View from the top

View from the bottom

I made these on a whim! Zach tripped a bit and splashed coffee all over our white curtains. It kind of looked like splattered blood. It also didn’t help that he had just gotten laser eye surgery and joked, “Omg my eyes! Ahhh” as I came running over to see what the commotion was about. That plus the coffee “blood” splatter=freak out.

As the curtains were in the wash, I remembered I had bought some iron-on transfer sheet with the idea that I was going to decorate the bland white curtains with something. That was a year ago. So I finally got around to it today.

Wore this for Halloween at Atlus. I bought a bunch of felt and the cashier said “School project?” I’m 26! I haven’t had a crafty school project in 8 years.

It took me about 3 hours to make but I was working really slowly. I think I’m going to stuff it and hang it on the ceiling.

Video:

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Some singer took it for his music video for his mediocre song. I can’t find the original so this will have to do.

-EDIT- Here is the original! Yay!

Totally cried in the theatre and so did all the old people in the audience. At the panel after the showing, many people asked the director how he came up with the story how his parents felt… He said his mom asked why there was no mom in the story. hah!

This is similar to the Japanese short, La Maison en Petits Cubes (The House of Small Cubes) which won the Oscar in 2009.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uX0Dvtvev1E

I think I like the art of The House of Small Cubes better.

Frozen for 24 hours and now it's ready to make pops!

Outer shell is starting to freeze. To make filled popsicles, you suck out the juice with a straw and then pour in a different liquid. Ingenious!

I made these this afternoon. Black cherry iced tea with fresh lemon juice and a lemon slice frozen on the side. Frozen lemon mmmMmm.

It was so hot today that these were a perfect gift. It was an early present but it was just in time for the nice warm weekend.

There is something so beautiful about the science of food. We do it at least three times a day but we never really think about it. The photography itself is so yummy!

For more info, visit their website.

I wanted a classy wedding with nerdy undertones since we met playing World of Warcraft. It was still conventional: I wore a white dress, I had the appropriate wedding party, and the reception consisted of eating and dancing.

Here were the more interesting parts:

• Our recessional music was to the Theme of Star Wars, adapted for cello and violin by me.
• Our drink was called “Elixir of Cherry Blossoms” (my wedding flower)

Our wedding program contained a "buff" in the corner

Guests were seated to their tables named after locations in the mmorpg World of Warcraft. Seating arrangement was attached to a wreath of cranes. We made 1,000 cranes for the wedding.

This is was 1000 cranes looks like. We made them over the course of 5 months.

Each table had a description of the location and the story behind it.

Descriptions for some of the tables. We had 11 tables.

We had R2-D2 run around the dance floor.

• The wedding party walked in to the opening music in the WoW login screen, and I walked in with my husband to “Live to Win”
• We danced to “Earth Angel” from Back to the Future and the dance scene from Pulp Fiction. The video also sliced in Robot Chicken.

• My sister-in-law made World of Warcraft papercrafts that were spread out at the headtable.

Papercraft Moonkin

Frostmourne, Moonkin, Hearthstone, Goblin statue

The grooms cake was designed as a murloc wearing a top hat. You should have seen the look on the baker's face when we tried to explain to him what we wanted.

The cake came out really nice. We were very happy at the detailed results.

We made our own cake toppers in the shape of our avatars wearing appropriate apparel.

I’m not sure how this happened but I ended up taking more pictures of Tofu than family members. I met some new family members, and there were also some cute additions to the family, just like me! Except they were babies.

They had badminton set up and I hadn’t played since high school so that was fun. The net was set up too high so you couldn’t really smash it.

There were lots of other dogs too. Tofu was mostly shy and let other dogs sniff her. She’s more comfortable with the smaller dogs.

Some highlights:

Aqua made an awesome pirate doll. He was so creative, from the hook he made from taking out the pipe cleaner fuzz to the peg leg.

Tofu really enjoys the park and gurgling down water from the bottle.

Yummers

I added the cucumber slices for some color. It’s all about presentation! The noodles are also twirled into circles.

My first time making poached eggs. I love semi firm yolks with viscous yolk inside.

The dipping sauce. I didn’t have green onions so I put in julienne slices of cucumber. Cut by self because I don’t have a julienne slicer. I should probably invest in one.

This is his “eeeeeee” face. Excuse the mess…we’re in the process of moving.

Pick up…

And dip!

It was very refreshing and satisfying. It’s different from what I’ve been normally cooking. This isn’t something you can have everyday, though, because it’s easy to get sick of.

Anyhow, the best soumen I’ve had was in Kibune, Japan. It’s a special, kind, called nagashi soumen which means “flowing noodles.” After researching around, I discovered that I had to go to Kibune for its atmosphere. The area is very cool, even in the summer, and heavily forested with bamboos and trees. It is unique because the river runs through the strip of inns and restaurants which are built over the river and small waterfalls.

The restaurant we went to was called Hirobun

Here is a video that sums it up pretty quickly.

The train ride is about 30 minutes. We were lucky enough to get the new train with wide windows and seats that face outwards.

A a 30 minute walk from the station, we finally arrived to Kibune. There are several restaurants built over the river. Most of them have the expensive set meals.

A nice lady advertising her own restaurant pointed out how much longer we would have to walk to reach Hirobun. We felt bad. Most of the restaurants are split to two floors since the river flows downward with waterfalls.

The bottom floor. The top floor has low tables for the big set meals

Anticipating epicness

We wait for the waitress to set up before being seated there.

The nagashi soumen meal comes with a poached egg. Looooove.

After us, some Taiwanese people came down to eat as well. There are two tracks the noodles go on, and two sets of bamboo. There was also a Japanese woman who sat to the right of us. She took noodles from the top track and we took noodles from the bottom. The chef in the hut sends down the small bundles of soumen one at a time in spurts. For instances “one soumen, second soumen, one soumen in other track, wait…….one soume, second soumen, one soumen in other track, wait……” It gives you time to eat before you ready your chopsticks again.

The last noodle is flavored with ume to make it pink. That way, you know it’s over so you don’t sit there waiting for more noodles, variable interval style.

I totally recommend going to this place if you’re not afraid to get lost. Otherwise, be prepared to stare at train schedules and figure out platforms very carefully! I think it was totally worth it.

I also have some nice napkins that say Windows 7 on them.

I’ve been running Windows 7 for awhile now and last night I had to sign over to my other partition with Vista on it. Wow. I didn’t think there was a big difference going from Vista to 7, but last night I could actually feel it was slower. Granted it’s a bit more stuffy in there from 2 years of accumulated crud, but I’m pretty sure I can’t go back. I love the new taskbar that peeks at windows if you hover over them. I love the new snap that displays two equally sized windows side-by-side. And the middle “un-maximize the maximized window” button on the top right is pretty redundant now since you can just drag the topbar off from the edge of the screen and it’ll automatically become a smaller window, and fully maximize again if you snap it to the top of your screen.

Anyway, all is good in the world of my computer.