a crafty crafting table, rugs for the price of .27 rugs, oatmeal chocolate chip cookies, and a vintage oven

this weekend mom and dad visited and seeing the lack of table space in the dining room, dad constructed a crafty craft table for me out of a kitchen cabinet door (leftover from the set of cabinets that had to be removed from the breakfast counter construction) and 4 wooden railing spindles!! the only disclaimer he gave me was that i was not to apply any pressure to the table. hahahahhaha. eventually i will utilize the 2 cans of black spray paint i have sitting around to doll up this crafty craft table!

the bottom of the table is actually the front of the kitchen cabinet door. it's painted white because andrew and i were in the middle of priming the door for my parents to then paint white when we realized we were painting one of the extra doors! oh well, now it's primed for spray painting!

in the rules that came with the condo i live in, i have to cover 80% of the floors. at 1275 sq ft total, that's a lot of rugs; to be exact, 1020 sq ft of rugs (more than the entire floor space of the first apartment i rented when i moved to dc)! big rugs range in price from $180 to $1000. i'd have to buy about 20 rugs, which would mean i'd be spending upwards of $3600! my solution: sew together 2 ikea rugs! this 1st set involved the ubiquitous dark brown and beige ikea rug that costs $17.99. mom and dad sewed them together along their lengths with dark brown embroidery thread. i actually have 2 more of these rugs, not sewn together, flanking the bed in the master bedroom! (at $17.99 each, how could you turn these rugs down?!) this second round of sewed rugs dad and i completed this weekend and it sits right in front of the breakfast counter. the rug i had before was really old and stained, so off i went to ikea and acquired 2 runners for $25.99 (more expensive, i know, but i really can't have 6 of the same rugs around!). here's the back of the rugs sewed together:and here is the front side! luckily dad and i are both perfectionists (so is mom!), because look at how the stripes matched up perfectly!!! today is liane's bday, so in honor of this momentous event, i baked her some oatmeal chocolate chip cookies! here they are cooking in the oven: and here they are all pretty and wrapped up. liane stresses the presentation of things, so this is pretty fancy for me, considering i usually gift treats in ziplock bags! you might have noticed from the baking cookies pic that my oven looks aged. and aged it surely is! when we bought the condo, we were told that the oven was replaced in the 1980s. yet when the inspector went through and checked everything, he reported that the oven never was replaced and in fact was from 1964, the year the building was built!!!

deluxe coconut chocolate chip coffee cake, a reading bunny, and awesome swag

this post is going to be very varied. let's start with the dessert i made for tonight's dinner with clara's nanny family! deluxe coconut chocolate chip coffee cake (i kid you not, that's what joy of cooking calls it)!! i had started mixing all the dry ingredients together, when lo and behold, i ran out of sugar. it was 9:38 pm. giant closes at 10 pm sharp. i call clara in a panic, thinking i could bribe her with fancy wine from my boss in exchange for some sugar. no response. i panic some more. i grab my wallet and sprint through the underground parking lot system that connects my building to giant, grab some sugar, sprint to the registers, and exit giant at 9:45 sharp. not bad, not bad, considering i did used to run track. hehe. this is the cake before going into the oven:here's the end result. recipe called for 50-65 min, but at 40 min, it already smelled a little burnt, so i took it out. hope it tastes ok!!!

so i think i caught your attention when i said that i have a reading bunny. well, i do. he reads books by ingesting their pages, including the covers. how he got to the bottom cover, i'm not sure because the book was lying on the bedside table. i was so embarassed to carry the book around that i bought a new copy at my school's rummage sale yesterday for 25c! but the best find from the rummage sale is an $1800 christian dior clutch for just $45!!!!

little birdies and space jam shorts winner!

this thursday i am going to have dinner with clara and the family for which she is a nanny. there are twin 4 year olds: harrison and audrey. you can't just show up at a little kids' house without a gift, so i finally was able to put this amazing little birdie pattern that i found over at spool, a fabric store in philly that has a blog, to use!! spool's pattern lacks wings, so i made my own template and added wings to both birdies. i also shrank the pattern to 75% its original size. harrison's birdie has the same fabric as andrew's ducky shirt and audrey's birdie has hot pink taffeta on the top (lined with white jersey knit because the taffeta was see-through) and the light pink with white polka dot fabric, that i used for the flowers on mommy's mother's day shirt, for the bottom. the birdies were then plumped up with polyfill. i hope they like them!!!

and great news! i have found a very worthy winner of the space jam shorts: nathan from my fc ceviche soccer team!!! congrats!

space jam pj shorts up for grabs!

back at the knittin' kitten, the thrift craft store in portland, andrew picked out this absurd flannel with a red plaid and "basketball playin' bugs bunny" pattern on it (think space jam, the michael jordan and looney toons bball movie of 1996!). since his bday was oct 16, i decided to start making a pair of pj shorts with the fabric early (we know how i tend to finish my projects late). the perfect pattern was found in weekend sewing, a sewing pattern book by heather ross that has quite the diverse collection of sewing patterns! (i actually bought the book to send to my friend erin on her bday in late october, but seeing as i couldn't resist the pretty pictures, i bought myself a copy as well!) i used a shoelace from an old pair of cleats as the drawstring and some 3/4" elastic for the waistband. the backside: andrew has since decided he wants to find himself on his own, so one pair of size adult medium (30-35" waist) space jam pj shorts up for grabs! my bro jimmy has called 1st dibs, but he's got a 28" waist, so if someone else who wants it has a slightly bigger waist, it's all yours!

on another note, my friend ave saw the last post with the cheesecake brownies and proposed that i bring some to her friend's dinner party this evening. so i made another batch and this one came out even better (aesthetically, at least)!

happy birthday, long!

today is lan's younger son's 10th bday. he's super cute, very loud, and absolutely endearing! long also loves his nerf dart gun, so it was only appropriate that he got his own set of jerseys! here they are in production:and here is the final product! hehe, bunks insisted on being in the picture and was licking the painted letters.

now the boys needed something at which to aim their dart guns (since mom banned aiming at each other). they've been wanting a real dart board, but seeing as those little needles are kinda dangerous, how about a nerf dart board?!? i made them one from a dry erase wipe board with black outdoor acrylic paint and a black sharpie. sadly, i ran out of wrapping paper (ok, i admit, i've never owned any wrapping paper that wasn't holiday-themed and i use the "running out" story as an excuse every time!!!). actually, i ran out of enough of one roll of paper and thus could only wrap the dartboard in random scraps of christmas paper. hehe. the front:

sorry ryan and long! hehehe. and around back:

long and i both share a love of chocolate, so i made him my favorite dessert ever: cheesecake brownies!!!

dear friends: please try not to have children with birthdays so close together! mmmkay thanks!

bunks is famous!

eeeee! bunks is famous! or rather a look-alike of his (with 1 floppy ear and 1 not) is famous! check out the pic at cheezburger.com. thanks pat for sending me the link!

happy birthday ryan!

it was a good thing that i had a long weekend this week because it was a crazy craftapalooza!! why? because 2 little boys celebrate birthdays this week! but before we start, here's a cute pic of bunks sunning himself and enjoying the temporary lack of a dining room table.

now ryan is my fav 13 year old. he's the hilarious older son of lan and it was his bday yesterday! when i asked ryan what he likes to do in his free time, the only answer i could get out of him was that he liked to play with his nerf dart gun. go figure. however, ryan is not all that aggressive, so i figured i'd help amp that up with some nerf dart gun jerseys to duke it out with his friends.

i printed these with the same technique as the zebra shirt except this time i did both sides of the shirt and used a slightly different kind of paint: fabric paint with a velveteen finish. i'll admit, it was only velveteen because i didn't notice the finish part of the label and was only aiming for black. i would not recommend velveteen finish because afterwards you have to fluff the paint with an iron. absolute nonsense in my opinion. i think ryan could care less if his shirt was velveteen or not. i expect dirt and grass stains on these jerseys!!! the 1st shirt has his last name with a 1 on the back. ryan happens to be extra short and skinny (i wasn't kidding when i said i only like tiny people, hehe). his mom is always trying to fatten him up (yeah asian moms!!!) and hinted to me that his favorite dessert is pound cake. plain pound cake. because he likes everything plain. 2 sticks of butter and 4 eggs later, we get this beauty of a dessert: come back in 2 days to see the "team long" jerseys (long is ryan's little brother and his bday is on the 15th!)!!!

heartbreak and red velvet cake

what do i do when my heart is broken? i bake a cake.

i'd been searching the city high and low to find buttermilk because the giant near me stopped selling it a month ago. why would you ever stop selling buttermilk??? how are your customers supposed to make red velvet cake? whole foods stocked it, but of course it cost twice as much as it would at a normal grocery store. but alas, none of this matters when you're sad.

so cake was baked this saturday. it's a red velvet cake without the red, because honestly what's the point of adding red food coloring? when the cake came out, it was pretty moist. unfortunately i never felt up to making the cream cheese frosting (with raspberry flavoring to go with the chocolate flavor of the cake) until monday, so the cake ended up being a little dry. as you can see, i'm not that great at frosting cakes. the frosting was tasty, but looked like mush. i sprinkled a little bit of coconut on top.

tasty, but i suppose its flawed state reflects my current mood

twinkle by wenlan

is one of the cutest clothing lines out there. the designer is wenlan chia and she is really into intricate details... my fav! so naturally, when i saw that she came out with a book called twinkle sews, with 25 sewing patterns included, my heart stopped. actually, no. i had heart palpitations. major. heart. palp. i. ta. tions. add that to my christmas wishlist! it's even on sale at amazon.com! hint. hint. hint hint.

she also has numerous knitting books. but we all know how i feel about knitting. sigh

k2 vs k2tog

um, didn't realize there was a difference between them. sigh. off to restart my cardi knitting project again for the 5th time!

or are we at 6 x's already?

why is your german chocolate cake so pale?

is the question i keep getting asked since the posting an hour ago. i didn't use buttermilk because giant stopped selling buttermilk (why would they ever do that?!?!??!?!), but thankfully "joy of cooking" recommended sour cream as an appropriate alternative. and appropriate it sure was, as the cake came out super moist!

so to answer the question, it was the sour cream that made it so pale

german chocolate cake!

last weekend, while working on a new embellished tshirt, i got frustrated and took a nap instead. what did i dream of? german chocolate cake! so this past weekend, i put my dream to work after the soccer game (that we won!!).

to this day, i still have no egg beater, so when the recipe calls for beating the egg whites on high, i just beat a little faster. when it asks for beating on low speed, i still beat a little faster because let's face it: my high speed beating is not as fast as an egg beater's high speed beating. sigh. instead of doing 3 tiers, i baked the cake in a new bundt pan that i wanted to test.

then off i went with 3/4 of the bundt cake to the usual sunday potluck dinner. only problem: my camera died. no worries, i thought. i'll just take a pic of the 6 leftover cupcakes with the coconut and nut icing on top. monday came along and of course i had to bring 3 cupcakes to lan, liane, and my boss. tuesday came along and of course i had to bring 2 cupcakes to my co-coaches at field hockey. tuesday night rolled along and andrew and i had finished that 3/4 piece of the bundt cake. so late last night, before diving into the last and final cupcake, i snapped a picture. i'll admit, i did a pretty terrible job frosting it. i was more concerned with eating it than its appearance. see, i'm not shallow! this icing is 100% deliciousness

tissue posy tee and debut of the duckie shirt

the recent jcrew catalog had amazing embellished tees. this particular one looked so simple and so amazing and jcrew has the nerve to charge $39.50!!! we weren't afraid though, because it looked incredibly easy to make. so, clara and i had our challenge ahead of us. off we went to h&m, where clara scored a very similar white v-neck tee for $5.95! i was less lucky. nothing fit. but no worries because i have a closet full of clothes where i found a simple black tee (that was super cropped because of poor laundering, but we could work around that...). we bunched really broad grosgrain ribbon as the petals of the flowers and i used a big jewel button as the center while clara went more artsy and exactly replicated the jcrew one by sewing down squares of the narrower satin ribbon. then we made stems with the satin ribbon, making sure to bunch the ribbon every few steps so that it would have more texture. i made one of my stems go diagonally across the shirt because i preferred the pattern to take over more of the shirt than just one side. and then we twisted small strips of the satin ribbon to make the leaf and voila! so so so easy! how did i deal with the fact that my shirt was super short due to frequent use of the dryer? i paired the shirt with a high waist pencil skirt and my fantastic suede fuschia belt from portland! i actually wore this as an outfit today. hehe.here's the one clara made. hers looks just like the jcrew one! sorry for the blurriness. i had to use my blackberry's camera because i didn't have my regular one on hand.
and all day yesterday andrew sported the duckie shirt for the 2nd time! (1st time was for my bday dinner.) i got him the hat ages ago from one of my fav stores in dc: propper topper!

zebra t-shirt!!

i absolutely love the jcrew crewcuts girl's zebra graphic tee. however, the zebra could be a little smaller and i didn't dig the $22.50 price tag. so naturally, i made one myself. i found some freezer paper stenciling tutorials online, traced a zebra onto the paper side of some freezer paper, cut it out on my new self-healing (!!!!) cutting mat, and ironed the negative onto an old tshirt. with some fantastic metallic purple paint, i painted in the negative of the stencil, waited all of 2 hrs (i was supposed to wait 24, but i got impatient), and then peeled off the freezer paper. amazing, no? the right eye is a little freaky as it has no pupil. originally i had a small dot, but i think it was too small and just in the wrong spot. since i can't change this, i just filled it in instead. i still have to let the paint sit for the rest of the 24 hrs and heat set the paint with a pressing cloth and iron, but in the meanwhile i figured i'd show off the goods!

my pimp coaching jersey

so i'm coaching field hockey this season. it's so much fun, but the coaching jersey i got was a men's small! it almost went to my knees and the sleeves went half way to my wrists. there is only one word to describe my emotional state: drowning.

i took matters into my own hands and shortened the shoulders, the sleeves, and the torso. the shirt i got didn't say field hockey on it (we ran out), so i beaded that on in white 10° czech glass seed beads. under the red is the name of the school, which already came embroidered on the shirt. i sneakily scratched it out so you won't know where i work! (actually you all pretty much know where that is.)the back was rather plain. so, i traced crossed field hockey sticks on white jersey cloth (ok i borrowed one of andrew's white undershirts) and stitched gold 10° czech glass seed beads down the middle. and ditto for the ball. even if the girls do sprint slower than anyone i've ever seen, we must win since their coach has the most piiiiiiiimp jersey! ok off to bed!

happy birthday to mommy and me!

last monday was my bday and last friday was mommy's bday. andrew took me out to eat the sunday before and monday evening. yes, i'm so special that we have to celebrate me twice! we celebrated mommy's bday on saturday in pittsburgh with the jimster. i tried my bestest to find her the perfect bday gift but failed miserably (i hate gift-giving unless i can find the perfect gift, sigh). however, mommy is a pie-lover and since peaches are in season, i decided to make her a fresh peach pie (non-custard type, since she dislikes custardy things). it was rather tasty, despite the slightly singed crust.

here's jimster and mom at her bday lunch!! it's a rather special sighting of the jimster, since he's rather elusive...

and here i am in my anthropologie bday necklace from andrew!!! yay andrew!!! (i'm wearing my glasses, which is not so cute, so i didn't want to ruin the photo of the necklace with my face!)

happy bday to mommy and me, happy bday to mommy and me, happy bday to mommy and meeeeeeee, happy bday to mommy and me!