11. Moon Pies

Yum Yum Yum

As soon as I saw Rex's video I knew exactly what I wanted to do. Anyone that knows me well knows I love to cook, any excuse to experiment and make something new. So after watching Rex's video I really wanted to make a Moon Pie.

 I've attached a short video from Greyson Explains youtube channel who explains amazingly well what a Moon Pie is:

The Biscuit

The biscuits used are graham crackers the UK equivalent would probably be something like a digestive biscuit. I've tried a couple of recipes but couldn't find a perfect one so this is a collaboration of about six different recipes.

Ingredients you will need:

- 380g Plan White Flour

- 180g Dark Brown Sugar

- 1tsp Bicarbonate of Soda

- 4g Salt

- 115g Honey

- 2tbsp Vanilla Extract

- 5tbsp Milk

- 2 bags of Marshmallows (white)

- 2 bars of Dark Chocolate 

Making the dough:

Preheat your oven to 180 degrees. 

Mix together the flour, brown sugar, bicarb & salt in a bowl (If your're lucky and have a mixer feel free) Mix all the ingredients together well. Whilst that is mixing, whisk together the honey, milk and vanilla extract. Then mix together.

When all the ingredients are mixed together, Lay out some cling film and cover lightly with flour, place the ball of dough in the fridge for approximately 2 hours as it's quite a sticky dough.

Once thats done flour your worktop and roll out the dough with a depth of 1cm. Then use a round cookie cutter  and cut out your biscuits.

I then sprinkled caster sugar mixed with cinnamon on top and baked for 20-25mins.

The Marshmallow

Once my biscuits had cooled, I then needed to create the marshmallow filling. I attempted to make my own marshmallow but sadly this ended in what I can only describe as the marshmallow man from ghostbusters coming out my microwave. 

The easier alternative is to buy some marshmallows and put them in the microwave for 15 seconds. This then goes into a piping bag and spread across the biscuits which are then joined. 

The Final Result

Once this is done melt the chocolate over some boiling water and dip the biscuits in and then let set in the fridge or if your impatient like me the freezer.

And finally a quote

"A cake is a very good test of an oven: if it browns too much on one side and not on the other, it's not your fault - you need to have your oven checked"

          Delia Smith

10. Animated Astronaut

The First Thing - An Old Sony Television

Strangely enough, the very first thing I thought of when I saw Craig Osgood's drawing of an astronaut was an old Sony television. I can't really remember the actual images that I saw on that television, but for some reason I think I remember going around to a friend's house in 1972 when I was 6 years old so that we could all watch something which was far more exciting than any Hollywood blockbuster of today, but which at the same time seemed entirely normal and to be expected by my 6 year old self who had grown up immersed in several years worth of men walking on the moon. This miraculously exciting event was viewed on that small, foreign, Sony device which at the time was unusual in itself because it wasn't until many years later that it became commonplace to purchase electronics and gadgets produced by Japanese companies.

I can't remember any earlier times when I watched astronauts live on television but I can figure out the year of this instance because we had just moved from one area to another in San Antonio, Texas in time for me to start first grade at my new school and thus I know is was 1972. ( Yes, I know that I incorrectly put 1973 in the video titles. Sorry about that. I was a bit hasty in trying to complete the project. )

With a little help from everyone's favourite answer machine, Google of course, I have managed to pin down the fact that that was the last time anyone ever watched men walking on the moon. It was the Apollo 17 mission and it seems strange to think that it was so long ago. I was reminded of those moon walking days more recently when my children were excited about watching the somewhat similar, but let's face it, no where near as exciting or amazing, highest ever skydive by Felix Baumgartner which was streamed live on the internet and viewed by my children on a white MacBook. One day of course they may think back nostalgically to that event and the quaint old technology of the day.

San Antonio, Texas

My earliest ever memory is of when we moved to San Antonio from my birthplace of Denton, Texas when I was about 3 or 4 years old I think. A couple of years later, we moved to the house on the left in this Google Street View screen capture. It looks just the same to me now really, although I'm not sure if that now-cut-back tree trunk was there at the time or if it must have been planted after we left. As an added bit of trivia, after a couple of years living in this house we ended up moving only just across the street to live in that house for a few more years before we eventually moved to the Kansas City area that I now consider more the place where I really grew up. It's a real nostalgia trip to take a virtual walk around Google Street View to see the route I used to walk to school and remember some of the friends I knew when recognising the other streets and houses in that neighbourhood. My elementary school and the outdoor swimming pool are still just as I remember them although the school has changed it's name. It used to be called Sunset Hills Elementary. Whenever I think of that outdoor swimming pool it reminds me of hearing the Earth, Wind and Fire cover of "Got to Get You Into My Life" being blasted through the loudspeakers while we splashed away in the bakingly hot Texas sunshine. To this day I still don't like to go swimming outdoors unless I'm so hot I'm already dripping with sweat. Needless to say that is an extremely rare occurrence in England where I now live.

Mix It All Together

So my creation is a bit of a video mash up of the memories in my head created by seeing Craig's astronaut along with a bit of cheeky humour just because I couldn't resist, and at least it makes me laugh. Hopefully you will laugh too when you watch it.

9. Aaaaagh! I’m Getting Old!

The First Thing....

I'm going to be honest I really enjoyed Rex's post but the first thing I thought of when I had a quick glance was that I needed a cup of tea before I read it. (Which I did) I do find a good cup of tea can solve pretty much any problem.

So the second thing I thought of was when I was growing up and all those crazy ideas (some that I still have) about what I wanted to be and do.

Space, the Final Frontier

Every young boy wanted to be a astronaut at some point and I wasn't any different. I also loved to doodle and colour in when I was younger. So I found a notebook grabbed some pencils and pens and began to doodle away. 

So I began by sketching out my idea

I then inked over the design using a Sharpie and erased the pencil.

and voila, we have a astronaut (I don't know what happened to his right glove but hey)

I've been on holiday this week and have one more week left. I thought i'd do something productive so I have signed up to a series of painting classes to see what thats all about. So hopefully some of the future posts could be paintings!!!!

And as this seems to be my thing now i'll leave you with a quote:

"You have brains in your head you have feet in your shoes. You can steer yourself any direction you choose"  

Dr Seuss

8. Growing Up

Craig's Animated Gif

I was very happy to see that Craig Osgood is keeping the art of the animated gif alive. It reminded me of some animated gif's that I made from photos of myself and put on my website many years ago. The other thing that it reminded me of the fact that I quite often seem to accidentally take a series of photos which, as I scan through them on the camera, are revealed to being an animation of one kind or another. Or in the case of this animation of Maggie and Arthur, the images are the result of what happens when you give your children permission to use your camera and they are left to make funny faces as they please. I didn't know that they had even taken these photos. I only stumbled upon the images later on while browsing through all my photos and decided that it would be fun to bring them to life.

Family Photos

The other place where these animated faces present themselves to me on a regular basis in within the "Faces" feature found in both iPhoto and Aperture. As you skim your pointer over the thumbnails of each person you are presented with a flip-book style animation of all the photos you have of that person within your photo library. When that person happens to be your own child with the photos dating from their birth to the present day, then what you get is a condensed history of that person's entire life. I have thought many times that I would like to turn this accidental discovery into a proper presentation and now, thanks to the inspiration from Craig's money growing on trees, I have. I took three individual screen captures while skimming through each child's photos within iPhoto and then cropped and assembled the results in Motion 5 together with a bit of decoration for good measure. You may have noticed from the result that it becomes apparent that my children are to be commended for putting up with the number of times that I have taken photos of them over the years, but then they are my favourite reasons for owning a camera so I must thank them profusely.

7. Does Money Grow on Trees

Are you really the winner

I really liked Rex's last post and hope lots of people sent out copies. It got me thinking about when I was younger and how I would have loved to receive a massive cheque but not so much now......

The Plan

So for this post I wanted to create a animated GIF, never done it before and always wanted too. So what is a GIF it stands for Graphics Interchange Format and i've attached a short video I found the other day.

When I started thinking about Rex's post the first thing that came to mind was money and what would be good animated. 

So I sketched out a tree in Photoshop and then began my work, you create animated GIFs in photoshop by creating multiple layers and then adding them to the timeline below.

The Result

So here it is my first animated GIF! 

So Does Money Grow on Trees?

Sadly money doesn't grow on trees but maybe thats for the best, money won't buy you happiness 

People tend to cling to things a lot. We all get attached to things like our career money etc. Its human nature to become attached even when it doesn't necessarily make sense we can be reluctant to let go.

I remembered this quote from a while ago not sure who said it, but it stuck

“When we stop holding on or clinging to anything, we realise we have everything”

One thing that i've decided in life is if I don't like doing something why do it, if you're in a job that you hate, get out. If your not waking up in the morning enthusiastic about going to work, you shouldn't be there. Why spend the time moaning about it, find another job, time is precious and we should make the most of it!

(Rant over)

and i'll leave this post with a final quote

"If you think sunshine brings you happiness, then you haven't danced in the rain."

Craig

6. Lucky Winner

Letters in the Post

When I read about my friend Craig Osgood's plan to send letters randomly to unsuspecting people, I was immediately taken back to the days when I was still living with my mother in Kansas and we would regularly get junk mail from an organisation called The Publisher's Clearing House Sweepstakes. As I remember them, these unsolicited letters were often disguised to look like bank cheques made out in huge sums to make you think that you had already won something. I couldn't find a vintage images of those letters on the net but the phrase that stuck in my mind was "Congratulations, You are a Lucky Winner" - and thus I decided to create my own Lucky Winner scheme.

You are a Winner

The concepts of luck, happiness and success seem to be an endless source of fascination to most of us. Does the possession of money or fame or objects bring happiness to people? Perhaps it's just being able to compare our relative amounts of good luck in relation to the people around us that helps influence the state of mind we inhabit in regards to whether or not you consider yourself a "winner". Thoughts that spring to my mind include the idea that anyone who owns a device capable of reading this blog post on the internet is indeed a Lucky Winner in comparison to the many people on this planet living in poverty who can still only dream of owning the kinds of gadgets that we consider out of date as we yearn to be lucky enough to one day be able to buy the next great whizzy this, that or the other. 

The Certificate

So as my response to Craig's letter writing campaign, with your help I would like see if I could spread some happiness and good cheer to a few people. I would like you all to have your own copy of the Lucky Winner Certificate which you can download by clicking on that last link. As an added bonus I would be entirely thrilled if any one who reads this post would go so far as to actually print out a copy of the certificate and present it to someone you know. As you can see I have done the same myself in the form of a greeting card that I sent to my friend Victoria Wright because Victoria mentioned that she liked Craig's last post about hand-written letters so much. The card itself is hopefully a nice thing to receive but additionally, in my letter to Victoria, I mentioned some of her qualities as a person that I feel mark her out as one of life's lucky winners and of which she should be proud.

Please feel free to resize or make any changes you would like to my design and of course print as many copies as you like. The crowning glory would be if any of you could respond in the comments of this blog with stories of how you made use of the Lucky Winner certificate. Best wishes to all of you Lucky Winners out there.

Rex Boyd

5. Par Avion

Thoughts.....

So Rex took my airline and made it into a paper plane....... which is something I never considered. For my response I knew exactly what I wanted to do but not overly sure on the execution so here goes.

The Idea 

So I took the two words and looked up the definitions:

paper |ˈpeɪpə|noun1 [ mass noun ] material manufactured in thin sheets from the pulp of wood or other fibrous substances, used for writing, drawing, or printing on, or as wrapping material: a sheet of paper | [ as modifier ] : a paper napkin | [ count noun ] : toffee papers. 

plane 2 |pleɪn|nounan aeroplane.

          [ no obj., with adverbial of direction. to travel in an aeroplane. 

- So paper is used for writing letters! 
- Planes help people travel and produce amazing stories 

    I seem to get hundreds of emails a week (half of which are junk) and then in the post I seem to only get bills.

    So letters, can you remember what they are? they sort of look like an email, but it's printed on paper, then neatly folded and put into an envelope.

    I believe writing a letter to someone is the next best thing to seeing them in person. I read a really good quote the other day from Catherine Field from the New York Times

"A good handwritten letter is a creative act, and not just because it is a visual and tactile pleasure. It is a deliberate act of exposure, a form of vulnerability, because handwriting opens a window on the soul in a way that cyber communication can never do. You savor their arrival and later take care to place them in a box for safe keeping."

So the idea is to write a series of letters to complete strangers telling them a little bit about my journey in life so far and getting them to add to the letter and forward it on to someone else.

The Tools

Paper

I visited my Nan a few days ago and mentioned what I was planing, my nan is a very well travelled lady and I always remember when I was younger receiving post cards from the far ends of the world. My nan then let me have some vintage airmail writing paper. Although she did think it was a bit odd when I said I was writing to a complete stranger, but as normal she smiled and gave me a biscuit. 

The Ink Pen

I love writing in ink and you need a good pen to get the job done! 

My pen of choice is the Lamy Safari. I've had about 4 of these in the past and they last forever, my most resent purchase is the Safari aquamarine. It's made from sturdy ABS plastic and sports a chrome - plated stainless steel clip and the coolest part its designed by a guy called Wolfgang Fabian.

The Execution 

So I've decided to write to six people to increase my chances of getting a response. I spent about ten minutes hunting around for the yellow pages (the only time you need one its not around). I typed in random address generator and it came out with this address generator site.

So my letters are being sent to the follow places (I did have to look some up)

• Munlochy
• Prescot
• Pwllheli
• Matock
• Westminster
• Whitchurch

So what did I say in the letters, I introduced myself, and explained my idea of sharing journeys. I then wrote down the link to the address generator and asked them to add their story to the letter and send it on. Finally when the letter reaches 20 people it gets posted back to me. 

I'm not sure how Rex will react to this post, or if i'll ever get anything back. Its something i've always wanted to do so fingers crossed something will turn up in my mailbox