Archive for August, 2010 Page 2 of 3

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Day Eleven: Fiesta Lime Chicken Tacos

Published
by
robayre
on August 17, 2010
in General Update
. 1 Comment

For today’s thing, I actually altered a recipe I found online. The recipe was for Fiesta Lime Chicken breasts, but instead of serving it as breasts, I chopped the chicken up, and served them on flour tortillas with a bit of low fat sour cream and cilantro. They were delicious and I was extremely proud of myself. If you read this blog at all you will know I don’t enjoy cooking. I’m not a bad cook, I would just rather spend time putting food in my mouth than spending that same time preparing and cooking. Plus, unless I’m making something I know is tried and true, there always comes this time while I’m preparing when I want to throw in the towel because “I just know it’s gonna be a flop.” It rarely is, but I worry. I’m glad I stuck it out because both Matt and I really enjoyed it tonight and it was a very quick and satisfying meal.

Day Ten - Banner Flag Notepad

Published
by
robayre
on August 16, 2010
in General Update, Projects and life
. 1 Comment

Once again, I’m really stoked about the project I came up with for today for day 10 of the “create something every day in August” challenge.

I was at work and thinking about how we print notepads for customers occasionally. I immediately decided to create some as a new paper product for my Etsy shop, but it took me a bit more time to come up with a design for them. At first I was just going to look through my old artwork and use a cropped thumbnail as an image on each sheet. Then I got the idea to make a banner flag notepad and was just so excited to get home and start working on it. I actually made little banners, photographed them, photoshop-ed them, designed them on the computer, printed them out, cut them down and padded them, all this evening. I want to make tons of them. I’d actually love to get some professionally printed and padded, but I don’t know if they would be successful enough to sell. This is a dilemma I often have. I have the constant passion to design and create, but lack the exposure and/or buying demand for the things I make.

I made four pads all together (two different images, and lined and unlined), just to test the water. I’m so excited to offer them in my Etsy shop, there’s one pad there now. I’ll post more tomorrow.

Day Nine - Yoyo Zipper Clutch

Published
by
robayre
on August 15, 2010
in General Update and Projects
. 1 Comment

I’m so excited about day nine’s thing, I just had to share it before it is completely finished.

I’ve actually been working on this yoyo zipper clutch in bits and pieces, here and there, over the last several weeks. Most of the work went into piecing the yoyos, as you can probably see. The zipper pouch is complete, I just need to anchor the yoyos to the pouch itself.


When working on yoyo’s I love picking fabrics that have super tiny patterns, and I found this excellent retro reproduction fabric at a local quilt shop. I love that I was able to find a zipper in just the exact color I wanted, which replicated the color in the fabric. I wanted more of a pale orange, sherbet color, for the background, in the pouch itself, but I just can’t find a good selection and variety of solid fabrics locally. It’s either patterned or the 10 standard colors (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple, black, brown, gray and white) and that’s it. Forget about finding anything as fancy as chartreuse or teal, as if they were some extraordinary, hard to come by, colors. I could probably find the colors I want online, but when I buy, I usually only buy half a yard here and half a yard there. It’s not really worth it to buy online if I’ll have to pay for shipping, And there’s always the fear that the color on the screen is not the same color as what arrives in the mail.

I’m thrilled at the way this pouch looks and I’ve already cut out fabric and started working on my second pouch. I’ll post better pictures once it’s completely finished. With any luck, I’ll be posting some of these to my etsy store soon.

Day 8 - zucchini bread

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robayre
on August 13, 2010
in General Update
. 1 Comment

My garden has been in a sad state this summer. These pathetic zucchini are probably the only ones I will get from it. Who’s ever heard of only getting two small zucchini from a garden? My mom always jokes about having to make sure your doors are locked and windows closed during the summer because otherwise you will get to your car/home and find all your neighbors have kindly left you with more zucchini than a family could possibly use. Usually the average garden overflows with the plant, but this year my plants struggled.

From the garden to the plate, I had to make something special with these two. Matt loves zucchini bread so that is what I made. Even I had a slice, which I wouldn’t normally do because, well, hello, two and a quarter cups of SUGAR. For the last year I’ve been avoiding sweets as much as possible, but yeah, that slice was deeeeee-licious.

It looks like we will have more luck with the tomatoes, so hopefully we’ll be enjoying fresh salsa later this month.

Day Seven - Hoola Hooping

Published
by
robayre
on August 13, 2010
in General Update
. 3 Comments

Okay, you may be looking at me with a tilted head and questioning glare, “Hoola Hooping?” For day seven I am thrilled to share that I have taught myself the very beginning of hoola hooping, which is to say that I can keep it up for longer than 5 seconds, lol. I’m so embarrassed to share this video of me, but here it is anyway. Please disregard all the camping stuff still scattered all over our living room floor.

Last year during this same month I shared a video of some pretty amazing hoola hooping as dance and I’ve wanted to learn how to hoola hoop ever since. Even as a kid I think I had a hoola hoop but couldn’t really keep it from falling immediately. Fast forward to the age of youtube and now I have step by step instructions right at my fingertips and within minutes I was able to actually do it! I actually screamed with delight when it didn’t immediately fall down. I just simply googled hoola hoop instructions and came to this series of videos here.

I have a long way to go to do any sort of acrobatic movements, heck I’m still trying to master turning in place while hooping. But I’m having fun and so excited to progress.

Day Six - Bunting flags and Camping

Published
by
robayre
on August 13, 2010
in General Update and life
. 1 Comment

It may seem I dropped off the face of the earth with my daily project this month, but I’m still here. I was actually on vacation.

We went camping with some of our best friends. It’s a trip we’ve been talking about taking for YEARS and YEARS. After plenty of research our friend Nikki found a great place for us in Wisconsin to go camping/floating. The idea was that we wanted to find a place that rents giant inner-tubes and then shuttles you to a drop off location and you lazily float back to camp. It was an awesome vacation.

Would you believe that I took 3 cameras, 2 of them being film, and the third digital, and I didn’t take one digital picture the whole trip. So, normally I’d have pictures to show here, but for now, nothing.

Nikki chose perfectly. Our campsite was right on the beach. We drove a bit over 4 hours north to get there but once I saw how close we were to the beach I once again found more support for my whole theory that “Any amount of hard work pays off as long as my feet end up in sand and water.” The first evening, after the long drive, we all stuck our folding chairs in the shallow edge of the sand and sat, drank and chatted with our tootsies in the water. When we woke up the first morning the first thing I did was run straight into the water (about 10-15 steps away from our tent). We took floating trips 4 times, 3 of those being long trips over 2.5 hours in length. It was so much fun to just float along, relaxed, tethered together with great company. Our friends even brought their pooch, Monty, who wore a mini life preserver and was a huge hit with other floaters.

Of course the mosquitoes were out of control, I got crazy grease burns on my legs while cooking on our campfire, we thought our campsite was going to wash away during a crazy thunderstorm during the middle of the night, and despite the sunscreen I still turned quite red. Still, we had a great time, and definitely plan on going back again next year. Hopefully next time the mosquitoes aren’t as bad, but I’m not holding my breath. After all, I think they are the Wisconsin state pest. Within a half hour I killed over 30 mosquitoes in the bathroom and shower alone. FYI, flip flops work wonders as a fly swatter.

Back to creating daily. Before leaving for our trip I created a couple flag garlands (pictured at the top of this post), thinking I would use them to decorate our camp site, but we didn’t have a tree to our site! It was truly a beachy site. So, now I have these buntings that I created. I used this same method as this tutorial of mine from earlier this year. Once I find something fun to do with them, I will share.

I’ll hopefully be back shortly with more projects for the August Challenge.

Day Five - pill box

Published
by
robayre
on August 6, 2010
in General Update, My Artwork and Projects
. 3 Comments

Today was extraordinarily busy. It wasn’t until after dinner that I remembered that it was actually Friday and I still had to do a thing for today. I was exhausted from running around and was regretting that I would have to resort to just pressing a one inch pinback button for my thing. Even that small project seemed daunting in my tired state. Then I remembered a small handful of lathed wooden pill boxes that I bought at a garage sale.

Immediately I was inspired and filled with energy to create. The original and unfinished box is pictured above. Actually it probably had been stained, but I painted it white, cut a piece of felt for the inside and created the collage/mixed media piece to go on the lid. I plan on giving it a glossy resin coat over the image when I have enough pieces to make mixing the resin worth it. I bought a bunch of these small boxes so you will probably be seeing more.

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Completely unrelated, check out this tutorial on Design Sponge for making a beautiful chandelier. I think I’ve admired similar ones in stores before, but now I think I must create one for myself.

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Have a good weekend!

Day Four - Canvas Bag

Published
by
robayre
on August 5, 2010
in General Update and Projects
. 2 Comments

This is a project I’ve been meaning to do for a while. I bought a pack of 3 small canvas bags and I wanted to customize them, similarly to the shoes I did last year.

I love stripes, that’s a given, so for my first bag I wanted a simple pattern of fat horizontal stripes. I wanted the image area to be pretty loose, look handmade, and PENCIL marks make up the pattern. My hopes are that, like my shoes, people have to look again because they are surprised how much like pencil it looks…only to be informed that it is indeed pencil. I was so pleased with my shoes because the techniques I used resulted in a very permanent mark, and the pencil never smeared or wore away and still look great to this day, just more worn in.

I love how the finished bag looks. It was one of those things where I had the vision, but while I worked on it I kept changing my mind, “I’ll post in my etsy shop.” then a few minutes later “No, I love it too much, and it’s SO ME. I’m gonna keep it for myself.” and lastly “I shouldn’t be selfish, I should give it as a gift to so-and-so.” I prewashed it before doing this, but I think I will wash it one more time before deciding, just in case it doesn’t like going through the washer.”

I apologize for the pictures and colors being kind of wonky, but this bag took me over 3 hours and I began it after work, which left me no daylight once I was complete.

Day Three - Phone Blaaaang

Published
by
robayre
on August 4, 2010
in General Update
. 3 Comments

No bling without irony.

Let me just start by saying I defy you to find anyone under the age of 60 who has used the same cell phone, straight, for 6 years. Well, in one month this beauty will be 6 years old, and not because I just love it so much. I have on so many occasions gone into my carrier’s company, hoping to replace this horrid monster, only to leave sadder, and with the same phone I came. 1. I have to high of standards, apparently, and they just don’t carry phones like the ones I want at my carrier. 2. I keep trying to hold out until I have my credit card paid off, and a new cell phone will be a reward.

This phone truly takes a licking and keeps ticking. So, in celebration and anticipation of my phone’s 6th birthday coming up, I decided to obnoxiously and sarcastically bling out my phone. In general, I’m not fond of sparkly-glittery anything, and I have no prior experience in working these little gems. I bought a pack of these gem things at Michaels, only to get home and find out they don’t come with adhesive already adhered. What did that mean? I had to make do with some super-glue. Oh yeah. You can tell how well that worked out.

Twenty two minutes later I have the most awesome phone ever. Now I can continue to carry it with pride for another six years.

I kid, if you couldn’t read the sarcasm.

 Update on to do list for 2010

No. 26 on the list: Nikki, Tom, Matt and I went to Lothson’s chicken. It’s a hole in the wall type place that apparently has been there since the 40s? The type of place that serves the most delicious fried chicken, in paper bags, that then become translucent from all the grease.  My family used to go pick up fried chicken from there when I was a little kid and I had no idea they were still open until recently. We ate dinner together, the four of us, while watching True Blood.

No. 3 on the list: This past weekend my sister-in-law and I went garage sale-ing and at the end, we hit up an estate sale. There, thanks to Dacia’s keen eye, I was able to score my first world globe. I was so happy. It’s really nice, and the whole time we were there, people kept commenting on how nice it was, wishing they had seen it first.

Day Two - mini books

Published
by
robayre
on August 3, 2010
in General Update, Projects and etsy
. 3 Comments

For Day Two I made a small handful of mini books. I’ve been wanting to make books like these for a very-very long time.  I always carry around those mini moleskine cahiers, and these are my answer, or should I say version, of the moleskine cahier. Each book is 4.5×5″ roughly.

At work we get our printing plates in big boxes, and each box always has many large sheets of this flat cardboard strictly for packaging and serve no other purpose. I often pick up a stack to use for various things and one of the projects I’ve been wanting to do for a long time was to use it for book covers. Each book is staple bound with an industrial commercial stapler (using metal wire, rather than precut staples).

For the inside pages I gathered a variety of papers from my personal collection, similar to my handbound journals. They might have watercolor paper, graph paper, lined paper, linen paper, marbled paper, even paper doilies. I am in serious love with these books right now. If I could, I would make a living constructing and selling these books and I don’t think I would ever get tired. All the different papers, all the different alterations to the covers, all the whimsical additions. Once again, similar to my grass journals, I think it comes down to my obsession with school supplies and the ultimate design in notebooks, back from when I was a kid.

Each book is entirely unique with different individual special touches. Each book also has its very own rubber-band to keep it shut tight. I think these books would be perfect for the creative type who loves to draw, sketch, doodle, write, journal, scrap, etc. And I will be adding them to my etsy shop later today, so keep your eye out.

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