This was Mama’s Mother’s Day present all dressed up (and looking very chic!) in recycled pages from old fashion magazines. It’s also a way of celebrating the holiday for Mother Earth by taking something used and transforming it into something useful.

I chose some pages with interesting colors:

Used questionable amounts of Scotch tape to create a paper patchwork large enough for the gift:

Cut strips from excess paper and made curliqued bows:

And stuck them on the top in an interesting arrangement (Thank you, W., for the design suggestion!)

Voila! Tres chic! Happy Mom’s Day to all.

I found it! This Dymo label maker tvc came to mind while I was baking this weekend. Glad I tracked it down on Youtube. Watch, and giggle.

From Caryn’s Creative Swap:

1. What kind of creative things are you into?
- sewing (quilting, dressmaking)
- needle arts (needlepoint, knitting, crochet)
- baking/cooking

2. How would you describe your personal style? (girly, ethnic, modern, etc.)
- Ah! A bit tough to answer! But, style-wise, all these make sense to me:

- If you can guess who the four characters are above, you’re a person after my heart.

3. What are your favorite colors?
- green
- black and pink
- fuschia
- Maison Martin Margiela’s palette
- I don’t like PURPLE or any of its ilk!

4. What is one craft you would like to learn?
- millinery
- tatting
- lacemaking
(Oops, those are three!)

5. What other hobbies are you into?
- dance
- reading

6. What items do you really wish you had right now?
- a pretty canister/holder for my makeup brushes
- a keychain because my Hello Kitty one is on its way to heaven
- a pretty scarf with bird silhouettes on it like this one from Hayden- Harnett

- a new oversized bag for all my dance accoutrements, so I can haul my big behind back to class
- an honest-to-goodness book strap (like those vintage ones!)

Alright, my chips are on the table. Looking forward to crafty swappin’!

I never expected this blog to lead me to the discovery of other crafts (and craftsters) beyond my own sewing kit. But now it will – because I’ve joined Caryn’s Creative Swap. I don’t know WHEN I’m going to have time to do this (One crafty thing a month! I may have to skip out on some when I start traveling for work!), but the chance to reconnect with other curly-minded freaks like me was too good to pass up. Heehee.

Details of the swap are below. If you’re interested, please email Caryn at gandarynako-at-yahoo-dot-com.

I’m filing all swap posts under my DO Curlygory.

Mechanics:
1. Post the mechanics and logo on your blog and answer the meme (above). This will serve as reference for the people who will be sending you stuff. If you could, please tag back to sari-saring kulay so other interested people can also sign up.

2. The swap is on a monthly basis. You will be assigned a swap partner on rotation. Consult the meme that your partner posted on his/her blog and send four items.

3. The four items are as follows
1-something you made
2-a craft material you think he/she would enjoy
3- a snack or something you like munching on before, during or after the creative rush—It’d be nice to send something interesting from where you are currently based
4- a short note or card to say ‘Hi!’

4. Items should be posted on the last day of each month.

5. Wait to receive your items and then post something about it on your blog.

6. Other crafters who aren’t bloggers are also welcome to join; they just have to send Caryn an email with their name, adress and answers to the meme above to be included in the rotation. Emails may be sent to gandarynako-at-yahoo-dot-com.

7. On the first week of each month you will be sent the details of your next swap partner. Please try to keep all details confidential.

Good luck to all (especially me! Haha.)

This is the new-fangled Easy Bake Oven and Snack Center. It is super adorable.

Kids have it easy these days. Granted, the Easy Bake has been around since 1963, but I don’t think they had cake mixes like these back then!

Growing up, the first pots and pans I cooked with were those clay sets from Silay City. And it was a ritual – to cook (and burn) your first tiny pot of rice over a tiny fire in a tiny kiln (is that what it’s called?). And maybe the fact that I had to work with real fire was a safety precaution of sorts: there was always an adult around to supervise. I read that in 2007, Easy Bake had to issue a recall because kids kept getting their fingers caught in dangerous nooks and there were incidents of burning. I don’t think you should leave a child alone with any heated appliance anyway – even if it has the word “easy” in its product name!

All horror stories aside, I would try making these mixes myself! Look at how cute:

I think they should repackage the toy so it’s for both boys and girls, though. Right now, there’s only a girl’s face on the box. The best chefs in the world are men, you know!

The Easy Bake Oven and Snack Center retails for $24.50 at the Hasbro Toy Shop.

Oh no, Dale.

So, my boy lost it on Top Chef last night. The Quickfire challenge was a relay race that had the cefs scrambling to section oranges, peel artichokes, dress a monkfish and whip up mayo by hand (something I’ve always wanted to do!) When his team lost, Dale promptly punched (and dented) the steel cabinets in the kitchen with a very malutong “F*CK!”

Dale Talde is now the official bad boy for this season. They flashed one of those polls on TV during a commercial break, asking viewers to text in their answer to “Which chef annoys you the most? Lisa, Spike or Dale?” Dale came out on top with 47% of the votes.

I thought for a second last week that the perception of Dale’s bad attitude would pass, but he’s really carved a niche for himself in the jerk department with this week’s show. Maybe my judgment is clouded (well, yes it is) but I don’t think he’s THAT much of an a*s. A bit of a divo perhaps, but who isn’t, in their own way? I have to admit to the same when I’m in the kitchen sometimes! (Just ask my family!)

His team also lost the Wedding Wars challenge, where they had to cater a wedding for 250 guests. They worked for 14 hours AND manned the buffet tables at the reception with no sleep. I would’ve keeled over.

Lisa made a Chocolate Hazelnut cake (recipe HERE) for the Groom’s Cake that I’m dying to try.

But in the end, Nikki got the boot. I’ve been waiting for her to get, uhm, served.

To end, I’m d-d-k-ting this Pinoy anthem on keeping it cool to Dale. Dale Talde, cool ka lang. Kawawa ang mga stainless steel na cabinet na yan. Spare the steel cabinets next week! Ahehe.

Be still my heart.

Dr Martens is putting a creative spin to their footwear by inviting craftsters of all kinds to update the brand’s classic boots as part of their FREEDM campaign. On www.dmbootdesign.com, you can submit designs for your own low or hi-top boots with different colors and even upload your own images onto the boots. The site allows you to work with all kinds of tools – virtual colored markers, lighters to “burn” your leather with and pre-designed shapes that you can apply to your masterpiece. You can even build a design from scratch using a downloadable template.

Here are my attempts. This first one uses colors from the standard ballerina’s uniform of grey, black and pink. (If I can’t quite dance it, I might as well wear it on my feet!)

And this one, using an illustration that my brother did for me, after I pleaded with him 75 million times to draw me a fairy.

Try your hand at it! Dr Martens will produce a winning design for sale in their stores across the universe. While you’re at the site, check out all the WAY cooler designs other craftsters came up with.

I have lusted over Docs for years, YEARS I tell you! Ever since Singles came out in 1992.

Perhaps I’ll finally bite the bullet and get a pair of my own. (Cue Paul Westerberg’s ‘Psychedelic Heart’.)

I’m back to regular programming with today’s post on a nifty breakfast idea.

I first heard about Egg In The Basket from a Friends episode. Joey used to make this for Chandler all the time. After he moved out, Chandler’s new roommate Eddie ends up making him some sort of new egg dish, and this irks Joey to no end.

I love Friends – and I love eggs! So I was curious about trying to make this. Found out that it’s also called an Egg In The Hole or Egg In The Window.

So, here goes.

Take a piece of sliced bread and butter both sides. Find a glass or cup whose mouth is just wide enough to hold an egg.

Use the glass to cut out a hole in the buttered slice of bread. At this point you can eat the cut-out, but I thought it would be good to include in the dish, so I saved it.

Melt a bit of butter in a non-stick pan and place the two bread pieces in it. Break an egg into the hole (carefully!). Sprinkle with salt and pepper. Do the dishes, watch the news, twirl around in your living room while you wait for the first side to brown.

Peek underneath the bread to check if it’s turned golden and flip the whole thing over. I thought this would be great with Spam, so I threw a slice in the pan as well.

Once the whole thing is browned evenly on both sides (you’ll see that I was too impatient to wait for the other side to really brown!), chop up some tomatoes and use your now-crispy bread cutout to garnish.

Yummy, fun and easy. You can get creative too – top with parsley or chives, grated cheese or a hollandaise sauce for your own twist on the classic Eggs Benedict. Here’s wishing you luck on your own eggsperiments!

1) Chocolate Chip and White Chocolate Macadamia cookies travel well and will last a long road trip. To minimize on prep time, I doubled a standard recipe and divided it in two. Mixed dark and milk chocolate chips in one, and white chocolate chips and macadamia in the other.

2) California wildflowers would be great as embroidery designs. I’m thinking of edging scarves with these flowers’ silhouettes.

3) It’s entirely possible to make great minestrone in the wild from pasta (with marinara sauce from a jar!) leftovers the night before. (Wish I had better pictures, but I was cooking and my hands were full!)

4) Varied greens with contrasting spots of lavender are just this side of lovely as a palette for a quilt in your head. (Oh no, another one!)

5) I want to be a craftster for as long as I can–just like this lovely old lady, who was happily painting the sun-drenched Big Sur, CA coast.

Had a blast, but glad I’m home where I can take hour-long hot showers, watch Iron Chef and blog.

As a girl, there are days when all I want to do is dive headlong into a pool of chocolate and do the backstroke in it. I’m talking about this bad craving for all things cocoa when, uhm, once each month, I am reminded of the fact that I am not the boy with a curl, but the GIRL with a curl.

This past weekend, I had an intense craving for chocolate cake. And very specific KIND of chocolate cake. Does anyone remember the Devil’s Food Cake with White Icing at Chocolate Kiss in UP Diliman? (I wonder if that place is still open.) I loved that cake; it was chocolate bliss, the kind I was hankering for. (Ross should remember that cake with fondness too, but for different reasons. Ahehe.) But Chocolate Kiss is a 14-hour plane ride away and I was kind of sick and it was hot and gross in LA. So, given all that, I made this:

And topped it off with Marshmallow Icing, which is the traditional boiled, Seven-Minute Icing that you whip up in a double boiler, except that you beat in a cup of mini mallows at the very end until it melts into all that fluffy goodness:

The frosting was too soft to be piped, so I just piled everything on the cake, made swirls on the top with the back of a spoon, and finished off with a dusting of powdered cocoa.

That cake was soo good. It wasn’t Chocolate Kiss good, but it cured my cravings by hitting all the right chocolate spots. I even ate a slice for breakfast the following day. (I baked the thing, so I am allowed to eat it when I deem appropriate – and that’s first thing in the morning with a tall glass of ice cold milk! Yum.)

But the fact that I made all of this in under an hour and a half isn’t the real story.

THIS picture is. Can you tell why?

Teehee!

This post is for Ate Christine, who thinks I make everything from scratch.