productivity, part 2 (electric boogaloo)

I fear I've fallen a couple weeks behind again... All this productivity in the real world has led to less productivity in the bloggy world. In fact, many of week five's pictures were taken almost as afterthoughts, as my attention was on other things.

Sunday was another food photo lunch, and the subject was a couple of quinoa patties from Heidi Swanson's Super Natural Every Day. They turned out well, but the recipe called for way too many onions, which also made the cakes fall apart more easily. With some adjustments, we'd make them again, though. These had gruyere and chives, but they're the kind of thing you could take in multiple directions with different ingredients.

29/366 quinoa patties

On Monday, I started my next project: finish the stupid plaster medallion on the dining room ceiling. The room has been painted since 2008, but the scraping and painting of the medallion has taken much longer. I worked on it here and there the last few years and had it almost ready to paint by the time I ran out of motivation last time. But now I was determined to finish it! I did the last of the scraping and sanding off the old paint on that Monday afternoon.

For my picture of the day, the word was "Nature." I didn't have the time or desire to do much more than walk through the park and around the block, so it was probably an ideal theme. Not the most exciting picture, but it did the job for the day.

30/366 nature

Of course, I went even lazier for Tuesday. The theme was "You Again," which was clearly meant to be a self portrait to bookend with the one on January 1. Yeah... I didn't do a self portrait that day either. And I certainly didn't feel like taking one on a day when I was working on the house. I spent some time on the ladder again, washing the dust off of what I didn't get to the day before. This is what the medallion looked like at the beginning of that work session. Quite a bit more definition in the design when compared to its state in 2008 or even 2009. Looking at those pictures, I can't believe how much work I put into it. It was worth it, but... never again.

31/366 you again

Then it was February 1st, and the daily themes were at an end. Technically, there's a new list I could have used for February, but I thought it was time to go back to making my own rules. And my rules say that the first of the month needs a calendar picture. The page for this month featured a heart for Valentine's Day, so I decided to augment it with a few of my own. There I was, still wearing my paint clothes from priming the medallion that afternoon, cutting out hearts from card stock, and hurrying to get my picture of the day done before the light was gone. I think I showered at about 5pm that day.

Also, I had this brilliant idea a few days before: we had a board that was supposed to cap one end of our cupboards, and it was just sitting in the utility room, not being used. (We never got around to putting it up...) I dusted it off, and now I have a fake table top that looks way better than our actual dining table. That's what I used for this photo.

32/366 february

I took a day off from ceiling work on Thursday so that I could run some errands in Noe Valley. Mostly, I needed to buy some birthday cards and send them to a couple nephews. Then I saw this interesting pitcher and mug set in the window at Ambiance, which ended up being my picture of the day. I went to the playground with Carmen and Elsa later that afternoon for some quality swinging time, but I liked the color in this shot better.

33/366 perfect pair

Friday meant more painting, while listening to every last podcast I had downloaded to iTunes. (There was some "Wait Wait Don't Tell Me," some NPR Pop Culture podcasts, and some old How I Met Your Mother and Grey's Anatomy ones.) It took a couple hours, but I got the whole medallion painted and finished. I'll probably take an "after" shot one of these days, but I'll wait until after we've replaced the ugliest light fixture ever with something better.

After painting and showering, it was time to take my picture of the day. I had determined that eggs would be a nice subject, since I was on a hard boiled egg snack kick around then. Steve had even gotten me brown eggs so they would make a prettier picture if/when I decided to take the shot. The ones that made it into the picture weren't actually the hard boiled ones, but they looked no different anyway.

34/366 eggs

Saturday was a little less exciting. We didn't do a whole lot, other than a making a quick trip to Walgreens. On the way, we passed these interesting flowers, so I took some pictures. I also got a few pictures of neighborhood cats on the way home, but I liked the flowers better this time.

35/366 green flowers

That takes care of January, which means the first mosaic of the year.