lately

Happy Friday!!

And Happy Easter weekend! It looks like we might break 50 DEGREES in Chicago ahhhh so excited. Ben's spring break starts tonight, and next week we're off to Arizona to soak up some much needed sun and also to start clearing out his grandparents' house now that his 96 year old grandpa is in an assisted living center. I'm not certain about the internet situation so this blog might be quiet all next week, but I'll try to sneak in an Easter post before we leave. 

This week has been an emotional roller coaster for me. The gloomy weather, spending every day at home by myself, plus major job insecurities were really getting me down, but I started taking Vitamin D, the sun has returned, and I got some amazing news that I had given up hope of ever hearing (more details to come) so everything is on the up and up! Oh, and I also got a new shipment of gorgeous lace appliques, and who wouldn't be happy after unpacking that. Can't wait to add them to new scarves!

Here's what I've been up to lately: 

 

Mailing: Tons of pretty packages, to everywhere in the US, Canada, and even one to Singapore! I think the shop is finally starting to take off!

Listening to: OneRepublic's new album Native, addictive give-me-energy music that I've definitely been needing lately.

Eating: Lots of delicious recipes! Caramelized banana bread, gingerbread granola, rotini with tuna, olives, and capers, orange balsamic glazed chicken with lemon risotto.

Sewing: Pretty new lace infinity scarves in fun patterns and colors for spring (and summer!).

Working out: With my current fave YouTube fitness channels, Fitness Blender and LionsGate BeFit. I really need to get outside and run more though...

Reading: Erik Larson's The Devil in the White City, a documentary-style crime thriller about the 1893 Chicago World's Fair and the serial killer who stalked young women there. It's very interesting to read more about the history of Chicago and the architects who made the city what it is today.

Watching: White Collar (Ben and I have been working through all the seasons on Netflix and we only have one episode left!!! What should we watch next?), and Mad Men Season 5 which is now on Netflix too! It took me a couple seasons to get into Mad Men but I'm a huge fan. It's a great portrayal of the social, class, and gender issues of the 60's, and the sets and even film quality feels so authentic, like they found a way to time travel and film in the actual past. I've loved watching the clothes and interior decor change styles through the "years". I'm definitely glad to be a woman in this day and age!

What have you been up to this week?

my trader joe's staples

Since I grew up in what Chicagoans refer to as the boondocks of "downstate" Illinois, I was deprived for most of my life of the staple amenities that my suburb-raised friends always took for granted. This includes outlet malls, Caribou Coffee, IKEA, Whole Foods, and Trader Joe's. How did I survive? I don't even know.

Luckily I now live in Chicago and am consumeristically saved. I do love Caribou, IKEA, and Trader Joe's. Whole Foods is tempting, but a bit too Lululemony for me, especially after living in Oregon where they have genuine health food stores and co-ops that are lower middle class accessible.

Trader Joe's actually reminds me of a cross between a co-op and a small European grocery store, and it's definitely a fun place to buy specialty food items for decent prices. I'll go to TJ's every two or three weeks to supplement our regular grocery haul. Here are some of the things I buy every single time!

 

• Chocolate yogurt. SO GOOD. They also have mocha, which is also good. It feels like eating dessert but is healthy(er)!

•  European Style Plain Yogurt. I am phasing out of my Greek yogurt obsession and am loving this thinner and smoother textured kind. There aren't any weird additives like gelatin and it tastes delicious, even without the added sugar!
• Any kind of hummus. They have awesome flavors, but I usually stick with the basic garlic.
• Multigrain Pita Bite Crackers. These are crunchy and delicious with hummus or goat cheese!
• (Not pictured) Goat Cheese...the spreadable kind is extremely inexpensive here, and the one with honey is delicious.
• Bread of any kind. I love the "take and bake" mini ciabatta rolls, and will keep them in the freezer and bake them one at a time to go with a salad for lunch. I also love the Golden Hearth Healthy Multi-Grain bread for sandwich bread. It's baked in Chicago so it might be a regional item.

•  Wine, of course! I think TJ's wine and beer selection is the best part of the store (and I am SO sorry if you live in PA or other states with weird alcohol laws). "3 buck Chuck" aka Charles Shaw is legendary, but obviously not the best quality. The only varieties I really like are the Sauvignon Blanc and Shiraz (pictured above). Other good wines I've tried and liked for around $6 or less are Black Mountain Pinot Noir, La Ferme Julien White Blend, and Archeo Nero D'Avola. AVOID the Blue Fin Pinot Noir, the price really is too good to be true. The tricky thing about wine is that price does not always indicate quality, so you just have to drink around to see for yourself!

• Inexpensive flowers are another great thing about Trader Joe's! These are alstroemerias, and they are the best cheap flower to buy anywhere because they will last for at least two weeks. The ones in this picture look kind of smashed and sad, but once they sucked up some water the blooms opened up and this bouquet lasted for 3 weeks before falling apart! (Yeah, I've been meaning to write this post for a while).

NOT PICTURED:

• Mandarin Orange Chicken (frozen)
• Chili Lime Chicken Burgers (frozen)
• Mini Stroopwafels (cookies)
• Goddess Dressing (same as Annie's but cheaper)
• Chocolate. Any kind.
• Nuts/Trail Mix
• Alcohol-Free Vanilla
• Orange Blossom Honey French Liquid Soap (Ben is obsessed and so am I)

Is there anything you love from Trader Joe's that I should try?

learning to shoot in manual

(Flowers in a dim bathroom with indirect natural light from one window. Unedited, shot in manual. I can't believe I took this!) 

Since moving to Chicago last August, I knew that as soon as I upgraded to a DSLR camera I would want to take a photography workshop with our talented and amazing wedding photographer Christy Tyler.

I'd been using my little Canon 7.1 megapixel Power Shot Digital Elph since 2008. While I HIGHLY recommend Power Shots if you're looking for a point and shoot (see great examples here, here, and here--its strengths are landscape shots in natural daylight), I was dying to get a "real camera" to expand my skills, although I figured it would take me another year or two to actually save up for one. Well, Ben surprised me with a Canon Rebel T3 on the morning after our wedding and let's just say that gift cemented the entire weekend as the best weekend ever!

So last Saturday I attended Christy's beginners photography workshop and in just 4 hours she'd taken us all from photography novices to shooting in manual! I'd been playing around with the semi-automatic settings (mainly Av and P) and had basically figured out depth of field, white balance, and exposure while taking millions of self portraits for my Etsy listings, but now I feel like I've unlocked a whole new level of control! With the manual setting it's easier to take the picture you want to capture, as opposed to taking a so-so shot and then editing the heck out of it (and sometimes losing detail) to make it brighter and clearer. It's also easy to take bright photos in dim, indoor settings!

Here is an extremely brief and abbrieviated summary of what I learned:

When you're in manual, the three main things you have to think about are aperture, ISO, and shutter speed.

• You set the aperture (depth of field or f/number) depending on how blurry you want the background to be. If you want to capture one object in focus with a blurry background, set a smaller f/number. If you want a landscape or group shot, set it higher. 
• The ISO controls the camera's light sensitivity. A lower ISO number is good for daylight and outdoor shots, and a higher ISO number is necessary for indoor shots or night time. 
• The shutter speed controls how much light enters the lens. A slower shutter speed makes your image brighter, and a faster shutter speed makes the image darker but allows you to shoot moving objects.

The settings you should try first are 1/125 shutter speed and ISO100 for outdoors, ISO400 for indoors. Use whatever f/stop you want depending on the depth of field of your shot (person vs. landscape) and adjust from there!

Now I'll devote the rest of the post to some of the photos I took during the workshop! I'll label them with the aperture (f/no.), ISO, and shutter speed I used for each one so you can see the difference it makes to have the correct settings to achieve the exposure or brightness level you want.
*All of the photos in this entire post were shot in manual and are unedited, straight from the camera! (Canon EOS Rebel T3 with basic kit 18-55 mm f/3.5-5.6 lens).

 Dark bathroom--this is what it looked like to the eye. Aperture F/4.0, ISO800, Shutter 1/60.

Dark bathroom, brighter picture! Aperture F/4.0, ISO3200, Shutter 1/60. 

So the only change I made was increasing the ISO from 800 to 3200.

Close up of the flowers in the dark bathroom. F/4.5, ISO3200, Shutter 1/100.

I made the flowers just a little brighter by lowering the shutter speed. F/4.5, ISO3200, Shutter 1/60.

Objects in front of a bright backlit window, very over-exposed i.e. too bright!! F/4.0, ISO 800, Shutter 1/80.

 Better exposure by increasing shutter speed! F/4.0, ISO 800, Shutter 1/250.

This is what the camera "thought" the exposure should be with an even faster shutter speed, but Christy said that if you have a bright backlight such as a window, you do have to overexpose the shot in order to make the subject bright enough. I think this is a bit too dark. F/4.0, ISO800, Shutter 1/500.

I lowered the ISO because the light was brighter for this close up, but it was too dark. F/4.0, ISO 400, Shutter 1/320.

Raised the ISO back up. Much better! F/4.0, ISO800, Shutter 1/320

 Even a bit brighter by slowing down the shutter. F/4.0, ISO400, Shutter 1/125.

Here's the room in front of the window. Way too dark! F/4.0, ISO400, Shutter 1/160. 

 I raised the ISO and lowered the shutter speed. Yay brightness! To get a sharper picture, I should have left the shutter speed higher (to protect against accidentally moving the camera while the shutter is open) raised the ISO even more to compensate for the higher/darker shutter speed, and maybe raised the f/number to lengthen the depth of field. F/4.0, ISO800, Shutter 1/30

 Christy let me play with her awesome and huge 100 mm macro lens! (Ben calls the "ring in flowers or nature" a classic Christy shot, haha). I was also focusing manually with this lens. A little too dark for my taste but I love the moodiness. F/4.0, ISO400, Shutter 1/125.

I brightened the shot by lowering the shutter speed since I was bracing my arms on the table and wasn't worried about camera shake. If I was holding the camera up, I would have tried raising the ISO too so I didn't have to make the shutter so slow. Gorgeous! I can't believe this is straight from the camera. I obviously need this lens.... F/4.0, ISO400, Shutter 1/25.

Christy turned the tables and let us practice photographing her for a change. Note the lower ISO number for outdoors, although I think I would have raised it a tiny bit to brighten the photo since we were in the shade: F/4.5, ISO100, Shutter 1/80.

Once I got home I had to keep testing out my new skills to make sure it wasn't just photography magic inside Christy's apartment that made us all so suddenly and mysteriously good with our cameras! Our apartment is extremely dim all the time since we only have one south facing window in a tiny breakfast nook, which is where I take all my Etsy photographs.

Here's what it actually looked like at 4 pm, minimal light left. Piles of magazines and fabric are typical.

F/4.0, ISO400, Shutter 1/125.

I like taking super bright and over-exposed product pictures for my shop, so I quadrupled the ISO. F/4.0, ISO1600, Shutter 1/100.

And here's a quick selfie I took for the shop! (Get the scarf here). F/4.0, ISO1600, Shutter 1/100.

Usually I have to edit the brightness and highlights on my product photos to get them as bright as I want, but I didn't have to adjust the exposure in this one at all! (This photo is straight from the camera, but for the listing photo I did minor touch ups and warmed the color temperature up to make the colors more true to life since the indirect late afternoon light here was blue-ish).

So there you have it! This is definitely not a "how to shoot in manual" guide since I am NOT professing to be even close to a photography expert, but if you've been attempting to play with manual I hope that I've helped you out a little bit! 

And if you're an amateur or professional photographer in the Chicago area looking to expand your knowledge and camera skills I definitely recommend registering for one of Christy's workshops!