One of the things I remember best about Christmas as a child is all of the yummy Christmas treats my mom used to make for us.  From about the end of November she would keep the kitchen in a constant state of activity and there was always something for us to help out with.  Decorating cookies, dipping chocolate cherries, washing dishes…but mostly ‘cleaning’ the icing mixers of all that pesky leftover icing.  Someone had to do it.

In an effort to get ‘into the Christmas Spirit’ and to really help Danni celebrate her first festive season, we’ve decided to renew that tradition and make ourselves fat bake all of my childhood favourites.  Last week was butter tarts and a new addition called Rocky Road Crunches.  (We’ll actually have to remake both of these this weekend as our supply has already run dry.)

This past weekend we made sugar cookies and something a bit more challenging but an all time favourite from my childhood.  The gingerbread house.

Not wanting to tackle the gingerbread house blindly, I picked up this book from Amazon last week and read all of the important bits before setting out on our confection construction.  I then spent a fair bit of time looking at gingerbread house images online to decide just how to design our first home. The book includes a design for a simple 4 walled affair, boring!    I wanted to branch out and push the limits a bit so I spent a good hour designing the templates necessary.  It was admittedly a little ambitious and would either be a great first attempt or a glorious mess of gingerbread and frosting.

I figured delicious either way, so why not go all out!

I messed up a bit on the actual gingerbread recipe by using too much flour so it was tough to roll out, but we managed after letting it warm back up to room temperature.  Patience is not easy and I’m sure as a 6 year old I wouldn’t have stood for this delay, but it was a necessary step.

One of the things I remember clearly about my mom’s gingerbread houses were the candy glass windows so I knew I had to recreate those.  There were instructions in the book on how to do it, but that involved making them separately  and gluing them in with icing after.  Certain that’s not how we did it as a child, a quick call to mom revealed the secret and we were on our way.

I really wanted to take a few photos of us doing the actual construction and decoration of our first home, but there was so much icing and powdered sugar everywhere so you’ll have to use your imagination for that part.  The final home looks like this:

Surprising 2 whole days later it looks exactly the same.  It may have something to do with the fact that I ate my weight in candy while building and decorating the house.  It turns out I still need my mom around to tell me to stop eating all of the sweets as I have the same self control my 6 year old self had when it comes to sugar.

There are a couple more photos of the house and cookies in the gallery.

It’s random but mildly exciting for me.  The website Make: Online has added a page to their site that links to the orb tool tutorial I posted back in April on Flickr.

I’ve never visited the site before, but they have some cool stuff and quite a few links to other light painting tool creation tutorials.  The cold cathode guide by Flickr mate { tcb } is particularily good.

With our nerd badges affixed firmly to our lapels, Robert and I were off to this years Film and Comic Con for a day of childlike indulgance and perhaps a brush with fame or two.

These are mostly just snaps as I was far to excited about all of the toys on offer and costumes on display to worry too much about shooting.  (this should be read as an excuse for the poor quality of the shots)

We circled the showroom floor more than a dozen times as there was always some new gadget out that we had to have or some new cosplayer on display that we had to see.  Also, we spent a fair bit of time just waiting around for our photo op with Captain Kirk.

All in all, a great day out and definitely something we’ll do again!

There are a few more shots from the day in the gallery.

evilKitchen.ca has a new logo!

I’ve wanted to do something like this for ages, but I definitely lack the skills to do it myself so I needed outsource the work. I’ve spoken to a couple of people about doing it in the past, but nothing has ever panned out. Until Lee posted a link to some of his previous works on the POTN thread.  I sent him a quick message about what I was looking for and he was happy to get cracking right away.

We went through a few options before finally deciding on the toaster for its instant recognizability (and how can you not love the devil-horn-toast?)

I’ll be adding a smaller version to the header image of the site in the next day or so, and I’ve already inserted it into most/all of my online networking sites.  I’m very excited about it!

Would love to hear what you think!

Once again, the fine folks from POTN and I set out for a day of photography.  This time the destination was Rochester, Kent.  I don’t recall who selected the destination as it seemed a bit random, but they had a nice cathedral and the lion’s share of a castle remaining to attract some photographic attention.

I did sneak into the crypt of Rochester cathedral for a couple of light orbs as well.  Ok, so it was open to the public and there was no sneaking involved, but it was still a very cool venue.

After the excitement of the castle and cathedral and when I’d felt said excitement had peaked, we headed down to the Medway Festival of Steam.  Honestly.  There were some interesting steam powered contraptions lumbering around, but not really my cup of tea.  It was down at the rivers edge, which gave me a chance to play with some really long exposures and shoot these boats through a bit of welders glass.

You’ll find a few more images from the day here.  There are also images from the other photographers on the POTN site here.