Happy Easter! My favorite childhood memories of Easter was decorating Easter eggs with my mother and my brother every year. It’s been well over fifteen years since the last time I decorated Easter eggs, but becoming a mother myself brought back those memories and made me want to relive them this year.
As always, Dan was a good sport with my sudden urge to craft, and we decorated these eggs together on Friday night. (I know, we’re such party animals!) We huffed and puffed and blew the eggs out, and then tried a couple decorating techniques.
The first one we attempted was a “gilded” look with some metallic dyes. It didn’t come out quite as clean as I had wanted them too (I wanted them to have more uniform coverage), but as Dan pointed out, you have to have enough dye to dip it in, and we only had enough to paint it on with a brush. Oh well… it has more of an organic, abstract look to them with the painterly texture.
The second method I tried (at this point, Dan had given up and run off to indulge in a Breaking Bad-watching marathon) was one which involved wrapping the eggs in Japanese patterned paper. I was definitely happier with these results! 🙂 It’s a lovely Eastern take on a Western tradition.
The best part about these is that we can keep them around for decoration for a while, since the insides are hollow because we blew them out, and the decorated eggs won’t go bad.
I can’t wait until Mio is old enough to decorate Easter eggs with us! 😀
…recreating delicious dishes in the comfort of your own home.
Homemade haemul pajeon (Korean seafood pancake) for an afternoon snack. The one thing that's lacking in the Bay Area is good Korean food... I grew up near Annandale, which has the best Korean food, so I'm constantly craving the delicious eats from back home.
… surprise packages in the mail from friends.
A lovely dress for Mio, from Jina! She remembered that dusty rose was one of my favorite colors. Love blush tones!
… including homemade goodies from the bestest!
These homemade jams that my best friend Debbie made are amazing. Both are delicious, but the blueberry champagne in particular is heavenly!
… picking up an old favorite hobby.
I've started creating floral accessories again. I hadn't made any after Mio was born, but I'm excited to have some more time to craft some fashioned florals!
Last Sunday, we hosted a baby shower for our dear friends Megumi and John, who are expecting a baby girl around Christmas next month! It was my first time planning and preparing a shower, but it was a lot of fun to put together! (I did realize how much work goes into them, though, and awakened within me a deeper appreciation for all the effort friends have put into the brial shower and baby showers they threw for me in the past.) I’m glad that we had this opportunity to gather together as friends to celebrate this new life and welcome Megumi and John’s beautiful baby girl into our lives!
Setting up for the baby shower!
Megumi is a big fan of Studio Ghibli films, especially Totoro, so I created a Totoro-themed calendar for the guests to guess when the baby would arrive.
Guess when the baby will arrive!
Little umbrella favors for the guests to take home.
...complete with personalized tags.
And what is a shower without some delicious food? As baking is more of my forte than cooking, I made the desserts — cupcakes and sugar cookies!
Chrysanthemum cupcakes. The cream cheese frosting was a little runny, so it looks a little like the mum petals are melting.
This was my first time making sugar cookies with royal icing, but they turned out decent, thanks to some awesome tips from my dear friend and sugar cookie guru, Miss Megumi Kaminaga (different Megumi from the one we hosted this shower for). Thank you Mamagumi, and hope I’ve made you proud!
My first time making sugar cookies with royal icing.
Totoro, onesie, and baby carriage cookies
For the main course, we had a Korean platter, with bulgogi, japchae, and dumplings. Thank you for cooking everything, Kayo!
And a special thanks goes to Ann Helen for the delicious salad (not pictured) and the veggies, hummus, and homemade guacamole!
Mio took everything in as her Mama ran around preparing and setting up.
We also planned some fun games to play during the baby shower. The first was the Dirty Diaper game, in which we melted chocolates within these “diapers” and the guests had to guess what type of chocolate each diaper contained. (i.e. Butterfinger, Crunch, Mr. Goodbar, etc…)
The guests of honor, John and Megumi
Ann Helen and Aika take their guesses
A curious Mio watched as everyone played the game.
Aika and her adorable 5-month old son, Easton.
John got all of them right and was the winner!
The next game was the baby food guessing game. I soaked the labels off of baby food jars and the guests had to pass them around and guess what type of food each jar contained, from smell and (if they were brave enough) taste.
The last game we played was the classic “Guess the Mommy’s Belly Size” game, where we measured out tape to however length it was around Megumi’s baby bump.
John with the daunting task of taking the first guess.
Megumi still looks so petite for 8 months! She looks great!
Kayo measuring out Megumi's belly to get the actual measurement.
A few people came pretty close, but Kaz was the winner!
After the games, we went onto an activity of decorating onesies for Megumi and John’s baby! I’d seen variations of this where people used fabric paint, but I thought it would be a lot less messy and perhaps look nicer if we cut out fabric and attached them to the onesies with iron-on adhesive and peel-n-stick adhesive. Even the guys got into it and created some great custom clothing for baby!
Dan exercising his creativity.
Daddy-to-be John worked on making one, too!
Everyone hard at work.
Ironing on the letters.
The results were spectacular! Look at how cute everyone’s onesies turned out! I was so impressed! 😀
We had John and Megumi each pick their favorite designs out of all the great onesies everyone created. It was not an easy decision!
Having a hard time choosing...
John chose Kai and Koreana's collaborative onesie creation.
Megumi picked Ann Helen's lovely design!
Finally, it was time to open presents! There were such cute goodies for their baby girl…
Aika crocheted this adorable hat and mitten set for the baby!
Special thanks go Kayo, who cooked for the shower and MC-ed the games! I couldn’t have done it all without all the help from her, Kaz, and Ann Helen.
John and Megumi getting some practice entertaining a baby... and Mio just enjoying all the attention.
Thank you to everyone who was able to make it to the baby shower — I think it was a great success! 🙂 Congratulations to Megumi and John — we can’t wait to meet your sweet baby girl!
We’re excited to announce the completion of a project that has been months in the making — our blog has been redesigned, and is now called “Blooming by the Bay” instead of “Coupled Confessions.” As a few of our friends pointed out, “Coupled Confessions” was no longer very applicable now that little Mio is in the picture, and we are now a family instead of a couple. (Special thanks to our dear friend Tarrin for helping me come up with the new name for the blog!) It has also been over two years since we started this blog, so I thought it was time to give it a new look, too! It took me a lot longer than I expected it to — I’ve found that everything takes ten times longer when you have a baby to take care of! When I initially started this blog, it only took me three days to design and set it up, but I was working on this redesign on and off for over a month! Yikes! I’m so happy and relieved that I’ve finally finished it and can unveil it for you to see! (If you’re reading this through a feed reader or your email inbox, please go ahead and click through and check out the new design.)
Everything was designed by yours truly, and it was a fun project since I rarely have the time nor opportunity to work on any personal projects outside of work these days. It was a great learning experience for me, because this was my first time building a responsive layout. With so many people browsing the web on mobile devices nowadays, I really wanted to redesign the blog so that it would respond to various screen sizes and serve up different layouts accordingly. Using fluid grids, flexible images, and media queries, this has now been made possible on our blog. There are still some tweaks I need to work on (i.e. still trying to get embedded video to be elastic), but hopefully your viewing experience here will be pleasant, no matter what device you may be using! Feel free to drag and collapse your browser window in and out to see how the design and layout changes; I dare you to try to break it — but if you do, please don’t tell me until I’ve had a few days to recover from the brain-racking toll this web development has taken on me. 😉
So begins a new chapter for us in the blogosphere. Say goodbye to Coupled Confessions…
…and hello to Blooming by the Bay!
Please let us know what you think of the new look! Do you love it? Hate it? Don’t give a crap? We’d love to hear your feedback! 😀
For our three year wedding anniversary, Dan and I decided to forego getting gifts for each other in favor of buying ourselves a joint gift of a DSLR so that we could capture some quality photos of Mio as she grows older. After some research, we decided that the best camera for us was the Canon Rebel T3i. We purchased the Sigma 17-70mm F2.8-4 lens to go with it because we wanted an affordable walkaround lens that could be used in a variety of situations so we wouldn’t have to buy a bunch of different lenses (mostly because I am too lazy to constantly switch them out).
Mio with our new Canon Rebel T3i when it arrived.
She looked delighted with the box, but somehow seems confused by the camera.
Here are some photos of Mio we took with our new T3i! 🙂
She likes to twist backwards in her Bumbo seat.
Trying to eat her Winkel toy.
Having a meltdown.
The new highchair we got Mio last weekend. She hasn't started solids yet, but lately she cries if she doesn't get to sit at the table with us during dinner, so decided to get a highchair so she could be with us at the table. The best part of it is how compact it folds up, and how we can lower the seat on it (like this)!
Daddy's Girl.
Smiling at the camera.
On her playmat, holding her head up high.
We can’t wait to capture all of Mio’s precious moments with this camera as she grows older. I’m still learning how to use it, but I’m having a lot of fun with it already!
