Hanging Frames Somewhere

Posted on September 29, 2009 by Juliet Tiu

This may be one of my more visibly Martha Stewart-esque home decor crafts. I collected a few leaves around our neighborhood and pressed them in between the pages of a heavy phone book (Yeah, that’s what they’ve been reduced to. Never mind actually looking up phone numbers in them.) You’ve got to love autumn leaves. The colors are outstanding. Ginkgo leaves might be my favorite next to maple leaves. I forgot about my ginkgo leaves drying- for a year! But I re-found them, and added them to the maple leaves and red oak leaves from the backyard. The question is, where do I hang these up?

I was originally going to hang them in our guest bathroom in the basement. But they’re so pretty, they could go in our dining room or maybe our bedroom? You see the struggle I have with hanging pictures and frames? I probably would have more things up on the wall if it wasn’t for my complete lack of faith that I’m placing them in “just the right spot”. This is also just one reason why I’m not an interior designer or decorator.

Should I Use These for Grocery Bags?

Posted on August 28, 2009 by Juliet Tiu

You know when your family or relatives go on vacation and they bring back a little something as a momento from their trip? It’s a nice gesture, right? I think it is. Normally. But why these designs? Seriously, is my sense of style that hard to read that my relatives purchase these very, uh, unique totes?

Totes from afar

It’s not that I don’t appreciate my family’s thinking of me while away on their tours. The tote on the far left is beaded, crazy beaded. Where would I use this? And the tote with the woman came with it’s own makeup/satellite bag. My daughter thought that bag was slightly creepy. And, the one on the bottom is newly acquired, even though the date on it is the year 2000. Note to family: if you feel like you want to buy something, really, just spend it on my kids. They LOVE it when you come with small treasures from abroad. They have stories to tell their friends like, “My grandparents got this for me in Paris.”

So, do I take these totes to the grocery and use them until they fall apart? I suppose they could be good dress-up material for the kids. Library book bags? Ooh, white elephant gift!

Rain Barrel at Work

Posted on August 26, 2009 by Juliet Tiu

Our 55 gallon rain barrel filled up so fast, which is great, and then it started spilling over. That was expected. The problem is WHERE it was spilling into.

Rain barrel at work

Soil was getting washed away, and water was just pouring right underneath our driveway. It probably disturbed critters living there, if there were any at all. But the big concern is that the soil backfill is just eroding, and soon we might have a big problem with our basement flooding, or driveway sinking, or who knows. The weather calls for more rain tomorrow, so we emptied the barrel into the side yard which hardly gets wet from the rain since it’s shaded by a big tree on our neighbor’s lawn.

We’re thinking about painting the barrel someday. See here for some examples!

Amazing Spray Paint

Posted on August 23, 2009 by Juliet Tiu

We turned our white air vent registers into beautiful hammered bronze registers, all with a spritz of spray paint. Love those Rustoleum products!

Hammered bronze - after

It was a lot less expensive than buying the actual decorative cast metal ones that we have in our dining room. But, we love those covers too.

In the hallway

Close up of hammered finish

We decided to spray paint the ones in the living room, too. Just a few more to do around the house…

There’s Gluten-free Filipino Food?

Posted on August 21, 2009 by Juliet Tiu

Went to Assi International (pronounced ah-see) in our neighboring suburb of Niles, IL. I like to refer to the market as the Asian mega-mart. This is not to say that I don’t shop at the other one nearby, Super H Mart, which is larger, but more chaotic to me. Not only does Assi have a great produce section, there’s every kind of Asian cuisine cooking product you might ever need: Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese, Thai, Filipino. Oh, and I also buy my Cafe Du Monde coffee there, Makes a great Vietnamese iced coffee, I hear, but I like mine straight from a French press. But I digress.

I’ll be heading there tomorrow (Saturday) because I need to get some fixin’s for a Korean BBQ lunch. We have some marinated rib eye (bulgogi) that we’ll grill. Who am I kidding…my husband will grill. I want to buy a few different kim chee (or sometimes kimchi, kimchee or gimchi), for you non-Asians that’s pickled vegetables with varying degrees of spice and seasonings. Some of them are so red with chili heat, my forehead starts sweating just looking at it. I wouldn’t even touch the stuff before, but I’ve gotten used to the taste, and it really does lend a nice flavor if you eat it along side of your grilled meat and rice.

If you go on a weekend, they often have samples of products and you might be lucky enough to eat the right amount of food for a light meal. So, last weekend, my family and I were walking through the frozen section and we saw an elaborate setup of Filipino food by Pronto Foods. Holy cow, they had all sorts of fried spring rolls: chicken, pork, plantain. Actually the plantain spring roll is called turon, and there are different kinds other than plantain: Ube (taro root/purple yam), ube and cream cheese, plantain with cream cheese. They were sampling this with a gluten-free wrapper (corn) that had been fried three hours prior. It was still crispy! Definitely not oily, either. I was impressed. Granted, they weren’t shaped like traditional turon, which is wide and sort of rectangular. These were more like cylinders, a bit bigger than a cigar, I think. We’re looking forward to trying it at home.

**Update – taro root and ube are totally different. While they are both monocots, they are different plant species.

Filipino Food Turon Spring Roll

One of the Pronto Foods representatives who was working that afternoon, Eddie Chua, gave me quite an in-depth explanation of their cooking philosophy and product formulation. This was all okay because my kids and husband were busy sampling their full-size chicken siopao (steamed bun) and other spring rolls. So, he told me, as if in secret, to come back this Saturday because they were going to sample their crab rangoon, which has REAL crab and a cheese blend rather than cream cheese. Maybe we’ll run into Eddie again.

Hosting the Bridal Shower

Posted on August 19, 2009 by Juliet Tiu

Bridal Shower

Shower Day was fun with an intimate crowd. It’s amazing how quickly it all happens after a few months of planning, but rest assured, we all enjoyed the afternoon. My sister-in-law’s maid of honor and friend, Megan, helped the night before.

Theme: Orange

Tabletop: Napkins had Gerbera daisies and stripes, drink umbrellas were perched in square vases with coffee beans, simple bouquet became three small arrangements.

Other decorations: pom-pom paper flowers and wire-edged ribbon

Menu: Vegetable pizza appetizer, veggie bites (aka crudites) with carrot-ginger dipping sauce, poached salmon sandwiches with orange wasabi mustard and asian pasta salad from All on the Road, chicken salad sandwiches, mac-n-cheese, fruit, marble cupcakes with edible flowers, candied orange peels with chocolate dipping sauce, and yellow cake.

Shower games: Who has the closest birthday to the wedding date? and Bridal Bingo

Shower Favor: individual, hand-packed tea bags (theme related) with personalized labels. In this case, we had Orange Orange Pekoe for the happy couple. Thank you, Sheila!