:: best app ever ::

iphone = awesome.
iphone pictures = so so.
iphone pictures that have been polaroided using my new favorite app shakeitphoto = awesome awesome awesome.

this is by far one of the favorite ways i've ever spent 99 cents. in my life. all day i've been taking "polaroids" and shaking my camera to get them to develop faster (yes that's a real feature of the app and not just something i just came up with), just like when i was a kid.

so now when you get another one of those iblog posts like the one from last week, it will be all full of polaroidy goodness.

yum.

:: letterpress play ::

about a month after emily was born, after my first week home by myself with the two kids, brian gave me a gift:



no, not a letterpress, although wouldn't that be cool? he gave me a letterpress class. his good friend from high school co-owns dock2letterpress here in rochester.

the class taught me a few things:



(a) letterpress prints are as cool as i always thought they were
(b) letterpress printing, on the other hand, is far less mysterious and esoteric than i imagined, even on century-old presses.
(c) it's a lot lot harder setting wood and lead type than it is to play with, manipulate, and arrange type digitally. i'm so used to being able to adjust leading, kerning, justification, type size, etc. with the click of my mouse. figuring out how to align and arrange my type, and how to keep it from falling apart when i lifted it up to take it to the press, was far more difficult.



as a result i am not all that in love with my first-ever hand-typeset design, but i'm thrilled with the prints themselves.

the best thing is that now, since i've taken the class, i can rent time on the presses in the future for my own projects. you can bet you'll be seeing some letterpress items coming to my shop in the next year or so. if i'm not paralyzed by trying to decide what to make first, that is.

:: Free Handwriting Fonts ::

Pictured here: Pea Anderson, Amanda's Hand, and Pea Missy.

So, a while back, I wrote about how you can have a font made from your own handwriting for just $9. Well, now I've found a place where you can (possibly) have it done for free (assuming your handwriting is selected for fontifying).

Even if you don't want to have yours done, you can download all the handwriting fonts for free and then use them in Word and stuff. It's freaking COOL.

:: Did You Have Any Idea? ::

Behold: the Edge Brownie Pan by Baker's Edge. I cannot believe that I have lived, breathed, and baked oh these many years and never known about these. How, in my many visits to Williams-Sonoma, Sur la Table, and the cooking aisle at Target have I not run across one of these. I own a scone pan. I own a scone pan and a cookie press and cake decorating tools. How do I not own a Baker's Edge Brownie Pan?

Forget that I actually hate the edge pieces of brownies and other pan-baked goods. Forget that if I could invent a brownie pan it would be one with no edges. This pan is freakin' cool. And now I want one.