Feb 20

How to save a picture from Flickr Photo Session

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A Flickr Photo Session provide way to share a set of photos on Flickr in a large slide show format with the ability to chat about the pictures. Photo Sessions are still in beta by Flickr, but are very useful for sharing and discussing photos. You can navigate a Photo Session suing your right and left arrow keys easily.

The purpose of this post is to show how to save photo to your local computer, this is based on using a Windows computer. If you have a photo you like on Photo Session you can click the “I” at the bottom left of the screen, look below for the marked section.

This will pop-up a dialog that shows you the number of views and comments for the photograph as well as the name, description and date taken. Also, there is a link “Go to the photo page on Flickr”, this will take you directly to the photo page on Flickr and allow you to view more information about the photo and take you to a download section.

Below, we are on the photo page of the picture, there are many actions that can be used, but I will just be discussing downloading it locally. If you are NOT using a photo session from this point forward is how you would also download a photo.

Click on the “Actions” button in the top right of the screen.

 

Then click on “View all sizes”.

The screen shot above shows you all of the available sizes that you can download, the original size is not available for download because the License of the picture is “All rights reserved”. If someone would like to download the original size a photo of mine please contact me and I can help out.

Select the size of the image that would like to download and then right click on the image to get the menu shown below. From here you can select “Save image as” to save the picture to your local computer.

 

Feb 09

{Project: Food Budget} Week 6

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One thing that I am realizing is that I love to eat out. We planned a menu out and then had an extremely busy weekend and week and I would say “Hey, let’s go to Eat N Park”. Then of course there are no objections to that.

But, one thing this project is doing for me is helping to visualize it, every week I go back and review exactly how much we spent and where it went. Sometimes it is high on snacks and other “junk” food or healthy fruit. Other times it is high on venturing out to eat, this can be anything from pizza, hoagies, and usually Eat N Park. We love the soup and salad bar.

Why I am continuing on with this project, because I really want to get better at this and the only way is to keep with it. I used to smoke and I quit smoking many times, but then finally I stuck with it and haven’t had a cigarette in over 3 years now. I don’t think my kids even remember when I smoked.

I am dedicated to trying to live a healthy lifestyle and this involves both eating and exercise, I don’t have the metabolism that I had in my 30s or 20s. I am going to hang in there and eventually I will get this at least to a close level in my budget.

Project: Food Budget

I’m excited to report that I have some great company on my Project: Food Budget challenge. Please check out these wonderful blogs, and give them support as they take on this challenge.

All have different budgets, number of mouths to feed, and food preferences {veggie + meat eating}. And yet, all have a common goal of saving money and making better choices when it comes to the food we put on our table.

Want to get on board? Fabulous. {Now go here.}

Participating Blogs:
Feb 08

Turkey Vegetable Loaf Cups

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I look at AllRecipes.com a lot to find ideas for meals, my wife and I love finding different ideas and then experimenting with them. We discovered Turkey Veggie Meatloaf Cups and thought this would be a good healthy meal that hopefully the kids would like. We made our changes as usually, I will let you look at the original recipe in the link above and our customization in this post. My oldest daughter Savannah helped a lot with this and just about made the meal herself.

  • 2012-02-07 - 1
    1/2 cup of yellow onion (finely chopped)
  • 1/2 cup of bell peppers (mixed colors:yellow, red, orange)
  • 3/4 lb of ground turkey
  • 1/2 tsp of black pepper
  • 1 tsp of garlic powder
  • 1 pinch of salt
  • 1 egg
  • 1 pack broccoli couscous
  • 1 lb parsnips

I chopped the peppers and onions into small pieces and Savannah  mixed the peppers, onion, ground turkey and egg together, as I added the seasoning. We pealed the parsnips and cut them into pieces and boiled them in water while we mixed the ingredients above. We also made the broccoli couscous according to the directions on the box.

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Savannah put the mixture into a muffin pan and made holes in the center, this is where we will stuff the couscous inside. Once the parsnips where boiled we mashed them adding a little milk and butter as needed and let them set.

The oven was already preheated to 350 so after stuffing the loafs we placed the pan in the oven and waited about 40 minutes.

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After checking the loafs, we put the mashed parsnips in a zip lock bag and cut a whole in the corner so we can top the loafs with mashed parsnips.  Only topping a little of half of the loafs just in case the girls didn’t like the parsnips, we put it back in the oven for another 10 minutes.

 

 

Well, the kids didn’t like the parsnips, and struggled through the meal, but at least they tried it. My wife and I loved it and then I took some to my niece who I am waiting to hear what she thought of it.

2012-02-07 - 4

Feb 04

Menu Planner App for iPad/iPhone/iPod

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By joining the Project: Food Budget I realized or confirmed that it is much better on the budget to have a menu planned. I know this should have been known already, and I guess it was but we usually didn’t plan a menu out and worked day by day. Since participating in the project several weeks now we have been planning out menus out weekly more often.

I have used Evernote, which itself is a wonderful application for taking and managing notes, but it is just like a notebook and you have to manage everything yours. Then after searching I found Menu Planner an app for the iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch, I purchased the app for $2.99 in the app store and began to experiment with it. I have only had the app now for 2 days and so far I like the concepts behind it.

First off, the application allows you to import recipes for many popular web sites, the recipes import in fine, I have use Food Network, AllRecipes.com and a few others already to start building my recipe database. I was very impressed with this functionality and it works very well on the recipes I have imported.

The app also provides a means for you to manage your own pantry, this is time consuming and I have NOT completed this part yet. But, you go through the app and add your own inventory to the item list and mark them as in your pantry. This helps build a more realistic shopping list by comparing to what you already own and do not need to purchase.

Once you have this information entered in the app you can then start creating meal plans, select the day that you would like to plan.

Click on the on Add a course link on the left will the course to your daily menu plan, they you can add a recipe to that day from the recipes that you added to Menu Planner. You can always enter your own recipes or modify the recipes that you imported.

You can email this recipe to anyone you wish or edit it to make changes as desired.

Shopping lists are needed if you are planning a menu and trying to maintain a budget, the app provides a way of generating a shopping list for a time frame that you select and also allows you to associate a cost to each item. and see if it is in your pantry or not.

Like I said I just purchased this app yesterday and started using it to plan this weeks menu and shopping list. I am still entering all of the items in my pantry, which can be a very large undertaking in and of itself. So far I am happy with it, I have found a few problems and email support and quickly received a response that the have a fix ready, so I have to wait to see it on the app store for an update.

One of the features that I really like is the ability to sync your database between devices and the menu-planner.com web site. I have installed this app on an iPad 1, iPad 2 and also an iPod Touch. I can see taking the iPod touch with me shopping to see the shopping list or just emailing the shopping list from the app to my email and shop using my Droid’s email. I used my daughter’s iPod and added the app and restored the data from the server, where I synced up the contents from my iPad. This worked perfectly and  I know have the shopping list on a small iPod that can be put in my pocket when I am grocery shopping.

I like Menu Planner and can see this app being very useful and helpful within maintaining a food budget as well as planning a menu on a regular basis. I like the calendar and also the note features, I am planning at adding notes as a meal is completed with information about how the family liked it especially the kids. Knowing how the kids accept specific meals helps us plan better in the future and also to slowly introduce new foods to them and stagger the meals with other more healthy meals that they already like. I am looking forward the upcoming update that fixes a few issues that I have encountered already. The support seems to be very responsive and acknowledge a known issue and also let me know that an update was coming out to resolve the issue.

Check back for an update to this review as I dive deeper into it. I wanted to post this initial evaluation or first impression, I will post an update after I have used the app for a few weeks to see how this app continues to hold up and be beneficial.

Feb 02

{Project: Food Budget} Week 5

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Well, we finally did it! We beat the budget, I guess the over spending caught up with us. Over the past week we had everything we needed except for so odds and ends that we had to pick up, so the groceries where very low as you can see. So of the previous weeks we picked up some buy one get one offers so that offset this week a lot. Our freezer still has plenty of staples in it for the next week.

We did go out once, we hit the local Arby’s for some roast beef sandwiches. We had a wonder roasted chicken which we used the leftovers yesterday for a hot sandwich with rice instead of bread.

Of course, last night I decided that we should go to Eat N Park for Potato Soup night, my whole family loves their soup. But, we still managed to stay within budget, I have to really concentrate on out eating out.

  • Goal: $200
  • Actual: $144.87
  • Groceries: $39.72
  • Eating Out: $73.56

 

Project: Food Budget

I’m excited to report that I have some great company on my Project: Food Budget challenge. Please check out these wonderful blogs, and give them support as they take on this challenge.

All have different budgets, number of mouths to feed, and food preferences {veggie + meat eating}. And yet, all have a common goal of saving money and making better choices when it comes to the food we put on our table.

Want to get on board? Fabulous. {Now go here.}

The Week 14 Participating Blogs:
Jan 28

Our First Tropical Aquarium

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2012-01-22 - 1

My oldest daughter asked about bringing an African Dwarf Frog home from school, which she learned about them as part of a science class. We had this frog for several months in a small bowl that accompanied by a plant, we all enjoyed having the frog.

DSC03130

Having wanted to have a fish tank for a while, I decided to purchase a larger tank and also add some fish to the tank along with the frog. Originally we purchased a 15 gallon tank and then we obtained a 50 gallon tank from my sister-in-law in the following days. After letting the tank water set for a few days we ventured out to PetSmart in Century Square and got some excellent information. I was highly impressed with the knowledge that the staff in the fish department had. They help direct us to the right fish that would accompany with the frog, so we slowly over a period of 2 weeks built up a tropical community tank. Currently, our aquarium consists of the following:

DSC03126

Watching the fish and frogs swim around the aquarium is so relaxing, my family all enjoy sitting around the tank and discussing the different activities that occur in the tank.

I look forward to posting more about this adventure and learning experience with our Tropical Fish Aquarium.

 

Jan 26

{Project: Food Budget} Week 4

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I have known that I am not good with budgets, and I think this project is just reinforcing that fact to me. We are used to eating out more often and grocery shop through the week. We really want to get control of this and lower this portion of our expenses, give us time and we will get there.

I have modified my budget to $200 for the week and below our my results for this week, as you can see we went over yet again. But, examining the numbers a little more I see that our groceries bill actually was within the original budget of $150 and what took us over was eating out. This is entirely my fault, I enjoy eating out, who doesn’t! I don’t like the budget of 200, but will work with that number for a bit and then try to lower it some.

  • Goal: $200
  • Actual: $208.91
  • Groceries: $113.21
  • Eating Out: $95.70

Moving forward I will be breaking out my budget listing for this project as listed above, I use mint for budgeting which I find to be a great tool and I go into much finer detail there.

Our menu for the past week, consisting of eating our with family at Hoffstot’s, which is not included in my budget above it was a gift. I made tuna casserole which I have to say was very good, the leftovers, well, not so much.

We ate out again on Monday, we had a long day with doctor’s appointments and got home late. This was fast food also, so it wasn’t very healthy.

Moving forward we are staying close to the budget, but still not hitting it.

Project: Food Budget

I’m excited to report that I have some great company on my Project: Food Budget challenge. Please check out these wonderful blogs, and give them support as they take on this challenge.

All have different budgets, number of mouths to feed, and food preferences {veggie + meat eating}. And yet, all have a common goal of saving money and making better choices when it comes to the food we put on our table.

Want to get on board? Fabulous. {Now go here.}

The Week 14 Participating Blogs:

 

Jan 23

Family Dinner at Hoffstot’s Cafe Monaco

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Every year my father takes us all to dinner for our birthdays, it is a combined birthday dinner for myself, my wife, sister, niece and my kids. It is so nice to know that we have a planner dinner on the calendar every January to sit and relax with family.

This year we went to Hoffstot’s Cafe Monaco in Oakmont, we have been there before and thought this would be a nice place for dinner.

2012-01-22 - 1

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We started with Fried Calamari and the Fried Platter (Zucchini, Provolone and Eggplan Mornay). Everyone loved the calamari, my kids every enjoy calamari, the eggplant mornay was amazing, I was shocked to see my oldest daughter even eat two of these.None of us where very impressed with the zucchini and we usually do like zucchini.

 

 

I also had the lobster bisque which is great, it was full of lobster and very creamy. For our

2012-01-22 - 3

Shrimp Monaco

Shrimp and jumbo lump crabmeat baked in butter garlic, lemon, white wine, basil and oregano

.

 

2012-01-22 - 4

 

Jumbo Lump Crab Cakes

Jump lump crab lightly blended together with seasonings, pan seared and served with a lemon beurre blanc.

 

 

The meal was outstanding, the food was just as we expected cook to perfection and mouth watering. Sadly the service was less that stellar, the place was not even packed when we arrived, but we seemed to have to wait for our waiter often. I would definitely go back and hope that it was just a bad day for the waiter, he was tipped well since we had a part of 9 and there the 18% was included in the bill.
Hoffstot's Cafe Monaco on Urbanspoon

Jan 20

{Project: Food Budget} Week 3

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I have known that I am not good with budgets, and I think this project is just reinforcing that fact to me. We are used to eating out more often and grocery shop through the week. We really want to get control of this and lower this portion of our expenses, give us time and we will get there.

I am going to modify our budget some and see how it goes.

Goal: $150

Actual: $220

Project: Food Budget

I’m excited to report that I have some great company on my Project: Food Budget challenge. Please check out these wonderful blogs, and give them support as they take on this challenge.

All have different budgets, number of mouths to feed, and food preferences {veggie + meat eating}. And yet, all have a common goal of saving money and making better choices when it comes to the food we put on our table.

Want to get on board? Fabulous. {Now go here.}

The Week 14 Participating Blogs:

 

Jan 18

Very friendly and tasty food @ Silk Road

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My family and I decided to try Silk Road in Whitehall, we have seen this restaurant in Caste Village and live very close to it but never tried it before. We arrived early and the place was empty, as we sat and decided what to eat it slowly started to fill up.

The staff was very friendly, we have 2 young girls who where busy playing on their electronics and would have rather been at a fast food place. We enjoyed some of the house tea, both my wife and I liked it, very smooth and relaxing.

We started with the Silk Road Appetizer Medley, which consisted of two skewered beef, two spare ribs, two crab rangoon and one egg roll. We didn’t care for the spare ribs, seemed a bit fatty, but everything was was excellent.

I ordered the Mango Chicken which is seasonal with fried rice. I was not at all impressed with this meal, it didn’t seem to have a lot of flavor. The chicken was tender and the mango and peppers where very good, but I would not order this again. My wife ordered the General Tso’s Chicken, this was faboulous, it was full of flavor and had a nice spice to it. This has to be the best General Tso’s I have  ever had, both my wife and older daughter loved it also. My youngest ordered the Sweet and Sour Chicken, this was good and loaded with pineapple, peepers and a few cherries.

We also had egg rolls and thet where wonderful. We decided we would defintely go back to Silk Road, excellent food and service.

Like any Chinese rerstaurant we left with a lot of leftovers, a meal for another day.

 

 

Silk Road on Urbanspoon

 

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