Hello, my name is Hil and I'm addicted to iPhone apps

When picking up my new iPhone 4 (squeeeeeeee!!!!), the uber helpful and friendly Apple Store Genius lady mentioned her favorite new camera app, Camera Plus.  Since I am helpless in the face of my addiction, I downloaded it as soon as I skipped out of the store.  Now bloggities, I love PSMobile for photo editing, but it pales in comparision to the rad effects available on Camera Plus.  And I seriously love Hipstamatic for some cool cool lenses and film, but with the editing capabilities in Camera Plus, I can replicate those looks and it works twice as fast.

Last summer Brent planted some hibiscus plants in our backyard.  He found them on clearance at Lowe's and planted them in the dog heat of summer.  My hopes for their survival were low, but they not only pulled through but grew into GIANT plants with GIANT dinner plate sized blooms.  Me and the plant had a photo session yesterday morning and I will use it for a brief demonstration of Camera Plus' awesome abilities.

Here's the original picture.  Well, not the original, because I cropped and rotated the orientation 90 degrees to get it this way.

Next, I started playing with the effects.  See 'vibrant':

How's that for color pop? 

Now see 'so emo':

I can almost see Edward presenting dark and twisty bloom to Bella.

How about a little 'grunge':

I don't get as much Kurt Cobain out of this as I get Grandma's Attic.  Still love it though, the scratches are awesome.

Now for some 'Ansel':

Perhaps not the best example of Ansel, but you get the idea. 

Besides these effects, there's about fifteen or twenty more choices including 'faded', 'hipster' and 'antique'.

I haven't even gotten around to showing you the various borders including 'instant' (think polaroid), 'grit' and 'vignette'.   Also, it has scenes which change the lighting tones.  I'm in luuuuurvvveee!!!!!

I just realized this post came across as a sales pitch.  I WISH they'd given it to me for free, but honestly, 2 smackers is worth it for the hours of play I've gotten out of it so far.  My poor DSLR, in all of it's powerful, beautiful glory, actually has dust accumulating on it.  I'm definitely hung up on the iPhone camera apps right now.

Time Warp

Yet again, another iPhone app knocks my socks off.

and makes my drain my battery three times a day

I love the groovy retro feel

and it comes with all sorts of awesome settings

Get it?  Got it?  Good.

Aperture...wow, that's what the Av setting does?

I am pretty dense when it comes to photography, even though I'm interested in the subject and I want more than anything to take beautiful interesting artsy pictures. For some reason my brain turns to mush whenever I try to figure it out. So, I was playing with the Av setting on my Canon this weekend. Whatever I was doing, I got some pretty neat shots!

See this sneaky little bumble bee that decided to buzz around while I was shooting in the flower bed? I took about seventy shots of him and got a few good ones.

April showers...May flowers

On the north side of my house is a beautiful peony bush. It blooms a little later than other peony's around my neighborhood since it's not in direct sun. When Brent was working on the fence yesterday I snapped some pics of the buds, they are just about to burst. A couple days of sun and they should be all out!

Fence construction!

The wooden privacy fence in our back yard has been deteriorating for awhile. A few weeks ago the weakest post finally gave into the elements and broke off at the ground. Brent worked out a sweet deal with the neighbor where he bought the material and Brent did the labor for a little bit of cash. He ended up replacing four sections of fence, of which two posts had to be removed and replaced. That meant we got to mix up some quick set concrete and put our initals in it!

Brent started the project yesterday and got up pretty early this morning to finish since there is again a chance of rain, imagine that. It's only been raining for 40 days and 40 nights. There have been a few breaks in the clouds and people's lawnmowers have been going like crazy. Thankfully Brent finished the fence project today before the rains returned.

Gracie really liked checking out the neighbor's yard. There used to be a knothole in the old fence and she'd look through it all day spying on them. She's a snoopy dog.

***In case any of you had noticed before and were wondering, Gracie's tail is docked. We didn't do it on purpose, we adopted her from the shelter and she was pretty sick and malnourished. When we got her her tail was unbelievably long and skinny and was really badly infected. We tried to doctor it under the vet's supervision, but the infection spread up her tail, making her sick. The vet decided to dock it when he spayed her. I'm glad it's gone, if you've ever had a dog with a long tail with an infection in the end, you know what I'm talking about. It took months to get all the walls clean. blech.

I was able to help Brent a little by holding the cross bars while he made measurements before cutting them to size. I also held them while he screwed them in. Oh, and I made sure the post was square while the concrete was poured and setting. I guess that's a pregnancy perk, I wasn't able to help with the really dirty and heavy stuff, like pulling the old posts with their concrete settings out of the ground. I actually stayed clean during this project :)

Since it's so cloudy, the airport must be having their planes come in low, we usually don't see or hear landing airplanes unless it's stormy.

Cookie

No, I don't have a cookie recipe to share (not just yet anyway, we did make three different kinds of cookies for the birthday party a few weeks ago). The Cookie I am talking about today is my mom's puppy, Cookie the Black Pug! She was just shy of six months when I took these pictures.

Most of the time, Cookie is a crazy puppy who likes to eat things she shouldn't and makes a habit of constantly rearranging my mom's throw rugs. She likes to be the center of attention and isn't intimidated by anything. There was concern how my brown lab, Gracie, would take to Cookie. We were worried Gracie would get too crazy and try to play too rough for such a small puppy. However, just the opposite happened.Gracie was the one who was looking for time-outs and Cookie was the one who wanted to play, hard, nonstop, all weekend! My dogs literally collapsed from exhaustion Sunday when mom took Cookie back to Kansas.

When she wasn't antagonizing Gracie, or chewing on Sadi's delightfully long swishy tail, Cookie found time to terrorize Brent into submission.

Recognize this tree?

In my last post, I bragged about how beautifully our spring was starting out. Exactly eight days later, we received a huge snowfall, covering all the beautiful new vegetation in heavy wet snow. Oklahoma weather is so crazy though, that this heavy snow barely lasted 36 hours before it was almost completely melted.

We took some time to get out and play in the snow since we knew it (thankfully) wouldn't be around for long. I really don't like snow that much, but it's fun for awhile.

23 hours until Spring 2009...

I am ready for winter to be over! We've had some interesting weather, of course, but the overall temperature seems to be on an upswing. It's almost time for the spring thunderstorms and rain which I love, but that also means potential tornado warnings and hailstones, which I could definitely do without. The good with the bad I guess is how it goes.

Looking out my kitchen window yesterday I noticed that the little tree to the north of our house has started blooming. I like taking pictures of flora since it doesn't try to move away or tell me to stop snapping pictures.

New layout!

I finally took a little time to spiff up the bloggity-blog this evening. It was a lot of fun going through my saved files browsing for picture candidates for the banner. Now that I feel comfortable cropping and editing photos with text, I'll try to make this a more common occurance because it was kinda fun!

Now for some bad news...my camera is missing. Seriously, it has disappeared and nobody can find it. It was sitting on my desk, where I left it after uploading the pictures from my last post. Now it is MIA. It had better show up soon because I made some beautiful lemon ricotta cookies that are as yet unphotographed and the supply is dwindling rapidly. Also, I'm leaving town Sunday for a work trip to Austin, Texas, and I'd like to take it so I can take some photos of that neat town. So help me figure out, internets, how a camera can just disappear. *shakes head, baffled*

I almost forgot to mention the musical inspiration for this blog installment: the album Sevens, Garth Brooks

Excuses, excuses...

I truly hope I haven't lost all of you, my internet friends, due to my FOUR MONTH absence from blogoration. And even worse, especially since this is supposed to be a food blog and cooking is something I vowed to make a central part of my home-life, I didn't even step foot into the kitchen for about TWO months of that absence. My excuse is simple...a UFO abducted my DSL line and kept me off the internet! No, not really. How about, a new life form stole my appetite, made brushing my teeth something I had to do near a toilet, made 12 to 14 hours of sleep a day mandatory and forced me to live off of cheese and crackers for about ten weeks? That's more like it! Figure it out yet??? We are expecting a baby! We had a positive test right about the time of my last post (yes, that was the end of September, ghaw) and soon I began feeling the morning sickness (more like all morning, day and night sickness) that stuck around 4eva. Not fun, but worth it. Props to the ladies out there with the m/s.

Now for the baby stats. As of this moment, I am 23 weeks into my pregnancy. Don't ask me to convert that to months. My doctor and my trusty pregnancy book both refer to weeks when discussing gestation length, it just seems easier. My due date is May 25, 2009, Memorial Day, how cool is that? Last Memorial Day I was drinking a beer or five on the lake with my husband and our friends Amy, Shawn and Lanie. I don't expect Memorial Day 2009 to be quite the same, but then again, I know our lives changed that day last September when the two pink lines appeared on my Target Brand First Response test stick.

In mid-December we found out that Baby Smith is actually Baby Boy Smith! I felt him kick for the first time right around Christmas and his dad felt him kick for the first time last Sunday! My favorite thing is to feel him rearrange himself when I roll over in bed at night. Not only do I have to rearrange my nightgown, hair, pillows, etc. when I roll over (yes, it's a process) but he also has to get re-situated.

We have a lot of baby related things to do in the next few months including setting up the nursery, registering at a few baby stores since my wonderful friends have offered to throw a baby shower for me, and taking some childbirth classes **epidural, here I come**. I will post baby updates here since lots of my readers are family and friends IRL. And yes, now that I've returned to the land of the non-nauseous, I will be posting about FOOD again. A huge thank you to those of you who have stuck with me through this delay. I know a quality blog includes timely posts, and I know how disappointed I am when my favorite blogs go awhile without posting. I will try not to let this happen again.

Oh, and a new part to my blog: I love good music and I'm always looking for new suggestions. I'm going to try to remember to end each post by sharing the musical selection I was enjoying while writing. Today it was the self-titled album The Bird and the Bee. Very dreamy, very clubby. Good inspiration!

And thank you to my boss for closing the office today due to the massive ice/sleet storm that's been moving through Tulsa since yesterday afternoon. You rock, dude. (I can say that to him because I'm relatively sure he has no idea I have a blog, let alone care to read it).

Trying Something New - Curry

While sitting at the hair salon, waiting on my highlights to set, I stumbled across an intriguing recipe in a random RealSimple magazine: Curried Rice and Shrimp. One of the greatest things about it was that I already had all the ingredients except the curry. Call me a sheltered small town plains girl, but I've never smelled or tasted something and had someone say 'hey, that's curry'. I didn't know what to expect either, because I've heard bad things about curry, that it smells strong, it's hard to get the smell out of your house, etc. Undaunted, I trucked it down to Target with my wet head (because I'm too cheap to pay for a style, and hey, it was almost 9:00pm) and picked up a bottle of curry in the spice aisle. Since there were about five curries to choose from, I bought the simplest one. All voyages should start at the beginning, right?

The next night when I prepared this dish, I was blown away (in a great way) by the cumin/cinnamon/nutmeg smell of it. And it made the rice such a gorgeous yellow color previously unproduced in my kitchen! So here is where this post gets interesting. I have beautiful pictures of this tasty recipe, but I've decided to wait...because I think I can beat RealSimple at it's own game! I have a couple of changes I plan to make and I'm really excited to try again! Expect to see a lot more curry use on this blog, folks. I have found a new style of cuisine.

On another note, I found a new blog and it's not only eating all my free time, but simultaneously gives me both smiles and tears. Now that's an emotion, isn't it? It's called matt, liz and madeline and as of this morning, I've only read his posts through the middle of June but I am addicted. Matt's story is poignant, his writing is beautiful, and his honesty is inspiring. I also love his fascination with robots.

The Omnivore's Hundred

This is a fun little game I saw on a couple cooking blogs and I thought it sounded like fun. I have a ton of blogs in my Google Reader, truly, it's the only way to keep up with the plethora of pinatas (ahem, good ideas) that the Internet cooks come up with. The original came from Very Good Taste, and is a list of the top one hundred things every omnivore should try at least once. Since I enjoy trying new things, and I think it's funny what some people will NOT eat, I decided to give it a whirl. Here ya go, Internet, a quick glimpse of my lifetime food sampling resume.

Here's what to do if you want to do it yourself:

1) Copy this list into your blog or journal, including these instructions.
2) Bold all the items you’ve eaten.
3) Cross out any items that you would never consider eating. (I can't figure out how to 'cross out' in Blogger, so mine will contain the comment NO WAY.

The VGT Omnivore’s Hundred:

1. Venison
2. Nettle tea
3. Huevos rancheros
4. Steak tartare (does carpaccio count?)
5. Crocodile
6. Black pudding
7. Cheese fondue
8. Carp
9. Borscht
10. Baba ghanoush
11. Calamari
12. Pho
13. PB&J sandwich
14. Aloo gobi
15. Hot dog from a street cart
16. Epoisses
17. Black truffle
18. Fruit wine made from something other than grapes
19. Steamed pork buns
20. Pistachio ice cream
21. Heirloom tomatoes
22. Fresh wild berries
23. Foie gras
24. Rice and beans
25. Brawn or head cheese - NO WAY
26. Raw Scotch Bonnet pepper - NO WAY, tongue blisters hold no appeal for me.
27. Dulce de leche
28. Oysters
29. Baklava
30. Bagna cauda
31. Wasabi peas
32. Clam Chowder in Soudough Bowl
33. Salted lassi
34. Sauerkraut
35. Root beer float
36. Cognac with a fat cigar
37. Clotted Cream Tea
38. Vodka Jelly/Jell-O - ah college...
39. Gumbo
40. Oxtail
41. Curried goat
42. Whole insects - I could see trying this if they were gnats covered in chocolate.
43. Phaal
44. Goat’s milk
45. Malt whisky from a bottle worth $120 or more
46. Fugu - seriously, why?
47. Chicken tikka masala
48. Eel
49. Krispy Kreme original glazed doughnut
50. Sea urchin
51. Prickly pear
52. Umeboshi
53. Abalone
54. Paneer
55. McDonald’s Big Mac Meal
56. Spaetzle
57. Dirty gin martini
58. Beer above 8% ABV
59. Poutine
60. Carob chips
61. S’mores
62. Sweetbreads
63. kaolin - wikipedia says this is clay. I don't know why anyone would eat it. Does it aid digestion?
64. Currywurst
65. Durian - NO WAY. I have a friend whose actually seen (and smelled) a durian before. The woman carrying it got kicked of the Singaporian bus.
66. Frogs’ legs
67. Beignets, churros, elephant ears or funnel cake - speaking of, the fair's right around the corner...
68. Haggis - NO WAY
69. Fried plantain
70. Chitterlings or andouillette
71. Gazpacho
72. Caviar and blini
73. Louche absinthe
74. Gjetost or brunost
75. Roadkill - NO WAY...this one's gotta be a joke
76. Baijiu
77. Hostess Fruit Pie
78. Snail
79. Lapsang Souchong
80. Bellini
81. Tom Yum
82. Eggs Benedict
83. Pocky
84. 3 Michelin Star Tasting Menu - birthday gift ideas for me, dear husband.
85. Kobe beef
86. Hare
87. Goulash
88. Flowers
89. Horse - NO WAY. I reject this on moral grounds.
90. Criollo chocolate
91. Spam
92. Soft shell crab
93. Rose harissa
94. Catfish
95. Mole poblano
96. Bagel and lox
97. Lobster Thermidor
98. Polenta
99. Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee
100. Snake (I've had rattlesnake, fresh from the prairie)

After going through this list, I realized I'm not as cultured as I thought I was. Thank you, Wikipedia, for defining at least 20 items on this list.

The sous chefs

They're tuckered out now after all the cooking we've done this weekend, but Sadi and Gracie are the greatest helpers in my kitchen. Never must I worry about picking up errant morsels that have fallen on the floor. One of them will instantly be there to ensure the cleanliness of my workspace. Gracie's special talent is assisting with the dirty dishes by 'pre-rinsing' them after I've loaded the dishwasher. Sadi prefers to supervise the project from the center of the kitchen floor. She said cooking isn't challenging unless you must do so while also stepping over a contantly position-shifting labradore retriever.