Sewing Day with Robyn

Last week we had Robyn over to sew her Liberty Day dress. Since she still isn't comfortable enough to sew by herself and Mrs. G doesn't have much time to help her, Tara offered to have Robyn over and we could help her make it. 

Thankfully it was an easy pattern and we made very good progress for one day. She arrived at about 11 a.m., and we...

Got out the material, cut it out and got to work!

Took a brief break for a tea party lunch...

Pinned and sewed and trimmed and basted and gathered and fitted....

And at 6:30 p.m. we had this:

A basically-finished dress (minus the hem) and a very pleased Robyn!

Thanks for coming over Robyn - it was fun!

Chinese New Year

Yesterday was Chinese New Year, and since Dad is Chinese, we celebrate it. And it just so happens that the Hills have Olivia who just so happens to be Chinese too! :) Of course, the only sensible thing to do is get together. So we did. And as usual I took very few pictures; people pictures just aren't my specialty. :) I'm waiting on Wendy to post hers so I can steal some of them. 

Dad picked out a bunch of Chinese dishes from our cookbook and we girls went to work chopping and prepping everything ahead of time. With Chinese cooking, the downside is that everything is stir-fried so you can't cook it ahead of time. We made the soup ahead of time and put that in the crock pot to keep warm.

Then Tara and I decorated with red streamers and paper lanterns. Red is the traditional Chinese color.

Tara made some fancy place card/napkin/chopstick ensembles.

The full place setting.

The the Hills arrived... and we stir-fried for the next hour.

Olivia being cute on the stairs :) (don't you love the dress?!)

Deep frying tofu

Tara and Wendy socializing across the stove

Fried rice

And here are two more pictures of Olivia because she is WAAAY too cute:




Shame on me, I didn't even get pictures of the finished dishes or anything... *sigh.* It's up to your imagination! :)

What's new with the Yens...

Uhhh.... not much. Which is why this blog has been rather quiet for the last week. Us girls have been scrapbooking the past few days for our "faithbooks" (scrapbooks centered on faith). Saturday Mr. Chidlow and Sokea came over for Mr. C to check out our living room ceiling and evaluate the possibility of building on top (or bottom?) of it to further insulate it as it's the draftiest room in the house.

We took Sokea out snowshoeing, which she very much enjoyed.

And... well... that's about it. :-)

Cookin' the Chinese Way

Here's a post Hannah will enjoy... a food post! :-) A few weeks ago we picked up a little Chinese cookbook, and Dad decided we should make an all-out Chinese meal. So he picked out 3 dishes and a soup, and we cooked them!

It was more work than a normal meal because it was like we were making two main dishes, a soup, a side, plus rice. We had marinated beef with vegetables, cashew chicken, stir-fried bean sprouts, and a bean sprout & bean curd (tofu) soup (Hills, these are all out of the same book we gave you, so take note :-).

And Dad's overall impression was........


Our comments were that everything was good except the beef should have marinated longer, even though we marinated it twice as long as the recipe said (it was slightly lacking in flavor).

Dad's plan is now to do this once a month....

Contest Results...

For those of you who remember when I posted that a story I wrote placed as a finalist in a contest, I just thought I'd update on that and say that FINALLY they announced the winners. They were supposed to announce on November 1st (yeah) but they had some very unprofessional professional judges :-) who were two months late on getting in their verdicts.

Anyway, after all that waiting, I didn't win. But that's alright. I'm still happy that I placed at all!

New Year's Eve

Big news folks.... for the first time that I can remember, we rang in the new year with America instead of France! :-)

We've never been real big on the staying up till midnight thing. At least most of us haven't. A certain youngest member of the family has always wanted to but the majority rules, right? So we always go to bed at a normal, SANE hour and figure it's a new year somewhere in the world.

This year, however, we broke the tradition and stayed up to midnight - and beyond, as a matter of fact.

Our dear friends, the Chidlow family, came over to welcome 2009 with us. Games abounded (much to the delight of Sokea) and so did something else - FOOD. Oh, boy did we eat. I'm surprised the buttons didn't pop on my skirt. :-) We had "munchie" type foods instead of a sit down meal, but we had a LOT of munchies. And they were all delicious!

A "rousing" game of mahjong (btw, that's sparking European French Berry Lemonade in the wine glasses :-)

Mrs. Chidlow playing sjoelen with a vengeance

The YUMMY Thai chicken rolls, a la Emily

"Don't take a picture of me" :-)

Stuffed mushrooms (thanks, Jessica - they were a hit!)

Sorry I didn't get any more pictures; I know Emily and Sokea got a lot more than I did so when/if they post I'll edit this with links.

Just curious - how many of you reading this have ever sung Somewhere Over the Rainbow in 3 part harmony at 12:30 a.m.? :-)