Packing for lunch...

One of the many fun things I got in Japan were Bento boxes! I try to pack my lunch as much as possible and am always claiming the leftovers from dinners or restaurant meals. I even try to eat only half of my entrees so I can take the rest home and eat it for lunch the next day.

I bought 3 Bento boxes in Japan - a plain white one from Muji, an orange Yomiuri Giants one, and a yellow double-decker Very Hungry Caterpillar one.

Here are all the pieces of the yellow Very Hungry Caterpillar bento box, laid out and ready to be filled.

In the bottom container, I've put in FI's yummy pai gu with scallions.


In the top container, I used the divider and put in the rice and broccoli rabe separately so the liquid from the rabe doesn't soak the rice.

This Bento box also comes with a lid for the bottom container.


Finally I stack the 2 on top of each other and snap the lid (with the awesome Hungry Caterpillar) onto both of the containers. Ingenious!


At my desk, heated and ready to eat. Yummy!


I am technically not making true Bento boxes, but at least I'm packing lunch. If I had the time and the patience, I would aspire to be like Sakurako Kitsa and make amazing picture Bentos. Or just have time to pack fun lunches that aren't just the leftovers of last night's dinner, like Biggie of Lunch in a Box.

But at least I'm not wasting food and reusing the same (and super cute!) containers for lunch. Plus I save money by not buying lunch (Yay for the wedding fund!).

My creative RSVP...

For my friend Angela's wedding RSVPs, we were asked to decorate the back of the postcard with whatever you wanted. They said the most creative would get posted at the wedding.

So that became my goal and I ended up sending in the RSVP 5 days late because I wanted to take the time to draw something fun. I know, I know, as a bride-to-be planning her wedding and reading lots of wedding blogs, I know that a late RSVP is one of the most frustrating things to deal with. However, she did ask for creative postcards...

I'm not a great illustrator, but I pencil and letter stuff pretty well. I'm also a huge fan of comic books and I like the sort of descriptive, wordy, stick-figure style of creating comics. I've done this before.

So I decided to do something similar and incorporate the story of how they met (from their wedding website). I used pencil first to create the blocks of space and then penciled in the stick figures and the dialogue. Then I went over each section with a black fine-fine-tipped pen (I got these 0.3MM pens from China that smell like fruity markers and don't skip).

After each section was inked and left to dry, I went back with an eraser and got rid of all the pencil marks. That's actually my favorite part of drawing or lettering. I love seeing all the blurry pencil marks start to disappear. Then you blow on the paper to remove the eraser shavings and the picture becomes all clear and perfect.

Then I went back and colored in some of the drawings to make the images pop. I think adding just a bit of color makes it even more cheerful and stand out more versus filling the whole page with color.

Anyways, if you do actually enlarge the image... they met online via friends, met in person at a Halloween party (he was Kobayashi the hot-dog eating champion and she was a cat) and he proposed at the next Halloween (they were a Chinese emperor and empress).

Rohobeth Beach!

For the holiday weekend we went to Rohobeth with a bunch of FI's friends. We rented a house about 3 blocks from the beach and were able to spend 3 days at the shore.

We all got in Saturday afternoon and went out for dinner at Claws Crab House. We got 2 dozen crabs for 4 of us. They were super delicious and full of meat and we got all supremely messy banging on the crabs with mallets.We spent all day Sunday and Monday hanging out at the beach and on the boardwalk. We sampled Boardwalk fries, frozen custard, burgers, and fish & chips. Five of us even played the "roll the ball to make your horse race" game. There were 11 of us playing and I WON! I got a stuffed horse about 8 inches long that I stowed in our friends' son's stroller as we wandered the boardwalk.



Here's where he discovers the ipod. It was really cute. He knew what to do with the earphones too.

Our friend decided to use the boogie board as a prop and create a sand sculpture.

Here's the finished work. People kept stopping by and taking pictures. Yes, there are 4 arms on the lady. We don't know why. He doesn't know why either. I just called it a Hindu goddess.

Besides lunches on the boardwalk and our crab dinner, we cooked our own meals. One friend made incredible ribs on Sunday night. She slow cooked them in the oven for 4 hours and the meat was so tender, it was falling off the bones and you could cut it with a butter knife. FI and I made blueberry pancakes for Sunday breakfast. That's one of our usual weekend activities so it was nice to make them for everyone. He also grilled hot dogs for everyone on Monday night before we drove back to NYC.

A very relaxing weekend!

Sorry for the lack of posting...

Whew! It's been a crazy summer for FI and me. We've been traveling or going to weddings or moving all of my stuff into FI's apartment. His place is bigger and we save over $2K each month in rent, electricity, and cable. Hello wedding fund!

Anyways... the last couple of months have been action packed. Here's the run-down of our summer.

5/24 - FI's cousin's wedding (He was Best Man)
5/31 - moving
6/7 - my best friend's wedding (I was MOH)
6/14 - moving
6/21 - meet the Parents (His family and I went down to NoVA to meet my family)
6/28 - moving (we moved a bookshelf, a desk, a tv, and a side table down to my aunt's in NJ)
7/5 - road trip (We head up to Rochester to celebrate FI's uncle and aunt's 50 wedding anniversary)
7/12 - beach (As a treat to ourselves for finishing moving, we take a day trip to Fire Island.)
7/19 - Japan (my cousin's wedding)
7/26 - Taiwan (my cousin's Chinese banquet)
8/2 - Fire Island (Again! We go for FI sister's surprise birthday party. She was definitely surprised, since it was raining all day.)
8/9 - wedding (We head to NoVA for another wedding)
8/16 - wedding (We head to Long Island for yet another wedding)
8/23 - I head to Boston for the Running of the Brides
8/30 - Rohobeth Beach (last weekend of the summer)

We thought we'd be able to relax in the fall and not travel so much and hang out in the city. But it looks like our September and October are getting packed too.

Our first piece of furniture...

So I'm in the process of moving in with FI. As we're trying to figure out how to make all the stuff in 2 studio apts fit into one, we are also getting a few pieces of storage to put all of my stuff.

Our first piece was a cupboard for the bathroom. We bought a super inexpensive one from Target for $30! Which I can't seem to find online... the only one I could find is $120, which is way more than we paid for it.

We spent one evening putting it together. I wish I had taken pictures of our construction. We were super organized. We laid out all of the pieces in order and worked through each step carefully. The pieces were all pressboard so it was superlight and didn't seem very sturdy at all. We had to put part of it together directly in the bathroom since it goes around the toilet.

We had a bit of a mishap because I put 2 of the screws in the wrong way, but FI managed to pull the top off and reattach everything and we finished!

Here's the final product in the bathroom. Looks pretty good right? Definitely worth the $30.

We were worried however that it was so light and not super stable that it might tumble over onto some unsuspecting person sitting on the toilet so we decided to add a support. Using hanging wire (for mirrors and frames), we drilled 2 holes and hammered some hooks and looped the wire through and tied some super tight knots. Kind of ghetto, but it's secure.

Look at the nice doors!

We are impressed with our handiwork!

Travel plans....

Our big trip this summer is a short tour of Asia. My cousin is getting married and his fiancee is Japanese, so they are having receptions in both Japan and Taipei.

FI has never been to Asia and we all haven't been to Japan, so this should be an exciting trip!

We will be traveling to both Japan and Taiwan over a 12-day period. The wedding in Japan is in Kyoto, so we'll be there and we also will stop over in Tokyo. Then we'll head to Taipei.

Mom actually wanted to also go to Osaka and Malaysia as well! I managed to talk her out of that otherwise we'd be flying/training every 2 days and basically have only 1 full day in each city.

Our itenary will be:

- 7/18 - leave US for Japan
- 7/19 - arrive in Tokyo, head to Kyoto
- 7/20 - wedding in Kyoto
-7/21, 22 - sightsee in Kyoto
-7/22 - travel to Tokyo
-7/23, 24 - sightsee in Tokyo
- 7/25 - fly to Taiwan
- 7/26 - wedding in Taipei
-7/27,28,29 - sightsee in Taipei
-7/30 - leave for US

We have a hotel in Kyoto and will stay with family in Taipei. However we still need to figure out where we're staying in Tokyo.

I've been assigned the trip coordinator for Japan since I didn't want to go on a guided tour and Mom isn't good with this whole internet research thing and Stephen is too busy to help out. Thank goodness FI has stepped in and offered to help plan. He's already found the nature-related sightseeing places he wants to go to near Tokyo so that's 1 day planned already.

For Taipei, I'm already thinking of the fun things and places I want to show FI. I actually totally want to get cheesy glamour-shot style engagement photos done! It's much less expensive and they have so many options and great packages. So that will be 1 day covered.

For the other 2 days, I'm thinking....
- get yummy egg pancakes for 30NT (about $1US)
- get hair washed for 90NT
- go to Shi Lin Night Market
- go to Gu Gong National Museum
- wander around Xi Men Ding
- go to Chiang Kai-Shek Memorial
- take the supremely clean and awesome subway system
- check out one of the giant department stores (which is basically a multi-story mall all contained under 1 storefront)
- wander around and eat random food

That should be enough to get us through Taipei...

My shoe organizer!

Remember my post where I vaguely mentioned buying a shoe rack for my cube?

So I did and I set it up under my desk and I put all the shoes I had under my desk on it. Then I started bringing in all the dress shoes I had at home to work too.

I finally ended up with 18 pairs of dress shoes at work!
Looks good, doesn't it? Now I can pick and choose different pairs to wear because I can actually see them.

My friend Ann was shocked I had 18 pairs of dress shoes. I was shocked she didn't have 18 pairs of shoes.

That's not even all of my shoes! I've got a few more dressy shoes, lots of fun sneakers (in different colors), several flip-flops, and rain, snow, and hiking boots.

Although I don't think I have a shoe fetish or addiction. I've never had to hide my shoe purchases from anyone. I even like showing them off to FI when I get new ones.