My husband and I live in a fairly quiet neighborhood, but because of where we’re situated, we get a lot of solicitors. So, one day and unknown to me, Steve ordered a personalized resin house plaque/address marker online through Lillian Vernon, choosing the words, “No Soliciting” to put on it. (You might have to search online a little, since Lillian Vernon doesn’t seem to have our particular one any more.) It’s a very warm and friendly looking “No Soliciting” sign. :) The following isn’t the same as mine, but it’s as close as I could find. (Sorry, still need to figure out how to load my own pictures…)
For the entire summer, it was propped up against the wall on itself next to our front door. One day, I came across a plate/picture stand and a lightbulb went off! This isn’t exactly like mine either, but you can get the idea:
There are many other combinations you can bring together, so use your imagination! So far, it’s working! :)
I was looking through my pictures to see what I could post about this week and I realized I haven’t been taking as many pictures lately, oops~ :) it has been a little crazy at work, which makes it harder for me to feel motivated to do much when I get home. When it slows down, I’ll try my best to get back on track with my picture taking…
So, today… I’m going to show you a clever trick I learned from one of my friends. In the Korean stores around Seattle, they don’t sell jalapenos individually, you have to buy a pound or more that they have prepackaged for you. This is nice for bigger families that use a ton of jalapenos, but for my family of two… it can be a bit much. For a while, I was slicing them all up and using 1 or less and freezing 90% of them, but after a while, you get the ice chunks and freezer burn… and all of a sudden it hit me 
One of my friends were over for a BBQ last year and showed me how to pickle jalapenos, like that kind you can get from a can in the Mexican food aisle of most grocery stores.
I got an old spaghetti sauce jar, filled it with sliced jalapenos
pour in white distilled vinegar (I always have vinegar on hand for everything, from cooking to cleaning :))
cover and refrigerate.
It should only take a week or so for the color to change to a dull green. After it’s done pickling, I like to chop it up and put it over nachos or on sandwiches, one time I tried putting it on Boboli pizza crust bread with mozzarella and cheddar cheese and regular deli ham chopped up (bake per instructions of course) and it was seriously delicious :). It’s also delicious on quesadillas. oh the possibilities
I absolutely love google, it’s so amazing in every aspect 
These are the features I use: google (although, I’ve been using bing lately too), gmail, gchat, picasa (photo), calendar, reader, maps, documents, etc... Over a year ago, I had asked my then fiance (now hubby) for his list of guests and their addresses. For my friends and family, I had sent out a mass email and was copying and pasting all the information into my excel spreadsheet. Mark, on the other hand, found a tool on google that alleviated his load. Google documents! If you have gmail, you should be able to see this feature on the top left hand corner. After you click on it, you should see the document site and there will be a section that says new, upload, share, etc… Click on new and go to forms. From here you can make a bunch of fields and make them required or not. You can even change the theme to make it pretty. After you are done, you can email it to your friends and all the information will stream into your google spreadsheet (which you can change to an excel sheet later on). It only took me a year to figure out how he did this, and it’s mainly thanks to one of my favorite IM buddies… I know I’m sort of a geek, my friendships are through IM lately O.o… Here’s a list of items I’m going to be inputting into my list for when I decide to send out Christmas cards this year? maybe?:
- First Name
- Last Name
- Street Address
- Street Address 2 (opt.)
- City
- State
- Zip
- Phone Number
- Birthday
It’s important to add the name part because it won’t link who sent you what :)*maybe I need a spot for email too?
Here’s what it looks like (I might change the theme later… but this was the mood I was in today:))
Update on the “hole in the head” disease…
Zebeshi is doing much better. Steve change the water and has been feeding him consistently. So far, some of the holes have scarred over, so he’s not as disfigured as before.
We’ll have to keep his water clean and feed him well, in hopes of a full recovery. :) The following is not Zebeshi, who has more of a defined barred-look. I’ll have to post a real pic soon.
Sorry, I seem to have a slight case of Writer’s Block, so this will be about it for today…
I try not to let myself get too stressed, but when I do end up getting overwhelmed… I get a cold sore on my upper lip that screams “look at me” :(. I haven’t had one in almost 5 or 6 years, so when I looked in the mirror, I was so shocked to have gotten one. This weekend Mark made me rest and I cancelled all my breakfast date with an old friend, two birthday parties and we went to pick up some medicine for me.
Usually I stick with abreva because that’s what I know and don’t like to risk change especially when it has to do with my face, but this time around I decided to visit the “natural” section at our local Fred Meyer. I found this:
So far with my new found friend super lysine and a ton of sleep… my lip hasn’t gotten out of hand, gross and bubbly and it looks a lot smaller than the first day. I got the smaller size because it takes up less space, but I’m glad I did. A tiny bit goes a long way, so the tiny tube would probably last a life time.
*I did use my abreva I had on hand for the first few hours, but wanted to try out a natural product :) The cost differnce is pretty significant: abreva is usually around $15 or more and the little tube .25 oz of Super Lysine is only $5.99.
Sorry it’s such a gross topic, but I figured at least one of two other people get these gross little things too
I wanted to make some banana muffins to freeze, which meant I needed overly ripe bananas. Whenever I need over ripened bananas it seems to invite all the fruit flies from the neighborhood into my house. So I heard about this remedy and tried it.
- 1/4 cup of grape juice
- 1 tablespoon of water
- a drop of dishwashing liquid
Combine the water with the dishwashing liquid- then mix it into the grape juice in a small bowl.
The fruit fly will drink and the soap will kill the fruit fly.
Here’s proof that it worked, but the only problem was that I had to make a new batch every time I found a fly, not only because it was gross, but because for some reason, the other fruit flies didn’t seem interested after one was already in there…
I’ll be the first to admit, I’m not very green compared to some seattlelites… I mean, I do my part and recycle what I can, but I don’t really go out of my way. But I have been trying
One thing I’ve been doing is, using things I have on hand instead of buying new items…
Example:
I wanted a charming watering can:
but in efforts to reduce my carbon footprint I use an old bottle instead. It takes up less space and hold the perfect amount of water to feed my cucumbers, jalapenos, strawberries, tomatoes, basil and ivy plant. (on a hot day, I usually have to get a refill, but it works :) Mostly, I love how space efficient it is
This past week I was out with the flu, since I was too weak to do much of anything, my home became pretty messy. Kleenex everywhere, dishes started to pile and Mark had to bring home take-out for me a couple of the days, the rest of the time I warmed up some canned soup :) While I was at home I watched a lot of TV. One of the shows I watched was a short informational show about how the swine flu pandemic would effect everyone and how everyone should have a plan. Part of the plan was stocking up on foods since you really shouldn’t be out and about spreading your germs. I had started writing a list of foods I keep in stock- for my sister a while back, but I thought I would post for all of you too. She once asked me how I’m able to whip out dinner without too much stress when people stop by last minute
I always have the following things in the freezer in a zip lock bag as flat as possible so it’s easier to defrost:
- shredded rotisserie chicken-from costco (I like to keep at least one breast whole just in case I need cubed chicken)
- ground beef (precooked and uncooked)
- chicken breast (uncooked)
- bag of assorted seafood (Korean store)
- beef brisket or flank steak (used a lot in Korean cooking)
- minced and whole garlic
- sliced jalapenos
- cut up green onions (I always buy to much, so this helps me from wasting…but you can only use this to add flavor, always best to use fresh when you want the green onions to look pretty in your dishes)
- frozen bag of organic: green peas, corn, green beans*I like the longer green beans vs. short just looks prettier in dishes, and broccoli
- dried anchovies
- hot pepper flakes
- dah shi dah (anchovy and beef flavored)
for the fridge:
- potatoes
- carrots
- onions
- zucchini
- green onions
- tofu (soft and medium)
- hot pepper paste
- deng jjang (soy bean paste?)
- kimchi
- eggs (costco)
*Once I bought one 5lb bag of potatoes and 3/4 of it ended up shriveling. Now I stick to buying 2 or 3 at a time and refrigerating them. When we have kids some day far in the future, I might be able to buy the 5 lb bag, but for now… it doesn’t keep well in our home, since we don’t use potatoes in a lot of my dishes yet. (same with carrots, onions, zucchinis and green onions)
I hope this is helpful ^__^
Yesterday, even though I still have a residual cough, I couldn’t stand it anymore and cleaned several rooms in our home. Ah… I feel much better now. Though, I do have a “Monica’s closet,” which is our office. It’s a bit chaotic, but at least, it’s all in one room. That will be my next project.
What’s amazing is the clarity that comes to my mind when I’ve cleaned the house. I can see why there’s that saying, “Cleanliness is next to godliness.” I feel like I can breathe again.
Alas, my body wasn’t ready for it, and I need to rest again…
Tip for today: keep a small mini-vac near the bathroom. That way, all the stray hairs can be picked up quickly.
This one is called the Black & Decker 18V Hand Vac - PHV1800. I don’t have this one, but it got great reviews for having powerful suction, which the hand vacs tend to lack. It’s $58.99 at Target, but with that amount of power, well worth it. There are others, like the Dirt Devil Kone. That particular one has more form than function, since it’s nice to look at, but doesn’t quite deliver power-wise. Look for power in any hand-held…
Okee, dokee… That’s it for today…
One of the hardest fruits for me to pick is the watermelon. I’ve tried knocking on them and trying to hear the subtle difference in hollow sounding-ness, but they all sound the same to me… This summer one of my coworkers taught me at trick, that worked the one time I bought a watermelon this summer. ^__^
do you see those ugly scars? supposedly those indicate that the watermelon is seeping sugar, which also means it’s super ripe ^__^
you can’t tell by this picture, but it was pretty delicious
one last tip is the cut off the corners so it’s easier to eat without getting watermelon juice all over your cheeks.