KWerner's Color Inspiration # 43

I can't believe how the weeks seem to be flying by with these color inspiration challenges. I really love these colors and actually made two cards but I wasn't happy with the first one. I used Kristina's A Year in Cards class technique on twopeasinabucket.com to make the flower. Here's my submission for this week!

Edit: Wowowoow! I made it onto Kristina's top 25 list! That totally made my day :D

Get Well Card

Because Ema's probably the only one that would appreciate my cardmaking amongst my friends and because she's sick, I decided to make her this card.

Cooking: Chicken & Sausage Gumbo

With the gumbo, Chef John :) We love it!

And you were right, this recipe did take a while to make but VERY worth it in the end. I think this is even better than the jambalaya!

No step by step pictures this time since they two recipes were similar and I'm eating right now, so I don't feel like typing. Nom!!!

PS - I made the brown rice with the rice cooker. It turned out perfect. The ratio is 3 cups of liquid to 1 cup of rice. I added some Creole seasoning to it before cooking too.

Cooking: Sausage and Shrimp Jambalaya

Happy Fat Tuesday yall!

Well for the occassion and since Justyn's been working late this whole week, I decided to make Sausage and Shrimp Jambalaya from Chef John's blog (http://foodwishes.blogspot.com/2008/05/creole-sausage-and-shrimp-jambalaya.html). His recipes are always spot on and delicious! You really have to be a dumb ass to mess up his recipes. On that note, I was kind of a dumbass with this recipe and now that I'm tasting it.. I have to say that I did a pretty good job.

Dumbass Messup # 1: I was looking at his recipes trying to decide whether to make Shrimp Etoufee or the Jambalaya and when I went to the store, I ended up getting ingrediants for BOTH recipes.

Dumbass Messup # 2: I didn't realize my mistake until too late.

Dumbass Pro-tip: Make sure you prep ALL your ingrediants before starting. Scrambling to prep while things are already cooking is dumb.

But actually, it turned out OK. Both recipes are similar enough where it was OK to mix ingrediants.

I started off by browning the smoked sausage (I couldn't find andouille) in a couple tablespoons of butter.

Then once the sausage was browned, add the spice mixture (paprika, cayenne & cumin). Mix that together and then add the canned diced tomato. At this point, it should smell ready to eat. Like yummy!

Add you veggies and bay leaf and give it a stir.

And then the brown rice and chicken stock. I snuck in some frozen okra at this point. If you want it to keep its green color, you might want to add this at the same time you add the shrimp.

I let everything simmer for 45 minutes per Chef John's directions but you really need to adjust the cooking time depending on a lot of factors. How hot your stove gets, the type of brown rice.. you know that kinda stuff. Mine ended up taking about 55 minutes. I then added my shrimp, and cooked that for another 10 minutes.

Done and plated. Time to nom it up to celebrate Fat Tuesday all by myself :(.

Cooking: Corned Beef w/ Horseradish Mashed Potatoes

Tonight Justyn made some corned beef. He started early like around 11:00am and left it cooking in some beer and water with red cabbage, carrots, parsnips and onions for about 8 hours! It turned out sooo good. I made some mashed potatoes with some horseradish cream, milk and butter. Oh yeah and I made some gravy with the juices from the corned beef. Pretty easy but very slow cooked meal. Esther came by earlier in the day and stayed for dinner. It was a pretty awesome day :)

Baby Shower Card

One of my second cousins is having a baby shower in March and I just got my latest twopeasinabucket.com shipment in. This paper is from Making Memories and it's kinda Easter-centric but I turned it into a baby shower card.

Cooking: Thai Basil Chicken w/ Green Beans

I was craving some Thai food for dinner so what better than a quick and easy recipe? Yep, none other than Thai Basil Chicken. Justyn has to have a veggie no matter what we eat for dinner so I threw in some chopped green beans. I messed up by not adding the green beans until the dish was almost done cooking so they were a bit crunchy. I ended up having to throw my wok lid on it for about 10 minutes so they would soften up a bit. In the end, it worked out though. I'll even go as far as to say that this is my best batch of Thai Basil Chicken EVAR.

The recipe calls for 10-12 cloves of garlic & 12-20 Thai bird chilies. Holy crap! That's a lot of garlic and heat don't you think? Instead, I cut it down to 5 garlic cloves & 4 chilies. That worked out well. It had just the perfect amount of heat. I also couldn't find any Kaffir lime leaves so instead I took Justyn's suggestion of using lime zest and squeezed half a lime in. Other than that, I pretty much followed the recipe verbatim.

Recipe: http://www.thaifoodandtravel.com/recipes/baschi.html

Cooking: Happle Pies

I recently stumbled upon this really adorable and modern blog called Twig & Thistle. Within this blog was a really cute apple hand pie DIY thing. I made my first batch over the weekend but since I wanted to give a couple to Ema tomorrow, I made a new batch just so it wouldn't be so mushy.

I decided to call them Happle Pies because 1) they make me happy 2) they're technically called "hand pies" so I merged "hand" with "happy" to get "happle".


Here's the link with the template & instructions: http://www.twigandthistle.com/blog/2009/02/diy-sweetie-pie/#more-785


And my pictures:




I strayed from the recipe and just eyeballed all the measurements. It came out better than my first batch. Who knew apple pie would be so easy to make? You don't even really need a recipe.

KWerner's Color Inspiration # 42

These colors were kinda springy so it threw me off because I'm used to working with very basic colors. I even had to go back to Scrapbook Island to buy the right cardstock for it. Oh yeah, I also picked up some cute new papers that you might get to see when I get a chance to work on what I'm thinking. Was that cryptic enough for you?

Anyway, here's a card I made for Ema. I had a really craptastic day and she came by to drop off some cookies she made. Chocolate chip cookies to be exact! Talk about yum. Man, I'm starting to get worried about my growing sweet tooth. First it was red velvet cupcakes, now cookies! Oh not to mention that I'm also eating an apple handpie I made tonight. Must. Stop. Eating. Sweets. *sigh*

Getting back to the card though... I'm thinking black ribbon might have been better but Lost is on right now and I don't feel like changing it.

Felt Heart Mobile & Pin Cushions

Man I can't believe I stayed up so late to make this thing, but once you get bitten by the inspiration bug, it's hard to wait until tomorrow to start crafting. I found this adorable mobile on a blogger's website but I can't remember who it was. (http://www.potterybarnkids.com/products/vd300/index.cfm?pkey=gthmoccval)

After dinner, I asked Justyn if he could take me to Michaels to pick up supplies. All I needed was some felt (pink, brown, red & vanilla), stuffing, some embroidery twine & some needles. The rest of the supplies I already had. I think the best thing about this kind of crafting is that it is somewhat backwards compatible. I could totally use it on cards and scrapbooking.

I hated how my first heart turned out so I redid it so the "back" part of it had a more even and finished look. You'll notice in the first picture that the stitching is all kindsa wrong. I tried to salvage the felt by taking apart the stitching but it stretched out and got ugly. Luckily I bought tons of felt so I could easily start over.

Anyway, here's what I made. It's not complete yet. I want to add some buttons and actually sew on the ribbon and maybe balance out the mobile so it's not horribly lopsided.

I also decided to do something with a couple Anthropology gift card bags that I had. They're so cute that I couldn't bear to just throw them away. I made quick and easy pin cushions out of them. I simply stuffed the bags with the same stuffing in my hand stitched hearts and then tied a double knot on the top of the bag with the drawstring.

K now I'm tired so I'm gonna chillax a bit and then go to bed.

KWerner's Color Inspiration # 41

I loved these colors!

And it was a total coincidence that I used the houndstooth background inside the scalloped square. I just thought it went well together just like the dresses in the inspiration picture. I also used my new tag punch which fits in well with the theme... kinda like a price tag or something. I didn't really study the inspiration picture all that hard too... something about it just well... inspired me to make the card the way it is. Neato :)

Speechless...

My work phone rang and it was the receptionist saying something about Justyn being here. I'm like uh... what? I couldn't quite make out what she said so I went to the lobby to ask her. Justyn was there standing with these flowers. I was kinda flustered and suprised hah... Thanks Bee! :D

Happy Birthday Card

I made this card for my sister since a friend of hers is having a birthday soon. I stayed up kinda late finishing this card but it was worth it. I have issues with leaving a project unfinished heh..

Oh yeah, just some details about the card, this was heavily inspired by KWerner's 9 Card. Here's the video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sN3lNyvdV4A&feature=channel_page). I also had to use a "d" for the "b" since I ran out of those. I'm actually loving how versatile my chipboard letters are. And if some of you are curious as to what the measurements are... The card base is 5"x5" and the squares are 1 1/8". I cut the circle out using the Coluzzle (3rd circle in from the largest).

Japantown

Today, Justyn and I went to Japantown for a late lunch. Man.. there was NO parking so we ended up parking really far. It was a nice stroll since the weather wasn't too cold and we needed the exercise. We ended up eating at Izumiya which wasn't spectacular but I was starving so I didn't care. Justyn got this omelet with udon noodles in it and I had the katsu curry.

Cooking: Tomato Beef

For dinner tonight I made tomato beef stir fry. I'm not too happy with how it turned out but at least you can take a peek at the result. No recipe though!

Contest Card

One of my favorite cardmaking bloggers (dawnmcvey.typepad.com) had a link on her blog to a contest to win a TON of Papertrey Ink ribbon. I. must. win. Well at least I'm hoping that I win. It doesn't hurt to try so here's my entry.

Leyla's Housewarming Party

Last night we went to Leyla's housewarming party. It was fun to see old faces that I haven't seen since last year sometime and it was good to meet new peeps too! I'll let the pictures do the talking since I'm in the middle of eating dinner heh. Thanks Leyla and Cormac for hosting :)