Geez Louise!

This afternoon, 11 of my friends and I were using KAKAO messenger to text each other in a big chat room.  We were texting about something that had happened, and one of my friends wrote: "Geeze Louise!" ...and our amazingly awesome Korean friend (who will remain nameless) responded with, "Who's Louise?"  

Needless to say, it made all of our days!  Hilarious!

Decorating cupcakes in Korea!

Last night, Ashley, Stella and I all met at Dan Hana Cake in PNU to get our cupcake decorating on! 

When it comes to doing cutesy/artsy things, Korea's got it down pat!  This place is basically a full service cupcake/cake decorating shop, with a full menu where you can choose your frosting flavors, frosting colors, frosting tip styles, cake flavors, cake shapes, cake sizes, and cupcake flavors!  There are endless opportunities for dessert decorating fiends like myself!   I snapped a photo of the menu, for anyone interested in how this whole things works. Double click the photo for a larger view. We decided to buy 6 cupcakes (12,000 won total) and 3 different colored frostings (1,000 won each).

After our cupcakes and frosting had been ordered, we headed over to the decorating area to pick out our toppings!

It was all a bit overwhelming - How can you possibly choose when there are a thousand options?!  

Luckily, they have this wall of pictures to inspire you!

Or... you can just walk around and see what other people are doing with theirs!   We had some cake decorating artists in our midst last night - mostly high school girls and 20 something year old couples!

I decided I would do a "days since anniversary" cupcake for Aaron.  Koreans love to count the days that they have been together, but since Aaron and I don't have a distinct dating anniversary, I decided to base it off of our wedding anniversary!  Thanks to the DATE DURATION CALENDAR website, finding out we had been married for 102 days was a piece of cake!  Ashley decided to do the same thing, but her dating anniversary with Adam ended up being 1768 days! WOW!  We grabbed little red plates and loaded up!

By the time we were ready, our cupcakes and frosting had been delivered to our table!

I was READY!

Let's do this!

Ashley's first cupcake was a "ddong (aka poop) themed cupcake"!  Yes, Koreans think poop is cute!

Tada!

Stella went with "portrait cupcakes" of her and Chris! :)

This is my "anniversary cupcake" complete with a sugar J, A, heart, 1 - 0 - 2, peppero cookies, sprinkles and 3 flavors of frosting!  I don't mess around when it comes to celebrating my marriage! 

Here they are, in all their glory!  Mine are in the back (I have no excuse for the freaky face cupcake except to say that decorating cupcakes is WAY harder than it looks!), Ashley's are in the middle, and Stella's are in the front!  Not bad for our first time though, eh?!

Even after decorating 6 cupcakes, we still had all this frosting left over! (I recommend getting 1 or 2 if you're doing cupcakes).  

So, we did what any other frosting-loving-American's would do!  We squeezed it into our mouths!

But not for long! The owner of the place actually brought us a plate full of these little pieces of cake to enjoy, so we piled the frosting as high as we could and laughed as it smeared over our faces!  Or wait, maybe that was just me! :)

When we were ready to go, we loaded our cupcakes onto a tray and walked it up to the front to pay.  They just looked at each of them, figured out what toppings we used, added it up, and gave us the total (24,000 won, which evened out to 8,000 won per person or $3.66 per cupcake!) SCORE!

Now, before I give this place a raving review, I do have to say that the cupcakes are more like muffins and the frosting is the consistency and taste of cool whip, but other than that, it's PERFECT and a super fun thing to do with girlfriends or as a date night!

If you're interested in going and you live in Busan, you're in luck because there are 2 locations!  

Here's the map for the Dan Hana Cake in PNU, where we went...

... just look for this staircase!  It's on the 2nd floor, just below Thirsty Moose.

...and here's the map for Dan Hana Cake in Seomyeon!

So, there you go!   Now you've got a place to get your cupcake decorating on while living in Korea! :)

You can thank me later!

Girlfriends are the spice of life!

This week has been filled with quality girl time! Poor Aaron has been getting lonely while I've had date after date with my girlfriends!  On Sunday, Sam, Gill and I all met up at our favorite coffee shop in Nampo for some catch up time, yummy tea and coffee and then delicious Indian food at one of the best spots in Gukje Market and some shopping later in the afternoon!

Then, last night, I met up with Stella (my very first co-teacher), Monica (my co-teacher last year) and  Okk (my current co-teacher) for dinner! Talk about a fun mix of girls! Monica retired last year, but started substitute teaching at Stella's new school this year... When they realized that they both knew me, they got really excited and called me right away to tell me they were working together and wanted to meet up for dinner!  I am so thankful to have had co-teachers who have loved me and built a relationship with me that has lasted even after we've moved on to different schools! (This is not always the case in Korea.)  Having them all together in one place was like having all of my favorite worlds collide!  AWESOME!

Tonight was Revenge night at Ashley's, which is always really fun!  2 bags of popcorn, a hand full of homemade cookies, some diet coke, and a little TV show gossip always makes for a great night in my opinion!  Tomorrow, Stella, Ashley and I are meeting up at a cupcake shop in PNU where we're going to decorate cupcakes!  Yes, there's a cupcake decorating shop in Busan!  My dream has officially come true... stay tuned for more on that soon! 

Are you the winner?!

Are you the 111,111th visitor to my blog?!  (Look at the counter to the right.)  If you are, you've just won yourself a prize!  Congratulations!  Just leave me a comment to let me know you were the 111,111th visitor, and there will be a little something special for you in the mail! :)

Happy Tuesday!

A's Custom Sweater Beanie!

Last weekend, Aaron and I sifted through our closets and got rid of some stuff we knew we wouldn't wear anymore.  As we were stacking the give-away clothes in piles, it dawned on me that a lot of them could be recycled and used as scrap fabric for other crafts I've been wanting to make!  For one, Aaron has been on a mission to find a comfy - saggy light gray beanie, so when I saw that he was getting rid of his light gray sweater, I snatched it from the pile, because I knew I could make a beanie out of it that he would love!  Luckily, he did! 

I forgot to take a picture of the sweater before I cut it up... but here's what it looked like... just your average Target Merona wool sweater!

I laid Aaron's dark gray beanie, that he LOVES and wears 24-7, on top of the band at the bottom of  the light gray sweater. (It's important to use the bottom of the sweater for the bottom of the beanie, to give it a more finished look).  Then, I cut a square out of the sweater material, about an inch larger than the beanie.

Then, I grabbed a sharpie marker and drew an outline a little bit bigger (maybe 1/4 inch bigger) than the beanie I was using as my example.

Then, I threw it onto the sewing machine and sewed along the marked line.  Then, I cut the excess fabric off.

In order to not have the beanie poke out on the top, you need to make a cross stich at the top. (basically make a + at the top).  In order to do this, fold the beanie in half, pinch the top and draw a line with a marker, making a + shape, then sew on that line.

Once you're done with that + stitch, turn it right side out and it's ready to go!  Aaron is a huge critic when it comes to beanies and how they fit him.  I'm happy to say, he was VERY pleased!  

He actually wore it ALL day! 

I grabbed the leftover scraps from the bottom of the sweater and quickly stitched up some baby mittens!    They're not perfect, but that's the point with any handmade thing, right?!  It's all about the character! 

    Hope this inspires you to re-think your clothing giveaways next time 

and to create something new and handmade out of them!