Monday, March 31, 2014

DIY Snack Bars

Although I'm not very good at cooking, every now and then I feel the need to go into that kitchen and make something delicious. This time it actually worked out pretty well, these snack bars are both tasty and healthy. (They have granola, that counts, right?)

1. Pour some granola into a medium-sized bowl.

2. Add cereal, chocolate chips, gummy bears, marshmallows. Whatever you want, but the marshmallows are a must. They will keep everything else together.


3. Heat in microwave for 30 second intervals. 


4. Mix in between, until marshmallows are all over everything else and you have this delicious-smelling, soft, gooey mixture.



*You can add all kinds of extra ingredients into this mix, experiment with it.

5. Butter up your hands a bit, and flatten out the mixture on a cutting board, cookie pan, or other flat surface you can put in a fridge. I used wax paper on top of the board, but it's not really necessary.


6. Stick in the fridge for a while. You can cut it before or after it's cooled down. I put this one in the freezer, that may have been too much.


Enjoy!




Monday, March 24, 2014

Antes del "¡Acción!"

Recientemente llevé a cabo un taller sobre la producción de video titulado Antes del ¡Acción! en mi alma máter, UNID. Si te gusta el cine o la televisión, conocer un poco más sobre la forma en que se realiza te ayudará a apreciarlos con mayor criterio.

Esta prezi recorre la vida de un video antes de nacer, los puntos técnicos que cualquier productor y director deben tener en cuenta antes de iniciar rodaje. También te presento algunos videos donde puedes observar lo que se comenta a lo largo de la presentación.


Long Time No See!

I haven't posted in what feels like ages, so I think a quick update is in order. I finished doing the community service that was required in order to graduate, and this involved starting a blog/TV show and a gazette for my alma mater, UNID. 

This was our first episode.

Both projects were difficult to launch, but they are both running now, under the guidance of the next generation of communicators to graduate. I recently began working at UNID, now as an English teacher, and I've embarked on the biggest journey of my life: my boyfriend and I got engaged. So, I've got quite a bit on my plate for the time being. I need to confess, I've been waiting for this moment ever since I watched The Wedding Planner.

Not the stealing another woman's fiancé part, just the perfectly organized, cool, calm and collected wedding planning.

I'm that weird girl that never actually thought of herself getting married, but for some reason thought being a wedding planner would be an awesome job. Now, not only do I find myself in a serious, loving relationship, starting a life with the man I love, (which in itself a fairy tale), but I get to plan our wedding! Design invites, make centerpieces and party favors, create a detailed timeline, decorate the venue, it's a die-hard DIYer's dream come true! But I digress.

Another great project I'm involved in is a journalism collective, El Zaguán. What we do is write narrative journalism. It's the mix of storytelling and hard cold facts, a beautiful and sometimes poetic way to present the world around us and to look a little deeper. We already have the blog running, and soon our first book will be published and distributed completely free of charge. It's a bit more challenging than what I was doing for my column, which means it's good; it's helping me grow as a writer. What we do is purely out of love for writing, as none of us get paid for our pieces, but we have come together to make this book happen and to keep the collective alive and writing, for the pleasure of the readers.

One of my jobs as a member of the collective is also to create a video clip introducing us to the world, what it is we do and why. I plan on taking a somewhat RSA-styled approach to this. In case you're not familiar with RSA video clips:

RSA Shorts - How to Find Your Element 

RSA Animate - Drive: The surprising truth about what motivates us


I find their videos to be so aesthetic and intuitive, it's absolutely inspiring. The way they present information in such a graphic way, it's just beautiful to me, a perfect balance of image and word. So, this video clip should be fun to produce. Hopefully it'll turn out better than my last video-related endeavor. Either way, I'll definitely be posting it here when it's finished, as well as the link to where you can download our book once it's available. I'll also post interesting or possibly useful bits of the wedding process as it develops. For the time moment, au revoir!