Fabulous Adventures of Listgirl

Wednesday, July 6, 2011

New 52 | Week 27: National Fried Chicken Day

I was going to categorize playing the Wii video game Michael Jackson The Experience as my New 52 this week, but during the day today I found out that today is National Fried Chicken Day. How could I not celebrate that?? Fried chicken is one of my favorite foods, although I seldom eat it because it's so unhealthy.

So after work, Todd and I headed over for some KFC. That is... Korean Fried Chicken! My friend Richard at work had told me about this Korean fried chicken place called BBQ Chicken, so we thought today was the perfect day to try it out.

We got some "Olive Strips"... I'm not sure what's olive about them, but these chicken strips were meaty and yummy!

We also got these sweet and spicy chicken wings. We didn't like these as much because they were wings and less meaty, plus there was too much breading.

We got a corn salad side dish, which wasn't what we expected. It's like this corn version of cole slaw, but more sour.

And it came with pickled radishes.

All in all, this first celebration of National Fried Chicken Day was a success!

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About This Project

New52 is a project started by Peppermint and I to encourage each other and others around us to try something new every week in 2011. The "new" each week doesn't have to be something big. It could be something as simple as ordering a new dish instead of old standbys at your favorite restaurant. It's simply opening your heart up to NEW possibilities.

Don't worry if you're late getting started on joining in. It's totally OK if you miss a week here or there. We encourage everyone to keep an open mind about trying something new. This is a life project, and a photography/blog and even scrap challenge if you wish. If you participate this week, please leave a link to your blog post in the link list below. You can also post images to our New 52 Flickr Group! We would love to see what you were inspired to do.

Restful July 4th

Todd got sick with a cold immediately after AJ and Meera left on Sunday. This is the 2nd time in 3 weeks that he's caught a cold! Last time it was later in the day after we saw AJ and Meera as well, so I don't think he's allowed to hang out with them anymore! :p

So all of Monday, Todd napped on the couch due to cold medication. I was a little sad that he got sick on a holiday, but I got a lot of stuff done around the house. I also took a nap on the couch, and I got to watch Giada At Home and Barefoot Contessa on Food Network and got inspired to find some recipes that I want to make later. I had fun tracking those recipes down online and clipping them into my Evernote.

So on our nation's Independence Day, we had a restful and relaxing day. It seemed to be just what we needed... even Noodle.

Michael and Mario

We went to the early service at church on Sunday. Our usual pastor was on vacation so we got a sermon from the assistant pastor. His message was just what I needed! It's so weird (or divine) when I feel like the pastor is talking to me directly. He described exactly how I had been feeling and behaving lately. God had planted a seed in my heart already earlier in the week that I needed to change my attitude about some things, and this sermon just hit the nail on the head for me. When this kind of thing happens, I know God is caring for me and drawing me to Him, and I'm thankful for it.

After church, we went grocery shopping because AJ and Meera and the kids were coming for a cookout for lunch! Todd made Jamaican Jerk Burgers and I was so excited!

We also had some hot dogs, cheddar potato cakes, and apple tarts with ice cream!

The highlight of the afternoon was all of us playing video games on the Wii. We played Michael Jackson The Experience. Todd's parents gave him the game for Christmas after they went to a party and people were playing it. However, we haven't really been playing it and having friends over was the perfect opportunity!

I wanna rock with you...

Cuz this is thriller... thriller night...

This cracked me up. AJ, the only person who didn't play the dance game, was pooped out on the couch.

After Michael Jackson The Experience, we played Mario Kart, which is our most favorite Wii game. Everyone participated and loved it. I love the wheel attachments that we bought for our Wii controller just to play Mario Kart. :)

So glad that AJ and Meera and the kids were finally able to come over and enjoy some Michael and Mario with us!

Saturday with My Dad

On Saturday 7/3, we drove up to LA to visit my dad. I brought him a belated Father's Day gift. We went out to lunch at a new-to-us Shanghainese restaurant. The place was crowded and we had to wait for a table. The food was good and was Todd-approved! :)

One scary thing happened on our way out the restaurant in the parking lot. We were crossing a lane in the parking lot when a car made a left turn right into where we were without looking, at fairly high speeds! I yelled at the top of my lungs "Stop! Stop!" and the driver didn't even look at us as he sped by and almost hit us. Thankfully my screaming stopped my dad in his track, or else he would have been run over had he taken a couple more steps. I'm fairly certain if that driver had hit my dad, he would have sped off and it would have been a hit-and-run. So scary! I wish I could hunt down people like that and punish them, they need to learn their lesson. I HATE careless or angry drivers who take a 2 ton vehicle and essentially make it into a weapon. But I thank God that we didn't get hit.

We read books and napped in the afternoon. Then for dinner, Todd taught my dad how to make a spicy garlic honey chicken dish.

We had some good conversations. I'm glad we were able to fit a visit in to see my dad.

Mini Book | Love You

As I shared a few days ago, I made Todd a "Love You" mini book as an anniversary gift. He really loves it and continues to let me know how much he appreciates it. It makes me so happy and feel like all the work I've put into it was totally worth it!

Today I'm going to share my process for making the book, and some pages from the book.

The idea for the gift book started in mid-April, when I discovered the mini art journals that Eve Johnson (Evalicious) put together in her shop. I loved them at first sight! At that time, she had a "Love You" mini art journal for sale. It's the base of a 4x6 mini book, along with some of her handmade embellishments and other pieces that she's lovingly curated together. She had released it in January for Valentine's Day, but re-released it later for any occasion to make a "Love You" mini album. I thought it would be the perfect anniversary gift for Todd, so I purchased it in secret and made sure I got the mail and he didn't know about it.

After I received the mini book from Eve, I started collecting additional embellishments that I thought coordinated with the theme and style of the book. I also started a project note in Evernote. My project plan had links to products that would go nicely in the book, techniques I'd like to incorporate, and I started a list of reason why I love my husband Todd. I also started to collect photographs that I wanted to use in the book. This was an ongoing list and I slowly worked on gathering the journaling and photos. I had to work on this project when Todd wasn't around, or when he was busy doing something else around the house.

Using Adobe Lightroom | I used Lightroom to organize the photos I wanted to use in the mini book project. I created a tag called "love you mini" and whenever I found a photo that I wanted to use in the book, I tagged it. That way, when I'm ready to print photos, I can just filter on the "love you mini" tag in Lightroom and see the complete collection of photos I had picked out and export them together to a project folder. I do the same thing with my ongoing Project Life album. I take too many photos every week to print them all out, so I tag the ones I plan to put into my Project Life album (my favorites of the week that tell the stories of the week). That way when I get ready to print, I have them all in one place again. I also use Lightroom to pick the photos that go onto my blog. I can't extol the virtues of Lightroom enough. I would have never been able to handle Project 365 in 2009 without it. It makes photo organization for projects SO much easier and the workflow is awesome. I process all my photos, tag them, and export them in both blog size and print size, ALL from within Lightroom. It is one powerful software that I cannot do without.

Journaling | I thought about how I wanted to add journaling to this book. Should it be handwritten all the way? Or a mix of handwritten and typed? Since I had so much journaling to fit into the book, I went for consistency. I took my list of why I love Todd from Evernote and copied it into Microsoft Word. Then I replaced the word "love" in each sentence with a ♥ (which is ALT + 3 on a PC, by the way!). Then I played with the spacing in Microsoft Word so that when printed out, I could cut the sentences into strips that are just the right size for my mini book.

I printed the journaling out onto Bazzill white cardstock in orange peel texture. I used Courier New font to make it look like I typed it out on a typewriter.

Then I cut the journaling into strips.

I had two large ziplock bags for organizing all my journaling strips and photos. One for general photos and sentiments and one for specific photos and sentiments. General means they're sentiments that I don't have specific photos to convey, so I just use cutesy/artsy photos of us together. Specific means I do have very specific photos in mind to tell a specific story of why I love him. An example is that I love him for loving my family and treating them as if they're his own. So I found a photo of him with my mom and dad from back in 2006, when my mom was ill with cancer and the four of us took a trip to Hawaii.

Next I trimmed all the photos I wanted to use. I had made them specific sizes in Photoshop, because I wanted them to be smaller than the size of the book (4x6). Some I made specifically to around 2 inches square so that I could use my 2.5" Marvy square punch to punch them out with a white border.

I should point out that I worked on this in small chunks of time, over 2 months. I had a secret place where I kept it all together, so if Todd came home I could just shove all the supplies in there, ha ha!

One Task At A Time | I made the project easier for myself by concentrating on one task at a time. I find that's how my mind works and it makes everything go faster. So I adhered all the photos into each page of the book first. Then I cut the journaling into the right size for the page and glued those on for all the pages. My last step was embellishment. I planned it that way so that the embellishments went into the spaces last so that they didn't cover up important parts of photos/journaling. And it was much easier to have all the embellishments I wanted to use in one place and just look at each page and decide what needed to be done, after the photos + journaling were there already.

I would have to say, the planning part of this project probably took more time than the execution. Collecting my journaling thoughts and picking out photos took a long time. Printing out photos took a long time (There's about 40!) Collecting embellishments took a long time. The actual adhering of photos and journaling didn't take as long, as well as the actual embellishing.

I love how the book turned out! But even more so, I love that Todd loves it because he knows I put a lot of thought and work into it. Some of the sentiments that I expressed are things that I'm so thankful to him for, but I don't say them every single day.

Here are some pages of the book.