Stab stitch binding!

This is the first book I bound hard cover with notebook paper  and hard cover covered with a fabric material! The tutorial for this was on youtube.  There were a lot of different videos but the best one was blueheronarts.  I found it to be most useful to watch but almost all the "japanese Stab Stitch binding" videos were good too.  Good luck if you give it a try.

My plates got stolen and I didn't know what to do.  Luckily I got my registration renewal, we looked for their number.  They make it very very hard to find however we did.  Mind you we are in Texas so you may need to know your laws, but going in blindly, we contacted them.  They will request for your sticker and plate that remain if you had any plates on your car.  Mine were both stolen and I had a back plate with a different plate on it with ugly old bolts that were not mine.  Tip: learn and check your plates! After calling them I then reported to the police and they will ask name, address, when you last remember seeing your plates.  I didn't notice cause I didn't drive my car often.  I noticed today simply because the front plate was gone and the back looked weird to me. Sooner you catch it the better. The police will not need the plates but it's always better if they can have it and it won't hurt since the County Office may not really need it to issue new plates.  So now what? If you live in an apt let your apt office know what's going on so that they may be aware.  Put your new plates and sticker on the car. It's 6 bucks for you to get new plates and I went a bit further and got new bolts with special tool to take the screw off and on.  Financially it's not really worth it but it may save you the headache of having to deal with all these things.  Oh if you have toll tags you may need to contact them and let them know what happened.  Keep your case number with you just in case. Hope this helps if you get in a bind.

Update: as much as I would have loved to have used these my car did not have big enough holes. I went to pepboys to get some fasteners and they gave me personal one on one help with getting the plates installed.  The manager said however that if your plates are going to be taken it will no matter how much security  you try to put on the plates.  He said it's easy to just snap the plates off with a big pull and they wouldn't care about the damage that happened to your car.  So just know that no matter how safe you want to be it could happen.

FOOD? DOG TOY? BOTH? WHAT?

Here is just a snap shot of what I have made these last few days while I was waiting for my computer to get fixed. All the dog toys have squeakers in them.  It was fun to make and a wonderful "thank you" gift for watching our dog while we went out of town for the weekend.  My friend enjoyed them. If you want to know I got patterns out of Yummi' Gurummi and Tasty Crochet. I'll post more projects as I make more.

Handmade box with paw print as serving tray.

Dog  Toy Sushi: tamago, eel, salmon, cucumber roll, futomaki, and wasabi and ginger

Dog toy: Chicken leg

cork screw for a friend's luggage tag

Homemade Onion Pancake: Chinese Snack

I have a special additional post today.  I was asked to post the recipe for this scrumptious food that brings me back to when I was a little girl!  Onion Pancake can be found in the Asian Markets frozen food section and typically eaten when you have Jook or Congee soup.  I wanted some Jook but I didn't have anything to go with it but living in Texas who doesn't have tortillas and eggs? So here's what I did.
bowl big enough to fit a tortilla or a deep plate
frying pan
spatula
butter
3 eggs
2-3 stalks of green onions
dash of garlic powder
dash of seasalt
dash or few twists of pepper
Tortillas

Heat up pan and cut a pad of butter in pan,
In the bowl  mix eggs, chopped up green onion, garlic powder, seasalt, and pepper.
Then dip the tortilla  in the mixture and  once melted butter has glazed the pan put tortilla down
Put some of the egg and onion mixture on top and then take another tortilla and dip in egg mixture
place on top of the tortilla already in the pan and press on the edge of the tortilla til sealed and flip.
If it puffs up it's ok, once flipped it will deflate and grow again.
Once it's a golden brown place on paper towel and use scissors to cut them.
Enjoy!

Sun-Activation Polish and Stamping

It's summer and it's time for some nail color fun!  I discovered Blaze by Solar Active last year and enjoyed all the color changing fun.  I also discovered the idea of nail stamping by Konad, I loved the nail art you get and it's easy to do.  This year I also found that you can use xanthan gum (xg) to thicken your polishes if they are too runny but most importantly it's useful when you are stamping and don't want to pay for the "special" stamping polish.  Just to let you guys know this is not a tutorial on how these products work. If you are interested you can do a search on all these ideas and products on youtube or the companies.  This is just to show what I did and keep in mind you can do the same with different colors and stamps and the like.  I just already had these colors on my nails from a mani/pedi I  had done and it was ready to chip. So the companies:
Konad.com- stamping stuff ( amazon sells other companies too however Konad seems to be better than other brands.)
Essie.com- This is just polish
Xanthan gum - Thicken polish:  can go to a specialty health store ie: whole foods, or sun harvest, central market
Sally Hansen- nail polishes - combined to form one color
Blazenailpolish.com- uv (sun) changing polish

So here's what I got: one hand was in the sun the other hidden and this was a huge color difference of my nails: left was in the sun and the right was hidden from the sun.
Here's how I did it:

You know how I said I had a mani? Well I was playing with my stamping and messed up the polish so then I grabbed my own stuff and re-polished my nails.  Sally's double duty  and then essie fifth avenue, and then topped off with sally hansen's top coat. 

While it was semi drying I mixed Sally Hansen's polishes a version of silver :220, 22, 230 and mixed in some xanthan gum (to a thick consistency) for stamping (bottle with the blue lid).

Took the Konad stamper and stamped an image (put polish on image, scrape excess and roll motion over the image and then place on nail).

Then I covered with the blaze polish since it goes on clear and then turns black in the sun.  So in the end the nails will go from design to black out and it's just an interesting look.
Hope this finds you well.  Sorry it's not a tutorial but if you want let me know and I can go over steps if you like. Enjoy!

Water, Water, Quench the Hot Days of Summer!



 I appologize for errors in grammar and spelling. It's late night and stupid netbooks not responding well. I can't wait for my computer to come back.




So water is water and there's not really anything too interesting about it. When you need something cold nothing beats ice cold water. Lately, I've been making spa waters. I have been basically tossing all sorts of fruit and herbs to liven up the water and get some good vitamins and minerals and well it couldn't hurt after all almost everyone is adding lemons to their water. Lemons are great and all, but it kinda gets a bit old. Let's face it, if we infuse so many things why not with water? So without further a do here's two waters I've made:

 1st is something that's been online and is a clense: Spa Cleanse water or water to loose belly fat: ginger, lemon, cucumbers, mint.  This helps appearently with belly fat but I think if you look at each of the ingredients you will find that there's more benefits than just belly fat. I found after a day of drinking this, I wasn't really hungry, skin looked much better and overall it was not a bad drink. Looking online for health benefits I found that:

Cucumbers - cools blood, lowers blood pressure, cleanse kidney, improve skin and purifies bowels, helps

                      with digestion.

Lemon - High in vitamin C, B, phosphorus, helps with swollen gums, colds, fights rheumatism

Ginger - Fights colon cancer, helps with morning, and motion sickness, reduce pain and inflamation,

                heartburn relief, fight cold and flu, migraines, menstral cramp and helps prevent diabetic

                nephropathy (kidney damage)

Mint - brightens teeth, freshens breath, helps keep you awake, eliminates toxins, bacteria, fungus, rid

            headaches and migrains

Raspberry - antioxidant, anti microbial, potential to inhibit cancer cells

Blackberry - fights obesity, also antioxidant, reduces risk of intestinal disease, high fiber, fights heart

                     disease, improve eye sight and helps with diabetes.

2nd water was Spa water: raspberry, blackberry, mint, ginger, lemons.  This water was just one of those things you look at and think what would sound good together.  I also like that the berries give a different feel to the water.  I hope you enjoy the waters and take time to look up different fruits and herbs you can mix and get health benefits from it all.  Enjoy it all! I'll post more waters as I start making more.

  



BP happened in my trunk (oil spill)

So the other day I had an oil spill in the trunk of the car.  Almost a full container spilled. Through lots of drying, washing and headaches.  Through searching online I have not found an exact cleaning method that suited me. I have tried so many different ways and I finally got it mostly clean and luckily it was a removable trunk insert! So how do you get oil out the carpeted trunk? Well here goes:
1. You can try to get cat litter and try to rub out all the excess oil which helps. 
     Pour cat litter on the liner and rub with hand across the soiled area to get it to soak the oil.
2. Take it to the car wash and use some dawn along with maybe a degreaser.
     Scrub the insert as the car soap is pumping out and then use the power washer to get it out. 
3. let it hang dry or dry in the sun.

If it's still greasy which I have found this to be the case go to day 2:
1. Get a stain remover special for cars, usually it has a scrubber on the lid.
     shake, spray and scrub.
2.  Blot dry with towels or you can wait for it to dry and vacumm.
      I blotted and let it dry in the sun.
3.  Touch to find greasy spots  which it still does have some but for the most part it is cleaned off.  I plan to try it again for a final time. 

Should you need to use your trunk after this I would suggest to get a trunk liner and see if that may protect things you place in your trunk.  Good luck!

30 ways in 30 days Hair Challenge

I just finished 30 ways in 30 days: Here's 30 ways to do hair that is shoulder length (barely). No heat or hairspray, just hair bands, headbands, pins and curl formers which I love!!! They just give you the ribbon like curls and holds pretty much all day! These styles were 10 min or less in the morning so no time to perfect but it does give you an idea of where I was going with the style.  Hope you have fun doing these too!

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