Milk Chocolate Banana Bread

Time for some more food, right?

Ahh, banana bread.  Classic, tasty and always seasonal.  

I love banana bread and I've tried lots of different recipes.  Some healthy with whole wheat flour, some not so healthy and loaded with chocolate chips.  I've found quite a few that I like, but I always come back to the one I'm sharing with you today.  It was probably the first banana bread recipe I ever made.  My mom found it in a newspaper article, I think.  I wish I could site the source correctly, but we've used it for so long, that it's now just one of those standards in my family's household.

I think my sister might have come up with the name--Milk Chocolate Banana Bread.  Doesn't that just sound delish?  This is definitely not one of those "healthy" banana bread recipes.  But, come on, isn't all banana bread at least a little healthy?  That's what I tell myself when I eat half a loaf for breakfast.  

Milk Chocolate Banana Bread

3 eggs
1/2 cup vegetable oil
1/2 cup white sugar
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/2 tsp salt
4 ripe, mashed bananas
2 cups flour
3 tsp baking powder
1 cup milk chocolate chips

Whisk eggs, oil, sugars, salt and bananas.  Combine flour and baking powder with fork in separate bowl.  Add flour mixture to egg mixture, along with chocolate chips.  Don't overmix.  Bake in an 8 x 4 loaf pan at 350 degrees for about an hour.  It should be a deep golden brown and a toothpick should come out clean.  My loaves usually take a little longer than an hour. 

Paint Chip Projects

You know how every time you walk by the paint section at Home Depot or Lowes and you see that glorious giant wall of paint chips and that little nagging voice in the back of your head says you could do something awesome with all those paint chips?  Oh, that never happens to you?  Oh.  Well, it happens to me.  Something about all those pretty colors lined up so nicely sparks the crafting side of my brain.  Alright, lets be honest, it doesn't take much to spark that side.  


Anyways, you know all those free paint chips are just waiting to be used in something super sweet, but what?  Maybe you're not going to go as far as this guy (besides, taking that many paint chips I kind of think borderlines on stealing),  but the options are endless with those little pretty pieces of paper.  


What got me thinking was spying this post over on Ohdeedoh - the children's section of the design blog Apartment Therapy.  Which led to the awesome blog Modern Parents Messy Kids.  And with Easter just around the corner, this is such a fun and simple way to add cute Easter decorations.  (Which is a big deal for me, since I am not big on decorating for holidays other than Christmas.  Maybe that will change once my child is older than a month.)  If you have kids you trust with scissors, you can force make a project out of cutting out the eggs. 



Besides that fun garland, there are lots of other ideas out there on the web of things to do with paint chips.  


I'm a little bit in love with these Valentines from Country Living.

You could easily use different colors and stamps to make cards for different occasions.

Wreaths are some of the easiest things to make, and you could easily use paint chips to make this wreath.  It would barely cost you anything and would be so fun for something like a birthday party.

But you want to know the project I'm dying to try? Recreating the artwork above this chick's head:

There is something about it that's so interesting, but it's brilliantly simple.  I think the fact that it's placed in such an elegant space helps it from looking too "child's room".  (Although it would also be cool in a child's room, now that I think about it.)  Anyways, this would be so easy with a batch of paint chips and one of those craft circle punches.  

So yeah, I have a weird affinity for paint chips.  I want to try all these projects eventually.  I like them because they are simple and easy, even for those not-so-crafty ones, but they still look fresh, modern, and not-so-cheesy.  However, accomplishing one of these projects would require me to get my 4 week old baby to Home Depot one of these days.  Wish me luck!  

Take better pictures! Part A

Before I get into Part A of the series, Take Better Pictures, let me preface by saying I am not an expert.  I am not a professional.  And I am still learning.  Every day.  So take my advice for what it’s worth.  Everything I’ve learned, I learned through my own research. 

This advice is for those who have Digital SLRS.  SLR is Single-Lens-Reflex but that’s not very important information.  Forget I even mentioned it.

So, the first step in taking a better picture is to get off automatic.  That little green box on your mode dial (on Canons) sure is easy but it severely limits your creativity.

But before we do that, we need to learn, “What is an Aperture?”

Aperture is the opening or hole through which light travels.  Plain and simple.  Aperture is represented by the F-Stop number on your camera.  Ex: 1.4, 1.8, 2.8, 3.5…etc.  And here’s the tricky part, the smaller your F-Stop number the larger your lens opening will be, thus letting in more light.  Photographers who say, “I like to shoot wide open” are saying they like to shoot as low an F-stop as their lens will allow, helping their images become sharper and the Depth-of-Field more apparent as well as creating some beautiful Bokeh. 

This picture was taken with my macro lens at an F-stop of 3.2 (my lens allows as low as 2.8).  You can see the nice blurred background giving the photo a more interesting perspective.

Here the aperture or F-stop is at 1.4 with a 50 mm lens.

On your DSLR there is a mode for Aperture control, on Canons it is the mode, Av.  On Nikons I believe it is just A. Turn it to that mode and it will let you change the lens opening by turning the dials near the shutter button; everything else will be automatic. Play around with different numbers and experiment going as low as the lens allows.  Most kit lenses only go as low as 3.5 but it’s a good starting point.  Remember, the smaller the number, the larger the lens opening thus letting in MORE light.

Too much light = an over exposed image (very very bright/blown out).  Too little light = underexposed image (very very dark, black)

So if you go as high as F11 the lens opening will be very small and will let in very LITTLE light most likely resulting in a blurry photo.  However smaller apertures are useful when working in conjunction with slow shutter speeds ex: taking pictures of flowing water or speeding cars to  achieve that feeling of motion. (But more on that in another section)

So go forth and capture!  Experiment with F-Stops!