One of our good friends was coming over for lunch and a birthday celebration in her honor. I figured she might enjoy panda-themed cakes, so I made these little cupcakes. The problem was, we found out the day before she came that she didn't like chocolate, which is what the lower part of the panda should have been made of for the best look. Also, she showed up 2 hours earlier than we expected and had to leave earlier than expected, so these were hurriedly thrown together in the other room... They're not all they could have been, but they were a cute idea we'll probably try again when we have more time & more interest in chocolate.

First, I used some mini yellow cupcakes and frosted them with cream cheese icing. I used a dark chocolate bar which had already melted during shopping to draw on the rings around the eyes and the mouths. The eyes and noses are made of dry black beans, and the ears are halved mini-Oreos, one of the two western cookies we can buy here.

The base of the panda body was a regular-sized cupcake (should have been chocolate). I frosted them with cream cheese frosting and sprinkled on brown cookie crumbs. Normally, this part would have been chocolate cake sprinkled with Oreo bits or left plain. I put big Oreo halves (or fragments as I hurriedly worked with whatever happened as I chopped) on the front of these cupcakes as panda arms, and added a dollop of cream cheese frosting to help secure the heads.

Finally, I attached the heads. They should have had little Oreo-half feet as well, but time just wouldn't allow. Still, they were cute & fun. I think it might have been her first theme cake!

Half birthdays are a young Sirles family tradition. This year, for Austin's 24 1/2 birthday, two of his friends came over for homemade hot pockets and cake. Now theme cakes are most certainly a Lowe family tradition. Following in my mother's footsteps, I decided to get to work. This year I made a dinosaur theme cake. So fun, and altogether pretty easy!

First, I made two round chocolate cakes. The recipe will appear shortly on the "Cooking & Eating" page.

I frosted the first cake with some green cream cheese icing that was a total experiment with some cream cheese we'd been randomly given from another town. I covered the top of the cake and let the frosting hang down around the outside edges.

Then I chopped up the second round cake to get four small cirles, each one slightly smaller than the last. This was for the volcano.

I stacked those four circles and cut around them to even them out. The volcano look was a good thing and allowed me not to worry about any rough or uneven places.

Now I went into a number of toy stores looking for dinosaur figurines and could find none. The conversation usually went something like this (in Chinese, of course):

Shop worker: Miss, what age child are you shopping for?

Me: (Thinking to myself: There's no way I'm going to answer that question.) Um, I'm just looking for some small dinosaurs.

Shop worker: We don't have any.  [Kind of looks at me like I'm crazy.]

So I settled for these paper dinosaurs I had at home. Yes, I just happen to keep a collection of paper dinosaurs. I laminated their feet with scotch tape so they'd be re-usable, then I dug them in. I also placed some candy rocks from the local supermarket around the cake.

The last thing to do was to add some lava to that volcano. I made some vanilla pudding and dyed it red, then poured it down the side of the volcano.

And that was that. We had a great time. Austin loved it.

My dad and sister recently rearranged some furniture and re-decorated a bit in one room of my parents' home to make an office space for my mom, who has recently had quite a bit of paperwork to bring home from the doctor's office and no place to set up camp.

They asked if Aus and I wanted to make any kind of picture, painting, drawing, etc. to hang up on the wall. We most certainly wanted to take advantage of this opportunity to make some motivational, nurse-themed posters. We used this super-handy website: http://bighugelabs.com/motivator.php to quickly and easily create 3 posters. This one was our favorite:

On Friday, we were looking behind the backboard of our bed in the secret compartment and ran across a coupon I'd given Aus for some holiday months and months ago. The coupon was made out for the "Sirles Spa," an at-home spa event just for Austin. In ways, Austin enjoys pampering (back rubs, foot massages, the works) more than many girls I know. So he didn't waste any time cashing in the coupon last night. We had a really fun and relaxing time, especially Austin.

First, he soaked his feet for about 15 minutes while eating some french bread pizza we made together.

Foot soak recipe:
14 cups of hot water
3 cups of milk

After his feet were soaked, I dried them off and exfoliated them with the following mixture.

Foot exfoliation recipe:
1/2 cup white sugar
2 Tablespoons lotion

I exfoliated for about 5 minutes and then rinsed his feet in clear, cool water.

I also made this body scrub which he used on his chest and back.

Body scrub recipe:
1 cup oats
1 cup brown sugar
2/3 cup oil (The oil would have been best as olive oil, but that's way too expensive here, so we used some good old sunflower oil, high in vitamin E.)

This is sticky, so it needs to be rinsed off really well after exfoliating!

The picture featured above is Austin enjoying a seaweed paste mask, a "green melon the nose membrane," and a "rose hip anti-wrinkle and moisturizing eye mask pack."

For Austin's birthday this year, I decided to go the cupcake route. We had just received cupcake tins with paper cups so it was easy. Of course, decorating them, making icing, etc. is sometimes more tricky. Here are some cook-out themed cupcakes I made for Austin. The chocolate cakes sunk in terribly (I haven't found a healthy from-scratch recipe I really like yet), so I opted to use some sugar-free chocolate pudding to heap on top as a healthy icing option. Then I sprinkled red and orange sugar crystals on top as embers, and decorated the cupcakes with kabobs, "hotdogs", and "steaks". They weren't gorgeous, but fortunately Austin is easily pleased and not that interested in aesthetics when there's chocolate cake to be eaten.

We also went out to dinner with one of our friends for Austin's birthday, so I made these Oreo-icing cupcakes:

He loves to hear "I love you." He loves soft pretzels. Why not both in one?

In a country practically devoid of turkey, sometimes one must make their own. The first is a picture of a fruit turkey Austin and I made for last Thanksgiving; the second is a picture of a turkey cake we made in the basement of my old dormitory a few years ago, back when we were "just friends."

These are a couple of shots from the "Multi-purpose Room". Really, there were just two walls to decorate and one window that needed it's burnt orange curtains replaced. This was simple and fast, and cost maybe less than five dollars... we just gift-wrapped some pieces of cardboard and called it a day!

A bamboo mat behind our very soft and cushion-y WOODEN couch. :)

And the little desk that's waiting for me to spend some time with grad school in another month. At least we have a spinn-y chair. That's the only way to study!

There's not really a great way to do a before and after on our room. The "before" is best described as burnt orange curtains, orange-themed bedding, red tulip lights, white walls, and for the most part, an absence of decoration.

1. Photo collage.
2. Red (non-functional) tulip lighting.
3. Burnt orange curtains
4. Orange-based sheets. (They're in a bundle because we believe we can save hours of our lives by refusing to make our bed.)
5. Map.
6. White wall.

Nothing you have to die over, but after having orange hues cast all over the white walls for a year, I set my mind to decorating creatively and cheaply.

I'll just be vulnerable and say it-- I really like the "after" of our room. I know it's not TLC worthy, not professional, and that we probably violate a whole bunch of decorating "do's" and "don't's". But it was a really fun project to try to make decorations, find materials locally, and arrange things so it feels warmer and cozier. As far as I'm concerned, the mission is accomplished. More the feel of a college dorm room than that of a bedroom occupied by the mature and rapidly aging, it's perfect for us.

Here's how it went down...

First, a small snack to keep us going strong while we decorated...

I had one wall that I had no ideas for, so I chopped up an old cardboard box and wrapped the pieces in different patterns and textures of wrapping paper. Maybe the cheapest way possible to decorate.

I segmented a wedding picture we had into roughly 4.6" x 5.4" pieces, printed it, and mounted it on... another piece of wrapping paper! (Our walls are concrete and pretty difficult to penetrate with anything more than a thumbtack.)

I whipped up a "Paper mache" mixture from some flour and water and made some hanging lanterns. The flour and water gave them a marble-y look. We also hung a bamboo/straw mat behind our bed for some texture.

I picked up a blue basket for holding our electric odds and ends, and covered a mini-lamp with some matching paper.

Here's our bed with a blue blanket and some pillowcases I made.

Some more bed/desk shots...

Austin oh-so-gleefully rigging up some pull strings for a bamboo/straw mat we hung as our curtain. This worked really well.

The view to the left of our bed... I paper mached some boxes to act as "book nooks" and hold our reading and studying materials.

Here's a little message board made from cardboard, wrapping paper, and some straw/string/ribbon stuff. We hung it above our desk.

And that's a wrap!

Last week we invited some friends... somewhere between friends and acquaintances, really... to our home for dinner on Friday night. They called a few days before Friday to let us know they'd forgotten that it would be their daughter's birthday on Friday and they were having a party at 6:30 pm. They invited us to the party instead, and we rescheduled the dinner at our place for Saturday evening.

Friday evening. 6:38 pm. We were strolling in, fashionably late. (Is there any other way, really, when fashion is just bursting out the seams of your being?) We knocked on the door and it opened several seconds later. Expecting to find a party of screaming six-year-olds, we were met with silence, and a host who may or may not have forgotten we were coming... They just smiled and went to the kitchen to start cooking. We sat on the couch and watched TV with the birthday girl. Later we were told we were the only ones who would be at the party that night. So interesting... so slightly awkward... did they know we were coming to the party to which we were invited?

Finally, around 8:00, they started calling a bunch of people, and slowly, the six-year-olds trickled in, just in time for cake. I applaud them on their impeccable timing. 

Now this country isn't really rockin' it on the birthday cake front. In fact, we didn't know if they knew what real cake was, so we decided to make some cake for dessert the following night. All of our normal desires for health were replaced with a drive to introduce this family to some real cake. I found a great little recipe for cake, and another for icing, and went for it. I baked it in two circles, then assembled and frosted them to make this little ladybug cake. For a cake that took only 3 minutes to decorate, it was really cute and well loved.

The cake in its early stages of ladybug-ship.

The completed ladybug. I left the head unfrosted, frosted the body pink, added some Oreos* as spots, and some chocolate sprinkles (thanks, Austin's family) to divide the wings. We had a thin pink candle I rounded for its smile and some white foam circles that I designed as eyes last-minute. So fun!

*I raced to the supermarket last-minute for these Oreos, one of the few western food products existing in our town. They were out of regular flavor, so I grabbed these ones called "Double Delight," assuming they were just like Double Stuffs or something... Turns out, they were half chocolate filling, half peanut butter. Do they have that in America? They're super amazing... A dangerous discovery!