Long Time, No Sea

Target's Archer Farms Espresso Beans

Something that I have really appreciated is the Archer Farms brand at Target (we pronounce it Tar-szhay). I recently went all out and bought their Fair Trade Espresso beans (unground of course). ANd I was pleasantly surprised!

They were around $6 and the coffee is really good! I might just be buying this from now on.

Baby snake in a big Meyer World

“A snake is loose in the house! A snake is loose in the house, mom!!!” Jacob screamed from the back room.

I set Emmalia down to go see, and she immediately began crying.

“Now, hold on guys…” I said cautiously, “… stay back, I don’t want you scaring it under the shelf.” I said. Of course both Eva Bella and Jacob were jumping beans all over.
“Grab me the camera !” I said to Jacob. He jumps over the itty bitty snake which then takes off, and the phone rings.
“Grab the phone too, Jake!” I yelled.

“Waaah! Waaah!” Goes Emma.
“Eeek, eeek!” Goes Eva.
“Ring! Ring!” Goes the phone.
“Hiss, hiss!” goes the baby snake in my entryway.

“Mom, I need you to email my teacher my homework right now…” Abbie says from the other side of the phone line.

“Waaah! Waaah!” Goes Emma.
“Eeek, eeek!” Goes Eva.
“Hiss, hiss!” goes the baby snake in my entryway, and Jacob scares it under Abbie’s coat.

I grabbed an envelope box, scooped up the baby reptile, let him go out in the backyard, ran to my computer, sent off Abbie’s homework to her teacher, and picked up Emmalia. Who let the snake in my house?

“Daniel.” O_O

-Jyn

I threw together an interesting dish yesterday that I wanted to share with you. There isn’t an exact science to it, but it was still good! You can alter it to your tastes and even add other stuff, so there is a lot of room for variations and potential!

Rice AlaJyn

Jyn's Rice Meal

First, take a pot and put in about 2-3 cups of water and turn on the stove to a Med-medium High setting.

I cook everything on HIGH so this is quite conservative for me, however I am thinking about your safety here!

In the meantime, crush some savory herbs into the water along with some tarragon, some ginger powder, garlic powder, 1 tbs of sugar and some pepper, 1-2 tbs of chicken boulion and throw in about 1 cup of rice. Bring to a boil. Add a dash of sesame oil, but be careful not to pour a lot in like me. I forget sometimes that it doesn’t have a hole at the top to dash the liquid in and end up pouring it all in >.< .

At this point you can cut up some cubes of ham (which is what I did in the picture) or chicken, beef, etc- or you can add some vegetables such as bamboo shoots, carrot sticks, etc. And let it come to a boil. Cook for about 10 minutes like that and then take a cast iron pan, put it on the top of the pot, and turn off the heat. Im sure you can use a lid- but this did a great job of reflecting the heat back into the pot and I felt cool doing it.

I integrate cast ironware into as much cooking as I can- something about the RAW iron of it that makes you feel special.

From here you let it sit a few minutes, you can peek and stir it until it suits your consistancy, but it doesnt take very long.

My kids have seconds on this dish, and if you put more vegetables in it, it could easily pass as a skillet meal.

-Jyn

Nothing like having your brain oozing out your ears to remind you how ADHD you are. Im sitting here about to write and all I can think about is how much I wish that Joomla! was more like Wordpress. You have to still manually update everything, plugins, etc on Joomla still and even the SEO functions are not working well. Backing up is tough, at least RECOUPERATING a Joomla! site can be a feat, in itself- and all the while, Wordpress has figured that all out, already.

Last night, Jay and I watched the 35 minute feature film of ‘Lemonade‘ last night- it was quite inspiring! I want my own coffee roaster in my home now. My ideal home would be such a circus, people. I would have a personal coffee roaster I would roast my own beans with, drive-thru espresso window to serve people ‘Jyn’s Juice’. My art studio where I would paint and edit my photography in, inbetween photoshoots. Downstairs I would have a family room with cabinets for storing kid projects and assignments, a corner area for studying with vaulted ceilings and lots of light coming in through windows. Floor-to-ceiling bookcases filled with all sorts of books- old and new. I would have my own pantry filled with supplies to cook with, shelves with cases of cake decorating supplies and recipes…. the list is endless.

Just this morning I was thinking about how neat it would be to have a website called ‘The Village Traders’ that sold bulk items for storage and use for large families/ organizations. How nice it would be to have a 3 sectional cereal dispencer that fit on the bottom shelf of our pantry that could be refilled when pulled out. But it really would have to be a 3 section, deep- not tall. Im always coming up with ideas like that.

But, I’m already the Jyn-of-all-trades. I do the mom thing, the wife thing, the web design and photography thing, the blog thing, the cooking thing, the Youtube thing, the writing thing… I do the coffee thing the making-stuff thing…. I really would make a bad employee, ADHD makes for a bad career.

Sometimes I feel like one of those one-man-bands, walking down the hall with a drum, cymbals, harmonica, horn, guitar and accordian all strapped to my body…and a baby on my hip.

-Jyn

And that is the very cake that my daughter, Eva Bella, who is turning four tomorrow- wanted for her birthday.

She has been bugging me all year to have a crocodile cake for her birthday. Last year we dropped $50 on a frog cake that was cute- but unappetizing. The kids barely touched it and we ended up cutting it up into peices and freezing it… because we couldnt stand to throw it away.

So this year I decided to try my hand at making Eva’s cake. My last extravigant cake I made one of my friends named the Melted decapitated dragon cake. The story behind it was that it was Jacob’s 2nd birthday and he wanted a snake cake. It was getting late and he had fallen asleep, so I hurridly took the cake out of the oven and started to assmble it and decorate it before it was fully cooled not wanting to miss his birthday. It was a wonderful cake at first. It had cool green icing, tiny m&m eyes and a licorice string tongue. I woke up Jacob to come to the table for his cake and he was crankily rubbing his eyes not really feeling like having cake yet.

We sang happy birthday as the frosting melted the face of the snake into a distorted demonic figure. I cut the head off (the most desireable peice- right? It had all the candy on it!) and put it on a plate in front of Jacob. He took one look at it and started crying. Yeah, brithday cake disaster.

So I researched what it would take to make a proper fondant cake and got to it. It took me about 8+ hours today, but I got it done!

This was my first experience with fondant. I was set on making something nice and took time to add details, studying a dozen or so pictures of crocodiles and trying to figure out ways of achieving similar effects.

When the kids got home, it was a hit! Everyone loves it.

Here is the process my cake went through:

fondant before and after

Larger cake of 3 with anotomical parts cut

Cake assembled but not sculpted yet

After frosting, starting the fondant cover

Fondant covered and front legs on

Finished product

Eva's 'Person'

Today I set Eva up at the dining room table to draw on some colored construction paper. Armed with an army of crayons, she went to work drawing me a picture.

“Mama….” she called from the kitchen.
“Yes, Eva…” I answered.
“Perhaps, you might like to join me…?”

I think I laughed for at least 2 minutes…. those old black and white movies seem to be paying off.

Heard from a friend:

(On a bus, a gal happens to be sitting on a stack of newspapers)

Man: “Excuse me, are you reading those?” *points to the newspapers
Woman: “Why, yes I am….” *she stands up, turns the page and sits back down*

Conans last Stand

“Please do not be cynical. I hate cynicism. For the record it is my least favorite quality. It doesn’t lead anywhere. Nobody in life gets exactly what they thought they were going to get. But if you work really hard and you are kind, amazing things will happen. I’m telling you, amazing things will happen.”

And THIS is true. Who said this? Conan O Brian on his last episode of The Tonight Show. Yes, really.
For a short time you can see it here in the last 15 minutes of the show http://www.hulu.com/watch/122598/the-tonight-show-with-conan-obrien-fri-jan-22-2010 .

I have been VERY ADHD today. But boy, has it been refreshing! It’s like stepping out of my skin and stretching a bit.

So, to follow just a few of my tangents from today, I was browsing Twitter exploring some users there. I confess, I’m a N00b Tweeter and haven’t really done too much with it until now. I ‘tweet’ my days and minutes on Facebook as it is,  why do it somewhere else too?

But I came upon a VERY interesting Tweeter named LightStalking who had some fantastic photography tips. From there, I joined the website and followed it to one of his HDR tips article links, Stuck In Customs- another fabulous photographer. If you have never done HDR photographs you have GOT to visit his website.

So, here I am surfing this huge wave- it was great. I go to Facebook to check out his profile and notice he works for this website called Web Wars. VERY interesting new era of online games. It offered 2 different platform games- Weblings and Weblords, a duet of online games that entertain while guiding people to website affiliates by splitting the screen in half and having creatures ‘hide out’ on sponsors waiting for you to defeat them. You install a toolbar into your browser that facilitates this online gameplay and by clicking ‘Explore’, you are directed to a random website within the categories their mobs are hiding out on.

If you are curious, I chose the Weblings version and I’ve won 4 battles already- the last of which led me (ongoing on this runaway train) to www.thingiverse.com. Its fabulous! The word ‘Inspirational’ did not describe entirely how I felt about it. Now I cant wait to own our own property complete with huge shop area so we can GEEK out and buy my own 3D Printer.

Im definitely inspired to develop some more shoots to upload. I haven’t really done anything particularly professional since I was pregnant with Emma- Lord knows I’ve had lots of opportunities. I guess I just wasn’t ready, entirely.

Either way, it feels good to creatively stretch and I hope it helps get you up onto your web surfboard, too.

-Jyn