01 January 2011
04 October 2010
A Virtual Photo Booth
Monday again. Time seems to fly. So many things I wanted to do over the weekend... and suddenly it's Monday.
John's at work, Johanna is busy growing and teething and is pretty restless and wriggley. Currently she sits on my knee.
I am trying to type with one hand whilst holding her little fists with the other other hand in an attempt to stop her trying to type.
She has been very active today and generally really good, but very clingy. She wants to be held and carried all the time since her first little tooth appeared. She's very alert and keeps looking around as if she's just lost something, which is ever so cute and funny.
She's got such an amazingly animated little face. It's so interesting to watch her working things out. The range of expressions seems to grow steadily. Most recently she started "fremdeln". There is no word for this in English it think. It's normal behaviour in babies, that at a certain age they just cry when a stranger (or anyone apart from mum & dad) is approaching them.
It starts off with Johanna giving the person a long, serious look, then she pulls her eyebrows together, then pulls down her bottom lip, takes a deep long breath and then starts screaming until big baby tears are running down her cheeks. It's a heartbreaking show.
We've spent the last 30 minutes in the virtual photo booth.
I came across "La Photo Cabin" via Juliette on her Blog "Zuhause in Germany". Vist her beautiful blog here.
The sun is shining and we'll be going out in a minute, though we probably won't go very far as it's nearly time for Johanna's next feed.
Have a nice day and don't forget to check out Juliette's blog!
20 September 2010
03 September 2010
Trapezius
You can now watch "Trapezius", a dance film I worked on, in full length:
TRAPEZIUS from John Coombes on Vimeo.
John planned this film using one of his paintings as a starting point. He filled lots and lots of pages with his exquisite drawings, scribbles and notes and created an amazing storyboard.
painting by John Coombes
© John Coombes
While we were in amongst the preparations, building the set, holding auditions, doing various test shoots and trying lots of different lighting options, we went to the farewell party of our friends Wayne and Fran who were going to live in Australia for six months. I sneaked out the back door for a cigarette [I used to smoke occasionally] and met Ian Sanderson, which, it turned out, was a wonderful coincidence. He said he was a musician. I said we were looking for a musician for a dance film. He said he was very interested in writing music for a film.
He wrote the most beautiful tunes and came up with wonderful arrangements.
Ian tailored his music around Johns images and John cut the pictures to Ian's music. I learned a lot whilst watching the amazing process of editing the piece. Oh, and by then I have also learnt that Ian is part of the Urban Myth Club, and that his sound samples have been used by hundreds of artists including Massive Attack, Lemon Jelly, the Prodigy and Beastie Boys. It was a pleasure working with him.
TRAPEZIUS from John Coombes on Vimeo.
John planned this film using one of his paintings as a starting point. He filled lots and lots of pages with his exquisite drawings, scribbles and notes and created an amazing storyboard.
While we were in amongst the preparations, building the set, holding auditions, doing various test shoots and trying lots of different lighting options, we went to the farewell party of our friends Wayne and Fran who were going to live in Australia for six months. I sneaked out the back door for a cigarette [I used to smoke occasionally] and met Ian Sanderson, which, it turned out, was a wonderful coincidence. He said he was a musician. I said we were looking for a musician for a dance film. He said he was very interested in writing music for a film.
He wrote the most beautiful tunes and came up with wonderful arrangements.
Ian tailored his music around Johns images and John cut the pictures to Ian's music. I learned a lot whilst watching the amazing process of editing the piece. Oh, and by then I have also learnt that Ian is part of the Urban Myth Club, and that his sound samples have been used by hundreds of artists including Massive Attack, Lemon Jelly, the Prodigy and Beastie Boys. It was a pleasure working with him.
02 September 2010
Laugenbrezel - Bavarian Pretzels
I made Laugenbrezel "Pretzels" this week and it was a big success. They tasted exactly like they should do when you have them at a beer festival in Bavaria.
I made up a recipe by throwing 3 different ones together to make it work the way I wanted. Here's what I did and how I did it:
Bavarian Pretzels:
Ingredients:
500 g plain flower
1 ½ tsp fast action bread yeast
1 tsp salt
1 tsp sugar
50 g butter (+ some butter or margarine for the baking tray)
150 ml water
100 ml milk
You’ll also need
500 ml sodium hydroxyde solution (4%)
and coarse salt.
You can order sodium hydroxide via your local pharmacy. They might even make the solution for you. Let them know that you want to use it in food, it has to be clean. I got some natrium hydroxid pearls at the pharmacy and make up my own solution. It’s a bottle full of caustic soda in pearls. This is not the soda you use for normal baking, this stuff is normally used for clearing blocked drains and stripping furniture. So be very careful with it.
4 % means 4 g of natrium hydroxid in 96 g of water. Use cold water! It will get hot. (20 g natrium hydroxid in 480 g water)
So let's get started...
Butter your oven tray (thick!) and preheat the oven to 180 ° C. Don’t use Aluminium foil or baking paper, the sodium hydroxide solution will destroy that.
Mix the flour, yeast, salt and sugar. Add the butter (in little flakes) and slowly add the mix of water and milk while kneading. Knead until you get smooth dry dough. Do not add additional water, just keep kneading, you’ll get there.
I let the bread maker do all the kneading for me. I set it for pizza dough, but take it out earlier as you do not want the dough to rise yet.
Divide in 6 equal lumps which you then roll into 50 cm long stings, which are a bit thicker in the middle and narrower at the ends. Then form a pretzel!
Let the pretzels rest for 15 Minutes.
Put on disposable gloves and goggles. (I’m not kidding. Do not touch the solution with bare hands!) Make up your solution or open the bottle of ready made sodium hydroxide solution and pour the acquired amount into a glass or china bowl (no metal!). Now dip the pretzels into the sodium hydroxide solution. Only for a moment, not longer than 5 seconds and place them on your baking tray.
You can use a sieve and pour the solution into a glass bottle for reuse, but make sure you do label the bottle and keep it out of children's reach.
Take off your goggles and gloves. Take a sharp knife and make a cut at the thick middle bit of each pretzel. Drizzle some coarse grind salt over the pretzels and put them in the oven for 15 – 20 Minutes at 180 ° C fan assisted top and bottom heat.
Have them still warm with some thinly sliced Emmenthaler cheese with salt and freshly ground black pepper sprinkled on top and some chilled German beer.
Prost!
UPDATE: cover your worktop with lots of paper
I made up a recipe by throwing 3 different ones together to make it work the way I wanted. Here's what I did and how I did it:
Bavarian Pretzels:
Ingredients:
500 g plain flower
1 ½ tsp fast action bread yeast
1 tsp salt
1 tsp sugar
50 g butter (+ some butter or margarine for the baking tray)
150 ml water
100 ml milk
You’ll also need
500 ml sodium hydroxyde solution (4%)
and coarse salt.
You can order sodium hydroxide via your local pharmacy. They might even make the solution for you. Let them know that you want to use it in food, it has to be clean. I got some natrium hydroxid pearls at the pharmacy and make up my own solution. It’s a bottle full of caustic soda in pearls. This is not the soda you use for normal baking, this stuff is normally used for clearing blocked drains and stripping furniture. So be very careful with it.
4 % means 4 g of natrium hydroxid in 96 g of water. Use cold water! It will get hot. (20 g natrium hydroxid in 480 g water)
So let's get started...
Butter your oven tray (thick!) and preheat the oven to 180 ° C. Don’t use Aluminium foil or baking paper, the sodium hydroxide solution will destroy that.
Mix the flour, yeast, salt and sugar. Add the butter (in little flakes) and slowly add the mix of water and milk while kneading. Knead until you get smooth dry dough. Do not add additional water, just keep kneading, you’ll get there.
I let the bread maker do all the kneading for me. I set it for pizza dough, but take it out earlier as you do not want the dough to rise yet.
Divide in 6 equal lumps which you then roll into 50 cm long stings, which are a bit thicker in the middle and narrower at the ends. Then form a pretzel!
Let the pretzels rest for 15 Minutes.
Put on disposable gloves and goggles. (I’m not kidding. Do not touch the solution with bare hands!) Make up your solution or open the bottle of ready made sodium hydroxide solution and pour the acquired amount into a glass or china bowl (no metal!). Now dip the pretzels into the sodium hydroxide solution. Only for a moment, not longer than 5 seconds and place them on your baking tray.
You can use a sieve and pour the solution into a glass bottle for reuse, but make sure you do label the bottle and keep it out of children's reach.
Take off your goggles and gloves. Take a sharp knife and make a cut at the thick middle bit of each pretzel. Drizzle some coarse grind salt over the pretzels and put them in the oven for 15 – 20 Minutes at 180 ° C fan assisted top and bottom heat.
Have them still warm with some thinly sliced Emmenthaler cheese with salt and freshly ground black pepper sprinkled on top and some chilled German beer.
Prost!
UPDATE: cover your worktop with lots of paper
01 September 2010
Back from Bavaria
We've had a wonderful summer. We really enjoyed our first big trip with our little one and there are lots of new tales to tell. So stay tuned.
03 August 2010
The advantages of having a very small baby
When Johanna was born, 4 months and 2 weeks ago, she was only 1490 g and around 40 cm long. Yesterday she got weight and measured again: 4620 g and 55 cm.
We are so proud of our little girl. If she keeps growing at that speed she'll have to move to the bottom drawer by the end of next week.
We are so proud of our little girl. If she keeps growing at that speed she'll have to move to the bottom drawer by the end of next week.
01 August 2010
First smiles
first smiles from Katrin Freitag on Vimeo.
Johanna practising first smiles on 21st June. She's pretty good at it by now.
I put this video on Johanna's private blog, that we started for our families to keep them updated, and I cannot believe how often they have watched it!
30 July 2010
The Other Corner
Another peek into our living room, that used to be the office of the printworks. It seemed to be a very dark room. It was painted glossy pink, which didn't help making it look bigger. After being in there just once I was convinced this room had very low ceilings, while in fact they are 3,20 m.
When I say the room was painted glossy pink I mean THE WHOLE ROOM - not just the walls. They've been painting the ceiling and the radiators in the same colour. To complete the theme they also had pink blinds. (!) Maybe Barbie did the interior design...
On the floor there used to be a dark blue carpet and underneath we found red carpet and underneath that we found an uneven concrete floor.
John knocked out some of the uneven bits and put down new concrete. On top of that we put polystyrene and wooden floorboards, we took off the attic floor. I painted the walls and ceiling white. And... we had a window custom made to match the others at the printworks.
We put in our stuff and voila... WE LOVE IT!
What do you think?
When I say the room was painted glossy pink I mean THE WHOLE ROOM - not just the walls. They've been painting the ceiling and the radiators in the same colour. To complete the theme they also had pink blinds. (!) Maybe Barbie did the interior design...
On the floor there used to be a dark blue carpet and underneath we found red carpet and underneath that we found an uneven concrete floor.
John knocked out some of the uneven bits and put down new concrete. On top of that we put polystyrene and wooden floorboards, we took off the attic floor. I painted the walls and ceiling white. And... we had a window custom made to match the others at the printworks.
We put in our stuff and voila... WE LOVE IT!
What do you think?
29 July 2010
The Transformation of The Old Printworks
Today you'll get a peek into our new home. So much has changed since I have seen the Printworks for the first time. Looking back at the photographs I took then, I realize how much we've done to the place to make it ours. We bought it in July 2009 and moved in in September.
Here is a photograph I took a year ago - and one I took at the beginning of March:
It's hard to believe that this is the very same corner of the very same room.
Here is a photograph I took a year ago - and one I took at the beginning of March:
It's hard to believe that this is the very same corner of the very same room.
28 July 2010
The Bavarian Window
I haven't been blogging for a while, but I think it is time now to get back to it and tell you what we've been up to for the last few months.
My apologies to everybody from the BYW class, especially the "Valley of Blogs"-girls, for dropping out so abruptly at the end of the course. I missed time in the forum due to the early arrival of our baby daughter.
First of all I want to tell you that our little one has been a star. She recovered from surgery and grew stronger every day so despite the early complications we were able to take her home 10 days before her due date. I am so grateful for the care she got from nurses and doctors at the hospital - they were brilliant - as well as for all the support from our families and friends.
John was a star, too. Johanna was in hospital for 55 days, I was there every day and John was there most days. I know it must have been hard for him. When he was not able to go, because of his work, he was always there when I came back from the hospital feeling exhausted and incomplete.
It's been an exciting time, sometimes difficult, but mostly wonderful.
Looking out of the window of our flat in Bavaria this morning. It's been such a peaceful and quiet moment with Johanna falling asleep on the sofa making soft little giggley noises.
My apologies to everybody from the BYW class, especially the "Valley of Blogs"-girls, for dropping out so abruptly at the end of the course. I missed time in the forum due to the early arrival of our baby daughter.
First of all I want to tell you that our little one has been a star. She recovered from surgery and grew stronger every day so despite the early complications we were able to take her home 10 days before her due date. I am so grateful for the care she got from nurses and doctors at the hospital - they were brilliant - as well as for all the support from our families and friends.
John was a star, too. Johanna was in hospital for 55 days, I was there every day and John was there most days. I know it must have been hard for him. When he was not able to go, because of his work, he was always there when I came back from the hospital feeling exhausted and incomplete.
It's been an exciting time, sometimes difficult, but mostly wonderful.
Looking out of the window of our flat in Bavaria this morning. It's been such a peaceful and quiet moment with Johanna falling asleep on the sofa making soft little giggley noises.
17 April 2010
It's a girl!
Johanna Marie-Louise Freitag Coombes
Our baby daughter arrived on 20th March 2010 - nine weeks early.
She had to undergo a surgical intervention as her foodpipe did not join up with her stomach and there was a connection between the foodpipe and the windpipe. In medical terms it's called Tracheo-Oeophageal-Fistula with Oesophagal Atresia.
She has recovered from surgery and everything else is fine with her. She is amazingly strong and has done brilliantly. She is beautiful and we cannot wait to take her home. She probably needs to stay in hospital until around her due date, the 23rd May.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
