Taken on New Year’s morning around 9:30 am. There’s an orb on the top left! Good things are to happen this year!! It snowed two days ago, and there’s still some snow left in the back!
Traditional Japanese New Year’s Food:
Osechi – meal filled with considered-lucky food (beans, prawn, etc.)
Futomaki
Inari (my fave!!)
Dried Persimmons. It it said that if you find lots of seeds in it, you’re lucky!
And the not-so traditional food:
For the boys – meat ‘n’ cheese ‘n’ crackers!
Our tradition is to play the Game of Life. It’s our 9th year playing it! (we’ve been doing this for a while now!) I’m always the banker because I like to be in charge of things. 🙂
I was last in place, but hey! Calculate the $$s and guess what! I won!!
Highest $$ so far in the 9-year tradition! (and my dad got the lowest of the all-time.) Wow! I feel even luckier! 😀 (my grandpa and my little brother thinks I cheated because I’m the banker – uh, no! THEY are the ones that would cheat if they were the banker!) 😉
And while being the awesome banker, I was nibbling on this fun chocolate from the vegan store that my bf bought me. 🙂
I’m back in my dorm, and barely anyone’s here! Perhaps a good time to go buy textbooks tomorrow morning and figure out where my classes are 😉 Lets reverse this night owl schedule and get up early!
I realized that the days up til Christmas is more fun than the actual day of Christmas. I like the spirit and the atmosphere people and the city provide. 🙂 I’m still listening to Christmas songs! (Glad Warm 106.9 still has their Listen Live stream player!) Obviously this isn’t live, but that doesn’t matter. I like Christmas songs and that’s that. 🙂
On Christmas day, I woke up around 9 and didn’t fall back asleep. 🙂 (usually would, because there’s no school, but Christmas day is one of those days where I should get up early, so everyone can open their presents)
Gifts I received…
From Santa are: A Nikon Coolpix 3000 (which didn’t let me get a photo off of the internet),
A Strawberry Cream lip gloss (the box was from my boyfriend; he worked so hard writing my name in kanji!! That touched me a lot!! Good job, Michael!)
a pink scarf from old navy that’s about 2 ft long (and it’s a whole hoopy-loop; not a long string, but more like a hoop),
a Vegan Tunic Sweater (sooooooooooooo cute and suuuuper warm!! I LOVE it!!),
and a hand-made bracelet in a handmade gift box made out of old greeting cards! (First I thought it was a gift that his sister got and gave it to me – I thought that because of the box. Sorry! And the types of beads, colors, and the pattern shows his personality, and it represents me really good! I love it!!)
From my brother: Mario and Luigi Partners in Time (OMG I LOVE M&L RPG games!! I’ve played all of them (1-3), and this is the cutest!!!)
Bunch of junky food, but oh well. 🙂 I had pancakes instead.
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Before:
After:
Ta-da!! I took off the tape today!! I really wanted to, and it doesn’t look as bad as I thought it would. 🙂
Other side:
This side was the better side. (because the other side had more move-arounds to do) I’m glad I’m healing! (but needs to put on ice pack more…)
Cute eat before surgury:
Vegan Snowman Marshmellow!! Mmm, it was soooooooooft!
Now, I’m able to eat food like this:
Japanese Seaweed + Salt potato chips. Each chips had lots of seaweed on it, and it was very salty. 🙂 (my bf likes American Potato chips better)
And
Haupia – Hawaiian Coconut “jello”. It tastes like coconut!! But not super-strong, so I’m okay with it. 🙂
This isn’t a blog. This is where I keep the record of ME. Solo for ME; only for ME. If anyone wants to see/read it, go ahead. Feel free, but, THIS IS FOR ME. 🙂
Wow. I was looking through the photos that I’ve taken over the past few months (before I lost my camera), and I TOTALLY didn’t do a couple of important/fun posts! So, I’m going to one of them today. 😀
On September 16th (according to the photo date), Michael and I went to the Puyallup Fair!!!!! 😀
(taken from ride) As you can see, it was very rainy.
The first thing we did was…food!! (even though I wasn’t hungry at all. I wanted to eat something for a good memory) 😉
So Michael bought us…
An Elephant Ear!! 😀
Don’t worry, it’s not real. 😉 (When I was little, I used to think that it was, and I refused to eat it everytime)
We asked, waited (for EVER!!), and found out what the heck was in it. It turns out that it’s vegan without the butter, so we got one with strawberry jam – the butter.
Am I focused on the ear, or my boyfriend? 😉
Gone! Oh, that was a lot. 😯
It was really big (about two hands in diameter), but I didn’t want to carry around with me, so we ate the whole thing!
Then we walked around, looking at stuff.
I thought to myself: “WHY ISN’T MY BROTHER HERE?” He’s (14) practicing with friggen college students!! He can easily beat the records!!!! (he’s a baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaad ass when it comes to baseball) And no one his age tried out, too. But then, they would have been put in shame anyways. 😀
And cute finds of weird fun toys + others.
My boyfriend’s FAVORITE Japanese mascot/character, Mameshiba. I bought A BUNCH of Mameshiba stuff from Japan for him, and it’s quite funny how much stuff I got him!! 😀
After the fair, I had to give a visit to my wonderful uncle, so I got him some presents:
lol Great socks, right? 😉 I like how it says “Other sock”. That just gave us a good laugh. 😀
And Michael got him a marble that says “Tom” (he’s so nice, isn’t he?) 😉
After making a trip to my uncle’s house and talking for a good chunk of time, mom didn’t have anything for us to eat for dinner, so we went to Teapot!
Pictures of what we ordered:
And then there were none.
But then there was room for dessert. (who wouldn’t have room for dessert?) 😉
(NOT a recycled photo)
Yum! But half each is enough, like always. 🙂
Oh, and guess what my boyfriend bought me at the marble store (where he got the “Tom” marble)??
WOW. Why does this sound so nerdy? Oh well. I want to be (and will be!!) a math teacher, so it shows my pride in loving math! 😀
In case you want to see the video for it, here you go!
Ha ha ha! It’s awesomely funny, isn’t it? 😉
Have you gone to any fairs in your area? Do you like fairs? Do you go on rides? The only ride we went on was the gondola. We don’t like spending money nor getting dizzy and sick and throwing up on eachother!! Ha ha!! 😀
Have a good one and thaaaaaaaaaaaaaaanks for coming! 🙂
Hola!! How are you all doing today?? 😉 How’s my new looks on here? Pretty rainbow, huh? 😉 (It’s totally me, says my boyfriend. I have to agree!)
What did you do today? Fill me in!
Me? I didn’t do anything for this certain holiday called Halloween, (other than cosplay a little here and there), but we had another visit to the Wayward Vegan Cafe and ate some chiggen! 😀 (I REALLY wish I had my camera so I can take photos of it!!!) Now that I think about it, I don’t think I never did a post about our first trip to the cafe…Hmm…I need to work on that, too…
But!! I know many of you are passing out candy and/or trick-or-treating with your kids! How awesome is that?
I have to say, is it just me, or is anyone noticing how there’s Cards for Halloween in the last 2 years?? I just think that’s so strange because…do you really need to send cards? What’s your opinion?
Because today’s Halloween, I thought I should give you some fun Halloween facts!
Halloween is Orange and black because Orange represents the fall color and black represents death
The most popular chocolate bar for trick-or-treating is a snickers bar
The first wrapped penny candy in America as Tootie roll
Jack o’ lanterns originated from Ireland. Originally, they put candles in hollowed-out turnips to keep the ghosts/spirits away on the Samhain holiday
The most popular Halloween costume this year are Lady Gaga, Snooki, and Buzz Lightyear!
This week: I’m going to have a little-sort-of-old-post (may include the cafe trip, but not sure) and a recipe from a great lady coming up, so for now, enjoy the day!!
Are you doing anything special tomorrow too? How about celebrating el día de muerto?? Fill me in on that too! 😀 (I hope I can bake tomorrow for this special day!!!) 😀 😀
Okay, the title was a must. lol So bare with it. 🙂 The blood part? Oh, you’ll figure it out soon enough. 😉
Do you know HOWMANYpumpkinrecipes/posts I’ve seen in the last week or two? It’s CR-AAAAAA-ZY!!! 😯 I guess everyone (except me) loves fall! 😉 (I’m a I-love-100-degrees Summer girl) 🙂
But those recipes on the other hand…Mmm. They look pretty yummy! SO, to catch on to the trend to test out my fall-cooking skills, I made Averie’sNo Bake Pumpkin Pie!! (Twice in a week, too!) 😀
I used a whole can of Pumpkin Puree instead of 2/3 can because I didn’t know what to do with the leftovers, and I used a pre-made crust because I don’t have what I need to make the raw crust and I’m not good with nuts.
For the first one, I didn’t have Pumpkin spice, and for the second one (both pictures above), I didn’t have Cinnamon, but they both tasted fine. 🙂 (the ingredients for Pumpkin spice is: cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, and cloves anyways. I can lack cinnamon and use just the pumpkin spice and vice versa.) 🙂
It was muy bien!!! The first one was the first recipe (with soymilk and brown sugar) and the second one is replacing those with agave. (And for the first one, I made 6 little pies using 6 mini pie crusts.) (though the crust REALLY tasted like Aluminum! I guess it got it because that’s what it was in. 😛 I wonder how long the crust was sitting on the store shelf. Hmm…)
Personally, I like the soymilk + brown sugar recipe more, because when put in the freezer, it actually freezes (and hardens). The agave one just stays as mush. 😦 But taste-wise, it actually tastes the same to me! And it goes very good with Rice Dream’s Frozen Vanilla Dessert!! 😉
Oh, and the blood part of the title, you ask? That was added later in the day because….
I DONATED BLOOD!!!!! (done it for the first time, so I’m really proud and happy about it) 😀
How was it? It was awesome!!! Before I did it, I was freaked out like heck. I was so nervous about it! D:
My mom was worried like crazy about how I’m “losing my hair” (I think I just naturally shed) and “lacking nutrition”, so she thought this was a great chance to get my iron level checked. And guess what?My iron level was 15.1!!!!! They said that it’s A LOT higher than normal!!! HA! I knew that eating lots of greens, especially spinach, was good!! 😀 😀 (Iron deficient when vegan? Naaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah. Not for me!)
So as I was donating, I was all excited about that and how I’m helping someone. And while blood was drawn out, I was playing pokemon. 🙂 I’m such a dork, I know. 😀
How was it? It was great! I wasn’t dizzy or anything afterward, I was able to move right after it was over, and I got a free apple juice! (I hadn’t had apple juice in a looooooong time.) Snack-wise, they didn’t have anything vegan other than raisins, so I was well-prepared with a S’mores Luna Bar. 🙂 The only things that “hurt” were when they measured my iron level, when the needle went in, and the aftermath. (It stung/stings a little to bend my elbow.) But I feel great knowing that this is going to help someone! 😀 I hope they like my vegan blood! 😉
And my hands freezesuper-easily, so when the blood was being drawn out, it got so cold that it actually felt warm. lol I guess I’m cold-blooded! lol
Now, I am very proud with my non-neon color (they ran out of neon pink. Oh well. 🙂 Red is close enough.) Red bandage. 🙂
I can’t take a shower at the usual time I take it (4:00-4:15 ish), because I have to have it on for at least 4 hours. Oh well. I can wait until 6. 🙂 But really, I think this bandage is cool!!! 😀 Will I donate blood again?For the neon-colored bandage,YES!!!!!!
It was a good experience to learn that it doesn’t hurt to donate blood, and I’m already looking forward to donate next time!! (but next time, with an awesome donor card) 😉
Thaaaaaaaaaanks for coming and enjoy your fall recipes! 🙂
P.S: Have you donated blood? Were you scared? What’s your blood type? My blood type is O+, and I sure was scared, but not anymore! 😀
Osechi – meal filled with considered-lucky food (beans, prawn, etc.)
Futomaki
Inari (my fave!!)
Dried Persimmons. It it said that if you find lots of seeds in it, you’re lucky!
For the boys – meat ‘n’ cheese ‘n’ crackers!
Sagojyou's Veg*n Page 