Warmest Wishes & Happy New Year

I hope you had/are having a wonderful winter holiday! :) I just stopped by to say happy holidays and share this darling calendar my sister got me from her trip to Japan. The wooden cutouts are so cute and clever. Unfortunately, it doesn't say who designed it so I couldn't look up the artist or company to see more of their products. :( Nonetheless, I'll be finding a perfect spot for it on my (now messy) computer desk. Thanks Shizuka, I'll have to hang up that wall clock too! :x I can't believe it's been a year! Oopsies.

I'll be doing some serious house cleaning and a few MDD projects before the new year arrives so this shall be the last post for 2010. Thank you for all the support throughout the year and here's to wishing you the best for 2011!

A Gift For The Bride To Be

My dearest best friend got engaged a year ago on this day and I thought I'd share this little gift I put together for her bachelorette party. She became a Misses in August so this project was from earlier this year. It's a small memory book of well wishes and favorite moments as a bachelorette from all her girlfriends. I think the toughest part was getting in touch with all the girls and having them send photos and messages via email but otherwise it was very easy to make. I was originally going to cut everything out myself but I bought the accordion kit, yellow paper, and paper flowers at Paper Source instead. Lol, basically everything. I loved putting it together and hope it was good enough for her to forgive me for not being able to make it. ;)

a sweet quote about friendship to start

a photo of us & a message from me

(each friend of hers got a page of their message and/or photo)

and a silly quote to end the book

I used the back for more messages

put it in a cellophane bag and shipped it off

Bruce's Handprint Ornaments

Yes! I successfully made three handprint ornaments with Brucie's little hand! One for us and one each for my parents. As I mentioned earlier, I was a little worried on how they'd turn out because Bruce is one  squirmy kid. He moves a lot even in his sleep but we took Megumi's advice and attempted it that weekend. We bought 3 kits from Amazon just in case they didn't turn out okay but ended up just using one. I can't find it anymore but we got the best reviewed Clay Hanging Keepsake Kit for $8. I read somewhere not to spend more than $10 and I'm glad we didn't because these turned out perfect. :)

Here's a few tips if you're planning to do one yourself:

* Allow some time for the project.

The clay was very easy to work with and the only person that gets a little dirty is the one the kneeds the clay in the beginning. After setting it up and finishing handprint #1, Bruce woke up. He loves making a fist so the next two prints we had to do over a few times. (The great selling point of the product: being able to redo over and over.) Both Brandon and Bruce were getting tired by the 5th redo so we ended up with two not-so-perfect handprints. In the end, I loved them better because it shared a story and a little bit of his personality. :) I would recommend 2-3 days drying time instead of the 24 hours it says on the package.

* Don't forget the ribbon holes.

I almost forgot to do this!

* Press really hard with the cutter.

After you've got the handprints, press down hard on the mold. It's okay if it doesn't come off clean like the photo above because after 24 hours, you can gently break off the imperfections. You can also use cookie cutters and whatnot to create other shapes.

* Don't pick at the little pieces.

While I was cleaning up, little bits of clay fell onto two of the ornaments. I was so sad and quickly tried to pick at one of them. Since it seemed like it made it worse, I gave up. After letting it sit for a day, the pieces that I didn't attempt to take off came right off but the others stayed on. Hahaha, lesson learned.

I totally recommend this project for a baby's first Christmas. Or even just to have their handprints or footprints to remember how small they once were. ;) I'm going to try talking Brandon into making Bruce's footprints with the other kit and maybe Katsu's paw print with the last.

Bruce's handprint ornament on our tree

Birthday Surprise

The Birthday Fairy and Santa worked together and brought my present early this year! I found the big blue velvet covered box under next to my tree on Sunday morning and I've been tempted to open it since. (I love how the theme for gift wrap and holiday bags seems to be blue this year.) Usually, I have an idea of what I'd be getting because Brandon's not very good at surprises. But this year, I have no idea! This is what he got me last year and he's been teasing me that this year's is an empty box because last year's was so grand. Lol. I'll let you know what it is when he gives me the "ok" to open it. ;)

So I thought I'd share some of the things I've been digging lately. All these lovely blogs that I follow feature gift guides and it's hard not to want some of the things they find.

* beautiful clothbound penguin classics from anthropologie
* darling insulated animal mugs by west elm
* japanese masking tapes
* doodle stitching
* drawing lab

That's just to name a few. :) Do you have a wish list for the holidays?


update: it was an embroidery machine!!

Christmas Decor

Can you believe it? Just a few more days until Christmas! :D

This year, I wanted to try and decorate our home with some Christmas cheer for baby Bruce. I know he's too young to understand what's going on but I slowly want to accumulate the decor. That way, by the time he is old enough to be excited about Santa, our home would be decked out. By the way, I'm totally looking forward to baking cookies for Santa and building gingerbread houses with Brucie!

Since we moved into this apartment almost 3 years ago, we had only put up our faux tree each time. It was enough for me and it was, honestly, bittersweet. I LOVE Christmas time like no other because it meant a lot of family time: decorating the house, picking out a tree, taking Christmas pictures, baking with mom, etc. But after my parents separated, all of that stopped. The decorations were stored in the garage and they never brought out. I thought about hauling all of them up here from the OC but we have no space to store it. Hehe, unless I wanted Christmas decor year around. ;) Anyway, my point is, that I want Bruce to experience Christmas the way that I did growing up.

I'm not too crafty and I don't have an eye for interior design so don't laugh too hard when you see these photos. ;) The day after Thanksgiving, we went to Target and bought 3 boxes of ornaments and a few snowflakes. I want our tree to eventually be covered with white and silver ornaments. Crate and Barrel has a few pretty ones like this pinecone but I think Brandon would be upset if I spent $8 on a single ornament. Lol.

These foam snowflakes were from Joann's for really cheap. I quickly put them up before my gingerbread house making party. Half of them are sprinkled with glitter so I hung the glitter-free ones and threw the glitter ones in a vase. Lol, are you laughing yet? Ideally, I'd like to put these on our fireplace (if we ever have one) along with these beautiful knit stockings. One for each phamily member including Katsu.

And these are my favorite. :) I asked my sisters to bring Mickey & Minnie up from my dad's when they all visited for Thanksgiving. We had these since Christmas of 1996! The snow has turned a bit yellow but they're in pretty good shape, don't you think? We have the original packaging too. My mom kept adding to it every few years so we have different ones like Santa and Winnie the Pooh. (I'll be stealing those some day.) When they're plugged in, they light up and move. We used to have them standing and dancing on our staircase. *LOVE*

Here's our tree at night. It's short. But I'm short so it's perfect. ;) Right now, I have an old red and green velvet tree skirt. It doesn't match so I found a couple that I liked: a quilted skirt and a handmade skirt. Which do you like better? I'd be making the latter one myself and possibly changing the red details but isn't it just darling? (Side note: I just recently found AllSorts and Jenny creates the cutest things! You should check out her blog if you haven't already.) So yes, that was a tour of my very mini Christmas tribute.

Ahh, I think this was one of my favorite posts since I started blogging. I mean, I really love Christmas time. Have I said that enough times? :P How is your house decorated?

Birth Announcements

Yesterday, I was pleasantly surprised to see that Brucie's birth announcement was shared on Oh So Beautiful Paper! I love Nole's blog, full of beautiful paper inspirations, so I feel pretty special for making the cut. ;)

I realize now that I should've shared a little more about the project. :/ So here's a few tips if you're wanting to make something similar.

*Scan the footprint.

Since the hospital does the footprint for you, I just scanned the extra one they gave us. :) Super easy. I kept it black and white so when I dropped it in Photoshop, I put a blue overlay and voila, done!

*Overnight Prints for printing.

I know there's good and bad reviews on this company, but it's cheap. Up until these were printed, I had a pretty good experience with them. Not great but not bad. In fact, I received 25 more postcards than I ordered. :) But as of now, I'm still waiting on Christmas cards. :( Hoping they'll come through soon. Do you recommend any other printing companies you trust and love?

*Envelope liners are a bit tricky.

My friend, Megumi, bought these cute baby boy scrapbook paper for my baby shower. There were a lot of leftovers so she gave the rest to me and that's what I used for the liners. I basically traced the envelope corners but made sure they were shorter in length so it'd fit inside. Hahaha, does that even make sense? As far as glue goes, I prefer to use spray adhesive on thin papered projects because the outcome is much cleaner. However, when I can't go outside to spray the toxic thing (like this project), I use the non-liquid glue sticks. Most of the time they don't warp too bad.

All in all, it was a pretty easy project to do during my postpartum recovery. Oh, and I know some people like to have them designed prior to their baby's birth, but I just couldn't! Lol, I'd sit in front of the computer to work on it but all I could think about was "What is my baby going to look like?" and "What if it's not a boy?" So I'm glad I waited and got to see his personality before designing the announcements. :)

Fan Food Contest 2010 Winners

Before I announce the winner of this year's Fan Food Contest, I just want to really thank everyone who participated! You are all awesome for taking the time to create such yummy-looking entries and for taking the time to vote for your favorites! It's such a great experience to be able to connect with my supporters. Every time I look at the creations (including last year's), I can't help myself from smiling so big. :D Alright, enough mushy stuff.

It was seriously difficult to choose the official winner this year. I mean, they are all so creative and have different highlighting qualities that I wanted every single one of them to win! And I'm not saying that just to be nice. I really had a tough time, hence the delayed post today. Brandon and I went back and forth a lot and here we are now announcing our final decision. The winners for this year:

My Dear Donuts by Tommy

Seaweed Skater by Kaman

Congratulations to our contestants! If you miss out on the contest, you can view all the entries here and past contests here. That concludes our contests for this year! I hope to see more next year! ;)

Gingerbread House Making Party

*I really can't stay, Baby don't hold out, Ahh but it's cooold outside~*

Hehe, I love that song (Baby, It's Cold Outside)!

This weekend was full of fun and hard work! On Saturday, my girlfriends came to my Gingerbread House Making Party. I've been wanting to build one for the longest time so I sent out my invites the day after Thanksgiving. I know it was early, but I had to make sure that it was going to happen this year. :P I bought a couple gingerbread house kits, piping utensils, gingerbread graham crackers, and lots of different candy. I know this sounds super nerdy, but I also YouTubed a lot of video tutorials on how to build one from scratch so in my mind, I knew what I was doing.

I wanted to make sure we got in the holiday spirit so I had the table somewhat organized and decorated. I also found a set of cute hot cocoa boxes with different flavors (like Tiramisu and Raspberry Cheesecake) at Target so I placed one in each cup. I'm drinking one as I type this now and it's so yummy! :) Anyway, before the big day, I was imagining how everything was going to go: the girls would come, we'd start building our house, drink hot cocoa, watch Elf (my favorite Christmas movie), and have awesomely decorated gingerbread houses with a few nursing breaks in between. But what I imagined and what turned out was a bit different. Since we weren't kids anymore, I figured that it'd be easy building the houses and decorating it with ease. Umm, wrong! Icing is sticky and messy. My fingers were too big to place all the little candy dots without getting icing on them. On top of that, it turned out to be SO hot that day that I had to put on the a/c to keep the icing from melting! Yes, in the middle of December. That's what happens when you live in California. ;) So the weather wasn't too helpful and unfortunately, hot chocolate wasn't the drink of the day. But even with these minor, sticky, unplanned events, we all had a blast! I learned that sometimes it's okay to just let go and get dirty.

Here's a few pointers if you're planning to host one yourself. (This is actually for me to remember what to do for next year.)

*Buy your supplies as soon as you see it in the store.

I made the mistake of seeing these cute gingerbread house kits at Target a couple times and saying to myself, "Oh, I'll just get it later." Well, just a week or two later, I was able to get my hand on the last mini town kit and there were only a few of the other options. I did notice though, that Costco and Joann's had a ton, but personally, I preferred the Target designs more. 

*Have powdered sugar, vanilla extract and eggs just in case you need more icing.

I ended up making one extra batch with this recipe that my friend recommended. OH! And food coloring if you want different colored icing.

*Buy a disposable table cloth, maybe those plastic ones from the party store. Possibly chair covers too.

Icing got everywhere. :P I can't imagine how all the teachers and parent helpers felt when we were kids making a mess. I suppose I'll see what it's like in a few years when Bruce is old enough to decorate one on his own.

*Do it in a non-carpeted area.

Although we didn't have a choice in our apartment, it's something to think about if you have the option of moving your party into a non-carpeted area. We were all being careful yet managed to spill some coconut shavings and sugar crystals. Lol, but Katsu was happy.

*Use as much candy as you can.

I realized that my houses were boring compared to all my girls' houses because I was picky with the color scheme. Or maybe I'm just gingerbread house challenged? ;)

*If you plan on making yours from scratch, it's not a one day event.

My original plan was having everyone design and build their own houses from gingerbread, but while doing the nerdy research, I realized it's a 3 to 4 day process! So that's definitely something to think about.

I had so much fun that I'm already excited to do it again next year! Maybe I'll challenge myself by designing my own building... or not. Baby Bruce will be able to join in a little by then too! Also, to all my girlfriends who weren't able to make it or live too far to come, hopefully these photos will convince you that it's worth visiting next time. ;)

My Dear Darling Fan Food Contest 2010

I'm very excited to finally share this year's entries, which all made my mouth water! I need to figure out a way for people to send them to me so I can taste them too! Hahaha, imagine that. Perhaps it's best that I only taste after reading the ingredients. ;) Here are the entries for the 2nd Annual My Dear Darling Fan Food Contest:

Orange Tiger by Jackie

Ingredients: mandarin orange, nori seaweed, water

My Dear Darling Penguin in Bear Suit by Shawn

Ingredients: flour, sugar, salt, yeast, mayonnaise, water, egg

Cran-Apple My Dear Darling Pie Pops by Bryce

Ingredients: pie crust, apple-cranberry filling

Seaweed Skater by Kaman

Ingredients: rice, nori seaweed, pickled daikon, sri racha hot sauce, boiled eggs,

pickled ginger, pickles, tofu, 2 whole black peppercorns

My Dear Donuts by Tommy

Ingredients: donuts, fondant, sprinkles, love

Snow Penguin by Alexis

Ingredients: crackers, cheerios, pasta, ricotta cheese

The Fan Favorite winner will receive a My Dear Darling Let's Get Personalized tshirt and the official winner will be announced next Wednesday! (Contest Info)

Which is your favorite My Dear Darling Fan Food creation?

Voting ends Tuesday, December 14th at midnight PST.


Edit: You can view more photos shared by contestants here! ;)

Fan Food Contest Update

Good afternoon!

I know you're waiting to see all the wonderful Fan Food Contest entries as I am excited to share them with you, but I am waiting to get a couple ingredients lists. So I'll be posting all the entries along with the Fan Favorite poll on Wednesday!

Thank you to everyone who participated! I want to say my food creation inspiration posts helped everyone think outside the box, but it's more likely that all of you are just super creative. ;) You're all awesome!

If you weren't able to make an entry in time, you can still be a part of it by voting for your favorite Fan Food entry starting Wednesday! Don't forget to tell your family and friends to stop by and vote for their favorite too! ;)

Totoro Cake & Songs

source: Carla Ikeda

Hunting for all these food inspiration photos has gotten me craving sweets! But then again, when do I NOT crave sweets? :P

Today, I wanted to share this cute Totoro cake for inspiration. My sisters and I grew up watching Tonarino Totoro (My Neighbor Totoro) over and over. We would sing, dance and pretend to be characters from the movie. What can I say, we loved it! So when my sister came back from Japan and got me a few CDs of classic Japanese children's songs, I was super excited when I heard the Totoro theme song (instrumental version) on one of them. The one we have actually has the lyrics but it's beautiful either way. I've been playing it on a daily basis for Bruce to listen to and he falls asleep or stops crying when this song comes up. :) It puts me in a good mood too!

Do you have a favorite childhood song that puts a smile on your face? I actually have a lot more, but I think Totoro is on the top of my favorites. ;)


P.S. Two days left to submit an entry to win $50! :)

It's December Already

source: gmwils

Can you believe it's already December? :) My favorite month of the year because there's so much going on: my sister's birthday, my birthday, Christmas and New Year's Eve. And this year, I've planned ahead and I'll be hosting a gingerbread house making party with my girlfriends (and Brucie). :D I'm super excited! This weekend, we'll have more visitors to meet the baby, take our family photos, and get those handprint ornaments made. Lots to do and pumped to get them done!

Have you planned anything fun for this month?