Canon Photo Printer

Michael keep asking me if I had written a blog post yet about the little printer we picked up at Best Buy on Tuesday night. He bought it mainly to keep track of continuity of make up effects for the goat movie he is working on in a few weeks. Michael is also working on a different project this weekend with Mark Whitten- the main actor from "A Light in the Darkness", the Star Wars fan film!

It's a Canon Selphy CP900 Compact Printer that we bought. It's only 5" in height x 7" in width x 2.4" in depth! We almost walked right past it on the display shelf, hidden between the regular sized printers. Here are some pictures I took of it yesterday. Michael and I tested it out Tuesday night, then he showed me how to use it. I believe we paid $99 for the printer = tax deductible! ;)

The extra pictures and ink had to be purchased separately, although they come in the same box.
But 108 pictures (all 4x6) plus three ink cartridges for $36, sounds like a great deal to me!

 What's this? An old Gameboy? Nope, it's a tiny printer!

 The picture gets printed one color at a time. It slides back and forth through the front of
the printer and almost all of the way out the back. Yellow is the first color it prints.

 The photo tray came with 5 free photo pages. Yippee!

There are a few different ways to get a picture onto the Canon Selphy printer before you print it. You can even edit the picture through the printer. But I prefer to use all my cool editing effects on PicMonkey, like I have for the past year and a half. Our examples are seen below:
#1 ~ use the WiFi from your cell phone to send the photo to the printer. If your phone doesn't have WiFi, I believe there is a place to connect a Firewire cable.
#2 ~ (my way) Edit the pictures on your computer, save them to a USB, then print them. However, my two photos were separate files. Michael was able to put them together as one photo, using one of the printer menu options. You can also print 4 or 8 pictures (or a scrambled collage) on one 4x6, but then I feel like the pictures are way too small. I'd prefer my pictures to be no smaller than 2x3.
#3 ~ Michael took this picture of me and Sasha with our Canon T2i camera during his printer tests, then without any adjustments, popped the camera's SIM card into the slot above the photo tray and clicked "print".

The pictures all turned out very well. They look different in exposure only due to the glare from the window when I took the pictures of the pictures taped to the wall. So, what do you think? Are you sold? Only note.. don't use it on a hardwood floor. Even from simply sitting there for these few "model" pictures, it got a little scratched up on the bottom.

Engagement 2010

Three years ago from today Michael took me to the Harry P. Leu gardens in Orlando for the first time. He asked me to dress up nice and brought the camera. We had recently moved our wedding date up to May 7th 2011 from September 24th. And although I already had my wedding dress picked out, he hadn't "put a ring on it". Haha. Walking around the Rose Garden, I almost said, "This would be a nice place to be proposed to." But luckily I kept my mouth shut, because only a few minutes later, he did! Oh, I cried so much and he had already asked me at least 20 times before then, to be sure I would say "Yes" for the real thing. I would marry Michael every single day if I could!

Tonight I was able to send a long message to a close friend with a list of reasons how I knew Michael was The One, getting to retell stories of the many times he got me to fall more in love with him while we were dating, engaged, and still now that we are married. Ugh, just that smile. *wipes a sappy tear from my eye* Well, here are some extra pictures from the Arboretum in Arcadia last week!

There are a lot that I took, and a bunch of good ones too, but these (shown above) are my second favorites. I added more green plant and tree pictures to show off this time, because after all, an arboretum is a botanical garden devoted to trees. ** Also, a quick HAPPY BIRTHDAY SHOUT OUT to my brother's awesome girlfriend, Jacquie!! **

Survivor

A couple weeks ago I bought Tofu Fettuccine from the grocery store, which can be found in the cheese section. They didn't have the Miracle Noodles I was looking for, but figured for only $1.30, I could try these out instead. I will start off by saying that I would not recommend them. One of the girls from work told me to drain them (they come packed in water), rinse them to get rid of the fishy smell, then put them into a pot of boiling water. I did all of that and it did not make them feel any different, but the fishy smell did go away.

I added all of the seasonings (garlic powder, oregano and parsley) into the draining bowl with the noodles. I later added tomato sauce and corn, in hopes that all the mix of flavors would distract me from the (lack of) taste of the noodles. But the wormy texture of the noodles could not be ignored, which led me to laughing and asking Michael to take these pictures:

It reminded me of the episodes of Survivor, that my family used to watch together way back when it was a newer show, where the contestants have to eat different kinds of bugs. I couldn't even get the noodles down. They were so squishy, plus its not like I am a huge fan of Fettuccine pasta in the first place, whether it's made with tofu or Alfredo. So no, I did not win the reward of a Mountain Dew and a bag of Doritos. I probably would have gotten voted off for letting my team down. Even Sasha wouldn't get near them! Luckily, I did think the garlic toast that I made was very tasty.

 

Arcadia's Arboretum

I was so happy that Michael and I got a chance to go to the Arboretum in Arcadia on Tuesday. I have wanted to go there since March, but it is only free on the third Tuesday of each month. I knew we wouldn't be able to go next month because Michael will have just started working on production for the goat movie by then, and in November we will be busy with the movers boxing all of our stuff up! When we drove to Arcadia in March for our Marriage Encounter weekend, it took us over an hour due to construction on the Interstate (or I guess they are called Freeways here?), but on Tuesday it didn't take more than 20 minutes and the parking at the Arboretum was free too ~ It always is.

The area was nice and big, but I couldn't help but compare it to Descanso Gardens in Glendale- my absolute favorite; I want to live there!! The Arboretum seemed a lot bigger and we had to check the map often to see where we wanted to go next and which roads or paths to take to get there. However, I just read online that it says it is 127 acres, while Descanso Gardens is 150 acres. I do keep letting the tulip area take over my memories and forget all about the back half of the land, simply because I did not blog about it. And that is why I blog- to remember the details. I may have to post those pictures later this week, so you can see them too!

 I was happy that Michael was patient enough with me as I walked around trying to find ledges to use as a tripod, so I could take timed pictures of us together. And he even began to Instagram some photos of flowers, plants and Little Yellow Butterflies on his iPhone. I think he had a nice time too, although he seemed to be most interesting in watching a bunch of guys take down pieces of a set that they may have used the day before. And he can always find imaginary house ideas inside a bamboo "cave". He pretended to take a shower in one corner, although when I asked, "Can my scrapbook area be over here?", he told me, "No". I guess he gets the bamboo house all to himself.

I will admit that I was bummed that they got rid of the Catawompus, which I was most excited to see and walk though. By the end Michael even wanted to see it the way I was talking about it the whole time and singing "Catty-wompus, catty-wompus!" as we walked along the paved roads. They simply must have taken it down because we walked all around the area that the map said it was in, but instead all we found was a locked garden with some scarecrows and a creepy dead squirrel on a post/sign. We drove down the road so Michael could get a Subway for lunch, then we drove us back home. It was a good day.

Benefits of a Lifestyle Change

Aside from feeling all around great and being proud of myself for getting daily exercise and eating more fruits (red grapes right now) and vegetables than I used to, I also like to try new recipes.  Today I had left over celery sticks from my tuna salad, plus extra chickpeas after I ran out of spinach for my salads, so I decided to make my own hummus. Did you know that the word "hummus" is actually Arabic, meaning "chickpeas"? Interesting! From Pinterest, I found an easy Black Bean & Chickpea Hummus recipe at Living the High Life. I didn't follow it completely, substituting ingredients for what we already had in the fridge, and not measuring any of it. I used garlic powder instead of a clove, lemon juice instead of juice from a lemon, almond milk instead of yogurt and didn't use curry powder. I used a smoothie blender to whip it all together!

Have I mentioned that hot water is the best thing ever invented? Ha. Aside from being great in showers when Michael likes to have the house 71 degrees at night, it made cleaning the smoothie blender super easy.  Also, I got this glass bowl from Target yesterday (only $1.59). We have been squabbling over whose turn it is to do the dishes, so I have a few of my own now- including the cute 99 Cent store plates that I picked up last month for Sasha's birthday party. This bowl does very well for picture presentation too. Don't you agree?

On Monday morning I stayed up again the whole day after working over night and took pictures outside with Sasha. My main reason for this was because Monday was Day 40, and I wanted to compare my body from how it was at the beginning of last month at Laguna Beach. I copied the poses the best I could, wearing the same outfit and there is a very healthy change seen. That makes me feel really good. Here are random ones of me and Sasha that I liked the best!

I wanted to take these progress body pictures since we probably won't go to Venice beach like I was hoping. Michael prefers beaches where he can actually get in the water. And unfortunately, he burns a lot more easily here in California since clouds are such a rare occurrence. And I guess its okay since I already have plans to go to different beaches with my bff, Alana, and my mom in December.

the History of History

Here are some pictures of the outside of the National History Museum building, the Becoming Los Angeles exhibit, and the back, where they had another garden area. My favorite! They are so pretty and I love the environment of the birds and the flowers and walking in the dirt with bees flying nearby (but not too close).

See, again with the lack of reading. How did cow poop change LA? I will never know.
The only thing I learned from a big sign painted on the wall: Mexican Independence began in 1821.

Michael really enjoyed the parts that talked about the creation of "moving pictures" and said he wished they had a lot more about the history of movies. I'm sure there are whole museums about that. The moving carrige was cool with the screen and video playing in the background. They had a box that I clicked and the scene changed from a city to riding along a dirt road. I thought the gift shop was really cute too. It had a bunch of stuffed animals and dinosaur figurines and stone necklaces. I have to admit, I would really like to have some California/ Los Angeles souvenirs to take with us when we move out of the sunny state in November!

There was a little pool that people could step down into, to dip your toes, like the sign said. But right as I sat down to take off my shoe, a lady came around saying they were closing for the day and needed everyone to leave. Blast! We also walked over to the Memorial Coliseum to see where the Olympics had been held in 1984 ~ coolio.

Of course Michael's favorite part of any outing is getting to choose where we eat for lunch or dinner. That night we went to Hook burger in Burbank. I got the Maui burger (no cheese, no mayo) and he got the Hickory Burger with cheese, bacon and onion rings.