Ambigram Drop

"Me Sumi and Roberto" Ambigram
"Emma" & "Faith" Ambigram	"Stacy" & "Jared" Ambigram
"Monster Golf" Ambigram
"Never" & " Again" Ambigram	"Gags" Ambigram
"Mia Nicole Henderson" Ambigram

Baby & Screen Printing Update

Baby Update ~
I am now at 17 weeks, about a week shy of 4 months. The last two weeks I was mostly plagued by dizziness (your veins expand in order to carry more blood, but since your body hasn't made it yet, you end up with super low blood pressure & a dizzy head). The doctor spoke of week 17 as this magical time when you start to feel better & are more energetic (at least until the 3rd trimester, when you have other problems & pains), and considering I was able to go grocery shopping & do the dishes without having to sit down for once, I am believing it!



A question for you girls in the know ~
how many sheets are we going to need for the crib? Is that something that is going to be spit up on & needed to change every day, or changed more like normal sheets? Do you need back up bumpers? (I've realized the bedding pattern is the only baby/nursery thing I'm picky about)

3 more weeks until we know the gender...


Screen Printing Update ~
I have been printing a little lately, but it is slow going. The owl screen is so bad that I usually have to spend an hour+ doing touch-ups on every print. Really not worth my time, but I keep printing a little here & there just to have something show up in the shop occasionally.

I just ordered a new brand of emulsion and am going to give burning the screens a go again. It will be a few weeks before that arrives & we are able to re-cover my current screens ~ everything is so pricey! I'm planning on burning a non-owl print or two first, I don't want to deal with those delicate lines to start out with. There is a good chance I will be also thickening up the thinnest lines on the owls, just slightly, to help keep the print clean in the future. As much as I hate burning screens, I really think I can get a cleaner image than I got from the shop I paid to do it last time (and I paid $50!) ~ keeping my fingers crossed!!

I think that is it for my updates, unless there is something you've been curious about?

Japanese Update

I realized that there are a few things I've not really given you guys an update on in a while, starting with my Japanese study. I've been at it for a little over a year now (almost a year & a month ~ is January really zooming by that quickly?!), and it's time to mark my progress.

Burnout ~
I actually ended up taking most of December off from studying, if not longer, and it was purely a lack of motivation that I brought on myself. Over several months, I had been switching around the way I was doing my flash cards in Anki, which meant I was re-typing everything in and then reviewing the same words & sentences over again from scratch (in a different format), giving myself a ton of unnecessary work. We are talking hundreds & hundreds of cards here. Already feeling pretty burnt out, every quiz and reading that I came across seemed so far over my head that I felt like I had learned nothing, and so I started spending my time elsewhere.

Motivation ~
Christmas, however, brought quite a few new books to my Japanese study collection... "Remembering the Kanji" vol. 2 & 3, "Making Sense of Japanese" (help with tricky grammar), and a handful of books my parents found in the clearance bin at a local Japanese bookstore (I can't believe they have one near their house!! So jealous). I decided my book collection had grown enough to warrant its own shelf ~ you can click on the picture for more information on what all is there.



Oh! And we also used some birthday money to grab a copy of Kanji Sonomama Rakubiki Jiten ($35 on eBay!) ~ it is like a handheld electronic dictionary for your DS, but for a fraction of the price.

Back to Work ~
I wasn't too excited about facing Anki after a month of not reviewing. The number of cards due was rather frightening, but it really only took a few days to get caught up. Since then I've added in a little new vocabulary and kanji, filled out some worksheets I found online, translated a few recipes from CookPad, and have really been enjoying it all again. And several times recently, when a blog posted city shots from around Japan, I realized that I could read everything on one of the signs or billboards in the photo. I may not be able to sit down with a book *yet*, but recognizing words like that makes me really want to start cramming more vocabulary.

So ~ after a year I have learned about 1225 words and 2075 kanji.
Another 450 words or so an I will be through the rest of the JLPT3 vocabulary, which I'm not expecting to take long. Now that I've figured out what works for me, I'm hoping to avoid any of the massive time-wasting I fell into last year, and learning new vocab just gets easier with the more I know.

Chicken Satay Noodle Soup

We recently made this Chicken Satay Noodle Soup from Rachael Ray, and it was absolutely fantastic!



Though I will never understand Rachael's insistence on using spaghetti for so many noodle dishes, especially when it is supposed to Asian style. Just buy some dang Asian noodles already!

Let's see ~ I used about 6oz. of rice vermicelli noodles (instead of 8 oz.), 1 tbsp. red curry paste (instead of 4 ~ I know ours is pretty hot, she must be using another kind!), no cilantro or lime wedge. There was enough filler for 4 servings, but enough broth for 5, so I'll be re-writing the recipe next time in an attempt to balance everything out, as well as throwing in a tip of my own. I'm sure Justin will be requesting we cook this again soon, though, so it shouldn't be too long!

Heart Designs

A few designs from long ago...

"Josie" Heart Design	"JHB" Heart Design
"Leo" Heart Design	"Mikayla" & "Asher" Heart Design

Owl Parliament - Cherry on Tangerine

As lovely as the cherry red ink is, sometimes I wonder if I should stop printing with it all together. Why? Because the color does not exist on the computer! No matter how much I try to tweak it, I always end up with an orange-tinted mess.



I've heard others complain about the red problem as well, so it's nice to know I'm not being neurotic (at least once). It's particularly bad against the bright orange, but what can you do?

Hot & Sour Soup Recipe

We made up some Hot & Sour Soup again last week ~ that stuff is sooo good! The broth has a slightly different flavor than you find at restaurants, but not really better or worse, just different. Last time I felt like it needed to be tweaked, so I held off on typing up the recipe, but now I wonder if we just had an odd ingredient or measured something wrong that time. With no changes to make, I can finally share the deliciousness with you.



Recipe Here

I've also changed the name of my Asian Chicken & Rice Soup to the more appropriate Faux-Sizzling Rice Soup. Justin said the name was way too boring for something so tasty, and I did base the recipe on the Sizzling Rice from our favorite Chinese restaurant. It's such a popular dish there, you can hear it popping all over the restaurant when you eat there. I hate naming things!

And it is definitely soup weather around here! I can't believe it, but we still have a little snow sitting behind the apartment, hanging around since Friday. Usually everything melts the same day we get a few flakes, but several spots are lingering this time.

Ambigram Drop

"Create" Ambigram	"Pretty Bird" & "Liddie Hefa" Ambigram
"Ho Kit Yee" & "Soon Lim" Ambigram	"Patrick Ho" & "Diana Lee" Ambigram
"Abbie" & "Terry" Ambigram	"Be Patient" Ambigram "Israel Torres.org" Ambigram
"Jordie" Ambigram	"Abbey" Ambigram

No Sno'

Pfff. It was just a light dusting of snow after all. No fun.



But, since this is Georgia, that was enough to shut the schools down for the day, and to send people scrambling to the grocery stores yesterday for bread and milk.

Shake your booties

We've told family & co-workers now, so I can finally post it on my blog.
I am pregnant! Almost 15 weeks now, due July 4th.



I feel an obligation to be squealing with excitement as I tell the news, but it mostly feels surreal. I can't pull off squealing. Until I start getting kicked, I don't know if I'll really believe it. Granted, I've had plenty of symptoms, but I have never been around pregnant women, never really been around babies, never been baby-crazy, none of our close friends have kids ~ it is all very weird to me. I kept waiting for my biological clock to start ticking, but the decision was more based on the chronological clock, since we turned 29 this year.

So, umm... yeah! I am not a fan of: the (severe) acid reflux, nausea, headaches, exhaustion, and congestion... of having to look up every little thing online to see if it is o.k. or not... of women trying to remember what they were told 30 years ago, saying "I don't think you can do that" ~ only to look up yet another thing online & see that no, that is actually something they recommend for pregnancy... or of being fussed over, "How are you feeling?" (Except by Justin. He can fuss all he wants). But really, other than those things, which have not been overwhelming, it has not been too bad at all, better than I expected. But that might depend on which day you ask me! On the plus side ~ I do enjoy, for once, not having to worry if an outfit makes my belly look big, or how many calories something has (I've actually been loosing weight throughout the whole thing). It can be hard to find something I want to/can eat, though, especially finding enough to keep up with the hunger!


And, unrelated, there are snow flurries outside, with a promise of snow! I can't remember the last time we've really had snow (north Georgia). Maybe once in the last 10 years? (I do not count flurries or a light dusting that melts in an hour, the grass needs to be hidden!) I keep peeking out the window to make sure it is still falling.

Bee Furniture

Months ago, as we were admiring some pet furniture & toys, my brother-in-law asked, "Why do dogs and cats get all of the fun stuff?". He keeps a small hive of bees & joked about wanting accessories for his 'pets' too. Well, I couldn't pass up such a fun crafting opportunity (and Christmas gift), could I?

I've had a few beeswax candle kits sitting around for years; the kind where you roll colored sheets of beeswax around a wick for a simple taper candle. Most of the wax sheets had the traditional honeycomb texture, though there were a few with stripes or other textures. I grabbed an x-acto knife and set to work building tiny bee-sized pieces of furniture, just eyeballing everything. Each joint was glued together, and then the wax edge was melted to create smooth corners.













So that was a dining room table & chairs, a bookshelf with books (my favorite), a sofa with throw pillows, bed, TV, and toilet (you can barely make out the black handle on the left side). Here is something to give you an idea of the scale ~



And everything framed together in an 8 x 10 shadowbox!