Japan Day 3: Disney Sea and Ikspiari

Note: We found it is faster for us to post photos here which are not clickable through to Flickr. Here is the link to today's set page. Right click to open it in a new window and you will be able to see the whole set.

So we are not doing well in our efforts to acclimate to the 13 hour time difference. We woke up at 4:30 this morning and could not get back to sleep. Perhaps the fact that the sun rises at 4:28 does not help. Anyway, it means that we can ‘boot up’ slowly, have some nice tea in our room and prepare ourselves for the day slowly and even decide to get to breakfast exactly when the restaurant opens! We had so much time this morning that I decided to have a nice bath! The tub here is somehow differently sized (though it doesn’t really look it) from American tubs and I found that I fit in it very comfortably (as opposed to American tubs). We have found that the water here heats up immediately which is super nice. Plus, the shower here has such fantastically strong water pressure it actually blasts the tangles out of my hair! After my luxurious morning soak, we headed off to breakfast. We decided to splurge on Chef Mickeys which is a bit of a splurge in the States, but marginally more of a splurge here at ~$41/person. But we hadn’t yet experienced a true Japanese breakfast and Chef Mickeys is a buffet, so we wouldn’t have to muddle through with our (slightly improving, but nowhere near quickly enough) awful Japanese. We instead looked the true tourists as we unabashedly photographed literally every single food item (for your viewing pleasure at home dear Reader!). Getting a table was nearly effortless except when the hostess tried to explain something about 90 minutes. Fortunately, she spoke choto (a little) English and was able to explain that there is a 90 minute limit on eating. I guess they have heard about gluttonous Americans. Or maybe it was because the other Japanese tourists are very excited to meet the characters who come out to every table to get a photo with every diner. We didn’t stuff ourselves silly, but decided to make a selection of interesting food items in addition to choosing things we thought we recognized. They had helpful little signs describing the offerings also. We did determine that seemingly recognizable items like scramble eggs are prepared differently here. The scrambled eggs were oddly smooth and perhaps cheesy? See my Flickr for a zillion photos and descriptions. Here are a couple of what we actually selected for eating: We also not very sneakily swiped 2 mini bananas and 2 mini yoghurts along with 2 nori (Japanese dried seaweed) packets for tomorrow’s breakfast. Breakfast done, it was about 8:20am, so we headed towards the buste (bus stop) to hop on a bus to Disney Sea. From online research it sounded like a 15-20 minute walk, but why walk when you can take a cute Airstream style bus? Plus we were proud of ourselves for having discovered the bus yesterday anyway. The bus appeared precisely on time according to the posted sign – which is not printed daily, but a permanent sign – how do they do this?! The bus dropped us at the entrance to the park, where we were met with this sight: Lines to get into the park at 8:45am! Of course, everyone was queued up patiently and Cast Members were going about making sure the lines were perfectly orderly to expedite the process of going through the turnstiles. Having drunk much of the ocha (Japanese green tea which has a very pleasant grassy flavor) at breakfast (and the different and delicious apple juice they have here), I needed an otay-a-rayi (bathroom). T patiently joined the queue (like James from Top Gear) and I went off in search of a Cast Member. I found someone in a gift shop, far away from the throngs of people so that I could test out my Japanese without too many people witnessing. Having just completed a Mango lesson about asking for directions, I was pleased to use my new skills and find that I… ACTUALLY UNDERSTOOD her response!! [It helped that she also spoke some English…]. Anyway, the bathrooms were far and I decided I could hold it, so rejoined T in the line just as they opened the turnstiles. Inside the park, they had some kind of show with Mickey and Minnie and a variety of characters around to distract eager park goers from storming into the park. After snapping a few photos, we were not distracted and headed straight for Mysterious Island; home to Journey to the Center of the Earth and 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (hereafter referred to as JTCOE – jay tee ko, and 2kLUS – too kay lus). We arrived at JTCOE to find … a 5 minute standby time?! FastPass distribution had begun, so we snagged some FastPasses (return at 9:55 – whatttt!) and dashed through the line. Passing all the cool theming, we decided we’d take photos the second time around. The ride was awesomely done and made more scary because it’s all in Japanese so we had no idea what was going to happen. We were completely surprised by the speediness and drop at the end! Ride completed, I tested my Japanese again and asked for a bathroom. Turns out it was right behind me. Literally. Dumb Americans. Oh well; this was one of the coolest bathrooms I’ve seen. The immaculately clean stalls had little baby seats where you could store your baby in addition to little pull down shelves to store your belongings. Didn’t have the camera, so no photos, sorry. Will try to get some today if we remember. ICN: the bathrooms here all have auto water faucets and in addition to soap, you are asked to spray your hands with provided sanitizer afterwards. It is billed as completely non-toxic if ingested, slightly acidic and ionized. Magic water! It’s nothing like the awful alcohol based stuff at home. Next, we saw that 2kLUS also had a miraculous 5 minute wait, so we walked right on. Again, not much opportunity for photos, but here’s one of our aquapod, note the benches which were super low at about 12 inches off the floor: Another amazingly cool ride in which you see all kinds of deep sea creatures and even have a little spotlight in front of you that is moveable so it’s sort of interactive. Again, the ride is in Japanese, but really, how much explanation do you need of an undersea exploration? Off to Mermaid Lagoon! I had seen photos of Ariel’s Grotto online which included an Eric statue, so I needed a photo there. The park was still barely populated, so we felt like we had the place to ourselves! We were able to walk right on to any of the kiddie rides we pleased and explored Ariel’s Grotto all by ourselves. There, we found Ursula’s super creepy lair where T insisted on scaring me by pushing shell buttons on her makeup table which brought her onto the mirror. But I did get my photo with Eric: As we were leaving Mermaid Lagoon, we bought a Japanese portable tarp ground covering because it had started to drizzle ever so slightly. Just outside, a janitorial Cast Member was taking photos of people, so we took advantage too: By this time, it was time to take advantage of our JTCOE FastPasses, so we headed back to Mysterious Island. Along the way, we saw this other janitor drawing with water on the ground! See a video! This time around, I was able to capture some more photos of the awesome theming. You can really tell how much money they put into this park! Of course, we have heard that typically these places are absolutely packed (more like our experience in Disneyland yesterday, but worse), so more theming along the wait lines is necessary. Next we headed off to Port Discovery to try the Storm Rider ride. Line looked long – longest we saw all day – but it was only 20 minutes. The premise of this ride is that you are boarding a Storm Rider heri-kopputa (helicopter) which can go into the center of storms to ‘deactivate’ them with some kind of electrical pulse. There is a fairly elaborate pre-ride show involving a cute Cast Member portraying a guide who tells you all about the heri-kopputa and how it works. The ride itself is a flight simulator that is kind of a combo of Star Tours and Soarin’. You enter a room like on Star Tours and watch everything on a giant domed screen like in Soarin’. Little touches like the door portholes showing the ‘storm outside’ and debris piercing the ceiling really make this ride much better than Star Tours though. Heading out of Storm Rider, we were greeted by a delicious strawberry scent. Ichigo pop-u-corn!!! [Strawberry popcorn] And the feed buckets it came in: STITCH! Today the impulse to buy was too strong, so we went ahead and got one: Feed bucket around neck, we headed towards the Lost River Delta for the Indiana Jones ride. Got some FastPasses in lieu of the 20 minute wait, and did some exploring. We walked into Arabian Coast, where I got a photo with Rajah: Walking around Arabian coast, we saw the Sindbad ride – possibly a completely Japanese story? – which only had a 5 minute wait. This ride is like It’s a Small World in that it is a boat ride that tells a story about Sindbad and his pet tiger Chandu all through a continuous song. Being all in Japanese, the story is basically about Sindbad visiting all kinds of places, helping people and receiving gifts in return. It was hard to get many good photos; but here are a few: Time for Indiana Jones! On our way, we saw the Raging Spirits ride entrance, which was manned by at least 3 CMs. The ride was closed, so we assumed their endless chatter was them informing everyone of the ride closure. Indiana Jones was pretty awesome. So awesome that there is only one photo, and it is of the safety video playing in the line… Getting off of the Indiana Jones ride, we found it was drizzling in earnest now – not just the tiny spritz of before. So we headed back to Arabian Coast and checked out Agrabah Marketplace. There was a place to play carnival style games, but we bypassed that for the shops. We hadn’t taken much time to look at the merch yesterday, so this seemed a good opportunity. And wow, they have way different stuff! We saw lots of omiyage (souvenirs you buy to bring home to everyone you know – a Japanese custom) but also lots of other fun, random and super expensive stuff; like this Genie dustpan and brush set: We saw another popcorn cart selling curry popcorn in Mickey & Duffy bucketos. These came with a baby bucketo as well, but at 2000yen, we passed on the bucket and just bought the pop-u-corn. It was still drizzling, so we opted for the Disney Transit Steamer Line from Lost River Delta to the Mediterranean harbor. Oddly it was Mexican themed… By now it was starting to actually rain and it was getting cold. We discovered that the giant building in Med Harbour is actually the MiraCosta hotel (a Disney Vacation Club Collection hotel – next trip maybe!). So we went inside to investigate and see if we could get lunch and a dry, warm place to watch the Mythica water show that was happening in an hour and a half on the lagoon which MiraCosta overlooks. Lunch prices looked pretty steep and we weren’t sure the show would actually happen because of the rain. So after checking out their gift shop, we headed back to our hotel. MiraCosta is a Disney Fairy Tale Wedding location, so they had some DFTW merch: We asked for directions to the buste in Japanese again and found our stop easily! Back in our room, we found this awesome towel-gami awaiting us: It’s Mickey!! See his nose and tongue?! We planned to rest our feet a little and it somehow turned into another nearly 3 hour nap. However, we woke up not feeling very rested. Instead of returning to the park as planned to see Fantasmic! (which we figured would be cancelled because it was still raining), we went back to Ikspiari to see if we could find our way to the top 2 floors which had previously eluded us. First stop was this interesting store called Plaza which sold a wide variety of items. From the sign outside: housewares, toiletries, toys & games, clothing. Plus all kinds of make-up and rain gear like umbrellas, bag covers and ponchos. Flickr has innumerable photos. Next we visited the Disney store and took another zillion photos. They have such cool stuff here! Tiny, tiny stickers: By now it was about 8:30pm and we were getting hungry and tired. After significant walking because we didn’t understand the layout, we found our way back to the food court and grocery store. We bought some onigiri (rice balls stuffed with something unknown) and honey-lemon jellies for breakfast at the grocery store. For dinner, we tried another Japanese quick service place and were pleased to find that the cook spoke fairly decent English and he helped us order a ginormous bowl of fat noodles in curry soup. We also got me an onigiri stuffed with salmon and T an inarizushi. Oishii rating: !!! Not much meat in the curry, otherwise it would have gotten an extra !

Tokyo Disneyland

Today we visited Tokyo Disneyland; it is the first of the two parks built here in Japan. We received little tickets when we checked in that allowed us into the park 15 minutes early. Luckily, as mentioned in my post this morning, we were up at 5:30am, so getting to the park early was no problem. However, when we checked the park opening time, online it said 9am. We walked over to the park from our hotel, less than a 15 minute walk. We arrived at the park at 8:40 am to see the gates already open and loads of people running in! [Later on tonight, we met another American couple who encountered the same thing and said they saw a sign saying that the park opened at 8:30...] Anyway, we only wanted to get FastPasses for Pooh's Honey Hunt and Monsters Inc. Hide & Go Seek. Because we can do Pooh's Hunny Hunt at home, we joined the masses headed for Monsters. There we found that the FastPass return was already at 14:00! The FastPass machines are Giggle-o-meters that giggle each time you scan a park ticket. :) FastPasses in hand, we went in search of the egg hunt booth to get our maps for the Easter egg hunt that is part of the Easter Wonderland event going on here (through June!). But first, we were lured in by the ever present and hard working scent emitters and got in line for our first popcorn choice of the day; caramel in a Mickey egg popcorn bucket. Here, there is an incredible proclivity for collecting things it seems. Popcorn buckets were seen around nearly every neck; all different kinds! The buckets themselves are pretty expensive at 1500yen, they are around $20! But refills are only 500yen and T cleverly noted that a regular, non-souvenir box of popcorn is only 300yen, so we bought that when we refilled. Ok, now that we have our feed bucket, back to the egg hunt sign up location hunt... There were two booths to sign up for the egg hunt, easily found in the courtyard in front of the castle. We signed up for the standard course (versus the expert course which only had Japanese maps) and went off on our hunt! Not having a real plan for the rest of the day, we started off in a random direction and found ourselves at It's A Small World, looking for our first egg. No luck with the egg here, but we did test our Japanese again and found a Cast Member who explained how to actually do the hunt. Turns out you get 5 stickers (yes, we did know that) and there are eggs all around the park. The map showed you the general locations of the eggs, but you had to affix the stickers to the proper locations. The eggs outside It's a Small World were very cute international children eggs, but none of the 5 that we were expected to find. Oh well, the standby wait for the ride was less than half an hour, so we went for it. The ride is not the re-done one that is now at WDW, but the old version from the nineties. It's still good though and the shortest standby wait time we saw the entire day! One ride down, we went to Critter Country and found our first egg; a rabbit from Song of the South! One down, five to go! In search of our next egg sighting, we began to catch the delicious scent of curry popcorn! Following the scent, we passed our second egg; bandit Donald! The line for the curry popcorn was longer than the caramel popcorn line, but we decided it was worth it, judging by the smell. Rating: Oishii!!!! By this time, we were seeing people setting up for the parade already. Interesting Cultural Note (ICN); people here are clean in all kinds of ways. For the parade, people brought their own ground coverings, portable, cutely decorated mini tarps to sit on. They laid down the tarps in perfect rows and took off their shoes to sit on them. The Cast Members helped to arrange the rows and made sure that everyone in the 3 seated rows was sitting in such a way that people behind them could see. The parade was very elaborate, more like a moving show. The group of floats were interspersed with incredibly costumed dancers and the whole troupe would stop, perform their whole show and then move down the parade route. We managed to see the whole parade from our amazingly good spot which happened to be at the beginning of the parade route and then caught snippets of the parade for the next hour or so as it went along its full route. Video of Parade

Parade (and curry popcorn) done, we were back on the egg hunt. We found a Snow White statue with 7 dwarf eggs, but none of them was the ones we needed. In Toontown, we found our Pluto egg and decided to ride Roger Rabbit's Car Toon Spin, judging that the wait was short by the appearance of the line (mistake). The lines here are even more cleverly designed than WDW it seems. The wait was at least half an hour, maybe longer. However, as many other people have mentioned on trip reports and blogs, the theming here is fantastic! The entire line trail is themed to the zillionth degree, leading you up to the ride literally with details from the movie. The ride itself was pretty short, and quite scary. The tiny girl riding with her dad behind us was scared and crying by the time we got off (though she was scared silent for the whole ride). ICN: as soon as they are able, children here walk on their own. Many of them even carry their own backpacks full of their own diapers, bibs, water bottles and other necessities. There are far fewer strollers, and they are generally only used for babies who cannot walk yet (evidenced by their bare feet). Even with babies, more frequently we saw them being worn in baby bjorns or similar devices or just being carried by their parents. On our way again, we passed another popcorn station selling Stitch buckets of caramel popcorn. I had been seeing these awesome buckets all around the park and surmised that they were on sale now based on how many we saw. They are so cool, I wanted one! But when we discovered that they are 2000yen; ~$25, I decided a close up photo was good enough. :( The popcorn scent emitters were working their magic on us though and we were hungry (also it was around 12:30, so lunch time). The lines for all the sit down restaurants were super long besides the restaurants were quite expensive 2000+yen per person. So, we decided to go the quick service route. We had heard about Mickey buns, like Chinese Char Siu Bao, but shaped like Mickey. We walked by a restaurant selling them and decided to try one Mickey and one Minnie. Mickey had pork in his head and chicken in his ears - rating: oishii!!!. Minnie was described as "strawberry milk" flavour, so we were apprehensive. Her ears were a thin strawberry jam and her head full of cheese (danish-like) - rating: oishii!! The buns were good, but like the Very Hungry Caterpillar, we were still hungry. Thinking we'd get more food at better prices in Ikspiari (the Downtown Disney like place), and decided to leave the park. We also found our Lady egg: Before leaving, we figured we'd turn in our egg hunt map and collect our prize! Note: if you have been paying attention, you will undoubtedly notice that we only managed to find 4 of our 5 eggs. The last one was Mushu, and we cheated off a little girl and just stuck our sticker where she had hers... shameless. But we got our prize! A yellow egg containing mickey clothing stickers (his shorts and gloves) and a Mickey egg necklace thing. I kept insisting it must open up, but again took cues from the 3 year olds around us and decided it was just for wearing. Prize collected, we headed towards the exit. On our way out, we passed a Tomorrowland Terrace clone and saw people eating ... eggs with Mickey shaped yolks?! WHAT?! We had to get one. We tried out our Japanese again, and this time T was smart enough to start out with "sumimasen, Nihongo sukoshi hanashimasu" (sorry, I only speak a little Japanese - which really should be 'I don't speak any good Japanese'). Our lovely cashier immediately pulled out a picture menu, but continued to jabber at us in polite Japanese. Here's what we got: Mickey hands fried chicken sandwich and beef & veggies with rice and MAGIC Mickey egg T's theory on how the eggs are made; they must have half egg shaped molds into which the egg whites are poured, with a piece that keeps the yolk space free. When the white is solid enough, the yolk is poured in; explaining how the yolk is so smooth and wet still. My theory; MAGIC. By this time it was just past 2pm and having been up since 5:30am, we were tired! We were about to leave the park when we passed the entrance to Captain EO - only a 10 minute wait time posted! Plus, T had never seen it and it's no longer in the US parks, so in we went. Half an hour later, we know why it's not in the US anymore. It's a very odd story (not much of a story...) about Captain EO (Michaeru Jakuson) and his weird muppet alien friends who visit an even weirder Borg-esque planet and convert them all into fabulous, rainbow 80s dancers; including their spider-ish overlord lady. All of this is done in 90s 3D with Michaeru Jakuson's magical rays of light goodness, signing and pelvic thrusting. Finally, time to leave the park. Sore feet were gladdened to find a bus that took us directly to our hotel! Yes, we hear you remembering that the walk was less than 15 minutes, but still, we took the bus. Good thing we took it too because this way, we discovered that there is also a bus to Disney Sea, the second park and our destination for tomorrow! Here, the monorail costs money, (though we have not yet figured out for certain how much), so the free bus is a great alternative. Back in our room, we had a nice 2 hour nap, completely missing our Monsters Inc FastPass return which was to be between 15:55 and 16:55. We woke up and it was night time. I checked our credit card bill on my phone to see what kind of exchange rate we got when we bought our park tickets last night and also discovered we'd been charged for our hotel room!! WHAT?! We booked with DVC points! Off to talk to Guest Services and hope that someone spoke English. The four people at the desk were very friendly and nice (as usual) and eager to help us figure it out. Unfortunately, it seems the best/only way to do this is to call the US Member Services people. Toll free number, but no international line... At $2/minute, that doesn't seem like a good idea. Emailed our DVC guy in Florida. Just inside Ikspiari, we saw a DVC model showcase and stepped inside to find Shito, another very friendly and also amazingly good English speaking Cast Member. We explained our hotel situation and he was on it right away. He took our information, contacted the US DVC people and assured us that they will email us tomorrow. Confidence level in getting our $$ back; pretty high. :) Walking around the park, we noticed a lot of ladies wearing leggings under their shorts/skirts/dresses. It's somewhat colder than what we'd expected, so I decided I need to join the Tokyo fashion. We headed into Ikspiari again to look for leggings. We found a store which sells only feet/leg coverings and found a variety of UV protecting, quick drying, compression (?) and other things leggings. 1050yen; bought. Feeling better about our room situation and leggings in hand, we found a curry place to have dinner. T ordered again with his improving Nihongo (Japanese); improved by the repetition of "Nihongo sukoshi hanashimasu." As he was ordering, we noted another American couple also trying to order. After our respective meals, the other couple approached us asking if we are American. They are from LA and the whole time we chatted (maybe 5 minutes) both T and I kept thinking about how loudly the girl was speaking! ICN: Everyone here speaks very quietly. Even in the parks, where the Cast Members positioned EVERYWHERE are talking constantly, they never speak above a regular voice level. Here in the Ambassador Lounge area, people pretty much whisper the whole time. After dinner, we explored a few shops, but they were closing (9pm). Now here we are back at the Lounge. We found out that we actually are not allowed in the lounge because it is for suite guests only, but we can be squatters and sit right outside and steal their wifi. Signing off for tonight! Oyasuminasai! (Good night!) As always: click the photos to be taken to my Flickr, where you will see many more photos and descriptions.

Ohaiyo goasaimasu!

Good morning from Japan! T and I are here for a week checking out Tokyo Dizunee Randuruu (Disneyland) and Tokyo. We arrived yesterday and have already discovered that the little Japanese we learned in anticipation of our trip is far too little! Everyone here is very kind and polite though, so we have been able to muddle through fairly well so far! We've been taking photos at nearly every step of the trip, so we'll try to post each day! Starting from the beginning! We flew National in DC to Toronto before catching our flight to Narita. We had about an hour and a half layover, so we had lunch at an interesting bike themed little restaurant. T was hungry and I wasn't, so he got a full meal with sandwich, salad and soup and I got bruschetta with cheddar cheese. It was all very good! On our 12 hour flight to Narita, we had special, lactose free meals. They were all quite good! See my Flickr for more photos and info about our special meals. We were served 3 meals! Once we arrived in Narita, customs was quite expedient and then we were on our way to look for the Airport Limousine Bus to the Tokyo Disney Resort. Luckily for us, it was quite easy to locate (right outside the baggage claim area in the South Wing) and had a giant orange sign. :) We bought our tickets for the last bus (phewf, didn't realize they stopped running after a certain time) at 17:10. They were 2400yen each. The bus ride took about 40 minutes; but T and I slept through the whole thing. We woke up to find it was drizzling and we were at the first stop; the Disneyland Hotel. There, the bus stopped at a bus depot type area, where disembarking passengers had to get off into the drizzle and walk over to the hotel. Second stop was us; the Disney Ambassador Hotel. Fortunately for us, the bus pulled right into the covered area in front of the hotel. We were greeted by a bell hop lady who took our bags from us super strength style and carried them (not rolled them), one in each hand! We checked in and then waited for our bags to re-appear with a different bell hop who showed us to our room and toted our bags on a cart. He did his best to explain everything to us (including taking time to show us the emergency exit). After a shower in the bath-room, (see photos - of the hotel room, not us - here), we headed off to Ikspiari, the Downtown Disney equivalent. Turns out is is HUUGE - 4 floors and loads of ways to get lost! We explored a little, happened upon the ticketing center where we bought our park tickets (~$375 for 3 days for the both of us) and then went off in search of some dinner. On the way, we stopped at a little tea shop where we tasted and then bought some delicious tea - oishii! (From now on, we will be using our own oishii scale of deliciousness - maximum of 4 !s - oishii is Japanese for delicious) Our dinner: Click for more photos and description of our dinner and explorations in Ikspiari! Ok, it is now 8:11am here (we've been up since 5:30(!) but had to wait for the lounge to open to get wifi) and we are headed to the park! We get to go into Disneyland 15 minutes early as guests of the Ambassador hotel. :)

T-Shirt re-fashion!

Every year, for the past several years, my mom has done the Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure, here in DC. It is a 5k walk or run and she does the walk part. I have gone with her a few times and my sisters have gone a few times. Anyway, every year, they send you a shirt after you sign up. I don't know what's become of the other shirts I got, but this year I decided to try to do something with it that would make it more wearable.

Here's a photo of the shirt before any alterations:

The finished shirt, front:

And the racer back:

Step 1) Wash your shirt! Free t-shirts are typically not pre-shrunk, and it would be sad for you do refashion it into something that doesn't fit!

Step 2) While your shirt is in the wash, find a tank that you want to copy to make a pattern. Any large paper will work for the pattern. Tissue paper left over from something you bought at Anthro, an unfolded paper bag, newspaper, old wrapping paper you've saved for some reason... you get the idea.

I traced a (Splendid) tank I have that fits me well. It's one of those sort of flow-y styles. It's slightly fitted at the top and then a-line, loose at the bottom. Here's a drawing of the basic shape of the tank. To fit the straight sides of the t-shirts, i just made the sides straight. The dotted line shows the way the Splendid tank is more a-line shaped off of the front piece. It has a very slight curve to it. I didn't actually digitally trace the pattern I drew out, so these are just rough shapes. If you want to make one yourself, you should definitely trace an article of clothing of your own. If you don't have a racer back tank, you could use a sports bra with a regular tank top!

To make the tracing easier, I flipped the tank inside out and then folded it in half. To trace the front, hide as much of the back as possible, while keeping the front part as wrinkle free as possible. You can trace it right up against the edge for the neck and arm holes. Unless the shirt is really too big for you, you should not need to cut the sides at all. The shape of the back is funky because I did some shirring/faux smocking in the racer back area.

Step 3) Trace your pattern onto your shirt. If you use a disappearing ink pen, you can do this on the right side of the shirt to make sure you capture any designs printed. If you either don't care about the pattern or are confident that it won't get cut off, it is somewhat easier to trace if the shirt is inside out. To make this easier, I flipped the shirt inside out and folded it in half. I ironed the fold crease just to make it more defined.

**Be sure to do this with the shirt inside out or you will melt the screen print!

Then you can go ahead and place your pattern and trace. When you trace, it is likely that your tank's arm holes will be smaller than the opening of the sleeve. That's ok.

Step 4) Cut out your tank. I like to start with the front, because the back can withstand a little more fudging if you mess up or if your tracing wasn't quite exact. (Almost nothing I do is exact!) Carefully make a small (0.25" worked for me) cut along the line you drew up at the shoulder seam. Insert your scissors here so that you can leave the shoulder seam intact for your tank. When you reach the sleeve, cut against the seam, leaving the seam attached to the sleeve and cut all the way down to the armpit. When you've cut out the whole front, flip the shirt over and have a look at where the shoulders are. Hopefully they match where you've drawn the shoulder from the pattern. If not, re-draw so that it matches up! Remember that you want the middle racer back area to be fairly wide. Mine was about twice as wide as I wanted it to end up.

Step 5) Shirr!!! I used this tutorial. You can draw lines along the area if you want. I didn't, because I don't do exact sewing! I do between 5 and 8 rows of shirring. At the end of each row, I knotted both ends before cutting off the excess. This allowed me to control the amount of gather and elasticity.

Step 6) Dig through your stash of bias binding and pick one. Before you start binding, you will need to sew up the little seams at the arm pits. This is a good time to try on your tank. You can make these mini-seams more like darts and pull in the shirt more if it's too big. When those seams are sewn up, I knot the thread ends also (instead of back tacking, I think it makes it a little neater because the excess is cut off and hidden in the bias binding. I alternately fudge and sew bias binding properly. Prudent Baby has a good tutorial (and lots of other helpful stuff).

Step 7) Trim any loose threads and put it on! You are now the proud owner of a fantastic new, perfectly wearable tank top!

Byoki no usagi (or "Sick Bunny")

We have a sick bunny here. He has been feeling badly for a week now. At first, we though it was just "run of the mill" sort of GI stasis; a common bunny malady. I took him to the vet on Monday where they examined him thoroughly and gave me a variety of medicines for him. He was prescribed Laxatone, Meloxicam and Propulsid. Laxatone is a veterinary grade laxative that also helps animals to break down/pass any furs they may have ingested. Meloxicam is a sort of "Tylenol" for animals and Propulsid helps to get bunnies' digestive tracts moving on a more normal rate. All three are administered orally, by tiny little syringe. In addition, I had to feed him Critical Care, which is essentially powdered hays which I mixed with a little carrot juice and water to make a little slurry. I fed him that by syringe also. All those medicines were supposed to get his little gastrointestinal tract moving along nicely. He'd had a similar incident before, about 2 years ago. That time, by the second day, Tuzi was clearly better. He was much more energetic, eating on his own and happy. This time, there seemed to be little change. After I administered his morning medicines, he would perk up some, but spent most of the day sitting/lounging on the floor next to me in the crafting room. So I took him back to the vet yesterday (Thursday). We got to see Dr. Stahl, the main doctor. He was great. He spent over an hour with Tuzi. Tuzi was sedated and Dr. Stahl filed his teeth to make sure they won't cause him any discomfort as he starts to eat on his own again. While Tuzi was out, Dr. Stahl had a chance to feel around his belly and discovered some blockages. Dr. Stahl concluded that Tuzi has Megacolon disease, which is common to Hotots. Megacolon (also known as Cow Pie Syndrome) is a gastrointestinal disease which is caused by a buildup of fecal/cecal matter in the intestine which causes a blockage. It makes the bunny very uncomfortable and likely causes quite a bit of pain. The photo shows the various medicines that we will be administering twice daily to help Tuzi get through this.

1) Critical Care 2) Laxatone 3) IV bag of fluids 4) Proviable; the probiotics 5) Buprenex; the narcotic pain killer 6) Meloxicam; the regular pain killer 7) Propulsid

Recipes for Pinterest

As I mentioned in my last post, I've been spending a lot of time on Pinterest. I also realized that it is a good way of keeping track of the hard copy things I have lying about the house. I like to tear recipes from magazines, but they often are hard to keep track of; being laid out nicely on a page does not always mean easy transfer into a recipe book. So, I've decided to start photographing the recipes and posting them to Pinterest for safe keeping. Unfortunately, the Pinterest iPhone app crops the photos and prevents you from enlarging the photos. So I'll post the photos here to pin on Pinterest. Kind of roundabout, but at least they'll get stored and will be actually readable and locate-able when I am looking for something to cook!

Cauliflower Soup from House Beautiful October 2011

Potato Salad with Sausage and Grainy Mustard Dressing from BH&G March 2012

Sausage and White Bean Stew with Kale from BH&G March 2012

Kindle cover!

I've been neglecting my crafty side for the past several months, focusing mostly on knitting. Well, let's be honest, I have been spending most of what could have been crafting time looking at crafty things other people have made on Pinterest. [That site is amazing for people prone to wasting time...]

Anyway, last night, Flea came over for a night of sisterly crafting. We started the evening off right by making paella from this recipe. However, we made some modifications of our own as we went along. Namely, we remembered that paella usually has saffron at the very end, and then sprinkled in a larger-sized pinch. Also, we cooked the rice separately (in the rice cooker, being the good Asians we are) and forgot that we were supposed to cook it in chicken broth, so we added a Knorr condensed soup thing to it at the end. Anyway, all in all, it was pretty good, definitely edible but not the best thing I've ever had. I suspect the leftovers might be better, now that the flavours have had time to co-mingle. We finished off the paella with a batch of brownies-from-a-box, which we made in little silicone cupcake moulds. Yum.

Click for more photos

Getting on to the crafty part of the night, Flea was set on making a case for her new computer. She had her tutorial all printed and even brought some nicely washed fabric for the project. As she got her supplies together and got started on her case, I cleaned up the poor, neglected craft room which has been languishing in its untidied, slowly pile-accumulating state since the big costume project of October 2011. By the time I finished putting 90% of the random things away that had accumulated in there, Flea was nearly done with her case and it was 11:00. I was determined to accomplish something equally crafty though, so I started work on my Kindle case! I followed the general guidelines from this blog, but given that she used a kit with templates and all, I was kind of on my own. Instead of using fusible fleece and stabilizers, I just cut pieces of peltex to fit each side, slid them in and ironed them. Then I topstitched the whole thing and called it a night!

New year, new ideas

Well I thought this would be a place for me to journal about my random life musings and other such interesting bits. But apparently even fulfilling one of my life's most outlandish dreams - getting married in Disney World - wasn't enough to encourage me to blog regularly. Oh well. New year, new ideas and a new take on blogging.

In the past few months, I've become quite hooked on a new (-ish) site called Pinterest. Those of you net-savvy folks (assuming anyone is still reading this thing) will know what I'm talking about. It's a great site where you create your own virtual pin boards. You can pin any website with an image thereby keeping a little reminder for yourself to go back and look at something cool you saw before. I have found it particularly useful in my quest for quick, delicious and nutritious meals to feed myself and T. I also think it will be useful to get me back into blogging. When all else fails (basically when I have nothing interesting going on) I will be making food. So in between gems of genius brilliance (do I still have any?), you'll be introduced to the variety of recipes I'm trying.

To start things off, we have a heavily modified Indian recipe. I originally had something like this at work. One of the perks of working in a place where someone lives is that you sometimes get to try their food. :) Turning to Google for some variations on this dish, I found that it is called by a wide variety of names in addition to being prepared very differently depending on the origins of the cook.

The noodles used are very similar to the Chinese feng-si or bean floss noodles. They are also sometimes called bean or rice vermicelli. So we'll call this dish

Veggie Vermicelli

Ingredients:
1T butter or ghee (you can use canola oil too)
1t mustard seeds
1.5t cumin seeds
1t ground ginger
1t minced garlic
1/4t turmeric
2t salt
1.5c roasted vermicelli noodles (the Indian variety which are cut to 1" lengths)
2.5 c hot water
1c finely chopped veggies (I used sweet baby peas and baby carrots)

To Make:
1) Heat the butter in a medium saucepan. Add the mustard seeds, cumin seeds, ginger and garlic.
2) When the mustard seeds begin to pop, add in the turmeric and salt. Saute for about a minute, stirring to make sure the turmeric is evenly distributed.
3) Add in the roasted vermicelli noodles (if you have the non-roasted type, you will need to add in a separate step of roasting them here - basically you will just stir them around in the pot until they turn golden before adding water)
4) Pour in the hot water. Some recipes insisted that the water be boiling, but I haven't found that it makes much of a difference except that it takes a little longer.
5) Stirring occasionally, cook over high or medium high heat until the noodles absorb all the water. When just over half the water is absorbed, add in the veggies - this prevents them getting too soggy and releasing too many of their sugars into the noodles.

Serve at whatever temperature you like. The flavours come together most after the noodles have cooled down, but you could heat them up again if you prefer. I have thought about adding some dry toasted tofu bits or peanuts just for some protein. I'll let you know if I try either.

Mickey's Not So Scary Halloween Party

We just returned from our second trip to Disney World this year! T and I have our annual passes from our wedding and wanted to get some more use out of them, so we planned this trip to check out how Disney does Halloween. None of us had ever been there for Halloween, so it was a new experience for everyone. On select nights in September and October, all of the Magic Kingdom becomes a giant Halloween party! There are dance parties, trick or treating for all ages and these are the only opportunities for adults to visit the park in full costumes!

Not to be outdone by anyone, I took on the task of making all of our costumes. That is, a costume for each of the 6 people going; Flea, Flea's bf, Noug, Sneetch, T and myself. Only about a month ago, we finally decided to go as characters from Sleeping Beauty. The decision was made because there were enough non-starring roles for each of us to be something fun. Flea, Sneetch and I were the 3 fairies; Fauna, Merriweather and Flora, respectively. Flea's bf is tall and dark haired, so he was King Stefan, complete with a mascara beard. Noug was the jester/drunk servant character named Lackey. [I personally thought his costume was the best.] T was Prince Phillip and was recognized by a few little girls in the park!

For King Stefan's outfit, I just made a long tunic from costume satin and edged the whole thing with gold bias tape. The crown was quite problematic. I bought a remnant of this awful stretch gold lame stuff for it. I ended up making two strips of it and interfaced it with heavy stabilizer. After that, I traced and cut out the crown shape and hot glued/topstitched the whole thing together. To make the crown more adjustable, I added 2 strips of elastic at the back which could be shortened with safety pins. Stefan contributed the "collar" of his costume by allowing me to cut a sleeve off of a too big red shirt he had - perfect!

Phillip's costume was fairly straightforward because we chose to make his forest outfit. T wore simple tan tunic made of jersey and edged with black bias tape over a black long sleeve shirt and brown pants. The cape was a remnant of brick red canvas, barely wide enough to cover his shoulders. I cut off a 3" section and interfaced it to make the stiff collar and then re-attached it to the rest of the cape after gathering the top edge of the long piece. We just safety pinned the cape to the tunic. The hat was made by looking at many photos of Peter Pan's hat as well as perusing some online tutorials. The boots were the funniest because they're fake and made out of black vinyl with little elastic stirrups at the bottom.

Lackey's costume was really the best because I didn't have any idea how to make balloon sleeves properly. I ended up sewing alternating strips of green fabric together to make tubes. The ends are elastic and I had to add a few pleats to the part that was sewed into the shoulder seam. I was particularly proud of the front because I was exact enough to match up the corners in the center. Plus I added a button at the back because the fabric doesn't stretch. The hat was a simple pill box thing with a $2.50 feather stuck in it. The pantaloons are a pair of T's gym shorts with spent waistband elastic. I put elastic through the bottom hems to tighten around Noug's legs and create the pouf.

The fairy costumes turned out to be significantly easier than I feared. I was able to find a fairly straight forward princess costume pattern and modify it enough to make our fairy costumes. Here's the pattern I used:

Even though the fairies' costumes are long sleeved, I decided to go with sleeveless dresses for simplicity and in case it was hot. I lengthened the bodice pieces by 3" for Flea and my dresses and about 1.5" for Sneetch's. For the satin inset, I just cut a very thin isosceles triangle and sewed it into the center of the skirt. The hats were the most challenging part, but even those only took me about 4 hours to complete all 3 to my satisfaction. In the end, I just hot glued the accent fabric around the cone and hot glued the ties to that.

The best part of our costumes was that we glowed!! You can kind of tell in the photo above (taken with another set of fairies we met in the park). I wasn't about to figure out how to make hoops for each of us, so I sewed the hems of our skirts and the rims of our hats as casings. Once down there, we strung together 5 packs of the $1 glow bracelets from Michael's and threaded them through the casings! It managed to work much better than I thought! We separated the colours so that we each used colours that matched our dresses which only increased the overall wow effect. Finally, I bought us "Knit Lite" light up knitting needles to use as wands.