazy time of year to be finishing a book. But in between present wrapping and tree trimming, that's exactly what I'm doing. It's a book on digital photography, which, as you probably know, is among my favorite hobbies.

As I write, I keep coming across these important tips and saying to myself, "Man, this is what people REALLY need to know. I should pull them out into a special list at the back of the book called, 'The Best Photography Tricks of All Time,' so people can't miss it."

So that's exactly what I'm doing. Thought I'd send you the list as it stands today, so you'd have it when you unwrap that shiny new digital camera that you get as a gift. (Most of these apply to consumer cameras, not S.L.R.'s.)

THE BEST PHOTOGRAPHY TRICKS OF ALL TIME

1. Half-pressing the shutter button (to prefocus) eliminates shutter lag.
Everyone hates shutter lag. That's the half-second delay between the time you press the shutter button and the time the photo is actually snapped--during which your child, pet, or action photo slips away. (Pocket cams have shutter lag; S.L.R. cameras don't.)
Shutter lag is the time it takes the camera to calculate focus and exposure. Thing is, you can make it calculate that stuff ahead of time. Aim the camera, anticipating where the subject will be, and half-press the shutter button. When you hear the beep, you've locked in the exposure and focus. Keep the button half-pressed; now you're ready. When the subject appears, push the rest of the way down. Presto: no shutter lag!

2. For the blurred-background effect, back up and zoom in.
In technical terms, what you're looking at is a limited depth of field. That's a geek-shutterbug term meaning, "which part of the scene, front-to-back, is in focus." Subject yes; background, no.
That beautiful, professional effect is easy to get if you have an S.L.R.; it practically happens automatically. (Dial up a wide aperture--a low f-stop number--to accentuate the effect.)
On a pocket cam, choose Portrait mode. Move your subjects away from the background--the farther, the better. Finally, use the back-up-and-zoom-in trick. That is, stand away from your subjects--the farther, the better--and then use the camera's zoom to "bring you" back up close. Thanks to a quirk of optics, zooming in helps create a shallow depth of field.
You may look like a weirdo, backing way up like that. But it really works.

3. Force the flash outdoors.
It might not occur to you to use the flash when you're taking pictures of people on a bright, sunny day. It certainly wouldn't occur to the camera.
Problem is, the camera "reads" the scene and concludes that there's tons of sunlight. But it's not smart enough to recognize that the face you're photographing is in shadow. You wind up with a dark, silhouetted face.
The solution is to force the flash on--a very common photographer's trick. The flash can provide just the right amount of fill light to brighten your subject's face--without affecting the exposure of the background.
It eliminates the silhouette effect. Better yet, it provides very flattering front light. It softens smile lines and wrinkles, and it puts a nice twinkle in the subject's eyes. (It also means that you can ignore the old "rule" about taking photos on a sunny day--the one that tells the photographer to "Stand with the sun behind you.")

4. Exploit the magic hour.
Hate to break it to you, but serious photographers don't get a lot of sleep. Show me an award-winning, breathtaking landscape--a pond shimmering in the woods, golden clouds surrounding a mountain peak--and I'll show you someone who got up at 4:40 am to be ready with a tripod as the sun rose.
That hour after sunrise, and the hour before sunset, is known as the magic hour. The lower angle of the sun and the slightly denser atmosphere create rich, saturated tones, plus what photographers call sweet light. It's an amazing, golden glow that makes everybody look beautiful, every building look enchanted, and every landscape look breathtaking.
It's a far cry from the midday sun, which creates much harsher shadows and much more severe highlights. Landscape shooting is more difficult when the sun is high overhead on a bright, cloudless day.

5. Use a lampshade socket as a tripod.
Another chronic problem with pocket cams is getting blur when you don't want it--which is just about any time you're indoors without the flash. Yeah, yeah, we know: "Use a tripod." But come on: for the average person on vacation or at school events, buying, hauling around, and setting up a tripod is a preposterous burden.
Often, there's a wall, parked car, bureau, tree, pillar, door frame, or some other big, stationary object you can use instead, to prop up either the camera or your arms.
But here's my favorite trick: It turns out that the threads at the top of just about any lamp--the place where the lampshade screws on--are precisely the same diameter as a tripod mount! In a pinch, you can whip off the lampshade, screw on the camera, and presto: You've got a rock-steady indoor tripod.
People might think you're a genius, a nutcase, or a genius nutcase, but never mind. It works.

There you have it, folks: five tips that can save you from throwing your pocket cam out the window. Happy shooting--and happy holly days!

He Says I Can Tell You

It seems like just a moment ago when he looked like this...

And now, Danny is engaged to be married. He and Erin will be married sometime in 2009. That's all I know, because that's all he knows. That means that Jackson will officially be numbered with my other grandkids (I've been numbering him there already, but now this makes it really official). He's a cute boy!

I'm sorry I don't have a picture of Erin on this computer, but we're happy to welcome you to our family!

Orange Chocolate Chip Cookies

About a week ago, I said my sister had been holding out on me. She made some cookies that were so yummy for the cookie exchange that I asked her for the recipe. She kind of put me off a bit and said she'd get it to me sometime. I asked her where she got it and she answered noncommittally, "In a book." The reason she was being so evasive was because she gave me the book for Christmas! It's a beautiful cookbook. It's called The Gathering of Friends.
Here's the Orange Chocolate Chip cookie recipe.


Cookies:
2 1/4 cup flour
1/2 tsp salt
1 cup shortening
1 cup sugar
3 oz. cream cheese, softened
2 eggs
4 tsp orange juice
3 tsp grated orange rind
6 oz. chocolate chips
Combine ingredients and bake on a greased cookie sheet for 12 minutes at 350 degrees.

Frosting:
2 cups powdered sugar
3 oz. cream cheese
1 tsp orange juice
1 Tbsp orange rind
Mix all ingredients together and beat well. Frost cookies.

I love the orange flavor combined with the chocolate. These cookies are good!

The Day After

I've had my eye on these guys for a month. They've been hanging out at my local Macey's grocery store. I didn't buy them for 2 reasons, until now. First, I told Bud I wouldn't buy ANYMORE Christmas decorations this year. Second, they were $50 each. But this morning I called the store and asked if they marked their holiday stuff to half-price. I was told they didn't have any holiday items left, so nothing had to be marked down. After I helped Bud dig us out from under a foot of snow on the driveway, I decided to drive to Macey's to see for myself just what was there. Long-story-short, I got what I wanted, and at a great price to boot. Merry day-after-Christmas to me!
My most fabulous gift this year was a contribution from all my kids, but Holly assembled it. It's a re-cap of the year of the activities of my grandkids in pictures and words. Love it!
Happy Birthday to Bekah today!

Merry Christmas

Were you dreaming of this?



Merry Christmas to everyone!

Merry Christmas Eve

I have a long list of things to accomplish today. However, I woke up feeling dizzy and it doesn't seem to want to go away. I may have to revise today's list. Perhaps the new list is to lie down all day and watch Christmas movies. What is your favorite Christmas movie? Mine would be "It's A Wonderful Life".

These Never Made It

On the back of the Hershey's Cinnamon Chips bag, I found this recipe. I baked them up and the smell was just like a cinnamon roll.

If you eat these warm, you will love them. If you wait for them to cool off, you won't be as impressed. Brandon was a little scared to try them, but felt obligated anyway, since Karen and I left one (and a third) for him. After the first bite, he was convinced. These are so good.
Two of my neighbors received these for their treats (rather than the cookie exchange plate). The rest of these babies were instantly consumed by Karen, Brandon and me. Bud wasn't home, so he didn't get any. I'm making them again on Christmas morning.
If you can find Cinnamon Chips in your neck of the woods (I understand they're not available everywhere), it's worth stocking up on them just to make these. All you have to do is open up the crescent roll dough (two cans worth). Separate the dough into triangles and brush the dough with melted butter. I tried brushing on the butter and adding the chips before separating the dough, but there wasn't enough space to roll them up without getting in the way of the next triangle, so it's better to separate them first and move them away from each other a little bit before continuing.
Press one cup of chips into the dough and roll up. Bake for about 8 minutes. Melt 2/3 cup of chips with 1 tsp shortening in a Ziploc baggie. Knead the baggie to insure all the chips are melted. Snip off the tiniest corner of the baggie and drizzle the baked rolls with the "icing." Eat these while they're still warm. Then eat some more until they're all gone. Then hit the StairMaster for 30 minutes.
Another thing to do with the Cinnamon Chips is to add them to your favorite Snickerdoodle recipe. I haven't tried that yet, but I will next time I make some.

The Cookie Exchange Results

I believe our cookie exchange was a success. We had a great dinner, and played a fun game. Everyone brought cookies and we found a few that were really scrumptious. My sister has been holding out on me. She made an orange chocolate chip cookie that was so yummy! She promised she'd share the recipe, so look for that later this week.
These are Andes Mint Cookies. The recipe is straight off the back of the bag, except they don't say to drizzle theirs. I had a package of the regular Andes mints so I melted a few in a baggie and drizzled away.

I've already given you this recipe. It's the chocolate chip recipe but with the mini Reese's stirred in, instead of the chocolate chips. If you do it this way, omit the salt on the top of the cookie!

Here's Karen's Lemon Snowflake cookies. She says they're usually a little puffier than this. These are still just as tasty though, even if they are a little flat. It's in the family cookbook if you're looking for that recipe (page 283).

Here's the plates of goodies, ready for wrapping.

And, all set for delivery.
Tomorrow I'll show you the one that never made it to the party. Yes, it was that good. Ugly, but good.

This Says It All

Congratulations to my firstborn and his family. Add another grandchild to my list!
To read Nora's science experiment on how to tell if the baby will be a boy or a girl, read Nora's blog for all the details.

Baking Day

As you can see from this messy kitchen, I'm way busy today! I'm doing my baking for tomorrow's cookie exchange, and I also need to mail off three boxes (or more, depending on how I can pack the boxes) to my kids and their kids who are out of state. Not to mention wrap a ton of packages for the party tomorrow. But I wanted to show you yesterday's cookie.
This is made the way the recipe said. 3 1/2 ounces of dough and a sprinkle of sea salt (actually, kosher salt...didn't have sea salt). Because I didn't use the chocolate discs as the recipe asked for, and I did use the peanut butter cups (those cute mini ones!), the salt from the peanut butter cups made adding the extra salt too much.
On the next batch, I made the cookies smaller, and decreased the baking time to about 11 minutes. The big ones are too big for me. I didn't add the extra salt, and I thought they were way better. In fact, they were great.
The outside edge is a little crispy and then it leads into a soft, chewy middle. Excellent.
Just to compare, the big guy and the little guy. I'd go with the little guy from now on, but you do as you wish. That big guy is about 5 inches across. That's a lot of cookie! For Karen, the big ones are a 6 but the little ones are a 9!

This Is It

Yesterday while learning about butter and how to get my cookie to hold that perfect edge and not crumble I came upon a recipe that I had seen earlier this year. I've decided that it will be the cookie dough winner of the cute mini Reese's PB cups.
What I learned about butter was this:
"For mixing and creaming, butter should be about 65 degrees: cold to the touch but warm enough to spread. Just three degrees warmer, at 68 degrees, it begins to melt.
“ 'Once butter is melted, it’s gone,' said Jennifer McLagan, author of the new book “Fat: An Appreciation of a Misunderstood Ingredient, With Recipes” (Ten Speed Press).
Warm butter can be rechilled and refrozen, but once the butterfat gets warm, the emulsion breaks, never to return.
"For clean edges on cookies and for even baking, doughs and batters should stay cold — place them in the freezer when the mixing bowl seems to be warming up. And just before baking, cookies should be very well chilled, or even frozen hard.
"The best way to get frozen or refrigerated butter ready for creaming is to cut it into chunks. (Never use a microwave: it will melt it, even though it will look solid.) When the butter is still cold, but takes the imprint of a finger when gently pressed, it is ready to be creamed.
"When using a stand mixer, attach the paddle blade, and never go above medium speed, or the butter will heat up."
Did you know all that? Now we can all be better bakers.
And now for that recipe...keep in mind that these cookies are supposed to be very large- 5 to 6-inches in diameter! If you have the time, click through on the recipe to read the entire article. I found it very interesting!


Chocolate Chip Cookies
Adapted from Jacques Torres
Time: 45 minutes, plus at least 24 hours chilling

2 cups minus 2 tablespoons (8 1/2 ounces) cake flour
1 2/3 cups (8 1/2 ounces) bread flour
1 1/4 teaspoons baking soda
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1 1/2 teaspoons coarse salt
2 1/2 sticks (1 1/4 cups) unsalted butter
1 1/4 cups (10 ounces) light brown sugar
1 cup plus 2 tablespoons (8 ounces) granulated sugar
2 large eggs
2 teaspoons natural vanilla extract
1 1/4 pounds bittersweet chocolate disks or fèves, at least 60 percent cacao content
Sea salt

1. Using a mixer fitted with paddle attachment, cream butter and sugars together until very light, about 5 minutes. Add eggs, one at a time, mixing well after each addition. Stir in the vanilla.
2. Sift flours, baking soda, baking powder and salt into a bowl. Reduce speed to low, add dry ingredients and mix until just combined, 5 to 10 seconds. Drop chocolate pieces in and incorporate them without breaking them. Press plastic wrap against dough and refrigerate for 24 to 36 hours. Dough may be used in batches, and can be refrigerated for up to 72 hours.
3. When ready to bake, preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper or a nonstick baking mat. Set aside.
4. Scoop 6 3 1/2-ounce mounds of dough (the size of generous golf balls) onto baking sheet, making sure to turn horizontally any chocolate pieces that are poking up; it will make for a more attractive cookie. Sprinkle lightly with sea salt and bake until golden brown but still soft, 18 to 20 minutes. Transfer sheet to a wire rack for 10 minutes, then slip cookies onto another rack to cool a bit more. Repeat with remaining dough, or reserve dough, refrigerated, for baking remaining batches the next day. Eat warm, with a big napkin.
Yield: 1 1/2 dozen 5-inch cookies.

Because this recipe had weight measurements, I pulled out my scale and weighed the ingredients instead of measuring them. Wow! I loved doing it that way. So much quicker and cleaner.
I bought a silpat (nonstick baking mat) last week. I"m excited to try it out on these cookies after my dough finishes its stint in the fridge! The dough, by the way, tastes excellent (yes, I licked the rubber spatula after I was finished making the dough, but I didn't double dip because that would be gross).

Choices To Make

I've been doing this blog for just over a year now. Have you ever wondered what in the world a person can talk about for a year? More than writing for the few of you who read this on a semi-regular basis, it's mostly just a way for me to journal the ins and outs of normal everyday life. Oh, and a way for me to remember a good recipe or two.
Speaking of recipes, on Saturday we're having a cookie exchange at my sister's house. I've narrowed my choices to about 30 different cookies I'd like to bring. Okay, so I'd go nuts (and I don't like nuts) if I tried to make 30 between now and Saturday, so I have to do some more narrowing. The problem is, I sit at work all day (after I'm done with my bit of work that I actually do there) and peruse other people's blogs, especially the food blogs. Especially the food blogs that post a lot of cookie recipes. When I find a recipe I want to keep, I post it with a star (in Reader), and label it. That way I can have half a chance of finding it again. However, there's a particular cookie that I was positive I'd marked and I cannot for the life of me find it.
I went shopping in preparation for the big baking day which is Friday. Because I haven't chosen my recipes yet, it made shopping a little more difficult. So, when in doubt buy it all, right?
I know of a couple recipes that incorporate ready-made cookies into a homemade cookie. Sounds interesting.

Another uses thin mints and wraps the dough around it encasing the mint inside.
These orange-flavored mints are very tasty, and a bit on the small side, so it should fit inside a cookie quite nicely.
Here's the whole caboodle. From candy canes (I might need to crush some for the cookie tops) and brickle bits (there's a world of possibilities with those) to chips galore (cinnamon, chunks, minis, chocolate and peanut butter swirled) and even Reese's cups with nuts. I'm also thinking about dipping pretzels in caramel and chocolate while I'm at it. But there in the front...
Yep, right there...these guys got me excited! How cute! I've seen the mini baking M&M's, but not Reese's.
And even more exciting was the premier baking pieces! So tiny! I cut one in half, can you see it? Who needs a recipe when you have this stuff to work with? Just mix up your favorite chocolate chip cookie batter and substitute these babies for the chocolate chips! With all this to choose from, I'd better get busy baking.

All Decked Out

Just empty boxes up there, but I was thinking that I'd give something really small to Bud on Christmas morning and make him go through all the boxes to get to it (they nestle).

This Santa sits on a chair. Bud spent a couple of hours repairing it for me this year (it was defective from the get-go).

Just for looks. The real stuff always went in a different stocking.

Here's the bigger picture. Love it. At least I thought I did. But under the tree was too bare, so I added a few gifts. That's better. At least I thought it was...


Then Bud came home and brought with him something that made it even better...
Can you see what it is? Now I can say it- LOVE IT!
Oh, and if you can see that this picture is a little brighter, hurray- I finally figured out how to get a photo OUT of Photoshop. I know, that's how ridiculous things are with me and Photoshop.

Still Decking

Here's a bit more...
Good thing I have a lot of shelving on the entertainment center.

I like this pair.

I "won" that snowman decoration a few years ago at a ward party for singing a carol Karaoke-style.
No corner left undecorated.

This nativity set was made by Bud's mother. It's amazing. The elf with the tree is a countdown calendar which is why the tree is only half decorated. Still more to come...

Deck the Halls

There were four stockings and conveniently, I had four children.

As you come in the front door...

Vroom, vroom...

Up the stairs...

Good friends, Mr Snowman and Santa. But wait, there's more...

It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like...

Nearly all the shopping is done. About half of it is wrapped. Some of it has already been mailed. This is what it looks like outside (should have taken it when there was snow on the ground...more festive that way).
My sad dead plants...they died as soon as I put them in last summer.

Candy cane closeup

See the Santa peeking out of the window?

Welcome!

Which one are you?
Tomorrow I'll bring you inside...