Happy New Year!!!

The last photos of 2010

Here are the last shots that my camera took in 2010… we went for a quick jaunt up to Abingdon and Bristol yesterday… nothing like a good walk and some Cracker Barrel to really make the day…

and… it helped that it was 65 degrees in Abingdon… it’s funny.. the people there were walking around with jackets on…. Virginia was ready to strip down to a bikini….

Or course.. there were still a few signs that it had been cold recently…

So… that’s it for the pictures from 2010…. we’re looking forward to more adventures in 2011…

Christmas in Lexington!

Well… we were at home in Lexington for the last… 10 days or so… had all sorts of good times.. good food… lots of good food… and time with family is always good as well…

So… blog updates will be broken up accordingly.. food will land over at the cooking blog… other stuff will end up here..

The trip started with me heading up to Northern VA with Newhall to play with some fun cars….

The above would be the heart and soul of a Porsche 911 Turbo … very clean, very fun car.

This… well… this is a Nissan Skyline GTR … and it’s.. amazing. I was lucky enough to sit in the passenger seat for a little drive in this thing… and it blew my mind. It’s wicked fast. It handles like a dream… and the sound… well.. the sound of the car is worth the price-tag by itself.

So.. while Newhall worked.. I got to drool. It was totally worth the trip.

Then, it was back to Lexington… where I discovered that all of my shirts that I made sure to wash, dry and hang on hangers…. had been left in Boone. So, I called Virginia and she had to go shopping for some new shirts for me… But, all of that done, we went to church.. then to lunch… and overall good times.

At the Page household, Virginia worked on decorating the tree.. and there was cookie making… which will be on the cooking blog…

and Virginia added an ornament that she made in Boone…

Then.. after lots of cooking… it was off to the Trovato household… we had dropped off the cats there when we first got to town, so we were anxious to get there and check in with them again… Poor OC doesn’t get along well with other cats.. and Grace and Tyger teamed up on her and confined her to the upstairs… so she got a little special treatment… her own room…. catered / delivered meals… and her private litterbox…. meanwhile… Grace had the run of the house…

So, Grace used her freedom to climb the Christmas tree… and set up camp there…

Back to the Page household, it was time for Martha to experience her own little bit of fun with Gingerbread. She gave it a valiant effort, but she was having issues with the frosting as well…. so… I blame the people at Domino Sugar. … I’m sure it has absolutely nothing to do with them… but… its easier to explain that way.

Then, it was back to the Trovato house…. Rachel showed up, and brought stuff to make buffalo chicken dip…. which was rather tasty… and there was more cookie making…

We “had Christmas” at the Trovato household on the 23rd.. Dad had to work on the 24th and 25th.. so, the evening of the 23rd worked like a champ… then, it was to Church on Christmas Eve.. and Christmas morning found us back at the Page household… Virginia’s mom was happy as a teenager with her new iPod Touch.. and she picked up the usage of it amazingly quick…

Before long, she’ll be downloading apps and accessing Facebook just like all of the rest of the cool kids.

Christmas evening found us at the Oliver’s house, where we stuffed our faces… sang carols…played games…

and had some great times and good laughs…

For the record though…. Settlers of Catan … two thumbs down. BORRRRRRING.

Amazingly… this is about all I have for non-food related pictures… out of the 160 pics I took… most were of food apparently…so… it likely won’t happen tonight… but a new update over at the food blog will be coming decently soon…***EDIT*** I actually did manage to get it up tonight!! So go check it out...

We did also get to spend some time with the NJ Trovatos who were visiting with my Grandparents… but… I didn’t take too many pictures there… so.. until next time.. here’s my cousin Vince.

Merry Christmas from Boone!

Death by Gingerbread.

So… I had plans today to make a Gingerbread apartment building… so, in preparation, we stayed up late last night making plenty of dough… then pressing the dough into the forms and baking batch after batch of gingerbread… of course, the down time was spent watching quality TV and drinking quality wine.

About midnight… we stopped cooking and climbed into bed. As expected, today was an apocalypse of snow and wind.. generally, blizzard conditions… high winds… snow from all directions… so.. the University was closed today, giving both Virginia and I the day off.  So, after a quick breakfast… we got back to cooking more gingerbread. But, eventually, we had collected all of the pieces that we’d need to make the “Apartment Building” …. or so we thought.. we actually ended up a little short.. so, we fired up the mixer for one last batch of dough… while mixing, all of the sudden, the mixing bowl went off to the side… the mixing bowl is metal, and locks into a plastic rotating doohickey on the base of the mixer stand… well.. the rotating doohickey sheared clean off…. so… no more attached mixer bowl = no more functioning mixer. … There’s a local place that sells refurbished Kitchen Aid mixers though… so.. I might have to go take a look at those… or, see if I can find a replacement base for our current mixer…

In any case.. due to the mixer going down, I couldn’t get the icing to properly mix.. it wasn’t as stiff as it should have been… and it wasn’t as structurally strong.. so…  the gingerbread building was falling apart as soon as I started to put it together… So… mixer.. you’ll be missed…. you lived an honorable life until taken down in your prime by a batch of gingerbread… worry not though… you will be avenged… or.. repaired. I think I can find a replacement base.

so.. not much else went on today… I felt that a blog update was in order though to describe the reason why the proposed construction didn’t get completed. …

I did play around with some neat camera stuff though… I took a piece of foam that I had leftover from making a flash bounce card and cut it down to fit inside of my 35mm lens threads… then cut a tree into it.

Like so.

Now.. why would I do this? Well… to get pictures like this:

Yep… that’s all it takes to make the lovely out of focus “Bokeh” turn from just colorful dots… to festive shaped little blobs… I thought it was pretty neat… and made it from things I had just lying around…

 

Grace has gotten more interested in the tree lately… so… we’ll end with a video from Simon Tofield that explains pretty well what’s been going on around here….

Oh… and I meant to add this earlier…. but.. I’ve ben playing with star trails again lately…

Gingerbread Houses!

So, those that are readers of the cooking blog know that we’ve been making some parts for gingerbread houses….

If you didn’t see how it’s all made.. you can go check that out… but… after it’s all made… it’s time for some assembly. Now, we use that industrial strength frosting that we made earlier to hold everything together… and we invited over a few friends to share in the construction.

Courtney started by laying out all of the parts involved with making the tower….

While Virginia jumped right into making a foundation of frosting and starting to stand up walls.

They continued working for a good bit…. you could tell that they’re not construction professionals… but we won’t hold that against them….

The best thing about working with gingerbread? When the side of your house breaks in half…. you toss some frosting on it and stick it back together… easy as pie…. err…. bread?

After Virginia was working on the house for a while… Victoria showed up, and we put her to work… starting with installing the roof…

She did okay…. although there were a few tense moments….

But… she did pretty good….and Courtney was making good progress on the tower… but she had to leave early…

After several hours of fun and decorating though… the house and the tower both came out rather lovely…

So… that was it for the gingerbread houses…  … .. …. … so far …

But… we’re supposed to have horrible weather this weekend…. Ice… snow.. just general nastiness… so… I think I’m going to build a gingerbread apartment complex… it should be fun. and I’ll be sure to post pictures if I manage to make it work out decently…

Beginning of December post…

Well… I know blog updates have been a bit few and far between lately…. but things have been really busy here in Boone lately… Virginia seems to have something going on every night of the week after work, and I’ve been having photo assignments for the newspaper and meetings and whatnot…

so, here’s the summary of all of that you can pick and choose to create your own sentence: We had to stay late tonight because Aaron / Virginia had a meeting / a presentation / to shoot football practice / to shoot a basketball game, and we didn’t get home until 10pm. For my part of having to stay late… I can toss in some cool pictures for you to glance at….

But… we went home for Thanksgiving…that was a good time.. these trips always seem too short… but, we made it up there with 2 cats… we ate ourselves silly for days on end… and generally had a good time.

We also went to the last Farmer’s Market here in Boone… and unlike last year’s final Farmer’s Market, it wasn’t freezing cold this time…

They had some decent produce left… and good meats of course… but typically, these final few Farmer’s Market days are for selling crafts and gifts…

I think that about ties up the end of November… since December has started… well.. it’s been NASTY cold. We got somewhere in the neighborhood of over a foot of snow up at our house…. of course, the actual town of Boone may have gotten 5-6 inches.. So… we’ve been having to bundle up… and keep the cats inside…

Grace doesn’t know anything else… but OC… well… she went outside in the snow once, when we had about 2-3 inches… she didn’t seem happy… but I think she needed to get away from Grace for a little while…. in case we haven’t introduced OC to everyone… here she is:

OC is a sweetheart… but she acts like an old cat… and Grace wants to play… and OC wants nothing to do with that…

Also… we went and got a Christmas Tree today!!

We somehow either don’t have a tree skirt… or we forgot about / lost it. But.. Virginia was glad to get a tree.. and I got her a nice wreath…. so… she’s been in a Christmassy mood tonight…  (Note: “Christmassy” apparently exists in spell-check) and she took care of all of the tree decorating…. while wearing a red ribbon Ninja Decorating Headband.

Also, Virginia has some Gingerbread going… it’s amazing what goes into making Gingerbread.. and how it’ll take over your entire kitchen. So…. be looking for Gingerbread baking on the Cooking Blog soon…. the actual making of the houses… well… that might end up on this blog… with some pictures of the completed gingerbread houses on the cooking blog… but.. we’ll see how that pans out.

But… we should be able to make some awesome Gingerbread houses…

We’ll try to keep the blog updated more often… with winter rolling in at full strength.. expect some pictures of snow.. and complaining about the same… for us… we’ll try to remember slightly warmer days….