Hetalia America Cake

Like the past three years, we had a lovely family BBQ and fireworks show at our house for Independence Day.

But not to forget all my friends who were braving the crowds at Anime Expo in LA - I thought an APH America cake was in order!

"Watashi wa HERO!"

So for those of you who don't watch anime - Axis Powers Hetalia is a short (5 min episodes) show that portrays countries as different characters. Mainly WWII countries.  It's irreverent, funny and definitely cute. I think it's on Netflix and Hulu?

Anyway, America is my favorite, obviously.

He's so cute! And he has a hamburger! Alfred Jones!

I made him with whip cream and chocolate (for lines) using the same method as V-Day's Keroro cake (using Kawaii Kakkoii Sugoi's tutorial).  Since this was my second time, it came out a lot better - I made sure to make the cream even, so there weren't as many holes when I peeled it off onto the cake base.  However, I used a different box cake mix, a "moist pudding" type cake mix, and it was almost too soft.  Next time I will stick to a standard cake mix as it holds shape better.

You don't know how long it took me to mix red, green, blue and yellow food color into BROWN and KHAKI. Ugh. A lot of trial and error. But still, he's pretty cool!

Aside from cake, we also had BBQ and lots of other tasty food for the 4th.  Unfortunately our grill broke that day =_= so we ended up ordering BBQ from Armadillo Willy's. Kinda lame, haha. But it was still good so all's good.

At night, fireworks in Foster City.  We watched from our deck, with patriotic tunes blaring on Dad's ipod.

The 92 San Mateo Bridge in the background

Mom got some good shots this year!

'Murica!

V-Day Card 2k14

Ah, Valentine's day. Ever cheesy, but I kind of love all the pink and red and cutesy hearts! I'm being ambitious and thinking of cooking something for Sak today, but if that doesn't work out we'll get some fancy take-out or something.

I knew I wanted to use more of my plastic shrinky dink film for this year's card, so I made a little panda graphic, printed, cut, baked and glazed.

I ended up not making very many though. Charms are a lot more work than they look! Fixing all the jump rings on to attach it to the strap proved the most tedious part.

I love how they came out though, so fun!  I glazed it with clear nail polish, so hopefully it won't yellow like resin.

The base of the card is cuttlebug embossed, and a short message is glued to the back.

With that metal bump from the strap, they didn't all make it unscathed through the mail sorter.  My sister's envelope was all torn up at least.

Anyway, I hope you all have a wonderful Valentine's Day with your loved one - or a flirty eye encounter with a cute stranger if you're not in a relationship! Ha! I guess you could have a flirty eye encounter with your spouse too, but whenever I try that Sak just thinks I'm being weird.

Monterey Bay Holiday

The holidays are really nice when your grandparents live in Monterey.  Whether it's a trip to Candy Cane Lane, mulling around in Del Monte Shopping Center, chowder sampling at the wharf, kicking up sand at Dennis the Menace Playground, or just hanging out at the house - us cousins always have a good time.

Usually we oversleep and don't do much touristy stuff, but since Sak's brother was visiting us for Christmas this year, we decided to be more active :)

I'm usually lazy like this seal butt.

 With Cousin A, we rented a surrey on the Monterey bike path! Yes, we were those ridiculous people.

Too bad it wasn't a surrey..with the fringe on top. XD

The weather was abnormally warm and sunny!

I dunno what's up with Sak's gangsta pose. 

Sis: Really? This is so stupid.

We stopped at Cannery Row for drinks and fudge!

salt water taffy for days!

It was fun.  We finished up with a shared plate of fried calamari from the wharf. Mmm.

The next day we joined another batch of cousins - A, S, G, B, S and E - on a trip to the aquarium.  Paw Paw has a huge family membership is all I can say!

It was very crowded since it was a holiday weekend, but it proved a good opportunity to test my new point and shoot camera.  Half of my pictures are still always blurry, but I'm getting there.

This one is my favorite though - hidey ho neighbor.

Pokemon Chistmas Card

Another oldie, but here's a look at this year's Christmas card:

They are pokeball ornaments!

I didn't make too many of them because I was *cough* too busy playing Pokemon *cough*. >.>  I wasn't even sure if I should send them to my grandmothers or not because they are kinda, well, not cute or normal.

But my grandmothers would love me even if I sent a blank piece of paper, I'm sure, so Mom told me to send them anyway.

Anyway, originally I was going to draw all the ice cream pokemon on a postcard, but I ran out of time to get them printed.  Cut cards are nice and all, but they are very difficult to make in bulk!

Also, thanks to everyone that sent us cards this year!

Weddingbee Ornament Swap 2013

Belated, for sure, but here is the lovely sewing machine ornament I recieved from D'orsay this year:

 It's acrylic! Pretty cool!

I had Mrs. Camel's name, so I made a felty:

And a camel card!

I love this tradition. Maybe someday I'll be able to fill a whole tree with sewing machines. Ha!

And for funsies, here's Sak and Sak-bro in an ornament too:

Little Bunny Update

As Katsu and Mochi approached their seven month old mark, signs of puberty were present. Everywhere.  They both took to spraying urine outside - onto the floor, the rug, whatever was withing five feet of the cage. Gross.  Katsu (the dude) decided his cardboard oatmeal container would make a good bunny substitute..if you know what I mean.  Things were getting pretty nasty.

So after an endless game of phone tag (by both Sak and my mom (who pretended to be me, since I have phone-phobia)), we finally got an appointment for surgery at the local humane society.

The night before the surgery, I let each one out of the cage (one at a time!) for some floor exercise.  Katsu, hormone-filled as ever, decided to play romeo.  I don't really know how he did it, but somehow he jumped back into his cage (a good 2-2.5 feet up), then out on top of Mochi's portion of the cage.  In his hunt for a way into the female apartment, he scratched his leg on something (probably a cage tie-down wire?). I came back from whatever it was I was doing, and saw a trail of blood all over the house. WHAT.

We found him hiding behind the cage, licking his fresh wound. He wasn't limping, but we needed to stop the bleeding so Sak grabbed a towel and wrestled him down, while I pressed a clean cloth against his leg until the blood clotted. Kinda scary though, and quite a mess to clean up afterwards.  It was a good thing the vet appointment was the following day!

Sak dropped them off  in the morning, and was late to work since someone cut in front of him in line. :P The vet checked them both out first, and said that Katsu had torn his hind nail a bit, which was the cause of the bleeding. Good thing it was nothing too serious!

My brother picked them up later in the day, and the poor bunnies were seriously drugged up!

It took Katsu about half a day before he started moving and eating again.  Mochi, probably due to her more invasive surgery, still isn't moving much.  She'll eat if I put the food right in front of her, but it's probably too painful for her to walk around.  They didn't give us any bunny pain-killers either, so I can only imagine she's feeling pretty bad!

In two weeks they'll be allowed to hang out together (yay!), and I'm thinking of getting them a new cage/hutch when that happens. They chewed up the plastic sides of their current cage, which makes the shavings/food/poo fall out easier. I know, gross.

I'm hoping they'll soon be less moody and territorial, but Katsu is still "fond" of his oatmeal container. I wonder if that habit is here to stay, or if it just take a while for the hormones to die down? I guess we'll see.

In sorta-bunny related events, Sak gave me a cute little orchid for Valentine's day.

Last week I found my older orchid from Cousin T's wedding (which had finally bloomed again after a good 6 months!) wilting.  I wailed a bit about the misfortune, and went to go inspect the poor plant.  Turns out the stem was totally broken...but it was propped against the wall so you couldn't tell. >.>"  Yep.  It was broken-Darth-Vader-cup all over again. I guess I'm scary when I'm mad, cause Sak's first instinct when something breaks is to hide it and hope I won't notice. :P

In any case, he said one of the rabbits ran into the bookshelf and knocked it over, thus breaking the stem.

I put it in some water, but it's a goner.

I don't know how long it'll take for a new stem to grow, but I accept the half-apology orchid in any case :)

Lastly, some quick Valentine's favors put together for co-workers:

I used one of the heart cut-outs that come with the silhouette software and backed it with a circle of cream paper. Simple, but pretty cute!

One of my co-workers looked down at it and asked if I had a cricut.

"No, I have a silhouette, but you've probably never heard of it."

Crafting hipster. @_@

V-Day Card 2k13: Zelda Heart

Wow. Where did January go?! Typically Jan-March move pretty slowly for me, but this year is different! A lot of things have been happening at work and at church, some of which I'll share later, but it's been keeping me pretty occupied lately! Hopefully February will be a little more moderate :P

Anyway, V-Day is around the corner, which is one of my favorite excuses to make fun cards!  Check out this year's design, which is a lot more sophisticated than the onion and farting guinea pig from past years. Haha!

Silhouette cut on cream linen paper, with a thin red liner.

The discerning eye might recognize the heart as the (new) heart container from Zelda.

(source)

But even if you don't play Zelda, it's still a pretty cool looking heart, yeah? :)

Anyway, I'd love to send you a card! It'll be blank so you can give it to someone you love (or like, maybe a little). The card is about 6.5" x 4.75" or so, and comes with a plain envelope. Just let me know in the comments or by email if you'd like one! (pengawenga{at}gmail)

By the way, have you seen the new love stamps? It sucks that postage prices went up, but these are really cute!

(source)

*Update 2/10/14*
Thanks for finding my little blog and for your interest in my card, however this post is a year old and I don't really have any cards left :P  I do giveaways every once in a while though so feel free to stick around in the future :)

Weddingbee Ornament Swap 2012

For the annual blogger bee ornament exchange, I drew Candy Apple's name and breathed the sigh of relief that comes with picking a straightforward icon! I always feel bad for people that draw my name (sewing machine) since it's so complex, but every year I've been amazed at how awesome they look! (Special thanks to Sushi for this year's ornament!)

Anyway, here's my apple:

It's a small ball of foil covered in red sparkly fimo clay.  I added a metal hook on the back for ornament hanging, and punched a hole for the small wooden dowel.

After it baked, I painted the bite mark with acrylic paint, glued the dowel in, and dipped the whole thing (just like a real apple!) into polyurethane for coating.

Then, I had immense cravings for a real candied apple. Sticky and sweet!

Akemashite Omedetou Gozaimasu!

Happy new year!

We're celebrating with Sak's family this year, which means I get to learn about all the Japanese traditions - not just those that Sak prefers, haha.

We started with mochi making, using two automatic mochi pounders that cook the mochi rice and then vibrate/churn it into a sticky fluff. Then the giant mochi mass is put into a funnel-shaped mochi cutter to make even pieces.  I tried my hand at smoothing the mochi balls but wasn't that great at it. Luckily the aunties fixed them all up nicely!

the "flour" is potato starch!

For good luck, stack some mochi and put a small orange on top. I think we used a cutie. Hehe. This kagami mochi sits out during new year's, and Sak's mom put one in the car (while it wasn't being driven of course) for good car luck too.

Also for good luck is the kadomatsu.  You're supposed to have two on either side of your house but we just had one :)

They are so pretty! It's made with bamboo, pine needles and plum branches, which represent prosperity, longevity, and steadfastness (according to wikipedia).

On New Year's Eve we partied with family and then ate soba noodles as we waited for midnight.  Oahu has a fireworks ban in place now (unless you have a permit), but there were still plenty of people lighting up the sky!

In the morning we ate ozoni soup for breakfast, which includes mochi and assorted root veggies like daikon, lotus root and konyaku. I ate everything except the konyaku. Yam jello is a level of food appreciation I have not yet reached.

At a second family party, we feasted on another spread of food - think sashimi, sushi and poke galore. I even had tripe poke!  This time there was also osechi included, cute little bentos of different tidbits of flavors and meanings. My favorite is the kuromame, which is a sweetish black bean, but this red bean cake took the award for prettiest presentation by far:

Lastly, Sak helped his mom fold otoshidama money envelopes (the equivalent of a lycee red envelope) for the kids.

Sak and I both recieved a few lucky envelopes from generous relatives, even though we are well beyond the normal 18 year old cut off!

Learning new traditions is pretty awesome - and I'd like to continue some of these in the future! Though I think it'd just be even more win-win to come back to Hawaii every new year instead, haha!

How did you spend your new year?