December 19, 2011

secret santa

So I'm jumping right into the highlight of this post. I participated in Secret Santa party over the weekend.

One of the participant spent his quality time making his own handmade gift wrap to wrap his gift. The photo of this man on the gift wrap is one of the host of this Secret Santa party and also one of my oldest friend.
We all burst out laughing at the gift box how funny it was. Then we continued opening the box then more of the same gift wrap appears. At that point my stomach was already hurting.
So many little gifts with so many same gift wrap!

It's been so long for me to laugh so hard. I would give this the best gift wrapping award.

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December 14, 2011

red scarf

While back, I posted about making red scarf.
I was quite busy with work this past few months, but any possible break time I spent it on crocheting this scarf.

I made it so that you can use it as regular wrap-around scarf, OR button the end of scarf and make it into infinity scarf.

SUPER warm!!!

my infinity scarf

button

December 4, 2011

homemade soba

Few weeks ago, I took Soba lesson with my mom. I never had an experience with noodles so I had to try.

We had processional to show us demonstration on how to make Soba, then all the participant make their own, and after that we all get to eat the instructor's Soba he made.
Since this was my first try, I totally failed to roll out the dough. I didn't have enough flour on the surface so the dough got stuck to each other. The dough has to spread to the point it's almost like wonton sheet, which I accomplished that part!
The best part was to slice the noodle. The blade was awesome to use!

I'll be honest, I actually hate Soba. There's this strange after taste I dislike about it, all store bought Soba taste like that. But after having homemade Soba it tastes nothing like the regular Soba. It actually tastes like noodle.

So after discovering the TRUE taste of Soba, my mom and I were thinking about making Toshikoshi Soba(Soba served on day before New Years Day) as our tradition. My parents are in Japan right now deciding to buy all the equipments!

All these Soba photos are instructor's, mine was too ugly to show...

starting point

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chop chop

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Soba complete!

boil

itadakimasu

November 29, 2011

mini donuts

I bought this cute make your own donuts snack pack from Pacific mall. They had different kind like cupcakes, sushi candy, ice cream cake pop and sort. This doesn't require baking so I would imagine it's just as bad as those Easy Bake. But it actually had no preservatives and no artificial colors. How did they do that?
Keep in mind that this is a kid's snack, I wasn't expecting great taste of deep frying goods that doesn't require frying, I just wanted to do the making part.

So this is what Sir Charles and I spent our Sunday afternoon tea party. The actual donuts were gross but the icing were finger licking good~

Happy Kitchen donuts

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mini mini donuts

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bite size!

November 21, 2011

simmered soybeans and salmon

I tried out this recipe and it goes REALLY REALLY well with rice. This is more for sidedish but I had it as main entre!
Soybeans has Isoflavone that does similar function as hormones protecting from cholesterol. This is especially good for middle age people.

- 1cup soybeans; in bowl with 6 cups of water sit overnight OR on the day of simmer soybeans for 1 hour.
- pinch of salt
- 1 salmon fillet; cut into bite size
- 1 spring onion; chopped in half
- 1 chunk of ginger; cut into 4
- 1L dashi(fish broth) OR veggie broth
- 3tbsp sugar
- 2tbsp sake OR any liqueur
- 4tbsp soy sauce

1. Pour pre-prepared soybeans in a pot and boil with pinch of salt. Add more water if required. Strain.
2. In different pot, grill salmon.
3. Add spring onion, ginger and soybeans. Saute all together to bring flavor.
4. Add dashi and sugar. Simmer for 8 min.
5. Add sake, soy sauce, and simmer for another 20-30min. At this point it's up to you if want to simmer more for flavor(it just gets saltier).
6. Discard spring onion(I just eat it instead of throwing away) and ginger, then serve.

simmered soybeans and salmon

November 16, 2011

share my childhood memory

Who had the REAL Polly Pockets when you were young? I saw the current one and they're nothing like these! To be honest I didn't play with these that's much cuz they were so tiny. It was more like miniature display purpose toys.

So last week I took a week off at my home town. It was time for me to clean up my room and decide what to keep.
I want to share some of my work I did during Grade School. I found my shield I made in Gr. 4 project. Clearly Dragon-ball influence!
The shampoo package design were Marketing class I worked on with my friend Jen. She has the pink version. Unfortunately these were getting gross so I had throw them out..... But here is the photo to keep me reminded.

And my collection of Disney puzzles. I had these since I was Grade 1 and Grade 3. These are worth to keep.

who remembers REAL Polly Pocket?

baby nursing polly pocket

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October 31, 2011

trick or treat!

Happy halloween everyone! I didn't realize this week was Halloween... I go to Micheal's to buy yarn and I see them carry Christmas stuff and thinking, what happened to Halloween?

What are you dressed as today?

happy halloween!

October 23, 2011

glare 2

How was your weekend? I had relaxing weekend crocheting and did some sketches.

I got lot of good reviews from people on my "Glare" so I did a another version! It's not sketchy as the first one but it still got the feeling. Hope you like it!

glare 2

October 17, 2011

diy wedding

I love DIY weddings. There's no end to creative possibilities.

My friend had lot of DIY assets for her wedding. A wedding that couple agreed on to have limited budge and spend more time on making their own decor. I've done DIY weddings for people, you do save TONS of money! The bride has her journey of wedding plan posted that might help your wedding ideas.
The centerpiece was adorable. I love tissue pom-pom flowers, miss making those....
I took few of them home and it's on my dining table right now. But the branches are pretty tall so it's distracting my TV view when I have dinner.

Sorry, color schemes for these photos are kind of everywhere, I'm experimenting Lightroom to see what I can do. And I'm having lot of trouble taking indoor photos without natural light. How do people do it?

little pom-pom flowers

pom-pom with sake bottle

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button+feather bouquet

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cake top

first dance

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table setting

October 11, 2011

other ottawa photos

My last post on Ottawa trip. They're photos of food I had there and things I saw.
I never had Beaver Tails before so it was delicious experience. I was wondering if you can make your own, I can try that someday.

An idea I saw outside the beads store(bottom photo). I would like to paint my chairs and table like that!

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collections of beads

October 2, 2011

War Museum

So the same day we went to Caravaggio's Painting at National Museum of Canada, and Aviation Museum, we also went to see the Canadian War Museum!

My guidebook says the War Museum closes at 8pm so we thought we can make it to all the Museum in one day. So we walked to the War Museum with beautiful weather taking about 30~45min to get there. As we arrived, we found out that the Museum closes at 6pm. We only had 45 min until the place closes.
So we completely scanned through the entire place in 45min. Mainly Sir Charles wanted to see tanks so we spent more time there. I honestly had no idea what tank I was looking at because they all looked quite similar.... I was looking forward to actually go inside the tank but they didn't have that kind of service.

You really need more time to look around. It has entire information about WWI and WWII that you want to take time to know everything.

We're planning to go back again someday.

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Collection of Tanks

Ford Food Truck

War museum Hallway