I took this photo yesterday in Yaletown. As I was wandering around looking at all the glass buildings, thought, “Whoa. Is Yaletown ever sterile.” A few blocks later I found a large mass of lavender bushes absolutely buzzing with bees. So much for that thought.

I’m just taking a little break from all the chores before we head out tomorrow. Malcolm (for reasons unknown – maybe because he’s nice?) offered to take us to the airport at 4:30 am. WHA? I don’t get it either, but who are we to turn down a free ride to the airport before the crack of dawn? Incredible. We have house-sitter extraordinaire, Lorne Snear, taking care of the kitty boys while we go gallivanting with the Blue Jays. While the bathrooms are mostly clean, he’ll have to ignore a rather unpleasant yard full of dandelions. But hopefully he’ll just watch the TV and not even look out in the front yard. Here’s hoping.

Next time I check in, I’ll be in Oshawa or Whitby – home of the giant Super Walmarts. I’d better get packing. I can’t forget any Christmas cakes or camera lenses. Or my toothbrush. Wait. What am I saying? We can always go to Super Walmart for toothbrushes!

I don’t know about you, but I’m using Cynthia’s design this month for my calendar. I am a BIG fan of her tiny houses art.

If you like it too, download it by clicking on the tiny houses above and you can have a cute little neighbourhood for your desktop for free. FREE!

If flowers are more your thing, you can find some fuchsias (by me!) or a big dahlia (by Robyn!) or a giant sunflower and blue, blue sky (by Scout!) or have one each for a week!

Happy September, everyone!

Continued from the last post…

Once you’ve got the chocolate mixture bubbling for a couple of minutes, it’s time to take it off the element (or fire!) and add 6 to 7 cups of puffed wheat cereal. I know the recipe card says 6-8 cups, but 6 1/2 cups makes a nice, heavily coated batch of squares. So, add in your cereal:

Stir it in until it’s nicely coated. If it’s too runny, just add more cereal!

Get out your 7X11 inch glass pan – or any old pan, but this recipe fills this pan perfectly:

It will start to cool down and not be as sticky soon after spreading it in the pan. I found it easiest to use a metal spoon to spread it out. It gets easier to spread as it cools down.

So squish it…

And there you have it – just wait for it to cool down (you can even put it in the fridge for 15 minutes or so) and then you can cut it up into squares like this.

If you have the ingredients on hand, you can whip these up in about 20 minutes or so. You don’t need to let the sugar, butter, corn syrup bubble for long before adding the wheat. It’s easy, quick, and simple.

And YUM.

I’m pretty sure my mom typed up this recipe card. My sister snuck it out of mom’s recipe box and scanned it in for me. My favourite part of this recipe is, “When bubbling remove from fire…” I wish I had a cauldron to make this recipe in. This step-by-step guide to making Puffed Wheat Squares is for my cousin Andrea and my Uncle Bill. This way they can follow the following steps and have a successful Puffed Wheat Square experience. There are a TON of photos, so I’m going to break it into two parts. Are you ready? Okay, first thing, gather your ingredients – all 6 of them.

Please turn to page 8 in Grandma’s cookbook.

You’ll need:

1/3 cup of butter
1 cup of brown sugar
1 tsp of vanilla
1/2 cup of corn syrup
2 tablespoons of cocoa
6-7 cups of puffed wheat cereal

Just an aside, this is 1/2 of a cup of corn syrup in my favourite measuring cup. It’s beaker scientist style. I love it. Mom gave it to me.

Put the butter, brown sugar, vanilla, corn syrup and cocoa in a pot on the stove like this:

Turn on the heat to medium and watch as the butter starts melting. Stir it up until it looks like this:

Try not to be distracted by Donner looking cute under the kitty mat by the window:

Try to stay focused. If you keep stirring the concoction should start bubbling and the sugar will dissolve, like this:

Uh-oh…that’s 7 photos in one post. I’d better start the second part now.

Me: (Proudly) Hey Mike, Kelaine told me she likes how my photos have taken an avant-guard style with the toy camera.

Mike: *Laughing* Do you know what that means?!?

Me: Yes. *shifty eyes* I looked it up and…(I’ll leave out my answer because it was wrong. Even after I looked it up the day before. DUH.)

Mike: No it doesn’t! It means it’s weird and no one understands it! HA! Wait, I mean, it’s open to interpretation.

Oh well. Now that I’ve looked it up again, it means this:

Avant-garde represents a pushing of the boundaries of what is accepted as the norm or the status quo, primarily in the cultural realm.

I’m not sure if this is avant-garde or not, but I like how the building in this photo looks like a painting. Somehow I took it with the Diana.

I have decided that this is the camera lens I’ll be using for the film marathon next month. I’ll just be using this one from now until the big day so I can get the hang of it. I’ll be taking it with me to Toronto and practicing there. I like the way this lens takes photos of landscapes and it is flattering if I want to take photos of people:

Imagine if I had her in the centre of the frame? She would have been in focus and everything. I think I can do it, if I just keep practicing. Also, I’m not sure if it’s this film or the camera, but the reds in these photos are deep and saturated.

And because I was feeling adventurous, I took these two photos and through the magic of photoshop, I made them one photo.

I’m not sure how I feel about this because, I kind of feel like it’s cheating. What happened was I had taken two photos of the same acrobat – one where her top half was in the photo and one with her legs only in the photo. I just put them together after I flipped one over and make the mirror image of it. I then added a little frame (also in Photoshop). But those are two photos – one flipped into the mirror image so it connects in the right angle to her body. Anyway…I’ll leave the interpretation up to you.

But, be sure to join me tomorrow when I give you the Puffed Wheat recipe and tutorial – step by step, for Andrea and my Uncle Bill.

We did it! This was us 12 years ago today shortly after we had officially tied the knot. We got married at the United Church in Bridgewater, Nova Scotia. Our photographer took many photos of us – some of which he used a soft focus filter on his film camera OR he just rubbed some Vaseline on the edges of his lens. After the last few weeks of my film photo practice, I’m even more grateful for our wedding photos. The photographer got so many! And all in focus! And we’re in the frame and everything! Clearly he knew what he was doing.

We celebrated our anniversary with a hearty steak and lobster meal at the Keg last night, and by watching more episodes of Underbelly today. Very laid back – and I’m glad for that. Besides, next week we’re off to Toronto for all sorts of excitement, so we’re just taking it easy until then.

Here’s a “before the wedding” photo for your enjoyment/amusement:

This is a photo of me STOMPING into the church – about 15 minutes late for my own wedding. We got lost in Bridgewater and had to ask a police officer we found at a coffee shop to escort us to the church. I was fuming as I got out of the car, stomped into the church where Mike’s mom met me at the door, gently pointed out where the washroom was and quietly told me to go touch-up my lipstick. I took her advice, tried to calm down, and headed into the room where the people were waiting for my arrival – including a pacing Mike Browne. It was all kind of a blur after that.

Happy Anniversary to us! And thank you for patiently waiting for me while I fixed my lipstick that day, Mike.

I was reminded that I sneakily took this photo last month through the screen door while Donner was taking a nap. Donner is mostly black, but he’s got a white patch of fur on his tummy we call his “bathing suit area” because it’s underwear shaped and it’s right around the part of his body where underwear could be worn. Also, he has white under his arms, like reverse armpit hair.

We have been watching an Australian Cop show called Underbelly this weekend. We’ve finished the first season and now have started season 2 – this season is based in the 70′s and Matt Passmore is in it. He’s the “American” cop in the A&E show called The Glades. But he’s not really American! He’s Australian. And his voice is much softer when he speaks with his Australian voice.

What an exciting day I had today! Over at the fancy new cbc building, a trapeze act put on a free show at lunch time. I had both my cameras with me. Sadly, I didn’t bring my long lens, so I wasn’t able to get my favourite close up shots, but I did my best with the stock lens and tried to get photos of the acrobats between the complicated pyramid bar system they had set up. This circus troupe is called Air Born and they do shows for people in old folks homes. I couldn’t find out too much about them, but they are some how affiliated with the Health Arts Society. I got there part way through the show, but saw 2 or 3 different trapeze artists. Here’s another shot of them in action:

That was a lovely lunch time break. The sun was coming out after a big rainfall this morning, there was a good crowd out there and room to take photos. Very lovely indeed.

I headed back to the office to find a TV show called, “Facing Kate” being film and they had transformed the building across the street into a city corner in San Fransisco.

That building is SO not in San Fransisco. That’s the building where they had the Olympic medals and the Canadian Mint Pavilion. I’ll be keeping an eye out for this show now that I’ve seen them setting up and stuff.

Acrobats and San Fransisco all in one day minutes from where I work. Vancouver can be a pretty terrific place.

On another note, some of you may have received an email from me inviting you to be a contact on LinkedIn. I mistakenly sent that email out after I thought I had culled the list. And then I saw “You’ve sent 466 LinkedIn invitations”. Oi. I am SO sorry for my LinkedIn spam to those of you who don’t like that stuff.

But on the plus side, I’m now LinkedIn with my mom and my Uncle Bill, so that’s a bonus, right? Right.

So Sorry about that.

A few weeks ago, my cousin Andrea wrote to me about her experience making Grandma‘s Puffed Wheat Squares:

We made 2 batches on Christmas day and one looked like puffed wheat floating on motor oil and the other looked good until you picked them up and then they fell apart and you got stuck with a handful of margarine.

This is a real travesty. I feel your pain, Andrea. My popcorn balls turned out the same way last Halloween. I felt compelled to help. No one should have to have drippy puffed wheat for treats. Actually, have you ever had wet puffed wheat? It kind of shrivels up to nothing. In fact, that’s kind of what happens when you eat it – without the added bonus of butter, corn syrup and cocoa.

Also, if you’ve never had the pleasure of puffed wheat, you can find it in the cereal isle. The cereal is usually packed in a clear garbage-bag sized package and weighs NOTHING. It also tastes like nothing and even if you eat 3 bowls with milk, you’d still be starving. Sorry, puffed wheat people, but it’s true. On its own, it’s a non-event. But with the right ingredients? Delicious!

I decided to try a batch myself to make sure I could do it. And I did! Mine stayed together and everything. I just forgot to take photos of how I did it – step-by-step style. So sadly, this means I’ll have to make another batch. Also, they are nearly all gone now. But this is what they looked like before we ate them.

Please note: we had a few people help us eat them. Cross my heart.

So, this weekend, I’ll do a puffed wheat tutorial for Andrea so she can refer to it the next time she needs to make a batch. Here’s hoping I can do it right twice!

I’ve decided to take your advice/lovely comments and look at this film stuff as happy accidents. Thanks, guys! Also, I love the thought of having a huge old camera with a blackout blanket over my head while holding up a huge flash that goes “POOF!” when it goes off. I would also be wearing a fedora with card that said, “PRESS” on it and it would be tucked into the satin band of my hat. I would mostly be taking photos of people smoking Lucky Strikes and people doing the Charleston.

Remember my favourite photo trick for food photography – taking the photos in the fridge? That sure worked out well with this camera:

And who could get tired of looking at lemon tarts, really? You know, I COULD do all 12 of my photos in the fridge for the Vancouver Film Marathon in a pinch. It could rain all day you know. This could be my plan B for the day.

Meanwhile, back at the graveyard…

I took this photo while standing in the Chinese and Japanese area of the cemetery. There is a small building there with a place to leave offerings and burn incense. See the red panel on the left? That’s part of the beautiful building. We’re going to go back so I can get more photos of that area. The Japanese graves have origami crane sculptures on them and are very beautiful. Sadly, I didn’t happy accident any of those shots. But it’s okay! We’re going back!

And here’s one more for the road – under the Burrard Street Bridge:

So far I’ve had the best luck with super sunny days and landscape shots. I’ll keep at it.

In other news, our friends, Art & Jo-Ann in Endako told us that they are getting two piglets this week. I have the urge to go on a LONG road trip to the centre of our province. But before that, we have to go to Toronto next week for Grandma’s 90th birthday bash. But in the near future, we are SO heading up to Prince George and turning left at the casino until we see Savory Road.

Baby pigs! EEP!