2NE1

I recently got the latest CD from the Korean girl's group 2NE1 which is pronounced 2 Anyone. I love that name. Boy, can these girls sing. I have their CD cranking in my car when I'm out on errands. This is my favorite:



Tomorrow is a busy day with knitting class in the morning and my first U.S. enameling class at night. I still can't figure out how to get my copper properly cleaned. We will see how much I learn when the teaching is not in Korean.

Maedeup Monday!

If you know me, you know who this is for.....yep, Miss Carol as in Carol Duvall. She loves my maedeup as much as I do. This she can use as an ornament on her tree or as a wall hanging. It's also this time of year that I miss her holiday shows. Remember those days. I had so much fun appearing on them with the live studio audience.

The ornament I got from the same Etsy vendor where I got the snowman ornaments. I asked her if she could make a sock monkey and she did. That's what I love about Etsy, if you don't see what you want, just ask and a lot of times the vendor can create just what you want.

Score!

The Saturday after Thanksgiving has always been the date that Gustavus Adolphus Lutheran Church in St. Paul holds their annual craft show. I hadn't been to it in years and I'm glad I was able to attend this year. I bought a bunch of things and left with a big smile on my face. The ornament above was only $1.95.


A booth had free samples and they were delicious!

These handmade cloth gift bags were only $1.50 each.

This snowman and Santa were $3.95 each.

Another booth had a take on the snowman gift bag I had bought at a previous craft show. They used blue fabric instead of red for a distinctively different look. They were only $2.95 each.

I also got this cute denim nap bag for Noah. It came with a cute pillow and blanket. All for $12.00.

Thanksgiving was wonderful if not hectic. I cooked for two days and we had a surprise visit from Rocketman's father who decided last minute to come up. I needed to add a few heart healthy side dishes and luckily I found some on allrecipes.com.

I thought by now with cooking some 3o or more turkeys that even though I am cooking challenged, I would manage without incident. I got a Butterball turkey when they were on sale at Target. Thanksgiving morning I donned a pair of surgical gloves (I hate to touch raw meat) and cut the turkey from it's plastic wrapping.

I looked at the instructions which told me how long and what temperature. I stuck my hand into the cavity to retrieve the neck bag and gravy bag but could only find the neck bag. I even grabbed a flashlight to look into the turkey and didn't see any other bag. I glanced at the instructions and didn't see anything about the gravy bag so I figured this bird didn't have one.

I stuffed the bird and placed it into the oven for the 4 1/2 hours. I was so busy with the side dishes that I asked Rocketman to spoon out the stuffing into a bowl and cut the bird. After a while I heard Rocketman say, "Oh, Becky...." I said, "What, I'm busy." He said, "What is this bag?" And that's when I found the gravy bag, it was in the butt. Nobody seemed to mind. I think they are all used to things like that happening when I cook.

Why I Love Kim Bum Soo!

His new CD is fantastic! It was produced by JY Park who is the mastermind behind The Wondergirls. I found this first video of him singing his hit song. I can't believe how clear it is with the high def.

The second video is my favorite song on the CD. I play this CD all the time in my car and my grandson, Noah, just loves it. You don't have to have a Rocketman going to South Korea to get Korean music. I buy a lot of it online at: www.yesasia.com.

I get chills when I hear his voice. Enjoy!

It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year

This is the time of year when you will find lots of craft shows and holiday boutiques. They are a fantastic place to do a little Christmas shopping. I went to a boutique being held at a local middle school and bought this gift bag from a darling little old lady for only two dollars!

I happen to be babysitting my grandson, Noah, and he came home with some new fleece mittens and a tin full of candy. He loves these shows as much as his grandma does. We even bought the new baby some handmade receiving blankets.

Tomorrow I will be busy in the kitchen with the Thanksgiving meal. We are having eight for dinner which is just right for me. Rocketman is always right there for dish duty when the meal is complete. Have a wonderful Thanksgiving everyone!

Maedeup Monday!

Saturday's mail brought me a CD of my three segments from "Creative Living With Sheryl Borden." I'm not going to watch them because I have a hard time watching myself on TV. I've never watched my Carol Duvall episodes either. It just freaks me out.

The video is on dorae maedeup. I am wondering what is going on with my hair. I need to find a better hair do. I like it longer but I don't know how to style it.

Anywho, here it is (please ignore the hair):

Ikebana

I hadn't had a ikebana (Japanese flower arrangement) class since March of this year so I was so happy to get an email saying that we were having class today. I had missed a few due to vacations. There were four of us in different levels and it was fascinating to see what each of us had to create. This is mine with winter berries, mums and green holly. The bowl I found at Target.

The following are from my classmates.

My teacher said that my berries will keep until the New Year. I will just have to change out the flowers. How cool is that!

The Sixth Times The Charm

Yesterday Rocketman had his sixth eye surgery, the third in his left eye if anyone is keeping track. The surgery was scheduled for 4 in the afternoon and he was not allowed to eat after midnight even though his surgery was late in the day. That was the hardest part for him.

This is the beeper they give you and when it goes off you know he is done. Since it was so late in the day, the place was pretty much deserted. I brought maedeup to work on and some of the staff had questions about what I was doing.


This is the back of the beeper. I had never read it before. I wish I could put a sign on Rocketman that said that.


The surgery lasted only 24 minutes and he was in recovery for about 15 minutes. Everything looked really good so we left. Unfortunately we were in Minneapolis and it was rush hour but we got through it pretty quickly.

Today is his post op and we don't anticipate much from it. It will take time for his eye to heal. I want to thank everyone for their prayers and well wishes. It means the world to us!

FaveCrafts Blog Hop!

The 15th of each month I am participating in the FaveCrafts Blog Hop. It just so happen that this month it fell on my Maedeup Monday so I hope you won't mind. Maedeup Monday will return next week at it's regularly scheduled time.


Copywrite 2010 Becky Meverden

Materials
Polymer clay: brown, black, white and yellow
Artificial fall leaf
½” round magnet
E6000 adhesive
Knife (polymer clay dedicated)
Toothpick
Circle template (optional)

Instructions
1. Body: Flatten a 5/8” brown ball into a 1 ¼” long oval.

2. Eyes: Flatten two 1/8” white balls into teardrops. Press onto body. Pupils: Roll two 3/32” black balls and press one onto each eye.

3. Beak: Roll a 3/16” yellow ball into a cone shape. Use a knife to cut beak in half only going half way down. Press onto body under eyes.

4. Wings: Flatten two 3/16” brown balls into teardrops. Use the toothpick to make three lines in the widest end. Press onto each side of the body.

5. Feet: Roll two 5/32” yellow balls into ¼” long logs. Use the toothpick to make two lines in each log. Press onto the bottom of the body.

6. Hat: Flatten a 3/8” black ball into a ½” square. Round upper corners. Brim: Roll a 3/16” black ball into a ½” log. Press brim to the bottom of the hat and press the hat onto the top of the body.
7. Bake according to manufacturer’s instructions. 30 minutes at 265 degrees. Let cool.

8. Glue leaf to the back of the turkey and glue a magnet to the back of the leaf.

When It Snows

This is one of my favorite holiday songs and it's by Minnesota group "The Blenders." The snow is now down to some flurries. It took Rocketman two passes to completely snow blow our driveway.

A busy week coming up. On Tuesday, Rocketman goes under the knife for a final eye surgery to laser and clean up scar tissue. After that it will be a long waiting game to see if his vision improves. It's been a long journey. His surgery is scheduled for 4:00pm and the poor man can not eat the entire day until after the surgery.

I also have my final knitting class that night but I told them I may not be there or I may be late. I'm not worried about it. We will make sure they do not give Rocketman any cranberry juice after his surgery and I will also be bring a barf bag for the car just in case.

Let It Snow, Let It Snow, Let It Snow

We woke up this morning to a beautiful sight! Snow! And lots of it! It was the heavy, wet variety.


I have a cranapple tree that I can look out at from our computer room. I saw that the branches were occupied by 10-20 birds just sitting there. Rocketman grabbed his camera and began to shoot.

We would have rather stayed in but it was Saturday which meant a trip to Donatelli's for lunch. I wish I would have brought my camera because we were shocked to see many huge tree limbs down even some taking out power lines.

We had to drop off some homemade salsa at my sister's house for her fiance who was visiting from Wales. He loves my salsa. We got stuck turning into her driveway and then stuck in the middle of the road. We had two cars come behind us so I called her and told her I left it at the end of her 1/4 long driveway.

Then we couldn't get unstuck. Finally, the two cars behind us backed up and drove away which allowed us to back up and drive away also. Rocketman is out blowing the driveway and from the looks of it, it looks like we got over 10 inches and counting since it's still snowing. It is beautiful, though.

Taping "Creative Living with Sheryl Borden"

Last week, Rocketman and I flew to Portales, NM for some tapings on "Creative Living with Sheryl Borden." We had to fly from Minneapolis to Memphis, then Memphis to Lubbock, TX. There we rented a car to drive the 1 1/2 -2 hours to Portales, NM.

The flight from Minneapolis to Memphis was fine except for the end. The pilot told us that we had experienced a heck of a tailwind and we were a half hour early. But he was arriving with too much fuel causing too much weight so he was putting down the landing gear and we were going to fly around for a half hour burning fuel.

Now Rocketman has flown over 2 million miles in his career (hence the name Rocketman) and he had never heard this before. So we flew around in large circles for 35 minutes and landed. We only had 35 minutes before our next flight would take off so it was a mad dash in the Memphis terminal to catch our connection. As we ran we were tortured by the smell of Memphis barbecue and if you haven't ever had Memphis barbecue, I highly recommend it.

We made our connection which was a much smaller commuter plane. The overheads were so small that carry on luggage had to be checked at the gate. That flight turned into a continuous ride on a roller coaster with the plane jerking left and right and up and down. It was so bad that the flight attendants had to return to their seats.

We made it to Lubbock and got our rental car for the road trip. It was so windy that our car was also swerving on the highway as we made our way to Portales. I saw my first tumbleweed thanks to the wind.


I wanted so authentic Mexican food since we were in New Mexico so when we came upon this restaurant, I told Rocketman to stop! It was about 5:00pm and nobody was in the place but the employees. We took our seats and it was like deja vu, we were transported back to South Korea.

The two waitresses were fighting over which one would have to serve us. I watched the whole thing letting Rocketman know what was going on. He wanted to leave but I wasn't going to let language get in our way of a good meal. I never did that in South Korea and I wasn't going to do that back in the States.

Finally, one of the waitresses came over with some homemade salsa and chips along with menus. The menus were picture menus but also with English and Spanish. We made our choices and off she went.

Then the door opened and 15 guys walked in from two mini vans. We couldn't believe they all fit. They all spoke Spanish and that's when I knew we picked a great place to eat.


Rocketman ordered the enchilada dinner.

I ordered two chicken tacos. The food was over the moon delicious. So much so that we stopped on our return to Lubbock.

The show taped at a local studio on a college campus. I was done in just over an hour from start to finish including setting up each segment. I did one polymer clay and two maedeup segments.

We were staying the night in Lubbock so we left the studio and made our way back to Lubbock.

Once we arrived in Lubbock and checked into the hotel, we had the afternoon to bum around. I had heard that Lubbock was the birthplace of Buddy Holly and they had a museum so I wanted to check it out.

The museum was $5.00 a person and no pictures. They even had surveillance cameras watching your every move. I thought that was ridiculous since even Graceland lets you take pictures. We first saw Buddy's bedroom. His mom had never changed it when he left and married. She died in the 90's with the bedroom still intact from the 50's. The family donated it to the museum.

We also saw lots of things of Buddy's like report cards, toys he had played with when he was young and of course, a lot about his days with the Crickets. They even had the glasses he was wearing when the plane crashed. His whole career had lasted only 18 months and he died at 21.

Lubbock is also the home to Texas A & M so we stopped at a bookstore so I could get a sweatshirt. I asked the cashier for a recommendation dinner and she was happy to tell us where to go. It turned out to be the perfect choice as you can see from Rocketman's expression.

Here is a studio shot. It was all college kids that did the taping except for the director.

Sheryl was the sweetest thing. She was a little late because she didn't know that she had to drop off her pumpkin pies that morning for the Thanksgiving dinner at her church. She apologized and it was too cute.

We saw lots of cotton. I had never seen cotton before.

I tried to pick some but there are prickers on the branches. I couldn't imagine people picking cotton by hand like the old days. I did end up finding some on the highway and yes, I am going to craft with it. I was thinking it would make a cute Santa beard.

As we drove, we noticed this huge house sitting in the middle of nowhere.

So we had to stop and take a picture.

This is the front gate. I wonder who lives there.

We had a blast and Sheryl invited me back for more shows. The flights back thankfully were quite boring. I managed to get most of my sock done.

Sarah Made Me Do It

I found Sarah's Korean blog a few years ago when we moved to South Korea. She has been living in South Korea for over 10 years. She is married to a most handsome Korean and they have the most darling little girl, Grace. We became friends through the Internet, sharing the joys and trials of living in South Korea. She knew many of the things I was dealing with because she had to deal with the same things.

Sarah is a fellow crafter and I learned much about her through her blog. She is an amazing knitter among other things. The things she has made are truly remarkable. I hadn't knitted in over 20 years but seeing what Sarah was doing gave me the itch. So I signed up for a sock class at my local yarn store and last night was my second of three classes. The class is pretty full at eight of us. I love watching the ball of yarn I chose create such a beautiful pattern.

Last night I was at the heel of my sock and was sitting next to my instructor for directions. I was following closely to every word she said. She told me, "Turn Becky," so I stood up and sat more at an angle. The teacher and whole class started laughing like crazy and that's when I realized she meant for me to turn my sock NOT my body. I was so into listening and following her instructions exactly that it never occurred to me that she was talking about my sock.

Everyone in the class wants it to continue past next week since a lot will not have even completed one sock and the instructor is open to it. I sure need more than 3 weeks to make a sock. I would also like to make the second sock. I am having so much fun with the other ladies who's ages range from the 30's - 70's. I miss getting out and meeting people.

So I want to thank Sarah for reintroducing me to knitting. I'm loving every minute of it even though I forget to breath sometimes when I'd doing something that takes a lot of concentration. If you want to check out Sarah's blog, click here.

Maedeup Monday!

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas! I've been busy making these wall hangings/ornaments for family and friends on my Christmas list. I bought the handpainted ceramic ornaments from this Etsy seller.

Last week was insane with a last minute appearance on Twin Cities Live and then a trip to Portales, NM with Rocketman to tape three segments on Creative Living with Sheryl Borden. We flew out on Wednesday and back on Friday. I'll blog about the trip tomorrow.

Twin Cities Live Appearance !!!

I got a last minute email yesterday from Twin Cities Live to see if I had any Thanksgiving craft projects and if I would be available for today's show. Of course I said yes and quickly came up with a project which they loved. They asked for another and I was able to pull something together with my stash. So at 2:15pm I was at the studio ready to go.
This is their green room. I was the only one in it. They had a chef today and me.

I never knew their autograph wall was so old. I really need to look at it sometime.

Lights, camera, action!

These are the hosts, Elizabeth and John. They are the sweetest!

Here is what my segment look like. I demoed the turkey candy dishes and the polymer clay turkey refrigerator magnet. For some reason, I thought I had 10 minutes and was wondering how we would get this all done. But I found out that I had 5 minutes so I really had to hustle to get it to all fit.

It was a blast and I have so much fun. Here is the segment. The instructions for the projects are also on their site but I'll post them here too later in the week. I'm soooo busy right now.

Maedeup Monday!

Yes, I'm thinking about Christmas. I tend to think about it all year round especially where my maedeup is concerned. I love to give maedeup gifts and so it requires some planning ahead. This week I made a string of red and green garakji maedeups. I used silver and gold 1mm cording from South Korea to dress up the garakji.


Here are the red garakji earrings.

and the green. I'll have the cording along with the earrings available in my Etsy shop.