Colorful Bracelet for . . . ?

Normally I like bracelets to have a single color, but today I made a multi-color bracelet with peach irregular shaped pearls, "watermelon"-colored tourmaline (pink, peach, pea green, dark green closer to black), and labradorite (blue flash which appears gray here).  Mainly I wanted to use up beads I already had around.  The clasps are not attached yet, because I need to buy some. . . .

Graduation 2010

Geldim ve çalıştım. Beyin bedava. Ben her gün taşımak....Strangely enough, while moving out, after E put my head + the cap in a small cooking pot next to our dumpster, somebody took the whole ensemble!  It was around sunset, and from a distance the head looked scary.

New Bracelet Partially Done

At my first beads show a week ago, a string of labradorite beads caught my attention, as I have misplaced last summer's beloved sterling silver bracelet with labradorite cabochons purchased from a pushy merchant at a jewelry store in the outskirts of the Taj Mahal.  It had lost one of its stones however, so I stopped wearing it as often.  Below is a picture of its currently unfinished replacement.  The labradorite beads contrasts nicely against the gold.

Refrigerator Magnets

Froggie

Last week I sewed this frog, but I haven't stuffed it yet.

My First Hair Flower

For my friend's bachelorette party, I made a hair pin with a cream gardenia hair flower (from Michael's) with pale amethyst, fire-polished beads wired at the center.  Today I found an old picture of my friend wearing the hair flower on her wedding day.  If/when I make another hair flower, I'll just sew the beads to the flower, but at that time I had no thread and used wire that was lying around.  

Love Birds

A week or so ago, I sewed these green and pink "love birds" by hand.  That was a slow and painful process, so I hope to learn how to use a sewing machine sometime soon.

Todzi Loves You!

Todzi = Turkish  Godzilla

The birds take flight!

Last week I finally finished this little project. I wanted to use different stones or crystals, but I just had this blue stone around.

SVU moment: clay head

Tonight when Emrah saw the clay head I'm working in the car, it was quite dark and the staring head startled him, like the generally sinister beginning of an SVU episode.  We have a model, and it's my first clay head ever.  I haven't smoothed out the clay, but here is my creepy head. . .

Baklava

After buying phyllo dough from the Greek market nearby, I modified a recipe from "Sultan's Kitchen" so that the baklava contained unsweetened walnuts, pistachios, and dried apricots (my addition).  I also more than halved the sugar, so that the syrup's sugar to water ratio was roughly 1 to 2, and added more lemon, so that the syrup contained the juice of one lemon.

Hair Flowers

My first ever attempt at flower pins and hair flowers. . . . For a friend's bachelorette party in Vegas a while ago, I had wired together 30 flower pins for each of the girls: 10 each in magenta (below), cream (below), and fuschia (no picture).  For each day, we wore a different colored pin, though the magenta one was the most popular.  I thought it was a subtle way to signify that we were a group.  The two pink pins (below) were for the bride and maid of honor, to distinguish them from the other pink pins the rest of us were wearing.

Additionally, I made a large cream hair pin with pink fire-polished centers for my engaged friend, and she surprised me by using it on her wedding day. Recently her maid of honor also used the same hair pin for her own wedding hair. Unfortunately, I can't find a picture of the hair pin, though my old computer had a few.

My Heart (Felt-Covered & Blue)

First concession to Valentine's Day since I was 8 yrs old or so. . . .

More Fast Food: Creamy Pasta with Smoked Oysters and Veggies

Originally, I had hoped to deconstruct the CPK tequila chicken fettucine using spinach & chive linguine pasta from TJ's, because E and I love that dish. However, I haven't finished collecting the ingredients, so instead I assembled (not much actual cooking involved here) this dish with a sauce of tahini and non-fat Greek yogurt (lately, my default), canned smoked oysters, fire-roasted red and yellow bell peppers, and marinated artichoke hearts. Today, I used more tahini than yesterday, as I'm a huge fan of tahini.

Later, I topped my dish with some smoked Norwegian salmon I picked up at Costco with Jaime. It's about the same price as TJ's and much less salty. The only problem is that there's so much of it for me to finish. . . .

A Tree Grows in G * l * t *

After visiting a few beads stores (Bohemian Crystal, Berger Beads, and Beads and More) in Downtown LA, a few storefronts away Emrah and I picked up this miniature manzanita tree, which rests atop the dresser and holds my strings of beads, reindeer headband, and new deco-style feather headband.

Originally, I had wanted to paint the tree gold and hang strings of origami cranes from the branches, or wrap copper wire around the branches with crystal flower "buds" on them.

However, I really like the natural coloring of the branches, and it's a convenient and decorative way to store my beads, jewelry, and hair accessories.  A few weeks ago I had purchased a fuschia cymbidium orchid plant from TJ's to brighten up the drab bathroom, but Downtown LA flower stores sell gorgeous orchid plants for cheaper.

Here is a close-up of a flower I made last year with thick stainless steel wire and a few beads I re-used from a hair vine I made.  If I make more flowers, I'll use copper wire from the hardware store.

Invasion of the Paper Cranes

A few years ago, after receiving a Borders gift card from one of my aunts, I ended up buying a few origami books and finally learning origami, something I'd always wanted to do. At my mom's house, the paper fruits of my effort are scattered around: a kangaroo, birds, fish, starfish, other animals, linked paper balls of luck, etc.

Our apartment decor is rather boring, so my goal is to create an origami paper crane mobile hanging from the (many!) hooks on the ceiling. Relative to the other origami animals, cranes are quick and easy to fold, and their shape is so easily recognized and lovely, that it seems worth my time to fold them.














My paper cranes hanging out on the TV

Monster Pizza

This weekend Jaime visited from SF, and Saturday night we made pizza with red bell peppers (roasted in the oven), goat cheese with herbs, brie cheese, homemade marinara sauce made with grape tomatoes, spinach and walnut pesto, apple-chardonnay chicken sausages with lamb casings, marinated artichoke hearts, and sweet potatoes.  It's not very pretty, but it was muy sabroso!

monster "everything" pizza

Fast Food: Creamy Fusilli with Bell Peppers and Artichokes

Tonight I made a quick pasta with a creamy sauce of non-fat Greek yogurt and tahini over brown rice fusilli, topped with fire-roasted peppers, marinated artichokes, parsley, and red chili pepper flakes. All ingredients from TJ's. I didn't even heat the sauce up, because I like my bacteria as live as possible.

Shrimp Wontons

Our second meal together was shrimp wontons.  The steamed wontons fell apart, but our second attempt--frying both sides and steaming--was successful and delicious.

Shrimp Wonton Recipe:
wonton wrappers
1 lb shrimp
large handful of sugar snap peas
scallions
garlic
ginger

Emrah frying the wontons

 

            Tasty fried shrimp wontons!

Live Rock Crabs: Struggling with our food

In mid-December, rock crabs at our farmer's market cost only $4 for three crabs, so we cleaned and boiled the crabs, and christened the new apartment with a nice meal of crabs, pasta, and salad.  

NB: Next time, we plan to freeze the crabs for half an hour to sedate them, and then boil them.  After our meal, we became extremely drowsy.  Perhaps stress hormones released by the crabs caused our extreme fatigue.

Susie holding a cleaned crab before placing it in the pot of boiling water