Quick Blurb

I made a couple of hair decorations and a cork board!

I got kinda bad at this!

Late Update, Incoming!

Well I don't know what happened to me this month... maybe laziness? I haven't exactly been sitting still the whole time though, I swear! I've made food and done a few crafts, but nothing major enough that I felt the drive to make a posting. Time to rectify that with a gathering of crafty or delicious things I've accomplished lately.

Egg rolls, Anyone?

The first image is of the egg rolls before I fried them, and the second is the egg rolls after I friend them. I'm sure you could have figured that out, but I like typing.


In these egg rolls I put chicken, red and green bell peppers, onions, and mushrooms. I think they could have used a few more mushrooms, but hindsight is 20/20. The chicken turned out great, I marinated it in the marinade I usually reserve for fish (approx- 1/3 c soy sauce, 1/3 c brn sugar, 1/3 c H2O, 1/4 c oil. I might have the oil and water backwards, not sure!). Then I sliced it very thinly and painstakingly laid each slice out on a frying pan to ensure that they all cooked evenly.

Everything else I just sauteed till they were at a done-ness that I liked. Then I rolled them up and dropped em in oil! They were freaking delicious. Too bad even though I said there was enough for everyone in the house to have 4, Ryan and Cuyler (boyfriend and his cousin) ate the rest of my share the following day (I had saved 2 that I wanted to take to work). Jerks.

Dinner at a Friend's

Some of you might know I went up to San Jose to visit a couple friends of mine! One thing we did was make a tasty salmon dinner. She had never made salmon before and seemed to be a little intimidated, so hopefully she will make it in the future, it turned out great! We used Alton Brown's citrus glazed recipe, it was super good. Sweet with a nice tang to it. We also made broccoli with cheese sauce and rice. It was all excellent.

Next, a Necklace!

Personally, I like to bring some sort of small gift when I'm going to be staying with someone, and since I'm broke it's usually something I've made. I made this necklace for my friend with some stuff that was waiting to be pulled together with a nice pendant. A few posts ago we went to the beach, this is one of the shells I picked up. It had some great ridges for the wire to pick up, I don't have the right drill bits to drill a hole in the shell quite yet. Anyways, it turned out very nice and I'm quite happy with it.

Something I made a While Ago...

I follow threadbanger.com for crafty ideas, and I saw this scarf in an episode a while ago. I really liked the idea of the scarf, so I decided to make one of my own. It looks pretty sweet, but I'm not 100% sold on the idea. Part of the problem might be the color. Maroon isn't something that you wear everyday, I suppose. It was an old work shirt that I saved for cloth scraps (you never know!). If you have any suggestions on how to wear this, let me know, otherwise I'm just going to throw it on randomly until I love it, I guess!

One last thing! I just want to say how frustrated I am with the way this website works. It's a pain in the ass to add pictures, and then they all end up at the top. If you upload more than one they don't load in the correct order, so you have to spend a lot of time putting them in the right order (they don't move from the spot they are in very easily). Then every time I'm making a new paragraph, it goes back to the default text. I like Verdana, and I wanted to use Verdana. If I have to change the font back every time I hit enter, something is wrong. I might have to check out the 'edit html' section and see if I can just type my thoughts in there and if it will be any easier! Good lord!

Night night,
Janiece

Dessert-o

Long time, no post!

I feel like I haven't been up to much, but I swear that's not true! I guess I haven't been doing anything super crafty. I did work on my embroidery project for a bit but stopped... I have been cooking, but I didn't feel anything was nice enough looking to post.

Today for dinner I made oven roasted sea bass, broccoli and cheese, white rice, and corn on the cob. Everything turned out pretty good. I have to admit, I forgot to take a picture, but my plating was not very picture worthy anyways. I did, however, take pictures of dessert.

Dessert was strawberry shortcake, from scratch. I almost over baked the biscuits, but luckily I caught the smell of caramelizing sugar and whisked them out of the oven with time to spare. Go me. Some of you might know this, but I don't like strawberries, so I put chocolate sauce on mine. We sadly did not have any vanilla ice cream or whip cream, but it was still pretty darn good.

Well, until next time!
Janiece

Of Beaches, Beads, and Edamame

Today, Ryan, Ryan's grandma and I headed out to the beach! It was very windy and pretty chilly for most of the day, but the sun did a lot to help dispel that. The ocean was FREEZING, no big surprise there. We walked out on a pier and had lunch at a Ruby's diner, then walked back down and then all over the beach, till we ended up on some sand, chillin just like you see in this picture. Actually I fell asleep for a good thirty minutes. I'm a little pink, but it's not too bad.


On our way off of the pier, Helen spied a seal. I don't know how she spotted it! It turns out the little guy was sick. Eventually a beach guard came and roped him off and stood by him so that people wouldn't get all up in his shit. I mean, it's not like I didn't want a picture of a seal, but there is no reason to get really close to it, I'm pretty sure wild animals don't care for humans. Anyways, I thought this was a good picture, a lifeguard running the evil humans away from the sick seal.


This beach actually had a lot of shells, so I picked up a pocket full. I think I am going to get a pretty glass jar with a lid and put them in the jar with some salt water. That's what my mom does with her beach glass, and it always looks so pretty. There are several Goodwills in the area, I'm sure I can find something nice for display. When I do, you'll see it. I wish that I had a way to drill holes through shells (so I could make jewelry with them!). My dremel bit is either too big or not sharp enough... It just ends up breaking the shells. Someday...

As For Crafts

As a quickie before bed, I decided to make one of my friends a cell phone charm. When I bought mine she said it was cute but she'd rather have one made by yours truly. It turned out pretty cute, even though my beads weren't the same size as the beads on the original charm. The one I made has the pearls and blue cats eye gems. The one I bought is the sparkly one (I added a jingle bell to it, I love having a bell on me for some reason.)

Dinner

As for dinner, I forgot to take pictures, but I made miso soup, salmon, rice, and edamame. Very Japanese-y meal, haha. Everything was a hit, except Helen didn't care for the tofu in the miso (I can't blame her, I don't always like it). Everyone really loved the edamame, of course. It's so damn good. I guess it might be a good thing I didn't take pictures, you might get hungry for edamame!

That's all for tonight!
Janiece

I've Always Hated Cardboard, and I Always Will

Just a quick update today... I was bored and waiting for Ryan to get home, and I started thinking about all his guitars (he has 4). He usually only plays the Ibanez, because it's his nicest one. Other than that he has one regular sized classical, one smaller classical, and another electric. He's always leaving the Ibanez in various rooms propped up against something, and I've been wanting to build him a guitar rack for all of his guitars for a while. Since I don't have the money to buy the materials for the stand I want to build (pvc pipe!), I looked for a cheaper alternative for a single guitar stand, so he could take a little better care of it.

Voila! It's certainly nothing to look at, but after looking at this instructable I was able to put together my own. Let me just say this: I hate cardboard. I hate cardboard with the passion of a thousand fiery suns. I remember in sculpture class we would build things out of cardboard, those were always my most hated projects. It's such a pain in the ass. This cardboard was really thick, too, which made it difficult to cut. In the long run that is better, because it will remain sturdy. Anyways, that's all for tonight, hehe.

Janiece

I put a bow on it and put the guitar and stand out in the hallway for him to see when he gets home from work, how cute! =D

A Little of Both

A Delayed Dinner

Yesterday I went to Cosco with Helen and Phil (Ryan's grandparents that we are living with). We shopped to our hearts content and ended up coming home with a lot of fruit (yum!). Sadly, they did not have the Martenelli's apple juice, I was pretty bummed about that. Anyways, when we got to the line, we realized that we had forgotten to grab a pack of spare ribs! So I ran from the front of the store to the back, and back again with the very cold ribs. When we got home, I looked up some simple recipes and decided instead of making my own rub, I would use the BBQ300 and the Chicken and Rib rub from Penzeys spices- may as well use what we have!

Looking at cooking length guides, I decided we would have our rib dinner tomorrow (today), because they wouldn't have enough time to marinate and cook nice and slow like they should. So today I got them outta the fridge, and whipped up a braising liquid and tossed 'em in the oven for a little under 3 hours. It was a pretty simple dinner. Meat, some leaves and some garlic toast! The ribs turned out very well, they were nice and moist and tender. The little cup of liquid you see there is a reduction of the liquid I braised them in. I made up my own thing and used some honey, white vinegar, red wine, and water. It was pretty tasty! We have plenty of leftovers, so if you are around feel free to stop by and gnaw on one, haha!

I've Black Paint All Over My Hands

Onto crafts. As some of you may know heart Alton Brown, and I have all of his episodes (or most of them) on my computer. I would watch him all day any day! Anyways, a few months ago, I made a 'stamp' of an image of him. I finally had the guts to actually put this on a shirt. The problem was I couldn't cut out the negative space and just use it as a stencil because there were too many small pieces that would have been lost. They were too small to even make connectors! Anyways, I taped the stencil inside the shirt and taped the shirt to the window! When I was done with the outline I sprawled across my bed and proceeded to fill the whole thing
in. After that I added the quote "We've got rules about that kind of thing here." to the front, and "...but that's another show." to the front.

I still have to iron it and then wash it, but it should hold together well. I'm excited to be able to pay homage to my kitchen hero (and unite my loves of crafting and cooking this way as well, hooray!)

That's all for today!
Janiece

Halter Top From Old T-Shirt

Greetings, citizens!

This is just a quick post to show you the shirt I made today. I followed this tutorial: "How-to Make a Halter Top with Megan Nicolay, Threadbanger"

I'm pretty proud of it, this was an old T-shirt I've had for years that just barely fit, but I didn't want to get rid of. Also, one of the armpits had a hole ripped into it. With the weight I've it actually fit again, but the arms were a tiny bit tight, and there was that hole in the armpit. I figured I would just give the tutorial a go and see how it turned out.

The biggest set back I had was that I have no sewing machine, therefore I had to sew the entire top line. It took about 30 minutes to sew that top part. Otherwise, the shirt probably would have taken me ten to 15 minutes, depending on how careful I was being. Here is me modeling it below, haha. A good experiment, and I hope next time I have a sewing machine!

See you next time, same craft time, same craft channel!
Janiece