Elements » Miscellaneous

A Peach Margarita break

Sheila — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 05:10:42 +0000

I’ve been blogging for about two years now, but the time has gone by so fast that it seems like almost yesterday.

It’s been a whole lot of fun!

It’s been wonderful to find your blogs, to learn more about you, and to be inspired every day by what you’re cooking, baking, and drinking too.

It’s been fun photographing and sharing with you everything that comes out of our kitchen.

But life seems kind of hectic right now, and I need to take a little break from blogging so I can finish a couple of projects that I’ve been working on.

So I’m planning to take a temporary break from blogging so I can do that.

In the meantime, Kemal and I plan on trying many of your recipes, and enjoying lots of good food!

Anyway, I’ll be around and commenting some, but I’ll be less active…at least for awhile.

In the meantime, here’s a peach margarita for you

and you,

and you!

Don’t worry…I’ve got more! There plenty enough for the rest of you too! Cheers! sheila

Leroy and Tammie Tied the Knot

Sheila — Mon, 30 May 2011 05:26:36 +0000

We interrupt this regularly scheduled program to announce that my brother, Leroy and his gal, Tammie, just tied the knot a couple of days ago! They had a quiet, private, wedding ceremony on May 27th, and Kemal and I wish them many wonderful years of happiness together. Congratulations you two!!

While I wasn’t able to take pictures of them on their wedding day, I was, however, able to take a few snapshots of them a few weeks ago on my parents’ back porch. Don’t they make such a cute couple!!

And here they are a smoochin’.

Here’s a couple of pictures my Mom just sent me. She said she took them after the ceremony. Aren’t they just so sweet together!!

In the photos above that Mom took, you can see how tall Leroy is compared to Tammie.

Below are some silly pictures I took of Leroy and Tammie comparing their feet and hand sizes.

I just love those hands and feet photos! I think they look so cute!

And they sure do make a great couple!! Both of them are very friendly and outgoing, they both laugh a lot, and they’re both a lot of fun! Congratulations you two!!!!

And to those of you reading, if you could go anywhere in the world on an all-expenses-paid honeymoon or second honeymoon, where would you go?

Kemal and I would love to go to Santorini Greece. Our second choice would be St. Lucia in the French West Indies. We’d go to either of those place in a heartbeat!

Baby Doves

Sheila — Tue, 19 Apr 2011 17:36:19 +0000

Spring is a magical time of the year. It’s a a time of new life…a time when trees, plants, and flowers start to bloom, as well as a time when baby birds are born.

This spring, Kemal and I have had a wonderful experience. A mama dove used one of the hanging baskets on our balcony as a nest.

She laid her eggs there and sat on them for weeks, keeping them warm and protecting them until her babies hatched. Once the two babies emerged from the eggs, Mama Dove was with them day and night, feeding them and caring for them.

Papa Dove also played a crucial role in feeding both her and the babies.

During a recent severe thunderstorm with very high winds and large hail, we feared for the safety of Mama Dove and her chicklets. Mama had no protection from the hail, and she was not only being pummeled with hail, but the hanging basket she and the chicks occupied was being thrashed around in the wind. Thankfully, Mama Dove and the babies survived the storm seemingly unscathed.

Watching the babies, as well as interactions between them and their parents, has been such a treat for us. We’ve witnessed the mother giving her babies a bit of independence by leaving the nest and leaving them along in the basket.

But she didn’t go far away. She stayed on the balcony nearby, watching them constantly.

Later, Mama ventured from the balcony to the large tree which shades our balcony.

She and Papa Dove kept an eye on them from there, and for a while, the couple even seemed to relax and didn’t keep their eagle eyes on the babies.

Yesterday afternoon after we returned home from a trip to the store, we noticed that the babies were alone in the basket

and Mama and Papa were no where to be found. Presumably they were nearby finding food for themselves and their chicks. Here’s a one-minute video Kemal took of the growing babies while Mama and Papa Dove were away. They’re just so cute!

Click here to view the embedded video.

Later in the afternoon, shortly before dusk, we noticed the hanging basket was empty. The babies had left the nest. We were kind of disappointed, but we knew the day they would spread their wings and fly away was coming. But Kemal predicted we hadn’t seen the last of them, and he was right.

This morning I was awakened at 8 a.m. by the cooing of doves. It’s not a bad way to wake up; I love their soft coos; however, when you go to bed at 3 a.m….well…eight o’clock in the morning comes awfully early.

Since I couldn’t fall back asleep, I went ahead and got up and poured myself some coffee. When I opened our blinds, I was treated to a wonderful sight. The baby doves were sitting on our patio table!

Just as Kemal had predicted, they had come home!!! Here’s a couple of pictures of Mama Dove and one of her offspring this morning. Look at the fluffy down feathers!!

And look at the baby’s face!! It’s just adorable!!

Later in the morning, both Mama and Papa Dove joined them, and all morning I’ve been watching the chicks and their parents. Mama is still feeding them, and it’s so funny to watch the hungry birds eagerly taking food from Mama’s mouth.

It’s also been fun to watch the little chicks as they flutter from our planters, baskets, flower pots, and patio furniture. They’re just so cute!

I hope Mama and Papa Dove, as well as their offspring, will be frequent visitors to our balcony the remainder of the spring, and the rest of the year actually. Since Mama and Papa have been visiting us for several years now, I have every reason to believe that they will. I wonder if we’ll be able to recognize the babies once they get bigger? I hope so. Regardless…I’m just thrilled to have witnessed the magic of new life this spring.

Watching birds is so much fun, especially the baby doves. It’s definitely made this spring extra special and enjoyable! How about you? What has been the highlight of your spring so far?

Edit: By the way, all the pictures (except for one) and the video were made by my sweetie, Kemal.

Photographing What I Cook (Part 2)

Sheila — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 22:55:38 +0000

Well, it’s been a little over two months since I started photographing what I cook, and while I still find it challenging and not-so-easy to do, I’m still having fun with it while I try to improve.

We just made some changes to our little DIY studio. The biggest change is that our studio no longer sits on our bar counter top. There were two reasons I was having problems with that. One issue has been that’s it’s difficult for me to take pictures of food in the various stages of preparation because my prep area and the studio location is the bar counter top. There’s no room for the studio to be set up if I’m prepping food on the counter top.

I’ve done it, but it’s very hard because when the studio occupies the entire breakfast bar counter top, it means that I have only a very small counter top space next to my sink to prep food. That makes cooking very awkward.

The other reason I was having problems with the studio box being on the counter top is because it sits up very high, making it difficult when I want to take pictures from high angles.

So what we did to solve both problems was to purchase two TV trays which we place side-by-side below the breakfast bar. We just move the bar stools out of the way and put the TV trays in their place. Here’s a picture so you can see our new set-up:

We also added a fifth, overhead light which clamps onto our breakfast bar counter top. The extra light helps a lot. Now we can have two front lights, as well as a light on the right and left sides of the box. If we don’t want two frontal lights, we can move one to the side.

Another change we made was to buy a piece of white fabric to use as our seamless background. Today was our first day to use it, and I think it’s going to work better than the roll of paper we had been using. Later, we will purchase some fabric in various solid colors so we can change up the background.

Kemal also cut a hole in the back of the studio box. If we want, we can light from the back. If we don’t need a back light, we just attach a piece of white foam board to cover the hole. We use Velcro so we can take the board on and off easily. We also use Velcro to attach the fabric to the box, and Velcro is also used to attach the corners of the box. That makes it easy to collapse and fold the box when we’re read to put it away and store it under our bed. The TV trays also fold up and occupy just a little place in our closets which is also nice since our apartment is so small.

We made some test shots, and I’m definitely satisfied.

Photographing What I Cook

Sheila — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 17:08:14 +0000

It’s not easy to take pictures of what I cook…and that’s putting it mildly!

I’ve been a hobbyist photographer for several years, and while the experience I have does help in trying to photograph what I cook, I basically feel like I’m in new territory and that I’m out of my element. For the most part, I take pictures outdoors in natural light. I have very limited experience shooting indoors under artificial light so this makes taking pictures of food inside quite challenging.

We don’t get much natural light in our apartment because of all the shade trees. So, I tried taking my food outside on my balcony to shoot it, but the trees that block the sun, and that causes problems. Even if the sunlight was adequate, shooting on my balcony is far from ideal during winter and rainy weather.

The result is I’m learning as I go, and it’s very slow-going, challenging, and sometimes frustrating.

Kemal made me a do-it-yourself (DIY) studio light box which we place on our breakfast bar when I want to take pictures. He found a tutorial for how to make this box on strobist.com. Our apartment is very small, so this DIY studio box works well. We have fluorescent clip lights on our cabinet doors and the breakfast bar. Here’s the front view of the box.

At the time we took this picture, we used parchment paper as a stand-in to get the seamless background. Of course that paper wasn’t wide enough so we bought a roll of white all-purpose project paper which fits all the way across the width of the box.

Here’s the back view:

This is a great little set-up that works pretty well. The box is collapsible, so when we’re done shooting, we fold the box up and put it in a plastic bag under our bed. The clip lights are small so they don’t take up much storage space. Kemal is getting ready to modify the box further by cutting a square hole on the back side so we can have back lighting. The project paper that we’re using to get our seamless background will serve to diffuse the light.

Anyway, Kemal plans to write a post that will explain more about how he made the box, so I won’t go into any more details about it here.

So while this little DIY studio is great for taking pictures of finished projects, it’s not so great when I want to take pictures when I’m in the middle of cooking something. The breakfast bar where the box is sitting is also my work area when I’m cooking. It’s nearly impossible for me to use the box to photograph food in the preparation stages when I need that counter top to do my prep work.

We do have a glass coffee table in the living room that we could use to set the box on, but we can’t clip the lights to it because it’ll damage the glass. Kemal mentioned last night that we might look for a small fold-away card table that would be a good surface to put the studio box on, and we could also clip the lights to the sides of it. We won’t have any overhead light, but it might just work.

Anyway, until we get that card table, the only way I can photograph food in the prep stages is to use our little Sony pocket camera. It’s not ideal, but for now, it’ll have to do.

In the meantime, I’m doing my best to try to become better at taking pictures using artificial light, and I’m also doing a lot of reading about photographing food. I have to admit I’m disappointed in my food photos, but I hope that with practice and study, my disappointments will be fewer.

It’s a learning process, and I keep telling myself I can’t expect myself to start out taking food photos like the pros; however, I can hope for improvements and more successes along the way.