Scandinavian Food!

There's this great little Scandinavian grocery/gift shop in Ballard that I've been wanting to go forever!! I always go either on days when they're closed or right as they're locking to door up!
So finally this last Thursday I happened to be in Ballard running some errands, so I made sure that I had enough time to check out Olsen's Scandinavian Foods for some cultural exploration.
Their deli looked amazing!! As you can see they have hand stuffed sausages of all kind, meatballs, fishcakes, smoked salmon, and even pickled herring! Actually you can see at the very right side of the glass case, they have fresh lingoberry jam, which I got a container of it. Of course I didn't forget to get some Swedish pancake mix to make some good old Swedish breakfast! MMM!!
I always love their packaging! So colorful and fun.
I love the Dala horse figures! Aren't they adorable?!!
I 'll be going back to try their deli food soon!
-Jean

My Sister, Yilin's, 08' Spring/Summer Fashion Show

Last Saturday, April 12th, my older sister, Yilin had her first fashion show at the New York Fashion Academy (NYFA) where she's been studying fashion design for the past year and a half. It's a small school located in the heart of Ballard, Seattle. Not sure why they used 'New York' as their school name, but nonetheless its a fashion academy.
Yilin worked extremely hard for the past 6-7 months, designing and making clothes, recruiting models, photographers, makeup artist, hair stylist, assistance, and at the same time helping to coordinate and organize the fashion show!
I got to help her out here and there, did some brainstorming, gave some feedback, worked on her brand, went material shopping...and not to mention multiple shoe shopping trips. Overall it was super exciting to be part of it and I defiantly had a lot of fun helping her out.
I was totally impressed with the result and proud to see how creative her designs are.
You can see a low res clip of Yilin's new 2008 spring/summer line, Nouevelle, exhibiting 8 finished design pieces here.
Also you can view more photos taken by Darien So of the runway shots to get a better look of her entire collection! They're really wonderful, and I'm not just saying that because I'm her sister!!
You can get in touch with Yilin at nouvelle-design.com
I'm so proud of her!....tear.
-Jean

Finally!! Glazed pieces!

Finally! here they are, all glazed and done! As you can see we didn't take too many risks in terms of experimenting with glazes. So we played it safe and went with white, black, yellow, and some oranges. All the white pieces are my miniature form studies. I threw them all on a hump of clay and each are about 2.5"-3" tall. It was great way to practice making various forms in a short amount of time. This was the extent of my experimentation using underglaze. Black bubbles.
This is the yellow and white combo by Dylan. My first piece in use....and you guessed it! It's a planter! If it's not a vase or a bowl, it's going to be a planter. The color and shape reminds me of an orange...with a crazy stem.
This is one of the letter stamp piece with a clear glaze. I made some coasters some with letters and some with numbers. All the pieces can be seen here on Flickr.
After taking the ceramics class, it made me really want to have my own ceramics studio and just make things all day. It's so gratifying to see and feel the finished piece in your hand. Hopefully I can make this happen before I retire!
-Jean

Our 4 year anniversary weekend

Dylan and I just had our 4 year anniversary as an unmarried couple. We planned a little getaway last weekend and stayed in an yurt at Cape Disappointment, WA (Formerly known as Fort Canby). The name is deceiving, because it's far from disappointing! It was actually a really beautiful and relaxing state park off the southern west coast of Washington that's close to beaches and couple of small wacky towns. We decided to stay in a cozy and convenient yurt while still got to have our campfire dinner. It was the best of both worlds. It was PERFECT!
Our first stop was at this wacky place called Marsh's Free Museum in Long Beach, WA. Its' a store/museum filled with cheesy beach themed trinkets and novelty toys plus tons of mounted animal heads all over the walls AND some on the ceiling!
After walking around Long Beach, we headed back to our campsite and built a fire while sipping on some wine and cooked ourselves a gourmet dinner. We made garlic dill pork chops with roasted butter asparagus and squash, baked potato, and tossed salad. Food just tastes so much better cooked over the fire....I wonder if it's because of the charcoal....
Then, for dessert...it was homemade roasted coco marshmallow. We tried one of Martha's recipes for marshmallows, and it was surprisingly easy and fun to make....not to mention that it tasted soooo much better than store bought ones! The recipe is just for making plain ones, but we improvised and added 2 tablespoons of unsweetened coco powder in the mix, and then after it was set, we rolled it in 1/2 powder sugar 1/2 coco powder mix. Sitting by the warm fire, drinking wine, roasting and eating homemade marshmallows....we, were in heaven.
The following day, we woke up with the campsite covered in some snow. It was such an unexpected surprise. I was just totally glad that we stayed in a yurt versus a tent, which we saw some people stayed in them. Not sure if they froze to death or not, but I know we would of!
For breakfast, we then cheated and plugged in our toaster oven and baked ourselves Croque Madames for breakfast. Sorry for all the real hardcore campers out there...I know we put camping to shame, but it was too easy! 5 minutes to prep and 15 minuets to bake type of easy. :P
We then went out to the beach and saw some snow still remained after the sun came out. I've never seen a beach with snow on it, it was quite a sight!
We then headed to the North Head Lighthouse close by the park. It was built in 1896 and it's a working lighthouse. We climbed up 90 some steps and got to see the amazing coast line and it was gorgeous..... Now I have this urge to start collecting lighthouses and decorate my entire house with a beach theme...lighthouses, American flags, shells and dolphins....oh! I forgot, and mermaids, too. Gotta have that.
These beautiful sexy mermaids were at Marsh's Free Museum.... I should go back and get them....They'll be perfect for what I'm thinking of in our apartment.
So, in conclusion, Cape Disappointment was anything but disappointing. Not to mention that we saw a mummified half man half alligator named Jack at the museum, the worlds biggest frying pan, a cafe called Scrappaccino, a stuffed cat, AND this!!
We took too many photos, so the rest of the photos of the store and of everything else can be seen here.
ENJOY!
-Jean

Neat postcards

These are also from Noal from some museum down in L.A. (where did you get this, Noal?) They're such bizzar but interesting postcards with all the embroidery on their clothes! I especially love the bright colored shiny thread.
-Jean

I love Birthday Packages!

So it was my birthday end of march! Hurray! I got some lovely birthday surprise packages from my good friends and I really enjoy how each were so well wrapped...so I had to document it!
A bundle of surprises from Noal. But the pods were my absolute favorite, especially with the beautiful vibrant paper and gold thread wrapped around it!Noal and I would always find random natural debris all over. And now we always keep and eye out for beautiful mother natured made things like this. Noal picked up some amazing tumbleweed while on a road trip one time, which you can see here.
Package of pretty in pink from Christianna...I ate almost half of the delicious strawberry chocolate right away!! mmmm.
Such a charming and cheerful birthday cake drawing! and of course she doesn't forget the forks. Thank you guys so much! I love you guys! MUAH! ^3^
-Jean