Monday, August 31, 2009

Apartment What-nots

So I moved into my apartment like last week, I have one roommate from Utah and two roommates from Vietnam. I haven't decorated my room yet so no pictures of that, but I do have a couple random shots from this evening.

Today was a pretty neat day, I rode the bus for the first time, I met a girl at the stop who had never ridden the bus either so we figured things out together. Later, when I got home, I found my roommate sitting in the living room putting together a centerpiece for our coffee table, and it came out beautiful!
This was also on the wall, my roommate found it at Dollar Tree (I think):
Later, I went to Family Home Evening with my ward, and after that, the girls in an apartment near mine asked me if I was gonna go with everyone to see "Up!" at the Dollar Theater so I said yes. I met some new and interesting people and the movie was super cute!

When I got home, I found this on the white board in our kitchen:
You won't get the reference if you haven't seen "Galaxy Quest" :p

Anyway, thats it for now, more pictures and entries to come soon!

Sunday, July 26, 2009

Fun Snacks

Never would I recommend not eating potatoes – they’re delicious! I’m a huge advocate for potatoes, as well as a big fan of potato chips, in my opinion they’re the second best way to prepare a potato (fries being the first, but specifically waffle-cut, Chik-fil-a style). But, sometimes, you’re out of potatoes or potato chips, but there is one tasty alternative!

Pita Chips!

Delicious, tasty, supposedly healthy - I’m not buying it, they’re too delicious to be healthy but I digress.

This is a tutorial on how to make them because they’re quick, easy, and cheap (I think - I’ve been too busy eating them to do the math).

Ingredients:

· Pita Bread (I use Toufayan brand Whole Wheat Pita bread)

· Sea Salt (I use Morton Fine grain sea salt…and I love it!)

· Olive Oil (I specifically use Pompeiian OlivExtra Olive Oil and Canola Oil – pretty darn handy)

· Italian Seasonings (But to make things easier/quicker I recommend McCormack Italian Herb seasoning grinder – which has all your basic Italian seasonings like Rosemary, Basil, Red Pepper, Black Pepper, etc.)

· Toaster Oven (or you could probably use a regular oven, the toaster oven is quicker though!)

Pre-heat toaster oven to about 375 degrees on the toast setting

1 – Cut the pita bread loaves in half (like you’re making Pita Pockets), then stick the knife into the pocket and cut along the outer seam. At this point you can leave it and have big half circle chips, or you can cut 3 triangles from each half like so:


2- Mix your olive oil and seasonings and apply them to each pita triangle (you can either mix them together in a bowl and apply the mixture to the individual triangles with a brush or you can apply the olive oil and then sprinkle the seasonings over the top). You can also choose to sprinkle the sea salt over the chips at this point or after they come out of the toaster.


3 – Place the triangles on some foil or a pan and place them in the toaster over until brown and crispy (I can’t give exact minutes because my toaster over heats up a little unevenly so some are done quicker than others – I would just suggest you keep an eye at least on the first batch in order to determine how long they take to toast).

4 – Let cool (this is probably the most difficult step what with the tasty aroma and everything) and serve!

Happy Snacking!


P.S. If you're interested in other flavors, I've experimented with and enjoyed
Garlic - replace the Italian seasonings with minced or powdered garlic (I prefer minced) - You may want to have some mints on hand for after-wards.
Cinnamon/Sugar - replace the Italian seasonings with a mixture of sugar and cinnamon, it's like a desert/snack!

Tuesday, July 21, 2009

Link-fest July 09!

Okay so I actually have a couple of "REAL" blogs coming up, but for now I figured I'd just share some interesting links I've come across online.

With school coming up I've been looking for some ways to be a little more organized this upcoming semester and I've stumbled across these links:
Getting ready to go to a new college, get a job, and make new friends, I want to make sure I've got plenty of confidence. A few weeks ago, I came across this great article: How to Fake It from Girl Meets Business. Don't worry, it's not what you might think! It's about Faking confidence in order to gain confidence!

I'll probably be taking an English course this fall semester which means I''ll have to write some big papers. Sometimes when I'm writing I know what word I want to use but I can't think of the word itself, that's where this site comes in: Tip of My Tongue you can search for a word based on how it starts or ends so you can find the word that's just on the tip of your tongue!

Finally, here are a bunch of links to make you smile or laugh:
Have a Good Day

Thursday, June 18, 2009

Ghetto Light Tent

I came across this neat tutorial a few weeks ago about making a DIY light tent so I decided to make one!

Photographers sometimes use light tents for macro photography or product photography - the tent/box creates a clean background for the subject as well as controlled lighting. I created my light tent out of foam core board that I cut into rectangles and taped together. I cut out a square from two of the side panels and covered the holes with tracing paper. Then I lit the sides with two standing lamps (which I had to kind of disassemble to to place them correctly) and I used those compact fluorescent lights in the lamps which give off more of a white light instead of the yellow light that incandescent bulbs have. The Result was pretty neat:


Obviously not perfect, but still pretty neat!

Sunday, May 17, 2009

My Typography Final / My graphic Design Portfolio

I've finally gotten around to uploading some of my Typography assignments to my Flickr and I thought I'd go ahead and post them here. I really need to get around to finding a host/website domain for a Photography and Graphic Design website. I've already begun trying to design a logo for both my Photography and my Graphic Design (it's pretty hard, especially since I have yet to take a logo/brand design class). Anyway, here are a couple of assignments which I turned in for my Typography final:

Next time I'll try and post the photos from my Photography final.

Wednesday, May 13, 2009

Returning from M.I.A.

I've been MIA from the net for almost the past week due to work and finals but finals are over and I'm back! Instead of writing a really long post recapping everything, I'm going to divide everything up into two posts.

Firstly I got the opportunity to shoot another wedding (making it my second this year), earlier this month at the American Mother's Chapel at Garden of the Gods. It's a very tiny chapel, only seats about 12 people but it was a small wedding and it was a fun happy atmosphere. You can see a couple of my favorite shots on my photography site: Kaylynne Michelle Photography

I'm actually trying to come up with a new logo/brand design for Kaylynne Michelle Photography - and later I'll probably be coming up with a similar brand design for a design website/portfolio for my graphic design work.

My photography class ended last Friday and I turned in my final, a 20 photo series based on the theme: Fruit. I'll be uploading a number of these photos along with a few others from my photography course to my photography site over the next few days so keep an eye out for those!


I turned in my final 3D Design project last Tuesday which consisted of creating two different designs based on the same basic mask each student received. Despite the fact that we all started with the same mask, we all came up with a variety of designs. I created a cupcake and an octopus.

The cupcake was made by starching this awesome sparkly pink material (which I loved - I imagine its the kind of material that would be used to make a Disney Princess dress, its that unreal) and brown mesh, I painted the mask brown using a sponge (to give it a cake-like texture) and I gave the mask eyes made out of ping-pong balls along with a cherry made from a ping pong ball and polymer clay.

The octopus was created by gluing yarn to the mask (and a styrofoam ball stuck into the back of it to fill out the head), I stuck some wires into the bottom of the mask and braided the yarn around them, and I glued some yarn to a ping pong ball cut in half and painted to create the eyes and finally I created a beak for it out of polymer clay and glued some sequins to the legs for suction cups. I got an A on the octopus but only a B- on the cupcake.

I'll go ahead and save my typography final, mother's day and everything else in my next post!