Old Times!

While going through some old video I found this clip from May 2008. Our daughter and her family came to South Korea to visit us and one night we took our grandson, Noah, out to dinner with friends.

Noah will be 4 in April and I can't believe how time flies!

Polymer Clay!

I haven't worked in polymer clay since our return from South Korea last April which is almost a year now. All my clay (well, most of it) got over to Korea when we moved but U.S. customs would not let it back deeming it too dangerous. I did try to smuggle it by packing it myself but it was discovered. So Hannah's nephew was thrilled to get all my clay.

These three little pigs were in my first book, "Clay Creations" with Design Originals.


Also in that book I did a series called, "Babies of the Month." This is March. I've put many of these in my Etsy shop.

We ended up at the Retinologist yesterday because Rocketman was seeing flashers which means tugging on the retina. We saw the older brother of Dr. NBM (No Beside Manner). He sure was different than his little brother. Very compassionate and concerned. He said that the flashers were due to the gas bubble pressing onto the retina. No cause for alarm but told us it was good we came in. He said that Rocketman needs to watched closely right now. His retina was still attached and doing well.

My Name is Sam Soon

This was the drama that started my love affair with Korean dramas. The focus was on a chubby (overweight) older (late twenties) woman who is a pastry chef who wishes to change her name. Actress Kim Sun Ah reported gained 15-20 pounds to play the part of Sam Soon. She did it brilliantly!

Her love interest was played by actor Hyun Bin who owned a restaurant and had issues of his own. Sam Soon ends up working at his restaurant with a lot of twists and turns.

The music of this drama is also fantastic. I am lucky to own a copy of the original soundtrack. I also have a pig like the one from the drama.

My sister, the eye doctor, recently had a patient in that is suffering from some eye condition where he can only see up close. He told her the only thing getting him through this time was Korean dramas. He's hooked.

You can watch a lot of the Korean dramas online at Mysoju.com. Another source is here.

I surprised to find out that one of my Korean yoga teacher's name was Sam Soon. She didn't seem to like her name either.

Maedeup Monday!

I have been spending a lot of time at doctor's offices and day surgery centers and my maedeup has been a wonderful friend to me especially when I am stressed out. It relaxes and calms me down plus makes the time go faster. The pendant used above I bought while still living in South Korea.

A recent trip to JoAnn's had me coming home with this pendant from Jolee's Boutique. I had heard of them before because they make the cutest scrapbook embellishments but what I didn't know was that they had branched out into beading.

While Rocketman was having his retina attached I was working on this piece. An older gentleman sitting near me after watching me for some time asked me what I was doing. He thought I was untying a bunch of knots.

Have a wonderful Maedeup Monday!!

Photo Bracelet

I haven't played with "Shrinky Dinks" since the kids were little but when I heard they had ink jet sheets I just had to try it. I made this bracelet of our kids through the years.


I bought this pack of six sheets on Amazon.com.


I had a bunch of pictures in our computer from another craft project in it's own separate file and in our photo program I was able to print 16 per page which was just the right size.

After printing and cutting each picture out, I used a hole punch to punch a hole in each picture.
Then placed them on a cookie sheet covered with parchment paper.

I covered them with an additional sheet of parchment paper to keep them from curling and into a preheated 300 degree oven they went for about 2 minutes.

I had some really cute heart chain and I used jump rings to attach the pictures to the chain.

This is how it looked on me. The pictures shrunk to about 20% of their original size and were also a lot darker but they turned out great. It was fun to revisit "Shrinky Dinks!

Ikebana - Week 2

With all the excitement with Rocketman this week, I forgot to post on my second Ikebana (Japanese flower arranging) class. This week was working with twigs and how a few twigs, flowers and greens can create such a simple and beautiful arrangement. This one is the one I created with a lot of help from our instructor.

The following are arrangements from the rest of the class:

We have all had to much fun with this introduction to this wonderful craft. We all want continue so we will be meeting twice a month at our instructor's home. I am in the process of buying all the pieces needed so I can actually create my arrangement and bring it home intact.

Update on Rocketman. The retinologist visit today went as well as can be expected. He does want Rocketman to be have his eyes parallel to the ground for a week which was not unexpected but hard to hear. I went off this morning to get the magic massage chair that allows him to and least be able to sit up. Thank goodness for his IPod Touch and Net Flix.

2nd Time The Charm

Home Sweet Home! This morning found us back for more surgery. This time on Rocketman's "good" eye. Now I don't know what to call each eye! We had to be there at 7:30 am and the surgery was scheduled for 9:30 am.


They give you a pager and when it lights up, a staff member is looking for you. The admitting guy was standing right besides me as I took this picture (unbeknowst to me) and he asked if I scrapbooked. I told him "no, I blog."


Here's Rocketman with his two bad eyes waiting for surgery.

Rocketman post op. The Retinologist said that the worry is that he develops a membrane which would not be good. I didn't bother to clarify since we will be seeing him tomorrow at 8 am. Surgery went went well and his eye has a matching buckle in the back like the right eye. I wonder what color the buckle is? We got home around 11:30 am. Rocketman has to keep his head facing the floor until our appointment tomorrow. Thank goodness it isn't for a week like the last time.

He came home with this spiffy bracelet just like last time. He has to wear it for 3-4 weeks. He just loves the bright green color. He's not working tomorrow although I have caught him on his computer a few times today.

He was partially awake for the surgery but didn't feel a thing. I can't imagine being awake and having someone working on my eyeball. I had to have a Valium before they did my Lasik surgery years ago that's how big a baby I am.

We will know about his prognosis tomorrow. What are the chances of having a spontaneous detached retina in both eyes!

If It Weren't For Bad Luck...

Poor Rocketman. We just got back from the retinologist and he grounded Rocketman. No flying to Asia on Saturday. The grounds: detached retina. Yes, you heard right. Not only did his right eye spontaneously detach (June 2009), the same has now happened to his left eye.

Surgery was immediately scheduled for tomorrow morning. I'm still in shock and will blog more later.

Happy Birthday to Me!

Saturday night was the night my sister had set up for my birthday party. All I knew was that she would pick us up and we would be going out to dinner. So when there was a knock on the door and I opened it to find a gentleman standing there, I thought he was the UPS guy. Then I saw a humongous white stretch limo backed into our driveway.

I looked shocked at Rocketman and he had one of his knowing smiles. I threw on my coat and out the door we went. When I entered the limo, I was shocked to see my other sister and her family there also. This was so shocking to me that I started to cry. I wasn't expecting any of this.

The picture above is me with Noah, our grandson.


Off we went to dinner which turned out to be at one of my favorite restaurants, The Cheesecake Factory. When we arrived we found out that there would be a 2 hour wait. We put our name in and then drove around in the limo to see if we could find somewhere else to go. But it being Valentine's Day weekend all the restaurants were packed.

But before we took off, everyone had to use the bathroom except me. So I found myself with a limo to myself.


This is my sister, Wendy, who planned the whole party getting back into the limo.


We drove around having a blast listening to the radio. This is a shot of my nieces and nephews.

Then our daughter and her family and my son showed up and joined the party in the limo.

Due to work schedules, it is almost impossible to get both of our kids together. On the left is our youngest, Luke and on the right is Laura, mother to Noah.

This is my brother-in-law, Paul, who is married to my sister Heidi.

Dinner at The Cheesecake Factory was unbelievable. Of course, my niece, Hayley, had to keep her boyfriend informed.

On the ride back a song by the Beastie Boys came on and my sister, Heidi, went crazy!

We had a great time and it was so fun to get together with everyone. I had given Noah a Valentine's Pez dispenser when he first came into the limo and by the time he left, he had eaten at least 3 packages of Pez.

Maedeup Bracelets!

It looks like I'm going to be teaching some maedeup classes locally. This bracelet is very easy and uses the hapjong maedeup knot.


This bracelet is made with the dorae maedeup knot.

This week I finally fired up the kiln to do some chilbo (Korean enameling). My Korean teacher always had the copper prepared ready to start. When I left South Korea, she told me (in Korean so hand signals were used since my Korean is minimal) to put the piece into the kiln until black to remove all the grease. Then you scrub off the black and you are ready to go. Sounds simple, doesn't it? I had no problem with getting the piece to turn black but to remove th black from the copper has been another story.

I have several books on enameling and I don't know what I am doing wrong but it's been a bear to remove the black. Hopefully, I figure it out soon!

Tonight is my 50th birthday party and all I wanted was my family together for a dinner. It is hard to accomplish since my son works all different hours and days of the week. My sister fired Rocketman from the planning since he really didn't know what he was doing. She is picking us up at 6:15pm and we have no idea where we are going. Rocketman did try to get reservations and could not anywhere. We found out today that no one is taking reservations since it is Valentine's Day weekend. My sister knows I hate to wait a long time to sit and eat so we will see what transpire.

I also pitched some more craft projects to "Twin Cities Live" and am waiting to hear what they think.

And The Winner Is!

Thanks to Random.org, the winner is #8:

Den!!!

Please email me (becky@meverden.net) your address so I can get the maedeup necklace off in the mail to you. Congratulations!

Japanese Ikebana

Today I took a class on Japanese Ikebana. Ikebana means living flowers or flowers in water. I recently learned about this craft and saw that it was being taught locally. The charm for me is in its simplicity where less is better than more.

We started by choosing the branch that would be the tallest in our arrangement. The length was determined by a formula based on the size of the ceramic dish. Everything was stuck into a kenzan which reminded me of a tiny bed of nails. The kenzan really holds the branches and flowers well.

Ikebana is about flow and there is a purpose on how long each branch or flower is and where it is placed on the kenzan and which direction it is to go. You can also bend the branch to get it to go the way you want.

I'm taking another class next week. It was fun and really relaxing.


This is my finished product.

The following are from others who took the class:

We all left class with smiles on our faces. I thought we were going to get to take the whole arrangement home but the class costs covered the flowers only.

This is how my flowers ended up. The teacher gave us some on-line sources for the kenzan and other Ikebana supplies. The clipper we used to cut the stems was really cool. I learned that you should always cut your flowers (and branches) underwater to make them last longer. So we would do an initial cut about one inch from where we really wanted to cut, then placed the stem underwater to do the final cut.

Pomplamoose

This group is called Pomplamoose and their music just makes me smile. Here's a few of my favorites:





We have another birthday party today. This one for our niece who is turning 16. We are getting to be a couple of party animals!

Happy 23rd Baby Boy!

He was always running on fumes, our boy. We often find him in this position with his "big one" blankey. We can't believe how fast the years went.

Another scare for Rocketman and an unplanned visit to Dr. NBM (No Bedside Manner). Rocketman spent Tuesday at work seeing flashers (streaking, flashing light) in his good eye. This even went on when his eye was closed. We have learned since the detached retina that flashers are NOT a good sign so with a quick call to the retinologist we were off to see him on Wednesday.

I was amazed that Dr. NBM again for the second visit in a row was pleasant and concerned, at least at the beginning of the visit. Hmmmm, I may have to rename him. He looked in the right eye where he had performed the most recent surgery and was very pleased with how it was healing. His sight is still horrible but that was expected. Hey, it's only been since June of last year that he been able to see out of it.

Now to his supposedly good eye, the left. Dr. NBM said that the vetrious was pulling away like he had anticipated since it had happened to the right eye. He said that hopefully it wouldn't take the retina with it but we would know in 3-4 days when this process would be concluded. Rocketman is well aware of the signs of a detaching retina so he told us to call him immediately if anything happened.

He then put some numbing drops in that eye and stuck a metal probe around Rocketman's entire eye. Now Rocketman has an incredible high tolerance of pain but the grunting he was making clearly told me that he was in a lot of "discomfort." I love how doctors use that word to describe excruciating pain. I reminded Rocketman of his kidney stone and that incredible pain that even oxycontin couldn't touch. Dr. NBM took offence to my reference of comparing what he was doing to kidney stone pain. I sometimes really wish he would have a detached retina and all the complications Rocketman has had to endure and see if that doesn't change his compassion. He took about 5 minutes to complete this probing but to me and Rocketman, it seemed like an hour. I left with a pretty good stomach ache and Rocketman said he got really nauseous during the procedure.

We are well into day four so we feel we dodged a bullet. Tonight we have a 60th birthday party for the mother of one of my dearest friends. I'm hoping to get Rocketman to have a few beers and forget about both his eyes for one night.

Maedeup Monday

Since returning from Anaheim, I've been doing a lot of maedeup. These bracelets are dorae and garakji maedeup. The garakji maedeup I bought pre-made at the maedeup shop in Seoul. I didn't buy too many before we left but I'm thinking about buying more when I visit Korea and carrying them in my Etsy shop. You can easy add them to your maedeup by using a loop turner.

One of my best friend's mom is turning 60 and Rocketman and I have been invited to her party. I made this necklace using a chilbo (Korean enameling) piece I bought from my chilbo teacher. I hope she likes it!

A different style from the other bracelets but still using dorae and garakji maedeup.

I went to JoAnn's today to pick up a few things and I even had a list with me. Why do I always leave that store with a bag full? I don't know how it happens. It's like I enter into a trance-like state and I impulse buy. I had hoped when I returned from South Korea that I would have broken this habit but I haven't yet.