Never enough hours in the day!

It's been FOREVER since my last post!  I hate saying that!  It makes me feel defeated!  But, in truth, it's just because sometimes life gets really busy which makes blogging a bit more on the difficult side {sigh}.  I haven't even been out taking photos for awhile either {although, part of that is due to the problem with my camera...}  BUT!  I have been working away on my etsy shop, so check it out by clicking here!  I am loving everything etsy!  What a great place to be inspired and it's so great to have a community of people being all artsy and crafty!  So cute!!  And, in case you were wondering, the $$ we make from etsy goes to supporting hubs and I here on the mission field!  So, thanks!

~Trista

What I have been up to lately!

Hi Friends!  Here is is: the link to my new etsy shop!!  Sorry I have been incognito, but I was working on getting some items ready to sell.  So, here is the link.  Please stop by and take a peak!

http://www.etsy.com/shop/EfflorescentDesignz

Trista

P.S. Still working on my cookbook... not too much progress yet, but perhaps soon I will post a couple pics of what I have done so far!

New Eyes!

Ok, I didn't really get new eyes!  I just decided to play around with some of my makeup.  I found the most awesome page in my new Real Simple magazine.  My all time FAVOURITE magazine!  It's pretty much AWESOME!  Anyway, there was an add for some makeup and I realized that in all the eye makeup I have, I already have the colours they were using.  I normally stick to pinks and browns, so this was a fun way of branching out in my colour palette and using some colours I wouldn't normally use.  

{Here is the magazine add}

 {Purples on}

{Me just being me}

Do you ever get stuck in a makeup rut?  

Trista

NEW HEADBAND!!

I just want to share the cutest headband I just made!  Complete with the cutest bow EVER!  Seriously!  It's AWESOME!  I know you will love it and want one of your very own!

{LOVE}

Trista

LOVE!!

Hubs and I have married for 3 years today!  I am sooooo excited!  So in LOVE!!  I decided that I wanted to make a cute banner to hang from our awesome window that said "I love you" and was totally going to wait to hang it until today, the actual day, but instead I hung it up a week early!  So that the celebration could begin!  You know, like birthday week!  It's anniversary week!  I hope you enjoy the cutest project ever!

{I took some heavy card stock paper to trace out my letters, a heart for the centre and hearts for either side}

{If you ever did arts and crafts when you were younger, perhaps this might look familiar?  Yes, tissue squared wrapped on the end of a pencil and glued to the heart.  Super cute, right!?}

{Here is the final product hanging from our window.  I used a needle and thick thread to attach it all together}

{LOVE IT}

P.S. How in the WORLD do you rotate a photo??????  Obviously, I need help!

Trista

Fun Recipe!

I LOVE Tofu!  And yes, I get mocked for it by meat lovers, but seriously... I don't eat lots of meat... chicken and fish sounds good to me!  One thing that I keep stocked up on in the fridge is a thing of firm tofu.  Normally, I just like to put it in a stir fry with noodles and veggies, but this time I opted to bake my tofu.  I googled baked tofu and found some strange recipes, but I also came across this amazing one!  I wish I would have actually bookmarked the site so I could go back to it, but instead it's going into my book of recipes that I am making.... if you follow my blog, you might now what I am referring to!  Basically, it calls for a marinade type sauce.  This one had soy sauce, sesame sauce, ginger... all kinds of YUMMY GOODNESS!  All you have to do is stir everything together so it's well blended, let the tofu marinate for an hour in the fridge and then bake!  If you want the full recipe, feel free to shoot me an email!  I served the tofu up with some fried rice {Hubby's request} and egg noodles {my FAV}. 

P.S.  See those super cute Japanese tea cups??  Charity shop!  Super cheap!  That's the way to shop on a missionary budget!  

Baking Fun!

I LOVE baking! I love being able to put ingredients together that on their own, might not be so spectacular, but mixed together make a wonderful treat!  Every other Wednesday, I have a cute little baking buddy who helps me make wonderful goodies!  Last Wednesday, she wanted peanut butter cookies and I had some bananas that were going bad, so we decided to make 2 desserts.  She made peanut butter cookies and I played with a banana bread recipe.  I had a part fail on the bread because I subbed here and there and then also realised that I didn't have the oven on high enough... oops!  But, hey, it still turned out edible!  And, it had chocolate chips in it.  I wasn't going to let that go to waste!  Especially since I am almost out of the ones that my mum brought me from the states.  Here are some cute pics from the evening!

P.S. Her peanut butter cookies turned out AMAZING!  And, she did most of the work!  

~Trista

My Latest Art Project!

I am super excited to share this art project with you!  A couple weeks ago, Roo-Roo got some awesome Chinese Character stencils and I started thinking about doing the most awesome art project painting with them.  I chose my favourite: LOVE and got to work!  I wish I had pics to show the process, but I don't, so use your imagination :)

First, I needed some sort of cardboard that would be heavy enough to make my own stencil out of.  I chose a cereal box, because it was handy.  Next, I traced the characters and made my very own stencil.  Then I decided that I wanted to use my acrylic paints and covered my whole canvas with this pink/read colour.  {The colour is a bit different than I wanted, but that's because in the middle of my mixing colours, I realised that I really needed to purchase the actual colour I wanted it to be.  Which, I only had this one canvas left.  So, by the time I purchased the colour I wanted that was on sale and then the other paint had already dried, it kind of turned a bit more on the red side.  But, whatever!  I still think it looks AWESOME}  After that dried, I mixed my colour for the character part, stuck the stencil on the canvas and painted over the stencil, being very careful to not allow the paint to spread by really holding down the stencil.  And, here is my finished product!

I am quite happy with the final product!  I love it so much, that I already have it hanging on the wall!

~Trista

The Supplies!!!

Woohoo!  I finally made it to the art supply store to collecting materials for my new recipe collection book! One of my greatest friends had suggested doing a decoupage type of a book and I think I am most definitely going to incorporate that into my design.  Here is a sneak peak at my supplies so far!

{sorry the image isn't super great!  I took it with the flash.. in the dark basically}

The supply list:

Rubber cement: this is my most FAVOURITE glue in the whole wide world!  Unfortunately, they don't sell it here :(  When I was at the art supply store, they did inform me of another glue that she thought sounded like American rubber cement, so let's hope when this runs out and I have to buy something else that it will be my new favourite.  I know that we are here now, so I need to make the most of what they offer here.  But, SERIOUSLY! It's my FAVOURITE.  Wanna know why?  Ok, because you can "erase" it if you mess up!  They make these most amazing rubber cement erasers that basically remove any residual glue that you got outside the lines.  Just like that.  GONE!  And, you can also make it so that when you are first trying out things, that if you just put a thin layer on one side and stick it to the other, it's not permanent.  So, if you decide that you want to change it, you just peel it up!  And then, when you are ready to commit, glue both sides and bam!  It is now permanent! Thank you 2-D Design art teacher for sharing all your amazing art tips!

Coloured Card Stock: to write out my recipes on and to make pretty designs with

Markers: Also to make pretty designs with

An Awesome Sketch Book: So cheap!  It will be perfect!

Recipes: duh!  

So far, that's what I have... Now I just need to make the time to really work on it:) 

~Trista

Sick in Bed.

Since we got back from our holiday, I had some awesome posts planned out!  I wanted to put up a couple pics from Sicily, show my supplies for my cookbook project, and show you a couple other fun things.  Instead, I am home sick with the flu, praying that sometime soon I will be back to full health.  I would greatly appreciate your prayers!  And hopefully soon, I will have the energy to get back to blogging!!  For now, I will continue my movie marathon...

~T

Chinese Awesomeness!!

We celebrated Chinese New Years London style this year!  Tuesday before our Saturday celebration, hubby and I went to China town to see what we could find.  I have always wanted to use the bamboo steamers and make yummy dumplings, but I never purchased them because of their steep price.  While looking through the market, we stumbled across an end cap that had bamboo steamers!  WOOHOO!  They were sooooo much cheaper there than anywhere else I have seen them.  I also found the cutest pink shirt to wear!  The only picture I have of me wearing it, isn't the best for showing off the shirt, but I will include it anyway :)  With my bamboo steamers in hand (and some panda snacks) I set out to find a recipe.  I searched online and found this recipe.  (I subbed with gluten free white flour).  They took a little longer than I anticipated, but they turned out seriously GREAT!  YUM!  So, here are a couple of pics from the evening!   

{This photo is from the celebration in Trafalgar Square on Sunday evening}

~T

Happy Heart Day!

I really really really wanted to share a recipe that I made on Saturday, but my sweet hubby had taken a couple of pics on his mobile and I don't have them yet on my computer.  Instead I decided to post this cute quick project that I made for Roo Roo for heart day!  It was soooooooo easy!  And, I had all the supplies already so I it cost me, well, nothing!

Supplies:
Felt: white, pink... whatever you colours you wanna use!
Clip
Hot glue gun (one of my most FAVOURITE TOOLS EVER!)

First, cut out hearts of varied sizes and colours

Cut out one circular piece with 2 slits in it

Slid clip through slits and glue down

Hot glue the hearts to each other

Attach circular piece to the back of the largest heart

And that's it!  Super easy!!!!

Trista

Excited!

The Problem:
I just have to say that I have loads of recipes floating around without any proper way of storing them.  A few years ago, my mum had given me a nice recipe binder which contained pockets to place recipes providing some organisation, but with all the accumulation of recipes it has run out of space.  What to do???

The Solution:
I am going to design my very own recipe collection book!  WOHOO!  So excited!!!  Tomorrow I will start gathering the supplies.  I am going to head up to Cass Art Supply and find a cheap sketch book.  When I was in there the other day, I saw some really inexpensive sketch books - spiral bound (although I haven't decided yet if I really want spiral bound... I have one more night to decide).  That will be my first purchase!  I will eventually need to get some rubber cement (they don't really have the same kind of rubber cement here that you can find in the states, so I will be trying out different kinds of glue that will hopefully do the trick!) and some cool paper!  I am going to look for that also, but I have noticed that you can find some inexpensive coloured scrapbook paper online.  Then I am going to let the creativity flow out!  I will try to post my progress as I go along so that you too can be inspired to organise your recipe collection!

Trista

Meet Percy!

Back in the summer, I took a really quick journey up to York for a Pastors/Leaders conference with Suzanne, the girls, and our hubbys (hubs were only there for a day because they had to get back for Bible study the following day).  We had almost a full day of walking around York and seeing the sights.  We went to an amazing museum that had the cutest make you feel like you lived way back when street and other amazing exhibits.  We also spent some time walking around the cute downtown shopping area.  So fun!  That's where I met Percy.  He sits in the window all day long hammering this one shoe!  Poor man!  That must get incredibly boring!  Just whistle while you work... all. day. long.  Come to find out, he has many other twins ALL throughout London!  Must have been a really HUGE family!  Anyway, I was looking for something funny to post today, and well, there ya go!

Seriously funny!
Trista

Movie Fun!

When the Holyde girls arrived back from the states, they were so excited about a film they had seen in the states: TANGLED!  I had remember seeing the advertisement for it way back when, but it kinda fell out of my brain!  Until they came home and said what a cute film it was and talked all about how much I needed to see it!  Te would continuously quote the movie to me and I would just stare at her blankly because I had no idea what she was quoting from!  Every time, her response was, "It's from Tangled!!!"  The funny thing is, movies are released here later than they are in America.  Confusing, I know!  Unless it is a British made film, then of course it would release here first.  Anyway, we looked it up and found out that it most definitely wasn't coming out until the end of January!  So long to wait!  But, that allowed for us to plan a fun event... GLAMOUR MAKEOVERS!!!!  Suzanne and I decided that we could give the girls mini-makeovers in which we could do there hair, nails, and makeup!  The inspiration behind these makeovers came from the bippity boppity boutique in Disneyland where girls can go in and be beautified into a princess.  Both of the girls also had really cute new dresses that they had brought over from the states which they decided would be their fancy attire for the event.  Since it was on a Sunday, we were also able to include and mum & daughter from church.  The mum helped out with the nails, while I did the hair and makeup.  Let's just say, GLITTER EVERYWHERE!!  I seriously LOVE glitter!  The night before, Suzanne and I had put together some awesome hair ties with ribbons and flowers as well as crowns and bookmarks.  She had found the templates on the Disney website!  So fun!  It as such a hit!  The girls got to work on their bookmarks and crowns while we took turns doing hair, makeup, and nails!  And once we were all prettied up, we left for the show.  Of course the film was AMAZING!  But, you would have to see it for yourself!  Here's some of the cuteness from our AWESOME Glamour Makeover/Tangled event!

{Te with here very AMAZING wig and cute hair piece I made!!!}

{The ribbons braided into the hair}  

{Roo Roo smiling as the flash blinds her... You can see Te in the background getting her nails done!}

{Close up of cute hair piece}

We had such a wonderful time!  I love being able to make cute crafty things!!!!

Trista

My Latest Project!

My latest project idea came to me as I was trying to figure out where to put my earrings.  I had them in a box, but with them out of sight, I would always forget to wear them!  In one of favourite magazines, they had suggested putting fabric over a cork board and then putting little sewing pins up on the fabric to hang the earring from.  I decided that was a little to plain for me, so I decided to incorporate my own style in it by adding my "earring tree".  Super SIMPLE!!  

This entire project was made for less than £5!!  I found some scraps of felt that I had from previous projects and used that for the seriously cute tree!  To attach the fabric to the cork board, I just cut down the fabric to a size that would allow for folding over the edges around the back and then used my favourite tool, the hot glue gun, to attach the fabric to the back.  For the tree, I cut out my felt pieces and then glued them down with fabric glue!  Easy!  You could really use it to hang your necklaces and other jewellery from as well!  But, I already have the cutest necklace/bracelet holder in the world!  Super CUTE!  Now, my earrings have a place and we can also use the rest of the board to pin up special papers and reminders!

Trista

An AWESOME Image!

One of my favourite places in the world is Yosemite!  Last year, Hubby and I had an awesome adventure for our 2 year anniversary!  He planned most of the trip and added this fun surprise in it!  A day trip to Yosemite to hike Yosemite falls (one of my favourite hikes!).  Since we knew we were leaving, we wanted to be sure that we made it up there one last time before we got to England!  What fun memories this photo has!

Trista

One of my all time Favourite FOODS!

If you were to ask me what my favourite food in the whole entire world is, I would probably answer with: SUSHI!  I get asked that a lot by my friend's 7 year old.  I always have to stop and think about it because there are so many seriously AMAZING foods out there!  Now that have moved from the states across the pond, we can't exactly afford to go out to sushi.  It's an incredibly special treat when it does happen!  In the last 8 months, we have probably only had it out 3 times.  They just don't make it the same here!  It's still yum, but the portions are tiny and the cost is tripled.  I decided the only solution was to make it myself!  You can make your very own for soooo much cheaper than they charge you in the shops!  And, granted, you are probably partly paying for the atmosphere, but really, it's fun to make it and enjoy from home!

Some of the essential things you need in order to make it:
*Bamboo Mat: a friend of mine gave me my first one because I didn't know where to find one here, but I have since then seen them in kitchen shops and Asian markets for quite cheap, maybe just a couple of £'s.
*White Rice: I just use Basmati rice although I am sure that they have some sort of Japanese rice that I have seen in the market but it seemed to cost way more £s
*Seaweed
*Fish: my personal favourites are tuna and salmon which I find at the fish counter at my local supermarket
Fun Extras!!
*Cucumber
*Avocado 
*Spicy Sauce: I LOVE spicy tuna so I have some of my favourite spicy red sauce
*Salad Cress: which I also like to mix up with the spicy tuna mixure
My someday list:
*Eel sauce: I would LOVE to find a recipe for eel sauce!  That was another one of my favourites!

I always start with steaming the rice.  Then I get all the fish ready: sometimes I use strips of fish and with the spicy tuna, I cut up into chunks and then mix it with the spicy sauce and the salad cress.  After the rice is finished, you can spread the rice onto the seaweed (which should be on top of your bamboo mat), add your fish and other bit size pieces of avocado or cucumber (or anything else for that matter) and roll it up!

Slice up!

Serve on cute Japanese style dishes with soy sauce and wasabi 

Enjoy!

It's seriously that simple!  I hope you try it and enjoy it!

Trista

Revamp!

Starbucks in hand, I am buckling down and the ideas are flowing to give this blog a complete makeover!  So, check back soon for the new and improved Seriously Seriously Trista!!

Mobile Phone Knit Case

Another project that I recently finished is this super cute mobile phone case!  Hand knitted, super easy and fast!  I wanted something that my mobile could go in so that when I toss it into my handbag, it won't get all scratched or anything.  So, here it is :)

Love it! 

Christmas Fun!

I know I am quite behind in posting, but I finally have a little bit of time to spend on my blog!  My first project I wanted to share with you were my Christmas Stockings!  Although they aren't exactly like the pattern that I downloaded, they are close enough!  I had a hard time finding cute stockings here that weren't outrageously priced and that weren't for a small child or pet.  In my blog searching, I came across this awesome blog called purl bee where I found this awesome pattern for making felt stockings.  While hubby was away on a short trip, I got to work!  I hunted down all the supplies and spent some time stitching everything together (made me think about investing in a sewing machine).  The felt I used wasn't my favourite, but I made due.  The white was a bit hard to work with so I add improvise when it came to the snowflakes.  The other thing that I was missing were pinking shears for the borders.  They too were outrageously priced so I decided to do without.  It works!