Did you know we make almost all our own bread? Yup, we do! And I made this beautiful loaf over the weekend from Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day. If you’ve ever considered making bread at home then you must have a look through this book. I also made the aloo paratha from Healthy Bread in Five Minutes a Day. Oh my! So yummy! It’s like a panzarotti except that instead of being filled with pizza toppings it’s filled with curried potatoes and peas.

~

I’ve been spending quite a bit of time lately trying to become more successful in the photography world, step things up a notch. Thinking long and hard about where I am and where I want to go. I am a minimalist photographer trying to find my way. I want to create beautiful, peaceful photographs that bring a natural serenity to people’s lives.

Aside from capturing these images how should I go about doing this?

• Should I blog about how I do what I do? Sharing with everyone my trials and tribulations, both good and bad, about all aspects of my business, not just the final products.
• Should I change my pricing structure to build up my clientele and gain experience? I feel like I’m past this point now, as far as minimalist landscapes go I think I have all the bugs worked out.
• Should I find a full time fine art photographer that could be my mentor? Or that I could assist? Do you know anyone in the London, Ontario area that I should talk to?
• Should I start approaching more galleries? How do I even do that? What sort of package should I put together? Should I aim to have work in at least one gallery at all times?
• Should I spend more time shooting stock photography so all my eggs aren’t in one basket? This may require some equipment upgrades.
• Should I really tighten my schedule keeping a better focus on core photography tasks? Today I got up an hour earlier than I usually do, I’m going to try to keep it up for a few weeks too and see how production is. I’m also going to really rein in my time spent on social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, etc. Even email. I’m going to limit checking these venues to certain times once or twice a day, giving me more time to focus on what’s important.
• Oh, and then there’s this blog. For the past little while I’ve wanted to post five times a week. Ya, five times a week. Clearly I’m insane. Do you have any idea how long that takes? Cumulatively over the course of a week it takes hours and hours, over half a day sometimes. I’m not a writer. Blogging isn’t my business. Blogging is how I connect with you online. So as of this week I’m going to start limiting my postings to 2-3 times a week.
• Should I eliminate the clutter from my office to eliminate the clutter from my life? Probably. That’s going to take a while. Maybe this week I’ll focus on my desk and take it from there.
• Should I start printing my work myself instead of outsourcing it to my lab? This could save me a lot of money and time because I won’t need to drive to the lab. Plus I could print notecards until my heart’s content. This is something that I’ve been pondering for a while now (oh how I’ve ogled the Epson R2880) and definitely an item for further exploration.
• Should I have e-commerce built right into our website? Wouldn’t it be nice if you didn’t have to go to Etsy to purchase my prints? There could be a drop down menu so you could select what size you want, maybe even a way to choose what type of shipping you prefer. It would be so lovely to keep everything here on our site, but what about the traffic that Etsy brings me? Perhaps I need to step up my advertising.
• Maybe I need a rep.
• And I definitely need to find a practical way to carry a camera with me wherever I go, even if it’s my point and shoot. It’s hard because I don’t carry a bag. Heck, ask anyone that knows me, I barely carry a wallet. What are all those things that women carry around in their purses anyways? Maybe I could get something small that just fits my G9. Or maybe I should go for something that’s more like a satchel and less purse -like. Hmmm, this is huge.

I’m totally open to suggestions.

We had a beautiful staycation last month! Normally we trek to our cottage but this time we decided to explore some of what Southwestern Ontario has to offer. We took five hours to do the two and a half hour drive to Point Pelee, and we stopped and jumped in the water at every public beach along the way – it was magical! Walked three of the trails at Pelee and arrived at the point just in time to watch the sun go down.

Saw Kiss Me, Kate at Stratford, toured through the native paths at Acorus, and swam at Turkey Point. Now our list of things to do near home has gotten longer! What were the highlights of your last staycation?

{image: jennifer squires ross}

{our square foot vegetable garden, may 25, 2010 - sunny side}

Good morning everyone!

This past weekend was a holiday here in Canada, our unofficial start to summer! And it tends to be a very popular one for gardeners in our area. Here in our garden we planted out most of our transplants including leeks, tomatoes, and peppers and we buried seeds for zucchini and cucumber too.

{our square foot vegetable garden, may 25, 2010 - shady side}

We also discovered on the weekend that we have two frogs living in our pond, we’ve decided they’re father (Carl) and son (Denny).

{Denny}

{Carl}

What do you plan to grow this coming summer?

Watch Handmade Nation.

I did. Now I need a printing press, a sewing machine, and a postcard vending machine.

Biking to a photo shoot during No Impact Week

Hi Everyone!

We wrapped up the No Impact Experiment yesterday and I have to say that it went really well! Each day had a specific theme that continued onward for the rest of the week, really giving us a chance to focus on the changes we could make:

• Sunday – Consumption – No buying new things (besides food)
• Monday – Trash Reduction
• Tuesday – Transportation – Focus on human powered
• Wednesday – Food
• Thursday – Energy Reduction
• Friday – Water Conservation
• Saturday – Giving Back
• Sunday – Eco-Sabbath

Eliminating Consumption was a pretty easy one for us and I thought that Trash Reduction would be a breeze however last week I was inspired to begin cleaning out my office. Reducing the amount of garbage we set out on the curb is definitely something we’ve always been aware of and we’ll continue to work on in the future. We currently put out one small shopping bag of garbage a week but our recycle bin is half full, something else we need to work on.

Transportation Tuesday, oh the irony! We decided that as of last Tuesday we would no longer be driving our cars (for the week). Well wouldn’t you know that my car was scheduled to go in for some routine maintenance that very day? Once that was taken care of we rode our bicycles everywhere we needed to go, including:

• 4 trips for darren to and from work (for a total of 40 km)
• 1 acupuncture appointment (14 km)
• 1 trip to the market (6 km)
• 2 location photo shoots (14 km)

And you know what? I loved it! Darren has always rode his bike to work (except when there’s snow on the ground) but I haven’t actually gotten my bike out in the last four years. Of course the first trek I needed to make was also the farthest one, 14 km round trip, but it was beautiful! I’ll definitely be spending more time on my bicycle from now on.

I was completely unprepared for making Food changes. And in all honesty we didn’t really do anything differently. We aren’t vegetarian but we only eat meat on weekends and more and more of our food comes from our local farmer’s market. What we did do was ride our bikes to the market, made conscious decisions to buy most of what we need unpackaged and locally produced, and we even visited our local tea shop and had them fill our jars with loose leaves. Yum!

Making cinnamon rolls by candlelight

Big cuts were made in the energy department. Thursday had us turning off our furnace, shutting down the computer outside of work hours, leaving all artificial lighting off, and hand washing the dishes instead of using the dishwasher. I think we picked a good (read: easy) time of year to come into this project. With the furnace off we woke in the mornings to indoor temperatures of 14C (57F) but we quickly warmed up with tea, wool hats, hot water bottles, lap blankets, and a few candles when it got really cool. Plus all that bicycling kept us nice and warm. I really enjoyed the electrical cut backs, Darren and I had many lovely evenings cuddled on the couch under a blanket talking by the soft glow of a few candles, he even got out his guitar and played a few songs. Wonderfully romantic!

We only made a few small adjustments in the Water department: showering every other day and if it’s yellow let it mellow… Still, these are some pretty easy things that can end up making quite a bit of difference.

Giving Back and the Eco-Sabbath are two things that we did not take part in for a few reasons, but mostly because we just didn’t have time. I know that’s not a good excuse but we really do feel as though we’re up to our ears in home renovation projects, plus I was busier than usual working last week, including a shoot on Sunday, and did I mention the tax deadline is this week? Having an Eco-Sabbath is something I’d like to schedule in the coming weeks and maybe even make an on-going occurrence.

All in all we quite enjoyed our No Impact Week and hope to participate in the next round coming this summer. Now our question to you is: what are some of your favourite environmentally conscious changes you’ve made (big or small)?

The weather here in London was so beautiful yesterday! We rode our bicycles to the post office to drop off our most recent batch of print orders. Yippee! And we even stopped for ice cream on the way home. High Roller was our flavour of choice, not that you asked. Bicycles and ice cream; the makings for a lovely spring afternoon.

Wishing you many beautiful days!

PS. Darren thinks I should have called this posting “bice cream”. I sounds better when he says it. Really.

Hello Everyone!

We have been utterly busy here in London getting our many projects in order. Here’s a quick run down of what’s had our attention:

seeds!

This past weekend we could be found attending two of the workshops at our local Seedy Saturday! We learnt about open-pollinated vegetables from Hawthorn Farm and listened to some seed starting stories from a local master gardener. Lunch was a beautiful Vegetable Tomato Basil Bean soup, lovely! We’ll definitely be making our own version at home.

Restraint was difficult when it came time for us to make our seed purchases (thank goodness I brought a list). Here’s what we came home with:

• scarlet runner beans – we’re going to grow these along the chain link fence at the back of our yard
• bouquet dill
• chives
• giant musselburgh leeks
• long standing bloomsdale spinach – good for spring
• costata romanesco zucchini – as recommended by Kim at Hawthorn Farm
• a mixed bag of native grasses from Tall Grass Ontario – Darren has a weakness for ornamental grass

They had run out of a couple things that we’ll be ordering in the next couple days:

• chinese five colour hot peppers
• mrs. burns lemon basil
• french charentais melon – has anyone had any luck growing melon in zone 5?

Plus we found out about the Stratford Garlic Festival, ever been?

a show!

Last Thursday took us to our local Rogers cable station for a taping of an interview with the Philip McLeod. Yup! My very first television appearance! If you live in the London, Ontario area you can see me in all my live glory! Details:

Mcleod

London’s Rogers Cable Channel 13

Wednesday, March 17, 2010

8pm (I’m the second interview which will be 8:30-9:00)

And if you just can’t get enough it will be replayed on Thursday, Friday, and Sunday

So mark your calendars then come on back here and leave us your thoughts!

social media!

It’s funny how the web and computers were supposed to make our lives easier and faster and more automated, yet I find I’m spending a lot of time trying to figure out where I should be spending my vast amounts of time online.

We blog.

We twitter.

We facebook.

I like them all for different reasons but I find the more time I spend online the less time I spend doing what I love, making pretty pictures.

I like our blog because it’s freeform and accessible to everyone with an internet connection, no account required. It’s the writing that bogs me down. Maybe I’ll write less and post more pictures – artwork or otherwise. We’re actually in the process of reworking our blog so I’d really love to hear your thoughts, that way we can make sure it works best for you.

I like twitter because it’s quick, to the point, and I can have little virtual conversations with people. Well, 140 characters at a time, but there is something profound about one short sentence, don’t you think? I find the twitter feed goes by so quickly that I often miss out on things that I would be interested in. I think I’m going to reduce the amount of people that I’m following so I can participate in more meaningful discussions.

I like facebook because I can share photos and links, plus the length of writing is up to me. I guess my real issue with facebook is that you need to be a member to access our page on a regular basis, otherwise I think it’s a nice blend of a blog and twitter.

What is your favourite way to stay up to date? How do you use social media? What are your suggestions for streamlining?

Good Morning Everyone!

How was your weekend? Ours was just lovely! We stayed cozy at home, dreaming of comfort food and the warmth of spring.

I did a rough plan of our 2010 vegetable garden using this really great website: Gardener’s Supply Kitchen Garden Planner. We’re going to try for some leafy greens this year, which should work well with the amount of shade our backyard can get. Here’s a general idea of what we’re planning on growing:

• onions
• leeks, this will be our first year
• parsley
• mache, we haven’t grown this before but we’re really excited
• lettuce
• mesclun, I’m itching to get things going (I know, it’s only March and I live in zone 6-ish) so I started a tray of mesclun to grow in our living room window.
• beets
• swiss chard
• spinach
• tomatoes
• peppers
• eggplants, hey, a girl can dream
• “melon”, Darren would love to have fresh melon from our garden, I mean, who wouldn’t? But it’s just not practical here so I’ve asked him to choose something else that he can be excited about.
• peas
• basil
• cucumber
• squash
• rosemary
• dill – is it a bad idea to put dill right in the garden? Will it self seed and take over? Should we plant it in a pot?

I’m anxiously awaiting Seedy Saturday here in London so I can pick up some seeds and talk sunshine for an afternoon.

This past Saturday I visited the Western Fair Farmer’s Market to pick up this week’s fresh veggies and I came home with the hugest sweet potato that I’ve ever seen! 1818 grams to be exact. And yes, that’s a full size 10 inch dinner plate it’s sitting on. We’ve been cutting chunks off and making sweet potato fries – yum!

Our weekend was quite food-focused, which seems pretty typical for us. What’s your relationship with food? Love it? Cook it? Grow it? Sell it?

I have been ogling the work of Michael Levin since last summer… The minimalist style he uses in his photographs of water is stunning, timeless, and definitely has a calming effect. The processing of his black and white imagery is superb! Lots of gray tones with rich shadow detail and subtle highlights illustrate his superior exposure control and craftsmanship.

I dream that one day my work will hang next to his.

{image: michael levin}

A few weeks ago I wrote about the pocket-sized floor plans that I found on Apartment Therapy. Over the holidays I had a chance to make some for our home: I’ve started with our living room and dining room. Mine aren’t exactly pocket-size, which is fine for me because I don’t carry a purse. I used 4×6 inch index cards, the blank side has a floor plan including dimensions and colour swatches, and the lined side I’m using for notes about the room, which is so far just window and furniture sizes.

I’m going to keep them in a 4×6 envelope in the glove compartment of my car, that way if I’m out and I see something that might work in our space I have all the information with me to make an informed purchase. I might stick one of those little ikea tape measures in there too.