garden update: july 31st

I feel bad that I had to thin the beets - they are like garden babies to me - but they need enough space to grow and I can't let them get crowded. We didn't just throw them away, they made a really good salad. Tomorrow I'll have to do the same with the little carrots. 

There are the first tomatoes in the parent's garden. They are orange and sweet! 

There are no photos of the peas this time (surprise!) because something unpredictable happened yesterday. Our dog Sam decided that the pea bed would make a perfect hiding spot for his new big bone... It's a disaster right now, I'm not sure which of the peas will survive, so I'll update you on them later :-) 

lomography monday: best toy cameras for summer

i love them, i want them, i need them.
my dream summer set.

1. Fuuvi Juicebox camera
2. Diana F+ Dreamer
3. Oktomat
4. Golden Half Chelsea Maika
5. Aqua Heart underwater camera

light painting: part 2

We're happy you enjoyed our light paintings!
We used different colors of glow sticks and long exposure on our camera.
Also a tripod and a dark night. :-)
Here are a few more:

light painting: part 1

Last night we were camping.
We thought it was a perfect chance to do some light painting!
Here's what we created :-)

what to do on a sunny day

lomography monday: x-rayed diana film

Husband and I travel a lot and we usually have a couple of film cameras with us. And I never before had my film damaged with x-ray! I always have my cameras with film in my carry-on bag, they are scanned in a security check point but it never influenced any roll before. Before this 120mm roll inside my Diana.

All these photos are from Russia, they flew with us from Moscow to New York, then to Minneapolis and to Spokane. I didn't have a chance to develop them in Russia, so I didn't take them out of Diana and just packed. When I got them developed in Sandpoint I was quite surprised. I had an x-ray fog all over them and  8 out of 15 shots had exposed waves on them!

The processing lab can't separate x-ray fog from camera exposure, it is impossible to correct this damage in the duplicating or printing process. You can also see the effect of the x-rays on film that looks like a "wave" that runs across the pictures. This shades will be seen on the developed, scanned and printed film. Here's what I got:

After reading about saving the film rolls from the x-rays I decided to share some advises with everyone. So here's what we should do/avoid doing:

Buy rolls wherever you go. Have them processed there.

Never ship unprocessed film as checked luggage. Keep all unprocessed film as carry-on baggage. I had my film traveling in checked baggage before and everything was OK but you don't want to gamble with your film... :-)

Ask the security officers at an airport for a manual inspection.

More official info: TSA - Traveling with Film

New, Random Paintings by Ben

We found a cool service that allows you to embed a product on your blog (www.shoplocket.com) and we decided to try it out! Please let me know if you're interested, I'd love to share and have a reason to paint new pictures!

food carving: a melon flower

I carved this melon yesterday and used it as a centerpiece for a dinner table. It was perfect with the yellow and orange flowers that we also have in our dining room. It took me an hour to make this flower but I'm just learning now! :-) Hopefully I'll be faster with more practice in carving fruit and veggies. I am pretty glad with what this melon looks like. And it's not too hard either - I used only one knife - a super thin one. If you are interested I could make a DIY post with step-by-step carving.

And here's Uno who was hanging around and helping me as much as he could :-)

garden update: july 19th

Because we moved, we didn't get to harvest the garden in Russia, but now we have a new garden! Ben's parents started theirs around the same time, so now almost every day we have fresh food on the table. We also started our own new garden (we planted more peas, dill and beets!) We'll have to wait a few weeks before we can get anything from ours, but the peas are already sprouting! So this mostly a parents' Sandpoint garden update, but while we're here we spend time every day helping to take care of it.

This is stir fry made from garden veggies and scallops :-)

And here's the view out our window!