Today's Photo

Today we embarked on a day trip to the motherland that is Zanesville, Ohio. "The motherland", because it is where both my parents were born and raised. It's a post-industrial, decaying, contradictory sort of town that has good neighborhoods, bad neighborhoods, poverty, wealth, a bridge that goes in two directions, farmland, urban sprawl, suburbia, a river running through it, and the skeletons of a once vibrant and bustling downtown where my Grandma used to "walk up and down Main Street while the boys walked on the other side." I have fond memories, bad memories, blissful and regretful memories of this town, not because I was a former resident, but because I would travel to see my multitude of relatives every summer as a kid for about 2 weeks every August. I always stayed at my Grandparents' home that was right on the Muskingham River. There was a steep hill in their backyard that led to the river, and they happened to live right in front of the falls. They had an enclosed porch in the back of their house and during the hot August nights the breeze would roll in through the windows accompanied by the sound of the falling water. It was such a calming sound. As a kid who grew up in a much more urban setting in New Jersey, this was total country. Unlike my brothers, I developed a real connection with this town that raised my parents and my grandparents and many, many cousins. I made friends in this town that I kept in touch with for many years... I even married one for a brief period of time.

However, it seems like a different town these days, and I'm not sure if it is just because I'm just looking at it with adult eyes. Because when we were leaving town today, my shutterbug, country-loving, history buff son who was snapping away all day at different sites throughout the town, exclaimed, "I love Zanesville!"

While I'm happy to be where I am, when I come back and happen to hear the falls of the Muskingham River, I feel a sense of "home."


Photo specs:
Canon xSi digital SLR
Colorized
125/5.6
18-55 mm lens
(click on image for high res view)

Today's Photo

Morning dew on the leaves of a strawberry plant.

The smell of scones in the air

After taking pictures of my scones this morning, I've decided that I'm a really bad food photographer. The professional people that make food look so unbelievably delectable are totally talented artists.

As for the actual food, though, I did bake these scones that are in the picture, and thought I'd share the recipe with you. If you're not familiar with scones, they are a biscuit-y type of pastry and you can add just about anything to them, such as strawberries, blueberries, chocolate chips, lemon shavings, cinnamon, etc. I usually bake them with either blueberries or strawberries, and today it was strawberries. Look at me being so domestic today!

Enjoy the recipe! They are quite tasty.

Dear Dad

It's almost 22 years apart now. And you are still terribly missed.

Happy Father's Day.

*kiss the sky*

Love,
Katie

Today's Photo

Train parts of the Cuyahoga Valley Scenic Railway.



Specs:
Canon xSi
18-55mm lens
Colorized

Photo Restoration: The house that papa built

Things are busy around House of Revelry with Grandma Revelry being in town from New Jersey this week. So I haven't had much time to post new stuff because every little bit of free time has been spent on orders or getting ready for the Artisan show this weekend. But I had a little break from the festivities this afternoon while Grandma and the kids spend some quality time, so I worked on a photo restoration project someone asked me to do.

They asked that the following picture be imprinted onto a trivet:



"But can you get rid of the cousins?" Hmmmm.

The woman in the center of the picture is the owner of the house; the wife of the man who built it, and it was taken in 1933. The two other ladies, one sitting on the steps and one standing to the right of the porch, need to be removed. While I'm pressed for time on providing a step by step tutorial, what I can say is, if you have Photoshop, the cloning stamp is your best friend, and then a little hand-painting, a little burning and dodging, and then the sepia-tone action button. Here is the end result:



I like doing photo restoration a lot; there are so many stories in the eyes of the subjects. This was done for my godmother, Tae, whose mother is the woman in the picture, an immigrant from Italy. So many stories.

Today's photo

The door to the round table?



Photo specs:
Panasonic point and shoot
Enhanced in photoshop

Organize and ye shall find

So it's not uncommon for me that when I move things out of my way around the house, I move them to places that I quickly forget. Then, out of nowhere, when I get the organizing bug, I rediscover all sorts of lost treasures (some of the time at least --- most of the time it's just a bunch of junk that gets moved from one place another again).

This time, I found a couple rolls of undeveloped black and white film. They could have been from 1985, 1995 or 2005. I had no idea. I was almost a little reticent about dropping them off at the lab. But I did, and when I picked them up, here's a few samplings of what I found:







I'm not certain where the shot of the barn was taken. I think North of where we lived. The decrepit flag was taken in a park near our house. And the shot of the mountain was the view at the top of our road. It is Mount Mansfield.

Vermont is a curious place. It can feel quite bleak and lonely at times, like these pictures. The native people are quite reserved and highly suspicious of "flatlanders". And while Vermont is known for its maple trees, for months on end in the winter, Vermont is like a carcass of ice and snow. And then one day it awakens sometime at the end of May after mud season into this beautifully alive, lush landscape. And then quickly by the end of August the mountains become technicolor for a few short weeks, and all is then barren again for a long, cold winter. It is a huge buzz-kill.