Blog appearance OCD

Sorry for all the confusion on the blog appearance. I am sure every time you visit the blog you say, "Is this still Splendid Minta?" The answer is YES! I am just crazy OCD about the appearance. I think it is finally at a place where I am leaving it ALONE!!! PHEW!

Love,

crazy Liz

get your eat on.

Today is the day!!! Sweet Tater's Nicaragua Bake Sale starts at 10am - get your fast fingers ready!

go here at 10am to help!

Sweet Tater Charity Auction Preview

My dear old friend Katie of Sweet Tater Blog fame is hosting an online Bake Sale to raise funds for her upcoming service trip to Nicaragua on Thursday 3/3 from 10am to 11pm EST.

Katie is traveling with her university over Spring Break to participate in service learning projects in Nicaragua and she needs your help. Here's what she'll be doing over there...besides living in a hammock(!)

1. Participate in an archaeological dig for ancient artifacts which will then be used to create a small local museum that will drive traffic to the area and build up their economy

2. Provide nutritional counseling and medical supplies to the local people. This will involve: planting a community garden, presenting cooking demos using local produce and participating in dietary recalls and evaluations at a free clinic that we'll be running with doctors from a nearby city. (Our medical supplies have been donated by a doctor in the US.)

3. Acquire an understanding of and compassion for a highly impoverished, malnourished population and contribute to a group effort to improve their way of life without imposing our own American practices, foods or ideals

Really cool right? You can help too. Incredible bloggers from all over are donated yummy baked goods and you can snatch them up and help people in Nicaragua too!

I'm participating too! Here's a sneak peak at the Splendid Minta contribution:

I know you can't eat tea towels, but you're going to need something to wipe your mouth with, right?

Now... head over to Sweet Tater to check out sweet Katie and then be sure to head back over on Thursday and buy some yummy grub.

Identity crisis

Splendid Minta is going through an identity crisis. I know I don't love what I've got going on. So I've spent all morning on Picnik trying to right the wrong.

HALP!

Baby did a bad, bad thing

I think I write more posts about how much of a bad blogger I am than anything else. Pardone me por favor.

It's all about balance.

I just watched Eat Pray Love. You see, if you know me well you, know I hold the book (notice I didn't say the movie) in high regard, and I've been holding off watching the movie because I am afraid it will ruin the book for me. Good news is, it didn't (although Eric can attest to the fact that for most of the movie, I was yelling at the TV saying, "I can't believe they left that part out!"). The movie did do one thing for me tonight, and it seems a timely lesson, life is about balance.

Right now, I am balancing school, wifedom, a little tiny bit of employment and other personal activities such as blogging, crafting and gardening. Writing it all in one sentence like that diminishes the duties but I assure you I am one busy girl. I am kinda struggling in this very moment to balance life. Being a wife and student is of the upmost importance and the rest just kinda has to fall in line. Right now however, there is not much of anything else going on and I am feeling a little out of balance because of it. I am working on it though.

I've got some great posts coming up for you like, "This one time at bandcamp, I mean school" - buhlieve me, you are going to get sick of me talking about school and "Thing's I've learned about Southern Gardens". I've got some great visual inspiration to share too. Please, please stay tuned, I owe you big time for seeing me through this balancing act.

I did find time to go out with the girls last week. It was a bittersweet farewell dinner to my friend April from A. Liz Adventures. Can you spot her?

She's the adorable one, 2nd from the left. We miss you already April!

yes, you have homework and other blogging adventures

ok Blogger is being poopy... thus the change in layout. Sorry for any confusion for my 3 loyal readers. I am kinda anal about how my blog looks, just call me vain - its the old advertising girl in me. I have to admit, even without the personalized header of yore, I kinda like the notebook paper. Hope you do too!

I've had a couple of people ask me how I do my headers, etc. I will prep a little DIY header tutorial for y'all once Blogger gets it sh*t together.

Until then, just pretend reading Splendid Minta is your homework assignment - except you actually enjoy it.

The Dewey Decimal system of links

Let's get real here, I spend a fair amount of time "Rogging". What is Rogging you say? It's Liz-speak for blog reading. Is there an actual word out there for this act? I visit crafty sites, home improvement ones, a few fashion and cooking blogs too. Most days I find a few projects/recipes/ideas that I want to file away for later use and these typically get dragged to a bookmark titled CRAFTY LINKS on my firefox browser window.

NO MORE... In an effort to be more efficient, use the blog for more purposes other than pretty pictures and little notes on life, I've created the Splendid Minta Link Library. Here you can find some of my favorite craft projects I have yet to try, yummy recipes, some cool DIY projects and just general links I don't want to lose. Go see if there is anything you like too...

I am not as cool as I think I am

I had a major blog realization today. My family reads my blog. WHAT? You mean people I'm related to actually read this thing I write (that's totally public and out there for all the world to see) WHAT?

Here's how it went down: Mom & I decided we needed to practice skype-ing because we were skype virgins and since the big Skype-mas 2010 is scheduled for tomorrow night, we needed a dress rehearsal.

I wore my best Mickey Mouse sweatshirt for the occasion.Mom: "Good thing we are practicing for Skype-mas"

Liz: "How did you know I called it Skype-mas"

Mom: "Oh, Cheryl told me"

Liz: "Aunt Cheryl?"

Mom: "Yeah, she and I were talking the other day and she asked me about Skype-mas"

Liz: "huh?"

Mom: "Yeah, she reads your blog. Adda does too! That's so cute that you called it Skype-mas"


HI AUNT CHERYL!! HI ADDA!!! xoxo


YIKES!!! Must self-edit now.

I aim to please.

See that fun little survey gadget up top on the right?

Can you do me a favor and click the answer that most applies to you, please?

Thank you. You are the best!

Have you seen? Grosgrain: Embellish Knits Month

This is right up my alley! Kathleen of Grosgrain is so talented! She is a self-taught seamstress and has an excellent eye for good design.
This month it's Embellish Knits Month and let me tell you, I am envious of all her beautiful new knits/cardigans. Most of the items it seems she picks up at the thrift shop then adds some flair and voila, magic!

Here are my favorites:
Head over to her blog to see the rest!

Say Cheese!

Christmas came a little early around here.

We've upgraded our hardware and finally sprung for a Digital SLR camera.

Up til now, we've been using a great point a shoot digital, Canon Powershot SD750 to be exact. Our point and shoot has served us incredibly well. It's great for outdoor shots and takes surprisingly great Macro shots buuuut, we've always been photography nerds - both of us taking photography in college and valuing a great SLR (read: interchangeable lens camera).

So, after much saving and deliberation we sprung for the Nikon D3000. We considered all the major camera companies, played with them at the big box stores over the years but it really boiled down to price and reviews we researched, plus I've used a Nikon for work before and love it's ease of use and great photographs.

The D3000 is considered an intro Digital SLR, great for beginners to intermediate photogs and will serve us well for years to come.

So far, I'm loving it! Most notable differences so far - those yummy fuzzy backgrounds you get with a long depth of field and wide aperture and when taking pictures of rooms, the angle is wider and crisper.... see: the first one is taken with the old camera and the second from the new one - while they were taken about 3 months apart, they are from roughly the same angle.
what a difference!

in case you are wondering, we referenced Pioneer Woman a lot for the "non-photographer" advice on photography. I could spend hours on her site. If you've never been there you must live under a rock. No offense.

Cheers to better photos!

Need to know...

How do you all like the new blog look/layout?

I was feeling a little frisky and changed everything up a bit - what do you think?

Blog Housekeeping

Allow me to bring your attention to a few new things you may have noticed here at Splendid Minta.

At the bottom of each post you'll see this great little toolbar:
You can email a recipe to someone who might like it, share it on facebook or twitter or even blog about it on your [google] blog. I would love for you to share something you see here with someone else.

You may have also noticed I've beefed up the blogroll on the right side of the page. If you like what you see here you probably will like some of the blogs on the right.

I'm also using labels now - see those little red words at the bottom of each entry? Well you can click on those and check out other posts like the one you like. Lets say your looking for posts dealing with canning - just click canning and you'll have all the Splendid Minta posts about canning at your fingertips.

And my summer goal for the blog - start noting where I grab inspirational photos so you can link back to the blog or site I've pulled it from. I promise to be better about this.

I may still only have about 15 people that read my blog on a regular basis but for me its not really about who is checking me out. Blogging is such a personal creative outlet for me. I love sharing my projects with others - even if its just sending it out there into cyberworld. So, thank you for being here and thank you for sharing Splendid Minta with others.