Wednesday, December 12, 2012

Inspiration


With this post I will begin a series on photographers who inspire me and leave their marks on my work. First up is Karl Blossfeldt.
His super magnified images of plants show such an amount of beauty, detail and the love for nature.
It's about two years ago that I saw some original prints hanging at FOAM and still they pop in my head every once in a while. This inspired me to take photos of my own plants, which you can see over here (and which I might post here in the near future)







Pictures found here

Monday, November 26, 2012

Lately


Lately I've been busy with loads of good stuff. Since I only work two days a week at a "real" job, I can spend the rest of my time on my own projects. So there are some photography project I will show you shortly. Apart from that I'm doing a lot of remodeling in the house. But since I'm on a budget, this contains a lot of thrifting, which I love! I've already bought a lot of vintage (or just old?!) frames and pictures for an artsy display above the couch.
And of course it Christmas is coming. This is the second Christmas living with my boy, but last year I couldn't convince him to get a tree, since we wouldn't spend Christmas at home. But this year we will, Christmas eve that is, so I'm getting high on Christmas decorations (also thrifted or hand-made!) 
The picture above I made at the Amsterdamse Bos (the forest of Amsterdam) when the boy and I went for a bike ride and found this farm-turned-into-restaurant with deer and peacocks which was lovely. 

Monday, October 22, 2012

Auditions



Last week was amazingly busy, but with a lot of really nice events! On friday I photographed an audition for one of the theatre groups I follow, Danstheater Adentro. They are looking for a new dancer for a part in this production: Doornroos, which is based on a book by Dutch author Toon Tellegen. 
So now I have about 600 photos to work my way through. I like these jobs, because I can practice my speed and reflexes. 
On Saturday I went to Rotterdam with the boy and visited two museums, about which I will blog in my Museum project posts, hopefully today!  







Wednesday, October 17, 2012

A quick note: Freunde von Freunden

I just ran into this website called Freunde von Freunden, because blogger and artist Sandra Juto was featured in an interview. This and other interviews on the site are amazingly inspiring!

Iceland part I: Icelandic horses



This summer the boy and I went to Iceland. Never ever have I seen such amazing nature and I feel sad that the images of this land flee from my mind so quick. Luckily I made tons of pictures. I showed them to some people this weekend and thought it would be nice to share some here. Part one are these beautiful Icelandic horses.






A quick note: New phone!



So I finally did it, I got a telephone contract with a new phone. This means I finally get a new one, all for myself. Before this I used cheap models (aka, no internet, no camera, only using it for calling and texting) and after that I got an old iPhone which belonged to my boy.
But now I've got my own! It so super fast and I can finally use all the apps I've installed. So I'll be getting active on Instagram as well. You can find me under 'greatwillowtree'. Let me know yours!

Now I only have to wait for my perfect iPhone case made by Ulrika Kestere aka Ulicam. Boy that was a hard decision, they're all so lovely.

And that is a picture (made with Instagram) of one of my succulents. I love them! (who doesn't?!) I'll do a blog post about them soon (again, who doesn't?!).

Monday, October 15, 2012

best laid plans (and apple pies!)

This weekend did not go as planned at all! I was supposed to start the museum-challenge on Saturday, for which I want to visit one museum each week to see what's all out there, art, history, what else?
I felt really bad though (my boy calls it sick, but I don't like to label those things), so I stayed in bed almost a whole day, made union soup (I love making and eating soup when I feel bad), burned some other food, watched Peter Pan II; Return to Neverland (nowhere near as nice as the original one... why is that so hard?) missed a nice party and watch stupid (and less stupid) tv-programs. I guess those days are also important.

Sunday we had some visitors for an early diner, so I wanted to make some bread to go with the union soup and bake little apple pies. During the morning I decided to not make the bread, because a real baguette, with some cheese melted on it, fits better with union soup. Of course, I could have tried to make it myself, but that is something for the future. I just bought one.

However, I did make the apple pies! They were lovely.
I got inspired by the lovely pies the people from Public Pie make, because at a festival all I wanted to buy was one of their jummy smelling apple pies, but every time I went there, I was too late!! Noo, what a shame! So I just made them myself. Ha.

Here is the recipe, I got it from Anne Bakt and adapted it a bit. I guess most people know how to make apple pie, or know how to find one of the million recipes online, but since this is my first recipe, I don't really care! Hope you enjoy it!



Ingredients

Pastry
300 gr white flour
190 gr butter
150 gr sugar

Filling
600 gr apples - I used more, my apples where too big! So I ate what was left over. I used Gourdreinetten, but you can choose any sort you like.
2.5 tbsp sugar - I used brown sugar for the filling, just because I like it!
.5 tbsp cinnamon - or probably more, I don't really measure spices and always add more cinnamon, I love it!
80 gr of whatever - In this case I added raisins, probably a bit less than 80 gr. Do whatever you like. Go crazy on nuts, raisins and the like
some lemon juice

You also need
Muffin pan for 12 muffins (or 2 for 6, like in my case!)
A bowl (duh)
Dough roller
An oven (duh again!)
and other things I'm not going to mention here.

What to do?!

First of all you want your muffin pan to be very well buttered, because else it is hell to get your lovely little pies out! So butter it up!






Next you make your dough. Throw everything in the bowl and kneed! If it is hard to get it consistent and you have little patience (or your butter is too cold....) you can add a little water in the mixture. I actually always do this. Not too much though, that's no good. In most recipes it says you have to let the dough rest for a while. I never really understood why and never did it, but now I am curious to see the benefit of this. So I wanted to let my dough rest in the fridge, but it wasn't really much colder when I got it out again, so I'll try again next time!



Okay, the filling! I like my apples really fine. No big lumps of apple, but soft smooth pieces of heaven. So I use a grater. (Be careful though, my boy lost a (little tiny) bit of his finger once with this thing). So peel the apples, remove the cores and grate them. You can also just chop them, if that's how your boat rocks. Add lemon juice to keep them from going brown (and add some nice flavors). Add the sugar and cinnamon and mix it very very good.

Next you get your dough out (which has not cool down a bit, maybe I need a better fridge!). Roll part of it out and punch out your pie bottoms. If you don't have a great handy tool like I found in my cupboard, you can use a knife or something else (use your imagination!). As you can see I choose to first punch the bottom and after that add the sides of the pie with a stroke of dough. You can also do it all at once, using a bigger round, but I choose not to. Make sure you press the corners well with the method, else there will be holes between the two pieces. Also make sure you keep some dough left over for the top of your pies, but that wasn't really a problem for me. I had plenty left.



Next stuff it with your delicious filling! I made too much, since I had such hugh apples, so I really tried to stuff it. And build a nice tower of apple filling on top. 
Now comes the hardest decision in the pie making process. What will you put on top?! This time I choose to crumble my dough and sprinkle it on top. Just because I love crumbled dough. But you go also go more traditional and add strokes, or even close the whole pie. There is probably enough dough left for that. Make some nice garment on it. Great. However, I made crumbles which resulted in lots of left over dough, which I ate (well part of it, the rest is still in the fridge). - When I was little I always thought the best part of making pies/cookies/whatever was eating the left over stuff. So being a grown up and all, I always make sure the are left overs! - You can also add a little bit of egg on top to make your pies nice and shiny. I didn't, I like them dull.

Bake your little pies at 180° (preheat your oven) for about 45-50 minutes depending on how brown you like them. Just check it.



Let them cool down a bit before taking them out of the pan and then place them on a rack to cool down entirely. Or enjoy them warm. Hmmmm!

And it is autumn! Time to listen to Fleet Foxes again! 

Sunday, October 14, 2012

Bird on the Wire

I am very much blessed with a lot of friends who make great music in great bands. One of these bands is Bird on the Wire. My high school friend Nina, who is am amazing drummer, forms this band with the lovely Rosa. They had had some bad luck with guitarists, but since a few months my boy is also part of the Birds. About a week ago they had their first gig in this new assembly and it was a great success.

I love what my boy brings to the band. He looks so good with his new bass-guitar-combo and he sings! Here are some pictures of that night made by me. They had a panda bear-livestream projected behind them, which was ultimately cool! Also down here is a videoclip of one of their songs (with an old guitarist). I love the clip so much, it such a nice and sad journey into this lonely bird-mans life.



Bird on the wire V Bird on the wire I Bird on the wire III Bird on the wire IV Bird on the wire II

Monday, October 8, 2012

New header



So I've been playing around with Photoshop and made up this new header. I don't think this will be the final one (as if there is ever going to be one...!) but I'm quite happy for now. Tell me what you think.

And now I've got this:

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Wednesday, October 3, 2012

Freshness

For some time now I've been wanting to have my own blog. My own space where I can share all the great things that inspire me. These are mostly other blogs and the great persons behind them. They make me want to begin projects and be creative. These projects almost never happen though, because they disappear from my mind. With this blog I hope to make a change in this process.
So I will blog about my own projects, like the museum-project (visit 1 museum each week and write about it), my plant-project (I don't have a garden, but I do really much want one), and my cookings and bakings (there is probably something like a bread per week-project in the future!)

For now I still have some work on the lay out. I already changed the name (which was from years ago, when on a whim I wanted to start a blog, but didn't really though about what I wanted to blog about) and I have loads of ideas to blog about.

I'm very excited! Hope you will stick around to see what progress I'll be making.