Things I want to Remember: full time crafter and MBA student

Posted in Life by beckyjael

I have noticed a pattern in life. There are many different phases and stages and being a sentimental person I frequently look back on these different phases with nostalgia, remembering my favorite moments and the small things that made me happy, that created an atmosphere that made this stage unique and enjoyable and special. I am always a little bit sad when a stage in my life ends, even when I am excited about the next one, or even when that time has been a difficult one. There are always beautiful moments that will never exist again. I don’t want to forget those things. I want to hold onto them. They may not seem very significant. But they make up my life and they are special to me. And I never want to lose them.

This past stage we have been in for the last year and half with Vu in grad school and me being a “full time crafter” has been pretty quiet, kind of uneventful. At least for me. Vu has been very busy with work and school. But right now, from this stage in my life, these are things that I want to always remember.

-Quiet afternoons sitting in the living room, listening to the rain or enjoying the sunlight streaming in through the windows, reading a book/studying French/brainstorming décor ideas

-seeing how dedicated Vu is to school and work, seeing how hard he works

-being able to try out new, time intensive recipes

-laughing with Rachel as we relive our youth playing Mario Brothers 3 on the Nintendo (thanks Christian for finding it for us)

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22Apr2015

My first time ever making Pho

Posted in Food by beckyjael

The first time that I had Pho was at a restaurant with Vu. I did not like it. I could have cared less if I ever went back. A few years later Vu and I were engaged and Vu’s mom invited us over for dinner and she made Pho. And it was amazing. I LOVED it! I figured that maybe I just didn’t like the way that particular restaurant made it. Vu’s mom made if for me a few more times after that. Then Father’s day came around and she was out of town, so Vu wanted to take his Dad out to a Vietnamese restaurant. When he got there Vu suggested that I order the Pho (because he didn’t think I would like anything else there). And I was really excited about it. And then I ate it. And I was reminded of my first experience.

Fast forward and we are married and we just bought our house, that was going to take 9 months to build. Our apartment lease ended and the rent increased significantly. Vu’s parents generously offered to let us live with them for free until our house was finished being built. I had come to the realization at this point that I don’t like most Vietnamese food. Except Pho. I asked Vu’s mom why hers was so much better than any that I had at the Pho restaurants. It’s because the proprietors have this idea that Americans like their food bland. And they cut out a bunch of the flavor. So taking advantage of the temporary living situation I asked Vu’s mom if she would teach me how to make Pho. And let me tell you, it is a process. It takes 2 days. It also isn’t an exact recipe, it’s a “taste and add this” kind of deal. I did nothing except watch her and take notes.

So over a year later and I finally got ambitious enough to try it on my own. It took me 2 days. When Vu came home he said it smelled like Pho. When I poured it into the bowl it looked like Pho. But when we ate it, it did not taste like my mother–in-law’s Pho. The restaurant Pho was better than this. Which was very, very sad. Vu said it was inedible. For all of that cooking down and simmering, there was still no flavor. And the noodles were undercooked. My noodles were better than Vu’s, but still not cooked enough. And as we know from “Top Chef” if you serve something undercooked, “please pack your knives and go.” Before Vu’s mom taught me she was a little bit hesitant because she was afraid if I learned how to make it for myself, then I would never want her to make it for me. There is absolutely no danger of that happening. Maybe in a long while I will try again. As long as my mother-in-law comes to my house and watches me do the whole thing. It may take me my whole lifetime to achieve her perfection. Or I may give up and never try to get there. It’s a lot of work for a dish that is “inedible.” We shall see.

Also. It’s possible I love cilantro. And put way more in than is normal.

Also. Vu’s favorite Vietnamese dish is a spicy beef soup and he doesn’t love Pho. When we lived with Vu’s parents and his mom found out I liked Pho she made it all the time and not the spicy beef soup. 🙂

15Apr2015

Mini Food Dinner Party

Posted in Dinner Party, Food by beckyjael

So Vu believes that our society thinks that anything that is miniature or oversized is adorable. I am not quite sold on the oversized portion of the theory, but I fully support the mini-sized portion. Because I absolutely love anything that is mini. I mean come on. How can you not love something that is tiny. The word adorable is pretty much in the dictionary definition of mini. So when I saw this mini food party on “Oh Happy Day” I knew that I had to host one too. Because I pretty much thought it was the most adorable thing ever. Also. I pretty much copied everything, except I used different recipes. Because did you see it? Adorable! And I had these little tiny bottles of Martinelli’s Sparkling Cider. That I found at the dollar store before Christmas last year. I am pretty much obsessed with them. I had to find these ones online because apparently they are a seasonal item. But this year I am going to the dollar store and I am going to stock up.

So do you want to know what we ate? Continue reading →

30Mar2015

12 Month’s of Holiday Décor: April

Posted in Decorations, DIY, Easter by beckyjael

I shared a little glimpse of the April décor last year at the end of this post. It was the first month last year that I really got around to holiday decorating, despite my goal to do it monthly (technically I decorated for March last year, but it was very poorly represented, there really wasn’t much). Which meant that it was the first month this year that I didn’t have tons of projects I was working on the month before. Which was nice because I used a lot of March to do some much needed organizing. This month is going to be a bit tricky in the coming years because I wanted it to be Easter, but since Easter is sometimes in March, that won’t work out very well for the April décor. Like next year for example, when Easter is March 27th. I will have to figure out something else for next year. Maybe the May stuff will be up for April and May. And because Easter is so early in April this year, the Easter decorations are going to stay up a quite a while after Easter. Oh well.

So for April I decided that I wanted to use purple as the primary color for the month, to represent Christ because it is the color of Royalty. And because purple is a spring color. I had this ribbon garland that I used for a birthday party for me and Rachel a few years ago, so I started with that and hung it over the top of the mirror.

I made 3 of the rhinestone eggs last year. I used a tutorial I found on Martha Stewart, but I can not find the post anywhere now. Here is the picture from my Pinterest board. I basically just glued the rhinestones onto a wooden egg. I made three more this year too. Last year I also painted 3 of the same wooden eggs in ombre purple. I was trying to decide what to do with them and Vu suggested the ombre paint. There is his contribution to the décor. 🙂 He was/is very proud of himself for that one.

The “Christ the Lord is Risen!” sign I made at a church craft activity this past October. I cut 3 pieces of cedar board 13″ long and then glued them together onto a couple of thin boards. Then I white washed it and the words are vinyl that were ordered for me for the activity. I used my wooden trough box and flipped it upside down to add some height. Continue reading →

19Mar2015

So I Married A… Zombocaphobiac

Posted in Life by beckyjael

(…wait, a what?)

Zombocaphobiac [Zom-bak-uh-foh-bee-ack] n. 1. an individual with a persistent, irrational fear of an end of the world scenario involving mobile brain consuming undead hordes.

When Vu and I were single and going to social activities, meeting new people and making new friends, Vu loved to learn about the professions and skills of our new acquaintances. He would often exclaim in the middle of a conversation “You can be on my Zombocalypse survival team”. For Vu that was a term of high praise. In his eyes, you had made it. In fact, he would even seek out certain positions for this hypothetical team. He never did find a doctor (In case you were wondering my contribution to the team is pretty much nil so I am getting a free ride). What most of our friends don’t realize, is that he was completely serious.

After we were married, I was working at the hospital and for one of our first weekly family nights, we “created” emergency routes that I would use to walk from the hospital to our apartment. And when I say we “created” them, I mean we printed off 3 different maps of the whole area from hospital to apartment and highlighted which roads I would walk home on in case of an emergency, including second and third alternate routes, just in case there was a “herd” that created a zombie roadblock on the first route. And the second. Then we made copies of each map and kept one set in my car, one in Vu’s car, and one at home. This way if Vu came looking for me when the world was ending, he would know which route I would be taking. We also packed a hiking backpack full of necessities, such as water bottles, rain ponchos, flashlight and batteries, thermal blankets, non perishable food, and an extra pair of clothing. He even did a bunch of research looking for good quality water proof rain/snow boots for me and after we bought them, he wanted me to wear them at work at the hospital to break them in (I refused this one). These all went into my car. Now before you start thinking that he is just a few essentials short upstairs (or maybe it is too late), let me explain.

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4Mar2015

12 Month’s of Holiday Décor: March

Posted in Decorations, DIY by beckyjael

I think this is my favorite month yet, from both last year and this year. I love how it all came together. I love the color mint and last year I decided I wanted to use mint for the St Patrick’s decor, but I didn’t get very far. I found the glass ornaments for 80% off after Christmas last year and used them as a starting point. I tied on some fishing line and then hung them across the top of the mantle and mirror. I recently discovered Jadeite and immediately fell in love with it, and it fit perfectly with the mint theme I was looking for.

I saw this shelf/hutch thing, whatever you want to call it, on Pinterest and loved it; I knew I wanted to make one for myself. I went to the salvage yard looking for a cool window to use, but they were all broken and dirty and moldy, so I decided to just try and make up one myself. I have realized I have a hard time with some repurposing, I have a strong aversion to cleaning up certain things and often prefer to buy the raw materials for what I want and to make it look “rustic”. I know, I know, it is funny to some people (and by some people I pretty much just mean men) to take something new and make it look old, but what can I say, I like the look but I like clean things. I ended up using some trim and sort of created a window look. I assumed it wasn’t going to be easy to create the whole thing from scratch, but it was difficult in different ways than I expected. I made a set of shelves and then nailed the bead board and trim onto it. Then I stained it, applied some Vaseline in certain spots then painted it all in white. Once the paint was dry I scraped off the paint in the areas where the Vaseline was, to get the aged look. I am really happy with how it turned out.

I have been collecting the jadeite and other mint and green items since the beginning of January from various stores and websites, and I already had a couple of items. I especially love the Jadeite cake plates and teacup. I made the 17 block (for St. Patrick’s day being on the 17th of March) with some metal house numbers from Home Depot that I spray painted gold and attached to a block of wood that I painted white.

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24Feb2015

2 Day Road Trip to Vancouver

Posted in Travel by beckyjael

Rachel and I decided to take a last minute road trip over President’s Day to Vancouver, Canada. We have been talking about going for probably the last 6 years or so and just never managed to get around to it. But Rachel has been on a huge kick lately to do a bunch of the things she has always been planning to do in the area, but hasn’t gotten around to yet. We left Sunday morning and came back Monday night. Vu had to work on Monday, so once again he didn’t come. We will both be so happy when he is done with his MBA! (only 15 more weeks to go!) Not that school had anything to do with him having to work. School+work=very little free time to go with me when I travel for Vu :(. Not that that bothers him…

We left early (and by early I actually mean early for me, as in I left my house at 8:30) on Sunday morning and headed up to Vancouver. It was a perfect day! We have had some really great weekend weather lately. And what is with the cherry blossoms and daffodils blooming already? (Please don’t be another really hot summer…)

We really liked Vancouver. The whole downtown area is very walkable. Sunday afternoon we spent walking along the seawall at Stanley Park (after we figured out how to drive into the park with a minor detour into North Vancouver). We got there right after a race had finished, so there were runners everywhere. Since it was a beautiful warm Sunday afternoon in February there really weren’t very many people at the park… or not. It was pretty busy.

We spent the afternoon wandering around the park. We both loved the Lion’s Gate Bridge (Rachel shares my obsession with bridges). Continue reading →

2Feb2015

12 Month’s of Holiday Décor: February

Posted in Decorations, DIY, Valentine's by beckyjael

Yay it’s February! So excited that I am still 2 for 2 for the holiday decorations. I am really happy with how February’s decorations have turned out. I hardly had any Valentine’s decorations before, but I spent very little money on this, plus almost everything that I did buy was on sale or on clearance. That always makes me (and Vu) happy.

I made the 4 heart blocks a couple of weeks ago. I was planning on making my own “Love” sign but then I saw this one at Joann’s that I really liked and it was 80% off… so I just bought it instead. (Also I forgot to add that the letter blocks that were also in January’s décor I made a few years ago using this tutorial.)

I have really gotten into embroidery the last year and wanted to make something for Valentine’s day too. I love tree’s and I have seen so many variations of the initials carved into a tree so decided that is what I wanted to do. I have to be honest, I don’t love how it turned out. There are a number of things I would like to change about it, so maybe another year I will redo it. But I like it well enough for now. I kept the branches from the January décor and added some sequin “branches” to them. I took pieces of wire and twisted pink 20 mm round sequins onto them and then twisted them around the tree branches.

The heart garland is one of my favorite things, I love how it turned out. I had some scraps of beige muslin left from another project so I cut them into 4.5″ x 5.5″ rectangles, then sewed a zig zag stitch around the edges to prevent fraying and to give it a little bit of a rough edge. Then I printed out a paper heart to use as a template and pinned it to the different pink fabrics (fat quarters from Joann’s that I got 50% off) and cut out around it then sewed the fabric hearts onto the muslin. I found some matching ric rac in a huge stash of craft supplies I “inherited” from my Grandma when she died (craft supply hoarding may be a family trait…my mom has a lot too…), and I used that to sew along the top to make the garland. I love it with the ric rac. It was a really easy project. Continue reading →

20Jan2015

Valentine Heart Blocks

Posted in Decorations, DIY, Valentine's by beckyjael

I have finished my first Valentine project and I am very excited about it. I loved the snowflakes blocks that I repainted for the January décor so much that when I was thinking of ideas for Valentine’s I really wanted to make some more. This time I made the blocks too. I wanted to make 4 of them with different colored hearts on them instead of the snowflake and then I added some Valentine words to them as well. The snowflake ones have a small space between the pieces of wood on the face of the block, but for these I wanted them right next to each other. I like that I can keep all four of the blocks together, or I can split them up and place them wherever I might need them. Continue reading →

12Jan2015

12 Month’s of Holiday Décor: January

Posted in Decorations, DIY by beckyjael

I’ve mentioned before that I love changing out decorations for holidays. Well when we moved into the house a year ago (can’t believe it has been a year) I was thinking about what to do on the mantle for January and decided that I wanted to have something different for each month of the year. I didn’t get a very good start and didn’t really get anything specific up for January or February (I was still trying to get everything unpacked and organized), but I started in March. I had some things for the month’s with the bigger holidays, but not much for every other month. I ended up getting 7 out of 12 (but let’s be honest March was not up to standard…I also don’t love the current set up for November) and many of my completed 53 projects in 2014 were Holiday and home décor.

So this year I really wanted to get every month. I already have a pretty good start, so hopefully it will be manageable. I noticed last year that what I did have before for our apartment didn’t go far in the new house, which is partially why I only got 7. I found that I have this problem. I see something in the store and like it except for maybe it isn’t the color I want, or it’s a good idea but cheap materials, or I want it a little bit bigger, or smaller, or I wish it didn’t have that one thing on it, or… So I think, “I can make that” and then it will be exactly how I want it. Which I usually can do. But that takes time. And let’s not even get into all of the good ideas found on Pinterest. And for some reason Vu thinks that he likes it when I make dinner, clean the house and do laundry. And here we are at 7 for 12. On to 2015. The main goal is the mantle and something on the dining room table, with anything extra I can get around to on the coffee and end tables, cabinets on either side of the mantle and the piano. We will see how it goes. I have many plans in place. (But not for June. I am currently stumped for June…the only thoughts I have so far are green and yellow…we shall see.)

So after the busy-ness of Christmas died down (and I got my energy back after having the flu/pneumonia, which I didn’t give to any of our house guests we had the whole time I was sick thank you very much), I started to think about January. I was discussing it with my sister Rachel, and decided I wanted to do a Winter theme. I already had some items from a blue and silver mantle I made a few years ago, and I think blue and silver are nice winter colors so I decided to start with that and then just add in some snowflakes to make it more “winter”.

I had some pine cones I didn’t end up using for Christmas, so I spray painted them mostly white. I took a walk along the path through the greenbelt down the street from our house and picked up some branches off of the ground and also spray painted them white. They even had some cute tiny pine cones hanging off their branches. Then I made some beaded snowflake ornaments (thanks Pinterest) to hang from the branches.

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