Wow – February is a very busy month! So far this week, I’ve made…
(22) a card with my koala.
(23) OUT (yah! sorry, no pictures)
(24) origami butterflies – i need more samples, but i want a few for some cards for someone’s birthday this weekend…
I am also still trying to figure out how to stay disciplined with TAD during the week – feedback welcome 🙂
Slacking on the posting… Here’s what the dog’s been doing to my homework:
(18) Organized kitchen cupboard to make room for 8 bottles of Imahan Goma Dare.
I’m a bit shabu-shabu obsessed at the moment and building the perfect shabu night at home has been thwarted by finding a comparable goma sauce. When we finally figured it out, we went back to the store from where we first bought it, only to find out that the store had closed down and reopened as a new store that happens NOT to carry this particular brand.
We, then, drove to nearby stores and discovered that the market that previously occupied said store in previous paragraph was the only one carrying this particular brand of sauce because they used a different distributor and this was a special import (or something to that effect). But not to worry – we can find this store elsewhere on the west side of town…
So, off we went, West of Downtown LA (very lala land for us on a normal driving day, but we were committed to finding this sauce). We went to another 3 stores and finally found said store!!! (You’d think this saga was over,but this was only Sunday and I’m writing about Wednesday).
We walked over to the sauce aisle and rejoiced when we found the shelf label for the Imahan Goma Dare!!! Looking just a centimeter above that label, we found the back of the shelf with no bottles of sauce in between! PANIC! We asked the manager who told us to come back on Wednesday when their fresh new shipment of sauce would be waiting for us there.
Fast forward to Wednesday – we drove to yet another one of these said stores (okay, it was Mitsuwa) and purchased 8 bottles to ensure a sturdy supply in case of attack. I know the final day wasn’t much (buying and stocking the shelf), but it was a DAY 18, several days in the making.
(19) Shabu with friends (of course we had shabu-shabu). I only really prepped the veggies, but I did make dessert. This is strawberry parfait: layers of Vanilla Yogurt, Crushed graham crackers, whipped cream and fresh chopped strawberries, layered in quantities catered to each guest’s choice. (Note: I tried a new yogurt because it was on sale and found that, athough still good, it was not as tart/tangy as the Mountain High brand that I usually use and didn’t offer the same kind of contrast to the rest of the flavors).
(20) SLACKER! I took a nap that ended up being a fall-asleep-on-the-couch-and-somehow-find-myself-on-the-bed-at-3-in-the-morning-with-all-of-my-clothes-still-on kinda nap, so I really did in on
(21) 2 things for my cousin’s baby shower. A nursing pillow and a Ox-themed card for the Year of the Ox.
‘been feeling clingy and avoiding my personal projects to sit on the couch next to mckay. sometimes i’m just like that for a while. compared to the rest of me, i have long fingers and limbs, so i actually physically cling. mckay calls me a koala. today, i needed to find a TAD i could do on the couch to stay clung.
head: origami paper
body: MARUKAI ad paper
yayy, holiday. i spent half my day going through ALL 1596 flickr photos, reorganizing and cleaning up my tags, updating the photos to get the tags i want on them, creating sets i should have been creating for the last 2-3 months, populating and cleaning up my sets. i think i’m about 95% done. YAYY, cleanup! events, projects, and instructions go in sets; people and cities in tags
(organizational structure subject to change)
i tried to put up an html slideshow, but everytime i saved it, it removed the html embed… ideas anyone?
the other half of my day was spent looking for IMAHAN goma dare. i saw an awesome rainbow arching all over downtown LA – i tried to take photos, but none came out with the rainbow in it 😦 we drove all over LA trying to find this sauce, ended up at mitsuwa in santa monica, got hungry and ate at one of the stalls there. this menu item made me curious:
‘Wanted to go with a bigger picture so I can show my sharpie handywork (the stripes).
A few weeks ago, just before TAD started, I posted some instructions on how to make knitting needles. Then, yesterday, while buying veggies for our shabu night, I found a 100-pack of bamboo skewers! I can’t post how much that bag cost me for fear of present receivers seeing how much I spent on their present (just remember, if that’s you – there was and effort investment post-purchase). Anyway, these make perfect knitting needles for those very thin yarns (used, I think, for socks) – and the best part… they are skewers for bar-b-que, so they are already pretty smoothly sanded with the expectation that you may be inserting them into your mouth. I supposed you could still do that, but I still prefer that with the meat option. I still used the sandpaper – mostly on the tips I shaved.
When my daughter and siblings were younger, we all used to get together (myself, McKay, Kariel, My Mom, Dad, Matt, Mike Otto, and Paris) for dinner, play games or watch a movie afterward. Everyone’s beyond their teens now, but McKay and I still hang with the parents most Friday nights and now that my grandma is here, she joins us, too. Occasionally one of the other youngers join us.
Last night we had Costco lasagna, store-mixed Luleh Kabob, Rice and Salad – I made Dressings for the salad (incidentally – we also tried using our DirecTV Movies on Demand feature and it took SOOOO LONG to download – when we finished watching an hour-long show, it was still at 30%!).
It’s pretty much the same recipe just using different kinds of vinegar and the quantities are VERY FLEX – I don’t measure it exactly and sometimes add or subtract, depending on how I feel that day… I just kinda keep tasting as I go and decide how much of what flavor I want in it while I’m making it.
Creamy Italian [substitute ingredient for Balsamic]:
Ingredients:
Directions:
14 – WINDSHIELD WIPERS, so far
Went to work early this morning and cleaned up my desk. Stopped in at the auto parts store to get new windshield wipers. Installed them (that was a lot more trying than I thought it would be).
Currently working on some pannier & pannier frame designs for my bike. Will post any view-worthy (is THAT presumptuous?) diagrams.
What a strange day. These are mostly perceptions on my part, but still feels very real to me. Doubted, praised and undermined at work, all in the same day. Then, protected from being affected by my coworker losing her job. I felt completely misunderstood, but since it was such a wonky day, I decided to take the leave and try to be productive. ‘Thought i’d get home and be alone and wasn’t. Went for a short bike ride. ‘Thought i’d get home and have company and didn’t. Passed out early. Woke up and banished to get my TAD done (thanks for trying to get me in the spirit – you know who you are). Sat in front of this for about an hour feeling completely uninspired(well, okay, so i started with a pretty clean area, pulled a bunch of things out of their place and ended up like this):
I really did try. I at least wanted to document my effort – there is really just nothing left in me today.
so, i’m still working through this garden wire and have a few extra bears lying around. what to do with the rest of that now that a bracelet and earrings are done? a ring of course!
I don’t think I can keep up posting the same thing to 2 different sites (and feel good about using up disk space on 2 blogs), so I have added TAD (Thing A Day) to my links. Please visit Thing A Day to see what I’ve made.
changed my mind. from this day forward, i’ll post and copy post instead (i might change my mind again)
so, i went to bike oven today and made some new friends. here’s one: jared nielsen. although he is not part of the nielsen family i don’t think he would mind sharing his opinions.
karizmatic 