Design your own font (tutorial)

Have you ever wanted to turn your own handwriting into a font? You could use it for electronic journaling, digital scrapbooking, spruce up your own blog, and, well, basically anything that you use a regular handwriting font for. Or, you could doodle instead to create your own doodle font. Get creative!

It's relatively inexpensive, easy, and fun. If you use fontifier.com, it's just $9. Their instructions are very easy to follow, but I wish they gave a few tips. I created my first font about 4 years ago, and just recently, I went back for a second shot at it.

You'll need a printer, a scanner, your favorite pen, a thick-tipped pen (like a Sharpie), lined paper (optional), and a photo editing software (optional). 

Here's how you do it.

1. Print out their template on one letter sized sheet of paper.
2. Place the template on top of a sheet of lined paper to help you keep your letters straight. If it's too hard to see the lined paper through the template, try placing a sheet of blank paper under the lined paper to help the lines show up.
   
3. Pick out your favorite pen. Using your best handwriting, try your hardest to fill each letter's space with letters that are the same size, centered, and using the "pips" as the baseline. My first font turned out small (see the example towards the end of the post). If you are using a photo editing software (even Microsoft Paint would work for this), focus more on the handwriting and less on making it perfectly aligned.
   
4. Take a Sharpie or other medium tipped marker and trace your original letters.
   
5. Scan the template back to your computer, saving it as a GIF, JPEG, PNG, or TIFF.
6. If not using a photo editing software, skip to number 8. Open your completed template in your photo editing software. Go through each letter to recenter and trim away flaws.
   
7. Save your new file as a GIF, JPEG, PNG, or TIFF.  
8. Upload your completed template to http://www.fontifier.com/submit.html. Name your font and preview before buying. If there's a letter that you don't like, go back to your template and edit it.
   
9. Pay by credit card or PayPal, download to your computer, and install the font.
   
10. Test your font and share with others, if you desire!

Here are how my fonts turned out.

The first was just my favorite pen (not traced by a Sharpie). I should have printed my letters out bigger and filled the rectangle more. You can see how much space there is between the letters (especially after the capital T) and how small the font turned out compared to a regular font. At this size, the thin weight is good, but when it's enlarged, it's too puny.

The second one is the one that turned out with this tutorial. You can see how the font size greatly improved, and the weight is good for more applications, though it is still wide.

Experiment and have some fun! 

Here's where I sometimes link up!

It's amazing what a little time does

I forgot my laptop at home when we drove to St. Louis this past weekend, so I took a little unexpected break from the blog. Hopefully, I'll have a new post up tomorrow.

Hope everyone had a great holiday weekend! I transfered the photos onto my laptop from our little point and shoot camera, and here's what I found:

LE and John are standing in the same place in our yard. The angle is different, but they are essentially in the same spot. It's amazing what a few months can do!

LE at 15 Months

I'm a week late getting this out there, but not a whole lot has changed from 14 months.

Now that it's officially summer and the sun is out, we've been trying to play outside a lot. At the end of the summer last year, I used a gift card to buy LE a little inflatable pool for our yard/patio.

She hung out inside the pool for about 10 minutes.

Since then, she's mostly stayed outside of it, playing with the water when it's on or when it's off, reaching over and into the pool to put rocks in and feel the water.

In between fetching rocks and playing with the water, she likes to go pull on the mint plant. Her suit from Mimi is adorable.

She got a new 'do to keep her hair out of her face. The rubber bands are basically the size that are used for braces, but they work pretty well.

Other than that, things are pretty much the same! She loves to talk on the phone (any toy held up to her ear), give kisses, dance and bounce, put things in buckets, hold her little doll LeLe, and have us hold her doll LeLe. She runs just about everywhere and makes friends everywhere we go. If given the chance, she'll run run up to someone, look up at them, smile a big cheesy smile, and wave until they acknowledge her. 

When she thinks she's being funny, she crinkles up her nose. 

She's also a big ice fiend. She'll unabashedly dive her hand into any cup and fish around for ice. 

Still no real words yet from the little one, but she babbles and understands a lot. I can ask her to go find her sippy cup, and she'll run around the house looking for it. If she hears anyone mention shoes, she points at her shoes or sits down to shoe them off. 

Oh, and on the teeth front, she has 10 1/4-- eight front teeth, two molars on opposites sides, and another molar peeking through on one side. 

She sleep about 12 hours a night and takes two naps a day. Speaking of... it's just about time to get ready for the bedtime routine. 

Have a good day!

Carrot-Banana Whole Wheat Muffins (or cupcakes)

My little girl turned one year old a few months back. Since family and a few friends came from across the US to celebrate her when she got baptized the month before and then we spent 3 weeks in Fiji leading up to her birthday, we really just wanted to keep her birthday very low-key. 

We also knew that our little one year old didn't need to have a real cake made with sugar. She didn't know any better, and we figure she'll have the rest of her life to be addicted to sugar like her mother. 

I stumbled upon 101 cookbooks's delicious recipe for a "cake" made with no sugar. It's naturally sweetened with dates and bananas. I had never had a date before, but I thought I'd give it a try.

This is the kind of recipe that makes you want to turn up your favorite music, open the windows to let the breeze flow in, and celebrate the ingredients. It feels good.

{Those are carrots on the right, not cheddar cheese, despite what it looks like.}

What we ended up with was something like 18 rustic muffins, and I think John had 2. One year old LE and I ate 16 muffins in 7 days, and I think it was pretty evenly split between the two of us. She loved them. They made the perfect snack and breakfast for pre-molar toddlers who need something more nutritious than Cheddar Bunnies to snack on and less messy than things like yogurt and fruit. 

Since posting about LE's birthday, I've been asked for the recipe a few times by friends. Here it is in all of it's glory! Please visit 101 cookbooks's site to see the original or if you think you'd rather make it in a loaf form. 

I opted for cupcakes for LE's birthday. They are cupcakes when they were frosted and muffins when they weren't. Of course, I prefer frosting to no frosting, but this last time I didn't make it at all. Frosting or not, they turn out very moist and slightly sweet. They don't self-level while baking, so if you're looking for something a little less rustic, you will want to take the time to smooth them out on top after spooning in the batter.

To save a little prep time, I used my food processor to process the nuts first, then the dates, and then the carrots. I didn't wash the bowl between processing and just did the chopping in order of driest to wettest ingredient.

Banana Carrot Cupcakes (or Muffins)

From 101 Cookbooks; for the loaf version, go to the original recipe

Makes 18 regular muffins, or 12 regular + 12 mini

2 cups whole wheat pastry flour or white all-purpose flour
2 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1 1/2-2 teaspoons cinnamon
3/4 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup finely chopped walnuts
4 ounces unsalted butter, melted
1/2 cup dried chopped dates
3 ripe bananas (1 1/4 cups)
1 1/2 cups grated carrots (about 3 medium)
1/2 cup plain Greek yogurt (2% or lowfat is ok)
2 eggs

Preheat oven to 350. Use paper or silicone cups, spray with cooking spray, or use butter to prep the muffin tin. 

Into a medium bowl, sift together the flour, baking powder, cinnamon, and salt. Stir in the walnuts.

In a small bowl, combine the dates and melted butter. Mash with a fork and try to break down the dates as much as possible. 

In a large bowl, mash the bananas (I used my hands), add the carrots, and combine. Add the date/butter mixture. 

In the small bowl used for the dates/butter (or use a separate bowl if you like to wash dishes), whisk together the eggs and yogurt. Add the mixture to the large bowl with the carrots/bananas/dates/butter, and stir well to combine.

Add the sifted flour mixture to the wet ingredients, stirring until it's just combined. Streaks of flour are good, but make sure you don't have pockets of flour. It's better to undermix a tad than overmix.

Spoon into the prepared muffin tins, filling to almost the top since the muffins won't expand too much. Place in the middle of the oven, and bake for 30-35 minutes. They're ready when the tops are turning golden brown and a toothpick comes out clean. Remove from the oven and let it cool on a rack. 

These are delicious topped with a basic cream cheese frosting to serve as cupcakes. For a refined sugar-free frosting, see the original recipe. Personally, I don't care for that one.  Or, serve warm with or without butter as a muffin for breakfast or a snack.

Organic Mint & Honey Sweet Leaf Green Tea

Let's get this straight: I did not in any way anticipate writing about this tea, much less writing about it as my first commercial product to rave about. I couldn't help it, though, after what happened Monday.

Rewind a minute to Sunday when we took a trip to Whole Foods to compare their bulk prices to a local co-op's bulk prices. We ended up leaving with Sweet Leaf's Mint & Honey tea, my new favorite drink. I was even ok with paying $1.49 for it since I knew it was so good.

Fast forward to Monday when LE and I headed to Target to price check essentially every consumable product we use. I stumbled upon Sweet Leaf's tea, but at an incredible deal-- and it's not even a sale! 

Target has Sweet Leaf Organic Mint & Honey Green Tea's 64 oz size for $2 (3 cents/oz)! Compare that to $1.49 for 16 oz (9 cents/oz) at Whole Foods. {i.e. It's 1/3 of the cost per ounce.}

Before you rush off to Amazon to compare prices, I already did that. Even with their Subscribe & Save program where you save 15% and get free shipping, you have to buy 8 bottles at $3/bottle. If you're looking for the smaller glass bottles; however, Amazon offers them at a good price.

This tea is smooth, sweet, and refreshing. Here's how Sweet Leaf describes this tea:

Infused with flavorful spearmint leaves and a touch of honey, this organic green tea has created a cult-like following. Loaded with antioxidants (90mg EGCG) and 100% Vitamin C. 

The ingredients are simple: 

filtered water, organic cane sugar, organic green tea, organic honey, organic spearmint extract, ascorbic acid (vitamin c), citric acid, and natural flavors.

So, if mint tea is your thang, I highly recommend this one!

I was not payed for this review or endorsement. Sweet Leaf does not know who I am. I wrote this because I love their product.