Remember my obsession with fiddle leaf fig trees? Well I found a miniature one, and I had to bring it home with me! The tag said “Little Fig”. I wonder how little it will stay? Just look at the beautiful veining in those leaves.
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Daniel and I spent the weekend in the mountains of North Carolina with a bunch of friends. We did a little bit of hiking and a whole lot of sitting around the fire pit roasting jumbo sized marshmallows and drinking hot apple cider. The leaves were just starting to put on their fall colors, and the air was cool and crisp—just the way I like it!
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I found this on the Scout’s Honor Co. blog.
I couldn’t have said it (drawn it?) better myself.
Thanks for everything, Steve.
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The other day while editing some of my Iceland photos I accidentally scaled a photo down to 15 pixels wide instead of 1500 pixels wide, and I liked what I saw. Just a few blocks of color were able to maintain the mood of the photograph even though the details were completely lost. Before I knew it I was getting out my watercolors. This project is simple, but if you hate tedium you might want to skip it. I gravitate toward time consuming, monotonous tasks (especially when they provide a beautiful end result), so I thoroughly enjoyed the process.
You’ll need:
digital photograph
photo editing software
basic math skills
ruler
pencil
watercolor paper
square tip watercolor paintbrush
watercolors
How to:
First, open the photo you want to work with in Photoshop (or your preferred photo editing program). Resize the image to about 10–20 pixels wide, and zoom in until you can see the individual pixels. Play around with different widths to see what you like best. The larger your image the more detail your painting will have, and the more time consuming your painting will be. For me 12 pixels wide was the sweet spot that gave me the amount of detail I wanted without being too daunting. You may need to experiment with several photographs before you find one that will look interesting simplified into pixels.
This is where you need your math skills. Once you’ve finalized your image, use a ruler and pencil to lightly draw a grid on your paper. The grid should have as many boxes as there are pixels in your photograph, but it still needs to fit on your piece of paper. My grid ended up being made up of .75″ squares.
Grab your paints and paint brush. Keep your pixel-ized reference photo handy and paint each grid square the color of the corresponding pixel. Watercolors worked beautifully for this project. I could easily mix and tweak colors, and the effect of the paint gathering at the edges of each box is gorgeous. It works best to paint every other box, let them dry, and then go back and paint the ones you missed so the watercolors don’t bleed into each other. Don’t worry too much about staying in the lines perfectly or mixing the exact colors. Imperfections are what will give your piece depth.
After a few hours of painting squares your eyes might start to cross, but don’t stop! It will be worth it when you end up with a neato painting.
What do you think? Are you going to make your own? I really love how this turned out. I think I’m going to have to go frame shopping.
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I want to talk about wrinkles. It seems like my forehead wrinkles are getting more prominent each day. They’ve always shown up when I raise my eyebrows really high,
but they used to disappear completely once my eyebrows resumed their normal orientation. Now the wrinkles tend to linger. How do you take care of your skin, specifically your face skin? I usually just slather on some moisturizer with SPF in the morning, and smooth some organic jojoba and/or argan oil over my face before bed (which often results in a greasy pillowcase). Surprisingly putting oil on my face has improved my complexion rather than causing breakouts, but I feel like it’s impossible to know if any one product will benefit my skin long term or not. Maybe skin care products don’t help at all, and it’s all a big scam. What do you think?
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Is it still considered window shopping if you buy something? I have been admiring Eight Seasons’ bags since July 31st, 2009, so I finally ordered one (#3 below). I think it’s the perfect reward for finally finishing my holiday line! Do you self-reward?
1 elephant dream print
2 yellow ochre pillow
3 leather wristlet
4 a fan of a fan print
5 hexagon necklace
6 porcelain dish
7 vintage scalloped metal mirror
8 linen dish towel
9 raccoons print
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Last week I discovered Katie’s Healthy Dessert Blog, and I was so excited to try her Cookie Dough Dip recipe. For some reason I was convinced that even though the recipe consisted mostly of smooshed up chickpeas, it would taste like cookie dough. I was being naive I guess. Today I made the “cookie dough”, and I was dissapointed. It was alright, but it didn’t taste the way I anticipated. I think I set my expectations too high, and I hoped for an exact replica of chocolate chip cookie dough that I could eat by the bowlful, instead of chocolate chip hummus.
I normally only share recipes that I love, but I want to love this one so badly! If you try this recipe, please let me know if you come up with any improvements. Next time I might leave out the nut butter (I used peanut butter which was a bit overpowering) and the oats (I wasn’t crazy about the oat texture in there). Also, it needs more chocolate chips!
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I’m sure some, if not all of you, are sick of hearing about Missoni for Target this and Missoni for Target that, so let me apologize in advance.
Now, can I tell you a secret? I honestly wasn’t that crazy about most of the Missoni for Target line. I mean, I like chevron stripes, but for me most of it was a bit too… is there a nice word for gaudy? (Please tell me I’m not the only one in the world who felt this way!) On M-Day, while browsing Target’s website out of curiosity, I saw this Missoni dress and fell in love. It has just the right amount of pattern without being too crazy for me, although I wish it was a few inches longer. It arrived last week, and I’ve been playing dress up ever since!
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How about a healthy dish to make up for all the Nutella ice cream you’ve been eating? I never would’ve thought to combine mint, edamame, and lemon, but since I like them all individually I gave it a shot. I’m glad I did, because this simple recipe is a keeper! I’ve been eating it all week for lunch (with pretzels… weird I know).
2 cups of edamame
2 tbsp of olive oil
zest of a whole lemon
juice of half a lemon
salt
pepper
pecorino cheese (I used fresh parmesan instead)
mint
Part boil the edamame and drain. In a bowl, whisk together olive oil, lemon zest, lemon juice and salt and pepper. Add edamame to bowl and mix. To serve, add shaved pecorino cheese and roughly chopped mint.
recipe from cookingchanneltv.com
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This morning I noticed the ivy down the hill in our backyard rustling in a turtle-y fashion. (This specific sort of rustling is hard to describe, but it’s quite different from bird rustling or squirrel rustling.) I waded through the brush and found this little guy! Unfortunately he’s one of the least sociable box turtles I’ve ever met. I tried all my turtle wooing techniques (fresh raspberries and belly rubs), but he just wouldn’t come out of his shell.
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