First, she had a landmark birthday. 18!

She chose the Lemon Curd Crepe Cake from April’s Martha Stewart Living magazine.  Delicious!

Next,  she had a series of award ceremonies and presentations she needed to give for her senior end of year.

This was at the Windsor Rotary Club for Student of the Month with another recipient.

This was some of her art displayed during Senior Project night.

Here she giving her presentation on her Senior Project.  Her project was to start and finish writing a novel. She presented in front of a panel of teachers, parents and students.  They were notably impressed!

With only one week of school left, we threw her a big party!  We celebrated her 18th birthday, her upcoming high school graduation, her upcoming trip to Italy to study art in Florence AND her acceptance to UCSB for tha fall!  This required a special cake. So I made the family’s mile-stone cake.

Family, friends, more family and more friends.

With finals done she prepared for graduation.

Windsor High School had 412 graduates.

Yeah!  Cheers! Hooray!

The keynote speaker was a former football coach.  He had been gone for most of this year to be a contestant on The Biggest Loser.  Koli Palu lost 216 lbs. Angela had watched the entire show and was so excited to meet him.

Five days later Angela boarded a plane to Italy.  She will spend four weeks there; one in Lucca with friends and three weeks in Florence studying art.  Now its June and I’m sure things will slow down around here.  She will be missed!

>Kathy

My parents were out today and I was in charge of a portion of dinner, which I did. But then, I was watching the Food Network today (more out of boredom than actually wanting to learn something) and I heard the term “Banana Bites”, which perked my interest. It was a dessert where the lady put a melted peanut butter chocolate spread between banana chips.

I do not have banana chips, nor did I feel like melting chocolate into peanut butter. So this is what I did instead.

First, I cut up a very large banana into thin, even slices and laid them out on a cooking sheet. I sprinkled them with cinnamon but I recommend you do this after they cook because it burnt on the pan and made the bananas stick a bit.

I put the banana slices in the oven on a broiler setting for about 10-15 minutes until they were golden and baked. For the filling, I split them into Nutella (a chocolate hazelnut spread) and creamy peanut butter. I used plastic baggies for piping and put them in a hot water bath to make them softer. Before I piped them, I cut little holes at the end of the bag.

When the banana chips were ready, I pulled them out of the oven and carefully transferred them to cooling racks with wax paper. I lined them up 2-by-2 so that there was a bottom and lid for each.

 I also split them in half because some people in this house don’t like Nutella.

 Then I piped in the peanut butter and Nutella, making sure to leave lids blank for each piped piece.

 I covered each one and set them on separate plates, sprinkling powdered sugar over them.

 Of course I had to taste one of each.

 And then I popped them in the fridge so that the Nutella and peanut butter harden and don’t ooze when eaten.

Super easy and you can put any sort of filling you like. Enjoy!

-Angela

Gingerbread House Decorating

 The teenagers were in charge of all things covered in royal icing.   

 And they did a GREAT job!   

And with a sense of humor!  

Our Christmas Day was very good.  Everyone was happy with their gifts. Especially Skittles.   

 We had some wonderful meals!  We had our Ravioli at my mom’s house for Christmas lunch.  She had two servings!!  

For Christmas dinner I made Beef Wellington, a special request from Angela. And it tasted as good as it looked!   

 The next day was my mother’s 100 birthday. 100 years old!!!  We had a small drop by at her house and many family and friends came to visit.   

  I still can’t believe that she’s 100!   

The following day we were visited by my brother-in-law, his wife, their five-year old triplets and 2 1/2 year old Henry.    

 Jenna has been my inspiration for blogging.  She’s been blogging for five years sharing her story about The Amazing Triplets and Henry.  

 We had a wonderful time with the kids,  Guy and Jenna!    

We went to the beach…   

                                                                  …to the park…   

                                                                                                                              …they busted the Gingerbread House…   

 …celebrated the New Year…   

 …by staying up until midnight eating chocolate truffles!!!   

While the Southern California Lawrences were here we had a Lawrence get-together.   

 Angela was sad to have the holidays come to and end.   

 When all the shopping is done, all the wrapping torn apart, all the cooking and preparing is done, the very best part of the holidays is spending it with family.  I hope 2010 brings us together with family even more!   

~Kathy

Kathy: I grew up with certain traditions, especially during the holidays.  The one tradition that stands out and that we still do is having homemade ravioli for Christmas dinner.  When I was little, I remember my mom spending several days preparing and making ravioli.  I don’t remember helping much then, but I remember being mesmerized by all the steps it took to make these heavenly little pillows of dough filled with meat and cheese. 

When I was older I was able to help make them but soon I realized that my mom didn’t have a written recipe for her ravioli.  So, through the years several of us in the family have spent time with her to help make them and to learn how to make them.  It’s not Christmas for me without my mom’s ravioli.  So every year I happily make them.  And thank my mom for all the years she made them for us.

However, I do make them a little differently then she did.  It still takes three days: cook the meats one day, make the filling and make the dough the second day and on the third we assemble them.  Now,  I can’t share the exact recipe here, but we would like to share the process.  Just know that each and every ravioli is made with love.

Angela: So here’s the set-up now that we’ve got this operation down to a two-person thing.

My mom rolls the dough out. This year, we figured out a super-sneaky way to get the ravioli to not have a ton of dough and yet, keep them durable.

We plan on filling all these baking sheets and some over again. We sprinkle semolina flour on them so they don’t stick.

I’m on assembly. This little station is where the dough and filling come together. The metal tray with the holes (very technical equipment here) gives the ravioli their hat shape. The scooper is used to get the right amount of filling and the water is to seal them up.

This is the filling. It’s a secret recipe that even I don’t have the rights to yet. All I know is it has meat, cheese, spinach, and eggs. I don’t make it, I just assemble. This is a huge bowl by the way. By far, it was the biggest batch we’ve ever made.

But before this delicious filling can be stuffed into the dough, the dough has to be rolled into sheets that can fit on the ravioli tray. We have another nifty machine for that. Back when we started this whole operation, my dad and brother used to take turns with a machine that cranked the dough flat. With this new mechanical doohickey, we’ve eliminated the boys (they’re happy) from the labor force.

She just runs the homemade dough through this lovely contraption.

And then she gets these long, thin pieces of dough that are strong enough to put up with being stuffed.

At this point, the dough comes to me where I place it on the metal tray. Carefully with my thumb, I make little depressions in each of the 12 holes. Then I use pastry brush and water to wet the edges so that each ravioli will seal.

One scoop of filling in each hole and then with clean fingers, I flatten each scoop so there’s no air bubbles.

Then the top layer of dough goes on (carefully so that no air bubbles form).

I roll it over with a rolling-pin so that the zip-zap edges cut through the dough.

I then flip over the tray and out pop a dozen perfect, lovely ravioli.

They get placed on the baking trays until that tray is filled.

 When the tray is filled, like this one, it goes in the freezer. When they all freeze, we put them in bags and freeze them until its time to eat. 

So the result for the day……… 

 370 ravioli!

Skittles even came by to check out what we were doing. Either that, or the smell of the filling lured her in.

♥ Kathy and Angela 

She lives near several great fabric stores!  So we went shopping and I found some navy blue cotton eyelet.  I had never seen cotton eyelet in navy!  It seemed like a great fabric for a dress; casual, easy to wear, and great color!  So I used the magazine inspiration to design my navy, eyelet dress.

I lined the bottom with silk lining so it feels really comfortable and I lined the top part with silk organza in navy because I didn’t want it too sheer.

I used my dress form and created and changed the pattern a bit.  When it came to the hem, I just left it trimmed to the eyelet.  I used an invisible zipper and added a little vent at the bottom.

I am really pleased with my dress!

Then I though about wearing it and concluded that a jacket would make a finished outfit.  I have made many jackets and I wanted something different and more current.  About that time I watched a piece on TV on Michelle Obama and I saw her in that lemon grass colored coat.  I remember watching her on Jan. 20th and thinking what a great outfit she wore.  So…

I decided to make a coat for my navy dress.  I wanted similar fabric with that comfortable, easy wear feeling. So I went back to the fabric store and found 100% linen in navy! 

I made a linen coat in navy to wear with the eyelet dress.  The dress had a low v-neck front and back.  So the coat has a higher neck and four buttons.  I found them at Britex in San Francisco!

I wanted to inject some color into this outfit so I added  a lively lining.

I’m really pleased with this entire outfit.  The coat can be worn with other outfits.  The dress can be worn alone or with a colorful shawl.  I can dress up the outfit for a more formal occasion.  Or keep it simple for casual events.

This outfit took me all summer to make.  But it wasn’t difficult sewing.

I entered this outfit into a sewing contest.  Go to: http://www.craftstylish.com/contest/fall-fashion-challenge-09

and check out my competition!

~Kathy

 For this Italian Family Reunion we decided to celebrate ‘zero’ birthdays.  Partly because my mother will be 100 this year.

My mom with grandson.

After a little searching I found 16 family members with ‘zero’ birthdays!  We had someone for each decade except 90.  It was GREAT! 

Everyone brought a potluck dish so we had lots of yummy Italian dishes!  And my husband manned his new BBQ kitchen.

Dessert was birthday cake with a star trophies for each celebrant.

Large family group pictures were taken.  Cousins played darts and bocce, lots of eatting, drinking and talking and my 100 year old mother enjoyed visiting with everyone! 

It was very special to have so many family members here and I want to thank everyone who made it.

A week later my husband’s family had a smaller but equally fun family reunion.  Good food, wonderful people, and some good billiard games were enjoyed by all.

Cousins got together and shared stories from college, work and travel.

The grandparents were there, too!

With a little modern technology and Angela’s wonderful photo editing skills, we took a nice group photo.

We missed family that couldn’t make it. 

It’s great being part of these wonderful families! 

Let’s do this again soon!

~Kathy

Two of my students won Best Of  Show in the pillow and tote bag categories!

It was very rewarding for me to see my students do so well!  It really is a great job.  I wish I could do this year-round!

~Kathy

PRO: It has a fireworks setting! (yay? maybe not…)
CON: The fireworks setting has a really, painfully long exposure time.

For those of you who don’t know, exposure is how long the shutter is open when taking a picture. It controls how much light goes in. Obviously, in perfect daylight, the shutter speed is quick as lightning because the natural lighting is ideal for a clean, crisp photo. However, at night, the exposure is much longer because there is less light. If you look at a photo taken at night and there is no up-front, non-light subject up front and if flash is off, instead of what you want the picture will look like, you’ll get a lot of light streaks.

Now, for someone like me who owns a resource website, light streaks, or light stocks as I call them on my site, are awesome and really quite handy with graphic designing. All I wanted though last night, was a nice, clean shot of a firework. That didn’t happen. But I did get theses:

Now obviously these have been doctored in photoshop so don’t be discouraged if they don’t come out quite as dramatic in their raw, out of camera form. Now, you’re probably thinking something along the lines of, “what the heck can I do with a blurry firework shot?”

Here’s what. I turned this boring, average backyard shot from January…

Into a beautiful, interesting Fourth of July night over the vineyard…

For this photo, I brought the brightness way down and the contrast way up. Then I added a gradient of light blue to a darker blue for the horizon-like night sky and I set that layer on Overlay. I then set up my fireworks where I wanted them and put both layers on Screen to get rid of the black backgrounds. Finally, I included a Selective Coloring filter to make the bright reds and  yellows of the fireworks pinks and golds.

Happy Fourth of July!!!

-Angelaaaaaaaaaa

This morning, at about 4:30AM, me, my mom, and my dad all got up to go see the hot air balloons launch in the field. I was encouraged by the hopes of fabulous photos, hot chocolate, my mother’s sudden enthusiasm to go, and a certain co-worker implying my weekend plans to do my AP summer assignments were lame. Unexpectedly, my boyfriend Robyn said he’d like to go when I offered and so he (though groggy and sarcastic) came as well. My brother… was… asleep… There was no way he was going to get up at that hour.

Have you ever shot photos in the pre-dawn hours? At first, all I got was a bunch of colorful fuzz. Even after I upped my ISO, set my camera on a stabilizing mode, and made myself into a human tripod, things were still a tad fuzzy. Hang in there. As the morning progressed, things cleared up.

Three balloons go up first for the dawn patrol. They were filling up really quickly. I’ve never seen something like this before. At this time, my mom would like me to add that this was the 20th anniversary of this show.

When all of them were filled, they let them stand up all at the same time. I would like to mention that while this was happening, they were playing the theme song for the new Star Trek movie on the loud speakers. It made me incredibly happy.

And they stood! I’m not sure if you can really tell how massive these things are. We were on a field and the people are all about 100 feet or more form those balloons. They. Were. Huge.

First one is off!

I promise you you’re not seeing triple.. This was three photos I took of the same balloon. I just merged them.

Second one to take off!

There was no wind so they were able to hover together. It was fantastic.

Proof that we were up that early. This is the sunrise through the park trees. It was mildly less blurry in real life.

About an hour later (hence the better quality photos), the other balloons began to be set up. At this point, we were allowed on the field next to the balloons. It was awesome. We were so close!

This one was the target balloon. It was my favorite. We were able to stand next to it while they filled it with the fan. That’s looking into it…

At one point, we were surrounded by about 10 balloons all being filled.

But I couldn’t ignore that Target balloon…

We were surrounded by all the pretty, simple ones.

There they are. I got these troopers up at 4:30. They all had a good time.

This was an amazing shot… You can add hot air balloon pilot to my list of possible careers.

I think we stayed close to this one because it was toasty warm.

The Target balloon is up!

This was quite surreal… I looked up.

I liked the fishy one too.

But then I was distracted because the Target balloon was taking off…

They launched them really quickly after one another. They all launched within about 20 minutes of each other.

Okay, now this is the coolest part. They were all in the air.. There were like 20 of them total. Count the balloons…

The clouds were beautiful.

Apparently the energizer bunny is bigger than Lady Liberty. I had a hard time with that one because I’ve never been to New York but this bunny was really, really, really massive.

This was like amazing lighting heaven!

Just.. awesome..

Enjoy the photos!

-Angela

Before I started working I was organizing my sewing room and found my knitting needles.  I’ve inherited knitting needles from my mom and my mother-in-law.  Both were avid knitters and had accumulated a wide selection of needles and yarns.  So I found all the pairs and tied them together.  I knew this wouldn’t last very long so I put my sewing skills to good use and make a very simple needle holder.  I thought this might be an easy sewing project for those of you with knitting needles in disarray.

Start by measuring the length of my longest needles.  To that measurement I added 7″.  Then I laid out all the pairs of needles and spaced them with a generous inch between them.  I measured the width across and added 1 inch to the measurement. 

I needed two fabrics 17″ tall by 23″ wide. So I looked through my stash and cut my two fabrics into rectangles of that size.  Your dimensions will be different and you might make your holder with added spaces for future needles.

Put the right sides of the fabrics facing each other, line up the corners and pin the two fabrics on all four sides. Leave a 4-5 inch space to turn the fabric through.  I like to mark the opening with two pins at each end so I don’t accidently sew through it.

I like to use a 1/2″ seam.  To insure that it’s a straight seam I use a piece of carpenter’s tape placed 1/2″ from the sewing machine needle parallel to the stitching line. This allows me to sew straight seams.

 Stitch around all four sides, leave the space open.  Backstitching at either end of the opening insures that the stitching doesn’t unravel when you turn the fabric out.

Before turning the fabric to the right side, it’s best to trim the excess fabric from the corners.

Now you can turn it right side out, press the edges falt and pin the edges together including the opening.

Then I top stitch close to the edge all around.  This stiches the opening closed.

Laying the rectangle horizontally, fold the bottom up 6 inches.

Pin the sides together and along the top of the fold.  Here’s where you need something to make marks with.  I like to use sewers chalk because it brushes off when your done.  But a pencil would work.  You’ll just have to wash the holder to remove the marks.  Measuring across and using 3rd grade math skills mark lines where each channel will be stitched.  Make the channels 1 inch to 1 1/2 inches wide depending on the size of the needles. 

When you”re happy with the channels stitch them from the bottom of the fold to the top.  Do a backstitch or fix-stitch at the beginning and end of each channel line.  Stitch the sides in the same way.

The diagonal threads you see above happen when you don’t cut threads after each line.  I get lazy and leave all the threads to cut at the end.

Next you need a 20 inch piece of ribbon, fold in half and stitch to the holder at the midway point on one side.

Insert your needles, roll up and tie a bow.  That’s it!

I also made a needle holder for my crochet hooks.  And because they are shorter I use a purchased fabric placemat, folded up the bottom and stitched the channels. Viola!

If you make one of these send me a picture. I’d love to hear from you!

>Kathy