365 Days of Coffee [attempts]

As I was fitfully attempting an overstyled photoshoot with my espresso this afternoon, CKP strolled by with his espresso and sweet treat of babka*:

Which, in all of thirty seconds, negated my 30 minutes of prior shooting.

*we have no idea if that is what this bread is actually called.  It's a brioche bread, swirled with cinnamon and chocolate that is currently a special at my cafe, but the triple-language barrier has prevented any of the servers from knowing if it's babka, bakba, or some iteration involving a 'Q.'  Also, we don't particularly care, because ridiculously delicious and thus quite easy to sell.

365 Days of Coffee [holiday lights]

It's difficult to tell, but yes I have strung my french doors with bright orange twinkle lights.

Celebrate the season!  

365 Days of Coffee [decor]

What's better than tacky Halloween decor?  Free frequent-flyer-at-the-coffee-shop decor:

Yessiree, that is a burlap coffee sack masquerading as a tablecloth in our kitchen.  Can I pretend it's because we're eco-conscious?  I can?  Good, because my only other option is to tell people the truth - that we're cheap, and I'm mad for typography.  

365 Days of Coffee [eating my veggies]

See, Mom?  The puppy isn't the only one eating right.

PS:  Still no 'comment' resolution - argh.  Otherwise I suspect someone would note that I need to move the word 'BEANS' up a skosh.

365 Days of Coffee [new member of the family]

 . . . but it's not a new camera!  Or lens, or espresso cup.  Here's a hint:

and another:

Oh, okay - you guessed it!  We got us a puppy!!!!!:)  

[yes, I did just regress about 20 years what with the smiley and all the exclamation points.  He's a puppy, for Heavens' sake, I'm allowed!!!]

Pleased you to meet Augustus Bean:

In his natural, I'm-only-eight-and-a-half-weeks-old-and-love-nap-time state.

Lest he overrun the blog, I've developed a Flickr set for him here for you all to ogle [and for my mother, who is fairly certain this is the only grandchild she'll get out of me].

PS:  I've heard that I'm having comment problems, but the nice folks at Blogger are helping me solve it as we speak.  Until then, feel free to email me, mostly because I love compliments and congratulations:)

365 Days of Coffee [hooters]

My Halloween decorations are quite like Hooters:

Delightfully tacky, yet unrefined.

365 Days of Coffee [stealth]

Halloween is creeping up on me . . . 

365 Days of Coffee [group photo]

All right gourds, we've reached the end of your all-star week.  Everybody gather 'round, we'll just get this last shot in:

Perfect.  Go ahead and take five.

See you tomorrow!

365 Days of Coffee [matchy matchy]

As much as I want new espresso cups/saucers, these ones seem to go with everything lately:

Table, pumpkin and miscellaneous green gourd?  Color check, check and check.

Helpful that orange, brown and green are pretty easy colors to tablescape/shoot fall-time espresso with.  Come Christmas, I'll have to paint things with red lipstick.  Strew tinsel about.  Cover the table with batting to imitate snow.  Float ornaments in the cups.  

So much to look forward to!  

But let's just enjoy the relative simplicity for a bit, shall we?  Final gourd shot tomorrow.

365 Days of Coffee [obvious]

Since this is Day 5 that they're featured, that question is rhetorical.

365 Days of Coffee [selling something]

Around the blog-o-world, it seems to me like a lot of us have had a tough few weeks.  Maybe I read so many blogs that it would be impossible not to find men and women having a difficult go of it now and then.  Maybe since my-own-personal last month has been a general meltdown, I'm more attuned to those in similar circumstances.  But [for whatever reason] the end of September/October has seen more than it's share of bloggers taking a break, struggling to re-focus and revive.

[bear with this first seeming non-sequitur of a paragraph for a moment - it will all make sense at the end]

This photo looks like I'm selling something, right?

The watch, the cup . . . I mean, it's a rather confused product photo, but it looks like a product photo. 

[I'm not hawking either one, btw - that watch was CKP's birthday present, and the cup clearly states that we are both Coffee Nerds that can't spell.  Thus, necessary items.  Anyway.]

[here's non-sequitur number two]

There's a line in one of my all-time-favorite-watch-it-every-time-I'm-sick-and-twice-on-Tuesday movies The Princess Bride that is as follows:

 "Life is pain, Highness.  Anyone who says differently is selling something."

So this is my post, selling something to the beaten down bloggers out there.  Because I say differently, that life is not pain, though I have no true words of encouragement just yet.

365 Days of Coffee [falling up]

It may not have felt autumnal at 81 degrees this morning, but tonight - closer to 65 degrees, with a whipping windstorm - it finally feels like it's falling up in Florida.

365 Days of Coffee [symmetry]

I believe that what this photo may lack in character or focus, it makes up for in unintentional symmetry:

PS - that's a macchiato this morning - CKP had made himself a cappuccino and I stole some foam:)

PPS - When I say unintentional, I mean during the initial set up, framing and actual taking of the pictures. Once I got them into my computer I was all "Well!  Aren't we being literal today?" and thus made a perfect square of the photo, etc.

365 Days of Coffee [nestled]

My espresso, all warm and snuggly in an ever-evolving centerpiece:

Sure am glad that doorknob came out looking fab!  

[think I put too much grain on that photo?  It's actually very sharp.  Hmm.]

And the sun nestling into the horizon for the night - no, I am not advanced enough in my effects-skills to make this any more amazing than it already was:

365 Days of Coffee [taste level]

CKP, on passing by my computer:  "Ew.  You didn't drink that one did you?"
Me:  "Yes.  As always.  Why do you ask?  Did you use that cup for something strange?"

[He's been known to, say, clean jewelry in an espresso cup.  With a fork.  And put them both away with just a water rinse.  I don't know what-all I've ingested over the years.]

CKP:  "No, but it looks gross.  Maybe it's just the picture."
Me:  "It's the one I'm posting."

CKP:  "Bad day, huh?"
Me:  "You can go back to your toy helicopters now."

Is it so awful?  Am I so buggered by my hardware issues that I've lost taste - both in photos and in espresso?

Reminder

365 Days of Coffee [solutions]

I won't lie to you - this has been a rough, rough day.  The hard drive and backup errors keep mounting, creating an astronomically high number of issues, most with no solutions.

[Except take less photos.  Finding 6,000 of anything is pretty ridiculous, and has turned me on to, like, a two-photo limit per day.  That solution will last me about three more days.]

So I took to eating Vietnamese take-out.  Or it might be Thai.  I don't even know. What's in this roll?    CKP brought it to me and told me to eat, at which point I attempted to stuff it in my ear, because finding my mouth was just another problem I had no solution for.  Or maybe I was acting like my computer, like when I tell it to find a photo and it tries the Recycle Bin first.

I'm confused, guys.  Hopefully I pick the right room when I go to bed.  There's a couch in the garage at the moment, and in my current state you never know what may happen.

365 Days of Coffee [bling]

Dear Florida Lotto:

I'm confused.

Is this the season of bling that we're greeting?

[Because I did just win four dollars on this ticket.  And four dollars can buy some mad bling.]

Because otherwise we're greeting sparkly snowflakes.
In Florida.
In October.

So really, I'm all for the season of bling!  Let's just roll with that, then.

365 Days of Coffee [quit]

No, I'm not quitting my pet project here.  My devices, on the other hand, are quitting me.

That would be my broken hard drive.  My SECOND broken hard drive.  After the last one feel to its death, I started backing up all my photos and Lightroom edits on a third drive, should anything ever happen again. At first, I was backing up once a day, then once a week, then . . . well, let's just say my last backup was a little over a month ago.  I remember thinking "Boy, I hope I never have to actually use that backup!  It's going to be a mess."

And so it is.  

What actually happened to the one pictured, we're not sure.  It literally just woke up one afternoon and decided not to function.  CKP has torn it apart for recreational purposes [with the vague goal of fixing it], but it is, in my opinion, useless scrap now.

Scrap that I am deeply, tragically angry with.  

365 Days of Coffee [newness]

A couple thing happened to create this evening's post - wait, that sounds sounds like a newspaper, no? This Evening's Post. 

Should that actually be a newspaper, my apologies.  If it is not, I may use it for my revamped blog.  If so, . . . I may stealth-steal it.  For my revamped blog. In the future.

Like I did this espresso cup:

Except the stealing occurred in the past, in the cup case - wait, that sound sounds like a novel.  The Cup Case.

I don't even need to tell you about the couple things anymore.  You can read the newspaper. And the novel!

365 Days of Coffee [offspring 7]

I am ridiculously proud of myself - do you see how healthy these guys look?  On a side table in the entry, hanging out with a dried seed pod picked up on the Ringling Museum lawn last year:

I'd say we scored pretty well on the original, sale-priced, mama bouquet - out of it came seven children arrangements for five rooms, which have fueled seven blog posts and brightened the heck out of the house for an entire week.  Some of these [like the one above] have a few days left, even!

Not bad for $8.99.  Not bad at all.  

365 Days of Coffee [offspring 6]

These guys I'll have around for a whole 'nother week, it seems. I keep them at my outside 'desk,' and they love this autumn sun.

[And yes, CKP has a very similar arrangement at his desk.  I am that adorable.]

Photoshop Phun

I finally opened the massive manual I have on Photoshop and began trying to, you know, learn it this week.  Prior, I knew how to do exactly two things:  insert text and draw arrows.

50 pages in, I thought my head would explode.

You see, I've learned computer-stuff as it comes since high school.  In college, I leaned the whole MS Office Suite, and at various jobs I kept up with the updates on everything, simply because I had to.  I started photography and I learned Lighroom.  I started a blog and I learned some HTML.

But PS has been around a looong time - long enough so that it's amazingly detailed and customizable and for a total beginner, a I-have-never-needed-this-program user, it's beyond overwhelming [for me].  I cannot express to you how much I wish that I began with it when it was first beginning, instead of jumping in feet first to its umpteenth improvement.

[at least the manual would have been shorter]

Anyway.  What that means is 1)  I'm an old dog!  New tricks are difficult and 2) you'll hopefully be seeing some random Photoshop bits here and there as I practice and think my results are spectacular.

Exhibit A:  My friend Tim's car, which I shot just before going home for the night and diving into the Great Jaws of Photoshop

[Many thanks to Katrina Tan of Pugly Pixel, whose Blog Bling Kit I will be fiercely abusing]

365 Days of Coffee [offspring 5]

Morning light on the filler arrangement, which is beginning to droop on our random knick-knack table in the dining room.

I had actually just pruned all the dead-dead-dead stems, which is why it currently seems rather empty.  I told you, the hardest part of shooting the seven arrangements I made from one bouquet is going to be the 'keeping them alive" portion.  

By Monday, they'll be dried:)

365 Days of Coffee [offspring 4]

As I was prepping for this photo tonight, CKP was delicately preparing his latte.  Minutes later, I was snapping away and he says to me:

"You're doing a thing with flowers this week, huh?"
"Yup."  Click, click, click.  Sigh. "Or trying to."

"Okay.  Here's a flower."

Indeed!

My fourth arrangement, on the kitchen pub table, in a jar formerly filled with marinara.

365 Days of Coffee [offspring 3]

The centerpiece!

Right in the spotlight where she belongs.

[Please forgive the oversized, over-textured vase.  I'm not a fan either!  Also, the plug in the wall.  I could probably Photoshop that out, but I'm only on page 116 of the 800-page Photoshop manual.  It'll be awhile.]

365 Days of Coffee [offspring 2]

I'm going to play favorites with this bunch I plucked from the bouquet - when I cut them down to fit in the bitty vase, they looked just like two long arms and hands plus an upturned face, reaching for a hug:

Hug Meeeeeee!!!

It's okay, you don't have to see it, too.  Just know that's the mindset I was coming from when I cleared a minute section of my honey's desk for their home, along with a cuppa for his morning.  I'm sure by now they've been relegated to the windowsill, where they're trying to embrace the sun.

365 Days of Coffee [offspring 1]

I converted to buying supermarket bouquets awhile ago for the price point, and consider myself rather seasoned when it comes to separating, re-assembling and otherwise de-supermarket-ifying them.

This past Saturday, CKP came home with a particularly diverse [and thus inspiring!] marked-down bunch, and I went to town as never before - seven arrangements out of the $8.99 original.

While I wasn't smart enough to snap the unspoiled mother specimen, over the course of the week I feel like showcasing its offspring:

Numero Uno - on the coffee table in the main living room:

Billy buttons [maybe?  I'm no good with naming flowers, despite adoring most names when I discover them] and filler sprays, chopped way down and tucked together in a squat old salsa jar.  

[PS:  This little week-long project is going to get extra-fun as I try to preserve all of the subjects for seven more days:)] 

365 Days of Coffee [bits and pieces]

Sips, specks and a stowaway:)

[was feeling descriptive today]

365 Days of Coffee [pick-me-up . . . actually, don't]

A little post-work, pre-workout snack moment:

During which I discover that the pretty light, gleaming white tabletop and shiny-clean cup add up to "Weird Floating Espresso Effect." 

Good excuse to let this outside table get a little more, ahem, lived in.  

Happy October, everyone!