NAC: Punched Babby & Santa

Yes I know "baby" is spelled wrong.. it's kind of an inside joke amongst a group of friends. I made this card not because one of my friends is preggers but because I wanted to give her a reminder on why she should be patient.

Anyway, I got the punched baby idea from andreawalford.com. Her sister made a Christmas card with a baby in a manger which I thought was super cute. I almost never distress cardstock but I thought the shading on the bundle gave it a little extra somethin.

And no, I did not punch Santa. I made him out of punched pieces. This is a completely original design :) I worked with what I had and it turned out pretty cute IMO. I love when simple cards turn out good. (tooting my horn a bit)

Justyn & Me Cooking: Spaghetti & Meatballs

This is a story of how I finally got my spaghetti on.

Yesterday we also picked up some roma tomatoes from the farmer's market since I had a major craving for spaghetti. All I really wanted was a simple marinara with spaghetti. However, earlier in the week I also spotted Chef John's meatballs w/ ricotta cheese. Mind you I don't even like ricotta cheese.

These recipes matched perfectly together. LOVE!

Marinara Recipe: http://www.ifood.tv/recipe/killer_marinara_sauce_three_ways

Ricotta Meatball Recipe: http://foodwishes.blogspot.com/2009/10/experimental-ricotta-meatballs-prove-to.html

Not only did I put these two together but Justyn made the meatballs and I made the sauce. We were totally bumping and shoving each other around in our tiny kitchen but the end result was amazing. The meatballs were super tender and the marinara sauce really was "killer". Despite the fact that we're eating dinner at 7:20pm, I'm enjoying it a lot. I also love the fact that Justyn and I cooked something together. This meal really was made with love (and maybe a little hate haha).



I couldn't help but include my pumpkin from yesterday too heh. Doesn't she look sad with envy?

Jack-O-Lanterns!

Earlier this week I discovered that SeriousEats.com was doing a pumpkin carving contest.

Link: http://www.seriouseats.com/2009/10/serious-eats-pumpkin-carving-contest-20091014.html

After seeing last year's entry I immediately thought of doing a sad pumpkin crying while eating one of its own. I mentioned earlier that I had gone to the farmer's market to get ingrediants for dinner tonight. But I bet you didn't know that I would be incorporating dinner with my pumpkin carving did you?

Here's Justyn carving his pumpkin.

I ended up making a spicy thai pumpkin soup to go inside the "bowl"

Recipe: http://allrecipes.com/recipe/thai-pumpkin-soup/detail.aspx

I did alter the recipe by adding a couple more thai chilies and sauteed the pumpkin with the aromatics before adding the coconut milk and chicken broth. Keep in mind that if you make this recipe, be sure to blend small batches and make sure to blend well. I'm currently still chewing on a bits of lemongrass. Not pleasant at all heh. The recipe is VERY easy. Give it a try :)

PS - Here's a night time shot of our pumpkins.

Weekend Update & Gift Tags

I've had quite a busy weekend..

On Friday I went to Taryn's house to hang out with Ken and peeps. We had drinks and played a board game called Expose Your Self. Don't ask me why but for some reason I thought the game meant you had to do an expose on yourself instead of exposing yourself haha. Ken gave me tons of shit for that one.

Saturday Justyn and I woke up early since E-Ma came to pick up her flag garland for her sister's baby shower. Since we were up, we went to breakfast at Bill's in Downtown Willow Glen. We walked around a bit before catching an 11:40am showing of Cloudy With A Chance of Meatballs. I was suprised that Justyn enjoyed it more than I did. After the movie, my sister came over and we all went to hit a few balls at the golf range. I was happy that I did tons better than my first and second time. I think I'm starting to get the hang of it :)

Today we went to the farmer's market/flear market across the street and picked up groceries for dinner tonight. I can't tell you what I'm making yet but it involves pumpkin ;) We also grabbed a couple pastor tacos from the taco truck. Sooo good. I normally don't like radishes but it gave the tacos a nice refreshing crunch. Right now I'm about to leave to grab a couple more things from the grocery store before I start on dinner. Stay tuned for the suprise and cross your fingers. I hope I can pull off what I'm thinking of doing!

Oh yeah.. here are a couple gift tags I just finished. I figure I'm going to make them match the Christmas cards I'm making.

More Flag Garlands

E-Ma wanted me to make her a couple flag garlands for her sister's baby shower so I obliged. It's for a baby boy so I used Cosmo Cricket's Boyfriend & Lil'Man lines for them. This project went by so fast. Seriously a TON easier than measuring each diamond and hand cutting them thanks to my new diamond punch :) I also noticed that the ones in our bedroom started unpeeling even though I had used snail adhesive & mini glue dots so this time I added a bunch more adhesive and bigger glue dots. I hope they stay in place.

Bliss on a Plate & Pumpkin Patch

I was dead tired after a hard workout and on the drive home my stomach started telling me to get some food. Justyn and I drove to a nearby strip mall intending on getting some banh mi sammiches but apparently the place he was thinking of had closed. By this point I was getting pretty cranky due to what I think was low blood sugar so we went to a pho place in the same shopping center instead. I had really low expectations going in because of the lack of customers. The menu was huge which is normally another bad sign but they had one of my favorite dishes which is boiled chicken with rice. I actually made this dish before: http://jadedskitchen.blogspot.com/2009/09/cooking-hainese-chicken-rice.html. I can tell you from making it that it's harder than it looks.

When I'm this hungry, I have to have something to eat right away so we ordered some spring rolls as well. Justyn ordered some rare steak and well done flank pho.

Just so you know, this place blatantly advertises being a beef pho place..

So I was completely suprised that my chicken dish was SO good. I even told Justyn that this was my new favorite pho place. That's saying a lot since we have so many of these restaurants around our area.

The broth was clear and extremely clean tasting. There was none of that cloying after taste to it at all. I knew right then that we had been going to all the wrong pho places. My chicken was tender and juicy. The sauce it came with was a wonderful balance of sweet, salty and sour. Justyn's pho broth was different but equally as delicious. Oh and the spring rolls? OMG! Crunchy and fresh tasting. It was unlike any other spring roll I had ever had. The sauce it came with wasn't that goopy peanut butter based sauce either. It was light and fresh, close to the sauce my chicken came with but different in flavor.

After what I'd like to call bliss on a plate, we went to the pumpkin patch to finally get our pumpkins. I had been waiting all week to go but earlier this week the rain ruined my mood for going. We picked up two medium sized pumpkins and a baby one. You'll have to stay tuned to see what we do with them ;)

Halloween Album

My friend E-Ma's birthday was this past Sunday and I couldn't figure out what to get her. Of course, I made her the card but she wouldn't give me a clue as to what kinda crafty stuff she wanted. Instead, she asked that I attend a Halloween album class with her. I wasn't exactly thrilled with going to another class since my last two experiences were terrible. I felt rushed and wanted to make my project perfect. All the while, people around me were telling me that there's nothing wrong with making mistakes. *smacks forehead* Srsly? If it doesn't look good to me, I'm going to hate it.

Anyway, I decided to suck it up for E-Ma's sake.

Guess what? I enjoyed the class. The instructor was easy going, not minding that I changed the album up a bit. It actually looked quite different than what was intended but she was cool with it. I was also relieved that she cut the cardstock for the front, inside & back covers out beforehand. From previous experience, I had to cut out the cardstock by hand which took forever.

Here's the album. All I need to do is add pictures and it's done! The inside has 4"x6" slots for pictures and decorative pieces.. 5 pages total. I can't wait to fill it with Halloweeny stuff :)

Here's what the original album looks like:

(Courtesy of memoriesliveon.com)

Tutorial: 3D Season's Greetings

Susan had left me a comment asking for a tutorial. So here it is. I didn't have as hard of a time doing this as I thought. This totally makes me want to make videos now heh.

Start out with some kraft cardstock cut down to 8.5" x 4.25" and score it at 5.5". Then fold it in half and you have your card base. Pretty standard..

I didn't have enough green cardstock to punch out 3 diamonds so as embaressing as it is, I had to dig in the trash to find leftovers from the previous card. Cut the diamonds in half.

Then fold the triangles you have in half. I only had 6 for this one but it'll still work.

Use some snail adhesive to stick on side of each of the triangles together. It should look like this.

Continue to do all pieces until you have something that looks like this.

Stamp a small (I mean TINY) on some yellow cardstock and cut it out.

Punch out 1/2" circles until you think you have enough. If you don't have enough you can always go back and punch out more.

Using your Coluzzle, cut out a circle bigger than the tree. I used the 3rd ring from the center here.

Put some snail adhesive on the outter portion of the red circle and start sticking the green 1/2" circles around it. You may need to play around with spacing them as evenly as possible. Don't worry, it took me a while too.

It should look something like this when you're done. Then add some faux stitching to the red circle for some added interest.

Using a 1/16" punch, punch each of the green "scallops" you've created.

I used some glue dots and a tiny piece of dimensional to attach it to the red circle. You may want to attach these at the end so it'll be easier to assemble later on.

Next, punch a circle (doesn't matter what color cuz you won't see it later) smaller than the red circle and fold it 4 times each time matching up the folds to the previous lines. Then mark on the lines so they are evenly spaced from the edge of the circle and next to each other.

Using the 1/16" punch, punch where the marks are. You will need 6 pieces of strings with their ends double knotted and threaded through the holes of the circle.

Take a dimensional and stick it in the center of the circle with the strings. Then stick that circle to the red one making sure the top strings are centered with the bottom ones.

With some chocolate cardstock, use your scallop punch to punch out an entire row of scallops all the way down the cardstock. This should be more than enough for you to cover the top and bottom of the kraft card base.

Attach the brown scallop strip to the top and bottom of the cardbase and cut off the excess. Then do some faux stitching.

On your embellishment, stick some dimensionals on the side of the "rig" so that they do not interfere with the string.

Remove the backing on the dimensionals and stick it onto the cardbase making sure that it is more on the left side and centered. Then take the middle string on the top and wrap it around to the back of the front of the card and use some tape to secure it. Make sure the string is centered before you stick it on. Then do the left and right strings making sure that they are evenly spaced. If you're worried about the ugly tape and extra string on the back, you can cover it with some patterened paper or something.

Repeat the same process for the bottom strings. It should now look something like this.

Now just stamp your sentiment on the right side and you're done!

I hope this helps and that some of you guys try this card out. If you do, leave me a comment. I want to see your creations!