Baking

Yesterday, around 5:30pm, Stephen called me from work and asked "Do you want to bake something for my work tomorrow?"

And I replied, "Heck yeah!"

I love baking.

I like it better than cooking, though I don't know why.

It's a lot easier to mess up with baking, trust me, I know.

Maybe it's because I love eating baked goods.

And dough.

Especially the dough.

I'm lucky if the dough ends up being a baked good.

I don't do cakes (or muffins, AKA morning appropriate cake). Never have.

I never really liked cake.

Perhaps one of these days when I am feeling particularly adventurous I will try a cake.

So Stephen needed me to bake him something to take to work.

Some sort of breakfast pastry.

I knew exactly what I wanted to do.

The Pioneer Woman (my blogging inspiration) has a famous cinnamon roll recipe that I have been wanting to try.

I haven't made it yet because it makes 50 cinnamon rolls.

It would be a few too many for just Stephen and I.

So I made the dough last night and then got up at 4:15am to make the rolls.

Here was what I was shooting for:



This is what I made:



I'm not sure what happened, but hey, as long as they taste good right?

Here they are baked:



Then add the maple glaze:



I'm impatiently waiting to hear from Stephen what people said about them.

Confession #64: Though I get embarrassed when people complement my baking, I secretly love hearing it.

I am now wishing I had saved one of those rolls for me.

Dang it!

Editing

A few years ago we bought a "real" digital camera (as in one where you can change lenses and such).

A had a really nice film camera given to me by my grandma when I started getting into photography as a teenager.

But alas, film died out and digital won over.

I prefer film.

Always have.

Always will.

Film is much more an art, you hold up the camera, you press the button and "click".

What you took is what you got, and you did't know if it is any good until you got it developed.

Not so with digital.

Digital is more of a computer graphic type art. More of a science I would say.

You hold up the camera, you press the button and "click".

Then you look to see if you like it and retake it if necessary.

But it doesn't end there.

Then you can edit the photo.

You can make it lighter, darker, brighter colors, black and white, more contrast, less contrast, sharper, softer, you can erase things from the pictures entirely.

It's never ending all the editing you can do!

I love it and hate it.

Maybe more hate than love.

But here we are with a real digital camera and only a very basic photo editing program.

Then the Army gave Stephen an editing program because he was taking a lot of pictures at work.

(Thanks Army!)

It is a very nice, professional grade program, Photoshop CS4.

We installed it a couple weeks ago.

My brother-in-law, who has taught some photoshop classes, insured me that it was very user friendly and that I could just figure it out by messing around.

He's a big fat liar.

Or maybe I am just dumb.

Or both.

This thing has a million buttons and options and I have no clue how to use them!

And of course it came with no instructions.

So the first thing I did was go and buy a book on how to use it.

I chose one with very clear, step by step instructions.

The pictures I posted from hiking were my first stab at using the program.

Next I take on the more daunting task of the pictures from the in-laws visit, there are about 300 or so pictures.

Depending on how good the original picture is, it takes about 15 minutes or so per picture to edit.

You do the math.

Here are some before and afters to give you an idea of what this wonderful/horrible program can do.

Before:



After:



Before:



After:



Before:



After:



Now, some of you may be thinking "oh that's why the water looked so blue!" but believe me when I say, that is really what it looks like.

I have always hated landscape photography because, one, I was never good at it and two, it never looked like it did in person.

There were always some areas that seemed too bright while other areas were too dark and it was never as vibrant as it looked in person.

This program really fixes that.

Now the hard part is to edit the photos without them looking too overly processed.

I beg your patience as I work to find that balance.

(Complements and criticisms are always welcome, though I do prefer for the criticisms to be sandwiched between two complements. Its easier to swallow that way.)

Enjoy!

Hiking

This weekend I dragged Stephen out of bed on his day off and said “Let’s climb a mountain!”

And he said “Ok!”

Not really.

It took a little begging on my part, but who could say no to this cute face!

We went to Kuliouou Ridge Trail.

This would be the fourth hike we have done on Oahu.

Pretty sad for having lived here for almost 2 years!

We started around 9:00 or 10:00 and finished around 1:00.

It was about a 6 mile hike (round trip).

The best thing about hiking in Hawaii is the crazy change in scenery as you go.

Where the trail started was a drier part of Hawaii.

It looked like this:



Then as you go up it all of a sudden looks like this:



When I say “all of a sudden”, I mean you look behind you then in front of you and it looks like two different places.

I love these pine trees.

When you are hiking though them you feel like you’re in some enchanted forest.

It’s almost creepy.

There are no other plants but the trees.

Their needles cover the ground and everything has this blurry, muted look.

All you can hear is the slight breeze that is muted by the pine needles.

The pictures really don’t do it justice.

Here is a good example of “all of a sudden”.

Behind me looked like this:



And in front of me looked like this:

Bam!



Crazy huh?!

Then as we got higher up, it looked like this:



The other thing I love about hiking in Hawaii is that there is almost always a destination.

Usually that destination is either a waterfall or a view.

For this hike, it was a view.

I had heard the view from the top of this hike was amazing, I couldn't wait!

The first view we got while going up was this one.



Then we got a little higher.



Then we got to the top.

It was amazing!

I pulled out my trusty camera and cli....cli....... "Error 99"

Noooooo!

No "click", just an error screen.

"Stephen!" I yelled, somehow expecting him to be a camera repair expert.

He looked, shrugged his shoulders and went back to looking at the view.

Darn his philosophic stoicness!

Never in the almost 4 years we had had this camera had it ever not worked.

Maybe it was all the trips to the beach...

Or the way we tossed is around without much care...

Maybe it felt neglected and needed some TLC and chose now, on the top of a mountain, to get back at us.

Well I wasn't having it!

I didn't climb to the top of this mountain to see the view and not get a picture of it!!

So I turned it off and on and messed with the battery and lens and got it took work.

In other words, I showed it who's boss!

Here is what we saw (going from right to left).

That is Diamond Head off to the right in the distance.



Then Koko Marina and Hawaii Kai.



The Koolau Mountain Range.



The town of Waimanalo.



Over to the left is Kailua and that island on the far left is Kaneohe Marine Base.



Here is a panorama.



Beautiful huh?

Then we hiked all the way back down.

The other thing I like about hiking is lunch afterward.

It's not a hike to me unless you go eat something really tasty and fattening afterward.

It gives you motivation on the way down.

We had burgers, fries and a milkshake.

It was a great day.

(by the way, if you click on the photos you can see them larger, that's true for all my posts)

Goodbye Jack-Jack

Yesterday Jack-Jack, our foster dog, was taken to a new home.

A military couple fell in love with him and adopted him.

He’s a great dog and we’ll miss him.

But boy am I glad to being back down to just 2 dogs, 3 is just too many!

Questions

Today I was filling out an application to volunteer at the local crisis pregnancy center.

One of the questions was "What is a Christian?"

Now this should be a pretty easy question for me to answer right?

I have been going to church my whole life.

I've been a Christian since I was 11 years old.

I took Bible and theology classes in college.

I read the Bible daily and talk with Stephen about theology all the time.

"What is a Christian?"

My mind went blank.

I felt like a moron.

Then I had a flashback.

About three years ago Stephen and I took our church's membership class.

The first thing the pastor did was hand us index cards and asked us to answer this question,

"What is the gospel?"

I wanted to sound smart in my answer so I thought I would use some of the big theological words I had heard Stephen use.

Words like, "imputation" and "propitiation" and "sanctification".

So I wrote my answer and felt all smart and handed it in.

After that class Stephen asked me what I had put down.

I told him my answer, very proud of my vocabulary.

Stephen looked at me and said "That's what Catholics believe."

Dang it!

So now here I am with the question "What is a Christian?" and two little lines to answer it on.

I learned my lesson and steered clear of the big words and tried my best to give a good answer.

I think those kind of questions are so difficult because there are the simple obvious answers like,

"A Christian is someone who believes Christ is their Lord and savior."

But that really doesn't cover it.

It's like someone asking "What is the United States?" and answering,

"The US is a country located in North America."

It just doesn't cover it.

There is a more theological answer such as,

A Christian is someone whose heart has been regenerated from its sinful depraved state to understand the glory of God and recognized their sinful nature. This person then repents of their sin and believes that Christ is the son of God who came to earth and died on the cross and rose again to cleanse us of our sin so that we might be in relationship with God. A Christian then continues to live their life striving to glorify God in all they do and turning away from sin.

But its also more than that,

A Christian is someone who lives life every single day with the knowledge of God as their maker and savior, with a joy in the fact that they have been saved inspite of their sins, with a love for all people as God's created beings, with a hatred of those things in which grieve God and a never failing hope of eternal life with Him.

Even that doesn't cover all it is to be a Christian.

I guess what I am getting at is that to define a Christian takes more than what can be put into a two sentence dictionary description.

Just to be safe I should probably run my answer by Stephen to make sure its not Jewish or Muslim or anything.

Peaches

Before Stephen's family came to visit I cleared off the camera memory card in anticipation of all the pictures I would take.

In doing this, I came across a lot of random pictures I never did anything with.

One of the pictures was this one.



This is Peaches.

We had Peaches for about a week about a year ago.

Here is the story.

We had gone to check out a Christian book store at a shopping center we hadn't been to before.

We wandered around the stores to see what there was.

We saw a pet shop.

Pet shops that actual sell pets are still strange to me being that there aren't any in California, at least not that I have seen.

We of course decided to go inside because even though we have 4 pets at home we just love seeing more.

It was a dirty little hole in the wall type place.

When we first walked in, out of the corner of my eye I saw a little cage on the floor and something white and fluffy inside.

I went over to look and my heart broke.

It was a tiny kitten, much to young to have been separated from its mom.

It was filthy, covered with fleas and was all crusty around the nose and eyes.

They were selling it for $20.

I stuck my fingers through the bars and she rubbed up against them with a pathetic little meow and purr.

Stephen quickly dragged me away knowing all to well what I wanted to do.

As we walked away from the store I felt so awful leaving the poor thing there.

I then came up with a great idea, what if we got her and then took her to the cat rescue place that we got Giselle from?

Stephen said "If you call the rescue lady and she says she'll take her then we will get her."

So standing outside the store, I called the rescue lady and told her where I was and our plan.

She agreed to take the kitten and said that the store was notorious for its poor conditions.

Then she said something so awful that I hung up the phone and literally ran into that store and got that kitten as quickly as possible.

She said "Those kittens are sold so cheap and in such poor conditions because they are bought by people who use them as bait for pit bull fights."

The thought that someone could take that adorable little fluffy kitten to be torn to bits by dogs was so horrifying to me.

So we got her, took her home, named her Peaches and nursed her back to health and gave her to the rescue where I am sure she was quickly adopted from.

That wasn't the last time we brought that lady a rescued cat.

We'll save that story for another time.

Containers

I love containers.

I love containing things in containers.

My favorite of all containers are glass ones.

They're like doorless cupboards, organized clutter.

They give me the warm and fuzzies inside.

They make me clap my hands and hop in place.

I have your basic containers of all-purpose flour, sugar and brown sugar.



I have containers for cooking utensils and 3 different kinds of oats and 4 different kinds of rice.



I have containers for different kinds of flours.



I have containers for spaghetti.



Containers for lasagna noodles.



Containers for wine corks.



Containers for beer caps.



Containers for change.



Containers for colored pencils.



Containers for sketching pencils.



Containers for mini colored pencils.



Containers for paint brushes.

\

Containers for buttons.



Containers for my brains.

Wait, where is that jar?....

It’s around here somewhere.

Anyways, in summary,

I love containers.

The end.

Motivation, or Lack There Of

Monday started out well.

I walked the dogs, went for a run, cleaned the entire house and had dinner made by the time Stephen got home.

I felt pretty proud of myself.

Hm, “proud”...as in having pride.

Pride...isn’t there some saying about that?

Something in connection to tripping? Or maybe it was falling?

Oh well.

Tuesday came with my main chore to mop all the floors.

We have no carpet, not even a rug.

It’s a lot of floor to mop.

My subconscious (or not so “sub” conscious) knew this and kept me sleeping past my alarm until 7am.

Then I suddenly contracted a terrible case of ADD.

I was distracted all day long.

Greatest distraction of all time: Etsy.com

Etsy, I hate you.

I love you.

I can’t get enough of you.

You’re ruining my life.

Never leave me.

I need help.

So distractions, that was what I was talking about right?

Ok, so distractions, lack of motivation and laziness led to a day of unproductiveness.

This spilled into Wednesday as well.

And Thursday.

And today.

Dang it!

Being a homemaker is hard!

All day there is no one to keep me accountable.

To tell me to get off this darn computer.

This feeling of “unaccountability” lasts until around 4:30.

This is when I realized Stephen will be home in about an hour.

With Stephen comes the dreaded question...

“What did you do today?”

This question haunts me daily.

Stephen, clueless of the stomach knots this question causes, asks me this everyday to be kind and caring and curious about my day.

Darn you and your caring!

Maybe if I posted a big sticky note with that question written on it to my computer I would be more productive.

I might try that.

This week has been a bit of a failure for me as a homemaker.

Praise God His mercies are new every morning. (and Stephen’s too :o)

Praying for another chance to glorify God better tomorrow.

Amen.

The Shadow

Ever had that feeling that someone is following you?

It’s similar to that feeling you get when you know someone is staring at you.

That recognition of a presence.

The presence of someone, or something, that has set its eyes and intentions on you.

I had that feeling this morning.

It was early morning, the sun was just peaking over the hills.

I was walking with Lilo at my side when I felt it.

The presence.

I turned, almost out of pure instinct, to find out what was behind me.

There was nothing.

Just a glimpse of a shadow out of the corner of my eye.

So I kept walking.

The presence returned.

I turned.

The shadow darted.

I knew there was something there.

I continued walking.

Then before I knew it...the shadow was in front of me!

Staring me in the eyes!

Then rubbed up against my legs with an evil growl.

Or was it a purr?

Not sure.

This is what I saw.



A black panther on the prowl, AKA our kitty Bagheera.

He followed me and Lilo all the way down the street and back.

He kept trying to rub up against Lilo's legs and Lilo just kept trying not to trip over him.

Silly kitty.

Pesto

We planted two basil plants in our garden.

This wasn't a mistake.

Like the two oreganos.

I don't even use oregano.

But now we have two.

So back to the basil, we planted two, on purpose, to make pesto and enjoy fresh basil whenever possible.

If you don't have basil plants, its a lot cheaper to just buy pesto because making it takes a lot of basil.

It's really easy to make.

Start with your ingredients.



Process.



Have I mentioned I am in love with my food processor?

I seriously don't know how I lived so long without it.

Put in freezer safe jars.



It will keep for 3 months.

Arrivederci!

That's goodbye in Italian.

One of the few words I remember from the two weeks of Italian class I took.

I begged my mom to let me take the class at the community college when I was 15.

Begging was required because the textbook cost $80.

And because I already had my language credits (sign language).

And because my best friend was taking the class and we had elaborate plans to travel to Italy and marrying Italian men.

I told her "It will be good for me. I will use it all the time. I will work really hard in the class."

She fell for it.

Kinda like when I begged for a keyboard promising I would play it all the time.

She should have learned her lesson.

Two weeks into the class I came home crying begging to quit the class.

The teacher's style of teaching was immersion.

As in she would walk up to you and ask you something in Italian and you were supposed to answer back in Italian.

Hard to do when all I could say was "Bonjourno" and "Mi chiamo Megan".

It was too much.

I cracked.

Crocodile tears flowed.

Mom cracked.

Waste of $80.

Hense the two weeks of Italian.

Arrivederci.

And pardon my ramblings.

Hurricane Season

You probably didn’t hear it on the news, but a hurricane swept threw Oahu last week.

Because of this hurricane, I have neglected my blog until it blew over.

It was Hurricane In-Laws.

There was a calm before the storm and then it started to build.

First to hit was my father-in-law and his significant other.

The next day it was my mother-in-law and her husband.

Then the following day it was my sister-in-law, her husband and two kids.

A couples days later it was my uncle-in-law and his wife.

It then became, the perfect storm!

And they all stayed with us.

Just kidding!

All joking aside, my husband’s family came to visit for labor day weekend and they stayed at the military hotel near Waikiki.

We had a great time.

Busy, but great.

More to follow.

Still cleaning up the aftermath.

Sneak peak: