30 Days of Creativity - Day 17: I Heart Beer

I heart beer. There I said it. Perhaps it has to do with the fact I grew up in the beer capital of the States. Yep, I said it again. Milwaukee is, and will forever be, the beer capital of the world. Don't hate me. I speak the truth. (Although I may admit, I am biased).

Back to our love of beer. Part of the reason I think I like is so much is because we make our own. I really enjoy the process and experimenting with different recipes and ingredients. This has kind of made us - dare I say - beer snobs. And yes, we know it.

So why beer? Well ... There is no other beverage I can think of that has so much versatility. It can be light, dark, full-bodied, fruity, potent, creamy, tart...etc. You get the point. Beer can be anything you want it to be.

We are learning this more and more as we progress through our homebrews. It is through this hobby that I have really come to appreciate microbreweries. (This is not to say that I did not value their products before.) I have learned that while it is not hard to make beer, it does take a true craftsperson to make a unique one. So cheers to all you homebrewers out there.

(I should also say that I am going to continue to experiment with homemade "print-making." It's been a fun ride thus far. Now we just need to sharpen our exacto knife blades!)

30 Days of Creativity - Day 8: Sweet Tooth

My KitchenAid has been lonely. My palette has been craving something sweet. The solution: Cupcakes! I almost made my "go-to" recipe: One Bowl Chocolate Cake, but instead decided to make my cupcakes from a simple yellow cake recipe. The result, you guessed it -- delicious.

Now that it is summer I am eager to try out new dessert recipes. Cakes with ice cream, tarts with fresh fruit...etc. Since we're new to the 'hood we still have to discover all the great farmers' markets and orchards. We are planning to so check me of this over the weekend.

Anyway, a short post from us today. We don't want to delay eating these delights!

Here's the recipe:

Set oven to 375 degrees. Bake 15 minutes or until golden around edges.

Mix:

3/4 c butter

3 eggs

2 1/2 c flour

2 1/2 c baking powder

1/2 t salt

1 3/4 c sugar

1 1/2 t vanilla

1 1/4 c milk (or as I do it: one yogurt and 1/2 c milk)

+ I would have added orange/lemon zest to this if we would have had it at home. Darn!

30 Days of Creativity - Day 4: Manual focus lenses on DSLRs

Last night we decided to go for a stroll around Hamlin Park and took our Olympus e510 with an old Olympus OM 50mm f1.8 (the "Made in Japan" one, which is supposedly the sharpest version of this lens). Focusing with a manual focus lens on a modern DSLR can be quite a challenge, especially if, like us, you can only afford the entry level model. Because of the digital sensor size, the mirror on this cameras is smaller and therefore what you see through the viewfinder is smaller. Using a magnifying finder helps a lot.

We love Hamlin Park during the summer and the fact that is so close to where we live. It's fun to see lots of little kids learning how to play baseball with their parents. This park is one of our favorite after work walk destinations.

We've also been taking more pictures with our old cameras, right now there is a roll of film in both our Olympus OM-10 and our Kiev 6C (in this case it's one that is really expired). We also always carry the DSRL with us. You can't beat the instant gratification that digital provides, especially when with film you have to wait at least a couple days to get film developed, and then spend the time scanning it.

Anyways we have a couple of projects going on for this weekend, we want to decorate some vinyl toys, an airplane and maybe we'll brew some dunkelweizen beer, so stay tuned!

30 Days of Creativity - Day 2: Through the viewfinder

We're not going to let the rain slow us down!

We can already tell that this is going to be a fun month. We are looking forward to keeping you updated on our projects and progresses, but are also excited to see what others are doing as well. You can check out the roster of participants here and the Flickr group of some of those taking part in 30Days.

Now on to Day 2: Viewfinder Views.

As we've slowly watched our camera collection grow throughout the years, so has our collection of cameras that have a waist-level viewfinder. These finders are great for focusing and can be a lot of fun when you use other cameras to capture the image through the finder. Our example today is an image shot from our Olympus E-510 through the Kiev 6C finder. Neat result, right? Yeah, we thought so too. [You'll have to visit again sometime soon to see the actual images shot from the Kiev. We can't turn around medium format film as fast as digital files. :))]