Olympic Torch Relay - Central BC

After a long trip across our beautiful Canada, the Torch had arrived in Central BC at the End of January. Here a couple of shots from the Relay (sorry they are a bit late).





and my favourite:

Wordless Wednesday

Sled Dog Races 2010

This past weekend was the annual Sled Dog Race about an hour south of us and I wanted to share some of the photos from the event:








Skijoring

Sugar Cookies 2009

People have been asking me about my yearly Sugar Cookie Pictures and here they are. I'm not too convinced that these are the nicest ones I have made, but I'm pretty happy with how they came out. Even though, it wasn't a good idea to have all that coffee before starting the decorating process. ;)




Ingredients

* 3/4 cup butter, softened
* 1 cup white sugar
* 2 eggs
* 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
* 2-1/2 cups all-purpose flour
* 1 teaspoon baking powder
* 1/2 teaspoon salt
* 1/2 tsp Cinnamon

Directions

1. In a large bowl, cream together butter and sugar until smooth. Beat in eggs and vanilla. Stir in the flour, baking powder, and salt. Cover, and chill dough for at least one hour (or overnight).
2. Preheat oven to 400 degrees F (200 degrees C). Roll out dough on floured surface 1/4 to 1/2 inch thick. Cut into shapes with any cookie cutter. Place cookies 1 inch apart on ungreased cookie sheets.
3. Bake 6 to 8 minutes in preheated oven. Cool completely.

(adapted from allrecipes.com)

Royal Icing:
1 Egg White, beaten til soft peaks form.
Add 1 cup of icing sugar and a few drops of lemon juice til desired thickness is reached. Ice cookies

Etsy Etsy Etsy - New Print, Sold/relisted, Treasury

Newly listed at: photographybymoni.etsy.com

Father Frost



Sold and Relisted:
Vintage Agfa Ansco 5x7 Print


Sold and Relisted:
Print Set Totems - 3 8x10's



and to top it all off, I am featured in a beautiful ice blue treasury with 'Father Frost'.
http://www.etsy.com/treasury_list.php?room_id=99198


this just in. Another treasury featuring 'Father Frost'
A Picture is worth a thousand...


Thank you so much for featuring one of my prints in both of these treasuries.

My favourite Biscotti

Recipe courtesy of King Arthur Flour

6 tablespoons (3 ounces) butter
2/3 cup (5 ounces) brown sugar, packed ***
1/4 teaspoon salt
4 teaspoons ground ginger
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
2 large eggs
2 cups (8 1/2 ounces) King Arthur Unbleached All-Purpose Flour
1 cup (6 1/2 ounces) finely diced crystallized ginger

Preheat the oven to 350°F. Lightly grease (or line with parchment) one large (about 18 x 13-inch) baking sheet.
In a medium-sized bowl, beat the butter, sugar, salt, spices, vanilla, and baking powder until the mixture is smooth and creamy. Beat in the eggs; the batter may look slightly curdled. At low speed of your mixer, add the flour and crystallized ginger, stirring until smooth; the dough will be quite soft and sticky, but should hold its shape when you drop it from a spoon.

Transfer the dough to the prepared baking sheet, and shape it into a rough log about 14" long. It will be about 2 ½" wide, and about ¾" thick. Using your wet fingers, smooth the top and sides of the log.

Bake the dough for 25 minutes. Remove it from the oven, and allow it to cool on the pan anywhere from 5 to 25 minutes; just work it into the schedule of whatever else you’re doing in the kitchen. Using a spray bottle filled with room-temperature water, lightly but thoroughly spritz the log, making sure to cover the sides as well as the top. Softening the crust just this little bit will make slicing the biscotti much easier.

Reduce the oven temperature to 325°F. Wait another 5 minutes, then use a serrated knife to cut the log into ½" to ¾" slices. Cut at a 45° angle, for long biscotti; cut crosswise slices, for shorter biscotti. As you’re slicing, be sure to cut straight up and down, perpendicular to the pan; if you cut unevenly, biscotti may be thicker at the top than the bottom, and they’ll topple over during their second bake.

Set the biscotti on edge on the prepared baking sheet. Return the biscotti to the oven, and bake them for 25 to 30 minutes, till they feel very dry. They’ll still feel a tiny bit moist in the very center, if you break off a piece; but they’ll continue to dry out as they cool.

Remove the biscotti from the oven, and transfer them to a rack to cool. Once they’re cool, store airtight, to preserve their texture. If biscotti aren’t as crunchy as you’d like (and the weather is dry), store them uncovered, overnight, to continue drying. Biscotti can be stored at room temperature for one week; for longer storage, wrap airtight and freeze.
Yield: about 16 large (about 5 ½" long) biscotti.

*** I made my own, since I didn't have any. 1 cup sugar and about a tbsp of Molasses mixed til incorporated well.

quack

I just came across some of these pics I took last summer during a little outing. This little sweetheart was so cute and stuck around us like glue.

'Track it down' Contest - update: winner announced

I'm having a contest for you all, in celebration of the release of the fabulous IndieNorth Holiday Gift Guide.
What I need you to do, is to track down all of my 3 listings that are featured in the IndieNorth Holiday Gift Guide. Find all three, click on them and email the etsy links to me. (don't post them here, because we don't want to make it too easy for anyone). Email the 3 urls to all of my featured Etsy listings to: eeniemoni [AT] gmail [dot] com . All correct entries will be put into a hat and next monday (November9th) I will chose a winner and that person will receive a free gift from me. It costs you nothing, zip, zilch but a bit of time to take part. So go and find all of my three featured listings in the gift guide, include the url to the actual etsy shop listing and enter.
one wee tip: my shop name is: Photography by Moni
Good luck to you all and happy gift guide hunting!

UPDATE: We have a winner! Congratulations to Malina B. from PA. The winner has been contacted and I want to thank everyone that entered.
This was a fun treasure hunt to host

Fireworks - A first for me

Perfect weather conditions on Halloween Night were the right excuse, to take a drive to see the yearly Fireworks show that our town puts on. Compared to shows in big cities like Vancouver, they are of course much much smaller, but hey, at least they haven't cancelled them yet. ha.
Believe it or not, I have never taken any fireworks shots for whatever reason, so there was no better time to give it a try. Here some of the photos I got during this 15 minute show:

Fall Foliage

We have missed the fall colours here in our region this year, due to the quick cold snap we received a while back. But last weekend we took a trip to the coast and some of the colours were just beautiful.