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I love presents. Most of all I love presents that come via snail mail. Opening packages, ripping off paper, reading the card - I love all that good stuff. My sister Karla sends me little packages now and then filled with some sort of surprise - sometimes chocolate, sometimes little makeup thingies - all cute little things. Back before Brian and I got married, when I lived in California and he lived in Houston, he would send me little parcels. They would arrive at my work, totally unexpected, and I would light up inside, and my coworkers would peer over to see what it was each time.
As some of you know, I am starting my own Etsy store soon selling little bits and pieces of me and my heart :)
Here are a few pieces that I have made. This first one was inspired by my husbo. I love, love, love making breakfast for him - it's one of my favorite things to do. I made a set of four flat cards that say "Toasted with Love", so that whenever you make breakfast for your loved ones, you can slip a little card along with their toast!
Another one is this print:
But phooey, as you can see, the corner is a little scuffed up. Bummer, hey?
Well, not for you.
I have noticed a lot of giveaways online lately. And as I posted here, I have been winning some of them (woo!). Kotori has a good one going on right now, and so does Tina, and also Art Gallery Fabrics. And then there's the Blah Blah Blahg, who has been having a giveaway every flippin' day this month! Goodies galore! So to jump on this present-giving bandwagon, I am going to give away these two little bits of me.
To get this lovely little stash from me, tell me what your favorite presents have been - your favorite received and your favorite given. Then next week, I will find one of those Random Picker things online and it will pick a winner for me. And to make it seem more like a present than a prize, I will try my best to wrap it up all lovely for you!
If you don't have a blog, please leave your email in your comment so that I can contact you for your mailing address if you win.
These last few days, I have been a busy little bee in the kitchen. It's been a Bread Baking Bonanza!
Monday was my first time ever baking bread by myself and I loved the results so much that I just tried another bread recipe this morning.
Below is the loaf that I made last night to go with dinner. I was so proud of myself.
Before I go on, I just wanted to tell you how I got into this Bread-fest. Pamela Susan, who has a great blog that I visit all the time, posted an amazing recipe for bread last week. I went to the store and bought all the ingredients to make it over the weekend, but I forgot to buy gluten, so I was really bummed because I was all hyped up to make the bread, but didn't have the gluten! So yesterday, while I was poking around at various random blogs, I found a recipe on Lollychops for Ham and Swiss Bread. It was AMAZING.
B and I ate it with dinner last night, and he loved it. It's such a great recipe! I love how in this recipe, the sandwich filling is baked directly into the center of the bread - so there's no need to fuss about cutting it open when it's finished and putting all your sandwich fillings between slices - it's already baked on in there!
My roommate before I married Brian - Renn - is a great baker. She would bake all kinds of yummy delights, and she taught me how to bake pumpkin bread, but it was under her supervision because I didn't trust myself to bake without her checking on it. Yesterday I was very pleased with my first unsupervised bread baking project.
This morning, on a high from last night's bread baking victory, I decided to look around for other great bread recipes. I came across The Joy of Baking, and there was a great little recipe for Strawberry Bread. I happened to have strawberries in the fridge, so I whipped it up this morning, and it tastes great! I definitely recommend making either or BOTH of these recipes. And also try out Pamela's recipe, which I am sure is scrumptious - you know I will be making it once I get some gluten!
I am addicted to chocolate, and I have no idea how it started. It's strange because when I was younger, I didn't really have a huge thing for it - I could take it or leave it, but as time went on, something changed in me. I grew a chocolate heart.
This weekend was a complete chocolate-fest. We went out with some friends for dinner, and then afterwards they took us to this place that I had never been to before. The Chocolate Bar. It was my dream come true. It's set up like a bar, with pub tables, etc. - but there is no alcohol there - it's all cake, chocolates, hot-chocolates, iced chocolates, etc. I was in heaven. I had a Chocolate Flan Cake and it was so richly wonderful, but it couldn't compare to the richness of the hot chocolate that I had with it. It was the thickest hot chocolate I have ever had. It was like drinking a cup of melted chocolate with a little bit of cream added to it. Oh. My. Gosh. Be still my chocolate-beating heart!
The thing about chocolate is that there's a style for everyone. It's not just a matter of dark, light and white chocolate - there's so many different forms of chocolate - like bars, truffles, cake, sprinkles... it really baffles me how some people can't find a SINGLE type of chocolate that they like.
I recently tried Bacon Chocolate (I know, it sounds weird - but it's amazing!). It has little bits of applewood smoked bacon mixed into the dark chocolate, and I find that the saltiness of the bacon, the sweetness of the applewood, and the bitterness of the dark chocolate makes a great combination. It's made by Vosges, and this place has really interesting, decadent, exotic chocolates. I order them when I want to splurge. I also highly recommend their Naga Bar.
What's your favorite chocolate?
Who doesn't love Gelato? Is there anyone out there that doesn't?
Last night after dinner I had a craving for it. I had been thinking about it all night, and after inspecting the refrigerator, I found that we had all the ingredients that we needed for me to make Blueberry Gelato (yes, I have been using a lot of blueberries lately - cobbler, pancakes - i just seem to always have blueberries!). So I decided to make a quick batch while Brian did all his online banking, bill-paying stuff. Here's the recipe for those of you with Ice Cream Makers. For those of you without Ice Cream Makers, at the part below where i say to put it in the icecream maker, you would just pour the mixture into a container (that has a lid) and put it in your freezer. Keep checking on it every half hour, take it out and stir it, and then put it back in the freezer. You will need to keep doing this every half hour until it's frozen, and at the consistency you want it to be. Then next time, you should invest in an icecream maker - it only takes 25 minutes until it's ready with this machine!
Ingredients
- 2 cups heavy cream (we prefer yogurt though, so I used vanilla yogurt)
- 1/2 cup milk
- 1/4 cup granulated sugar (I used a little less than this, because Brian doesn't like too much sugar)
- approx. 2/3 cup FRESH blueberries (there's a huuuuge difference between using fresh and frozen berries in gelato. If you use frozen, it won't have the bits of soft, sour blueberry skin in the mix, and i think that's part of what makes this so yummy!)
- a drop of lemon juice
- 1/4 cup water
Directions
- Mix berries, sugar and water in a blender/food processor until smooth (but not too smooth if you like big chunks of blueberry like I do), and then add lemon juice
- in seperate bowl, mix cream/yogurt, milk with mixer until slightly thickened (buttermilk-like consistency)
- add berry mixture to cream/yogurt mixture and blend together with mixer
- churn in icecream maker as per your brand of icecream maker's instructions
The other thing I wanted to talk about was that last night we finished our second toothpaste tube! Yay! For those of you who don't know the significance of toothpaste to me, you can read about it here. This second toothpaste tube time has been great. Brian and I have gotten so close, and I can't wait to see what #3 brings!
February 15 is a very special day to me. It's the day that God brought into the world the thing that brings me the most happiness in this world - my husband, Brian. We celebrated his 28th birthday this weekend, and to me, his birthday is like my own personal Thanksgiving celebration.
I baked him a cute little cake with vanilla yogurt icing and then royal icing dots as decoration (if you don't know how to make royal icing, it's just confectioners sugar, warm water, vanilla extract, meringue powder and then optional lemon juice). I got the dot decoration idea from Inchmark, and although it looks like a cake for a little boy, my 28-year-old Brian loved it!
My younger sister Karla came to visit from California, and for Brian's birthday, she took us out to lunch to this cute little cafe that I had found online. It was great catching up with her and having two of my favorite people with me.
Brian has just gotten into the blogging world and blogged a little about his birthday. So please go over to his site and give him some comment love!
And totally off topic: remember when I blogged here about winning stuff lately? Well a few days after I posted that, I won another prize! This time from the Blah Blah Blahg. It was a choice of a photo print by Jacqleen Bleu, and I chose the print "Upon Entering Wonderland". So lovely!
For those of you who don't know, this Saturday was my first Valentine's Day as a wife. Brian is my best friend, and we have a blast together, and I really wanted to have a great first Valentine's as a married couple. However, I tend to let my spending get away with me sometimes, so Brian set some ground rules down for this Valentine's Day... NO BUYING PRESENTS.
So Saturday morning, I got up and made a lovey-dovey breakfast full of hearts and girliness (this is pretty much the only occasion where girly decorations and pretty things are acceptable for a man, so I took full advantage - and he loved it!).
After the food overload, I gave him a little card that I had made him (and I think he liked it).
The rest of the day was his turn. We got into the car, and there was a letter on the passenger seat. It reminded me of the letters that he wrote to me while we were still dating. It was on the same style paper. Of course, it made me cry :)
Next, he took us to this little bagel place that had the same bagels that we had in New York. For our first vacation together before we got married, Brian called me up and told me that he was taking me to New York - it was amazing. We discovered our favorite bagels there, and this place he took me to for Valentine's Day had the same ones. It was very sweet.
Then for dinner that night, it was really low-key, but also lovely and funny. He brought home McDonalds (yes, you read that right). And we had it on fancy plates on a picnic blanket in the living room, with candles lit. It was great. And then dessert was Creme Brulee.
You must all think that I am very ungrateful. I forgot to thank those of you who voted for my fabric design that I blogged about here the other week (and thanks to Eric for blogging about it).Thanks to your votes, I won!!! I feel like I have been on a winning streak lately. Just the other day I won a hat from Haute Andi. Andrea makes lovely hats, and was looking for a name for her latest hat design, and to make things fun - she had a contest for people to contribute name ideas for it. One of my contributions was "Zephyr". Zephyr means "gentle breeze", and also "lightweight fabric", so I thought it would be perfect for the name (it also happens to be the name of my very favorite coffee shop in Pasadena, CA). Here's a pic of that hat that I won. Isn't it lovely? It makes me think of riding pretty bicycles through the park in spring.
The free things continue - at the end of last month I got a free 1-year subscription to Martha Stewart's Everyday Food because I filled out a vendor survey about my wedding.
I remember when I was about ten years old there was this cartoon show that I used to watch after school. They would have weekly contests where you would send a letter and a drawing in, and if they liked yours the most you would win a prize. One day when I got home from school, my aunt called and yelled into the phone that they had just picked my entry on the show and I'd won a laptop computer. That's a pretty big prize - but it was a SUPER big prize back then - it was flippin' 1990, laptops weren't an everyday home item! Another memorable prize was when the movie "Speed" came out, starring Keanu Reeves. I was a big fan of his, and loved the movie. I forget what this contest was, but I ended up winning a Speed video, poster, and a bottle of Keanu's favorite cologne. I remember my girlfriends and I all huddling in a circle to get a whif of his cologne. It was awful. We were all so very disappointed, hehehehe.
Don't ya just love winning things? Have you won a lot of things?
Here's a peek at my latest fabric design. It isn't in a contest or anything, but I just wanted to share it with you:
1.
Brian's friends from highschool were visiting from California and stayed with us this weekend. They're a lovely couple, and they have a gorgeous 6-month-old son, Adam. A big chunk of my time was spent taking photos of his cute little thigh rolls, and the drool on his lip. I definitely had Baby Fever this weekend.
2.
After they left, I was looking at my friend Maggi's blog, and she found this AMAZING recipe for Blackberry Cobbler. I didn't have any blackberries on hand, so instead, Brian and I used blueberries. This recipe would have to have the fastest baking prep time ever! It took us literally 5 minutes to get it all together. And since it was so quick to set up, we still had time to make some vanilla icecream to go with it. Yummmm! I highly recommend checking out Maggi's blog for her link to the recipe, and also for the fun read about her obvious passion for this recipe, hehehehe.
Here's some shots of our yumminess:
I woke up this morning to see my husbo Brian all dressed for work. But something was different.
He normally wears khakis and a polo shirt, but today he was wearing something a little unusual - certainly not the standard attire for his workplace:
I couldn't resist snapping a photo.
Every year, NASA has a Safety Day, when they set up booths about all kinds of things relevant to safety (eg. a Self Defense Booth, a Breast Cancer Awareness Booth, etc.), and the employees get given a special "Safety Awareness" t-shirt to wear. This year the t-shirt was a funny Superman-esque theme. I liked waking up to my own personal Clark Kent :)
I am hoping that you all had a great weekend. This weekend I was reminded how much misplaced shopping carts bother me. We were at Target and I saw some people who had just loaded up their trunks, just pushing their carts off to the side. The little cart area was sooo close, but they were too lazy to take theirs over. And then when we reached our car, the car parked opposite us had parked sooo close. I swear an ant couldn't fit in between us! My fellow shoppers, you all drive me nuts, lol!!
After our Target time, we came home and made Bastilla together. Have you ever tried it? It is this amazing Moroccan dish, and it's so simple to make. I will post the recipe below this photo of our yummy meal:
(please note that this recipe is for two people, so just add more based on this ratio if you are cooking for more people).
BASTILLA:
Ingredients
- 2 chicken breast fillets
- 4 eggs
- 1 chopped onion
- 3/4 cup almonds (if you don't have almonds, it's ok to leave them out, it still tastes great without them!)
- 4 sheets phyllo pastry (2 sheets per person)
- 1/2 teaspoon ginger
- 1/2 teaspoon tumeric (we didn't have any the other day, so we didn't use it)
- 1/2 teaspoon pepper
- 2 tablespoons and 1 teaspoon cinnamon
- 1/4 cup sugar
- 1 cup chopped fresh cilantro- non-stick oven spray or butterDirections- Preheat oven to 400 degrees F.- Boil the chicken breasts in a pot with enough water to keep the chicken submerged. Boil with the ginger, tumeric, pepper and 1 teaspoon of cinnamon in the pot (approx 30 minutes or until chicken is cooked). Add chopped onion halfway though the process.
- Once boiled, drain the water, but keep 1/3 cup of it.
- In another bowl, mix the 4 eggs, and then add the 1/3 cup of spiced water with the eggs and stir.
- Scramble this egg/water mix.
- Cut the cooked chicken into bite size pieces and then combine with the scrambled eggs and chopped cilantro
- Process almonds, sugar and rest of cinnamon in food processor until almonds are crushed
- Take phyllo sheets and fold them all in half. Then over a pyrex baking tray (sprayed with non-stick spray or brushed with butter), lay a folded in half sheet a little over halfway across the tray, and then lay another folded-in-half piece over the other side so that it slightly overlaps the first piece (see my quick little diagram below). Do the same with both sets of two folded-in-in half sets of sheets.
- Take a few tablespoons of the cinnamon/sugar/almond mix and put it on the center of each phyllo setup. Place it in the middle, it's ok if it goes over where the phyllo sheets meet, this will all eventually be folded over and wrapped.
- Then add a layer of the chicken/egg/cilantro mix
- Then add another layer of the almond mix and repeat until you've used up all the mixes on both phyllo set ups
- Once finished, fold over the phyllo packets to cover everything up and spray with a little cooking spray or butter to keep the top stuck down
- Then spray some cooking spray on top of each packet, or butter, and then sprinkle some sugar and cinnamon over the top
- Put in the oven for 15-20 minutes
Phew! That took longer to type than I thought it would. Enjoy!
