25 Random Things

Hello friends! Thank God it's Friday!!! This week has been nothing but work, work, work. And I am glad that the weekend is here. I've been working on my 2013 to-do list. I know, I'm getting started early. John and I usually wait until spring, but as I was looking at my list the other day, I saw a couple of things that I could absolutely do by myself [i.e. painting walls, re-organizing closets, you know the easy stuff!] and that's how I got started.

Also, I have been very contemplative and silly lately and I've been thinking about stuff that I do and choices that I've made then and now that are just so weird [refer to #5, #6 and #7]. So I got to working on these 25 Random Things About Me, and maybe some of you are just like me or maybe the total opposite. :) But, who cares? This is just for fun!

1) My blog has a new look! And, I finally got my own domain. It is now cookbakesewcraftrepeat.com

2) I did not used to know how to sew. 

3) With a little help and encouragement from family and friends I can sew now.

4) I am working on re-upholstering a piece of furniture

5) I don't like pink

6) But, I have a pink craft room

7) I own pretty much all Apple [Mac] products but I will never buy an iPhone

8) I love everything that is wireless or cordless, mini, and anything jarred

9) I adore paper lanterns. Fact: I have 3 in my craft room, all lighted, too

10) I haven't gotten the flu this year without getting the flu shot

11) I choose tech gear and more practical gifts over jewelry or flowers

12) I chose a new roof for a wedding gift over any other stupid material thing

13) I was given a house for a Christmas gift one year [our current house]

14) i have always had an obsession for pens and markers

15) I hang out with a funny bunch of senior folks every Wednesday

16) We don't drink any soda at our house

17) Crocheting is a new skill I just recently added to my repertoire [Thanks to my Mom-In-Law for being such a patient teacher!]

18) Design-wise, nothing in my house stays the same longer than 6 months.

19) Christmas is my favorite holiday

20) Every time it snows, I put on my shorts, t-shirt and flipflops and I get out and run around in it for a good 5 minutes [in my backyard of course!]

21) On Sundays when I can't go to church, I feel really weird. 

22) I can bake and cook like you won't believe but I don't eat any of what I make

23) I rarely answer phone calls. Text me! Only very close friends and family's phone calls get answered.

24) I am still allergic to anything alcoholic

25) I love love love love being my husband's wife. :)

I'm Back!

Oh how great it is to be back in blog-land! It has been a while friends and I am so happy that I have finally gotten the chance to sit down and relax.

My excitement for the holidays have brought me into this hiatus. Spending every day pretty much doing what I do every day anyway except when I baked, I baked in huge batches because I get extremely generous during the holidays. It all felt great! Also with all the baking, I also did a lot of sewing and broke both of my sewing machines while I was making my own table napkins. Yes, both!

 

I had picked up a set of napkins at the store before I decided to make my own but the white seemed boring. Then I went and looked, but none suited me. So I made my own! And I love the punch of color it added to my table.

 

I did end up with six chairs before the holidays came so I added to the whole repertoire as the holidays drew near. I busted out all our silver, goblets, apothecary jars, and everything we have that shimmers and all that smell good and set the table like we were hosting a fancy dinner every night. But really, the reason why I did this is because other than I want the table and the kitchen to look pretty all the time, I also want to discourage people from throwing their stuff on my table, cluttering it. It is a pet peeve of mine. *winks*

 

So other than our cat, Voodoo, no one has had the guts to mess up this pretty set up. Nobody dared touch the fragile stuff either, not even John. He is the bearer and the spreader of all clutter in this house. :)

During my short hiatus, I also managed to host a few dinners with teenagers and adults both and a new year's eve party, learn how to crochet [now working on an afghan] and managed to get a very brand spanking new sewing machine for Christmas! I had such a wonderful time during the holidays hosting parties and having people over and sharing great food. There is nothing better to do but this.

My girls Natalie and Megan making cookies for the other kids that were coming to our Ugly Christmas Sweater party.

Thumbprint cookies with a strawberry preserve topping and chocolate ganache

I also shopped... a bunch! This fruit bowl is an awesome buy from Crate and Barrel. I got it when we had to go to the actual store to pick up one of John's gifts for me at the store. :) You can see the bottom of said gift in the background. He got me the piano white clock!

Here's John attempting to eat a whole pie during Christmas morning. He did eat the whole pie by the way.

 

And here's said clock from John hanging in my kitchen! I love weird- looking things.

 

And then, it snowed. Then I was happy. I love snow. But it's not nice to be stuck... So...

 

the awesomest Dad ever came to the rescue and brought the snow blower so we can get out of our garage. :)

 

Snow is sooo beautiful at night. I enjoy taking pictures of it and of the things it covers.

 

 

 

I also got a new phone. If you ask John he will say "Yeah, she stole my upgrade." I did take his upgrade but I didn't steal it, but given the circumstances I did steal it. My phone broke four months before my contract is up. 

 

And, yes, I do listen to a lot of Puddle of Mudd and other noisy things. The creative part of my brain functions better with noise, the kind I like. And I love my Samsung Galaxy S3.

NYE dessert

My wonderful husband put up a new light for my craft room.

The best gift for myself ever! I got me a glass top for my craft desk so I don't have to worry about dumping paint or anything on it.

John binged one day at the Guitar Center and bought him a guitar

Also, during the holidays, I have been wanting to re-do the pillows on my sofa but couldn't quite figure it out how I could do that because I was very sure I wasn't buying new pillows because I already have a ton to start with. So, I decided to I was going to venture into making pillow covers with piping. Since I moved to the states and realized how expensive it is to have anything tailored to your liking, I made it a point to learn and hone every skill I have in my arsenal and do whatever it takes to get good. I'm just thankful, I have a husband and a whole family of supporters and encouragers. 

You wouldn't know me to be a Susie Homemaker looking back 7 or 8 years ago. A lot has happened since then. I have grown up and have realized there IS more to life. My priorities have insanely changed and my outlook has widened way beyond I thought it would after I got married. And I am loving every single second of it all. There is not a better feeling knowing that what I do matters a great deal and I am grateful for all these gifts I have been blessed with that I didn't know existed until I married the most wonderful, most supportive man. He is really handy too and he is the reason why I could pull off most of the things that I do. :)

So I am back. I'm hoping to post more recipes and projects on here very very soon.

Laterz,

Chocolate Chip Cookies, etc

Hello friends! Hope everyone has had a great mid-week. It's been kind of a run-all-errands kind of day for me and by the time I got done with all of it, I was ready to crash but alas, I still had supper to make. So I did that too. When I got dinner out of the way, I remembered I did have a recipe I wanted to try. I've told you all so many times how when I want to relax, I bake. So here I go...

This thing has been all over twitter... Chocolate Chip Cookies with cornstarch. Really, take out the baking powder and use the same amount of cornstarch as you would baking powder. The claim is: They are supposed to be soft when they bake and the batter should have an ice cream like texture.

And these are my findings:

• the batter is thicker and ice cream-like. 
• the dough retains its shape as it bakes [given you use a scoop and not a regular spoon to portion the dough out] check out how mounded the baked cookies are in the photo below.
• it doesn't brown up as rapidly as the regular chocolate chip cookie dough with baking powder. Usually at about 9 minutes, chocolate chip cookies would be golden brown. These weren't. But I took them out of the oven anyway because they looked done [and they were].
• According to my taste testers they are SOFT and GOOEY. To quote what Will said when he took his first bite, "Oh my God, this is soooo amazing!" And I believe him, because he rarely says anything about anything. So when he speaks, believe that every word that comes out of his mouth is from his heart.

 

The photo below is the second batch of dough that I baked for 10 minutes instead of the usual 8. They don't have darker brown edges, which I LOVE. I do not like burned cookie dough, it's bitter. Gross. I looked at the bottoms of them and they weren't burned either.

So guess what cookie recipe is going to make it in my holiday baking this year? I think you already can tell! :) I will share the recipe soon as I am able to transcribe all these gibberish that I wrote down on my notebook while I was baking the cookies.

 

Also, I did get a new addition to my kitchen last night. My facebook friends on my personal account have seen photos of it because I got excited and just went crazy and posted them. Here's a pic.

 

This used to be just an empty little corner behind our kitchen island and I have been wanting so bad to have a place for our Keurig because even how much we love it, it does take a ton of counter space... So my handy dandy husband put this together for me and now this little space doesn't seem so lonely anymore. I didn't want anything too permanent here because a double wall oven is in the cards for this room when it's time to replace the appliances, which isn't soon. The cabinet is from Ikea. I love the red and the glass on the top drawer. It's darling. There is a runner on top because we are getting a glass top for it and we don't want to ruin the top before we could protect it.

I am grateful for a really handy husband. :) He is just the best. Everything that is in this nook is a gift from him. He knows me too well and I've said this over and over again in multiple posts, I am not the girl to buy flowers or jewelry for. I'm very highly allergic to pollen, it's like poison to me... And I don't have any use for jewelry. Period. So he buys me stuff that I actually enjoy using from stores that I enjoy shopping from [Crate and Barrel, CB2, Pottery Barn, Pier 1, West Elm, Ikea, Restoration Hardware, Anthropologie, etc] He adds into it every time he feels generous, which is always. :) That's one of the reasons why I love him.

Laterz,

Hello There!

Hello! 

I hope everyone has had a nice Halloween. We didn't do anything halloweeny [no, that's not a word]. I am not a big fan of the holiday. It seems to me like it happens, kids/people overload on candy and then nothing...  So I don't invest time or money on it. I did end up channeling my energies into other things, like play with my Silhouette. :)

I finally got a Silhouette Cameo early in October. I say 'finally' because I have been planning on getting it for like a year and a half now and I got it at an unbelievably low price. Getting it was one of those right place, right time kind of thing. My Cameo only set me back $70 as opposed to the $269 price tag it has on Amazon or anywhere else. And it was very very brand new when I got it because the person I bought it from did not want it at all.

 

I have played with it a ton. And I have cut quite a bit of stuff from it... and I am very very impressed by all that I learned about the Silhouette Cameo in comparison to my Cricut Expression and the other stuff I have that has to do with the Cricut. Here's my list:

1) The Cameo doesn't require cartridges, unlike the Cricut. However you do need a computer with the Silhouette machines. But what crafter/paper crafter doesn't have one nowadays? Also, as a Cricut owner, it is an awful feeling paying $20 for a cartridge just so I would get the one or two images I have my eyes on. The Silhouette images only cost 0.99 cents a piece and you can cut any .PNG, .JPG files you have on your arsenal. And if you have the Designer Studio software, you can cut .SVG files too.

2) The design software for the Cameo comes free with it. I paid at least $20 for the Cricut software. My bestfriend, Sara and I got ours from ebay and spent days, maybe weeks waiting for the right deal to come around. Then I spent at least $40 on Sure-Cuts-A-Lot just so I could use the fonts on my computer and non-Cricut .SVG files without depending on my cartridges. 

3) You had me at Print and Cut! Yes, the Silhouette has this capability and I didn't have to buy a totally different machine. I am able to print any image through my printer and cut them in my Cameo.

4) The detailed cuts are SUPERB! I can't tell you all how happy I was when I found out that I could load my vinyl into the machine without the mat! You could certainly NOT do this with the Cricut and there is no guarantee the Cricut blade won't rip your vinyl either. I am loving the presets on the Silhouette software.

5) I love the weight of the Cameo compared to the Cricut. I have tried to lug my Cricut around with me in the past, and none of them was a pleasant experience. I could probably load my Cameo in a plastic sack, that's how light-weight it is. 

6) The learning curve. To me, there is/was none. I am used to using the Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop and I am used to using paths, layers, adjustments etc. So for me, it was easy transitioning from the Cricut to the Silhouette.

I may have forgotten to mention some stuff, but the bottom line is, I love my Cameo. It is totally so much better than what I am used to.

 

John, my Husband has been wanting me to do this for a long long time. But I couldn't do it with my Cricut. I had forgotten about it until a couple of days ago while I was playing with the Illustrator and I bumped into it. So I laid the stuff out on AI and went to cutting this morning.

I also made this last week...

After I painted our kitchen, I found that getting rid of the wallpaper in there also required starting from scratch decorating-wise. So I really can't show much of it right now. It is in the works and John and I are in the process of figuring out the route we want to go design-wise for our kitchen because it has taken a totally different personality soon as I started rolling that grey paint on the walls. :) I wasn't surprised but it sure made me re-think our furniture choices and all kinds of other stuff. 

One of the things I had to re-think was our window treatment/s

 

We only have one window in the kitchen, but we have french doors leading into our back porch and backyard. There used to be lace everywhere in this kitchen. I love lace. Every time I go window treatment shopping, when I see lace, the search is over. This time around though, I decided against it but this doesn't mean I don't have lace anywhere in my house now. I have them all in my craft room.

I've seen a ton of these [photo above] on Pinterest. So I decided I'd give it a shot. I am on a sewing kick so this is a No-Sew project. I actually sewed the slats onto my fabric to secure it. The only tricky part is making sure that all the slats are on straight otherwise, your shade won't cover your window like it's supposed to. The level was my bestfriend during this whole process!

In addition to my subway art, I also added a few other things... I made sure we had a place for precious gifts and memoirs from loved ones. I am working on a really special display for Grandma Turner, John's Granny. In the process of making this house ours, we also don't want to forget that she is responsible for us getting it, and we want to make sure we are reminded every day of her and how wonderful she was. :) I will make a post for it very soon. 

I also did some shopping. Fall is when I do a lot of it because I love fall and winter, and this is also the time when summer clothes go on sale. So I go on a clicking frenzy online and spend most my days waiting for the UPS or the mailman to deliver the goods to me. I love shoes but we are very partial, we love Nike and I love Zappos.

 

 

Also got these gorgeous boots. They [may be] Nine West.

 

And last but definitely not the least, I put one of our trees up in the kitchen! :) To me, Christmas ALWAYS trumps halloween. I did buy two bags of candy, and made loots for my little buddies Reed and Riley [our friends' kids], everything else went to John's belly. He loves candy and he doesn't like sharing. 

 

So, I really didn't miss Halloween. :) I have had a really great time the past couple of weeks getting my house ready for Thanksgiving, Christmas and the New Year. I am ready for Christmas most of all. It's my favorite holiday. 

I'll be back soon for more updates. I am having a good old time working on our house. This has been a great year!

Laterz gatorz,

Twinkle

 

There's so much darkness around. Let your light shine!!! :) Create. Be happy. Make something. Give someone a hug. Tell someone you love them. 

Life is too short.