I recently had the opportunity to take pictures of some of my first cousins, once removed. I’ve decided that I really like taking pictures of people, especially kids that are so cute. As evidenced.
Here are a few others.
I love Kneaders Cafe. It’s a restaurant in the area that specializes in breads, deserts and soups. Yummy stuff. I succumbed one evening while I was getting dinner to also get a slice of their Raspberry Cream Cheese pie. And boy, was I not disappointed. It was delicious.
After that experiment, I decided to try to make my own so that I could have it anytime I wanted (well, at least when raspberries are in season).
My first attempt didn’t turn out too badly, but it was a little more tart than I remembered, and there wasn’t quite enough filling below the raspberry topping.
So I tried again, doubling the filling and making the raspberry topping a bit sweeter, since it was quite tart. And while it’s not an exact replica of Kneader’s pie, it’s close enough to satisfy me. And I love it. :) The recipe, as I cobbled it together from a few different sources and modified to suit my needs, is below.
Raspberry Cream Cheese Pie
Cream cheese filling:
2 – 8 oz. packages of cream cheese, softened
2/3 cup white sugar
1 cup sour cream
2 tablespoons lemon juice
Combine ingredients in bowl and mix well. Pour into pre-baked, cooled pastry shell, or graham cracker crust.
Raspberry topping:
2 cups raspberries
1/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons white sugar
3 tablespoons water
1 tablespoon lemon juice
1 tablespoon cornstarch
Combine 1 cup raspberries, sugar, lemon juice, cornstarch and water in a small saucepan. Cook over medium heat until thickened, smashing the berries to make a jelly-like consistency. Add remaining berries. Cool. Pour over cream cheese filling. Chill for at least 2 hours before serving.
And then you can have something like this. Yummy.
Jared ran across this little scene the other day when checking on Sarah one evening. It was a little familiar.
Perhaps you can see why.
We’ve known for quite some time that our son is quite sensitive to human relationships. From the time that he was a baby, he has never liked loud noises, and ever since he has grown to understand conversations and conflict between people, he hasn’t liked to watch movies of nearly any kind.
For example, in a certain episode of “Sesame Street,” Bert and Ernie have a bit of a disagreement because Ernie wants to play instruments in the middle of the night and keeps waking Bert up, to Bert’s great exasperation. Timothy used to run out of the room while that part of the show was playing and then return to watch the rest of the show after that scene was over. (He was 3 or 4 years old when he started doing this.)
When he’s in a situation where he can’t run away, he cries. It’s so sad and so sweet at the same time. We took him to see “Wall-E” and he liked it, up until the point where Eva shuts down and won’t talk to Wall-E. Tears flowed. He had to watch the rest of the movie on Jared’s lap. “Ratatouille?” He didn’t like the peril at the beginning that Remy faced when he went on his wild ride through the sewers. Again, he had to watch the rest on Jared’s lap. (He wanted to leave.)
This past week, we rented “High School Musical 3.” Timothy and I like the music and it’s just something fun that we both enjoy. (I realize that it’s not stellar cinema, by any stretch of the imagination, but I don’t expect it to be. And it’s fun for what I like it to be.) We watched it together and Timothy really enjoyed himself. His favorite song was “I Want It All.” At the end, he wanted to watch the little bonus feature, a 5-minute featurette of the senior class saying goodbye. I thought nothing of it. Silly me.
At the end, Timothy was in tears. I had to explain to him that the actors were sad because this would be the last film that they would do for “High School Musical,” and that while they liked the time they spent and had fun, they also were sad that it was over. Hence the tears by the actors. But we are meant to enjoy their time in the movies, and we can go back and watch them when we want. Timothy was somewhat mollified by my explanation, but rather puffy-eyed for the next little bit.
I love my sweet, sensitive little boy.
Nope, not mine. Hers…
I recently had the opportunity to take some baby pictures. Not my baby, so I am not giving out identifying info, but most of you will recognize who this is.
I thought they were just for fun when I was taking them, but then found out that they were for an announcement. If I had known how they would appear on the announcement I would have backed off just a bit so that they would have fit the square crop better.
After the more normal shots I decided to have a little fun.
During the session I saw an opportunity to try something different for me. Before I show you the result I’d like to explain a bit. I had seen pictures sort of like this before, and I decided to try it. I lined it up and released the shutter, hoping for the best. I looked at it on the LCD screen and was immediately disgusted. It didn’t seem right at all. I was so disappointed that I put the camera down and quit taking pictures. Then a little later, as we were reviewing the photos with the parents, I got a better look at it and decided that I had judged too quickly. It’s grown on me quite a bit, and it is one of my favorites from the session now.
What do you think?
Well, sort of. It’s my own book and I’m the one who paid to have it published, but it’s still a book and it’s still got my name on it (as well as Jared and Timothy). And it’s rare too; only three copies in print. :)
Jared’s cousin Heidi was the first one to do it, but I took inspiration from her experience with Blurb and decided to give it a go myself. In April, I took our blog posts from late 2007 and all of 2008 and formatted them into a book using Blurb’s software. It took me a couple of weeks hard effort to get it all formatted the way I wanted. Not to toot my own horn, but I’m rather pleased with how it turned out. (Being a designer, sometimes the template-only option got on my nerves. The software is made for someone who doesn’t really know what they’re doing to let them get a good product. I do know what I’m doing, but I got over the limitations and just worked with what I had.) I’m happy that I have a more permanent version of our blog, since it is functioning as a type of journal for our family. I also made a DVD to go with the book that included all of the little video clips we’ve put on our blog. Such fun memories. It is something that I’ll certainly treasure in years to come.
As you see, Thomas is playing in packing paper from a box we got. I call this Thomas Tornado.
You might be interested in them.
There is a video too.
Good thing it isn’t real!
