Camera lessons at the Botanical Gardens

Recently I bought a new camera.  After much research (and interrogating about 5 photo-savvy friends), I decided on the Canon G12, a tidy little 4/3rds camera.  From what I can tell, it does a lot of what a DSLR would do, but it is compact and you don't have to buy expensive lenses.  Exactly what I wanted: a one-shot purchase that would help me take nice (but not necessarily professional-looking) photos.  I've enjoyed playing around with the apertures and ISOs, etc, but there's not a lot you can do at 9pm in your living room.  Pretty much all photos look like crap in that setting.

Enter the most beautiful place in St. Louis: The Missouri Botanical Gardens.

On a beautiful Saturday morning I went with my friend Sarah, who just so happens to be a professional photographer :)  Lucky me.  Here are some photos I snapped, and some lessons I learned.

Color gradient in shallow pool. Don't remember my settings on this one. 

China dragon!  

Twirling iron wind-catcher.  I was using a high aperature (low numbers? Is that right?) but there was nothing interesting behind the twirly gig to give it the "depth of field" I was wanting. 

Pretty pom pom flowers.  2.8 aperture + Auto ISO & T. 

"Macro" setting, high aperture. 

Man, this water fall was a doosey to shoot.  I wanted to focus on something still to get that fuzzy motion effect with the water.  But fast water + really bright light = HARD.  

I finally used the exposure compensation (-2) to get a better shot. 

Tomato and Green Bean Quinoa Salad

I got into quinoa a couple years ago. I guess about the same time the rest of the country discovered it.  We love it.  As my husband likes to remind me every time I make it, "Did you know it's a complete protein!?" Why yes, baby, I did.  In fact, I'm pretty sure I told you that to begin with :)

I've made several variations of quinoa as both a side dish and also as a hearty chip dip.  But my favorite has to be this one.  Here's the recipe:

Ingredients:
1 lb fresh green beans, trimmed
1 quart of cherry tomatoes, halved
1/2 cup of feta cheese, crumbled
1 cup uncooked, rinsed quinoa
Balsamic vinegar
Extra virgin olive oil
Salt & Pepper

Directions:
1. Rinse your quinoa twice.  Put in a sauce pan with 2 cups of water, bring to a boil, over and simmer for 12-16 minutes.  Fluff and set aside.
2. While the quinoa is cooking, cut your green beans into 1 inch pieces. Cook in boiling water for about 4-5 minutes, until al dente. Drain. Set aside.
3. Once cooled, combine quinoa, cooked green beans, halved cherry tomatoes and 1/4 tsp. of salt and pepper in a large bowl. Mix in the feta.  Add about a TB of olive oil and a TB of Balsamic (more or less depending on your preference).  Mix. Refrigerate.
4. Serve as a side chilled or slightly warm.

Enjoy!

The Room We Live In

There is a lot that happens in the front living room of our home: casual meal eating, Downton Abbey watching, fire-side chatting, old vinyl record listening, grocery-list making, internet-surfing, and yes, even blog-writing.

But we've had a lot of challenges with this room.  It's a long rectangle and the front door opens right into the middle of that rectangle. Figuring out a usable furniture arrangement was tricky.  Not to mention the fabulous "textured" dijon-colored walls. Oh, and not just the walls in the living room.  The walls in EVERY ROOM.  Oh, and not just the walls in every room, the CEILING in every room, too.  It was a nightmare.  A nightmare that took dozens of hours with a power sander to remedy. But I guess that's what you get when you buy a fixer upper.

The front room, pre-Salters. 

The front room, now. 

Once we got some new walls (and ceiling) in the room, we decided to break the room into two basic spaces.  The space on the left side of the room is the "TV-watching" space.  There's no disguising that. Not only do we have a big TV, right out in the open (interior design sin #1?), but we have a coffee table that actually lifts up and plops right in front of your chest, at the perfect height for eating in front of the TV.  It might be my husband's favorite piece of furniture in the house.

Now there are a lot of things I like about this room. We're trying to move from warm-toned accents (hence the muddy brown rug and the yellow/orange paintings) to something a little more cool-toned.  The blue and grey pillows probably accomplish that the best.

The other side of the long rectangle is our "fire-side chatting" area.  I generally like the mantle and I love the stained glass. Still a few too many brown-toned items (rug, pillows, throw), but we're getting somewhere.

Gotta love a good record player. 

One of our favorite wedding photos. 

Coming Home

One of the best parts of my day is coming home.

Our house is far from perfect (somedays, its even far from presentable), but it always reminds me of how gracefully God has provided for me.  We have a great front porch, a newly renovated kitchen, a cozy fireplace and a great back deck and garden.  But more importantly, we have lots of memories.  Here are just a few:

-Our first meal in the house: Chinese food & beer on the floor in the empty sunroom.
-Inviting all our wedding guests over as part of wedding-day St. Louis scavenger hunt. (We were finding notes hidden around our house for months.  The hardest ones to find were behind the wall clock and in a gallon of icecream in our freezer.)
-Sleeping on the floor by the fireplace the night our furnace broke.
-Pulling chairs from all over the house and packing them into the living room every Tuesday to host community group.  Many of those members are now dear friends.
-Meeting 30 of our neighbors in a back yard BBQ this past spring. It was long overdue and so rewarding.


I love my home and I'm eager to share that with you.