justin s. lewis

Crows: A Free Wordpress Theme

Justin — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 01:02:05 +0000

Screenshot of Crows theme.

Today I decided to create a free theme for Wordpress based on my current blog theme. The design and customized CSS is all mine but the theme coding is from the Cutline theme by Chris Pearson. The Cutline theme is my favorite Wordpress theme to customize since I’ve been using it for so long and know the code inside and out. For this design, I’ve added a few customizations: a favicon, drop cap styling, and a wrapper for a more organic “outside of the box” header design.

The Crows theme is FREE. Visit Keri Marion Design to preview the theme or download for your Wordpress blog. If you decide to use the theme, feel free to comment on this post or drop me a line with your blog url.

Special Instructions:

Drop Caps:

To use the drop cap styling, start your post in HTML view in the post editor. Before the first letter of the first sentence add (without the outside quotes) “” and immediately after that first letter add (without quotes) “”. It should look like the letter “T” in the first paragraph of this post.

Favicon:

I included a favicon with this theme. To use it you will need to copy the file “favicon.ico” from the images folder and paste it into your root directory then upload it.

Soupy Sunday

Justin — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 12:15:47 +0000

A few days ago Keri and I had an idea inspired by our friend Melissa. She had told Keri about her college days and how on Sundays she and her friends would gather together to make soup and while the soup cooked they would perform a play. What a cool thing to do! We just had to do something like that. And so, Soupy Sunday was born.

What we did was have each person attending the party bring one ingredient to add to the soup. It didn’t take long for our huge cast iron Jambalaya pot to fill up. So many ingredients, in fact, that we had to start a second (non-vegetarian) soup in our cast iron wok. While the soup cooked and Keri’s bread baked in the oven a bunch of us formed an impromptu jug band in the living room. The sounds of spoons, conga, steel drum, guitars, and castenets filled the air. Ah! Fun!

The soup turned out to be delicious even though we didn’t follow a set recipe. The two soups both had a vegetarian base made with sauteed onion and garlic, tomato, herbs, dandelion and other greens, macaroni, celery, and cauliflower. The vegetarian one had vegan “Italian sausage” added to it and the non-vegetarian had chicken and hot peppers. I had the vegetarian, of course. Click on the pictures below to see the larger version.

The vegetarian Soupy Sunday soup.

I’d like to thank everyone again for coming and for the clean up help. Much appreciated! Keri and I plan to host another one soon and the soup will most likely be our famous taco soup. Yum!

Happy Halloween!

Justin — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 20:56:47 +0000

For your viewing pleasure…

Tons more free Halloween appropriate movies on Hulu.

Andrew Bird: Live at Lupo’s in Providence

Justin — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 23:50:44 +0000

Last night Keri and I went to see Andrew Bird perform at Lupo’s Heartbreak Hotel in downtown Providence. The videos here were taken by various people in the audience and I snagged them off youtube for your viewing pleasure! The concert was awesome. *note for facebook readers* If you can’t see the videos then visit the blog here.

Focaccia Bread

Justin — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 22:40:07 +0000

Focaccia bread about to go in the oven.

I asked Keri last night to teach me how to make Focaccia bread today. This is the result of my first attempt. Lately, she had been baking this bread a lot since it’s very easy to do and tastes delicious. The bread is half devoured already with a bowl of homemade potato leek soup.

After making and kneading the dough, I mixed up a quarter cup of olive oil, fresh thyme, herbs de provence, and Italian seasoning. I brushed this atop the dough and sprinkled freshly grated parmesan cheese over that before putting it in the oven.

Click on the pictures to see them full size.

Recipe: Focaccia Bread

Ingredients

for the dough:

tablespoon of sugar
1 1/2 tablespoon of yeast
1/2 cup of warm water
about 1 1/2 cup of flour
1 teaspoon salt

for the topping:

1/4 cup of olive oil
tablespoon of thyme
tablespoon of herbs de provence
tablespoon of Italian seasoning
grated parmesan

Instructions

First get a large bowl and combine the water,sugar, and yeast. Mix well and let the yeast rise for about ten minutes. Next you’ll want to add flour about 1/2 cup at a time until all the liquid is absorbed. 1 1/2 cups is approximate. Start kneading the dough and as you knead add salt. Once the dough feels like it’s all mixed well you’ll need to shape it into a ball and then on a flour dusted countertop flatten the dough into a pizza shape and transfer to an oiled baking sheet.

Focaccia up close.

At this point use your fingertips and poke “wells” into the top of dough. Place this in the oven and make sure the oven is OFF. Let the dough rise for 10 minutes. Repeat the “wells”. Let rise again for another 10 minutes and repeat the “wells”. This time let it rise on countertop and turn on your oven to 350 degrees. While the oven is warming up you can now baste on your herb/oil topping and sprinkle the cheese on top. Bake it! It won’t take much longer than 15 minutes or so. Bake until top is golden.

Fresh baked!

Cooking time (duration): 45

Diet type: Vegetarian

Number of servings (yield): 4

Meal type: hors d’oerves

Culinary tradition: Italian

My rating:5.0 stars

Recipe by Keri Marion.

Autumnal prose

Justin — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 23:33:19 +0000

Leaf I picked up in the backyard and scanned.

Fall is here. The leaves are changing. The houses in our neighborhood are decked out in Halloween decorations. The scent of wood fire fills the evening air. The ground is slightly damp from last night’s thunderstorm.

It’s quiet tonight and we’re busy creating here at the Mauran Avenue pad. Keri’s working on her latest series of pencil drawings. I’ve just finished designing the current theme for the blog. It’s only temporary until I’ve gathered all the imagery I need for the next theme which will be based on my paper journals. It will be a real challenge to see how well I can pull off the design. For now, this current theme will do just fine.

Later tonight is the U2 live webcast at the Rose Bowl. The full concert will be broadcast on youtube for those interested in watching. I’ll be kicking back with a couple cans of ‘Gansett and enjoying the show.

Font Fun

Justin — Sat, 26 Sep 2009 19:02:50 +0000

I was on reddit the other day and discovered this great FREE font creation site, Fontcapture. I thought it would be fun to take one of my carved rubberstamp alphabets and turn it into a font. Click here to download the font I made, TimesNewStamper. This font only has lowercase letters, numbers, and basic punctuation. It is free for personal use.

If you don’t have a scanner you’re not completely out of luck. The template they provide is in .pdf form and is editable in Adobe Illustrator or any .pdf editor.

47 Years of Good Flux

Justin — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 05:53:16 +0000

47 Years of Good Flux.

The link above goes to Keri’s blog with pics of our Fluxbox for Fluxhibition #3.

My latest project… Peace in Sudan via President Obama

Justin — Wed, 20 May 2009 05:27:13 +0000

A few days ago my Mom sent me a dvd of a peace conference she set up in California. The dvd and case turned out surprisingly well. However, she asked me to make a custom case for one very special recipient, President Barack Obama. As it turns out, Mom has a friend in D.C. who will be meeting with a lobbyist this weekend and has agreed to pass the dvd/letter on to Obama. Sweet!

For the case construction I used matboard and two sheets of handmade paper. The images are toner transfers that I designed (with Keri’s help) in Adobe Illustrator. I used Chartpak pens to do the transfers. In the foldout view, the left side has an envelope I made using a regular envelope as a template. The cd is attached by a handy little foam button purchased in sets online.

Here are the pics…click for larger view.

sudan

A Murder of Crows

Justin — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 21:42:57 +0000

A Murder of Crows

I was sitting outside on the porch when suddenly I heard these loud noises in the air above me. I got up to look and saw hundreds of crows flying this way and that. A Murder. I raced inside and grabbed the camera to get this shot. For more crow imagery, please visit my Crow stamps gallery.