Saturday, April 21, 2012

J & Summer's Nu Haus Party!

Tonight, J and Summer hosted an open house for people to come and see their amazing new house! It's finally done!!



Clark and Anne came down from Columbus to attend the party. First they stopped by our place and tripped out on the Brain Machine for awhile.






Party time!! I didn't take nearly enough photos. There was a delicious table full of food!



Look at their awesome house!!!



The upstairs is an art studio.



Anne and Ben checking out the upstairs!



The open house doubled as cooking club for April. The cooking club ladies catered the event! Summer made a ton of food, and the rest of us also brought dishes to supplement the menu. I made house-shaped gingerbread cookies with lemon icing.






Yumi and Summer working on some dishes in the awesome new kitchen!



Yumi did a grilled cheese station!



She made several different types of grilled cheese, and they were ALL DELICIOUS!



Alex and I assembled one of Summer's specialties - crostini with mint and pea puree, bacon and parmesan.



Assembling! Whee!



Valerie made crostini with sauteed squid and shitake mushrooms in a cream sauce.



Nancy made thyme crackers, which she topped with salami and cucumber; Emily made mini beef empanadas; and Summer made roasted red pepper bruschetta with shrimp and also bacon-wrapped, gorgonzola-stuffed dates.



Debi enjoying a house cookie!



The evening was a wonderful and delicious way to celebrate the new house.

Wednesday, April 04, 2012

The Brain Machine

Kayla's friend recently ordered this item called The Brain Machine after seeing it on the Internet. They advertise, "Relax and rejuvenate as your brain synchronizes to a wonderful meditative state, and enjoy as you hallucinate beautiful colors and patterns from your subconscious mind!" She was expecting to receive this:



But what she received was a cardboard box containing the following: Microcontroller, 8-pin socket, Stereo headphone jack, 5mm Diffused Red LED, 1/4W 5% 47 ohm resistor, 1/4W 5% 2.2K resistor, 1.0 uF electrolytic capacitor, 6mm tactile switch, 6-pin ICSP header, 2 x AAA battery holder, Circuit board, Over-ear Headphones, Safety Glasses, Rainbow Ribbon Wire, 4" Zip/wire ties, Heat shrink tubing 1/16" diameter, Paper Overlay and AAA batteries.

Apparently, The Brain Machine does not come assembled. Kayla's friend was exasperated and asked Kayla to get rid of it. Kayla knew Ben would be up for the challenge of assembling The Brain Machine, so she gave it to him at his birthday party! He put it together and tested it out. It actually worked!!



Kayla came over and tried it, too!



Several people have tried out Ben's Brain Machine since he put it together on Sunday. Here is a video I put together showcasing their experience.