I fail at blogging.

I always fail at keeping up with this blog. So here are some things:

I recently made a very tasty and vegan creamy chicken and vegetable soup. It was a recipe from the cookbook Skinny Bitch and was awesome.

My cat is still the cutest thing ever and everyday I love him more and more.

Cora's recital finally came and went and she was beautiful and amazing!

I went to Philadelphia and got myself a vegan Philly cheesesteak from Gianna's off of South St. Yes, it was freakin delicious. I want one right now actually. If you have a recipe for a great vegan cheesesteak, please share!!

Also hung out in a chandelier shop in Philly. Beautiful place. The ceiling looked a little old and a little stressed.

Thanksgiving is coming up and I'm having a pot-luck at my house tomorrow night!

We have a week off for break so I'll try and post more soon. xoxo

Okay, I made this today:

Vegan of course. And dee-lici-ous!

Brushcetta Pizza

This isn't my picture by the way. 

Eh whatever

I'm not feeling very creative lately. =[

This is kinda cool though:

 What are YOU working on lately?

New Video!

New video up on the 'tube! I am making a piece of felt cake to the song "All of a Sudden" by Telekinesis. 

They are definitely one of my favorite bands this summer. I've also got some new music to share with the world.

This is my "Smithsonian" playlist because we are going there tomorrow. Hehe

World Spins Madly On - The Weepies

Magpie - The Mountain Goats

Blue & Green - The Little Hands of Asphalt

I Was On The Moon - Apollo Sunshine

Wilde Rice - Summer Cats

Never Wanna Let You Go - Camera

The Garden - Mirah

Deep Water - Portishead

Pop Lie - Okkervil River

Repeater Beater - Mew

Too Young to Love - The Big Pink

The First Days of Spring - Noah and the Whale

They Live By Night - Make-Up

Lengths and Limits - Makeout Party

Looks Like Styrofoam - The Little Hands of Asphalt

Sling A Song For Me - Pint Shot Riot

Really Like to See You Again - Thieves Like Us

Play It Again, Sam! You Don't - Manchester Orchestra

In other news, I finally gave in and bought a vegan cook book. I got Isa Chandra Moskowitz's Vegan Brunch There 

are so many beautiful pictures. I'm drooling just thinking about reading through it again. I am definitely making the 

Tofu Benny on pg 67 tomorrow for breakfast along with some potatoes and beans I have left over. Yum yum yum!

Okay no more typing, here is my video. Ta ta!

July 5 Update. New video!

I haven't been up to much lately creatively. I thought this to myself when I remembered I had a blog to catch up on. But really I did create a cool video the other night. I think a lot of people have already seen it. This is a video of me baking pretty much. It was inspired by a similar video a friend sent me. I had a lot of fun and it was super easy to make - I even learned iMovie in the process (which isn't that awful of a program). A friend of mine has approached me about creating the video to a "mash up" song he made a while back so I hope to get started on that soon. 

MyLATESTVideo is in widescreen and cannot be viewed properly on this page. Please check out the link to YouTube to see it. Sorry, I don't feel like messing with the code to make it the right size. :)

Things that have inspired me lately:

I REALLY want to make a stop animation video:

Sea Orchestra from Shy the Sun on Vimeo.

Breeze reflection by Djeff @ "Mal au pixel" France from djeff on Vimeo.

And this article on paint/jellyfish. Just read it.

Almost forgot!

I got mail from Finland today! Tarja Trygg over at  http://www.solargraphy.com/ has agreed to let me be apart of her global solargraphy project! She sent me three canisters prepared as pinhole cameras which I am going to set up around Winchester for as long as I can stand it. They really should be hung up for three or more months to get a really good photo but I will either fail and take them down in a few weeks or forget about them entirely and forget where I put them. What an adventure! The pinhole cameras will take an extended photograph of the suns rays as they streak across the sky for...as long as I keep the camera up. I'm going to set up two around the city and keep the third one to open up and see how she loads them. Eventually they need to be sent back to Finland. I wonder how much the shipping will cost me...

God I love this.

Things that have inspired me lately:

This is pretty neat. The Red One Camera is still fairly new to the scene but lots of productions in Hollywood are taking advantage. The resolution to this thing is sick - it's better than HD. These guys are using the Red One Camera like a DSLR to shoot "living posters".  Check this out:

Living Movie Poster - Start to Finish from Alexx Henry on Vimeo.

Wonder how you can get your own? Look at the price on these cameras.

This is a program that you can use with any webcam to try out some basic lightpainting. I really like the idea but the program is super sensitive. This is the first one I did that didn't look entirely blurry. I will definitely play with this tonight when it's dark. The one thing I really don't like is that you have to have an internet connection to save your photo because it automatically saves to the web - which is also a drawback because the whole world sees your photo! How annoying. Cool concept though.

 

Using my phone as a lightsource 

And finally, if you know me, you know I only like two kinds of rap; the kind I enjoy making fun of on the radio and rap that has nothing to do with sex and making money. (I like my rap to be about more substantial things, you know, like drugs and death.) But really, I cannot get enough of this guy. His name is Chris Palko but he's gone by Cage Kennylz since he got out of the mental hospital after he grew up helping his dad shoot heroine into his arm which led to a life of cocaine and alcohol abuse/addiction. What a guy! But in all seriousness, what doesnt kill us makes us stronger. Or gives us inspiration to become badass underground rappers.  He's fairly attractive as well ...oh and Shia LeBeouf directed this video. It gives me chills everytime.

Sunday Morning

Sunday afternoon found me cleaning my room and taking things into Holly's "storage space" which is this old converted porch. The cats really like to sit on all the window sills and bask in the sun. I wish I could be a house cat sometimes.

Molly Jones

Chester

Show: June 28, VA beach

I never mentioned this would also be an outlet for my friends' bands did I? Well now you know.

Bike Ride

Shenandoah Valley Heritage Ride 5.31.09

White Oak Canyon Pictures

It's raining all week and all I want to do is ride my bike to work. Ugh.

So this weekend was lovely and very busy. Here are some pictures from my hiking activities on Saturday. We went to White Oak Canyon in the Shenandoah Valley and my calves are still sore! I need to hike more.

Blue Trail

(Magazine cover no?)

An Afternoon in the Kitchen

I love spending time in my new kitchen. I thing it's absolutely darling. Tiny, quaint, just the right size for me and my new roommates. I love them. One girl who is only living with us this summer is a little odd but her "favorite chore" is doing the dishes. And sometimes mine. Pretty neat compared to last years batch of lazys. 

I have this special place in my heart for mason jars. I think its because my parents and I used to can pickles and peppers in mason jars for a few summers when I was a teen (not long ago honestly haha). But now I find myself not being able to throw away a single jar and instead keeping fresh fruit in them. They just seem so much more aesthetically appealing than plastic ware. I ate the rest of my strawberries for the week and cleaned up these blackberries yesterday to put in my fruit jar.

I'll be starting a garden at some point this summer when I have more money. For now however my garden consists of these two tomato plants from John and this teeny pot of basil sprouting on my kitchen windowsill. 

We also have a TON of eggplants sprouting on another window. I would like to grow a few more things. I don't need much honestly. My friend John is growing a bunch of veggies on the other side of town too and we decided to trade. I'm ready to dig my fingers into some dirt but first we need to clean up the poison oak that is apparently running all throughout our yard. Great.

And finally I must share this little piece of the internet I have stumbled upon. The other night I found this band, The Mural and the Mint and then found that they were giving away a free download of their album. They are a completely legit band that I have fallen in love with. Especially the song "I Never Knew." Check it out.

Transplant EP release by Justin Andrew

One of my favorite people/musicians, Justin Andrew, who used to be Pillars, is releasing his EP titled "Transplant" this coming Wednesday, May 13. If you're in the Pittsburgh area you should stop by Brillobox and join the party. I wish I could go. Transplant will feature some songs that are new to me and some sweet album art by Jesse Best.

Check it out if you haven't already:

Printed Photo

My design final today consisted of turning in a bunch of work and printing this photo out. Its my first professionally printed out work which will hang above my bed in my new place. Yay!

The photo was taken in Mali on my Sony Cybershot DSC-H10. I almost threw it out but then thought it looked really cool focused on the window of the bus instead of the sunset outside. It took three proof prints in CMYK mode on my professors professional printer before we gave up and printed in RGB. I don't understand how to make all that work yet. The print is drying in his office right now but when I get it and get it framed it's 17"x22". Quite large!

:)

If I think about it tonight I'll link to the large photo.

May Day

Its late at night and I am wide awake. Which is handy because I have much to update.

It's finals week and I have finished my first short film. Entitled "Somogow" which means "family" in Bambara. The assignment was easy - learn Final Cut Pro and create a five minute film. We had to write a script, create a story board, and think about our lighting ahead of time. Being forced to create something, I didn't really know what I wanted to do for a long time. I learned Final Cut a week ago and only had about two hours of footage to work with when all the shooting was finished. A lot of scenes had to be cut because I couldn't wrangle people to shoot for me. All my friends are conservatory students and take about 8,000 classes each. I've been getting very good feedback for the most part. I'm already sick of watching it but this is the final product:

"Somogow"


This past weekend was Apple Blossom in Winchester. Here are some pictures from working with the film crew.

Poor Elephants, they still look happy even though they have to walk around on the road.


Proud lady and her pooch


Clowning around! Check out that dog!


Lonely princess


Buy some stuff?


"Working"


There you go. Apple Blabble. I, of course, did not get to party too much because I had to work and was usually exhausted afterward. Being tired and trying to party results in:



I'm so glad my friends were able to catch that elusive photo for me.



I've been playing a lot of guitar late at night the past few days. Mostly because of Priscilla Ahn:



Her voice is absolutely enchanting. I wish I could do so many things at once. Guitar? Okay. Sing? Well, I'll give it a shot. Play harmonica and use a pedal too? Oh geez. No. She is my inspiration this week to finish finals so I can move into my new house and play guitar all summer.

Sustainable doodle

Waiting for a sustainability lecture to begin. Fake plant and bowl of snacks outside of lecture hall.

I've taken to doodle in this composition notebook whatever happens to be in front of me. I think its good practice to sit down and draw something everyday. Even if you never want to look at it again drawing something everyday is important to keep your mind thinking of actually looking at things instead of just glancing at them. The granola bar I had out of that snack bowl wasn't that great. The lecture was better...

lolbored@work

bling bling baby

Things I'm working on for school

Web design project:

A website designed to show off my sub par coding skills and my spring break. I have so much content about that trip, I'm doing a lot with it right now.


This is still not done and, I'm gonna be honest, I can't wait til it is. It looks so very naked right now (note: this is only the home page). I should have been working on this a long time ago. Less than three weeks til the end of school and this project is due. There is a home page, about me page, what is gcp? page, an about mali section, a photo page, and a day to day look at what everything we did in Mali.

Short Film:



This is a screen shot of my film capturing to final cut. This is the classroom scene of Robin playing teacher for me. This movie is about how I felt coming back from Mali. I sincerely need to begin some editing on this project. Shooting will finish up this weekend. Hopefully.


I'm also working on an interactive PDF portfolio for another design class that I happen to be skipping this evening to work on that. Will post pics for that soon.

doodle today, gone tomorrow

Doodled this waiting for flute rehearsal to begin. Its Holly practicing piano I guess.



Green marker on dry erase board.

Photography Contest

The following photos were entered in the Microsoft ProPhoto Contest to show off my work and try to win $20,000. I figured it couldnt hurt to enter since I already had some beautiful photos from my trip to Mali. The categories were: landscapes, people & portraits, and sports & photojournalism. Since I don't particularly care about sports and didn't have any truly outstanding landscapes, I submitted the maximum three photos all in one category - people.








Contest ends April 30, 2009.

Haiku to a new blog.

Welcome to my head
a place to empty my thoughts
photos, art, drawings.