APM's Piano Puzzler Turns 10!

For several years, I had lost the Piano Puzzler from my podcast line-up because I hadn't realized that it moved from National Public Radio (NPR) to Performance Today on American Public Media (APM). But happily I was reuinited with my favorite classical geek podcast through this post on the Piano Street Blog. I also didn't realize that you can now purchase the scores for some the super cool creations from Bruce Adolphe here:



Piano Puzzlers: Thirty Familiar Tunes Disguised in the Styles of Famous Composers

Wow, how cool is that?  Last time I geeked out over the Piano Puzzler was back in 2006. Lately, I've been catching up on everything on the feed and was really awed by the April 25, 2012 show (clicking the link will open a streaming window).  The contestant was a pianist in the US Marine Band.  Not only did he correctly guess the tune (Mozart Symphony No. 40) and the composer (Chopin) whose style it was performed in, he also took to the piano and played the Mozart Symphony in a jazz style.  A piano conversation between Bruce Adolphe and the contestant!  It made the music geek in me completely flip over the awesomeness of it all.

If you're in Minnesota, check out the Piano Puzzler 10th Anniversary party being held at the UBS Forum in St. Paul on June 20th.  Happy piano puzzling!

Happy Mother’s Day to Me–Kitchen Gadgets

Everyone knows that you should never buy utilitarian gifts for Mother’s Day, such as a vacuum cleaner or kitchen gadgets, because it sends the inadvertent message that she is only good for cooking and cleaning.  In fact, on Chicago Tribune’s list of What NOT to Get Mom, you can see that kitchen utensils hit the list twice:

1. Chia Pet – tacky!!
2. Obscure kitchen gadgets – that’s me!
3. A wig – “Only really reminds us about how often mom can make us want to pull out her hair!”
4. Socks – this must be akin to ties for Father’s Day
5. Pots and pans – cook, woman, cook!
6. Vacuum cleaner – only if this was specifically requested
7. Popcorn – tins of popcorn are only acceptable from work suppliers during the holidays

But if you’re a gadget geek like I am, and you specifically pick out the obscure kitchen gadgets yourself, it can make for a very sweet Mother’s Day.  This year, Amazon was running a 20% discount on Kitchen and Dining items with their credit card up until Mother’s Day (hmm, did they not get the memo on what not to get?).  I took the opportunity to find some really cool kitchen gadgets for fruit.  We love eating fruit at our house (all of us except for Adam who will only eat soccer oranges), so anything that makes preparing fresh fruit easier is welcome.  Here’s my new arsenal:

Chef'n StemGem Strawberry Stem Remover: Kitchen & Dining

This little gem works like a charm!  Press the button, insert, twist and a perfectly hulled strawberry emerges.  Even 8-year-old Dova can handle it.  It will also save my marriage because I always complain that Doug lops off too much of the strawberry when he uses a knife.

MIU France Stainless Steel Pineapple Corer/Slicer: Kitchen & Dining

I absolutely love fresh pineapple but hate the huge time sink and mess of cutting one up.  This pineapple slicer and corer took all of 30 seconds to extract the juicy pineapple slices from a fresh pineapple.  A co-worker joked that you could use the leftover shell as a huge drinking cup for a tropical themed party.  Well, it would work if you didn’t core right through the pineapple like a did the first time.  But, we can still pretend.

OXO Good Grips Cherry Pitter: Kitchen & Dining

This cherry pitter looks like fun as well as being useful. I can’t wait till cherries come into season. In the past, I’ve actually sliced cherries and pitted them by hand for fruit salads.  Now cherries will regularly appear in fruit salads as well as fresh cherry pies!  Mmm, pie.

Starfrit 93013 Pro-Apple Peeler with bonus core slicer: Kitchen & Dining

For over ten years, I have used the the Apple Master Apple Peeler, Corer, and Slicer for peeling, coring and slicing apples for apple pies. The kids have loved the tradition of peeling apples for Thanksgiving pies.  Here’s a shot of Adam from 2007:



I’ve always had issues setting up this contraption because the core has to be lined up exactly or else you have to touch it up afterward.  Sometimes the peeling blade cuts too deep, sometimes it misses huge sections.  So when I spotted the Starfrit peeler and read the reviews, I jumped on it. I peeled one apple and it came out perfect with far less waste. Can’t wait to make the next apple pie, because you know we love pie around here.

Hope you had a Happy Mother’s Day!

Hiking for Photographs

Beautiful Dova tree-hugger taken by Adam.

Last summer, when I suggested to hiking to the kids, they immediately said, "Nooooo!!! That's BORING!!!"  So I bribed them with a camera for each and lots of snacks.  Adam got my brand new Canon EOS Rebel T3i and Dova used my Panasonic Lumix DMC-TZ5K.

Adam has taken photographs along these trails for years now, and he's always had a great eye.  This year, he was more interested in getting as many "butt shots" as he could.



Good thing Dova has a cute caboose!  Dova took the high road with her camera and captured this amazing photograph of the waterfalls near a dam.  Such movement!  Such texture!  And the light through the water!



Later, Dova gave up the camera and took to tree hugging.



I asked Adam to take a close up of her. Closer! Zoom in! He starting joking around and exaggerated everything I said. And then this beautiful shot emerged.



This has now become our favorite photograph of Dova. It is framed in our house and in the homes of both grandparents.  Wow, Adam you are quite the photographer!

Later, Adam finally gave my camera back and I captured these shots during the golden hour on our hike back. Here they are taking a rest along the edge of the trail.



It was a beautiful spot to stop, overlooking a lake.



They got a bit silly, here's Dova pretend-slapping Adam in the face.



It was a beautiful day to get outdoors for a hike. I love to see the kids this happy.



We've since moved onto to mountain biking as a family, and now they've finally stopped groaning whenever I suggest hitting the trails.  Yay!

Percolate My World

There are so many apps for the iPhone and iPad that modify and enhance photos that you can spend days just wading through them.  But when I happened upon a photo run through the Percolator app, it was an instant "I want!"  It's retro, it's bubbly, it's altogether an awesome way to be creative just a few taps.

The gingerbread man and Christmas tree above were simply to remind myself of the graphic that came inside  cookie molds.

Instantly transformed from boring to pop!

Since then, the kids and I have gone into quite extensive percolations.  Adam took a shot of a street light going by in the car and percolated it.




Dova took that image and percolated it again.



And then again with stars.



Holy triple percolation!!!

Stars look mighty fine on cute chihuahuas too.



I went for artful usage of percolator with this sunset.



And this view of a concert held in a church, like looking through stained glass.



Or looking through a water-spotted window at this foliage.



Last but not least, here are some shots of the kids all happy and percolated. Their faces are relatively untouched by using the "dark" mode, where only dark areas get percolated.





Have fun with Percolator!

Friendship Bracelets Made Easy

Although friendship bracelets became popular when I was a child in the seventies, the whole fad passed me by and I never learned to make them. So when Dova asked me to show her how to make friendship bracelets, I thought that googling some instructions would be enough to get her going. But with a mess of colored strings, we completely failed in making a bracelet with a stripe pattern. Dova was stuck making only the Chinese Staircase she learned from a friend.

Now we have the wonderful My Friendship Bracelet Maker (MyFBM) by the Choose Friendship Company, originally known as Crorey Creations.  Built-in fingers keep up to 10 strands in their numbered slots, so there is no more confusion over which color comes next.  It really works to keep bracelets neat and tangle-free while you make them.  You can really see what is going on!



Best of all, it is an all-in-one portable solution which holds the bracelet in progress, so there are more bracelets taped to tables and pinned to cushions.  My Friendship Bracelet Maker comes with 56 pre-cut threads in 14 colors which is plenty for a dozen bracelets.

On the MyFBM.com site, we found the patterns and instructional videos to be extremely helpful. These are just some of the patterns they offer.  Dova wants to make all of the them!



Since friendship bracelets are ultimately about friendship, The Choose Friendship Company has also created a music video to promote the message that kids should choose friendship, not bullying, which has become such a destructive force for kids today. Proceeds from song and t-shirt sales will be donated to non-profit organizations that support anti-bullying initiatives. You can check out the “Inside Out” anti-bullying video on YouTube.

For Dova, she was extremely proud to complete a beautiful friendship bracelet with My Friendship Bracelet Maker.  What a sense of accomplishment!



Special thanks to the Choose Friendship Company for providing the My Friendship Bracelet Maker for review.  No other compensation was received.

Inspiring the Violinist in Us

I recently posted on BlogHer about how my family and I were inspired to learn the violin.  I’ve also posted here about how I first got sucked into became reacquainted with the violin.  The BlogHer story ends where inspiring the violinist in us has come full circle. 

My mother-in-law’s friend had once played the violin quite proficiently as a youth.  Now at 80 years of age, he hadn’t picked up a violin in forty years.  At a get together, I urged him to try my violin.  After a couple minutes, he was able to play a Danny Boy with beautiful vibrato.  He even became choked up over how much he missed the violin.

This occurred about a year ago (drafts are forever languishing at mommy bytes) and here is the rest of that story.  I had come to a family get together in February last year, and was planning to visit with my fiddle friend afterward to try yet another one if his fiddles.  I brought my own violin inside to keep it out of the cold. I had no intention of taking it out, as I had yet to perform in front of them.

My mother-in-law’s friend, RUP, kept asking me about it, telling stories of his glory days as a violinist.  I kept urging him to try mine out, but he refused until he heard me play first.  Finally, I took it out and performed the Thomas Gavotte from “Mignon” from Suzuki Book 2.  This was after less than six months of lessons and no expectation of having to perform it.  I played it passably enough (darn accidentals!) to garner applause from the family.  Then RUP picked it up.  At first, he had trouble placing his fingers, but once he found the notes, his fingers reflexively started to vibrato, and incredibly beautiful sounds came out.

RUP was so moved by holding and playing the violin again that he vowed to have his violin repaired so he could pick it up again.  I received a thank you card from my mother-in-law, where she specifically thanked me for inspiring her friend.

Angela - you have inspired RUP to have his violin repaired. He told me he had a "great time" at the party which he has never said before and he thanked me for inviting him.

Wow, I guess it did leave an impression.  About a month later, I received some sheet music in the mail with this letter.

The duet with RUP has not come to pass, but we’ve had many duets and more with the kids.  I might even dare to say that they actual enjoy playing with me.  Now if I can only get these darn posts out of draft, you’ll see what I mean.

Chamber Music with Falling Leaves

I recently posted on BlogHer about Introducing Kids to Classical Music.  Our children have been taking piano and violin lessons for some time now, so they are quite familiar with the music. But they have never attended a classical music concert.  I grew up attending classical music concerts, ballet, and the like, and always remember falling asleep at those events. It wasn't until I was a teenager that I really began to appreciate them.  So was it too early to think about taking the kids at ages 10 and 7 to a classical music concert?  It hadn't really dawned on me to take them until our violin teacher suggested that we see one to watch the technique of the violin players.



Our first opportunity came in form of a Groupon to see the Worcester Chamber Music Society. Sadly, many of our family activities come in the form of a Groupon like last summer, but heck, it works for us.  When we asked the kids to join us for this very adult program featuring contemporary works by South American composers, Adam refused but Dova was game because she got to dress up.  Not wanting to "force" him to attend, we set him up with a babysitter and ventured out with our precocious seven-year-old.

PIAZZOLLA                    Four for Tango
GOLIJOV                       How Slow the Wind & Lua Descolorida
VILLA-LOBOS                 Duo for violin & viola
                                  Assobio A Jato
GINASTERA                   String Quartet No. 1

Maria Ferrante, soprano; Tracy Kraus, flute; Krista Buckland Reisner and Rohan Gregory, violins; and Peter Sulski, viola
With Guest Artists Gabriela Diaz, violin and Jan Müller-Szeraws, cello

The concert performance was phenomenal. Doug and I thoroughly enjoyed the music which included wild techniques on the violin as well as a theme based on the open strings of guitar. The music in the program was new to all of our ears, but the musicians made it quite accessible.

We allowed Dova to bring a bag with quiet activities such as drawing in case she got bored. Dova was attentive, thoughtful and quiet through most of the performance.  She even bopped her head around during the rhythmic portions of the program.  The only time she took out her Hello Kitty notebook was to write about what she was doing and compose a poem for school.

"today I am at the chaber music concert. tomorrow we might go to the corn maze. On monday I have computer. I have to write a poem that has words that spell Fall. I am going to write Fun jumping in the leaves. all the fun is in  fall. Leaves fall red yellow and orange. liveing in the fall. I hope we go apple picking tomorow"

Sure enough, we did go a corn maze and apple picking the next day (which I posted about one day later instead of 5+ months).  And Dova created her Falling Leaves poem in Computer class the following day.

After the concert, there was a reception with the musicians.  If it had been Adam, he would have sulked behind us not wanting any attention drawn to him.  But the musicians and audience members alike all gravitated towards Dova, exclaiming how well-behaved and grown-up she was.  She smiled and spoke  clearly to everyone with grace and charm.  I explained that she was learning the piano and violin, which served not embarrass her, but to hold her head up high.  It was a proud parent moment to have their child carry herself so well.

Many years ago, I met Yo-Yo Ma's daughter Emily when she was about 10 years old.  I was amazed at how precocious and well-spoken this young lady was.  I thought that someday I would be very pleased and proud have a child like this. This day has come. We love you Dova! You can be an handful, but you more than make up for it with moments like these.