Wednesday, September 2nd, 2009 | General

A bug terrorized me the other day. And when I say terrorized, I mean it was on a wall across the room, not flying or making a noise, clearly just trying to figure out a way to get outside. It was a menace. Anyway, I freaked out for a good half hour until Zach responded to my IM and said he would take care of it when he got home. Unfortunately by that time it had disappeared, however I was smart enough to take a picture before that happened in order to scare Zach with its immense scariness:

Neither of us knew what this was. A friend suggested that it was a beetle. Could be. I googled it but all it came back with was pictures of cars and a few disgusting bugs, none of which were my disgusting bug.

Unfortunately, disgusting scary bug returned. All it took was a buzz to make me run from my computer in fear. Seeing nothing, I decided that I’d best stay away from the computer for awhile. I played wii fit for a bit then returned, thinking I had imagined the buzz. Nope. Icky bug was back in all its glory, although his back leg looked a little worse for wear. I don’t want to even imagine that I might have stepped on him without noticing. Disgusting. But back to the bug. I grabbed the Windex and sprayed him like crazy. Then I shoved him under a glass cup where he now remains. Not two feet from me, I have the captured beast in an overturned coca cola glass. But now I’m feeling pangs of remorse. I know the Windex is hurting him. He keeps flipping over and writhing in what I can only assume is bug pain. When he manages to straighten himself, he walks to the edge of the glass (always the edge nearest to me, clever bug) and gives me the saddest little bug look ever.

Should I release him? I could drop him out of the window, but it’s 11 floors up and that bug is really high on Windex. I don’t even know if he can fly, although Zach assumes so since he managed to make it up here. Gah! He’s looking at me again! All up on his hind legs, looking sullen. He’s going to die anyway, right? I mean, yes, I probably killed him with the Windex, but still, any action I take now won’t help things, right? And maybe my blogging about him gives his little life meaning? He will be forever on the internet! I like justifying my cruel actions.

He’s still looking at me.

Tuesday, September 1st, 2009 | General, Law School

Yeah, I said it, Seattle is weird. No, it’s not weird for the random Michael Jackson flash mobs, nor is it weird for all of the naked people that ride bikes here (as opposed to the ones who nakedly walk). No, Seattle is weird because rain falls directly down. It’s as if gravity is calling to her lost love, saying, “Rain, do not dally! Return to whence you came, preferably taking the fastest possible route, a straight line.” It really is quite crazy to me. In Arizona, rain is usually accompanied by wind. It would seem less odd for me to witness it moving parallel to the ground as opposed to perpendicular. And yes, I have referenced math related terms three times in this post. I am smart. 5th grade math smart (I did have to use spell check on parallel and perpendicular).

So I suppose that more than law school, rain perplexes me. Law school simply amuses me. While reading for torts, I encountered several cases relating to children performing negligent acts. While most of the cases were drawn out, there was a small, one sentence reference to a case in which a child, performing in a play as Peter Pan, attempted to fly using his own contraption. I was left to create that mental image and wonder just what happened to that Peter Pan. I then questioned whether he truly believed in fairies. Evidently, as the book would like us to conclude from its lack of details, he did not believe in them enough. Did I mention Zach’s cat will be coming to live with us on our 11th floor apartment? I wonder what her belief in fairies is. I think Zach will believe in closing all of the windows considering this cat is not be the brightest about protecting her nine lives:

Friday, August 28th, 2009 | Law School

That’s how I’m defined in law school. I just finished my first full week, not counting Criminal Law during the summer. I went from one course to five (torts, contracts, civil procedure, legal writing, and property law). Before you comment and ask me where my interest lies, I’ll just tell you: I don’t know. I don’t have a clue what I want to practice. Ideally, I’ll make enough to be able to shop at the Gap. That’s the plan anyway. Maybe, just maybe, Banana Republic. But I’d probably need a pretty awesome job for that one. Do they have an outlet?

It’s really interesting looking at what people wear in school. I saw one person in a suit and tie, and one wearing pajama bottoms. It really covers quite the spectrum of clothing. I tend to err on the side of nicer, one step above a t-shirt.

I haven’t been called on yet, although it is just like Legally Blonde. One teacher has a stack of cards with our names on them and draws about ten each class in order to call on people. Although I’ve only contributed a little to the discussions, I think my peers respect me. Is it because of my clear genius? My charm? My wit? My beauty? No. It’s because I told them an easy way to remember which room their classes are in. All of the female professors happen to be in one lecture hall, all of the male professors are in another. Oh well.

1 week down, 89 to go before I am Emily Esquire.

Friday, August 21st, 2009 | General

Meet Fat Kitty. I met him on the way to QFC. For those who don’t know, QFC is a grocery store chain that sells Kroger products. I frequently call it KFC, much to my boyfriend’s dismay. Anyway, as I walked past an older looking condo building, I saw Fat Kitty. I proceeded to pet Fat Kitty and wondered if anyone would notice if I were to steal him. Unfortunately, too many people were around and I had already made it quite clear that this was not my kitty by giggling, calling him Fat Kitty, and taking many a picture with my google phone. Sadly, we had to part ways.

I wonder…do you think Fat Kitty is Fat Kitty because of all the squirrels around? I hope not.

Tuesday, August 18th, 2009 | General

I love the squirrels that live in the neighborhood. A lot. My boyfriend has to keep me from getting too close to these lovely creatures. He fears how friendly they are and thinks they’re all rabid. I told him I could just get the rabies shot and then I’d be able to pet them! He didn’t like the idea. He doesn’t feel the squirrel love. They’re just so nice! See, there’s this crazy man who whistles and throws peanuts at them, making them friendly to humans. So now whenever I walk and see one, it comes up to me. I like to think that it wants to breed with me. Think of the beautiful squirrel babies we could have!
Today I had an extra lovely treat walking home. One squirrel, who I’ve named Mel, stood in my path, not budging no matter how close I got. When I went for my camera, he got spooked and ran up a tree along with another squirrel, named Barnacle. Mel got pissed that Barnacle was on his tree so he attacked him and started chasing him around me, all the while making the most adorable squeaking sounds. That was definitely the highlight of my week. Seeing my brother was nice too.

In case you’re interested, I took this pic of Bailey the squirrel and edited it using The Pioneer Woman’s actions. I think I used boost, soft & faded, and fresh & colorful.

Monday, June 1st, 2009 | Recipes

I had a party at my apartment and wanted to make a dessert that would impress. Normally I’m not a cupcake fan, I mean, they’re pretty annoying to eat. If society allowed it, I’d eat it with a knife and fork. Nonetheless, I had to make cupcakes when I stumbled upon some lovely cookie monster cupcakes. Aren’t they adorable? They’re also super easy to make!

I started with a basic chocolate cupcake and made up a batch of vanilla buttercream icing. Then, using a few blobs of blue food coloring (gel kind) I turned the icing a delightful shade of cookie monster blue. Next came the fur. I took a bag of sweetened coconut flakes, added a few blobs of the coloring, and proceeded to mix it with my hands until every little shaving was coated. Then I simply iced the cupcakes and dipped them in the coconut mixture. To get the eyes, I cut off the ends of marshmallows, glued them on with the icing, and glued some chocolate chips onto them. Finally, I shoved cookies into their mouths. Ultra easy and a big hit. Next up is Oscar the Grouch!

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Saturday, May 2nd, 2009 | General

I just had to post these pictures somewhere. I had intended this site to be purely recipes and tutorials but, well, that was before a kitten came into the apartment. You know how these things work. This kitten’s mother was killed by a dog, so my roommate’s sister decided to take her. Isn’t she (he?) cute?

I just love little paws. I’m going to need to take some paw pictures soon. Here are a few more adorable pictures:

Duck: Pssst, come here!

*whisper whisper*

Cat: “The duck said I must kill the “other one.”

Saturday, April 25th, 2009 | Photoshop

This Photoshop tutorial is a little odd coming from me considering I rarely wear make up and have been known to put deodorant on in the car, forget to shower, rub my head on my dog’s butt, roll on the cafeteria floor, etc. I really could go on for a very long time, but I digress. This tutorial is geared towards those of you with etsy shops who model your own jewelry or clothing etsy. We all know that the picture is a big factor in the sale, so why shouldn’t you have the best picture you can?

First, get a picture that you want to edit. I found this old photo of myself from last year. I don’t know why I took it. I assume it was vanity. Oh yeah–most of these pictures are clickable so that you can see a larger image.

Let’s begin with blemishes. I have two zits on my chin. To remove them, I’m simply going to use the healing brush tool. It’s the bandaid located in the toolbar, left column, fourth from the top. At the top, you need to change the size of the brush so that it’s about the size of what you want to fix. Then, find an area of skin close by and and alt+click it. Now, go to the zit and click and drag the brush over it. Magic! It’s gone! If a bit of it exists or if it didn’t quite cover up, keep experimenting with different sizes/areas until it goes away.

Now, it’s time to remove bags under the eyes and wrinkles! This next tool is really awesome. We’re going to grab the patch tool. Just click and hold the healing brush on the tool bar and you’ll see the patch option. Make sure source is selected at the top. Now, lasso the arrow around the bags or wrinkles. When you’ve lassoed it, drag it to a nearby area of skin that you want to copy.

Presto! Dark circles are gone!

Time to smooth out the skin. There are longer and better ways to do this, however this is fast and produces decent results. Go into the filters menu, down to blur, and select surface blur. Below are the settings I used, but you’ll need to experiment and see what works for you:

Be careful not to overdo it. It’s a good idea to have someone nearby to make sure that you still look human. Unfortunately all I have is the cat. You may notice you’re a little too smooth. That’s easily fixable by adding some noise from the filter menu. I added 1.5%, uniform, monochromatic. Sometimes in pictures I appear very pink, so I slightly adjusted the hue (Image>Adjustments>Hue/Saturation). You can also lasso any areas that you want to change and adjust them individually that way.

Finally, my eyes were a little dull so I decided to brighten them up. Create a new layer (shift+ctrl+n) and call it eyes. Now, grab the paint brush and choose a color that’s similar to your natural eye color, maybe a tad brighter. Hey, we want these items to sell, don’t we? Start painting on top of your eyes in the new layer. Only paint over the iris. If you have a small area to work with, adjust the size of the brush accordingly. Once you’re done, change the layer from normal to overlay in the layers palette. I decided to reduce the opacity because I looked a little freakish. 26% seemed about right for me, but it really depends on how bright of a color you chose to begin with. The top eyes are my dull, dingy ones. The bottom are my brand new blues!

And now, drumroll please!

Before

After

I don’t think I went too crazy, right? Ok, maybe I did a little…but trust me, I could have gone waaaay further. It’s a slippery slope playing with your appearance in Photoshop. Be careful…

And just for kicks, here I am at the beach with kitty!

Thursday, April 16th, 2009 | Photoshop

A tool I use for just about every banner and shop ad I make is the lasso tool in Photoshop. This tool allows you to get rid of the messy background and just cut out the image you want. Within photoshop, you have three options: lasso, magnetic lasso, and polygonal lasso. The standard lasso relies on you clicking on your image and then dragging around the item you want to select. The magnetic lasso is a clever rope–you drag around the item and it attempts to find the edges of what you want to select. My recent favorite, however, is the polygonal lasso. Rather than just dragging around an object, it creates straight lines and you click to make a line in a new direction. What’s very nice about this tool is that you get to choose what’s selected and you don’t need a steady hand like the regular lasso requires. So, let’s get started. You’ll need an image with a background that you wish to remove. Here is my roommate’s cat stealing my yarn. He’s on my roommate’s rug. I hate the rug and want it gone. The cat can stay.

First, we need to blow up this picture so we can get precise lines. Go into the view menu and click Fit on Screen. If it’s still not big enough, use the magnifying glass to zoom in a bit.

Now, select the polygonal lasso tool. It’s on your toolbar, left column, second from the top. You need to click and hold the icon in order to select the correct lasso:

Once you have the tool selected, click ones on the edge of the picture you want to select. Then, follow the edge of the picture until it curves. When you see a curve coming, you’re going to click right before it and then angle the line against the new border. Each red dot you see below represents where I made a new click. You’re basically drawing an outline around the cat using only straight lines. Don’t worry if your object has a lot of curves–you can even draw a circle with straight lines. Go geometry!

As you’re doing this, be very careful not to double click. If you do, Photoshop assumes you’re done and you won’t have your entire selection. Really, be careful. If you should make a mistake and click in the wrong spot, simply hit backspace as many clicks as you want to revert to.

Once you’ve reached the end, click on the very first point you made and your selection will have a moving outline. Go into the edit menu, hit copy, and paste it into a new document or on top of another picture. This will automatically create a new layer of just that image. If you took a little background with it, don’t worry. That can easily be cleaned up with the eraser tool.

Kitty is pretty dull, so I decided he needed to visit the beach. Enjoy kitty!

Tuesday, April 7th, 2009 | Recipes

This last weekend I visited my parents in Phoenix and as soon as I walked in the door, my mom exclaimed that she had a job for me: decorating cupcakes. While I was a bit wary at first, I quickly came around when I saw how I was to decorate them. There, on the cover of Family Circle, were the most adorable Hostess recreations! If you’re interested in them, it was p. 127 of the April 17 2009 issue.

They’re surprisingly simple to make. Just bake some chocolate cupcakes and once they’re cool, insert a piping tip into the top about half an inch down, and pipe in some white frosting. Then, dip the cupcake tops in a ganache so that the tops are covered. Once they’re dried, simply pipe on some frosting in curly-q’s.

Now you too can buy the ingredients and bake your own hostess cupcake instead of having to go to the painstaking trouble of unwrapping a pre-made one!