The theme upgrade came with minor changes to the site’s layout.  More than anything, this is really my learning more how to manipulate the code for this site than the theme itself causing these changes.  I’m just going to say a big thank you to Yvo on that, because if it wasn’t for her and a special project then I wouldn’t have figured these things out.  Now, that might have piqued your curiosity.  And I don’t blame you.  I would pique mine too.  However, I’m sworn to secrecy.  I honest.

What this means for you is that I now have room in the side bar to add some features.  We now have a drop-down box for the site’s archives.  I can’t tell you how happy I am about that!  It’s making it easier for me to go back and find posts to link to or to look at.  Sometimes, I need to go back and look at things for inspiration as well.

There’s a blank spot below that.  Soon, we’ll have a link to a fan site on Facebook for NEB.  The page is made.  I just have to make it public…just as soon as I make a graphic for that blank space.

In January of this year, I had announced two new features to Not Exactly Bento: Photo Friday and Tuesday’s Tips.  Now, Photo Friday of course worked.  I take so many photographs, there was never any doubt that it would work.  I have to have somewhere to share all these pics!  LOL!  However, Tuesday’s Tips was announced, 1 post was made, and I never went back to it.  The idea of this series was to talk about behind the scenes stuff with Not Exactly Bento.  However, the more I thought about it, the more I realized a few things.  1.) My interest just wasn’t there for this series.  2.) I realized how much of what I thought I wanted to share with Tuesday’s Tips would be more appropriate shared with Photo Friday.  3.) A new, better thought was starting to circle in my mind.  However, it wouldn’t really solidify until the past month.

Along with the discontinuation of Tuesday’s Tips comes the discontinuation of other things, such as tutorials for The Gimp.  It’s free.  Everyone has access.  But in all honesty, I’m a Photoshop girl at heart.  It’s where I’ll stay.  We’ll just have to find other ways to impart photo editing information here and there.

If you’re wondering about my great idea for another series, here it is: New-t0-Me on Tuesdays.  All you have to do is read this blog for a few days to realize how much stuff I have never tried before.  Some of my adventures in eating have turned out great, like quinoa and lentils.  Some have not been as great, like salmon burgers (shudder) and cauliflower.  Still others have left me scratching my head, like kale.  Oh Kale, you deserve your own post.  I promise, it’s coming on a Tuesday sometime in the near future.

Often as I cook a new food or experience a new food, I want to talk alot about it.  Sometimes alot more than what the post I’m working on allows.  Or maybe what I limit myself to.  I’m telling you now, this series has no fear of dying some slow death.  LOL!  I already have about 5 weeks worth of posts.  Here’s what you can expect with New to Me Tuesdays:

1. Talk about a new food I have tried, such as kale, cous cous, and more.
2. Talk about foods I now eat that were new-to-me since starting bento.  This gives me the opportunity to talk about why something has stuck with me, and give a recipe as well.  There’s a good one on quinoa coming up soon (or so I think).
3. Talk about sweets, snacks, and other delights I’m always giving a whirl.  That’s right!  I admit it!  I have a huge sweet tooth.  And I’m always willing to try something new, especially when covered in chocolate.  I’m also going to use New-to-Me Tuesdays to talk about these.  Upcoming posts will include Caro’s Chocolate Covered Orange Slices, some fudge mint cookies that taste surprisingly like Girl Scouts thin mints but aren’t, and a brand of cookies that are surprisingly tasty.
4. Product Reviews.  I pick up all sorts of food items, like some crackers recently that I now adore, to try.  Things I’ve never tried before that I want to take a bite of and give it a whirl.  I want to make it clear now that none of these are solicited.  It’s just simply a sharing of what I thought about something I bought.

I’m so excited!  Are you?  I hope so.  This is going to be fun.  I’ll probably have more scheduled NTM posts than Photo Friday posts.

There are other things coming as well to the sidebar, but I’m keeping quiet on those for now.  There have to be a few surprises right?

I hope you enjoy the recent updates.  And if you have a great idea, please share it.  I’m hear to listen.

I’ve talked a good bit here on NEB about choosing backgrounds for your blog photos. If you’ve been watching this blog closely, you may have noticed that I’ve been using the above background. Don’t you love it? It’s a type of fabric called a batik. Batik is a form of dying and decorating fabric originally begun in Indonesia. It is my favorite type of fabric. It is bright, colorful, vibrant, and appealing. It also tends to match my website very well.

With spring and summer on its way, I’ve wanted a brighter background for my bento photos. I remembered I had one or two uncut pieces of batik fabric from a quilt I may never finish (but have dreams that one day I will). I’ve been meaning to go to the quilt shop to purchase a few additional pieces of batik fabric for photo backgrounds. Then, fate intervened.

My mother called me to tell me she had found another open-to-the-public restaurant supply place in Baton Rouge. Not only was it bigger and better than the place we went to for my birthday, we found out that place buys from this one. In case you live in Louisiana and are wondering what this place is, the name of the store is Ducote’s Restaurant & Bar Supply. When my mother told me about this place, I just had to go there. So we did. And I found these plates. And I fainted from the sheer joy of it.

I haven’t been completely happy with some of the plates I use here on NEB, even though they do make a nice photo.  I’ve wanted a plate or two that would match my color scheme better.  VOILA!  Now, I have some.  <big cheesy grin>

On my way home from Ducote’s, I stopped by Fabric Krazy, a quilting store. I purchased a few new batik fabrics in what is called a fat quarter. This is a quarter yard length of fabric used in quilting. They tend to be about the size of a napkin. I’ve lined my new fabrics up with the one orange fabric I already had. You can see that I’m staying within the color scheme for this blog.

As usual, I took some test shots to see how I would like the different plates against the fabrics. I’m so pleased it’s nauseating!

Just as I’d hoped, the brown fabric matches everything.

Moral of the story: When choosing photo backgrounds and accessories for your food photographs, always keep your eyes and mind open. You never know what you might find that will be just perfect.

Ever wish you could just print something off a blog quickly and easily without using a huge amount of paper?  Sometimes, things print out that you don’t necessarily need.  I know I wish that all the time.  It’s something that I’ve wanted for quite some time for my own blog, and I’m finally working towards making it happen.

I’m calling them Posts to Go.  Basically, I’m taking the pictures and explanations for different posts here at NEB, turning them into .pdfs, and posting them for you to download or print out.  To make all Posts to Go easily accessible, they will be linked from a page in the brown menu bar above, rather than you having to search the archives each time.  As well, a link will be placed on older posts for any that have  Post to Go associated with it.

I’ve made my first one using yesterday’s Chicken Tortilla Filling recipe.  Check out the new Post to Go and let me know what you think.  I plan to work on more of these and post them over the course of the next month, slugging through the archives of Not Exactly Bento as I go.

Future Posts to Go will include tutorials on photography and blog-related posts as well as more recipes.

  Happy Friday everyone!  Be the bento!

Another feature will be Tuesday’s tips, where I talk about behind the scenes stuff with Not Exactly Bento.  Mainly, this will be a continuation of the blog tips that I now do.  Hopefully on a more regular basis.  Probably not every week, but my plans are a few posts a month.  I already have a list of ideas, some of which include addressing issues that have been pointed out to me lately, how they were fixed, what the issues were, and more.  I believe in sharing my  mistakes and learning process.  Hopefully, it will help someone else not make the same mistakes as I have as they start their own blogs.

However, I must forewarn you all that all non-bento photographs will not be regulated to Fridays…

or so I have been strongly advised.

For some time now, I’ve been frustrated with the layout of Not Exactly Bento. I didn’t feel like I could find the things I wanted to find, much less my visitors. Past posts felt virtually buried, my categories and tags where a virtual messpile of confusion, and older posts had lost images due to a bumble on my part.

I set January 2009 as my goal to have a new layout/redesign of the site. It’s a bit different than the old, but hopefully more functional for both you, the reader, and me, the worrisome poster. This has been an interesting goal to work towards. I’ve looked at many themes, read many blogs and helpful tips, and thought hard about what I liked the best about my site, and what I liked the least about it. My latest bento contest was another way to gather information.

The most difficult part of this process is that I do not have a technical/computer background. The knowledge I possess has been gathered and stored from years of tinkering and experimenting as different aspects of the Internet have caught my interest. While I might know more than the average bear (Hey BooBoo!), I’m a long way from really understanding all the code and whatzits that make this whole thing work. Mainly, I know just enough to get myself into deep doodie.

The most helpful thing I did during the revamp was to sketch out what I wanted to appear on the front page of Not Exactly Bento. It also helped to have a very clear understanding of the type of information I share on this blog. My posts tend to fall into three big categories: bento related information, photography related information, and stories related to my life (read that as pictures of my dogs). Having a sketch of what I wanted helped me to look at blog themes and compare if those themes could really perform the way that I wanted them to perform.

This weekend with a mental push to myself, I finished the first phase of the project, releasing the new look and feel of Not Exactly Bento a little ahead of schedule.  The color scheme hasn’t changed much, neither has the logo.  You’ll find lots of cool (or so I think) stuff here now.

Here’s some of the neat things I like:

The green sub-navigation bar is a listing of all post categories here at Not Exactly Bento. In order to have NEB work the way I would like, I have had to do a serious overhaul of my categories and which categories posts are assigned. I should have paid more attention in cataloging class in library school!

The whole reason I wanted a navigation area like this is for the recipes section.  Look at that!  I can find my recipes now!  WHEEEEE!  I often go back to my posts to see how I did something to help me out in the kitchen when I get confused or unsure of myself.  My next step is to get some of my recipes into a .pdf format I can easily print and store in my handy-dandy recipe binder.  Then, I can share them with you as well. Don’t be surprised if you can’t find pictures on older posts. I have some picture issues to clear up still.

Another thing I’ve wanted to share in a more visually pleasing way are the two social networking sites I participate in: Flickr & Twitter. The great thing about my flickr account is you can find many of the photos I post here at NEB. I also have started gathering a section where I’m placing all the step-by-step recipes I’ve tried. If for any reason you want to see just the photos, they are available for your perusal.

I have a whole list of things to work on still (like missing pictures and a bit more category reorganization), but for the hardest part may just be over. I hope you like it and you can learn something from the process I’m going through. Hopefully, it will help you avoid mistakes I’ve made.

Soon, you’ll hear me talking about categories and tags.  Boy, have those been a mess and a half to clean up!  And I’m still cleaning.

I’m always on the lookout for great backgrounds for blog pictures.  Lately, I’ve been scrounging around hard trying to find more “fall” backgrounds.  Much of what I currently own has a very spring feel to it.  The hunt began two weeks ago for a burnt orange background.  However to my big dismay, i have been unable to find something I just adore.

When looking for backgrounds for pictures, sometimes you have to take a step back and rethink what you normally use.  Yesterday when I went to town to purchase groceries, I stopped by a shop that sells decorator fabric.  You know, those large rolls of fabric that you purchase to recover a couch or make fancy draperies.

Decorate fabric can be expensive, but what I was looking for normally costs just a few bucks.  Many decorator fabric stores sell what they call sample squares for $2 -  $4 (or at least in my neck of the woods they do).  The brown patterned fabric to the right was a sample square for $4.  It is HUGE.  Most likely about 20″ square; much larger than a napkin.

The other two fabrics are 1/2 yard of decorator fabric that was on sale.  The total cost of the fabric above was just over $10 with tax.  Woohoo!  Much more fabric for the same price I might have paid for three napkins.  Why is more fabric useful?

I can do something fancy like this in my picture. Wheeeee. I’m so excited.  Well, maybe it’s not that fancy.  The picture could be posed better, but I was in a rush.  I’m so excited to share this bit of minutia of my life with you!  Heheheheeee.

And then I do something like this: take a quick photo to see how my bento boxes look against the new fabric. Because if you don’t know it, I’ll pick my bento box based on which background I want to use.  Sometimes I do pick the background based on the box. It’s all how the mood strikes me.

If you’re wondering how I picked my colors, it was simple.  I just picked slightly darker colors than the ones I already use.  I also looked for fabrics that might match the colors of the bento boxes I use.

I hope this helps those of you that think about your bento photos as much as you think about what you’re putting into the box.

Or is that just me?  I am slightly obsessed!

Today at work, there will be a potluck lunch featuring jambalaya and hot tamales! This means no bento box lunch for me today.

I didn’t want to leave my readers without a post for today. Yeah, I posted pictures of the dogs, but I wanted something a bit more “meaningful” to share as well. As I was snapping pictures yesterday, I forgot to set a camera function and a picture of Toby came out too red. I remembered I wanted to talk about white balance and how to fix photos. Then, I kicked myself in the rear because it has been so long since I’ve done a blog tips post. Shame on me!

In the above example, you’ll notice that the picture on the left is a bit too red. This was the original photograph. The picture on the right is the edited photograph. In this first tutorial on fixing white balance, I’ve used Google’s Picasa editor to fix the photograph. This is free-to-everyone software everyone reading has the capability to fix their photographs if they are coming out a little off.

I will do a follow-up tutorial on fixing white balance using Photoshop Elements.

Enjoy! Be the bento and have a great Friday everyone!

My next blog tip discusses how I chose the colors for Not Exactly Bento. Since I want to be able to easily refer back to these blog tip posts, I’ve decided to turn them into pages. This is the first one. To read more on choosing a color scheme for your blog, click here.

Now keep in mind my general disclaimer: The information you are about to receive is in no way expert information.  The information you are about to receive is from my own, non-techie experience.  It’s real life, baby.  With this in mind, take this information with a grain of salt, and be sure to do your own research.  What works in my life, might not work in yours.

Now that I feel I have sufficiently warned you, let me explain a bit about the inner workings of Not Exactly Bento for those of you who wish to know.

For any blog, there are two things you need in order to be up and running: a domain name and a host.

Domain Names
Domain Names:  Your domain name is of course the www.yoursite.com address you’ve chosen.
If you’re running your blog from Blogger, you know that yourname.blogspot.com is your domain for that blog.  However, since I’m a creature who needs more control than that, I wanted my own doman name.

Domain names can be purchased from a variety of places.  GoDaddy is a popular choice, and the one I’ve used for years (I’ve had other websites before this blog).  For a list of other places, Blogger has a nice list on their site for those individuals that are interested in a “custom domain name” as they call it.  Or in other words, you want to be called by your blog’s name and not yourname.blogspot.com.

Domain names are sold to you for a minimum license of 1 year.  If you choose to just pay for 1 year, you will need to renew your domain name after that year (and every year after that until you or your blog decides it can go no more).

Hosting Your Blog
Once you have a domain name, it is now time to decide where to host your blog.  You’re going to have to choose a webhost (the horror!).

Now for a quick definition of a webhost…in storybook format (hehehehe, can you tell I’m a children’s librarian?).

A webhost is the company
that owns the servers
that store the code
that runs the blog software
that features the content
that you write about
on the blog that you’ve built.

Or something like that.  Choosing a webhost is what I view as the most difficult part of the task.  I’m always looking for a company that has low fees, good service, and lots of bandwith.  This sounds like the proverbial needle in a haystack.  But with what seems like the big competition of the Internet hosting market, it can sometimes be quite easily found.

If you’re a fan of Blogger and don’t want to switch, you can purchase your own domain name and continue to host your blog with Blogger.  Blogger has a great help section on just this.

However if you’re that creature of control (read that as Type A personality) like I am, then you’re looking for more control over your blog.  You might dream of a snappy layout, great blog header, and cool features for your readers.  This means choosing a host and robust blogging software.  There are lots of blogging platforms out there. I’m only going to talk about WordPress.  It’s the one I like.  It’s the one I use.  It’s the one I recommend.  It is highly customizable and has loads of templates (or skins).  There is an extremely active and knowledgable community of WordPress developers that help the newbie WordPress inductees.

Now, you can go out on the big, bad World Wide Web, choose a host, upload the WordPress software, configure it yourself, update it each time an update comes out, etc. etc.  And that is all before your upload the template, and configure the look and feel of your blog.

Me, I don’t want to do that first part.  So, I looked for a web host that had WordPress built into their  hosting package.  GoDaddy again saved my bacon on that one.  However, GoDaddy might not appeal to you.  With that in mind, WordPress has a list of recommended hosts: http://wordpress.org/hosting/.  I highly recommend choosing any of these hosts.  And it all has to do with the upgrade process.  For example, WordPress just came out with a new upgrade to their software.  My host, GoDaddy, makes that really super simple.  They make the upgrade available and with a click of a button, their server upgrades the software for me.  YAY!

What happens when you host your blog outside of WordPress or Blogger’s free hosting?  Control, baby, control.  You get lots and lots of control.  More control than you or I might be able to handle.

We won’t get into all of that control.  That’s many a blog post to come.  For the time being, just sit back on this Friday, have a piece of chocolate, and contemplate:

To host or not to host?  That is the question.

P.S. We won’t ask the question about whether or not to have a domain name.  It’s $9.99 a year at GoDaddy.  Skip today’s super grand tall latte from your favorite coffee shop, don’t eat out one night this week, or whatever.  Purchase the domain name and then bask in the realm of your individuality and hang your welcome sign on your new corner of the web.

Have a great Friday everyone, and be the bento.

In this post, I’m going to show you how to add a logo like I have done in this picture of my new bento box.

Let’s get started.

First, you need a graphics program to do this.  I use Photoshop Elements, and it will be the program I feature in today’s post.

Second, you need the file that you want to add the watermark to.  For this example, I’m using my recent picture of my new red, rectangular bento box (the one above.)

You also need a black and white picture of your website’s logo.  The logo image must be smaller than the image you plan to add it to.  Here’s a look at my black and white logo image.

Now, you’re ready to begin working in Photoshop Elements.  You need to open both pictures in PSE.

In the center of the light gray area is the picture you are working on.  Below it is a dark gray area with the thumbnails of the two pictures you opened.  This is a navigation area of all the images you have opened in PSE.

Double click the black and white logo image.  It will now become the active image in the middle of the light gray area.

The next thing we want to do is to select this whole image so we can copy it onto the other image.  You will do this by pressing Ctrl+A. This executes the “Select All” command.  A dotted line should appear around the edge of the image indicating you’ve selected the whole image.

Now, click Ctrl+C, or Edit>Copy, to copy the image to your computer’s memory (or clipboard as it is called).

Now, double click the thumbnail (remember that dark gray area?) of the picture you want to place this logo onto.  This brings that photo back to the center of the work screen.

Click on Edit>Paste.

This will paste the black and white copy of the logo onto your picture.  Normally, it will appear right in the middle of the screen.

Before we go any further, we must talk a small amount about layers.

In the lower right hand corner of the PSE screen is the Layers Palette.  This shows you all the layers of your image.  Think of layers as transparent pieces of paper that you can lay ontop of each other.  This means, you can make changes to one layer to achieve a certain look without changing another layer or damaging your original picture.  This is very useful, especially when you want to undo changes you’ve made.

Now, I want to rename this layer so that I know exactly what is in this layer.  Double click on Layer 1.  The text becomes highlighted in blue.

You can now rename the layer.

I’m going to name this layer “logo watermark.”  You can name your layer whatever makes sense to you.

Next, I want you to notice that the logo watermark layer is light gray.  That means this is the layer currently active…the layer you are working on. This is very important for the next step.  If your logo layer is not the active layer, click on it once in the layers palette.  It should then turn light gray and be ready for modifications.

Now, we need to move the logo to its proper position.  In this photo, I want the logo to appear in the lower right hand corner.  The first thing I need to do is select the logo.  I do this by using the Move tool.  You can either click on the move tool in the tool bar or you can press “V” key on your keyboard.  The move tool is the first tool in your PSE toolbar on the left side of the working area (where your image is).

When you select the move tool, place holder boxes show up around the active layer.  You can click and drag those place holder boxese to enlarge or shrink your logo.  I like the size of this logo in comparison to the rest of the picture.  So, I’m going to leave its current size alone.

Now, we need to move this layer.  I do this by holding down the Ctrl key while dragging the layer where I want it to be.  I will drag the layer by clicking on the logo and holding the left mouse button down while moving the logo into the position I want.  By holding down the Ctrl key while dragging the layer, I can move it anywhere I want.  The explanation on the importance of the Ctrl key is going to take longer than I wish. Just trust me, and hold down the Ctrl key while dragging.

Now, drag that logo layer into the position you want it.

Perfect!  That’s just where I want the logo.  Now, I just don’t want it to be so noticeable.  The first thing I’m going to do is make an adjustment to this layer.

Look at this layer in your Layers Palette.  In the layers palette, you’ll notice a drop down box called Mode.  These are the different blending modes that can be applied to layers in an image.  Your logo layer should say Normal right now.

The blending modes apply an effect that blends into the layer and causes it to look different.  We want to choose the darken mode.  Here’s what Darken does.  It finds the darker color and uses that as the base color, the color that won’t change.  Then, it finds any pixels lighter than the base color and replaces those.  Or so, that’s what PSE’s help file says.  Here’s what I know.  With a black and white layer, like our logo, the Darken mode will keep the black part and the white parts of the image will disappear.

Choose darken…

The logo layer will now look like this:

Way cool huh?  Now, I don’t want that logo to be so stark.  I’d like to lighten it a bit so that it’s still noticeable, but not quite so in your face.  The next thing we are going to do is to adjust the transparency of the logo layer.  In the layers palette, this is called opacity.  It is currently set at 100%.  This means that the colors of that layer are at their strongest.  If we bring the percentage down, it will lighten this layer, allowing the layer behind (the background layer) to show through the logo.  In the case of this black and white image, it will also mean it will turn more gray, rather than being a stark black.

Set your transparency, or opacity, between 35% and 45%.  Your logo should now look something like the one below:

Before we can easily save the file as a jpeg in PSE, I want to flatten all these layers.  That means I’m going to meld all those transparent sheets of paper together into 1.  I won’t have control anymore over individual layers, but that’s okay.  I’m done with my image now.  This the absolute last step in the process.  Don’t flatten your image until you’ve made all the adjustments to your picture that you want to make.

Select Layer in the menu bar at the top.  Then, click on Flatten Image.

After you do this, notice your Layers Pallete.

It went from having two layers, like this:

To having one layer, like this:

Now, you’re done with your image.  Simply save it as a jpg, load it to your blog, and post!

Hopefully, this tutorial was clearer than mud!