This week I’ve been obsessed with one thing and one thing only: web coding.  CSS, divs and hex codes are all I think about.  Weird right?  I mean, who falls in love with web coding???

Honestly, this wasn’t even something I thought I could do until I came across the Girl’s Guide to Web Design (GG2WD) Program.  Amanda Aitken’s approach is what made it doable for me – she teaches coding in a way that both eliminates the fear AND is geared toward women (via forums, community collaboration, upbeat videos, etc).  It’s been super intense, but FAB-U-LOUS.  I even hesitated after purchasing it, still buying into the idea that I couldn’t do it.  Fast forward to last week when I watched the first video – got totally hooked – and blew through the videos in one week’s time (with a notebook full of notes to show for my efforts)!

Last night it dawned on my why web design and coding set my spirit soaring.  Much like photography, web design is the perfect marrying of right and left brain thinking for me.  My right brain gets the pleasure of visualizing the site and laying out the content graphically while my left brain dives into the challenge of how to make it appear on the page in the way I desire.

It’s a rare occasion that I find a pursuit which exercises both parts of my brain equally.  I never realized it before, but having both my intellect and creativity accessed at the same time is an amazing aliveness trigger for me.

I’m curious, what activities have you come across that draw upon both your left and right brain in relatively equal proportions?

PS – You can expect a super-duper kick-ass redesign of Novakistan sometime in 2013.  It’ll be worth the wait.

Hey folks – Welcome to this Tuesday’s edition of Tech Tuesday.  Today I’ve got a real winner that’s going to make your email management a WHOLE LOT EASIER.  Let me tell you about it.

Unroll.me is a service that combines all of your subscriptions, newsletters and social media updates into 1 DAILY EMAIL.  Cool huh?  Here’s what my rollup looked like today when it arrived in my inbox.

From there, you can simply click on any of the subscriptions and it’ll take you to your unroll.me dashboard which looks like this.  There you can view all your current subscriptions, unsubscribe with one click and choose your delivery preferences.

My other favorite feature of unroll.me is the ability to view subscriptions by category (because I know that I, for one, have a tendency to sign up up for way too many subscriptions).  For example, here are all the daily deals that came in to this person’s email on that day.

A couple more things you should know:

1. Unroll.me is currently ONLY AVAILABLE for GMAIL and YAHOO EMAILS.
2. You don’t need to do anything to add your subscriptions to the rollup.  Unroll.me will automatically add them.  The only thing you may have to do is switch your email preference in your subscriptions so that they all go to a Gmail or Yahoo Account.

CLICK HERE TO GET YOUR OWN DAILY ROLLUP

So, what do you think?  Are you going to sign up???

It’s hard to believe, but 1 year ago today, this was us, en route to the airport for our flight to Lima, Peru.  We were nervous, excited and quite unsure of what to expect.  It took longer to acclimate to Lima than the Philippines (the remainder of 2012, if I’m being honest) but we’ve found a nice groove at this one year mark and are eager to see what our final 365 days in Lima hold!

Just for fun, let’s review what we accomplished this last year:

1.  4 Trips in Peru: Huaraz, Ica, Machu Picchu, Lunahuana

2.  3 Trips Internationally: Easter Island Post 1, Post 2, Post 3; Galapagos Islands Post 1, Post 2, Post 3, Post 4, Video; Mexico

3.  Nick settled in to Embassy Lima

4.  Lived (very briefly) in a house  in San Isidro and then switched to an oceanview apartment on Miraflores’ Malecon

5.  Learned to successfully select a safe cab in Lima and have remained crime-free to date (knock on wood)

6.  Hired AND Fired our help

7.  Enjoyed our 1st Peruvian Chicken – YUM!

8.  Nia learned to Swing, Crawl, Bite, DO Lizard Tongue and Walk

9.  Nick got tenured!

10.  Survived a horrible bout of homesickness (for the Philippines, no less!)

11.  Became BFF’s with Lima’s cab drivers

12.  Saw piles and piles of bones

13.  Enrolled at a Spanish Institute and successfully PASSED my first class!

14.  Tried our first Gaston Acurio Restaurant

15.  Nick learned to paraglide and flew solo

16.  Became regulars at CityToys and Music Class

17.  Bought our very own Peruvian art

18.  Attended Mistura, quite possibly the world’s greatest food festival

19.  Watched Nia stuff cake in her mouth at her 1st Birthday

20.  Took our little ladybug out on the town

21.  Watched Nia grow and change by the day

25.  Attended my 1st Lady Gaga Concert

26.  Met Santa

27.  Met the Easter Bunny

28.  Played in the Fountains

29.  Went Volunteering at CIMA

30.  Got Nia’s 1st Haircut

Well look at that, it’s Tuesday already… and you know what that means!  Iiiiittttt’s Tech Tuesday.  Today I’m sharing another one of my most-used web tools.  The tool is called Jing and it’s used to capture what’s on your screen.  I use it to take screen shots of what I’m working on or to turn a small section of my screen into an image file.  It’s my go-to tool when I can’t right click and save an image for some reason – Jing works in all situations and allows you to modify the size of the capture area as well.  Once captured, you can then save it to your hard drive or share it immediately on social media.

Jing also has a second useful function.  It can be used to create 5 minute videos of your screen activity.  This could come in handy if you’re creating a short instructional video about how to use a web program or want to teach a relative how to use Facebook, for example.  Just hit record, go through a series of action onscreen, hit stop and share your video.  Perhaps that’s what I love most – how SIMPLE this tool is to use.  And one other big bonus is that it’s FREE.  That’s all for today – hope you found this tool useful!

Click here to download JING for yourself

Well, we made it nearly 19 months before having to trim those beautiful blonde locks…. I delayed as long as I could, but her bangs were starting to cover her eyes and the stubborn kiddo refuses to wear clips for me (but she’s just fine doing it for the nanny).  So off we went to the Jockey Plaza Mall to the kiddy hair shop called Safari Kids.

I should start by saying that I was expecting this to go horrendously.  My child doesn’t even like to be restrained long enough to receive a hug, let alone sit still in a chair and let someone touch her hair.  To combat this, we employed a multi-pronged distraction technique, complete with TV, books, toys, the car chair and our magic weapon: ICE CREAM (with a little bitty fun spoon).

Much to my surprise, our tactics worked.  She did try to pull off the cape a few times and she swatted at the guy while he was trying to cut her bangs, but I found that if I just shoved a spoonful of ice cream in her mouth she’d become distracted by the yummy-ness (Not too surprising honestly, since she is the daughter of an ice cream addict and all).

So folks, the motto of the story is: ice cream is the answer to all problems!

Words cannot express how much I love this!  If only we all lived this freely and joyfully in our daily lives…

OK, I’m about to let you in on one of my photo sharing secrets!  It’s called PicMonkey and it’s F-R-E-E.  It used to be called Picnik but then they did away with that one and brought about a new-and-improved version.  There are two aspects to PicMonkey – photo editing and collage-making.  I do my photo editing in other programs, so I can’t speak to that (although it does look pretty comprehensive and simple to use).  What I do love here is the Collage-making component.  You simply upload your photos, choose either a pre-made collage template (or design your own) and then drag and drop to create!  Here are some of the ways I’ve put it to use:

Facebook Covers!

Blogging Photo Collages

Tell me what you think!  Are you using this already?  Hope you enjoyed Tech Tuesday!

This is rockin’!  Happy Monday y’all…

We had two great food-based experiences this weekend and they couldn’t have been more polar opposites.  The first was on our Friday night date.  We visited a new restaurant in town called Amaz (located next to the Hilton Miraflores).  This restaurant is the 2nd in a series from Pedro Miguel Schiaffino, who is known for sourcing his ingredients directly from the Amazon.  No seriously, how cool is that?  Someone went foraging in the Jungle for my meal!

Schiaffino is developing a name for himself because of his unique commitment to Amazonian-based ingredients and cooking techniques.  His other restaurant, Malabar, which we also plan to try, focuses on Amazonian-based dishes too – but with a more upscale feel.

Nick and I didn’t go too crazy with our choices, but we definitely got a flavor of the jungle.  Nick chose shrimp and scallops marinated with vegetables and cooked in a bamboo leaf (pictured below).  I had an Amazonian river fish with wild mushrooms and cashews.  For dessert we got a lava cake and mousse made with Amazonian Cacao.  Not a bad dish in the bunch.  I think this place is going to move up the ranks quite quickly in the next year or so.  Keep it on your radar Limeño friends.

Our second outing took place on Saturday to a country place called La Granja Azul (the blue farm).  It was reported to be kid-friendly, so we ventured there in the afternoon with Nia.  The ride was about 1 hour from Miraflores, in a part of Lima called Ate.

La Granja Azul occupies a large parcel of land, some of which is devoted to the restaurant and the remainder that is occupied by rides, playgrounds and go-kart tracks.  Each adult is required to purchase a $25 all-you-can-eat meal of salad, anticuchos (cow heart on a stick), rotisserie chicken, french fries, rolls and a beverage.  This restaurant is famous for it’s fire-roasted rotisserie chicken and hand-cut fries and I gotta say, they were pretty damn good.  Did I mention that the chicken just keeps a comin’?

Nia was into the chicken, but she really dug the rides and playgrounds.  We did the classic merry-go-round (which she got bored of) and then tried her first pony ride (which she insisted upon quitting after 30 seconds).  Oh well, so much for that.  At least we got a picture before she bailed!

I liked the concept of this place, but I’ve heard that there are similar ones in Cieneguilla that offer more for the money.  I thought $25 was a bit steep for the food, considering how far out we were and the fact that they made you pay for all the rides.  I think we’ll try some other ones and perhaps see if we can put together a group of families to all go together in the future.

Last week I had the good fortune of visiting the non-profit CIMA with the Canadian International Society, an expat group here that has supported this organization since it’s inception 25 years ago.  CIMA provides assistance to 8-18 year old boys who live on the streets or find themselves in high-risk situations.  The boys choose to come to CIMA of their own free will and may leave at any time.

CIMA does its best to meet the boys’ needs for housing, food, education, affection and healthcare with the hope of  re-integrating them back into their homes and society at age 18.  The staff diligently models teamwork, discipline, commitment and respect and channels the boys’ energy into a multitude of activities including music, sports, farming, art, woodworking and much, much more.

The picture at the top is the art studio, where the boys produce products that are sold to the public. This is one of many examples of how CIMA teaches them to contribute to their community, whether it be through producing the food they eat, preparing the meals or creating goods to sell.  Not only do these endeavors increase their confidence, but the boys also leave CIMA with a wide variety of skills to use for employment in their adult life.

When our group arrived, we were greeted by the director Jean-Louis, a Canadian who founded this organization 25 years ago after seeing an abundance of homeless children hanging out near the Plaza de Armas in downtown Lima.  He began by acquainting us with the facilities and then we were treated to a musical performance by the boys.

The entire group sang a song for us and then a smaller band performed.

The band was something created by the music department, which is run by two Alums of CIMA.  I expected something akin to my 6th grade concert band, but what we got instead was a professional-quality performance.  This kid pictured above with the windpipe was absolutely PHENOMENAL.

Watch them rock it out in this amazing video!

I was fortunate enough to get asked to dance by this cute little guy.  He was brave enough to ask, but lost his courage once he got to the dance floor.  This prompted one of the older boys to jump in and carry on with me.  Such a fun experience!  I can’t wait to return with Nick and Nia.

I leave you with a picture of the guinea pig (or cuy) pens.  There were roughly 250 guinea pigs at the moment, all of which will be food for the boys in the coming weeks.  Just in case you were wondering, they will participate in killing, butchering and cooking the cuy.  I’m all about self-sufficiency and learning new skills, but I draw the line at killing my own food…