2-4-6-8 Valentine's Box

I just finished making this super easy box. You basically take a 8.5x5.5 piece of cardstock and score it at 2", 4, 6" and 8" (on the 8.5" side). Then you turn the paper around and score it at 2" (on the 5.5 side). Fold over the score lines and then cut it up to the 2" score line... you know what? Just watch this video on how to make it hah. Trust me.. it's easier to make it than to describe how to make it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Id_kAVtkdg

Here's how mine turned out :)

Cooking: Pan-Fried Fish with Thai Lemon-Herb Sauce

Tonight Justyn had to go to a Search & Rescue thingy and had to be out of the house by 6:00pm at the very latest so I needed to whip up dinner quick. I felt the need to cook something too! Hmm quick and yummy.. I was still somewhat full from lunch when I started perusing tastespotting.com. Then I thought, hrm... Thai sounds good. So I searched for all the Thai food porn and found THE recipe.

Pan-Fried Fish w/ Thai Lemon-Herb Sauce... it sounds good doesn't it? Since this was a first time recipe for me, I was a skeptic. Prep was easy enough and cooking couldn't have been more simple. I'll post the recipe at the end of this post.


Well, here's how it turned out. It was suprisingly very good for such a simple recipe. I'm into really complicated 20 or more step recipes so I was happy to be proven that simple can also be just as good.




Recipe: http://thaifood.about.com/od/thaiseafoodrecipes/r/fishwithherbs.htm

PS - Oh yeah, I used lime instead of lemon juice.. I just thought it would be more "Thai-ish".

Before & After: A Look Back

Well it really hasn't been all that long since I started cardmaking as a new hobby but I wanted to do a before and after. I had moved all my crafting supplies and tools to the dining table so I could watch TV while making stuff for Christmas. I neglected moving everything back to the office because I knew I would be making Valentine's Day cards. Well, now that I'm very close to be doing with that, I decided it was time to move everything back into the office. I'm thinking I need a TV or radio in the office for background noise while I'm crafting. That would keep me from moving things back and forth when the holidays come around again. ANYWAY, since I just moved everything back into the office, I decided to take a picture of it since it's nice and neat... as neat as it can be anyway.

Before:

Look how little supplies I started out with!

After:

And look at how much I have now! This is within a span of about 4 months!

Confession time... I used to be both envious and curious as to how some of the other cardmakers accumulated so many stamps, supplies and other things. I told myself that I'd never get that obsessed with crafting. But now I can see it. I want the entire office devoted to my stuff. Unfortunately I have to share with Justyn's computer. I suppose I could get rid of the huge futon taking half the room up but yeah.. I think the next step is putting in some shelving so I can put the boxes on them and which would free up some table space. *sigh* I have lots of work to do before I get up with the major leaguers.

Another Valentine's Card

My friend E-Ma and I challenged each other to create a card using pink & brown as our primary colors as well as the use of her new Making Memories "tickets". I still loved the idea of squares that had three of the corners rounded so here's what I came up with. Oh... yeah, I had to use the "shit" stamp that I got at Paper Source. Unfortunately, since I stamped it over the "ticket", the image didn't come out well so I had to fill in the spots I missed with a black marker. Ugh! I like how it turned out for the most part though.

I found a picture of what E-Ma made:

KWerner's Color Inspiration # 39

Well I did make a card for KWerner's last challenge but I didn't post it cuz I forgot to take a picture during the day! OK... I was going to take a picture of it but I can't find it! Oh well..

And for this week's challenge, I also forgot to take the picture in daylight so here it is:

"Cooking": Japanese Goodness

*argh fucking blogger! This is the second time I'm typing this!*

After work, Justyn and I went to Nijiya market to pick up some stuff for dinner. I went straight for the chopped tuna & wakame salad (one of my favorite things!). Justyn got some tofu, green onion, bonito flake, natto and seaweed.

This is what Justyn made with his ingrediants. Look at that pile of stuff! He piled natto, bonito flakes & seaweed on top of tofu and drizzled it with a bit of soy sauce. I wrinkled my nose at it but after tasting it, damn.. it's good!

And this is what I came up with. I added some grated ginger, chopped scallion, seaweed, furikake, soy sauce and a drizzle of sesame seed oil to the chopped tuna and mixed it all together. I made fancy shapes out of them (quenelles) and then they went on top of the rice and wakame seaweed salad. Talk about yum! Even Domo-kun approves!

Quick Valentine Card

OK well no this wasn't a quick card to make but rather it's a quick post before I go to sleep. I wanted to enter the Hero Arts blog contest with their So Sweet stamp set so I made this. Could you imagine winning a $50 gift certificate and their catalog? Well, so far my chances are 1 in a little more than 9K! Yah, fat chance but we'll see :)

Birthday Dinner w/ Family

On Sunday my mom wanted me to come home to make me .... *drumroll* SHARK FIN SOUP. There's a little story that my mom likes to tell everyone about this soup. When I was a little girl, my mom gave me a bowl of this soup and I loved it so much I asked her for more. "Mom... can I have some more noodles". Yeah, I called them noodles not understanding how much it costs for a shark fin.

Anyway, so Justyn and I drove to my mom's house where not only did she make me shark fin soup but a cornucopia of other things she had been slaving over during the day. It's one of the reasons why I love my mom. She's always going overboard. Now, I'm not trying to sound ungrateful, but one day I would love for her to cook me what she used to make. One meat and one veggie dish. That to me, is the ultimate comfort food.

Here's what she made:

Beef & Tripe in Szechuan Peppercorn Oil, Homemade Kimchee (sooo good! better than store bought), Chicken & Ham with Chinese Broccoli in a White Sauce, Rice Cakes w/ Shrimp & Kimchee, Jai (mmmm), Steamed Fish (double mm), Shrimp in Pineapple Sauce

Afterward we played with Oscar. There was this alien balloon but for some reason, it scared the crap out of him. Justyn shook it around Oscar and the head on the alien fell off! I was cracking up! Then my mom wanted to make these mochi thingies with her new hibachi grill but it wasn't getting hot enough so we packed up a bunch of leftovers and went home. I was seriously going into a food coma! Thanks mommy!

Birthday Dinner w/ Friends

Since Justyn took me on the surprise trip to SF last weekend, I still wanted to hang out with friends for my birthday. So on Saturday night I planned a dinner at Tomato Thyme (my favorite Caltalian place). It ended up being a group of 6 peeps (me, Justyn, Ken, Alex, Dave & Janice). Besides the food, I loved the fact that our waiter was friendly enough to give us some markers to draw on the table. That ended up being a good laugh.

Here's a picture of what we had. (Justyn: Spaghetti & Meatball, Me: Beef Burgundy w/ Mushroom Raviolis, Ken: Olive Pizza, Janice: Sole w/ Risotto, I forgot what Dave & Alex ordered)

Then we went to a local bar called the Marmist (sp?) where we met up with some of Ken's friends and Cupini.

After that we went to another bar but I didn't get any pictures of that. I think my camera got confiscated at that point by Justyn and Ken since I was being annoying hah!

Itaglioed Technique

I was perusing Lisa Spangler's (sideoatsandscribbles.wumple.com) and came across this neat technique. It's almost the same as the faux metal technique except you use clear embossing powder instead. However, I thought up of an awesome idea of including a colored ink... it's kinda hard to describe so here's a picture of it. You basically ink up your chipboard with the color of choice, then sprinkle clear embossing powder over it, let it cool then go over it with Versamark and then more powder... rinse and repeat about 3 times. On your last part of doing this, ink up your stamp with Versamark really well and then put a color of your choice on top of the Versamark ink. Because Versamark is a clear ink, you don't have to worry about discoloring your other stamp pads. Right when you've heat gunned your chipboard for the last time, stamp it well and don't remove it. Let it sit for about 15-20 seconds and then remove it. This is how it turned out. I was seriously nervous about if it would even work but it did! I'm probably not the first person that came up with this but I'm happy I came up with it on my own.


On second thought you could probably stamp the "words" before you put on your first coat of clear embossing powder but I like how the "words" looked etched in.

Justyn Cooking: Mole Tacos

Yesterday Justyn made some tacos.. not just any tacos, but mole tacos. Isn't that kind of a weird combo since mole is primarly used for enchiladas? At least as far as I know? Anyway, I was skeptical.. due to the jarred mole sauce he was using. I had leftover fried rice to eat so I wasn't too concerned.

He diced up the leftover cinnamon chipotle steak he made a couple days ago and fried up it up with some diced sauteed onion.

He added the mole with some chicken stock..

And then topped some microwaved tortillas with the meat mixture and cilantro.

Here's how they turned out.. and I did have a spoonful of the meat mixture and it was GOOD! I was actually shocked since I hate mole normally. I even regretted eating my leftover fried rice when I could've had these!