#photo a day July - here's the new challenge list!

If you love photography you really should join in Fatmumslim's challenge for a month. It's  so much fun!

And voilà  the "June harvest" out of my camera:

from left to right: drink-at six o'clock- on your plate- where you shop- hat- out and about-
yellow- sign-from a low angle- time- in your bag-best bit of your weekend-
soft -art- empty- fave photo you've ever taken- movement- from a high angle-
on your mind- bathroom- close up- morning- cute- door

By now I decided to post a mixture of old and new pictures taken at home and during my trips abroad.  However, it must be an extra challenge to snap the pictures the exact day the prompt is given .
Hmmm, yet I'm not sure if this meant  more or less fun for me, if  quality eventually improved, if creativity  got an extra boost....

watermelon slushie -cinemascoped

Ok, the colours are not a 100% natural, but doesn't it look sooo cool?

It reminds me of the luxury of a hotel breakfast on the warm side of the globe, drinks by the pool and big fat hot summer....

Take

1/4 watermelon, cut in small cubes

a handful of ice cubes

1tbs freshly squeezed lemon juice

sugar to taste depending on the ripeness of the melon ( I prefer it without sugar; it's more refreshing and just sweet enough)

Put

all the ingredients in a blender and blend until smooth.

Enjoy!

the flavour of June: strawberry jam infused with the scent of fresh elderflowers

Yesterday my friend's mother-in-law, Gundula, treated us with a heavenly tasting strawberry jam which  fused the taste and the scent of June: strawberries and elderflowers. I  have always wanted to combine strawberries and elderflowers for jam- yet at the end of all my trials I hated that the nice little flowers had turned grey and ugly.

The solution is so simple: Gundula used little mull bags (I used a paper tea bag) packed with elderflowers to release their wonderful flavour while cooking within the strawberries and the sugar and to be discarded afterwards.

Find an elderbush in a piece of untouched nature,  pick about 4 blossoms, put them into a little mull bag, mix 1kg strawberries with 500g preserving sugar and 100ml freshly squeezed lemon juice.

Put all ingredients into a saucepan and cook  following the instructions on the preserving sugar. Voilà:  the best flavours of June in a glass!

I also added some photos of Gundula's historical roses, because beside the creative kitchen gardening is another great passion of her!

Heather Taylor's kale and coconut smoothie

Doesn't that sound delicious?

on inspiration

design and photo by my daughter

❝

The advice I like to give young artists, or really anybody who’ll listen to me, is not to wait around for inspiration. Inspiration is for amateurs; the rest of us just show up and get to work. If you wait around for the clouds to part and a bolt of lightning to strike you in the brain, you are not going to make an awful lot of work. All the best ideas come out of the process; they come out of the work itself. Things occur to you. If you’re sitting around trying to dream up a great art idea, you can sit there a long time before anything happens. But if you just get to work, something will occur to you and something else will occur to you and something else that you reject will push you in another direction. Inspiration is absolutely unnecessary and somehow deceptive. You feel like you need this great idea before you can get down to work, and I find that’s almost never the case.

— Chuck Close
(Source : nirvikalpa)

Hello, happy weekend!

The weather is so nice outside that I need to go out and enjoy it!

But this strawberry cake has been too good not to share......  I hope you enjoy it, too!

If you are intrigued by the colour of the topping, it's made from white wine, sugar and apple pectin..