Usually The Husband’s and my weekend consist of either:

a) Going to visit family or
b) Spending most of the time in a near-vegetative state

This weekend, however, we decided to mix it up a bit.

We started out Friday night with an actual meal of steak and Smashed Potatoes, as opposed to our normal pizza or something else that will leave leftovers so we don’t have to cook the next day.

Then Saturday morning is set our alarm clock (!) early enough so that we could go to the local green market and bakery (and everyone not be sold out and packing up).

Both ended up being somewhat of a disappointment. We were hoping there would be a good variety of produce at the green market, but it was mostly baked good, crafts, and just your normal old potatoes, onions, peppers, etc. which we either already had plenty of or didn’t need. Instead I spent our budget on a bouquet flowers, which I broke up into smaller bouquets to brighten up little corners of the house.

The bakery was sold out of all their bread by the time we got done at the green market. We ended up getting them to set us back a baguette from the next batch and picked it and some various pastries up after running other errands (including a new globe for our bathroom light to replace the one I broke like 4 years ago. Yay, no more bare bulbs!) Really it turned out fine, because the baguette and pastries were to die for.

Seriously, we didn’t even get back into the house before we had to get a taste of the baguette and obviously I didn’t make it until after the photos were taken before sampling the almond croissant. Heaven.

The evening was spent with our friends, eating spanakopita (made by my friend Marissa, SO GOOD) and watching their kids play in their pool.

Then this afternoon I made homemade donuts (recipe via Joy the Baker). They turned out pretty good for a first attempt. The chocolate glaze wasn’t quite right in my opinion (The Husband thought it was fine), but I didn’t have any bittersweet chocolate on hand, only nonsweetened and I even after monkeying around with it trying to compensate it still didn’t float my boat, so to speak. The glazed however, were spot on.

Maybe after a get a couple more attempts under my belt, I can write up a tutorial. However, before I attempt again, I need to hunt me down some decent cutter. My normal biscuit cutters were the wrong sizes and I ended up having to improvise with an old meat maker thingy (which I never use to make meat pies, ironically enough) and the lid off a bottle of decorating sugar for the hole. Not the best tools for the job.

And after all that, I think the donut holes with cinnamon sugar ended up being my favorite part.

Oh I almost forgot, check out the supermega-awesome painting my little sister made me.

I swear if I didn’t love her so much I would be forced to hate her very, very much.

Now, if you will excuse me, I think I need to go see if there is a home remedy for sugar shock.

A few more photos of the flowers can be seen on my flickr photostream.

This weekend we celebrated the combo Mothers’ Day/My sister Rachel’s 17th birthday with another crawfish boil.

The birthday girl:

The gifts, sunflowers for Mama and the rings were what we got Rach, the painting and cupcake pendants in the last photo were made by Rach for Mom:

Other family members, including my other sister Hannah who believes tiaras should be everyday attire:

My parents’ garden(s) are always good fodder for photos:

I know I still need to get pictures of all the stuff we bought at IKEA while in Dallas, we have just been so slow about getting it all situated. Hopefully I will have them up soon though.

This weekend The Husband and I joined my Mom and younger siblings for a holiday weekend in Dallas. My mom was meeting Ms. EllynAnne Geisel there and attending her book signing, so we all decided to tag-along and make a vacation of it.

So Friday morningish we set out in a two-vehicle caravan and headed west.

That evening after getting checked into the hotel (complete with a room change when ours ended up having a busted air conditioner, which even in April is doubleplusungood), it was time to head out for a bit of shopping and supper. We decided to drive to up to Frisco to check out the mall and IKEA(!). Now there are several things that contributed to how we spent the next several hours of our lives:

• Being from a relatively rural area, our grasp of the concept of traffic is pretty tentative. Traffic for us is getting stopped at a the red light. So, for those like us, a tip: trying to get out of downtown during rush hour in Dallas, Texas probably not the best idea ever.
• Never take directions for granted. Apparently to some people “will take you right to it” is synonymous with “will take you at least 10 miles out of the way, which if you weren’t paying closer attention, you wouldn’t even realize until you were in Oklahoma”. How in the name of all that is holy did people travel before GPS and cell phones?
• If you find yourself navigating busy, unfamiliar highways late in the evening, it’s probably a good idea that arrangements be made for the pilot of your vehicle to be not night blind, as proficiency in echolocation in humans is quite rare. If you are the aforementioned night blind pilot, the next morning is probably the latest one should speak up and remind the other occupants of your affliction. Someone else being inconvenienced by driving is still preferable to everyone involved dying in a fiery car crash.

All that being said, we did eventually find Frisco, some supper and IKEA. Of course, we realized after an hour in IKEA that we had only made it about a 16th of the way through.

The next day was devoted to exploring downtown. We headed down to Dealey Plaza to check out the Grassy Knoll, etc. While there, we spoke to some of the conspiracy theorist that were there hawking books, dvds and such. One of them was a man that (supposedly) was there near the Knoll that day. True or not, we had a good time. We were hoping to have time to do the book depository tour, but there just wasn’t enough time.

Next we walked down to the Dallas World Aquarium. It was crowded (why did no one tell the poor homeschoolers about aquariums on Saturday?) and warm, but it made for some great photo opportunities. By the way, I want a manatee for my birthday this year.

The next morning we packed up, checked out and headed to IKEA for final purchases before the drive home. Another tip: Always be sure to measure just how much you can fit in your vehicle before buying a metric asston of stuff at IKEA 300 miles from home (pictures of purchases coming, soon hopefully). Thankfully, it all fit, but it was touch and go there for awhile.

PS more pictures are available at my flickr photostream

So Sunday morning my Daddy and sister drive down south to pick some up and, mein Gott, were they good.

Mom’s kitty Julius wasn’t so sure about this. We thought for sure he would at least try to play with it, but one poke on the nose was enough for him to lose all interest.

One word of caution: You do not want crawfish spice in your eyes, peel with care.

Even so, it was a beautiful day, and great eating and fun was had by all.

By the way, in case you couldn’t tell, my sisters are insane.

And Happy April’s Fool Day!

Notes: I think this should work with just about any version of Photoshop, but for future reference, I am using Photoshop CS3.

First, open up the picture you are wanting to edit. If you are nervous about doing permanent edits to your photograph, just right-click and Duplicate Layer.

Now go to Image>Adjustments>Levels.

This will open up the Levels dialog box.

Now this is where things get interesting. In the Levels dialog box you will find, among other things, 3 droppers. One for Black, Gray, and White. Using these three droppers, you can set the darkest point, lightest point, and “tone” of the image.

To start off with, I want to choose the white point for this image, so I click the white dropper. Now click on the part of the image that you want to be the brightest.

If desired, do the same with with the black dropper for the darkest point.

If, at some point, you click by accident or don’t like the results of a click, just hit Ctrl+Z to undo the last change.

Now the middle dropper (Gray dropper) is a bit different. Instead of setting the black and white points, the middle dropper is used to set the white balance, meaning remove color casts (like you get from shooting under tungsten lighting). However, it can only be useful for this purpose if there is a colorless (neutral gray) reference in the image. That being said, if you are in the mood, you can get some interesting results by just playing around with it. Personally, I rarely use the the gray point dropper, I find I can get better results through other avenues.

It may take some trial and error, but I have found that this one little trick makes a lot of difference in how my photos end up, especially as I am still learning to take the photographs themselves. If I am not having much luck with the droppers, I often find that using the sliders under the histogram can be really helpful also. Don’t be afraid to play around and see what works best for you.

Before and Afters: