fine art by caroline serafinas
Steve Jobs, the brilliant, mercurial co-founder of Apple Inc. who introduced simple, elegantly designed computers for people who are more interested in what technology could do rather than how it was done, died Oct. 5 at age 56. (Washington Post)
As I was searching for photo collages tonight, this was one of the first images that came up. Remarkable picture. Remarkable man.
….my wedding favors. Yes, that’s right. This is going to look crazy for a second, but this is everyone who came to our wedding:
These photos were taken in haste the day before our wedding. As were individual portraits of each.
So I’m on a mission now to crop all of the individual pictures and make some sort of “cool” collage. (Better than what was slapped together above.) One of those photo collages that look like a picture of something from far away would be awesome. Not that I know how to do that.
I just went to one of the most delightful bridal showers I’ve ever been to. It was very non-traditional, which I very much enjoyed. There was no awkward opening of gifts or silly games. (The games were fun and consisted of mad libs and blind wine tasting.) Just lots of eating, mingling, and some drinking. Like the song actually: “…eat, drink, and be merry.”
For the party favors, they had a make-your-own-wine-charms station. So fun! And I will definitely use these. I did, however, forget to be social for the 20 minutes that I sat making my charms. I was extremely focused.
During the year I lived at home, between college and the real world, my nephew V. and I spent a lot of time together. Specifically, we spent a lot of time watching Shrek and/or Monsters, Inc. So for his 3rd birthday I painted him this picture of him and Sully. Stopping by their house this weekend, I was pretty happy to see it still prominently displayed in V.’s room. (He’s older now, and I’m pretty sure he has moved on from Monsters.)
As I was leaving his room, this caught my eye…
Seems we have a budding artist. Win.
Since I was already poking around the kid’s rooms I stopped into N.’s. Mostly I just wanted to snap some pictures of her wall. (I also delivered her picture this weekend. Not sure if she liked it or not because she gave me a look that said, “You’re a weirdo.”)
As you can probably infer from the pictures, mostly everything in her room is pink. So we lucked out when we chose the paint color! The flower-mural-thing was my baby gift to her.
I’m reminiscing as I write this post… and feeling really old.
By the way. When I asked V. what his favorite subject is in school he told me math. Double win.
This past weekend Mike and I spent a few days at Deep Creek, Maryland with his family. The tropical storm had made its way out by Friday afternoon so, despite the torrential downpour during our drive up, it turned out to be a beautiful weekend!
The opening NFL weekend also gave me some time to fiddle around with my camera. (Not that I dislike football. But I DO like to multi-task.) I found some great photography tutorials via Pinterest (wish I had bookmarked those) and learned quite a bit in three hours. I at least now fully understand the aperture and shutter speed relationship. Did I have my white balance set to incandescent while out at the waterfalls? Yes. Oops..
Lucky Mike gets another painting. He’s been asking for a painting of a Colombian flag guitar forever. (See Colombian flag here.) So I’ve kind of owed him one. Well… “owed” in the way that a wife kindly does something for her husband occasionally.
I threw the Rubicon in the background as a tribute to his old Jeep.
…And now that I’m looking at the painting, I’m realizing there is something I need to fix…. oops. Hopefully no one sees what I see.
I am procrastinating here before getting started on one of my least favorite activities: paying bills. Of course Meatball is hanging out, which got me browsing through some pictures. We got an SLR shortly after getting Meatball. And I’ll be honest, 90% of my pictures are of him. So here’s a rundown of my top 5 9 favorite pictures. Keep in mind these are only SLR pictures (post-puppyhood). He was equally awesome as puppy. But those pictures are for another day…
Does she have an evil smile in real life? Yes. In a good way!
In keeping with the miniature theme lately, this week a few weeks ago I made miniature beer mugs. We are attending attended an Augtoberfest party and thought these would be a good contribution. Plus, I’ve never made cake pops before and wanted to try it out. I got this book for Christmas, and this was my first time making them. I recommend the book, or visiting her blog, if you want detailed instructions.
This activity took me a few nights. The first night was solely devoted to baking the cake. The second night I rolled the cake balls. This involved crumbling the cake, mixing with icing (store-bought of course), then forming into the shape of balls.
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| Adding icing to my cake crumbs |
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| Okay, I forgot to take a picture of the balls, but these are in the mug form. |
Enter day three. After refrigerating these suckers, it came time for the candy coating. I quickly learned that you can’t just put a stick in these and go immediately into the candy dunking. If you do, balls of cake get lost in the candy goo. I had much greater success dipping the lollipop stick into the melted candy, sticking it into the cake pop, then allowing to cool. THEN proceeding into the candy dunking.
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| Awaiting a candy dunk |
In the meantime I rolled and made a few mug handles fashioned from gum paste (once again, store-bought).
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| Turns out there was no need for that rolling pin you see here. |
After heating up some candy in the microwave each cake got a dunk. I immediately gave them each a handle before the candy coating cooled. Sadly the beer color ended up a bit darker than I had anticipated, and so rather than some pale ales, they ended looking more like Guinness beer mugs.
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| Almost done |
And lastly, I added a frothy finish…
So they ended up being a hit at the party. Would I make them again? Eh…. I would probably stick with some simple round cake balls in the future.
As if I needed to spend more time browsing fun things on the internet. I just discovered Pinterest. I’m well aware that this website has probably been around for quite sometime, but I still love it. There are so many great ideas and things I want, or things I want to make! I may need to sign up soon so I can start tagging things.
