July 18th, 2010, 11:37 am
Recently I acquired a new cookbook: 500 Soup Recipes and since it’s been a while since I tried out any new recipes, I decided to attempt a completely vegetarian dinner: Mushroom and Fontina Quiche with a Summer Minestrone! I swapped out nutmeg for rosemary in the quiche recipe and added leeks to keep the mushrooms company 
Suzanne and I tag teamed the soup which ended up having rosemary, a bit of balsamic vinegar and a hint of cardamom added to it to enhance the flavor! The results!
I finally got to use these soup cups that I’ve had for the longest time! Since the soup turned out so well I have a feeling the soup cups will become regulars in the dish rotation And although the pie crust got a little toastier than I had expected, everything turned out quite tasty!
And before I let these photos go to waste, Sain and I were invited to a birthday picnic and decided to bring homemade lemonade and cucumber tea sandwiches to the event. The lemonade recipe called for simple syrup which I’ve never heard of for lemonade but evidently it helps blend the sugar into drink better – which it did! The recipe used sparkling water, but I chose to use regular water because I was afraid the sparkle wouldn’t last until picnic time 
I unfortunately don’t have a link to the tea sandwiches because I used a combination of 3 recipes but here is the recipe roughly:
1 cucumber cut into thin slices, 2-3 tbl cream cheese, 1-2 tbl butter, bread de-crusted and quartered, 1/4 cup watercress chopped fine
They turned out quite refreshing if I do say so myself! I don’t have any finished pictures of the lemonade because it just looks like…lemonade… but here are shots of the sandwiches!
Posted in Food | No Comments »
July 8th, 2010, 1:15 am
Lately I’ve been going nuts with the cleaning and reorganizing and I found these awesome boxes at Daiso to keep my kusudama string in:
much better compared to the shoebox I had crammed them all in
Don’t get me wrong! There’s nothing wrong with shoeboxes – they’re actually quite functional and I still use them but with all the kusudamas I’ve been making lately I really wanted to put the string in something nice My hunt for a kusudama string container also made me realize how obsessed with boxes origami makes me. Case in point:
That said…I’ve found containers in the randomest of places too – like for the organizing of my kusudama pieces – I looked in the normal places (craft stores, office supply stores, etc) and found suitable containers for like $2 each – then! While walking through the grocery store I saw these plastic (green!) containers for 25 and 35 cents! This is what things look like before it gets to the octopus:
I realize that this is a ridiculous post about boxes and organizing and origami containers and string containers and on and on. I never really cared about where I put things, I always just kind of threw them into whatever boxes would fit but now I realize how nice it is to not have to go through 5 different boxes and drawers just to find one item I need to finish a project – definitely makes the crafty projects more enjoyable when I’m not spending massive amounts of time hunting for the tools/pieces I need
Posted in Hobbies, Origami | No Comments »
July 4th, 2010, 1:35 pm
The second part of that title first! Sain and I had a movie marathon recently which included a movie called The Losers. It is the most awesome movie I’ve seen in awhile! I don’t know why we haven’t heard of this movie at all – it’s got an A-Team like feel and manages to balance the action with the cheese. And it’s a comic series under DC – I’m not excited about that purely because it’s a comic series but because I think movies based on comics have the potential of having the most amazing character development. And this movie did that For those of you who are more plot driven – it’s got the basic comic/action movie plot line but I find it forgivable in trade for some really hilarious moments and cool action scenes…also the best application of the song Don’t Stop Believin’ by Journey I’ve seen.
ok! the first part of this post’s title
So awhile back a buddy with super sharp eyes found these jars while we were all walking around in Jo-Ann’s :
They're the smallest jars I've ever tried to squeeze stars into - about 4.5 inches tall
I had originally called them ‘apothecary’ star jars but now I realize that apothecary jars have quite a distinct look about them. These bottles still remind me of those small vials and jars of mysterious healing liquids you’d see on the shelves in a physician’s establishment way back when. Anywho! Turns out the star paper I had were way too big to fit down the neck of the bottles so I ended up downsizing to these little guys:
Luckily, I had the perfect size of paper on hand and I just needed to cut them into stripes
I gotta admit that metallic paper are the hardest to fold for stars and after folding all those stars, I felt like I developed the finger dexterity required to diffuse a bomb However, the colors turned out pretty well – especially with the bottle patterns.
I think my favorite is the one in the middle
I was so excited with the results I went back and bought more bottles So maybe the next post you’ll see is my army of mini-star jars And to illustrate the size of the stars I thought I’d take an obligatory use-a-coin-as-a-size-comparison photo
Posted in Fun, Hobbies, Origami | 1 Comment »
July 2nd, 2010, 12:23 pm
so… it’s been a while In my last post I had mentioned a follow up post and I’ve *finally* acquired the photographic material for it Previously, I was raving about my new orange kusudama string and here it is in action:
I really really wanted orange in this kusudama’s tassel so I’m horrendously happy to finally complete this project But that’s not all! Recently I decided to do a bit of spring cleaning (yes, I know it’s summer!) and while organizing the closet I found the perfect kusudama hanging … contraption?
I found this guy originally at IKEA and thought oh! this is good for hand washed blouses or sweaters that need drying. Silly me, I don’t wear fancy things that need hand washing, I’m a t-shirt enthusiast So he’s been sitting in the closet shelves waiting for a purpose and here it is!
I was originally using regular hangers with string, which was getting out of hand because they couldn’t hold too much without the kusudamas bumping into each other. However the octopus holds them all with room to spare! And while I was at it, I took these as well:
I don't think I've ever had so many kusudamas hanging in the same space
Now I just need to figure out what to do with them all
Posted in Hobbies, Origami | 2 Comments »
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