On the Table

I never make Easter cards. But I didn't make Valentine's Day cards this year, so instead I'm sending out a handful of Easter ones instead.

On another note...a friend posted this photo on Facebook. It turned my stomach and cracked me up at the same time. So I had to steal it from her, but she stole it form someone else.
There are just so many things wrong with this. I guarantee this will never ever be on my table.

On the Table Monday

After spending some time at that Scrapbook Expo on Thursday, I've been on a bit of a creative streak. Here are a couple of things I've made in the past day or so.
I drew my inspiration from this card that I had pinned onto Pinterest 40 weeks ago. I still like their card better, I think the solid colors work better for a chevron pattern, but I'm satisfied with my version. I'll just have to make another card with solid colored paper.

I'm going to try to include a photo with the tools I used to create the card, kinda like how I try to include a photo of the ingredients (à la pioneer woman) whenever I share a recipe.
Aside from the paper, I used 3 different sized scallop punches to make the flower. The diamond punch for the cheverons - I punched 40 of them and glued them on individually. The swirls and birds embossing folder, embossed in my Cuttlebug (see below), a black ink pad and stamps from CTMH.

This whimsical little bunny card is inspired by Karen Burniston's pop'n cut dies from Sizzix.

When the card is opened up, it has a pop-up image in the center. I just added a little sentiment, but any image could be glued onto it.

I needed my Cuttlebug to use the pop'n cut die (it's below the ink pad) and the base tray to use the die. I also used 2 oval dies (1 regular, 1 scalloped) for the front image, and the bracket square die for a layered piece on the pop up. Most of the stamps were from Penny Black colored with alcohol ink markers. The sentiment is from CTMH.

On the {crafting} table

In January, I mentioned that I was starting a new project for the year, Project Life. We're 7 weeks into the new year and so far I've kept it up.

Week 2: Jan 6th-12th
Finished the quilt I started in May. Humiliated myself by walking hard into a glass door and extended the humiliation by posting it on FB, which seemed to make my friends laugh a lot. Doris and I visited our friend June who suffered a series of small strokes during the holidays. The photo I have in this album is from 2 1/2 years ago.

Week 3: Jan 13th-19th
Saw a couple of movies: "This is 40" and "Zero Dark Thirty". Jimmy and I went ice skating at Union Square when it was 40 degrees out at 11pm. Visited the princess niece and ninja nephew (who are shy).

Week 3 addendum
I did an extra page with photos from our anniversary road trip to Point Bonita and Rodeo Beach.

Week 4: Jan 20th-26th
Jimmy was oh so very sick for 4 days. But by Saturday night, he was feeling well enough to go to Supercross in Oakland.

Week 5: Jan 27th-Feb 2nd
Jimmy left for a 10 day work trip to Austin then Boston. Wanted to see "Les Miserables" before the Oscars. Drove down to San Diego County with my MIL and SIL (who are shy) for Ashley's shower.

Week 6: Feb 3rd-9th
Superbowl Sunday! The 49ers were in it, but lost against the Ravens. Playing dolls with shy Princess niece. June passed away on 2/3/13, she was 92. Jimmy came home from Boston right before a big storm hit. His flight was one of the last ones out of Logan Airport before it closed for 2 days.

Week 7: Feb 10th-16th
We were in San Diego during my SIL's birthday so we waited till this weekend to celebrate. Explored Dolores Park. Valentines day. The bay bridge got a new lighting installment! So cool!

I have a couple more cards on my crafting table:
I'll use them for my exchange cards for stamp club next week and the week after.

On the Table Monday

Even though it's been months since I've done an "On The Table" post, I decided to compile some of the miscellaneous food snapshots I took this month into one post. I notice I tend to post a lot of food photos on Instagram. I'm not sure why, but food photos tend to overpopulate that app. Here are some that I shared there as well as one or two I haven't posted anywhere except here.
Broccoli is one of my favorite veggies. My favorite part is the stem. Sometimes I feel like I'm alone in this, so I posed the question "Stem or Crown?" on Instagram and overwhelmingly, most people prefer the crown. Only 1 friend likes the stem, too. How about you? Do you eat the stem or just prefer the crown?

Trader Joes is my favorite grocery store. I think most of my California friends feel the same. They have a great cheese selection. One day last week I saw this "Chocolate Cheddar Cheese". Hum...sounds...interesting. But I had to try it. I looked for the smallest piece because...well...what if I didn't like it? Well...turns out...that I didn't like it. It was...weird. Odd. Unusual. The cheese was good sharp cheddar, except that it was too salty. It was the dominant flavor. Then out of the blue I'd taste the dark chocolate and it's like "what the heck is that oddball flavor mixed into this salty cheese???" Sometimes the chocolate flavor would be subtle, I'd almost be like "huh, what was that?" but then the next bite I'd be like "yikes! what was that???". Plain and simple: No sir-I don't like it.

I went 6 weeks without getting my Farm Fresh To You box because my delivery fell on Christmas Day so they just cancel the delivery all together. But I was very happy with this winter box: 10 Mandarin oranges, 2 navel oranges, 2 meyer lemons, 4 apples, 1 butternut squash, bunch spinach, 4 bunches bok choy and a bunch carrots.

So after making 6 batches of caramels in December, I felt like Jimmy and I needed a little sugar detox for the month of January. Not completely stop eating sugar because, well, it's me and Jimmy and that'd be like cutting out air. But just lower our sugar consumption by a bit. I'm not sure how well we succeeded, but we made a little bit of an effort most of the time. Except when we went out to the movies one friday night with our movie buddy and saw Zero Dark Thirty then went across the street to the diner and we all had milkshakes. We've lived here 2 1/2 years and that's the 1st time I've been to that diner. And it was the 1st time I've had a black and white milkshake. Which, if you don't know, is chocolate and marshmallow. I had no idea. When I ordered and the waitress asked "you know that's chocolate and marshmallow, right?" I played it cool, nodded and said "yea." {liar}. But I like chocolate and marshmallow so what the heck. Well it was OMG delicious. But hopefully I'll try to limit it to once every 2 1/2 years. Because seriously. Anyone who knows me IRL (in real life) knows that I consume enough Ghirardelli ice cream that I can't afford to add another type of ice cream based snack to my already very long list of vices.

Someone in our household caught the flu. The other person in our household made homemade chicken soup and was constantly disinfecting every surface and washing hands. It helped. I had 1 bad day and now I'm not entirely sure if I actually caught the flu or just had a 24-hour bug or really bad allergies or what. But, knock on wood, I've managed to escape the nastiness that kept Jimmy home and sick in bed for 4 days last week. He's still not 100%, but he's better.

Since he really doesn't eat veggies, he's been eating more fruit to try to get more antioxidants. I have a love/hate relationship with pomegranates. They're kind of a cool fruit and their seeds are pretty tasty, but you seriously have to have patience to de-seed one. Trader Joes sells them in a small carton already de-seeded, but they're not as good. I learned a little trick that helps a bit. Cut the pomegranate into quarters, then hold it in your hand, seeds down, and wack the skin w/ the back of a wooden spoon. It helps loosen the seeds. But it can be super messy if the pomegranate is overly juicy. Martha Stewart wacks it till all the seeds fall out. I just wack it 10 times or so. Almost 1/2 of the seeds fall out, and the rest are loose so they're easier to pull off. It still takes 15-20 minutes, but that's about 1/2 the time it used to take me.

Do you take a lot of food photos? If so, join me on my "On the Table Monday" meme. Of course, it's not limited to food...

On the Table Monday

It's been a long time since I've done an "On the Table" post. I'm trying to get back in the habit of posting a couple times a week, so I thought I'd bring this meme back for a while. As always, if you'd like to post your own "on the table" posts, it's always fun to see what you're collecting or working on.

My mother-in-law is the best pie maker in the world. So I really don't know what I was thinking when I decided to make a pie a couple of weeks ago. Actually, I know why. I had been making blackberry cobbler and Jimmy mentioned that maybe he'd like it better in a pie...more berries, less breading. So I gave it a go.

With the husband's approval, I used a store bought crust. Mistake #1...though it looked pretty enough.
Mistake #2 was I probably followed too many different instructions from too many recipes.
Since I've never baked a berry pie before, I looked up recipes from my favorite recipe site, allrecipes.com. So many recipes with similar ingredients but vastly different instructions. Bake at 350 for 1.5 hours. Bake at 425 for 35 minutes. Bake at 1200 for 10 minutes then down to 200 for 7 hours. Just kidding on that last one. Don't go baking a pie at 1200 degrees please. Oh and the recipe on the box of crust had different instructions, too. What to do??

Well, I decided to bake at a temperature somewhere inbetween, 375 I think. Then kept an eye on it. Mistake #3.
It looked pretty good, right? Wrong. The bottom crust, even though when I pulled it out of the oven and cautiously lifted the pie over my head so I could see if it was baked, fearing that I would spill hot berry filling over my face, deceived me. Because it looked cooked, but it wasn't. It was raw. yucky, doughy, gooey raw, store bought pie crust. Blech.

But we still made an attempt to eat it.
Heck, we could just not eat the bottom crust, right? Well, sort of, except that because the pie was soooo soooo liquidy, the raw pie crust kinda gooed all up into the filling. So what I don't get is why the pie was soooo liquidy. This pic doesn't even show how much juice was in that pie. I tried to drain it. Some of the recipes hinted that there might be a bit of liquid in the pie when baking. I added flour, just like all the recipes said to do, maybe that was suppose to soak up some of that liquid?
I donno.
But what I do know is that I'll leave the pie baking to my mother-in-law.

On the Table October

I haven't posted anything on the table since June so I thought I'd do 3 photos in one post...

On the coffee table. A new acquisition that I got at the Harvest Festival, handmade from an artist in Oakland. His inspiration was Van Gogh's Starry Night.

On the table at the chocolate shop. This amazing chocolate shop has a menu item of 2 pieces (or 4 or 6) and coffee of your choice. I was tempted to never go to starbucks in the city ever again. Their chocolate is the just about best i've ever had, but their coffee isn't up to par.

On the hideway dining table. Addressing my halloween cards.

On The Table Monday

Staples on my kitchen counter.
-Bread: Francisco Int'l Sourdough
-Tomatoes: cherry and roma
-knives
-small tourquoise bowl for onion and garlic
-larger handmade pottery bowl for potatoes
-Lucereo Olive Oil and Balsamic Vinegar
-Wooden salt shaker and pepper mill
-Small yellow container of kosher salt
-Small white container of Maldon sea salt crystal flakes
-Personalized spoon rest with my name on it

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On the Table 8

I'm in Palo Alto @ Printers Inc Cafe reading an amazing book.

Time fo r a refill.

On the Table 7

Jimmy looking something up on his phone while we wait for our dinner.

On the Table 6

I'd love to tell you that the reason I didn't get to my On The Table post yesterday was because we spent hours lingering over dinner at an amazing French restaurant, but alas, that would be a lie. In reality, I don't like fighting the crowds on nights when every single restaurant in San Francisco is packed. Because not only are the residents of San Francisco enjoying a meal with their beloved, so does of the rest of the Bay Area. San Francisco is a romantic city and couples from Concord, Fremont, San Jose, Palo Alto and beyond love coming into the City for a special meal with their sweetheart.

But we enjoyed dinner at home, I made salmon with rice and roasted tomatoes. And Jimmy's favorite dessert in the world, chocolate chip cookies.I'm lucky that my sweetheart likes the simple things best. No muss, no fuss and a nice dinner at home, just the two of us.

But I did do a bit of valentine's crafting on Thursday at Elizabeths. Check out these adorable treat holders and card.

On The Table 5

Fun On the Table stuff to share today!

Went to dinner with Doris at an awesome Thai hole-in-the-wall called Thaiger Thai Kitchen. Love that name. It may be a little hole in the wall, but the food was cloth napkin quality.
I had the chicken basil and chili. All entrees come with a delicious soup, itty bitty but tasty egg roll and samosa, a green salad, edamame and rice. All for around $8.

Then Doris and I met up with the rest of our crafting friends. Tonight was my turn to teach the project.
We made these cute trifold wallets.
When you open the wallet, it opens into 3 'pages':That each have small folded cards that open up...
to show your message inside.

A compact little greeting that can brighten up someones day when she opened it up to read the messages within.
Would also be fun to attach a giftcard in the center 'card' for a birthday gift.

I got my inspiration here. She intended hers as a photo wallet and that idea would be super cute, too. Imagine grandparents whipping out this adorable wallet to show their friends beloved photos of their grandkids. Or even kids using them to show off their trading cards.

Can you think of other cute ideas this would be useful for?

On The Table 4

Today was a good day. I've been sick. Again. For more than a week. But today was the 1st day that I finally felt, oh...maybe 95%.

I felt well enough to get together with my crafty friends. Actually, I've been out and about since Thursday. Perhaps I really shouldn't have been. But I had 3 full at home resting days and I just couldn't let life pass me by any longer. Ok, I have to admit that I think I got one of my close friends sick (sorry Doris!) and Jimmy's now sick, also. Haven't heard from Elizabeth yet, but I hope she's ok because I gave it to her the last time. I warned her this time, but she said she wasn't worried about it.

Anyhoo, that's why I missed my San Francisco Friday post. Just wasn't feeling up to it. Even though I still went out and crafted. With Doris. Thus her not feeling quite right today.

Let's get back to the topic, shall we?

On the Table!
Tonight, Sharon showed us how to make a cute accordion origami folded mini album. This is my finished album. The 1st photo is her sample.

Untie the ribbon and it opens up into this cute 3"x3" accordion album. Cool reflection on the marble counter top, huh?

Here's another view of it kind of from above without the distracting reflection.

Wanna make one, too? Sharon got her inspiration from here.

On The Table 3

These little SF guide book/cards are in our entry way, 1st thing we see when we get home, last thing we see when we leave. I've had the 52 adventures in SF for over 10 years and the San Francisco City Walks for probably 4 years and my SIL gave us the eat.shop san francisco book to us when we told her the news about our move.

On the Table

These are a few of the non-crafting items I couldn't part with during the big getting-rid-of-stuff-before-the-big-move. My sweet friend, Miss A, gave me these beeswax candles over the past couple of years. The first one she got me was the wax bear, then the sunflower and most recently the cat (which i see is out of the photo). They're so cool, but I'd never ever be able to light them. They are on display in my bedroom on my bookcase...ok ok, technically not a table, but the great thing about making up a creative weekly challenge is being able to make up your own rules. I encourage you to do the same!

So excited that Kristina and Shammie decided to play, too! It'd be a lot of fun if you wanted to join in as well! Just post a photo of anything on your table...kitchen, coffee, dining or even bookcase if you wanna cheat a little.

On The Table

I found this blog a few months ago from blog hopping and I like the idea. I've taken several photos from the table's perspective for several years. I like how stuff looks from that angle. And now with cell phone cameras making it so easy to take the quickest snapshots, it's a breeze to take photos of stuff on a table. So I'm thinking about doing a weekly challenge for myself, maybe my Monday challenge, to take and post photos of stuff on my various tables or various tables I happen to have sat at, like restaurants, libraries or offices.

Today's On the Table is kinda boring but might turn out to be a reoccurring theme considering my love of coffee. I try to only drink it once a week, but let's be honest. It's more like 2-3x a week. simply because coffee shop proximity to my current abode is plentiful.
Sometimes cell phone pics aren't the best quality.

And here's a flashback "On the Table" photo from 2004.We were driving from NYC to Boston and stopped at Mystic Pizza in Mystic, Connecticut. A fun little highlight of the trip because of the movie Mystic Pizza, filmed on location in 1988.

Anyone care to join me on my "What's on your table" weekly challenge?