Wifey

Gift tags

2008-12-26T08:59:00.000-08:00

I was at my mom's house the other day. She was complaining about a party that she had to go to. The object of the party was to gather together and make little gift tags for Christmas presents. My mom was dreading it but felt obligated to go. It sounded like fun to me, though. A couple days later I saw her again and she had two little gift tags on display, hanging from her kitchen cabinet. One had a little snowman and the other had a little santa made of small pieces of paper glued onto a blue square. I expressed my delight at her handiwork, but she only groaned.

"You should've been there," she said. "You would have loved it. I am not suited to this sort of thing, though. I was there for two hours and managed to eek out these two little cards, while everyone else made twenty or more."

"At least they are cute," I said.

They were so cute, I decided I wanted to design my own gift tags. After some deliberation, I decided to make tiny little snowflakes and glue them onto blue squares. I used tracing paper for the snowflakes because it folds more tightly than printing paper. It took me a while to do all the cutting but they turned out really cute. It was really interesting to see how each one turned out differently, even though I basically used the same procedure and pattern for each one. I guess my little tiny triangles are never exactly the same.

I had expressed my intentions to justacoolcat when I was preparing to make the snowflakes, but he was surprised to see how they turned out. "When you said you were going to make tiny little snowflakes, I thought you meant really tiny. I wondered how you were going to do it. Is she going to do some ninja action on those snowflakes. Oooaaah!" He said as he made a ninja cutting action. Needless to say, a simple scissors sufficed.

Christmas Roast

2008-12-26T06:50:00.000-08:00

We had a very successful Christmas this year. The in-laws came over on Christmas eve and I made a pot roast. It was only my second attempt at baking a roast in the oven. In the past I always made pot roast in the slow cooker, but we decided that we didn't like it that way. The meat just shredded into the broth and we ended up with a big sloppy mess. About a month ago I tried baking it, and it turned out much better. I used two recipes from epicurious.com to help me make it. I used the spices from "Gordon's Pot Roast" and I followed the cooking instructions from "Basic Pot Roast". It turned out really good. The only problem was that I didn't have quite enough broth to make my gravy.

For Christmas eve dinner I made the roast again. Here's how the recipe shaked out:

Roast Beef

A 3.5 lb beef roast
1/4 cup olive oil

1 medium onion

3 cloves garlic

1 cup red wine

1 can chicken broth

1 tbs pickled ginger

2 tbs worcestershire sauce

1 tbs packed brown sugar

3 bay leaves

1 tsp oregano

1/2 tsp margerum

1 tsp crushed dried mushrooms

1 tsp pepper

1 tsp salt

3 tbs cornstarch

Preheat oven to 350. Rub salt and pepper the roast on all sides. Pour oil in a large frying pan. Brown the roast on all sides. Add the garlic and onions. Reduce heat to medium. Cover pan and cook for 10 minutes.

While the roast is cooking, combine all the other ingredients in a 9x11x2 pan. Whisk together briefly to smooth the cornstarch into the liquid. When the ten minutes are up, put the roast and the onions in the broth. Cover with tin foil. Bake on the center rack for 1.5 hours. Turn the roast over and recover. Place potatoes (see below) around the roast in the broth. Return to oven and bake for 1.5 to 2 hours (1.5 for medium, 2 for well).

Green Mashed Potatoes
3 lbs red potatoes; peeled, quartered
2 cups raw spinach
1 stick butter
1/2 cup cream
1 tsp pepper
1 tsp salt

Ten minutes before the roast is done, remove the roast and transfer to another 9x11 pan. Cover again and put it back in the oven. Use a spoon with holes to remove the potatoes from the broth. Put the potatoes in a large serving bowl. Cut the butter into the potatoes. Use a potato masher to mash the potatoes. I prefer to leave them kind of chunky. Add the cream and stir. Chop the spinach into 1/4 inch strips. Stir the spinach into the potatoes. Salt and pepper to taste. The spinach doesn't really flavor the potatoes, but it gives them a little color for your table.

Pour the remaining broth into a frying pan and put on high heat. Add a tablespoon of flour. Whisk until the mixture congeals into gravy.

Serve the roast and potatoes with a colorful vegetable like baked squash.

Recipe Book

2008-12-20T09:20:00.000-08:00

My most recent project has been to produce a recipe book for my mother's Christmas present. She keeps all her recipes in a spiral bound notebook. When I was a kid I helped her transfer all the recipes from her old book to this one by hand. It's kind of cute to see my old handwriting and how I used to spell kitchen items like "flower" and "pinapple". I was over at her house the other day making Christmas cookies and I realized that her recipes were almost unintelligible from splash marks and food stains. I offered to revamp it for her. She actually already had a new book my brother had given her a couple of years ago, but she never got around to transferring the recipes.

I decided to type the recipes up so that it will be easy enough to transfer to the next recipe book after this one gets wrecked--which it inevitably will. I thought I'd be able to find a recipe template on the Internet that would make it easy. There were a few, but they were all created on MS Word, and it was a huge hassle to put the recipes into the template. I thought about just typing it on MS Word without a template, but that would've ended wasting a lot of paper, and I would have had to fiddle around with font sizing. Finally I decided to use MS Powerpoint, which was a brilliant move. You can print the slides out in a handout form. One slide per page was about the right size to fit the paper, but I thought it would be a waste of paper. So I did that for the longer recipes, but the shorter recipes I printed two slides per page. It worked out really great. I was able to choose a design that matched the book, and Powerpoint automatically changes font size to fit the slide, so no fiddling around.

I think it turned out really nice. The best part is I now have all my mom's recipes on my own computer. Someday I'll print them out for a book of my own, but until then they are easy to look up in my documents.

Trying to be dedicated

2008-12-20T09:11:00.000-08:00

When I was a kid I used to have a diary. I would go through phases of writing in my diary every day, and then I wouldn't write in it for months. I would feel so guilty about neglecting my diary. I always had to apologize to my journal and promise I would be better. Why? Isn't it there for my own benefit? So if I don't use it, I don't need it. I shouldn't feel guilty about an inanimate object.

This blog is the same way. The longer I put off putting in an entry, the more guilty I feel about it and the less likely I am to post anything at all. So I'm officially ending the self-imposed guilt trip. I will post when I have something interesting to say, and otherwise I will leave it be.

As far as my one-hour-per-day self improvement plan, it has been going pretty well. I've got the baby sleeping on her own in the mornings, so I'm able to get things done during that time. I don't accomplish something productive every day, but I do most days, which is good enough for me.

Past Accomplishments

2008-11-12T08:53:00.000-08:00

Even though I haven't posted for over a year, I still continued to create. I set up a flickr account so that you can view photos of the scrapbooking and drawing I have done recently. Click the link to view scrapbooking photos or drawing photos.

Back again

2008-11-12T07:20:00.000-08:00

Well, I let this blog slide into disuse for almost two years. I've decided to try and get back to it. My life has changed a lot since my last post. I am now a mother. I gave birth to my daughter CoolKitten in July, 2008. I decided to take some time off work and am staying home with my baby. I thought that this would give me lots of time to work on creative projects. I even bought some paints and fixed my viola to prepare for my time off. I've learned that it's pretty hard to do anything with a little infant in the house. A day goes by and it seems like I haven't done anything, but really I've been working hard taking care of the baby all day. However, I do accomplish some things, and I think that if I get this blog rolling again, it will encourage me to try and set aside time for self-development.

Here's my plan. Coolkitten has developed a sleep cycle that requires a morning nap and an afternoon nap. Generally, I need to nap with her in the afternoon because she is still waking me up at night. So I am going to reserve the morning nap time for myself. I am going to try and accomplish one hour of self-development per day. This may include: art, crafting, creative cooking, studying, or blogging. This may not include: cleaning, pointless IInternet searching, or reading fantasy novels. If I can't accomplish this task during her morning nap, I will try and do it after she has fallen asleep in the evening instead of watching tv. I am going to give myself one week for a trial period to see if this plan is a plausible reality.

In bed

2007-02-24T22:22:00.000-08:00

I started this drawing with a completely different intent than what I actually produced. I was going to use colored pencils and make it more abstract, but I liked what I was drawing with my #2 too much to change it. Maybe I'll draw it again from a different lense another day.

Songmaster

2007-02-09T21:06:00.000-08:00

I love to sing, and I've always played a little piano and viola. I'm just enough of a musician myself to appreciate the way music can stir the soul. It's one thing to hear and appreciate music, but it is another to feel the music pass through you, hear it as it expands and vibrates the air around you. Singing, I feel closer to God than I ever can feel in the silence of prayer.

When I read books that capture the power of music (which admittedly is a difficult thing to do with mere words), I become entranced by the story. Songmaster, by Orson Scott Card, swept me up and spun me around. I was drawn in by the initial concept: a school/orphanage that trains singers from infancy. They live in song in everything they do. They speak with music, each note singing their thoughts and feelings in a way that spoken words could never do. The story followed one singer who became the best of them all, who could sing back to a person whatever they were feeling. But as with any genius, his ability came with a price. The story is so human, the characters are so true. I read the whole book in the course of three days and I was sad when it was over. What could I possibly read next that could be this good? But then Orson Scott Card's books usually have that effect on me.

P.S. The picture above is the Polish version, I think. It had the best picture on the front.

Cookie frenzy

2007-01-29T19:35:00.000-08:00

I had been craving chocolate chip cookies for over a week. When I crave chocolate chip cookies, what I really want is to make them myself. No store-bought cookie will do. Even if somebody else made them home-made, it still wouldn't quite satiate the need. I love making cookies. I usually do it on an afternoon when I have the house to myself and no pressing needs to attend to. I clean the kitchen completely first, then I lay out all my ingredients. I have known the recipe by heart since I was about eleven years old. Back then my older sisters' friends used to sing my cookie praises as they scraped down my hard-earned treats. I make sure to taste the batter at every stage: first the butter/sugar mixture, then add the eggs and vanilla, then the flower mixture, and last the delightful chocolate chips. I have no qualms about salmonella poisoning. I haven't caught it yet, have I? The mixture is divine in every phase. Sometimes I have to test it a few times, just to make sure it's quite right.

I'm never very hungry for the actual cookies when they are done. I'm too full. I send half the batch to work with justacoolcat and freeze the other half for my own personal enjoyment later. If I'm careful, I can make the freezer batch last a whole week or more. What is it about chocolate chip cookies I love so much? The chocolate? The butter? The sugar? I think that those are all factors, but I think that what I really like about them is that to me they symbolize productive solitude, accomplishment, and pride. They make the perfect comfort food when I am down and they are the perfect celebration when celebration is needed. I really do make a damn good cookie, and nobody knows it better than me.

Sex and Death

2007-01-10T08:00:00.000-08:00

I finished Love in the Time of Cholera this morning. The ending was silly, but at least it wasn't sad. It was a pretty good book. To me, it was almost more of an essay on love, life, and death with the help of a few interesting characters than a novel, but I guess that's what the best novels are all really about. My mom's an English teacher, and she used to always say, "Sex and death. That's what it all boils down to in the end. Those are the underlying themes in all literature because they are the two driving forces of human life." I've never been able to disprove her. Anyway, it's a good book, and I'd recommend reading it this time of year so that you can transport yourself to a warmer climate. Ahhh, the Caribbean.

I'm on vacation this week and now that I've finished my book I have to think of something to do with myself. I'm thinking that today will be a productive cleaning day. I'll take care of some things that I have been putting off because I didn't have the time, and maybe I'll wrap it up with a little scrapbooking at the end. By tomorrow, though, I'll need a new book. Any suggestions?

Love in the time of Cholera

2007-01-08T08:33:00.000-08:00

I basically have two genres of literature that I read: Science fiction/fantasy and Mom/Kelly books. I think that everybody who reads regularly has a secret pulp fiction vice. For me, I love losing myself in the imaginary worlds of science fiction and fantasy. I need a healthy dose of fantastical literature, especially when I am on vacation or thoroughly depressed. The other genre, Mom/Kelly books, consists of recent fiction, local fiction, and classical fiction. My mother and my sister Kelly both read voraciously and seek out the best literature that our society has to offer. They are my filters. When they read a really good book and suggest that I might like it, I know that they have read at least one hundred books before that one which weren't quite as good. I try to always follow their suggestions, with one caveat: I don't like to read books with sad endings. I get too emotionally attached to the characters. When a book ends sadly, it wrecks my whole week. So if I know a book has a sad ending, I will avoid it if I can.

It usually takes me a while to get around to reading all of their suggestions. Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez has probably been on my reading list for about ten years. I read One Hundred Years of Solitude when I was in high school and loved it, but heard some reports that this one wasn't quite as good, so I put it off. I started reading it about a week ago and I am really enjoying it. It took me a while to get into it because the language is so dense; it's a little bit hard to read. I found myself re-reading paragraphs and falling asleep after a few pages. Now I've gotten into the story, and I've been eating it up. The characters are interesting and loveable. The story is written cyclically, so that it starts at the end, swings around to the begining, swings again to the middle, and then scoops up the beginning again. But it is easy to follow and not in the least confusing. I'm about two-thirds of the way through, and I'll let you know if I still like it at the end.

Quote of the day:

"A man should have two wives: one to love and one to sew his buttons."

Or maybe the wife he loves just needs a personal assistant. Don't you think?

Jamaica

2007-01-06T20:49:00.000-08:00

Last weekend I brought the photos for my next scrapbook in to get developed. Now that I've finished my wedding scrapbook, I need a new project. I'm going to make a scrapbook for our honeymoon, which was in Jamaica. I spent an hour in the photo shop picking out the pictures that I wanted to include. I also developed some five by seven photos for this frame we got as a wedding present. When I got the photos back I was astounded. We've had these pictures on oucomputers for the last year and a half, and many of you have seen them on Justacoolcat's website, but I was not expecting them to look this good on paper. Wow. My husband is really an amazing photographer. Didn't this frame turn out nice? I hung it up in the kitchen as soon as I got home.

As the week has progressed I have started on the first few pages of our honeymoon scrapbook. I love the new paper and tools I got at Michael's.

My work life has been pretty stressful lately, and it has meant a lot to me to be able to come home, relax next to the fireplace in the parlor, work with my hands and look at beautiful pictures. I wish I had a better way to present them online. They are 12X12 pages, so I can't scan them and capture the whole page. At least you can get an idea.

Michael's Madness

2006-12-29T17:05:00.000-08:00

I went to Michael's, the Arts and Crafts Store last night with a one hundred dollar gift certificate burning in my pocket. I was totally giddy. I had a long list of tools for drawing, painting and scrapbook that have been on my wish list for a long time. Of course, when I got there I realized that my one hundred dollars wouldn't go very far. Art supplies are so expensive! I ended up eliminating all the painting items from my wish list and only getting scrapbook stuff. My key purchases were a paper cutter, paper with new colors and designs, and a brand new scrapbook. I also got some cool paper scraps for making cards, wide page covers to replace the ones that make my pages bend, and some pretty stickers.

When I got home I showed off all my new toys to my husband, who was mildly amused, and then ripped open all the packaging and organized everything into neat piles. I spent the rest of the evening replacing the page covers of my wedding scrapbook, which looks much better now. I had wanted to start my thank-you cards, but I didn't get around to it before bedtime.

So thank-you cards were my project for today. I got to go home early (yay!), so I spent the afternoon making these cards.

Making cards for people is kind of a silly thing to do, because I know that most of them will end up in the trash. But at least the person I give it to knows, for the short moment they hold the card in their hands, that I was thinking about them and cared enough to spend the time to make them a card. At least, that's what I hope they think. Plus, they are pretty and I enjoy making them. These pictures don't really do them justice. There's something about the texture, weight, and dimensions of the different papers that makes them really homey.

What do you think? Are they too simple? What do you use when you make cards?

Psalm 150

2006-12-25T20:52:00.000-08:00

I drew this picture the other day in a fit of creative frenzy. I have a hard time with cray-pas as a medium. I feel like I am drawing with my thumbs--I have very little control over detail.

Also, I always over-estimate their blending capacity. There is probably at least five layers on the sky. I dismayed that I would ever make the sky look uniform in just the right color, but then it magically turned out. I'm thinking about taking it out of my sketch book and framing it. What do you think, a black frame with white matting?

Christmas Day

2006-12-25T19:33:00.000-08:00

Justacoolcat made this blog for me about a year ago, and it has taken me this long to create my first post. I have spent the last year deliberating about how I would use a blog if I ever got around to it. I would like to use this blog to display my art projects and dialogue with potential readers about my art, their art, and art in general. I am not a professional artist by any means, but I enjoy drawing, painting, scrapbooking, and making music. I'm hoping that these discussions will help generate ideas and stimulate the creative process.

A note on my creative process: I tend to be creative in spurts. This week, for instance, I have had the drawing itch. I've done a little drawing almost every day. I made the drawing above with my two-year-old nephew while we waited for Christmas dinner, using his glitter glue and construction paper. Another week I might be really into my scrapbook and think of nothing else. But then I might go a month or two without feeling very creative at all. A lot of it has to do with what's going on in my life at the time. I don't want to develop a guilt complex about my blog when I neglect it for a while, so for now I'm just going to say that I will post when I have something valuable to add to the Internets, otherwise I will leave it be.

Like most of my projects, this blog will probably develop a life of its own as it progresses. My ideas rarely turn out the way I expect them to, but usually I like the finished product just as well. The important thing is to keep at it until it's done.

Wifey

Smooth

2006-01-06T16:23:00.001-08:00