the little camera that could

When I bought our old Olympus Camedia, I was one of the "early adopters" on the digital camera bar graph. I purchased that little 2.1 megapixel guy on a Best Buy credit card for a whopping $699.99 in 2001 and was ecstatic to have it. A few years later, I decided that it was too outdated and marched right out to Best Buy, credit card in hand, to purchase a Nikon Coolpix, since I've always been a Nikon devotee. Problem was, I got the Nikon home, and convinced as I'd been that I'd love it, I hated it. It had the worst delay of any digital camera I'd seen. Your ability to capture good pics relied on one thing only: lucky timing. If, perhaps, your subject might have made an endearing facial expression 3-4 seconds after you pushed the button, lucky you! What a great shot! If instead, your subject, I don't know, decided to crawl away or look at the ceiling or blink or drool, well then, another scrap shot it was.

I sold it for $40 at a yard sale last summer.

I went back to the Camedia, which was, in all respects, a very good camera. Its big flaw was that it did not have an adjustable and interchangeable lens, i.e...it was not a DSLR.

Well, it must have caught wind that I was planning to replace it with the Nikon D60 because it finally, after all these years, just pooped out on me the other day. It flatly refused to turn on, no matter how many different combinations of different AA batteries I used.

So what are we using now? This little gem from Fisher Price, which Sassy received for Christmas. That's right, folks. This is our only digital camera in the house.

I won't purchase another snapshot type camera right now since I'm saving for my Nikon DSLR. So, we are suffering through with the KidTough. Funny thing is, it turns out that it does take some rather cool-looking shots. They're very vintage-style, reminiscent of pics from those little black box cameras that used to be all over every thrift shop you visited in the 90s, but are now collector items selling for big bucks on eBay. For the novelty of it, it's kind of fun right now, though the minute I have my $600 saved, I'm heading straight out to get my Nikon.

Check 'em out:

My Kitchen Sink
I just love having all these little glass bottles of different things above my sink. It makes me feel joyful, fulfilled. Silly, yes, but I do love it. I have organic vanilla extract, dried mango and pineapple slices, red rooibus tea, indian spice tea, and oven-dried tomatoes in olive oil in the first pic. The second pic shows my new why-didn't-I-think-of-this-already drying system for my rags and scrubbers so they don't get nasty sitting in the sink anymore.





Oven-Dried Tomatoes
Here we have the latest batch of oven-dried tomatoes, for which I cut in half some organic grape tomatoes that were on clearance at Jungle Jim's. They were 84 cents a package so we bought 2 packages and dried most of them. I actually turned these into a "salsa starter" (just add canned tomatoes) last night along with the rest of the dried mango (bought also on clearance at Jungle Jim's for a ridiculously low price, oh how I'm loving that Jungle Jim's right now).



Pancake Rollups
I made buckwheat pancakes for the first time last week. I soaked equal parts buckwheat and whole wheat with some raw cider vinegar, sour cream & water a la Weston A. Price guidelines, then rolled them up with the sweet cream cheese from Nourishing Traditions. I added some vanilla extract and almond extract to the cream cheese and YUM! Sassy and I both loved them.



Sassy's Plate Arrangement
Jeff's father would be so proud of our little girl. She is destined to work in the culinary field, I'm convinced. Here she arranged a plate for her "bake shop" where she sold "tea and pancake rollup pastries."



My First Cold Frame
Here it is -- the first cold frame I've ever made. (I say "my first", because I hope to make many more.) We used a free-to-us bookshelf for the base and a trash-picked french door for the top. I've already planted a few lettuce seeds in it, you know, just to see.



STILL I'm Watching You
And rounding out our gallery tour today is this stupid, oh-it's-so-cute-I-think-it's-going-to-kill-me little cat that Jeff and I have been hiding in various places for each other, like the inside of our kitchen cabinets, our underwear drawers, under the computer mouse, taped to his rearview mirror, etc.