Apparently Oak and I find the best time to work on our hobbies when the other is sleeping. This is my product of last night after Oak went to bed… my first actual completed project using the Silhouette. I found this funky Indian-style font on dafont.com. This is pretty much what Hindi looks like, but without the Western characters.. haha 
I then used one of the tutorials I’ve found online to weld the letters together. Each character has a line above it, so I welded the line together so it could be placed on the page in one piece. There were a few detached characters (the a, e, and i), but those were easy enough to place with all the other letters attached to each other.
The paper is from Rusty Pickle, the “Pashmina collection.” Belinda is the one that actually found this paper – she was much better at finding Indian-themed scrapbook papers than me.
I have about 3 or 4 more pages before my India scrapbook is done. I think I’m going to eventually put them all in my gallery on scrapbook.com. I just need to work on getting some better skills at taking pictures of layouts!
This layout is about the kite festival in Ahmadabad – Nirav’s cousins taught us the art of tying and flying kites. The main goal during the festival is to knock other people’s kites out of the sky. The string on the kites is very abrasive and has little pieces of glass in it so you can actually cut the string of the other kites. It’s kind of like a kite war. When we were there, it was a few days before the festival actually started so people were out on their roofs practicing. I’ve never been very good at flying kites (as a kid I think my kites always got caught in a tree), and this was no exception. Someone always had to save my sinking kite… haha. Sigh!
Normally on Sundays we don’t have anything to do in the morning so I let Carrie sleep in. I spend a few hours in the kitchen in the morning experimenting while listening to music. Yesterday I made the brines for the corned beef and pastrami. I picked up about 16 pounds of brisket yesterday which I split between the corned beef and pastrami. Both will be ready for when our families visit. I really look forward to the pastrami and making my own corned beef hash.
| Corned Beef Batch II | Pastrami Batch I |
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Candied Orange Peels I
Next I peeled some oranges and began the process of making candied orange peels. I think we will make some of these chocolate covered. The one I tried before the peels finished drying was pretty tasty.
The last thing I was working on when Carrie woke up was
brandied figs. I had been reading one of the library books on preserving and it had a recipe for the brandied figs. Following the recipe to make the brandied figs there was a recipe for a gratin of brandied figs. The writer declared that recipe was to die for so I had to make the brandied figs.
So this what I have been up to so far today. And with this I leave you with a view of the top shelf of our refridgerator. The corned beef and pastrami and about 6 pounds of Fickle Creek Farm pork back fat. I use the fat to augment my sausage making.
Scrapbooking/computer nerd post.. beware..
So, I’ve been contemplating purchasing a digital craft cutter for quite some time. Last year when Belinda and I were first getting hard core into the scrappyness (I think we had just discovered that BasicGrey is awesome), we were talking about how it’s a pain to either buy premade embellishments (hello expensive), use a die cutting machine for which you have to buy dies (hello again, $$), or cut out all your embellishments by hand (ok, time is money in this one). I thought I was being so clever and said something like, “There should be a machine that cuts stuff out for you, like a printer with a blade!”
While I thought I was exploring a realm of uninhabited intellectual property, I sigh, learned that such a thing already existed. Good for my sanity, bad for my patent portfolio (or lackthereof). The first one I encountered was the Cricut, which is very popular in the scrapbooking community. Well, that one kind of had the same limitations as a regular die cutting machine has. You have to buy cartridges that contain designs on them to cut out. Tres limiting! Plus who wants to buy an $80 cartridge every time you want some new designs? No thanks.
So, I continued my investigation then I discovered what I actually was thinking of – the Silhouette. I was liking what I was reading – you hook it to your computer and it can cut any TrueType font that you download on the web. That in itself is enough for any scrapbooker that has tried letter stickers and found themselves with a pile of Qs and Xs at the end of a hard core cropping session. Some more research and I found that people are pretty open about sharing files they’ve made for different shapes/themes, and you can buy shapes from places like Quickutz for much cheaper than a Cricut cartridge.
There are actually 3 machines that are the exact same thing – Craft Robo, Wish Blade, and the Silhouette. I chose the Silhouette because it was over $100 cheaper than the other two. For the same exact machine, except the Wish Blade comes with slightly different software and a snazzier case. The price had dipped pretty low on Overstock and Oak decided I would finally get one for Christmas. Huzzah! (yes, we have already exchanged gifts. We are bad about that.)
Well, my new toy actually arrived in the mail the same exact day I had that terrible fall at work. Talk about bad timing! But my honey actually helped me get it all set up and within a half an hour or so we had cut out our first items – a heart and our names. Pretty amazing! I think this is a craft tool that guys could get into. It’s geeky enough to intrigue them, and if you get the Silhouette, it’s not at all girly looking.
So, using the premade shapes and the letters is pretty darn easy! And, since I’m sure you know how many fonts there are out there, the possibilities are pretty much endless. Not to mention the fact that I’ve already downloaded a buttload of premade images – I even found a Scottish piper for our Highland games page. I’m sure when I get into Super Scrapbooking Mode, I’ll be using all of these shapes like no tomorrow.
However, since it’s the holiday season, I haven’t really been scrapbooking too much, so I decided, me being the nerd that I am, that I also need to learn how to make my own designs with this thing. There are a ton of tutorials online that help with learning different methods (see my delicious category for a bunch of links). I downloaded a program that is basically the freeware version of Adobe Illustrator, called Inkscape, which is where you make your designs, and then you import them into the CraftRobo software that comes with the Silhouette. Conceptually it is not very hard. However, I have a fair amount of experience working with vector graphics from college so I’m pretty sure that has helped.
I’m still working on my first design- it’s all done in Inkscape, but for some reason it didn’t cut correctly. And, let me just tell you, that the CraftRobo documentation is notsogood. Sorry to whoever wrote it, but it breaks pretty much every technical writing rule there is. It’s very componentized – no, I do not want to learn about the print window, I want to learn <i>how to print</i>. It’s pretty clear that Quickutz took the software and slapped their logo on it – and they didn’t really even do that in most places! Talk about interesting branding and vendor issues (oh, I am such a nerd.). So, I’m pretty sure I won’t be using the CraftRobo documentation as a reference very often and will instead print the tons of tutorials that people online have written up.
I have to say, for an open source project, I am pretty impressed with Inkscape so far. I’m so used to Illustrator though that I might just install the old copy that we have as well. For example, it took me about 5 minutes to figure out how to ungroup a set of shapes. Mon dieu! The pro is that you can directly export your images to the file type that the Craftrobo software uses. Very handy!
So, I will try to keep updates going on when I start figuring out more. It’s a very powerful little tool – the challenge is just learning how to leverage all of it! I’m up for it! stay tuned..
This isn’t a complete excuse for my absence, I know – but I was basically out of service last week. I was going about my business, leaving work to go to a holiday lunch, and the next thing I knew, I was laying on the ground face down at the bottom of the stairs outside our building. And, mon dieu, it hurt. Some very kind man (I’m assuming a fellow employee, but I have no idea who it was… thank you!) helped me up and got me back inside with some paper towels. I decided I better go home and get some band-aids and called Oak to see if he could come help me – well, I ended up getting some stitches on my lip. And, my lips were swollen like two balloons last week. I couldn’t laugh without it hurting, bite into anything (like sandwiches… bite sized food only please!), or talk without sounding weird. Boo!
So, the first thing I did when I got my stitches out on Saturday was eat a sandwich. Isn’t it funny how the moment you can’t have something you start craving it like no tomorrow? It helps there was a serious sale on lunch meat at Harris Teeter last week (50% off! HELLOW!). So, now my facial features are pretty much back to normal size and color but I have some residual bruising on my knees and hands. I mostly forget until I do something like put on lotion, and it’s like, hmm, why does this hurt?
On Saturday, I had recovered enough to go on with our cookie party! We made 4 different varieties of cookies, and we even had a signature cookie-making drink (Thanks Daniela). As a result, I have consumed way too many cookies. Ah, tis the season! The crafting of gifts has continued, as well as the shopping for and wrapping of the store-bought gifts. Busy busy busy. I’m really glad that I had gotten ahead on some of this stuff before I was out of commission!
So, since I have nothing else to discuss and this is an awkward ending to my post, here is a question : what is your favorite christmas cookie?
What can I say I like to experiment with meat. In preparation of my family visiting during Christmas I made some more bacon. It is quite amazing how easy it is to share homemade bacon. I tried two different cure flavorings this time. The ole standby of brown sugar and molasses was made along with a honey, ginger and cardamom. Unfortunately the honey, ginger and cardamom portion of the batch did not have a very strong flavoring. I will have to tinker with adding the flavors earlier into the curing process.
Well, the holiday season is in full gear. Which means, insane busy-ness. Thursday was Oak’s work holiday party, which was fun and gave me an excuse to get dressed up in a new dress. It was hot. All the holiday parties at my work are during working hours, which leaves little room for dressing up. Even wearing Christmas colors is probably a bit much for those. I’ll do it anyway. =)
We’re also in high production on our homemade holiday gifts. They are obviously Top Secret at the moment, but perhaps after the holiday I will have to share what we made. I think the trick is in high volume production – not making different things for different people. This is a trick we learned from Martha, whose Christmas book we’ve been pouring over this year.
I found Martha’s Christmas book at the flea market a few seasons ago and it is definitely a worthy investment. I think Christmas time was when I first encountered Martha as a child – when she was spray painting pine cones gold and sticking cloves into oranges. Those, and many other ideas are covered in the book. Some ideas, like the gingerbread mansion and cassoulet, are beyond insane. The cassoulet serves 100 people. If you ever find the book – read the ingredients – it has ingredients like “10 whole chickens” and “20 pounds of carrots.” Holy moly! Martha, we don’t all have THAT many relatives! hahaha. However, I do think we’ll want to try her eggnog recipe. Oak has had some brewing in the fridge since before Halloween, but it is way too strong for me and most other people that have tried it. Maybe that’s the point so you don’t drink very much of it.
Progress is also being made on decking the halls, sending Christmas cards and gifts, and holiday shopping. Our holiday potluck is at work this week, so I’ve got to think of something to bring to that as well. We’re also having a party next weekend where we are making a (to be determined) selection from Gourmet’s favorite cookies 1941-2008. Should be interesting!
Assuming I have a few free moments from holiday preparations, I’ll be posting again soon 
Well, I upgraded wordpress and in the process all my nift-o widgets stopped working. Poo. Well, after re-installing most of them, it seems to be in working order again. Phew. Situation averted.
I think my new year’s resolution for 2009 will have to be to increase the frequency of my blog posts. It’s so sad – for every blog I read I wonder why they miss a day of updates when I am letting it go for weeks. Shame on me.
Thanksgiving at our house this year was very low-key but nice this year. Oak made a few of the recipes that came out well last year, and we added on a yummy apple pie recipe that seems to combine apple crisp and apple pie together! Hotness! Also, my cornbread was edible for the first time in about 5 years. The recipe in Martha Stewart’s Baking Handbook is very Yankee-friendly. (Yes, there is a difference between Yankee and southern cornbread, I’ve learned.)
And, after several games of Scrabble, which seems to have become a holiday tradition, I realized that I won’t be taking the game up professionally any time soon — not even one win!! With wordsmithing being my profession and all, you’d think I’d be very good at coming up with words. Here are my 3 reasons for losing:
- All the low-value letters I kept getting. (At one point I had something like RIIIOE).
- A lot of awesome work terms that would make great words – IIOP, HTTP, JMX … etc, are not in the Official Scrabble Dictionary. Sure — accept Ye Olde English, but not Nerd English!!
- Mom needs to stop practicing year-round with online Scrabble, because that really isn’t fair to the rest of us (hint hint).
On a final note, I was very happy to see a nearby high school march in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade. NC represent yo!
