Pretend Pizza

We used to have this often for Sunday Lunch when I was young, and my brother was allergic to tomatoes.

You will need (per person):

• One medium sized roll. Morning rolls work particularly well (if you're fortunate enough to live in Scotland!)
• One sausage
• 1/2 tin Heinz Toast Topper - chicken & mushroom or mushroom & bacon *
• Cheese.

What to do:

1. Cook sausage - grill or fry. 
2. Cut roll in half, and toast outsides under the grill.
3. Turn over and spread both halves with Toast Topper.
4. Top with thinly sliced or grated cheese.
5. Cut sausage into 8 and arrange on top.
6. Put under grill until cheese melts.

*Not all shops sell this. I do know they sell it 3 for £ in Poundland, and from the internet looks like Tescos too.

Aerial perspective

7:05 am. Somewhere between Glasgow and Preston. Dull & overcast.

Lots of interesting things here:

• Contrast between light and extremely dark.
• The foreground grass looks very green, but is actually far darker than the greens I usually use.
• Fairly flat colours.
• How grey so many colours are. But it doesn't really look dull.

It's odd - I did this on a different computer during the daytime. Some of the tree colours look much lighter, so I would have done it a bit different on this computer.

Not saying I should always do it this dark. But it obviously can be, and not look weird.

Interesting bunting

In the centre of Macclesfield. It's not real clothes, but cutout shapes. No idea why.

Olympic torch

Anticipation

I got a better photo of this wee boy than of the actual torch!

Teaching myself by accident

In Sunday School last Sunday I was teaching the children about the tabernacle, which is a lesson I like for all kinds of reasons:

• I just find it interesting from a design point of view (which I didn't go into in the lesson). There's gold and silver and a beautiful tent and clothes.
• The first time God gave his Holy Spirit anyone it was to Bezalel and Oholiab to help them in their craft work for the tabernacle!
• We don't have a tabernacle, priest or sacrifices now because of Jesus - he is the way we get to God, and he's much better. 
• It's also a good lesson for showing interesting objects.

Materials for making the tabernacle

Those were the things I was expecting to teach (on a 5-7 yr old level of course) - and I did.

But I also taught the children - and myself - something else I hadn't planned.

I showed the children a picture of the High Priest; that was Moses' brother Aaron - did they remember Aaron? Blank faces. So to jog their memories, I pointed to the pictures on the wall. Look - there's Aaron with Moses talking to Pharaoh. I looked to see if there were any others. Oh yes, there was another - and for a split second I nearly passed over that one. Because there was Aaron, making the golden calf. We don't want to dwell on that one - focus on the good things he did. 

But in the next split second I realised that didn't make sense.  Instead I pointed out that, while Aaron did some good things, he also did some really bad things - but God still chose him and gave him the very special job of high priest, to help the people meet with God.

Aaron - the one who made the golden calf! Aaron!

And I realised that's the point. Brushing Aaron's sins under the carpet doesn't make the story better. God's grace to a man who did some really stupid and bad stuff makes it better. Because he does not treat us - any of us - as our sins deserve. 

Which fitted in with a lot of the other things in church that day.

It's a bit like Paul. He was hardly your typical candidate for an apostle. In fact, he described himself as "a blasphemer and a persecutor and a violent man ... the worst of sinners". But he considered that God had chosen him not despite this, but actually because of it, to show his great mercy. 

"Now to the King eternal, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honour and glory for ever and ever. Amen."

New face paint design

I never did like the fairy design on my face painting sheet, and it was quite difficult, especially the eyes. And the mouth. And the cheeks...

There was also the problem that using white as a base would look really wierd on dark skin, as it would be greyish unless pancaked on very thick (and on really black skin, it would still look grey). But I wasn't really aiming at white at all - I just wanted to give the child's natural skin colour an unearthly ethereal look. So I realised the way to do this was use gold on dark skin. Plain white could still be used on fair skin, but a pearlescent white or silver would be best.

So here's a new design. Disclaimer: I have not actually tried this on a face yet!

More face painting designs on Free Downloads page

Dawn Light

No, I am not completely crazy. I just happened to wake up at that time, noticed it was dawn, took the photo, and went back to sleep.

4.30am, June 3, looking North towards Glasgow

Best visibility of them all, as far as distant hills are concerned.
Very little difference between red roofs and green trees.

Jubilee

The Queen 2012

I know it's late, but Corel PhotoPaint helpfully crashed when I was part way through the first version :-(

Overpackaged banana

I was sorting through some photos, and came across this from a few years ago.