Oh the crafty!!!

Lots of crafty potential! After my laptop slipped into a coma and suffered massive brain damage (fried motherboard), Chris and I discussed pushing up Christmas a bit and replacing both our laptops now (his is just as old as mine . . . age-ist, I know). After a little research, playing in Best Buy, and waiting for a sale, we celebrated an early Christmas last night with our new toys.

One problem: they are exactly the same. So I am now window shopping for skins for mine.

And while I'm at it, might as well get a matching one for the phone.

I'm loving the super huge hard drive, so I don't have to exile my Harry Potter Audiobooks and Friends movie files to the external hard drive. PLUS!!!! I happen to have a sweet little set of CDs hidden at the bottom of my "things with cords and buttons" box, which happen to have a sweet little pirated version of a little something called Adobe Creative Suite 5. And now I have enough RAM or processing speed or magic computer juice to run it. I'm pretty excited.

I also had an interesting conversation with Chris last night as I was installing the new Microsoft Office and found to my disappointment that the one he bought didn't have MS Publisher. "What do you need it for?" he asked. "With CS5 you'll have everything you'll need! You don't actually use it to edit pictures, right?" Actually, I explained to him, I do. MSPub is my all-time favorite way to quickly add text or simple graphics on top of a photo. With all my computer and digital imaging skill, I can't seem to figure out how to put a g-d circle on a photo in Photoshop! Or to put an arrow on something! The good thing about Windows 7 though is that it runs previous versions of software pretty well, so that's on the To-Install list for this week.

I haven't downloaded photos from my camera in ages, so there are a few belly shots looking forward to seeing full-screen. And while I'm at it, my couch is full of knitting that needs to be documented (photographed, weighed, and Ravel-ed).

On to Food Craft! This week I experimented with Apple Strudel and Layered Jello Molds.

Strudel:

  

Takeaways:
1) I overfilled the pastry, which led to a very high filling:pastry ratio.
2) I don't know how to work with Filo dough. I think I took too long getting it ready, because it dried up and didn't fold as well as I think it should have.
3) I can secretly feed Chris cream cheese as long as he thinks it's frosting.
4) Filo comes in packages of too many for my cooking methods. I ended up quickly experimenting with home-made Hot Pockets because I couldn't bear to throw away half the package.

Layered Jello Mold:

Was supposed to look like . . .

My first try looked like . . .

Takeaways:

1) I need an actual Jello Mold and not just the bottom of my Big Top Cupcake pan.

2) I need to correctly mix the Cream-Cheesey layer, and not just mix in Cool Whip until I think it's done.

3) I need to not spill jello juice in the bottom of the refrigerator. 

4) I like how the top looks like a kiwi . . . unintentional.