Pentimento

Are These Tanagers? Can You Identify Them?

I have several bird books, but none of them seem to have these exact color of birds. Can you help identify them? I thought they might be early spring tanagers, but I can't be sure. I apologize for the quality of the photo too. I opened the patio door quietly, turned on the Kodak, hit the zoom button and this is as good as I could get.

Two Naughty Cats In The Bath - New Clock Faces Now Available!

Two Naughty Cats In The Bath - We've Put a New Face on It!

I love cats! I love them so much that I just created three new clock face designs now available at the Two Naughty Cats In the Bath Cafe Press store.  Here's the three new clocks available from the shop.

 

 

Click the link above to visit the shop and view the designs in their actual size. Thanks to all my customers who love my clocks and other items in the shop.

Potato Chips In The Microwave: Success On The First Try!

I happened to see the recipe on Facebook today for microwave potato chips and thought that it sounded like a 'complex' recipe I could tackle, so I gave it a try. The recipe I used was from Chatelaine, a site I absolutely love! The link below will take you directly to the recipe on their blog.

My kitchen doesn't have a mandoline, so ended up just slicing a potato very thinly with a paring knife and it was fine. You'll be surprised how many chips just one potato makes too. I didn't think to take a before photo, sorry. It looked pretty much like the one on Chatelaine though. Here's the finished product:

The picture really doesn't do justice to the chips, but I can attest to the fact that they were crisp and did take the same amount of time suggested as the recipe on Chatelaine. And yes, that one of my "antique" Corelle plates circa 1978. 

This brings up all sorts of ideas for other veggie chips. Yams perhaps?

 

Get the recipe from Chatelaine here.  Enjoy!

Snagit Work Around For Capturing A PDF Image

How to Capture Using Snagit

What I found out today (after hours of searching) is that the newest version of SnagIt (11) will not do a scrolling capture of a PDF image when using it in Firefox. What I had to do was set the image up to print with the Snagit printer. That automatically sent the image to Snagit Editor. The editor had the whole legal size image (a land record from 1855) right there. I then just had to right click the PDF image and save it with the name and type I chose.

It seems that Snagit scrolling capture doesn't work in Firefox.Yes, I could have opened up IE and tried that method. I use Firefox a lot though, and I didn't want to take the time to open the other browser.

 

So, to sum it up here's what you do:

• Open PDF file you wish to capture

• Go to FILE and click on PRINT

• Set the printer destination to Snagit

SnagIt will capture the PDF document and put it in Snagit Editor

Source: Unable to perform scrolling capture of PDF - Snagit Support

Snagit Support

 

Pileated Woodpecker Makes Early Spring Visit

Pileated woodpecker - Kitsap, WA 2012

Pileated Woodpecker

We had a welcome surprise at the seed feeder and suet cake this morning: A pileated woodpecker. In the 20 years we have been in this house we would see them now and then, but it had been a while since we had seen them in our backyard. He or she is pretty big! The little birds benefit from the woodpecker chipping off chunks of the suet too. It falls to the ground and they can nibble it right down before the pidgeons and ravens move in.

Since spring is just around the corner (four days) I imagine we'll be seeing more and more seasonal birds like goldfinches, mountain chickadees, and if we get lucky, maybe a western tanager will pass through. I've only seen the tanager one time. They're so pretty with their mulitcolored plumage.

 

Cottage Style Brings You Some Hawaiian Punch Via House of Yates

How About A Nice Hawaiian Punch?

We had a pretty thrilling thing happen in our Yates family last week. Our neice and nephew had their home featured in an article in the latest issue of Cottage Style magazine! There were about eight pages showcasing several rooms in their self-renovated home. As you might be able to determine, the theme for their decor is Hawaiian beach cottage. Jill's been going to Hawaii for decades and fell in love with the laid-back lifestyle along with the warm climate and sandy beaches of several of the islands.When she and Eric married they continued the tradition of the (near) yearly trek to their favorite get-away.

Photos for the magazine article were by Blackstone Edge. You can read more at this link BSE "Really Rocks" Cottage Style Summer 2012 Issue.

Don't you just love this photo Jill took of the flowers used for the photo shoot? Jill and Eric make a great team when it comes to making their home into a showcase. Eric does most of the building and buying of the materials, and Jill does all the embellishments of his work. They are both very talented and creative, but then, I guess you can see that in the photos.

Jill's caption for this photo reads: "Poppy posing in our "Hawaiian Plantation Cottage Style" Bedroom. We have collected the art, most of the pillows, accessories & books on our Hawaiian travels. Some is new, some is vintage."

Jill is a tireless interior designer and almost everything you see in these photos she and Eric have either built, created, or chosen especially for the room. OK, the dog wasn't built. Poppy is an adoptee. Did I mention Jill loves her pets?

Want to see more photos of the House of Yates? There are several more in this month's issue of Cottage Style. From what I hear, each issue flies off the shelf as soon as they're released. We got the last two from the store where we got them.

I wanted to mention too that you can find Jill on Facebook at Jill Yates Interior Design. Contact information is: Jill Yates Interior Design - phone 360-866-8033

 

 

View

I visited www.directstartv.com and upgraded our television package. I’m glad that I did because I just started working from home as a free lance writer, so I spend a pretty good amount of time writing on my laptop on you guessed it, the couch. I have started watching morning programming that I thought only the traditional house wives had the luxury of watching in the morning. I have gotten a routine down. I get up when my husband leaves for work at six. We eat breakfast and I go on a jog. I get home and shower, getting ready for the day. I watch the “Today Show” after he leaves and drink coffee. After I get done with my morning cup of coffee, I start my writing for the day. I write and watch the “Today Show”. My favorite hour of Today is the last hour. After that hour comes on, I turn the television to the “View”. I never thought that I would like a show like that, but I really enjoy the discussions everyday. I even get inspired to write about things that I see on the show. I love working from home!

 

Compensated

Roast Beef Carbonnade ala Wilkerson

Tonight's dinner at the Wilkerson Estate was Roast Beef Carbonnade with a slight twist to our tastes. (Technically, my tastes). 

Since this isn't really a cooking blog, I'll just hit the highlights and say I used a beef shoulder roast cut in large chunks, 2 large onions, 6 Yukon gold potatoes, bacon chunks, 5 carrots, 1 bottle of beer, 1 cup of beef broth, and a spoonful of chopped garlic.

The inspiration for this meal came from the Food Channel's Melissa d'Arbian's recipe Pot Roast Carbonnade which I watched her make this week on her show Ten Dollar Dinners.

I think what hooked me into making this recipe was that one of the first things she did was cook the slab bacon in large lardons, remove them and then add the slices of two onions. The aroma of those cooking always excites my tastbuds! From there on I pretty much followed her recipe except that I added the potatoes and didn't add 6 prunes and dried thyme.  The last two I didn't have in my pantry.

I think the whole thing was a success though, so Jim said.

 

Pentimento Is Blacked Out Today In Protest

I couldn't figure out how to add a blackout module to this Typepad blog, so I'm letting this image do instead.Please click this Google link and sign the petition. Keep the Web Open This is IMPORTANT!

 

 

 

How I Recovered Deleted Files After Emptying The Recycle Bin

I Got Them Back Intact!

Right now, I am so pumped about this I can hardly type! No matter how I write it I know I'm going to come off like a used car salesperson, but I have to tell you about this FREE program I found that helped me recover my deleted files after I had emptied the recycle bin.

First, I should say that I was a total twit and should have known better, but I was trying to clean up some duplicate file folders on my external hard drive. Paranoid wench that I am, I had made a backup of my Yates family picture files at one point and had two locations in my external drive for those files. I emptied one bunch of the folders and put the few pictures in them in the more full ones.

Brian Kato's Restoration

Anyway, to make a long story short, I did a search in Google for the words 'recovering deleted files after recycle' and found almost the exact words here. The name of the freeware program is Restoration and you can download it using this link. (The link is an .exe file, so your AV will be prompted to scan it, but I had no alerts or problems).

 

This is not an affiliate post. All opinions are mine.