Yesterday

After having a nice lunch at Red Lobster in Canton with my good friend, Barbara, I set out to get some new photos. She lives in the country where there are barns and lovely hills and valleys. Barb had to run some errands, so I was on my own. Now on these old country roads, there is no where to stop and park your car. If you move to the right, there is a chance of getting stuck in a ditch. So I pretty much did as my Flickr friend, Hootnonny does, and just shot out of my window, checking my rear view mirror to make sure no one was coming up behind me. Naturally, with Murphy's Law, on a usually deserted road, someone is behind me. Oh well, that photo was not meant to be. Onto the next scene.

I did happen to get a few nice photos that will sustain my creative juices for this week. And will post them on Flickr when I process them. Here is one:

I was imaging that this is where I was living. What a respite from the busyness of the world. So serene and peaceful.

Blessings and Peace to you all!

Rainy Tuesday

Not much going on today. Being my day off, I slept until 10:30 am. I haven't done that in a while. Hope  I can sleep tonight. I shouldn't have had that extra coffee today.

Had to change out the dog food because 2 of my dogs got very sick on the bag we got recently. I dumped it all out in the garbage and went to Aldi to get a fresh bag of their brand. Lot of wash to do because of sick dogs. They are okay now. I am watching over them.

Kim Klassen's lesson today was awesome. She showed how to use the healing brush on a separate layer and changing a photo to black and white. She even gave us a hint on changing the opacity to bring back some of the color, thus creating a vintage effect.




My Homework


Finished "The Moth" by Catherine Cookson. I have "The Parson's Daughter" to start next. Anyone have any favorite authors?

Has anyone noticed that the size of Nutty Buddies has shrunk?

Let's make a photo texture!

There are a lot of really good free textures online to download. Two come to mind right away: http://www.kimklassencafe.com/ and http://shadowhousecreations.blogspot.com/

I don't purport to be anything but an amateur when it comes to photography and Photo Shop Elements. But the derivation of amateur is the verb amare, which is "to love".  And I love creating on PSE.

This is my method for making a texture.

First of all, you need to download some good brushes to use on your texture. There are a number of resources but one of my favorites is: http://www.deviantart.com/
In the search box, type in something like "cloud brushes" or "grunge brushes". There are just so many to choose from, so pick a few and let's get started.

Open up PSE and file>new>blank file. Change the size to inches>10inches wide X 8 inches high. Resolution: 100 pixels, and choose RGB color. Then click okay. Your screen will look like this:

Under "edit" pull down menu >fill layer>click on the foreground color box to bring up the color picker. I like to choose a medium saturated neutral color. This one's code is #2c0909 but you can choose what you like. Be sure to put a number in for the "opacity". I am choosing 50%.

 Click Okay. Here it is:

Now here comes the creative part. Go to your brushes and choose one to start with. I am choosing a grunge border brush by ro_stock. I started by putting a corner brush, where else, in the corner. :o)

The next brush I choose from the same set from ro_stock ( I think I got them on deviant art) and increase the size (short cut-use the bracket keys, next to the "p" and the left one makes your brush smaller and the right one makes it bigger. I am making mine to fit the width of the bottom of my "picture" :

My next brush stroke will be a little different because the orientation is not what I want. But we can fix that. On your layers palette, click on the "Create a new layer" icon. Now choose your brush and click it onto the middle of the picture like so:



Now click on the move tool and grab one of the corners. If you move your mouse around, you will see a circle of arrows, click on that to turn your brush. When you have your brush positioned where you want it, (by moving the middle circle), you can resize by pulling on either end to fit your picture. Then check the green check mark.

I am adding one more brush to fill in the top left. I think you can do that just fine by now.

If you would like to add some text, now is the time to do it. Choose a nice font that you like and create a new layer. Type a word or phrase anywhere on your layer and then click on the move tool. This allows you to not only move it around on your layer, but also to stretch it and make it bigger or taller.

I added a couple more words using the same method and then decided to add a cool feather brush that I found on deviant art. Here is my final product:

Final Texture

I hope that this is clear for you to follow along. Please email me if you need assistance:

charlotteinkennesaw@gmail.com or just leave a comment.

Blessings to you all!

Monday, Monday

This turned out to be a busier day than I had planned. I was going to write a tutorial on making a texture, for fun. I am surely not an expert, but I just wanted to try and show what you can do on PSE.

Since Katie was off today and is starting her classes tomorrow, we decided to go to lunch. And not just any old run of the mill lunch places. :o) We went to H-Mart. Now H-Mart is a mostly Asian supermarket, specializing in all kinds of exotic items. So it was an adventure.
In the front of the store, is a kind of food court: Korean, Japanese, Mandarin, Sushi, and Vietnamese. We were both in the mood for Korean, walked up and placed our order. This was definitely not fast food. They prepare each dish fresh. It was hard to wait as we were already past lunch time and were starving. Finally my dish was called. But Katie had to wait about 5-10 minutes for hers. Here is what I got:

My Korean Sampler

In the upper left was a special seaweed soup. Right beneath is Kim Chi, a kind of pickled cabbage. The top Middle, a nice ginger slaw. To the right is chicken in a spicy sauce. Below, rice, of course. And the bottom middle is a vegetable fritter. I give good marks for everything but the seaweed soup. It may have been wonderful to some, but not my taste.

Here is Katie's dish:




Bee Bim Bop

 This is a combination of vegetables, beef and rice, topped with a fried egg. You are to mix it all together and top it with a Korean chili sauce, kind of a Korean catsup. She loved it but like me, she didn't care for the seaweed soup. And she gave me her Kim Chee which I am adddicted to.

After lunch we headed for a buggy and started perusing the aisles. We saw all kinds of interesting cooking ware, serving pieces, fancy chopstix, tea sets. They had strange brands of dish soap, facial concoctions, hair cream and oil.

I have never seen such a selection of meats and types of seafood and fish since Harry's Farmer's Market. Some were in tanks still swimming.

The spices, herbs and exotic produce were enticing too. A lot of items were in different languages so I didn't even know what they were. 

All in all, it was a good day. I am back home and Elmo is not liking that I am blogging and not sitting with him so I guess I will call it a day.

Blessings to you all!

Free at last!

This week has been wonderful...an unexpected staycation, because of the snow and ice. Although Jim and Katie have been navigating the roads, there are still a lot of rough patches to watch out for.

Today, we ventured out to Mass at St. Catherine of Siena. It was so good to be in the presence of the Lord again and to receive Holy Communion. I didn't realize how much I missed it for those 4 days. Since the school is closed, the nuns were in attendance.

We have a lot of grocery shopping to do today and I hope that Aldi is open. Being very frugal, we make a lot of our purchases there. They don't carry everything that we want, but have most of what we need. And I am in a cooking mood today. Hmmmm....what should I make? I saw a recipe for Greek meatballs that is served over pasta. Maybe I'll make that. Still need that comfort food in this cold weather. Diet will come next week. LOL

Chicken Pot Pie

This is day 4 of our being snowed in. Some brave souls are venturing out, but it is still hazardous because of the ice.
After reading this morning, another Catherine Cookson novel, I spent time edited a couple of photos for the Skinny Mini Ecourse offered by Kim Klassen. I conferred with my good buddy, Betty, AKA, Hootnonny, since she is also taking the class. We were on speaker phone when my husband came back from Costco with a rotisserie chicken. She heard him and asked me what i was going to do with it. I was thinking maybe I would make a chicken pot pie. She gave me a quick recipe that her mother used to make. And this is how I think I will do it:

♥ The 3 key ingredients that she gave me:
          1 cup of milk
          1 cup of melted butter( how can you go wrong)
          1 cup of self-rising flour

♥Mix all of these together and pour over:

          (in a pie pan) chopped, cooked carrots, celery, onion, peas and potato. I am just going to estimate how much of each vegetable. This mixture is supposed to add its own crust. I can't wait to try it! Here I go. See ya' later! Have a blessed day!

**** Flash update! I forgot to get the oven temp and time and since my friend is not feeling well, I just decided to set the oven to 375 degrees and leave the pie in there for 45 minutes. I will update and let you know how it turned out tomorrow.

Bean Days Recipe

This is the third day that we have been gleefully housebound. We have enough food stocked in our pantry...we just have to use a little imagination. After Katie saw that I had made a lentil soup, she decided to try a recipe that we found in the AJC newspaper for

Chickpea Burgers. I am paraphrasing C.W. Cameron's recipe in the "What's For Dinner" section.

Now I have to tell you, my daughter is an athlete. She is a runner, sometimes running up to 15 miles a day. So she is very careful of what she eats. Rarely eating red meat, she mostly concentrates on chicken and fresh vegetables and fruit. This recipe spoke to her.

Here are the ingredients:

3 slices of whole wheat bread, divided

1 15 oz. can  chickpeas, drained and rinsed

4 green onions, trimmed

1 ( 1 inch) piece of fresh ginger, peeled
1 large egg or 1/2 cup of Egg Beaters





15 oz can of chickpeas



  

Drain and Rinse






Make 3 pieces of toast

 ♥ Toast 1 slice of bread and place in a food processor bowl. Pulse until you have bread crumbs. Put in a wide bowl or plate and set aside.

Process one slice of toast until you get coarse bread crumbs






Our bread crumbs (sorry it is out of focus)


 

Our green onions

  


Since it is sometimes hard to get fresh ginger, I keep mine in the freezer. It is easy to grate when frozen.




The healthy alternative to whole eggs





♥ Return bowl to food processor and add the peas, green onions, the two other pieces of toast, grated ginger, salt and pepper to taste. Process until roughly chopped... you don't want a paste, like you would with hoummous. Remove half of the mixture to medium sized bowl.



♥ Add egg or Egg Beaters to the remaining mix in the processor and process until smooth. Add to the reserved mixture and mix well.



♥ Form the mix into four or five 3/4 inch thick patties and cover lightly with reserved bread crumbs.

Coating with bread crumbs

We are almost done, two more to go!

♥ In a large skillet, heat 2 tablespoons of olive oil over high heat, adding the patties. Reduce the heat to medium and cook until lightly browned. Turn and brown the other side. About 5 minutes on the heat altogether. Serve hot.



Cooking away!





Voila! a chickpea burger!