So, my theme word for 2012 is focus. I set it toward the end of last year, and things like these, goals, theme words, and such tend to evolve as time goes on.

Though I claim not to set New Year’s Resolutions, I did resolve not to eat anything out of the vending machine at work in 2012. 1 month down, 11 to go! However, this in combination with a book I just read: Make the Bread, Buy the Butter inspired me to take this goal a bit further for the month of February.

This February, I will not eat mass-manufactured snacks at all. No crackers, pretzels, goldfish, granola bars. None of that stuff.

My intention isn’t to be ridiculous and annoying about it. I will not be rude for a project. However, I suspect that this will make me a tad more mindful of what the heck I’m eating.

For example, this morning, yesterday I was packing my lunch and I had decided to take this lentil salad I made recently. Another day I might have grabbed some crackers to go  with that, but not today. Instead (in my morning rush) I grabbed a couple stalks of celery instead. Yay!

I am not saying that I am going all anti-sweets. If I bake cookies or a cake or something, I promise that I am going to eat (some of) it and enjoy the heck out of it. In fact, right now, four cookies are cooling on the pan from a batch that I mixed up a couple weeks ago, scooped into cookie shapes and froze for an evening like this.

We’ll see how this goes!

When I decided to start putting together this bread, it would not have been out of line to question my priorities.

Let’s just say that there were a number of other things that need to be done. But, I have been on a bit of a roll with the BBA Challenge as of late and don’t want to let the building momentum lapse.

That said, I have been trying to cut back on bread a bit. I love the stuff. Though it doesn’t need to belong on my list of things that I’m not allowed to have at home, I have to exercise deliberate self control. I thought about making a goal to only eat bread that I make at home, but I think that is a bit unrealistic for me at this point. I have been the queen of the sandwich as of late, well particularly in December. And when I’m watching calories there are a number of chains from which I know what to order to be full and to also stay within my intended lunchtime allotment.

Not that any of that is the point of this blog post. The bread is the point of  this blog post.

The recipe basically involved mixing the dry ingredients, then the wet ones. Then letting the dough ferment. Low maintenance!
Though anyone who bakes bread will talk about the precision that bread-baking requires, (While on some other occasion talk about how environmental factors can affect your bread-making….) sometimes I feel a little lazy when I’m baking bread. The instructions said that I should do the windowpane test, but I did not. Instead, I took it’s temperature and said…eh, good enough.

Then, I was lazy when it got to the point where my dough had fermented. I was working on some other things and I simply didn’t want to 1) peel myself from my other tasks and 2) clean a patch of counter in order to shape the bread. Trifling!

However, all’s well that ends well. Funny thing is is that I’ve been trying to write about this bread for six days now. That is how long it is taking me to get to things on the home front. It’s all good though.

Next up = marbled rye bread. Looking forward to it!

As everyone who knows me knows, I have become intensely interested in the US Presidents in the last couple of years. Primarily, I am interested in these people as men. You know, people who have favorite foods, and love their pets. I am thinking about these dudes quite a bit.

A different interest that I have is making thing with my hands. It was only a matter of time before these two things married (or at least got on a path of intermittent passionate trysts). So describes the above painting.

How did I do it? I found a picture of one of the Kennedy-Nixon debates. Then I played around with it in Photoshop Elements until I wound up with an image that I liked. I printed that out and then transferred the main lines onto a canvas (with the help of some carbon paper) and painted it in. I decided that the canvas itself would be a television set. So, I looked around for images of TVs from the appropriate era to figure out where various knobs, buttons, or dials should go.

For those who don’t know, the Nixon-Kennedy debates were the first televised presidential candidate debates. They were  significant to the outcome of this particular election, and really “changed the game” so-to-speak in presidential campaigning. Interestingly, at the end of the first televised debate, television audiences thought that Kennedy had won. Radio audiences, however, thought that Nixon had won. Here, I cannot resist adding that these debates helped Kennedy build up his image as a fresh, youthful, vigorous leader, when, in fact,  he was very ill. Kennedy had suffered poor health his entire life.

A while ago, I saw that someone did a pixelated portrait of Abraham Lincoln and I loved it! I had it in the back of my mind that I would copy it. I liked the idea of encountering Honest Abe here and there. I actually bought a long skinny canvas to copy what I had seen.

Earlier this week, however, I was looking around at different photographs of the Presidents. Actually, after watching a documentary on Jimmy Carter, I thought that I wanted to do a pixelated portrait of him doing Habitat for Humanity work. However, the pictures that I came across weren’t great for the task. Then I thought, who is a nice recognizable President with strong lines. Yes, it’s true, I have thoughts like that one. None other than the original Rough Rider himself came to mind.

So, this is the picture that I decided to work with:

The first step was to pixelate the image.

So, then I counted the pixels to figure out what kind of canvas would work best. I wound up working with a 22X28 canvas.

Then I drew the grid on the canvas. The long metal ruler that I purchased for sewing-related projects came in handy  here!

Then I decided that I was going to use 6 shades of gray to created the image. I hadn’t read the article that went with the Abe image that inspired me, so I hadn’t realized that I could have told Photoshop Elements how many “colors” I wanted to use. I did the next best thing. Basically I assigned each color of gray that I would be using a number and then numbered the squares appropriately essentially creating a paint-by-numbers.

Then, I mixed the paint (gotta love empty yogurt containers) and started filling in the portrait color-by-color.

It was pretty exciting to see it take shape. By this point, I had to erase the gridlines from the parts of the portrait that were to remain white. Luckily I had a virgin white eraser (that sounds so, so very wrong, but not quite wrong enough to make me edit out that line) and carefully erased the grids. I got rid of the eraser shavings using a can of compressed air. Finally, I painted over the hitherto unpainted squares. I debated between using white and using a very light gray. I went with the gray which will give the finished painting a bit of contrast against even a white wall.

There he is!

And for the sake of comparison: