On Top of Spaghetti...

Wednesday, September 28, 2011

Recently, it's been taking a little longer to get meals on the table; not because I take a long time to cook--ok, maybe a little, but because if it looks good, I want to take a picture of it.
Ok, that didn't come out right--I meant if it looks what I call Pin-worthy, I'll want to find a nice plate or bowl and take a couple of shots (maybe a few more than a couple). I'm not saying that our other meals aren't good, or we eat off plastic dishes--not that there's anything wrong with that :D, but I have started a small collection of props for food photos and take every opportunity to try them out.
No one has complained yet; you know, as in family members milling around, tapping their feet, snarling "let's go Mom, make with the picture, we're hungry!!!" but I expect it's just a matter of time. Hey, a girl has to practice to get better at it, right? I managed to get a couple of pictures (and by a couple, I mean two--they're my first--you gotta start somewhere) on Foodgawker (yay), but also have had a fair amount of rejections (boo). So, I'll just keep practicing and submitting and checking out other food blogs for inspiration and tips.
Anyway, here's a shot of my homemade spaghetti and meatballs. One of these days I'll have to write down the recipe--it usually varies a little. Sometimes I use fresh garlic and sometimes I use left-over roasted garlic from my (also homemade) garlic butter.
Ok, all this talk about food has made me hungry. Let's eat!

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Pinteresting, isn't it?

Tuesday, September 27, 2011

Since I'm spending such a great amount of time browsing through Pinterest recently, pinning, re-pinning, liking and commenting--not to mention sharing my finds via Twitter and Facebook, I thought I'd start sharing some favorites here on the blog.
If you're not familiar with Pinterest, there is a great article on The Blog Stylist. I don't know how I got along without it, now that I've used it for a while. You know when you browse various websites and see ideas for everything from laundry room organization to web design color lists and you want to mark those somehow? I usually made tons of lists (which I then promptly forgot about) or gobs of bookmarks which got too overwhelming after creating 35 menus and 76 items per menu (I know it's here somewhere, I saved it just yesterday... :p)
I suppose if you get carried away with Pinterest, you could amass loads of Boards and Pins, but I think because it's organized so visually, it will still be easier to find something this way as opposed to traditional bookmarks.
So, for the time being, I'm happily pinning and re-pinning. Here is my board for Favorite Recipies. Take a look. Happy pinning!


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Back to School - Yay!

Sunday, September 11, 2011

So, I was spending some time on Pinterest--okay, A LOT of time! It's hard to just look around a bit, because it's so darn fun and you always find something interesting, fun, cute and stuff you think must have, that I usually end up spending hours pinning and re-pinning. If you haven't tried it, go check it out. It's great.
Anyway, one of the pins that caught my eye was about organizing school papers. Wait, what? I NEED that, like, NOW!  So, off I went--following that pin to a wonderful blog called iHeartOrganizing, where I promptly spent several hours looking around and ending up planning all sorts of projects to organize my house.
Ok, back to the article on Organizing School Paperwork; it's a neat way to file all those papers you're constantly looking for (hmmm, which pile did I put that in?) and the article is sooo well written and also has great pictures to show the process. And, if that wasn't enough, you can download the templates for the Labels and cover sheet.
I couldn't find any of the nice file boxes locally and was too impatient to order them online and wait for them. BUT, I did find 1/2 boxes at Office Max which are super cute and don't look like filing/storage boxes at all. Take a look, what do you think?
Binders
I scanned in all the school pictures for both my kids, a task I had planned to do anyway, so now I had a good reason to move that up on my To-Do List. I downloaded the template and opened  it up in Photoshop. Since I had seven pictures to process, I decided to place the first image as a Smart Object on a new layer and then clip the layer to the template (background) and mask out everything but the picture. After printing the first sheet, preparing for the next one is easy. You just right-click the picture layer (the Smart Object), select Replace Contents and pick the next picture when prompted. You may need to adjust your Layer Mask a bit and you'll need to change the Teacher's name and school info as needed.
Folders
I could stop here and call this project finished, but I wanted to be able to quickly know which binder is which, so I used the template for the folders and changed the dimensions to make it narrow to fit the spine for the binder. I also removed all information except for the name and--voila--individually marked Binder Spines!
Spine

I saved the Photoshop file for the Spine-sheet as a template and would like to share it, but I will contact iHeartOrganizing first to ask if she would mind--it was her original template after all. :D

So, that's it--on to the next project.

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