A Sunday Night Photoshoot

We had a friend of ours named Ali come over earlier tonight so that my husband could have her try on and model his newest chainmail pieces. We were all having so much fun, that I decided to get in on the action too, lol!

NOTE: These pictures are all UNedited, except for a little cropping and resizing on most of them. I have thrown in a couple that are completely uncropped just so you can see how messy our living room got during the shoot with props and whatnot just lying all around. Enjoy :-D

WARNING! Nudity alert, all prudes should leave now!!!

Oh and apologies in advance that all the pictures ended up different sizes. It was hard to crop them all in a uniform way, so I simply cropped and then tried to adjust the size so that they were all as close in size as I could get :-)

First, a headshot, and then the teaser I posted to my facebook earlier:

One last warning, nudity alert!!! Here I'm just going to post the photos in the order that they were taken :-)

My hubby made this top for me a LONG time ago, and it's one of my favorites :-) This pic is just basically to show it off, lol!

My hubby just LOVES how this one turned out :-) Also, he's really proud of that robe, he made it a couple of years ago, and hasn't had much reason to use it, lol!

See, I told you I left one or two completely uncropped, lol!

Don't make me punish you...

Someone deserves a spanking...

See? I can use my mouth...

Turn about is fair play, lol!

You wanna fight? Let's fight bitch!

Close up of the same pic

Good little slave girl...

Very naughty mistress!

This last one is possibly my favorite pic of the whole photoshoot. I don't know how I got that expression, but I LOVE it!

Apple Wine, Applesauce and Butter

When a friend's parents needed to have the apples picked off their tree, they called my husband to come help, and for his effort, he got a good 15-20 pounds of apples. This is a good thing because I LOVE APPLES!!! However, not even I can eat that many before they go bad, lol!

This is ONLY about a THIRD of what we got :-)

So, we naturally wanted to make wine out of them. The last time I made apples wine, I ended up rushing the process and losing all the wine because I didn't have everything I needed to make it work out. However, it wasn't a complete loss because I learned something important...

When juicing a ton of apples, there ends up being a TON of pulp! When I had a good 3/4th of a gallon of juice, I had enough pulp the almost fill a 6 quart pot. So, I added a hint of sugar (about 1/2 cup to the first pot and closer to a whole cup for the second pot) and some water (7 cups in each pot) to the pot of apple pulp and let it simmer on low for about a half an hour.

Note: I don't mind seeds or even peel in my applesauce, so I did not peel the apples nor did I remove the seeds. The juicer I use doesn't put any of that in the juice anyway. This meant that I did have to spend a good 20-30 minutes each batch sorting through the pulp to pull out the bigger chunks of peel. If you would rather NOT have peels or seeds in your pulp, feel free to use an apple corer and peeler before juicing the apples.

Another reason that I did not remove the peel is that is has quite a bit more flavor than the apple flesh does, so leaving some in there can help give it some zing.

So, after a while, I had close to a gallon of apple juice, but it also had a lot of froth. That's okay, IMO. The froth is simply bits of pulp that is so fine it was able to fit through the micromesh of the juicer. To that batch (actually to both batches) I added a pound of sugar (approx 2 cups), lemon juice (between 1-2 lemons worth) and half a 12 oz box of raisins. I used organic raisins so that I know that the yeast I want hasn't been removed via chemical washes or irradiation.

The froth is at the top, the bottom has sugar and raisins... and maybe a little of the froth, lol!

Then I started on my second gallon of juice. To be honest, I almost wanted to stop because I had so much pulp from the first one, that I was leery of making more, lol! But I persevered!

From my second gallon of juice, I decided to remove as much of the froth as possible because - well - if any part of it is going to attract mold, it would be the frothy stuff on top. I figured that it would have to be removed later on anyway (when I bottle the wine) so why not remove it now?

That frothy stuff went into a smaller pot and then simmered on low for 10-15 minutes to make apple butter. The reason why for the simmering is that the froth is loaded with pectin, and the simmering thickens the froth and activates the pectin to create apple butter - like jelly but not clear. (I might just go back and remove the froth from the first batch because I liked it so much :-D )

This is the jar I removed the froth from, as a result, there is less total. Off to the left is my Rumtopf :-)

From the first batch of applesauce simmering in the 6 quart pot, I got 6 full pints of apple sauce. From the second, I got nearly 7 pints, but I decided to divide the last of it into bowls for my hubby and I to enjoy :-) To me, it turned out tasting almost exactly like the sugar free variety I buy in the store (the second batch was sweeter like "normal" applesauce) but it definitely looks different - containing bits of peel, seeds, and a brownish color. The froth taken from the one jar made TWO 8 ounce jars of apple butter.

Last note: I didn't "officially" can the applesauce, but I did put it in the jars while warm and most of the jars made a clanking noise as they self sealed. This means that the jars that clanked are technically shelf stable, but I plan to store all of mine in the fridge anyway.

As for the wine, well, I've added the sugar, lemon juice, and raisins to the second gallon and now have them sitting out on my stove to ferment. I will keep an eye on them to make sure they don't go moldy, but other than that, they just need to sit there for up to 4 months before being bottled. I look forward to tasting the finished wine!

Prepare to be OFFENDED!

And if you are offended, maybe you should go masturbate for an hour or so, because you obviously need to loosen up and relax. A LOT!

About a week or two ago, I shared an article on facebook that talked about a father who took and posted "nude" pictures of his daughter while they were on vacation. The thing is that these WERE NOT sexual pics. They were NORMAL pics that any person in any family might take... except that the child was naked.

GASP! EGADS!! OH THE HORROR!!! Naked? Say it isn't so! (Rolls my eyes...)

I just now spent an hour going through everything on my facebook in an attempt to find the article so I could post it here and share what I'd thought about it at the time... as it turns out, facebook quietly removed the article from my feed - along with the entire conversation I'd had about it - without bothering to tell me! So I had to look for it on the web, and just so you know, it wasn't easy to find!

This article: Artistic or Pornographic?

When I posted it, one of my sisters immediately commented that while she understood that the photos were not intended to be pornographic, there were too many perverts in the world to let it be acceptable to post such pics online. I responded that the world should not be dictated to by the small amount of perverts. MEANING that while it is not okay to actively be part of child pornography, it is also NOT OKAY to be afraid of posting innocent photos because there are perverts out there who will use said innocently taken photos as pornography.

I am of the opinion that nudity is not wrong and should not be illegal. Nudity is also NOT pornography since pornography is defined as pictures taken with sexual content for sexual gratification. Nudity should be allowed and it should be NORMAL!!!

That said, I am a nudist - as is my family - and I do not post nudity to my facebook because I don't want to risk some asshole or troll out there trying to make my life a living hell by reporting my pictures as pornography when they aren't.

THAT SAID, I have posted a couple of baby butt pics a few years back. Today, I had a troll go through what must have been ALL my posted pictures and report 3 of them as offensive because of nudity... I decided to post those 3 here so that y'all can see them and decide for yourselves if they really are offensive - or if that troll was just trying to cause trouble :-)

In defense of the troll, my original caption for this photo was: It looks like Phoenix is thinking I'm too sexy for this! Lol! However, you can't even see a butt cheek, so there's no nudity in this!

In this one you actually can see part of a butt cheek, but these are sleeping toddlers. There is certainly NOTHING sexual or obscene about this picture! If you think there is... then you are part of the problem...

I posted this pic way back when because it was the only one in which the nipple could not be seen. Nudity - as defined by law - is the unobstructed view of the nipple or genitals. Clearly, there's nothing wrong with this picture, and yet a troll has determined that there is.

Okay, so my real point is this: I have done nothing wrong, and I should NOT be at the mercy of a random internet troll! If facebook does have a REAL person look at these photos and determine them to be in violation of their policy - which I have read their policy and they are not! - then it becomes a matter and an example of yet more people who would rather be dictated to by the "But it might be seen and used by perverts!" theory than the actual American right to freedom of the press, among others. As in I took this photo and I published this photo, that makes me a citizen using my rights, and any censorship of this photo (any one of them) is a violation of my rights!

And warning to all perverts who want to use these pictures for purposes that I did not intend them: There is a special place in hell for you, good luck!