Pancake Saturday

You have to have the best syrup
And toppings
Waiting...
All decked out
David ate the rest!

This post is dedicated to all the dads out there that make pancakes for their kids. When my girls were little, my husband always made pancakes on Saturday morning. Not just any pancakes,but buttermilk from scratch pancakes! Ever since we first got married, David has always loved to make pancakes from scratch, including potato pancakes. Those were my very favorite with over easy eggs...Yum yum. When the girls came along, Saturday was always reserved for his buttermilk pancakes with all sorts of toppings. Now that the girls have grown up, and one has moved out,there aren't too many Saturdays where he makes these little gems. Yesterday, Caitlin and I had a hankering for them, so we bought all the goodies for David to make them, and when he got home from work yesterday, we informed him that he was making pancakes in the morning. As usual they were tasty and filling. This will probably hold us over for a few months until we get that pancake urge again.

curiositiesbutterfly

curiositiesbutterfly
Originally uploaded by taleoftheyak

This is an inspiration board for a collection designed my my daughter Nicole


I'm trying to upload things from Flikr and this is my first attempt, I wanted to put more of her things on here to show you what she has been working on. Let me master the relationship between flikr and blogger and I will post more.
Nicole made this and also another one that is really neat,but I couldn't put up multiple photos. I'll put up more when I figure this out!!

Sneak peek

The vintage jewelry that we found
We got these little gems at the Nordstrom's memorial day sale. Cute huh?!


Thought I'd give you guys a sneak peek at the prom dress. Today I finished up on most of it,but the hem needs to be done. Since it is quite gargantuan it will probably take me quite some time to do tomorrow, so don't look at the hem too closely.
Today after school we went into a local vintage shop and found the jewelry that she is wearing in the above photo. I can't believe how perfect the earrings and necklace go with the dress. The shoes were another great find. We went everywhere,and popped in Nordstrom to see what they had. I almost walked right out,because when they have "Sales," it is usually all the junk they couldn't sell. BUT this time we were so lucky to find these,and the exact shade of red that the dress is!
The hair may or may not look like this on Saturday, that is why this is only a sneak peek, I will be taking more on the actual day. Enjoy, and pretend the hem is all done and pressed! Maybe magic little tailors will come in tonight while I'm asleep and hem the dress for me. I can dream can't I!

Meet Oliver

After all the playing and visiting, Oliver is pooped!


All my niece wanted for her birthday was a puppy. After my sister and her husband mulled it over for a few days, they decided that a puppy would be a good addition to the family. Enter little Oliver. They picked him on Friday, and when Bella got out of school he was waiting for her at home. She was very surprised and they have been inseparable since! The first two nights though have been,as you all out there know with a new puppy, quite tough. When we came for a visit on Sunday, my poor sister was exhausted from listening to little Oliver barking all night long. They are trying to crate train him in the evening, and he really didn't think that is where he wanted to be. My sister has decided to be a little tougher on him and try not to get up in the middle of the night when he starts barking. She was pretty much ready to give the little darling back the very next day, in her sleepy state, saying that the breeder could keep all the money and the puppy. Of course this was the tired version of my sister talking. She has always been very good with animals, as I believe Bella is, so I think they will weather the storm through puppy hood.
How cute is he though huh?! You really can't even believe he is real she so darn little and cute!
Hope everyone is having a great holiday.

Ahh Barcelona

The other day I was thinking about how beautiful this market place was in Barcelona. We took a trip to France and Spain about two summers ago, and we spent about three days in Barcelona. Living in France, there were always market places as everyone has heard of. The freshness of all the produce,meats,cheeses,etc. So, when we went to Barcelona,and read everything about the best things to see there, one of them was this market place:Boqueria I kinda said to myself, well how good really could this be in comparison to all the lovely market places in France,and would we be wasting our tourist time by going here. When we came upon the entrance, I thought to myself, this is going to be overwhelming. It sure was!! In my entire life, I have never seen such an amazing market! Every stall was so beautiful and squeaky clean that it truly was a feast for the eye. Not one thing out of place, and the pride in each vendor showed. Why hadn't I heard of this place before? I think it is overshadowed by the more popular places like France and Italy. I never saw a beautiful market place like this when we were in Italy, maybe we just didn't roam enough to see them, but living in France I saw plenty, and I'll tell you, not one came close to this. Sorry France, you need to start looking over your shoulder at your neighbors in Barcelona. Anyway, I thought I'd share this not talked about gem, and maybe inspire others to go visit Barcelona.
Hope everyone has a happy Memorial Day and stay safe.

Knee deep in red silk!

Have you ever seen so much red silk?
The bodice

Ready to attach

Thought I'd take a breather and show some progress of the dress. Today I will be attaching the bodice to the skirt,then starting on the lining and boning. The boning is a new adventure for me. It seems very straight forward,but we shall see what challenges it brings today. I should have the dress completed by Friday,minus the hem, since we have to buy some new shoes. Next week will be fun finding the jewelry and maybe a hair decoration.

I've been tagged

A few days ago I was tagged by Nerm and Kitty In which I was suppose to give a six word memoir of my life's moto. After much thought, I think the closest I can come up with is: "Listen to people and respect them." I find this has served me well on all fronts. Not that I'm perfect and haven't slipped a few times by not following this, but in general, when you actually LISTEN to people and give them the respect that they are looking for, things seem to run much soother. I now tag:

Linnea Paulina of "Linnea Paulina"
Melissa of "Charmed Life"
CeCe of"All Dolled Up"
Leanne of "Crazy Little Thing Called Life"
Amy of "Bura Ellen"

I have tried to hit the link button on the posting page and it never seems to work for me. Can someone out there tell me what the steps are? Here is what I have been doing; I'll write the post,then if I want a link, I click on the little icon,and then I enter the URL. I see it on the page, but when I preview the post, there is nothing on there. I once thought that maybe it just doesn't show up until you actually post, but then that didn't work either. HELP.

And the color choice is...

We decided on red for the dress.We had gone to all the places near by, and we were hoping one color would stand out. It ended up being red. Not just any red though, very pretty ruby red. We had to go to three places to find it since it is prom season,and all of the fancy fabric is being depleted. I went to this very small out of the way place in the Oakland hills called Piedmont Fabrics. They are an off shoot of the very wonderful Poppy Fabrics that no longer is in business. We all cried a little bit when Poppy closed, I being one of them, since I have been a long time customer. One of the employees from Poppy decided to open up a smaller version of it, not far from the original location. I visited once, and was a bit sad that the selection wasn't that great. I decided to give them another try a few months down the road when they filled out their stock a bit more. So, when I called and asked them if they had red silk dupioni they said, "We sure do, come on over." Not only did they have red, but the prettiest shade at that. Caitlin is a happy camper,and I think I will have it done by this weekend if nothing gets in my way.
For anyone in the Bay Area reading this, go and take a look at Piedmont Fabrics, it is worth the trip.
On a side note,this weekend I also got the cook book that was mentioned in a previous post(Apples for Jam),and I can't wait to try out the recipes. :)

On to the next project

This is the chosen pattern for the prom dress. This is what I will be working on this week, so there may be some delays in posting. I might do some posts on the progress, we shall see. Today, we are going to get the fabric for it from our favorite store in Berkeley. This dress has 8 yards of fabric, if your fabric it 45 in. wide and 5 and a half if you are lucky enough to find a 60 in wide fabric. We want to make it out of silk shantung, and most of that is usually 44 to 45in. This isn't including the 6 yards of lining also!! There is also boning in the bodice to add to the challenge. The instructions are pretty easy and I should complete it by Friday at the latest.
I'll take a picture of the fabric and post what the final color decision is.
Our weather is finally getting a bit more normal, and my AC is working. Turns out there was never anything wrong with it according to the AC guy. Maybe after such a long slumber, it had a bit of a hick-up. At least I can turn it on and sew in comfort.
Caitlin's presentation went very well and the teacher was very impressed,so I think she will get a very good grade.
Hope everyone is having a relaxing weekend.

At last!

After slaving away...
The finished dress!

You have to twirl!

Well, after all the cutting, sewing,and measuring, it's finally done. It turned out rather nice didn't it? Friday is the big day of the presentation,and I will be bringing the dress before the class,so that she doesn't have to wear it all day, especially since the temperature tomorrow will be in the 100's. Yes, you read that right! At the moment that I'm typing this ,I'm dying from heat in the house, because the air conditioner needs to be fixed. Hopefully the guy can come tomorrow, or I think I will have to spend the day in a library or some other place with AC.
This is round one of the sewing, because we decided that I'm going to make her prom dress! Stay tuned......

Quiche aux asperges

Recipe from the spring issue of Marie Claire Idees
These two books are a life saver
Very useful when working with metrics
The pastry rolled out like a dream
I could probably eat this as is!
Dinner time!

I know a lot of readers out in blogland love Marie Claire Idees for it's crafts and all other creative ideas,but I love the recipes in the back. When living in France, I realized that food there is pretty much a religion and you don't mess with a French person and their food. They even have the most yummy recipes in their TV guides.I have tried all sorts of French recipes from all kinds of magazines,and Marie Claire Idees is no different, as far as the quality of the recipes. I have made several things from the magazine and they always turn out well. The two books above, called "Cooktionary," were written by a dear friend of my Dads. We had the pleasure of meeting her and spending the night at her lovely B&B in northern France. She wrote these books a couple of years back and was so nice to give us two signed copies. I really wish I had them while I was living there,since they translate anything related to cooking, from French to English. The other handy item is the scale above. I could not have survived cooking there without it. I still use it to this day for all the recipes that I have from Europe.
The quiche turned out very good, as I knew it would, and I got to use my new quiche pan!
If anyone out there needs any translations let me know.
On a side note, the dress is almost done! Yippee. It looks so pretty,and I will post the pictures as soon as possible.

Mother's Day with the family

My two girls
Yak Sing
Dim sum "sticky rice"
Gift from David and Caitlin
Nicole and Pierre's gift
Cute pins that were in the cup and saucer above
Caitlin's handmade card.

Hope all the moms in blogland and everywhere had a great day yesterday.We all had a very nice day,which started out with church then meeting Nicole and Pierre in the city for dim sum at Yak Sing. It was the first time I have been there, and I would like to go again when it isn't as crowded as it was yesterday! We barely sat down and they were selling their items,so that was a bit difficult at first. Once we got in the swing of it though, it was fun and we had some good items. Afterwards we all caught a movie near by and had a great time.
I received many nice goodies as you can see from above! The pen was totally unexpected, as I thought I might have gotten it for my birthday in the fall. I recently lost the same pen along with a beautiful Waterman pen in and around Christmas time. I was so crushed when I looked in my purse and they were gone! They were in this nifty little leather pouch especially for pens. I've had them both forever,and then one day I noticed they were not in there, and to this day I have no clue how I could have lost them. The original Cartier pen was gold and black, but to start with a clean slate, I have the platinum version this time. OK, enough with that side track. Nicole and Pierre got me the cute pins and they came wrapped in that adorable little cup and saucer. Caitlin made me the card, and it is all illustrated with all the inside jokes that we laugh at all the time. I'll treasure all of my gifts and hope to God I don't loose that pen! Thank you everyone for making my day special.

These two crazy kids met 27 years ago

Us, circa June 1981


One of my favorite things ever, is to ask couples how they met. I never get tired of hearing stories of people meeting their soul mates.
Our story begins at Humboldt State University. My first siting of my sweetie was in the very first semester that I started college. About a week before classes started, you could attend some workshops on how to get a job while going to school. My friend and I decided it might be a good idea,so off we went. The workshop starts, and in walks David, a bit late, and sits down against the chalk board with poster boards propped up on the sill. As he is sitting there, the boards start to fall on him. Of course everyone turns to see, as he starts to put them back up . Two seconds later the board falls on him again. My friend and I could not stop giggling in the corner of the room. My first impression of him was how cool he was about the situation and how cute he was.
The whole rest of the year I see him around campus.When I was with my friend, I would say,"Hey there is that cute guy from the workshop, remember the boards!" Then I would see him as I was going to take my tennis class. I tried to get his attention by smiling at him,but he never looked at the right time or something. To this day he claims that he didn't see me.
Anyway, then spring term rolls around. It wasn't until I went to my last class of the day,Spanish conversation, that I saw him sitting in there. I couldn't believe that he was in my class. Well, I had to figure out a way to talk to him. He gave one of our class speeches; on being a foreign exchange student in Sweden. I thought, there we go! I decided to ask him if he knew these students that were from the same organization that went to my school. Turns out he did! We chatted for a bit. That was all for a while, until he started asking if I wanted to study with him. Study session after study session,finally led him to ask me to a dance that was in town. Foolishly I said no, because the day after the dance I had another date. He seemed sad,but took it well. He leaves my apartment,and my roommate calls me into her room. She said,"Why did you do that? Go out with both of them!" I thought about it for a second, and then thought what the heck,maybe she is right. I asked David if he still wanted to go,when I saw him the next day in class, he said sure!
I go on the date with him, and we hit it off instantly and had a wonderful time.Talking to him was like talking to an old friend that I knew for years. I was smitten from that point on.
Next day, I go out with the other guy. That date turns into a disaster and the whole time I was thinking about David instead! From then on we were inseparable. I wish that I was a better writer to convey how amazing that time really was,because looking back, it was such a special time and so sweet. Young love!!!
If anyone out there wants to leave me a comment on how they met their partner,husband etc. Be my guest, I would love to read it

The mixer was feeling a bit neglected

Haven't used this old girl in a while.

These darn blueberries were 4.99 each half pint!
Love this grater
The batter was so beautiful
Yummy
Ta Da!

I have been meaning to make this lemon blueberry cake for quite sometime now,and last Friday I sent Caitlin in to get the ingredients. To my surprise,I looked at the receipt and almost had a heart attack when I saw that I spent close to $10.00 dollars on blueberries! It really forced me into making it,where sometimes I have these grand baking ideas and then don't follow through. This is a recipe from Cooking Light. I usually don't bake from their recipes,but I liked all the ingredients in this particular cake, so I decided to give it a whirl. Plus it will most likely be the last one for a while, because of the weather warming up. I think it will be tasty with tea or maybe a little slice in the morning. It is cooling off as I write this,so I'll report back if it was any good.