Easy Scarf #1

A friend taught me how to knit years ago but then I forgot how. Years later, I thought it’d be good to knit again but I couldn’t remember how. The yarns I’ve bought have always come with a free pattern and the Internet is full of free patterns BUT I’ve forgotten how to knit!!! I didn’t want to pay for a class and just wanted to relearn on my own so!!!…I resorted to YouTube which has been a wonderful teacher and the best part is it’s FREE!!!

Yay!!! After re-learning the basics, off to knit, knit, knit!!! 👍

So…here’s the pattern for this scarf:

• Cast on 28 stitches
• Sl1 yo K2tog (repeat yo K2tog except until you get to the last stitch) then K1.
• Then just repeat the whole pattern until it’s long enough for you.
• Cast off stitches one by one.
• The scarf can be made as short or as long as you wish.
• 
  I’ve knitted a few scarves here and there since but this is the first scarf I’ve completed in a long while. This is a pretty easy knitted scarf pattern to learn… REALLY! Just right in time for the cooling weather! ⛄

The Summit

Isn’t there something exhilarating after FINALLY reaching the summit after a grueling hike?! The hike up is always painful and fatiguing but, oh, the joy of finally reaching the top! The tiredness is almost always forgotten as happiness fills the heart!

Perseverance, endurance…they are attributes we hardly practice enough. I pray for more of them in my life alongside courage, wisdom, and humility.

Press on!

Isaiah 40:31
But those who wait on the Lord
Shall renew their strength;
They shall mount up with wings like eagles,
They shall run and not be weary,
They shall walk and not faint.

Basil Pesto, Aioli, & Fake Feta CheesePizza

My friends came to visit me for a long weekend just recently. We planned this visit months before and it’s amazing how God sees what’s in our future…He knew I was going to need my friends around the time they came! God’s timing is PERFECT, indeed!

My friends and I tried our cooking skills with the help of some awesome recipes and the food turned out muy bien!

One of the goodies we made was a pizza. Well, we actually bought a pre-made crust. Ok, ok, ok! Most of the toppings were store-bought as well.

The toppings were: black olives, artichoke hearts, red onions, raw cashews, dried tomatoes, fake feta cheese. On a side note, I don’t think an olive can be eaten raw, can it? I’ve asked lotsa people and I was told no can do! I love olives! I’d love to have olive trees around my own house one day!

Going back to the topic of this post… what we made in this pizza were the sauces and the fake feta cheese.

Half of the pizza crust had aioli sauce and the other half of basil pesto ( the recipe for these sauces should be in my salad blogs 😊). I will post the fake feta cheese recipe next time 😁.

After the crust had been prepped…the toppings were rained down on it. I liked the messy look and that’s how it turned out to be, hahaha!

Then we placed it in the pre-heated oven set at 410F (per the crust instruction) and baked the pizza for 10 minutes.

And it came out like this

My friends seemed to like the basil pesto side better…I liked them both, hahaha!!! I thought they both tasted yummmm!!!

Seasons Change

My two girlfriends came up for a visit just recently. I took them around the area and passed by vineyards and decided to stop and snap some pictures of the fall season 🍃🍁🍂.

Here’s some of them…

I like the autumn season because of the color changes. And although all the leaves of the grapevines will eventually fall and die, there’s hope in the future that they will spring up once more and produce the most-awaited fruits and again garnish the land with beauty!

How To Eat Salad Take 2

Another way to eat a salad is by adding it into a sushi roll. Mmm-hmmm!!! Personally, I think, anything can pretty much be added in a sushi and it will still taste yum!

For this sushi, I used regular brown rice and added a little bit of water, olive oil, garlic powder, sesame seeds, lemon juice, salt (and I didn’t measure them so I don’t know how much I added, haha).

Then I added the mixed greens, slices of avocado, pickled radish, and fake meat.

I don’t have a sushi maker but I don’t think it’s critical to have one so, no fret! 😁 I rolled it up as tight as I could then cut it up into bite-sized pieces!

Made it into a small bento! Yummm!!! 🍱🍙😊

I made a non-dairy aioli sauce which, i think, complimented it. I got the recipe from this book…

I’ll post the recipe soon!

Here’s the aioli recipe!

1 C unsweetened soy milk
1 1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp onion powder
1/4 tsp garlic powder
1 C oil
3 Tbsp lemon juice

Blend everything together! Yummm!!

***What I did differently: I didn’t have onion powder so I just chopped onions and blended them in. For the oil, I used olive oil. 👍

How To Eat Salad Take 1

Obviously, there are various ways to eat a salad but this is one way I like to eat mine…wrapping it in a rice paper! Yummm!!!

I’m sure anything can be placed in the salad wrap but mixed greens and a slice of avocado are what I thought of consuming the last time I made it, hahaha!

Wrapping it is really easy…just like wrapping a tiny, tiny burrito or an egg roll, whichever you’d prefer to liken it with! 😁

Then I ate it with basil pesto which made it taste so much better! Mmm-mmm!!! 👍 Very healthy too!

I got the yummy recipe from this book. Someone surprised me with this recipe book (it’s another story I can probably talk about next time). Random acts of kindness will find its way back to you! 😊😄☺

Here’s the ingredient list:
1/4 cup walnuts
2 cups fresh basil
3 cloves garlic
1 Tbsp lemon juice
1/4 cup olive oil
1/4 cup non-dairy Parmesan cheese or nutritional yeast flakes
1/4 tsp salt

What I did differently: I didn’t add any walnuts because I didn’t have any although I was told pine nuts are usually added in a basil pesto and I had pine nuts!! But I didn’t know!! 😰 Oh,well! Then, I used nutritional yeast flakes. It still turned out very yum after they were all blended together!

I made the basil pesto again at a later time. I thought I had pine nuts but I actually didn’t, hahaha! I had sunflower seeds which i used and it turned out quite good to me! 😊👍

Soy-Orange Smoothie

I was in a Health Fair two weeks ago. There was this one booth that was for a vitamin or booster. They were passing out drink samples made out of almond milk, orange juice, and their vitamin. I happily took a little cup and tasted it and mm-hmm! It was yum!

I, then, decided to make it at home. I had a vanilla soy milk and mixed it with orange juice but it didn’t quite taste right. So, I tried a plain soy milk which tasted so MUCH better.

Then I decided to add other fruits which made it sooo good!!! 👍😊

These were the things I blended together:
Plain soy milk
Orange juice
4-6 whole frozen strawberries
1 whole banana
2-3 Tbsp milled flaxseed

I didn’t measure how much liquid I put it but I’m guessing it was about a cup or two each. I’d think adjust it to your taste!

Maiden Voyage

I recently got me a kayak…my very first one! and I like it! I got it because my friends are coming to visit and we were thinking of going kayaking at a river. Looking at the cost of renting a kayak vs. owning one, I thought just buying one would be much more cost effective esp in the long run.

At first, I was debating whether to get the hard shell or an inflatable one and whether to get the 1-person or 2-person kayak. Well, thinking about my current living situation… I live in an apartment with a flight of stairs to get into my front door, there’s not much storage space in my apartment, I don’t have a garage, my car doesn’t have a rack. So…I thought, inflatable is the better choice. Then I had to decide about the capacity. Interestingly, it didn’t take that long to decide on this. I live by myself but I got me the 2-3 person kayak with a maximum capacity of 650 pounds, hahaha!!! I thought, well, I don’t think I’ll be by myself forever and it’s always much more fun to do things with someone anyway 😃.

So…I got the 2-3 person inflatable kayak, 650 pound capacity, SE370-pro edition! I got it used directly from the manufacturer and the warranty is for 3 years same as the new one. The package came with: the kayak, 2 removable and inflatable seats, a foot pump with an inflation monitor (which is just a plastic with a picture of a ruler matching the ones printed on the inside part of the chamber walls), 2 sets of adjustable paddles, and a carrier/storage bag.

I decided to do a trial run inside my apartment to see how I’d manage it alone. When i received the kayak, it came in 2 boxes: one for the kayak and one for the accessories. Taking everything out from the boxes was a woooork out, hahaha!

So, I unrolled it out and whoa!!! I was surprised to see how long it actually is!

There are 3 main chambers that need pumping. When I pumped it in my apartment it took me between 65-80 pumps to fully inflate each chamber but when I pumped it on the sandy beach, it took me about 80-100 pumps per chamber! 😪 It’s like an air bed! Really, I could have slept in it very snuggly.

There’s a lake where I live and I thought to have its maiden voyage there. And so I did! There are 3 main beaches of the lake and I decided to go to the least crowded one. Hahaha, but I made the mistake of choosing the beach with the parking up on a hill!!! Waaaa! I was spent after carrying the kayak (in its carrier bag) on my back down the hill. It said it weighs 32 pounds but it felt like I was carrying half of me! I had the foot pump in the bag too but that was all. It got pretty heavy that i just decided to drag it when i reached the beach, hahaha!

Whew! I think they could have made the bag more…user-friendly? I would say 2 shoulder straps vs. 1 would have been much, MUCH better!!!

Finally, I made it and was able to pump it ready for its maiden voyage!

Although it’s meant for 2-3 people, it was manageable for one person and a tiny person like me! It was pretty stable although i was somewhat leaning to one side (minimally) but it was my fault for unevenly inflating the side chambers. So, steering was a little tricky. Reading some reviews said you should sit somewhat in the middle-rear when kayaking alone. I tried sitting in the middle and towards the rear but I still have to find my spot😁👍.

I spent about 1 1/2 hr kayaking and decided to wait for the sunset… It was very pretty…

Cleaning it at the end was, I guess, ok. I just had to wipe the water and sand off. Rolling it back to pack into the carrier bag was the tough one. After deflating it, the instructions said to roll it like an air bed. The challenge was to roll it small enough to fit in the opening of the bag. All in all, it took me 30 minutes to repack everything which was longer than I thought…

Carrying everything back up the hill had my heart a-pumping! Hahaha!!! I had to make 2 trips and when I was carrying the kayak I had to stop multiple times but then again because I had to hike up about 300 ft to get to my car.

You can look more about this kayak here .

Wrapping Feat

Someone, recently, asked me to cover and decorate this plain-looking box.

I consented because I thought it wouldn’t be that hard. I thought, “pretty easy. I’ll just buy one of those nice gift wrapping papers then wrap it.” I looked for wrapping papers but didn’t really find any nice ones and I didn’t really want to spend so much on wrappers I wouldn’t use again. So, I thought I should just look at what I have in my apartment that wasn’t using and use it to decorate the box.

And I did!!! I found world maps that I got for free from a library. I wasn’t using them anyway and were just collecting dust in the bookshelf and I thought it was good way to get rid of needless things. At first, I thought of just wrapping the maps around the box but I thought I’d challenge my creativity skills.

An idea came to mind to cut the maps into small pieces and make collage out of them with the use of tape. I thought to myself, “this will be easy…mission accomplish in no time!” So…I went snip, snip, snip until I had the pieces down to about 3×5 size.

By the way, these were all the other stuff I used for this project:

A letter opener, double stick tape (which I only used for the first few papers I taped), clear packing tape, scissors (not pictured).

But, oh boy!!! This project was harder than I thought!!! Waaahh!!!

In the beginning, I used the double stick tape to tape down the squares followed by taping it further down with the packing tape. I realized I was wasting the double stick tape so I reevaluated my approach. Also, working on this size of cut papers was very hard…they were still too big.

I worked on the lid first and working on the corners was grueling and I had to round the edges of the pieces I placed there.

As I went further along, I realized that further cutting down the papers into much, much smaller rectangles was much, much better to work with and was more time efficient.

And then, a better idea came along. I rolled out about a foot long packing tape, attach the small papers on it (with the purpose of making the papers come out self-sticking), placed each paper with about a half inch space in between. Then I cut them individually. (It sounds really confusing but try to imagine it 😁). Doing so made things much, much faster! I was able to just tape the small papers onto the box without having to place a tape over it (but I still had to place some tape over some of them).

And, finally, I finished past midnight (2 nights later about 5 hours total) 😓😚😪, Hahahaha!

Voila!

Beautiful October Sunset

I went walking yesterday evening after work. I had somewhat of a late start but I knew I had to go walking. Since it was getting late, I thought of just cutting my walk short. But as I was walking, I saw the beautiful sunset hues and something told me I should at least make it down to the dock. I briskly walked to the dock and saw the most beautiful surprise of the day! Painted across the skies were these amazing array of colors which were reflected by the lake below.

It was so…beautiful!

I was… in awe! I knew it was just what God wanted me to see! I sat by the dock and waited until the display of sunset disappeared in the horizon thinking that God’s rays of sunshine would be rising on the other side of the globe for other people to see…

God is good! He really has been so good to me lately! It was such a comforting reminder that God watches over me. 💛

Be still, and know that I am God. Psalms 46:10

Call to Me, and I will answer you, and show you great and mighty things, which you do not know. Jeremiah 33:3