New Deep Fryer Dishes

We made 2 new dishes in our deep fryer. One is Fried Apple pies. Phil took apple pie filling from a can, added some spices to it, and put it inside of a flour tortilla. He rolled it up like a burrito, and then deep fried it till it was crispy and warm. When he took it out of the fryer he dusted it with Powdered sugar...YUM!!


We also made corn dogs. We found a recipe for Corn Dog batter on the internet. It actually used Krustez Pancake mix! The corn dogs turned out really good. We also had the mini hot dogs in the freezer, so we thawed them out and made corn dog nuggets. And then the Hot Links came out and we made Corn Dog Hot Links. LOL

The fryer is very handy!

The Ehara/Louisiana Bakery...

This is what Phil and I have been up to the last couple of weeks. The Embroidery machine is in the shop at the moment, so we had to find other ways of making things. Above is a picture of Phil's new Sweet Potato pie. He saw Tyler Florence on the Food Network making Mashed Sweet Potatoes with Baked bananas. So of course being the sweet potato guy, he had to try it. But he put a twist on the dish, he made it into a pie. I don't like Sweet Potatoes, so I didn't try it, but they said it was good. :)

This is what I've been up to. Caramel corn. Tons and tons of Caramel corn. Before I worked at the store, I would make Caramel corn for people at Christmas time. But the last few years I didn't have the time. So I was back into Caramel Corn Production. I think I must have made about 15 batches!! It's so yummy and addicting!

Philip's co-workers asked him where he's been hiding the Caramel corn all these years. LOL

My new toy

This is my new toy. It's an iPod Shuffle 2nd Generation. I now know why all the kids have these in their ears all the time. It's way better than the Walkman ever thought of being. Can you tell I'm from the Walkman Generation?? And not the CD Walkman, the audio tape version! LOL

My friend Kristen gave this to me, and I totally love it! I've been downloading tons of songs to it for days now. Well, I download songs I think I like on it, listen to it for awhile, then download different ones. LOL Ok, bit obsessed here. Right now I've downloaded some 80's music, rock music, country music, and even the Osmonds! Yes, you read right, the Osmonds. LOL

it's hard to think of what songs I'd like to listen to the most. I mean because I was the total music junkie back in the day. My BFF Christine and I would go to all kinds of concerts all the time, and buy tons of LP's and then CD's when we got CD players.

I didn't realize how much I missed listening to certain songs till I started downloading them. Now i have to find a way to hook this up to my regular stereo. I got the black cord to hook it up to my car stereo, so no more CD's in the car...YAY!

What are your favorite songs? Who are your favorite bands??

Christmas In Japan

Ok, it's almost new years, I know. My friend Kay just sent me this video and it just cracks me up! Love the dancing stormtrooper! Otto, you need to dress up like that for Christmas! ;)

more animals

People ask why I don't put up a Christmas tree. Now these aren't my cats, but this is the exact reason why. One year I put Beanies on my tree, and they took them all off and hid them around the house. LOL

New Deep Fryer and Garlic Steaks

At Phil's family's Christmas Party they do a white elephant gift exchange. If you've never heard of that before, it's where everyone who wants to participate brings a wrapped gift of a certain value. They are all put in a pile, and everyone picks a number. The first person will pick a gift to open. The next person has the option to either open a gift or steal a gift from someone who already has one. And this year they added a twist, you had to answer a trivia question to open a gift.

Phil ended up with this really cool deep fryer with oil! :) So tonight we made Garlic Steaks. What are Garlic Steaks? Well, they're like chicken fried steaks. You take thin pieces of beef, put it in an egg wash, then in a bread crumb mixture of italian bread crumbs, chopped onions, and minced garlic. The mixture is kind of a wet mixture. So when you put the meat in the crumbs, you kind of press the bread crumb mixture onto the beef.

Here's the steaks cooking:


They're getting ready to come out. The deep fryer is great for this! You don't have to fish out the pieces of meat with chopsticks or tongs. You just lift them out with the basket!

And here are the finished steaks! They are so very yummy.

We usually eat them with cheese tortellinis. I ate them with fries tonight cause I just love fries!

Christmas update

I realized it's been a week since I've updated my blog. Sorry about that! I've been baking up a storm the past week. First to make goodies for Phil's family's Christmas last Saturday. And then for my friends and family this week. I'll post pics of what I'm making as I plate them. I forgot to do that when I took stuff to Phil's sis' house. Everyone liked the cookies and marshmallows. :) I thought the flan was very flat, but they ate it! LOL

Today was cornflake cookie day and hopefully Toffee cookies. Now that Philip is baking I cannot find things, so I lost my baking soda and have to go get more. They don't put things back in the special baking section for some reason. Sheesh.

Hope you all have a Merry Christmas, and I'll put more updates up later on.

More Bracelets

All these bracelets were partially made from reuse items. Many of the beads were from other beaded jewelry items that had been broken. The bracelet above had some beads from other jewelry pieces. The clear crystal is from a chandelier. The bracelet actually came from Michael's, on sale, and it had the Buddha charm on it already. Pretty cool!

The beads on the bracelet above were from my bead collection. It actually matched the green bead that was already on the bracelet. And Green is a lucky good fortune color, so I made this one green and white.
We found a bunch of cross charms in my friend's jewelry stash. Some were from mismatched earrings, the big cross was on a necklace. And the crystals were from a chandelier. I loved how all the charms matched.
This goldtone bracelet was actually a belt of bells. I cut it into a couple of pieces and put red and green beads on it that were in my stash. It's cool that something someone tossed can be reused into something totally different. It just looked so Christmasy to me.
And I love this star bracelet. The beads were a mix of old jewelry pieces, the chandelier pieces, and my own beads. I just love how it looks, simple not too much. Although, if it were for me, I'd put a ton more beads on it! LOL

So save your single earrings and broken jewelry. You can make wonderful new pieces from stuff you were going to throw away.

Homemade Bread

Today Philip made homemade bread. I helped him to measure and to tell him how to do certain things like kneading and punching the dough. It was really fun to do, and easy. I can see we're going to make more bread in the future!

The dough is rising. Rise baby, Rise! I think this is what takes the longest. No such thing as speed rising. LOL

The bread looks yummy! Didn't rise as much as we thought, but heck, it's our first try.

The finished bread. It's a bit of a dense bread, and it's sweet. Almost like Hawaiian bread. I'll have to find the recipe for that! It was really good and really filling. :)

Mechanical difficulties.

This week is the week of unexpected happenings and mechanical difficulties. I swear! My truck decided to wear it's alternator belt out. It's a great truck, a Toyota. Did I tell you how much I love Toyotas? I had to get a smog check the other day. I have 322,000+ miles on my little truck, and still got a really great Smog check. They guy even asked if it was the original miles on this truck cause he couldn't believe it.

But this week when I've been starting it, there has been a squeaky noise when it starts. I thought it was a belt, then we thought it was the starter, but then, after driving it to Wal Mart to get emergency bobbin thread, it was squeaking a lot. It's a frayed belt (no it's not scared LOL). So that needs to get changed today when Phil gets home. So no driving on errands today. :(

Then, the embroidery machine decides to engage the safety device. We're not sure why it does it, but we'll take it to the guy again later and see what he has to say. And I can't find anything on the internet to why it would do that. When I find out, I'll let you know.

Stuff like this always happens when you have stuff you need to get done. Luckily I got all the blankets done for the girls, the coaches names just won't get put on their jackets yet. Sheesh.

I think I need to pray to the God of Mechanical things to see if she can fix it all. :) And keep my stuff from breaking down!! LOL

Merry Christmas!

Since I'm not at the store anymore, I've forgotten that it's getting close to Christmas! LOL I'm kinda sad that I'm not decorating the store for Christmas, having different Christmas events, and enjoying the Christmas rush! Even being there till late to help people find the perfect gift was fun.

We could play certain CD's all day long sometimes, like Clay Aiken's first Christmas CD. And I could play any of Amy Grant's Christmas CD's. I love the old standard Christmas songs done by Nat King Cole, Dean Martin, Frank Sinatra (and yes, I have them on CD!) LOL.

I love listening to Jaci Velasquez and Avalon. I couldn't find a whole lot done by them on my music player, but there are a couple. And I'm not a big fan of Josh Groban, but I LOVE his Christmas CD.

I think when I make cookies next week I'll be listening to their songs!

Do you have a favorite Christmas song?

Mauve colored jeans purse

This is a mauve colored pair of jeans that I turned into a jeans purse. I posted it earlier without the sequins, and here I updated the look with sequins all over the front and back. I think it looks really neat. Since sewing sequins on the tree skirt, I thought they would look pretty cool on this!

Hand-sewing sequins on things is pretty time consuming but fun!

Flyers Blanket

The color is kinda off, but I'll fix that tomorrow. This is one of the blankets I've been embroidering. Thanks to Sara at Crafterzone, I did my first embroidery on Fleece. It was pretty easy.

I hooped sticky stabilizer and a thick cut away stabilizer (using spray adhesive to stick the two together). Then stuck the blanket onto the sticky stabilizer. I did end up basting a stitch around where I wanted to embroider cause for some reason it stabilized better. I also put a piece of water soluable stabilizer on top so that the stitches wouldn't get lost in the fleece.

And wa-la! (Wha-la?) LOL It came out really well. There was a bit of movement on a couple of pieces, but other than that it went well. I did a practice test run first on a piece of black fleece that I bought for $1 at JoAnns Fabrics. Oreo is going to have his own little flyers blanket! LOL

8 down 5 more to go!

Christmas Boutique in Martinez

Here's a bit of info for a Christmas Boutique in Martinez that my friend is running. I won't be able to be there till Sunday. If you're in the area, you need to go!! :)

Cute Christmas Cola

While walking through WalMart the other day, we found these really cute Coca Cola bottles shaped like ornaments on a shelf in the soda section. They weren't in the correct spot, so of course i had to scour the store until I found them. OMG, they are just too dang cute!

I don't know if all WalMarts will have these, but look out for them. Yes, they're filled with Coca Cola too!! My dad thought they were ornaments until he realized that there was coke in them. :)

Ram's Jacket

Here's what the jacket looked like that we embroidered. It turned out really nice. I liked it a lot. Makes me want to have that embroidered on something just to wear it! LOL

new necklace

Here's a necklace I've been working on for my friend. I hope that she likes it! :)

Dancing with the Star Wars Stars...

OMG, this is too funny! It takes my two favorite things and puts them together....Dancing with the Stars and Star Wars!

Thanks Otto!

Kitty cat

more animals

Found this on Icanhascheezburger. I just love it. :)

Catch up...

Sorry I've been absent for a few days. Ok, it's only been 3, but I love to blog and it feels weird when I'm not here every day. lol

I've been working on a couple of embroidery things. One actually got finished. It's the football logo that we did a month ago. After a couple of changes we've actually done it on a jacket. Updated picture tomorrow. It turned out ok, but I've learned I don't like to embroider lined windbreaker jackets. I'll do it, but I don't have to like it. LOL

A few of my family members have had some health problems the past couple of weeks. It makes me sad because you don't want to see your aunts and uncles getting older, you think they'll be around forever. But of course, when they get ill, you realize how short life is, and how much they are a part of your life. I get a little sad when I see them go through things, and I wish I could change them. But all you can do is pray, and hope they have a good doctor!!

I'm going to get back into crafting now that the jacket is done. I'm hoping that being creative will help to take my mind off of things and to get grounded again. I'll post what I've come up with when I get stuff done. :)

Quantum of Solace

Today Kristen and I went to see Quantum of Solace. And talk about an action movie!! From the very start you are just thrust into action. It was amazing! I love this series of Bond movies. I was never a really big fan of the Bond movies. I mean I think that Sean Connery made the best Bond. But they just didn't float my boat.

But how can you not just LOVE Daniel Craig? He is so awesome. We both were bummed that there was no bathing suit scene of him in the movie. Really bummed!

And there were no fun car gadgets like in the other movies, but it was cool to think that he could do all that without a ton of gadgets. Did just LOVE the computer that they used though. I would totally love to have that as my computer.

And one thing that I totally didn't love was the opening music. Can you say, "ICK!"...ok, I'll do it for you...."ICK!!!" It was horrible. I am a fan of Alicia Keys, but this was totally not the best song she's ever sung.

I won't go into more than that, I don't want to ruin it for anyone that hasn't seen it. And if you haven't seen it...GO SEE IT!! Two thumbs up!

A Broken Aluminum Bat

Here's Phil back in his softball playing days. And he actually broke this bat during a game. We had to take a photo cause the bat is Aluminum, and it is pretty unusual to break an aluminum bat! The game actually stopped so that they could look at the bat. I don't even remember if he got a hit off that or not.

I had my engineer boss at the time look at the bat, and he said there must have been a flaw in the metal to make it break like that. Ok, burst our bubble. We'd like to think that he hit the ball so hard that it broke the bat. ;)

Tree Skirt Finished!

I finally finished!! Here is what the final tree skirt will look like. You can barely see the sequins, but they're there, trust me! LOL


I really like how it turned out, I think I have to scour the thrift stores to find more skirts to make tree skirts. What a great way to reuse old clothing. So scour your closets to see if you can find a skirt that will go with your tree. Especially if you were going to donate it in the first place.

I sewed a lot of this together, but you can really do this without sewing. You can glue to glue all the accents onto the skirt. And if the skirt has frayed edges, you really don't have to finish the side seams. And you can glue the ties onto the skirt too. Or if it doesn't matter, you can just leave them laying flat without tying them together.

I'm going to cut up a dress next and use that as the next tree skirt. I'll keep you posted.

Close up view of tree skirt

While going through some stuff today I found iridescent sequins and beads. I thought that would be a great accent to put in between the holly leaves. That way they wouldn't take away from the holly accents. So here's a close up of the beading. I've done about 1/3 of the skirt. I think I'll do more while I'm watching Grey's tonight. It looks kinda neat so far. :)

Tree skirt

This is the beginnings to the tree skirt. One of the trees we're going to do for the craft show is going to be in pink. So, what would be better than a tree skirt? This one is actually made from a reuse skirt.

I cut part of the top off, then sewed the top part so it was a bit more ruffly. Ok, I don't know all the technical sewing terms here, but I just lightly gathered the top and sewed a straight stitch. I also cut a straight cut up the side so that you can get it around the tree. I sewed ties to it as well, so that they can tie it together.

Where the light pink area is, I added the holly leaves cut from an old pair of green jeans. They matched the leaves in the calico print! And then I'm sewing on some pearls from a recycled necklace that my friend had in her stash.

I'll take another photo tomorrow so you can see my status. It's really fun putting together something new from reused items.

Reuse Charm Bracelets

These bracelets were made from pieces of jewelry that my friend had in her stash. Some of them were pieces from a bigger jewelry piece that was damaged. Like one side of a pair of earrings. Or maybe jewels had fallen out of a piece, but part of it could be used for something else.

I didn't put a ton of things on them. I think they look classic with fewer components. This one looks like a victorian heart bracelet. I didn't have a fancy toggle, so I just used a plain one. Maybe I can salvage one from a different piece? The crystals on this one were actually from a chandelier. And the pearls were from one side of an earring.

This next bracelet is so victorian looking. The crystals are from another chandelier. And the other pieces were just floating around in her stash. It's gold-tone, and the chain was in her stash as well.

It's fun to envision new pieces of jewelry from things we would have probably thrown out. We're helping to not fill up the landfill, and we're getting a pretty cool piece of jewelry too. :)

We're going to try to sell these pieces to benefit her non-profit program, the Green Youth Art Project. She's going to have an arts and crafts faire in December. If you're in the Martinez area and would like more info, leave me a comment with your email addy and I'll forward along the info to you.

Jeans purses

I've been spending the past few days trying to come up with ideas to decorate the jeans purses that I made from old recycled jeans. These ones aren't lined cause my sewing machine couldn't sew in the lining. But I think they're awfully cute and a great way to recycle jeans.

This pair is from a tan/taupe pair of jeans. I had these appliqué butterflies in my stash, and decided that they would look really cool on this pair:

I then cut out a kawaii skull from felt and sewed that on a pair of khaki pants that I made into a purse. I found the checkered belt with the skull from that cool second-hand store in San Mateo. Thought it would go well together.

I then figured that I could embroider on the jeans before sewing them up. So I embroidered a bunch of these little pink flowers that were already in the machine. I thought the middles of the flowers would look really cute filled in, so I found my fabric paint and painted them in.

I made the belt out of this fun material my friend gave to me to use for different projects.


Those are what I have done so far. I'll get more stuff done during the week. I'll post as I create. My creative juices are flowing again...YAY!

Do you ever feel....

Do you ever feel like you have adult ADD? LOL That is my day today. I start all these little things to do, cause I of course procrastinated again, and now have too much on my plate today. So I keep starting all these little projects, and haven't completed any of them.

I started cleaning the kitchen,
then started laundry,
then started to shampoo the rugs,
went back to the kitchen,
then had a brilliant idea on embroidering a jeans purse,
went to picking up stuff in the livingroom
got a call from a friend, now am looking for stuff for a project we're working on,
went back to the laundry...

PHEW! Now I'm taking a break on the computer and watching NCIS while trying NOT to get hooked into Gaiaonline's zOMG game.

See what I'm saying??

Do you ever do that?

Go out and Vote!

Tomorrow is voting day, and I'm really excited. Excited to be voting, but more excited that all the political ads will be gone!! I'm getting tired of the ads, the tv spots, the flyers in the mail, messages in my inbox. Although it was cool seeing Kelsey Grammer's name in my email box the other day! LOL

It is so important to get out and vote. Remember ladies, women fought for the right to vote!! (That's my favorite saying right now). LOL

So anyway, if you haven't mailed in your ballot already, get out there and vote!!

Follow your heart necklace and embroidery

I've been working on a couple of things the past few days. Well, that and trying to get inspired to create things. I've been in a funk, not sure if it's cause I'm not feeling 100% or not. But today I felt inspired to create. :)

My friend Debi is making an apron for her friend Imelda. And Debi wanted some embroidery on the apron. Here's how it turned out:

And I've been working on ideas for a necklace for a friend. It's hard to try to make something when I'm not sure if they're going to like it, so here's my interpretation of what she wanted:

I found that cool charm that says Love Life Live Life, and when you flip it over it says: Follow your Heart. Cool huh?

I have to put an extender chain on it, so I'm not done yet. But the bulk of it is done. I hope she'll like it, if not, it's goin' on etsy! LOL

Halloween at Debi's

Every year my friend Debi dresses up for Halloween. This year it was the Wizard of Oz theme. She was going to have all these spooky trees in her yard, but since it was so windy, they kept blowing over. :(

Here is Debi and her future Daughter-in-law as the Wicked Witch and Glinda.
Here's Alex playing like she's dead. Alex and her friends would lay around the yard like that, then get up and scare the kids! LOL It helped that the next door neighbor had a dummy in his front yard, so the kids just thought it was more of the same.
And here's cousin Frannie and Alex. It was a ton of fun watching them scare kids. Can't wait till next year!

Barbie Sleeping Bag

I made a Barbie sleeping bag for my friend's granddaughter. And here she is playing with it! I'm so glad that she loves it!

Flying Monkey

Here's the flying monkey I've been working on. I know, it's not blue, but it's a monkey, and it has wings! LOL

I actually took a webkinz shirt and kind of traced around it to make a pattern. I just made a vest out of felt cause I have never made sleeves yet.

I sewed the blue felt vest,together first, then worked on the designs on the front. I cut out a design out of the red felt, then sewed it on the white felt and then cut it out. Kind of like a shadow effect. Then I sewed that onto the blue vest.

For the hat, I just kind of made a pillbox type hat out of felt, then did the same thing like I did with the vest for the design. Then stuffed the hat and sewed it on the monkey.

For the wings, I took gold wire and shaped that into wings, then took some white kind-of-sheer backing that we use for embroidery and sewed it onto the wire. Then cut the wings out following the wire.

Sew the wings onto the vest and we have a flying monkey!!

Music & Lyrics

I just LOVE the movie Music & Lyrics. I mean who can't enjoy seeing Hugh Grant sing an 80's pop song?? LOL

Cute Bento

That has got to be the cutest bento box I've ever seen! I was Stumbling today and found this link: http://www.zuzafun.com/kids-food

It has some way cute bento boxes on them. I know if I had little kids they'd be lucky if they got a rice ball in a box, let alone one shaped like a cat. LOL