My weekend in Pictures

Friday I went on my "second birthday" with my mama to a city nearby for a little shopping trip :) I said I would try to take pictures, but it was nearly impossible. We were sooo busy and spent of course most of the time in clothes shop, where I don't take pictures normally ;)
However I got quite a few lovely clothes (mostly summer clothes) and had a lovely lunch in the sun.
Here is a picture of the café we were in:

This morning my family and I woke up to a lovely hot summer's day AND a lovely breakfast prepared by my mama:

 

 

While I was trying to make my legs brown without getting a sunburn, my brother was swimming in the fresh water which was a perfect occasion for me to practise taking pictures of moving water.

Haha I find these pool pictures so fun especially when he splashes :D

So that was my little weekend, I hope you all had a good one too!

What's happening these days?

It's been a while that I haven't put up any post! I was very busy with my new summer job (now that I quit the au pair job that didn't go as expected...) and I have a lot of things coming up!

This Tuesday was my birthday :) I'm 19 now! (feels so old!) and I was accepted today in the University I wanted to get in. (yaaaay!)
In a week I will get a new kitten !! A little black one with golden eyes. I will put up a lot of pictures of him as soon as he comes. For the moment I have to find a little name for him :)
In about three weeks I'm heading to Ireland (again, I know) but this time it's to do a trip/roadtrip around the west of Ireland with my two best friends.
We will see the cliffs of Moher, Connemara, etc and of course, as you can imagine, my little canon friend will come with me, so expect lots of photos to pop up here when I come back!

I don't know what photos to put up today, but for my birthday we went to a lovely restaurant (one of my favourites actually) where the main theme is the USA/western. So the whole place is decorated from top to bottom with cowboy hats, pictures, statues, and even a real pink Cadillac car is sitting in there. They make lovely pizzas that you can watch being baked mmmmmm :)

Here are a few pictures I took this week:

And a little bird that didn't move too much when I came close to him. I think he was hurt cause they normally fly away instantly if you come too close or make too much noise. My lens is a prime lens, and not a zoom so you can see by this picture how close I could get to him. Poor thing flew away though, I hope I didn't scare him too much but I just wanted a little picture :)

I hope I will get to post more pictures and posts in the next few days! Maybe I will get to take some of the city tomorrow where I'm going to enjoy a late-birthday with my mama.

Hope you all have a great Friday and weekend!

Mother's Day Brunch...

Last Sunday was Mother's day here in France and my brother and I decided to make a breakfast/brunch for my mom.
It took us a while, but we finally made pancakes (with fleur d'oranger inside which was soooo nice) and waffles. I also heated up some frozen berries and my brother decorated the table with flowers.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Spring Is Here

Finally the flowers are starting to come after weeks of rain here in France.
I'm back now from my au pair job, and I'm so happy to be back.
There's no place like home!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Scavenger Hunt Sunday

Hi everyone!
I'm posting this post quite early cause I don't know if I will be able to get at my computer in the next couples of days.

Here are my pictures for this Sunday:

Walking:

 

This is the cat that belongs to my host-au pair family. She's a sweet little thing but is hard to get a photo of cause she always sniffs the camera.

Yummy to my tummy:

For my uncle's birthday last Sunday, my aunt made this "Banoffee" Pie and I fell in love with it! It's heavy but soooooooooooo good! Definitely going to make this when I get home.

Favourite toy:

It didn't even take me a second to know what picture to take for this one. My little canon will always be my favourite toy :)

What I did this week:

This week I experimented on making nutella cookies (same recipe as the last post I wrote) and added peanut butter and oats in the centre. Unfortunately, forgetting that they needed less time in the oven since they were flatter than a nutella brownie, they burnt :( I had to throw them away. SO annoying!

Anything

I was babysitting my 2 year old cousin the other night. She was fascinated by my camera and we took this picture of this art craft her and her 3 year old brother made. Turned out to be in focus for once :) (my 50mm lens's autofocus is terrible). Such a cute crocodile!

So those were my scavenger hunt pictures for this week! Hopefully I will get to do the next one as I love picture hunting.

Have a nice weekend everyone! .

Macro Photos...without the macro lens.

Hello hello,

I was a bit bored today and was playing around with my camera when I remembered reading about a technique to take close-up shots without having a macro lens.
I tried it and I was quite happy with the result, and it was fun!

 

 

So the method is to take off the lens and turn it around. You have to hold the lens against the camera as it doesn't click on backwards. And voila! shoot away and play around to see different methods.

I find these pictures look very arty. I don't think you'd get good close-up pictures of insects and that but it's fun being able to get closer :)
Since the lens isn't attached, the camera doesn't allow me to change the aperture which is constantly on 00. This is why the pictures are quite blurry, but I find it gives a lovely dreamy look to them.

Here are some pictures of how close I can normally get with the lens put on correctly on the camera:

 

As you can see, my prime 50mm lens doesn't allow me to get too close. With a zoom lens, you could get much closer I am sure.

The only problem with this method is that it can let in a lot of dust on the sensor. I was a bit worried about that at first but then I just did it and I don't see too much dust on it.

Well there you go! I learn something new every day :) I'm definitely going to take more in the next days.

Have a nice weekend everyone!

Nutella Brownie (or Cookie)

Today I finally tried the recipe I found on the internet.
As you might know, I'm an au pair at the moment in Ireland and the family I'm staying with are not the type to cook anything other than chicken and spuds, so imagine them baking!
I didn't want to ask the mother to buy extra things for me to bake cause that kind of felt impolite so this recipe is perfect!

It's a 3 ingredient recipe: nutella, flour and egg. Things you can find in your kitchen (and that I found here!)

But before I begin to show you how to make this, I have to tell you that I slightly changed the recipe by reducing the amount of each ingredient (otherwise I would have ended up with 12 cupcakes and on my own that would have been way too much). I also didn't find any cupcake pan in the house, so I used a regular cake one... which makes my creation look and taste more like a cookie than an actual brownie.
Well, next time I will try and use a different tray!

Ok so let's begin.

 

 
Ingredients:

. 2 and a half tablespoons of flour
. 4 tablespoons nutella
. half an egg
 

 

 
This was the tray I found. I think it would have been better to use a cupcake pan so that the mix isn't spread too much and becomes more fluffy inside (my one was very crispy; more like a cookie).

 
You can add whatever you want on top: nuts, chocolate flakes, etc. These white decoration toppings were the only things I found in the cupboard that I could use.
I only put them on half of my brownie as a test. Couldn't really taste them when the brownie was finished but it's one way of decorating it.
 

 

 
I was using my phone to know how much time to put the brownie in the oven.
I put it in the preheated oven for 30 minutes on 180 degrees Celsius.

 
I was quite amazed when my brownie started rising after only a couple of minutes. I was quite happy cause I had no idea if this was going to work or burn or go flat.

 
30 minutes later it's time to take it out of the oven.

 

 

And this is how it looks like!

 

 

 

Voila!
I really enjoyed it. However, it was very dry and I had to drink a glass of milk with it but maybe with some crème anglaise or some chocolate cream this would have been perfect!

The real recipe is for a much bigger amount (don't be surprised if your nutella pot is empty afterwards). If you want to make the original one, here is the recipe:

- 1 cup (280g) nutella
- 10 tbsp (62g) flour
- 2 eggs

Bake them the same way I did this one and you will end up with about 12 cupcakes. Great to share with the family!

Well, it was fun sharing this with everyone and I was happy to end up in 35 minutes with a brownie (cookie in my case) in my hands :)

Have a great weekend and hope to post soon again!