Hot Cocoa / Chocolatl

The weather has turned chilly, and, in turn, I have begun drinking warm chocolate beverages. :) We have giant marshmallows left over from this, plenty of hot chocolate mix, and giant cups. All set!

For some spice, sometimes the Mr. and I add one or two several dashes of cayenne to our hot cocoa. I think we're probably mutilating a recipe here, but we had this at a restaurant recently and they called it chocolatl. It's supposed to be warming in temperature and spice. It is yummy and I would definitely recommend trying it. YUM!

This week is a standard week of school and work for me, so I've just got some studying to catch up on from the weekend. It was a relaxing four day weekend, and I think I caught up on most of my important/"should-do" things list.  Christmas shopping is (almost) all done, I think. Time to prepare for final exams next week!


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take some time to *steep* and smell the {rose} tea

Do you like my awesome pun title?

I haven't been remembering to take my camera along with me anytime I go anywhere, so I'm kind of low on pictures. Target had tea on clearance, so we stocked up, which I thought was totally rad. score!! {The more expensive brands are close to $6/box when they aren't on sale, which I refuse to pay!!} I'm trying a few news flavors I've never had before, and I have to say that I'm really enjoying the rose tea.

I made this crazy picture out of the picture above. Neat? 

Not much else is new, since I'm getting back into the swing of studying. So, I'm getting all of my amino acids under control, memorizing structures, yadda yadda yadda! If you read this far, I think a "congratulations" is in order. :) Take care!

Dr. Spaceman and some more lovely flowers :)

30 Rock is one of the shows that I watch a ton. Dr. Spaceman, played by Chris Parnell, is one of my favorite (but somewhat rare) characters on the show. Below, he says that "science is whatever we want it to be", since he is a "doctor" who has a loose grasp on pretty much everything. Since I like science, I think this is pretty funny. (Btw, if your doctor is similar to Dr. Spaceman in any regard, I would be worried!!)

Image of Science is whatever we want it to be

For my 'show off your shot' entry this week, I took a picture of my ultra-important timer which keeps me on task! I wanted to have a great deal of contrast, but I learned that I needed to keep it dark enough so that I didn't lose the details in the shadows of the timer's knob. {I'm sure there's some photography-speak for what I'm trying to say.}

 

Some purple flowers from the previous trip. They used to be more pink, but I decided it would be fun to color shift them to purple.

I used some different textures and 'crystallized' this flower.

pink Gerber daisy

...more daisies from the same garden. I'm surprised how this came through editing! I liked what the texture did for this photo.

orange and yellow Gerber daisies

I hope everyone is having a lovely Thursday!

Half-way done with the week!

We planted these awhile ago and they've been fairly neglected. They've grown quite a bit since this post, and they seem to have especially flourished with the rain from the hurricane. 

 

A rainy day picture, since it's been raining a TON recently! I like the blurriness that the rain-drops gave the trees. I'm still trying to figure out what my camera can do, and what's out of it's limits.

HDR-ish style giraffe from our travels westward, recently. I think he was posing for me. :)

A flower from the conservatory that was also part of the zoo. I have no idea what kind of flower this is. Any ideas?

Edit Me - Week 7

{The picture for this week's 'Edit Me' challenge is from Branson at My Reflection of Something.}

Original

Edited

After I got done and uploaded it, I realized that it looks grainy because I somehow worked with the lower resolution version of the picture :( Not really sure why I didn't notice sooner, but oh well.


I rotated the picture, so the flag would have its field of stars in the upper left corner.  I brightened it and softened the sky, and brought out some different blue colors.  I wanted to keep it simple, and clean.  I added a star focus to the flag, and 'Stars and Stripes Forever'; simple, straightforward, and meaningful.  That's my FAVORITE 4th of July song (although I'm not sure how many other songs are in the running), so I'm attaching it as a YouTube video, too. =)  

'Stars and Stripes Forever' by John Philip Sousa as played by the New York Philharmonic Orchestra, directed by Leonard Bernstein, and recorded at the Royal Albert Hall in London (1976)

Enjoy the cellos, cymbals, trombones, baritones, and piccolo. Well, enjoy whatever you want in the song, but those are my favorites. :)

Edit Me - Week 5

Original Version

This photo is from Keara @ Now I Know What Life is All About. 

Thanks to her for providing this week's 'Edit Me' challenge!

My Edited Version

This is my edited version of this week's photo challenge. It was pretty enjoyable to edit! I wanted to give the photo a softer feel, overall.

I started in picnik with regular editing (straightening the picture, adjusting contrast, exposure, etc.). Next I searched for some 'artsty' effects, and came across befunky.com and applied an oil painting effect (I think!). Finally, I wound up in fotoflexer (since I'm not sure if picnik does layering), layered the over-the-top-artsy picture on top of my first edit, and reduced it's opacity. I re-added the sky as a third layer (on top) to maintain it's blue color since it had become overly washed out with the other editing.  Seems like everyone else has some fun edits posted already, too!! {Click the button to check 'em out!}

Fill in the Blank Friday! Vacation edition

This week for Fill-in-the-Blank-Friday, the theme is vacations!

1.   This weekend I'm       probably going on an anniversary date and studying for the final next week   and      I am looking forward to dressing up and going out way more than the studying!  .

2.  My last vacation was    oh gosh, um...? Probably Hawaii almost a year ago for our honeymoon.  I don't think I've been on any real vacations since then.  I've visited people, but I don't know if anything else has counted as a 'vacation'. 

3.  My next vacation will be     probably in August, although it's still up in the air.

4.  My favorite way to relax is   either going to the pool on a sunny day, or listening to music and playing useless games  .

5.  When vacationing one should always    bring snacks for the car/plane/train/bus and leave space to bring back souvenirs.   

6.  When vacationing one should never   drink all the water one brought right away (since one probably ate all the salty snacks right away), otherwise the next few exits with gas stations will become mandatory pit stops. 

7.  The best part about a vacation is   not worrying about minutia! {Which should be banned on all vacations!!!}  The best vacations are care-free .

Can I go back there??

Picture of Waikiki from the evening catamaran cruise

I wish I would have known how to use my camera better, and this doesn't do it justice, but I thought the shoreline with all the buildings lit up was really pretty.

Edit Me - Week 4

Original

My edited version

{note: click the picture to see a larger version}

The quote says: "There are always two people in every picture: the photographer and the viewer." -Ansel Adams 

This photograph seemed like a blank canvas that I could do almost anything with, from the beginning.  I straightened, sharpened, and brightened it a bit.  I really wanted to do something with the space on the right, so I found a quotation that would look nice in the upper right corner.  I didn't want to disturb the clarity of the clouds or the water tower, so I mostly left those alone.  The overlayed stamps were put in each of the corners, and then blurred the edges.

I'm really having fun with these 'Edit Me' challenges.  I didn't have much to post yesterday, so I was looking forward to a new picture to edit today!

Since I'm posting this fairly early, I still have time to get some studying in since I woke up at 5:45 this morning. Nice 'n early.  There's a "pop quiz" this morning, so anyone who's habitually late to class will miss it {not me!} ...I'm always early since I can never understand why sometimes it takes me 10 minutes to drive 10 miles and other times it takes 20-25 minutes. Traffic is weird.

Have a lovely Wednesday, everyone!

Edit Me - Week 3

Original Photo

Photo with my Edits

This week's 'Edit Me!' picture proved more difficult than last week's picture, just since I wasn't quite sure where to start with it.  Black and white seemed like an interesting option, but I liked the color in the background too much to fade it away.  I usually like to do funkier edits, but I figured I should preserve the detail in the face.  I crystallized the background, gave it a boost of color, and added the border.

That's the end of my study break...  So, no posts tomorrow- and wish me luck studying!  By then, hopefully I'm an expert at the central and peripheral nervous systems. My neurons will be ready to take a break from firing so much, by Friday afternoon. - har har har!http://www.myreflectionofsomething.net/2011/06/edit-me-week-3.html

Edit Me - Week 2

Before

After

The 'after' is my edit for the 'Edit Me' challenge.  I started in picnik by intensifying the sky and grass by tinting them each blue and green, respectively.  After I did that, I have used the HDR effect to intensify the lines and colors, and then I used hex cells to tone it down and blur it a bit.  Next, I softened it using fotoflexer and made it slightly transparent on top of the original version.  I intensified the colors again, and I think that's about it. 

Fill in the Blank Friday

1.   People always tell me I look like ... I've been told I look like Maggie Gyllenhall once, and Natalie Portman once. But I don't think I buy it.

2.  Friends don't let friends... not be friends? Hmmm. 

3.  A sunny day is perfect for... hiking/biking/walking to a picnic spot, and then having a picnic. DUH!

4.  My favorite accessory is ...my wedding ring. {Does that count?} I suppose I also like my hairpiece I wore at my wedding, but I don't really have a lot of chances to wear that.

5.  If I could afford it I would...travel every weekend, visiting  beach resorts and spas all around the world.  Yes, that would be blissful. :)

6.  The cure for boredom is ...video games, movies, playing music, the Internet, reading, exercising.

7.  I am currently "in like" with ...the movie 'THOR' and my soft, brightly colored T-shirts (purple, neon yellow, bright pink, bright blue). Exciting, right?

Awkward and Awesome Thursday

Awkward

Filling out medical, insurance, academic, and other types of paperwork is awkward because my last name is consistently "wrong"/not updated, I record a former address, and fill out the Mr.'s phone number instead of my own.   The people reading my forms must be confused... Most notably, I keep writing the wrong address on the 'return address' part of the envelope. Hopefully I start remembering these things better!!

People enjoy disregarding the painted parking lines. A lot.  Why? I have no idea.

also, this car had no license plates.

Wandering around big buildings, being lost, but refusing to stop to look at a map. Even when a map is nearby.  That is totally my own stubborn fault for feeling awkward.  

Awesome

I ventured out for the first time since I've been here...by car, alone...and I made it back a-l-i-v-e! Mind you, the GPS was solely responsible for leading me to and from the correct locations.  When I tried to guess which way to turn by myself, my instincts were wrong almost every time. Thank goodness for the GPS!!

The Mr. has this Friday {tomorrow} off.  Hooray!

I learned the reason why I sneeze when I look at the sun or a bright light.  It's an evolutionary relic called the photic sneeze reflex or ACHOO syndrome, dating back to cave-man times {which is how all the best stories start out}.  The sneezing was an automated reaction that occurred to clear the debris from said cave-man's nose when exiting the cave, so that he could breathe better and smell more acutely when he left the cave.  The sun was an automatic trigger that said to the cave-man's brain, "Hey, we're going outside and need to breathe to be able to smell predators- like bears.  MAKE ME SNEEZE!" And now you know.  You're welcome! :)

Some of the seeds we planted a week or two ago are growing!  Well, not all of them.  Time will tell if they've been over-watered or if they'll sprout later.  Hopefully they sprout!

I'm actually not a huge fan of marigolds, but I was hoping that they'd keep the bugs away.  I hope the snapdragons catch up fast!!

Linking up!