Bookcover for a friend!
His request was, he likes Vintage-y, brown, so I made this ;)

I’ll make this for any size of a book, I just need measurements.

He’s holding it upside down though! 

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Naraaaaaaaaaa!!
 


 
Is this Nara the Nara I’m thinking about? The pretty place in Japan with Daibutsu-sama? I think so! I wa sexcited tp find the little writing on the fabric I was working on this morning :)

 
And the final dress,
 

I think it’s cuter on a real person, with maybe, a head? :P I hope we can take pics of all the dresses we havnen’t taken photos soon! And I hope I can get someone who wears Medium to model for me! :P
 Well, I just hoped a lot of things! :)
 
Thank you for visiting, people!
 lovelovelove, hana

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Hello, everyone! I hope you had a great day today, finishing up all the things you didn’t wanna bring to NEW Year with ya! :)

It was a really windy this morning, and, made me wonder how much do you have to weigh to be blown away by wind? like, paper weight, how much does a piece of paper weigh? I asked Whitney, and he said no one has asked him the question before, and, I got jolly hearing that. That’s is all, my empty story is finished.
 

Our kitties love to sleep on the back top of our futon, they sleep there everyday! and they fight over it. Kiki’s the most regular customer at this place, but Milan, even though he’s a bit too big for it, sleeps there too. And, sometimes, Kiki’s sleeping there and Milan comes in and start biting her to steal her seat. that’s when we say, “Oi, butthead!” The word. “butthead” is used fairly often in this household. Yes, I did hear it’s a word little kids use a lot! :P

Here’s the angel Kiki pic, and “The Dude” on the background with the bedhead!

You wanna see another one, right??

 
And today, I can show you a pic of a dress! It’s been a while, but, take a look!

Please ignore the tights, I was just wearing that since this morning, and, you know, when you put on a tights, you either keep them on, or take them off. And, I didn’t wanna take them off, so I kept them on. Am I confusing you?? Anyways, it just means, I didn’t mean to style like this! :P

I love plaids. I’ve talked about this before. I didn’t think I liked them, but my designer friend calls me for awesome fabric sale deals, and the first things she says is always, “Hana!! I see this awesome plaid fabric, you love plaid! you’d love this one!!” and I thought, “…Do I love plaid??? Am I the plaid person??” That was the beginning. I hang up the phone and looked at my fabric condo, then thought, “Well I guess I Do love plaid!” I even have plaid section of fabric condos. Thank you, my friend, for letting me realize my love for plaid! Now I am aware, I love plaid, and if you see awesome plaid fabric on sale, gimmmmmmme a call!!! ..and polka dots, floral, and vintage, and psychedelic, and and and… just gimme a caaaaaaaaaall!!
 

I meant to talk about the dress, let’s get back to it. So. this dress is not quite finished yet, I’ve finished all the machine parts, and I have a bit of handstitching parts left. It will have 4 buttons on front. I should finish tomorrow and put another pic of the finished dress soon! Maybe that’ll be the first pic of 2009!

Ok! Now, let’s talk about FOOOOOOOOD! Whitney brought back a baguette(フランスパン？), we wanted to re-create the amazing bread we had at the French African restaurant we went last week. A baguette with olive oil, with herbs and olives in it!
BTW, a baguette doesn’t have eggs in it, I didn’t know that! It was exciting to know! :)
And to eat the baguette and with the olive oil, we though Japanese food wouldn’t be the best match, so, our lunch today is pasta! I use this recipe so often, Try it sometime! Original recipe
 

The olive oil was really good with the baguette too! I’ll share my recipe with you.

Dipping Olive Oil

• Olive Oil
• Dry herbs ( I had rosemary, Oregano, basil today)
• Sea Salt and Black pepper
• Picked olives ( the ones that comes in a bottle or can)

Mix all of them together, stir. I guess you can’t really call this a recipe, it’s too easy! I didn’t even measure it, I just poured olive oil, as much as I wanted to dip, and sprinkle all the herbs and sea salt/ pepper. I did that in the morning, and let them sit for a while, and before we eat, I added the olives. But, I think I could’ve added the olives in the morning too! :)
 

 And then, to the dinner!
 

 
yum yum yum. If you notice, we’re eating a leftover! Can yu tell which one? It’s the tofu one on the bottom right. We do sometimes, have some dish we can’t finish and eat at the next meal. That might make us less scary creatures than the ones who eat up so so much food you see everyday in pics on this blog! :P And we do, always clean up our food, we’re proud “Clean Plate Club” members!
 
Anyways, I think I’m gonna go make me some Chai tea with rice milk, if I can find Chai tea bags! hee hee :) I know I wrote a looong loooong entry today, I really appreciate you keeping up with me! Hope you have a wonderful New Year’s eve with the ones you love, and the ones that love you! Don’t forget to say “Happy New Year’s!” to your lovely animals too!
 love,
 hana

Posted in Brown Rice Project, Dresses, Fabrics, Recipes, animals, cooking, daily life, kitties | No Comments »

Hi All! Hope you had a wonderful day today! Did you notice we’ve been making this blog page different? Do you like it? We’re still working on it, please come back to check often! :)
 
Well, it’s almost the end of the year… hm, I still haven’t finished the “the end of the year cleaning”, the Japanese tradition that I haven’t quite kept up since I came here ! :P
 
But at least we (Whitney) finished the last laundry of the year! Thank you, Whitney! And I worked on organizing the house more, I did not get much done at all. BUT! I did find the denim skirt I had been looking foe ever since we moved here! It’s my favorite skirt I’ve ever made! :) And we changed the air in the house with all our windows open, it felt so so good, and somehow brought me the air of Japanese Big Cleaning Day atmosphere, it was a great feeling. I’m so glad it was kinda warm today and I was able to keep the windows open without freezing to death! :P

 
So, I was gonna make Shu-mai and brown rice for dinner. I hadn’t decided on others, but I had those 2 things already on my mind, so I had a dried mushroom soaked in water to soften, and also you can use the water for broth for miso soup. but, look how big this dried mushroom is!!!
 

Well, I should’ve put something next to it, so you could actually see how big it is, you can ask Whitney, he seemed super impressed! Also, I had to get the brown rice ready in advance to let it soak for at leat 6 hours, then I thought of a project. I always hear white rice is already dead but brown rice is still alive, so if you keep them in water, they will sprout! Dooooo youuuuu think it’s true?? I’ve been curious, so I’m going to test them out! And I will try to keep a diary of my brown rice till they sprout or rot, it could be that japanese brown rice and the brown rice I have are different… we’ll find out!
 

 

 
and for lunch we had Yakiudon! We had been craving it! Finally we got them in our tummy, and made our tummy jolly.

 

 
And I got a card from my mom, giving me a teary eyes with her sweet words! We appreciate it, ハハ！


 
Speaking of my mom! I wanted to show you some fabrics she sent me! They are all so great, my friends love them too! I think she picked all the ones I like…how weird that we have the same taste now, but, very awesome!
 


 
And, to finish up this long blog entry, is our dinner! I think I mixed up kinda Western, Chinese, Korean and Japanese all together in one meal. Well, it was all yummy! :)
 


 
Thank you for coming to peek my blog, I hope you have a wonderful night, and wonderful tomorrow! :)
  love,
 hana
 
 
Ooh, I almost forgot!! How could I leave you without the kitty pic of the day! (even though we took this pic on Friday) Doesn’t Milan look miniature?? our lovely kitties!!
 

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