Enjoy our blog below:
Summer has kicked in full force over here and I thought it would be a good time to have a Bunko Reunion. About 14 years we were living up in South Orange County, in the San Clemente Trestles Community. At the time I was home with my brand new baby girl Ginger. I met some of the neighbor girls and they were starting a neighborhood Bunko group. Not knowing what Bunko was I had to get an explanation which went something like this. We get a group of women together, you put in $10 dollars towards the game. The host provides apps and drinks and a few of the players walk away with winnings. We all have a good time visiting and each month a different person hosts. For being a stay at home Mom fairly new to the area, it sounded awesome. It was some much-needed adult interaction. Our group got together for about 6-7 years on a monthly basis. Let me tell you having those women to relate to and talk parenting and adulting was a godsend. These girls supported our jewelry business over the years as well. Our Bunko nights turned into themed events with costumes and often included Holiday bunko with spouses so we could meet everyone’s other halves. We also branched off into Halloween Parties and Birthday parties. Many of these women became my closest friends.
Recently Paperless Post hit me up to try out their product and I thought it sounded like a great opportunity to get the Bunko group back together. Let’s do this.
So Paperless Post is an online invitation web site. You purchase coins or credits and then you can set up an event. You start with creating an online invitation and input your guest’s emails. The site tracks RSVPs and your guest’s questions. There is also a message board where you can post photos as well as set up reminder emails, so your guests don’t forget!
Here is an example of my invite. Paperless Posts offers cool on-trend templates like this one.
I have created some Fun Bunko Downloads similar to pictured above that you can purchase and download for printing at home in my Etsy store here.
I have created some Fun Bunko Downloads similar to pictured above that you can purchase and download for printing at home in my Etsy store here.
We have discovered that readers are now needed for Bunko.
So years ago I had come across this image on Pinterest for a Chinoiserie Mural. The designer had painted it on her wall. The design is based on a wallpaper & fabric design by Schumacher Chiang Mai. I have seen the design around on various sites and admired it. And after seeing the cost of the wallpaper a square ft. I thought I want to create a similar mural someday. 
Here is an example of the Schumacher Chiang Mai Wallpaper
So when we moved back to Oceanside, California from Hawaii, I thought this would be a good time. My husband Brad was waiting on the arrival of our shipping container from Hawaii, so we thought the perfect time to take on a mural. Brad loosely sketched the design on the wall freehand and then we went to work painting the design with various acrylic paints. T
The progression is from complete to start below, we painted the wall a nice blue that matched our retro stove.
So our design is based on our loose interpretation of Schumacher’s Chiang Mai Print. I just love this fabric. It is a fabulous designer fabric textile and makes a great mural too. If you’re interested in purchasing the fabric it can be purchased here at Decorator’s Best.
Here are some other Chinoiserie Chic images using this fun pattern. I have a whole board of Chinoiserie Chic on Pinterest you can check out here.
I have a love of textiles. I absolutely love fabric and pattern design. Pattern, design, and color are usually what draws my eye to something I see and adore. I have been playing with different types of pattern design and my own creative creations. I just love embroidery and these patterns are some that caught my eye that I thought would be cool in another format. So I reworked them into larger scale designs and bedding. They are for sale up on my SilverBotanica.com site as well.
Here are some of the designs. I think they would look really good say in your Bali Vacation Rental. Maybe on a cool hand carved teak bed.
So last night I was thinking about this post I saw on FB by Don Freeman:
We need to stop looking to politicians to make our world better. Politicians don’t make the world a better place. Everything that’s ever made the world a better place has come from inventors, viagra canada engineers, generic viagra scientist, teachers, artists, builders, philosophers, healers, and people that choose lover over hate.” Don Freeman
And then I got to thinking “What are some of the ideas that Trump has that people object too”, and how could we create something that could be a win vs bad. And how could we get more people behind the idea and make it a great idea. So my wheels starting turning and briefly a photo I saw somewhere went through my head of a pink wall described as what Trump’s wall might look like.
And I thought no that’s lame. What if this wall, could have all sorts of “GOOD” packed into and people would want it built.
What if the wall was large,
sort of imagine The Great Wall of China.
But a modern version of it.
And What if the wall was built from “good things” liked recycled plastic that they pulled out of the ocean like this product below by ByFusion from New Zealand.
Here is a video on the product.
And what if the top of the wall has a Solar Road way on the surface, like this idea by Solar Roadways:
Where the surface of the road looked like this.
Or this, heck Solar Roads already has a contract with US DOT in place.
And what if this solar road on Trump’s wall did things like this:
And in areas where bridges are needed what if the wall looked something like this:
And generated wind energy.
We could take this wall even further, what if the sides of the recycled plastic bricks are clad in Tesla’s Solar Roof Tiles like this:
How much energy do you think this wall could generate? Maybe it would be 100% LEED Certified?
And last but not least what if this wall had two more components, such as providing low income housing or housing for homeless within the wall, maybe something like this:
And last but not least what if we built Trump’s wall by putting all the unemployed millennials that love tech and can’t find jobs, to work creating this wall of the future that maybe we should rename Trump’s Smartwall.
Put America back to work.
And so in closing, I side with Senator Elizabeth Warren, “Let’s put aside our differences and work with Trump on this task.”
And let’s build things that we can all get behind and create a lot of good..
1 – 12 pack of King’s Hawaiian Original Rolls
1 package of Blackforest Ham9-Slices of Swiss Cheese
1-1/2 Sticks of Butter
3 Tblsp Grainy Mustard
1-1/2 tsp Worcestershire sauce
3 tsps of poppy seeds
1 Sweet Onion Diced
Heat oven to 350.
Melt butter in skillet add onions,
then mix in mustard, Worcestershire sauce and poppy seeds.
Cut the entire package of rolls in half horizontally, I treat the entire group as sort of one big loaf.
In a greased 9″x 13″ pan, place the bottom half of all the rolls into the pan. Then spread 1/2 of the onion mustard sauce mix over the bottom of the rolls, then layer on ham and cheese.
Replace the tops of the rolls and pour on the rest of the onion mustard sauce mix over the top of the rolls.
Cover with foil and bake for 15-20 minutes in 350 oven.
Uncover, and cut thoroughly and serve in the baking dish.
2C 1” Slices of Rhubarb fresh from the garden (frozen works too)
2C Strawberries sliced
1-2/3 C Sugar
1/3 C+ Flour (if your using thawed frozen fruit I recommend extra to make your pie thicker)
1tsp Cardamom
1tsp Allspice
1tsp Cinnamon
Optional 2Tblsp of butter before putting top crust on.
2 Pie Crusts – I buy premade rolled in a box I take them out of the box and let them come to room temp before unrolling.
Prebake the first crust in the pie pan as directed on box. Typically 8-10 minutes at 400.
Mix above ingredients and put into first pie crust.
Then put second crust on top.
I cheat and use fun pie crust cutters to make my fancy.
I also use pie crust saver like below to keep the edges of my pie from burning. You can use foil as well.
Bake at 400 for 40 – 50 min
Serve with vanilla ice cream
These Tropical Passionfruit Bars are a great end of summer treat. You can use both purple passionfruit or yellow lilikoi fruit.
For these I purchased about 6-8 fresh yellow lilikoi at our Hilo Farmer’s Market.
Shortbread Crust:
6 oz or 1-1/2 Sticks of Cold unsalted butter
1-3/4 C Flour
3/4 C Powdered Sugar
1/4 C Coconut Flour
3/4tsp Salt
For Lilikoi Mac Nut Layer.
4 Eggs
1/4 Coconut or rice milk
6 oz of fresh passionfruit or lilikoi juice
1-1/4C Sugar
3T Flour
1/4t Salt
1/2C Chopped Mac Nuts
Oven to 350
9 x 13 baking dish
First:
My daughter prepared the lilikoi this is the hardest part you can also use canned juice. To prepare the lilikoi juice scrape out the jelly substance out of the fruit skins and into a bowl. Then put the jelly|seeds through a metal sieve to extract just the juice. Continue until you have 6oz.
For the Shortbread Crust:
Preheat the oven to 350F
Spray the 9 x 13″ dish with coconut or nonstick spray.
Line with parchment paper
Put all of the Shortbread Crust ingredients into a food processor and mix:
6 oz or 1-1/2 Sticks of Cold unsalted butter
1-3/4 C Flour
3/4 C Powdered Sugar
1/4 C Coconut Flour
3/4tsp Salt
Spread the dough out into the 9 x 13 dish then put into frig for 15 minutes and then bake for 20-22 min at 350.
For the Passionfruit layer:
Put all the items in the mixer and mix for 1 min on medium or until smooth:
4 Eggs
1/4 Coconut or rice milk
6 oz of fresh passionfruit or lilikoi juice
1-1/4C Sugar
3T Flour
1/4t Salt
Then Chop the
1/2C Mac Nuts
Pour the Lilikoi mixture over the shortbread crust in pan, cialis canada then top with nuts. My daughter requested I only do 1/2 of it with nuts.
Bake 16-18 minutes at 350 or until mixture is set and hard. Like photo below:
Indulge!
So this is a large make ahead recipe. Makes about 18 – 20+ Quinoa Burgers.
Preheat oven to 350.
For Quinoa:
3 C Quinoa
6 C Water
Himalayan Pink Sea Salt – pinch or two
Take 3 Cups uncooked quinoa and put in rice cooker with 6 Cups water add pinch of Pink Himalayan Sea Salt. Cook.
Ingredients:
*When I made these, I halved the recipe below so was just easier to work with. But made two batches to use all my Quinoa. Again, I just made it up so I wasn’t following a recipe at the time. The numbers below are me guesstimating on what I used total.
12 Eggs
1-1/2 C Mashed Potato Flakes1/2 Onion Minced
2 tsp Minced Garlic (I keep a jar in my fridge of this)
2 tsp Worcestershire Sauce
2 T Grated Parmesan Cheese (like the kind you put on your spaghetti)
2 T Steak Seasoning
So I mixed half a batch first.
In mixing bowl
Whisk 6 eggs
add 1 tsp garlic,
onion
3/4 C Mashed potato flakes
1 tsp Worcestershire Sauce
1 T Grated Parmesan 1T Steak Seasoning
Stir in half of your cooked quinoa. Mix thoroughly, if it looks to moist add in more potato flakes.
Shape into burgers.
I used a mini pie press like this to shape the burgers. I also found spraying it with non-stick cooking spray helped to keep it clean each time. I also washed it every 5-6 times to keep it going well.
Repeat batch above to make the second batch.
I then placed burgers on Silicone Mat lined cookie sheets and baked for about 30 minutes.
I winged it here. Checking every so often until burgers looked good and cooked like the photo above.
Upon completion, I packed some in twos in my Sealer and then a large bag full in the freezer with parchment between patties for grabbing at lunch etc.
Follow my blog with Bloglovin Now you can use Bloglovin to Follow all my blog posts.
My Daughter wanted to have a murder mystery dinner birthday party. So we researched a few websites that supplied Murder Mystery Dinner Themes. We ended up getting this one called Murder Among The Matey’s. I let my daughter go to the website and pick one of the themes. I liked the Pirate theme since we had done a pirate circus themed birthday a few years back. So purchased the Mystery Dinner online and downloaded the Pdf’s. I will say that the pdf’s are extensive. So check the pages numbers before just hitting print. The main pdf is over 100 plus pages of Pirate Goodness, so be ready, you will need to print about 75% of the pages. We started out with invitations. I loved the message in a bottle idea. Which ended up being harder than I thought. Mostly because we live on the Big Island of Hawaii and our access to arts & crafts supplies is limited. So bottles are hard to find. I thought I would try our local Ben Franklin for cool bottles. On the mainland, I would have hit the Dollar stores. At Ben Franklin, I found some interesting bottles but they were close to $5 or $6 a piece. That was overpriced in my book. So then I thought what if I just bought soda in glass bottles. I was thinking Jones Soda or something along those lines. So I hit the local Target where here in Hawaii you do a lot of your grocery shopping at. No Glass Bottled Soda. Not a single drop. So I hit Safeway. I found Creme soda in 6 six packs and on special that week. So I bought 2 six packs.
This brand of soda also didn’t have labels so double score. I didn’t have to fight with removing bottles. I tasked the kids in that neighborhood with drinking as much soda as they could and burping contests. The gladly excepted since we don’t but soda around these parts much. My Daughter Ginger wanted to antique the bottles a bit to look like they had been rolling around in the sand. So she sprayed them with a Glass Frosting Spray paint that I had on hand. 
We modified the invites provided by Night of Mystery and added our party information. We also burned, antiqued, trimmed and then rolled the invites and put them in the bottles with a little sand and beach glass. I had picked up corks while at Ben Franklin which ended up being a hair too small so we bedazzled them with river jade, problem solved. We also added ribbons and wax seals to the bottles to make them a bit more piratey. I love the way they turned out. We just hand delivered them to guests.
I was a bit overwhelmed with getting a grasp on how the whole murder mystery dinner worked. So I suggested to my daughter that she figure it out, which she did. Our other family friend also offered to help. So they got all the paper stuff printed out and we got things like safety pins so guest could pin on their name tags. You need to have 2 sets of envelopes for each guest and things like fake money and evidence. That go into the A & B Envelopes.
I focused on decorating and the food for the party which are my favorite things. Since we live in Hawaii and good party supplies are hard to find I utilize my online resources.
Here is how the decor and food turned out. I utilized my Pinterest board for Pirate Ideas. The Night of Mystery has a Pinterest Board called Murder Among The Matey’s with lots of good ideas too.
My first attempt at a watermelon Pirate ship. I think it came out just fine.
Since I just love Party Planning for Parties if you need help with your kid-ohs birthday party and your on the Big Island of Hawaii. Feel Free to reach out I am happy to help with your event.
Here we are in our Pirate get-ups.
My Skull and crossbones necklace is available on our website here
I will say that after the party we talked about how it went etc. I thought all the conversation que cards you are given to help with figuring out the murderer etc didn’t really help much. We all had fun talking like pirates and mingling. But, in the end it all seemed to come down to the evidence. Which hardly anyone saw because it was given out in the second set of envelopes. And 90% of didn’t even look at it. I wish maybe that I would have used real evidence Sword or etc. and that the appropriate people had it and we all discovered it and passed it around or the likes. I feel prepared for next time around.
Well being that my training and passion for years has been graphic design I am drawn to paper goods. I just love all things paper. In my 20’s, from my sign shop, I use to design and produce very unique original wedding invitations and announcements. I produced them all myself. They were beautiful with combination of hand cut folders and unique papers, ribbons and dried leaves or punched shapes etc. Now can find this type of announcement at stores like Paper Source or even Michael’s. 20 years ago those stores didn’t exist in my world and my creations were one of a kind. I use to devour paper sample booklets that my mom had at her graphic design studio. I would ask for all the old ones so I could use them for things. I would cut them up and make cards and hand-bound booklets and all sorts of creations. Just like everything I do, I immersed full force. I took paper making classes, marbling paper classes, and book-making classes. I would hoard all sorts of interesting things, like copper garden tags or pressed flowers or antique seed packets to use in cards. Then the scrapbooking sensation took over which was interesting. It took my custom invitation making and sort of made it not so special, or maybe I lost interest because it had become mainstream. But it also created a lot more stores with all sorts of fun supplies that made finding things much easier to find. I went on to making other things and kept making fabulous fun creating for my own events.
I find stationery to be like small pieces of art that you can collect ( in my case I have a bit of problem with collecting, I like to collect). Or you can send these cards to friends and family and share these little art pieces with them. So this is part of the reason I am drawn to greeting card and stationery artists like Anahata Katkin of Papaya Art and also Fiona Richards of Cartolina The aesthetic these two artist’s use definitely inspires me to no end. I have my favorites of their designs sprinkled around the walls in my studio. And I also sell their designs in my store SilverBotanica.
So I am excited to announce I have finally created my first start of a line of cards to sell in our store SilverBotanica in Honomu, Hawaii. I hope that this is just the beginning for this endeavor because like many things I do I have a lot of ideas of where I would like to go with making cards. My grandfather Herb was a printer and maybe it was the fascination of visiting his print shop as a kid, that made me interested in it. In highschool, I went to a high school that had a Vocation school on the premise and I took Printing and Graphics. I loved every second of it. We did all the artwork by hand and with old typesetting machines and we even had the fist generations of Mac in that class. We then did all the stat work ourselves, developing the camera ready artwork. Doing color separations all by hand. Then we even burned the plates for the printing press. And printed all of our designs. We made note pads and 4 color greeting cards, along with t-shirt screen printing. My other grandfather Russell Daigle use to sell greeting cards for years and years. The brand he sold were called Norcross. My grandmother and he would always send a card for almost every holiday that deserved one. So I kind of feel like it runs in my blood. So it’s my time. I have finally had some time to develop some of my ideas. I had a company in the states print them for me, my days of running printing presses were short. I prefer the design aspect. This first batch is in the Chinoiserie Style. Many of the cards feature a Foo Dog water color painting that my husband Brad painted and then I have added a variety of layered imagery and patterns with them. The cards are available in note card packs of 5 cards and 5 envelopes and are blank on the inside. You can purchase them at SilverBotanica and on our etsy store here.
Crab Rangoon is a favorite appetizer that I have come across in my culinary travels. I first had it a Thai restaurant in the US, where it was called crispy parcels. And typically Thai restaurants are where I have found it most successfully. I have heard that it was originally found on the Polynesian-style menu of Trader Vic’s, probably another reason I love it.
So for this recipe, you will need:
Cream cheese (really you can use any style and even Tofutti) For this recipe use the whole rectangular package.
Imitation Crab Meat (if you have an Ikea around you can get Crab in a metal squeeze tube)Won Ton Wrappers at room temperature
Oil for frying – here I am using Vegetable but you can use Canola, Peanut or Coconut
Lemon Juice about a 1 tablespoon
Plum Sauce
Salt and pepper to taste about 1/2 tsp each.
Plastic Pastry Bag
Cookie sheet layered with paper towels to absorb any excess oil.
Cut up about 1/2 the package of the imitation crab and dice it into small pieces put into your stand up mixer bowl
Then put the cream cheese in your stand up mixer, use the whole tub or bar.
Turn mixer on low speed. Mix in the Lemon juice and salt and pepper.
Once the mixture is thoroughly blended. Remove from mixer. Put mixture into a plastic pastry bag.
Now is a good time to get your oil warmed up if you haven’t done so already. I put mine on a medium temperature.
Now take wonton wrappers out and squeeze a dollop onto the center of each wrapper.
Then Pinch together two opposing corners
And then the other corners and give the wrapper a twist, while pressing down. I like to squeeze close any openings in wrapper.
Take your parcels and place them on your spoon and slowly lower them in your hot oil. Leave them in the oil and keep an eye on them so they don’t get too brown. I like mine on the lighter side. As shown in the photo below. Once cooked take them out carefully on your spoon and put them on a cookie sheet with layered with paper towels to absorb any excess oil.
Serve your Crab Rangoon on a platter with a dipping sauce of Plum Sauce. I only use about half of the filling for this recipe. I like to seal up my pastry bag with my Foodsaver machine and stick the bag in the freezer until the next time I am ready to make crab Rangoon again. 
I am not sure about you but I like to get a little creative with my Thanksgiving leftovers. This year I decided to create a yummy quiche. My goal after Thanksgiving is to coast as long as possible on the leftovers. This one was so good I wish I would have made two. The amazing thing with quiche is that for the most part, you can’t really go wrong.
Gather your leftovers, mine included
Cooked Turkey pieces (1 Cup or More)
Mashed Potatoes (2 Cups)
Then I gathered your typical quiche ingredients.
Pie Crusts – I like to save time and buy these premade. I have had great luck with Pillsbury Pie Crusts and many of the generic brands as well. I like to take them out of the box and let them come to room temperature before I begin. For this recipe, you just need one. Go ahead and read the directions on the box to cook the crust.
5 Eggs
1 Cup Milk I use Coconut Milk.
1/2 Bar of Cream cheese you can really use any kind you like or even Cottage Cheese.
1 Cup Grated Cheese (I like to use cheddar/jack combo)
Fresh Spinach Leaves about a Cup
1/2 of an onion diced
1 TBLSP of Butter
1/4 tsp of Nutmeg and or Vegesalt
Other items to consider adding:
Mushrooms
Broccoli,
Squash
Zucchini
Bacon
Prepare your pie crust as directed on the box.
For the Quiche Preheat your oven to 350°, if you just prepared your crust mostly likely your oven is all ready to go.
Using a skillet melt the butter and saute your onions.
Add your Turkey leftovers and any of the veggies you have decided to add (in the photo above I used spinach only)
Saute the items for a couple minutes while stirring regularly.
I like to make my quiche in my stand up mixer so in your mixing bowl:
Add the cream cheese and eggs and milk, slowly crank the mixer up in speed so the cream cheese dissolves nicely into the eggs and milk, then add the mashed potatoes.
In your cooked pie crust add the items from the skillet,
Then top with 3/4 C of cheese saving a bit to put on the top of the quiche.
Then add your liquid mix over the cooked leftovers.
Nutmeg, Pepper or Vegesalt are a nice addition at this point.
Top the top of the quiche off with the remaining cheese.
Put your leftover goodness into the oven at 350° for 30 – 40 minutes, until the quiche looks firm and the yummy smell drives you crazy.
Remove from oven let cool, then devour. The best thing about quiche is it’s great for breakfast, lunch, or dinner.
Recently I escaped off island and went to Southern California to visit my son,which meant I had a chance to visit a few of my favorite shops. 
Loved these Kokeshi Ornaments I spotted at Solo,in Solana Beach
More treasures and wonderful display at Solo.
Love the disk garland at Solo,by Jennifer Price.
I thought these Wax Sachets were interesting and beautiful.
A fun Cigar box type display.
Some fabulous looking soaps by Finchberry that look edible. 
I love the base of this ceramic cake stand with the colorful mushrooms.
Retro glass ornament with such fabulous colors.
Anthropologie’s Winter Gingerbread like display of course is wonderful.
And I love the VW Bus in the window too.
And ginger bread looking star snowflakes, love the peak a boo view and the colors used.
This is a note to myself to make Dish towels.
Preheat oven to 350.
- 3 Cups Flour
- 1/2 tsp baking powder
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 1 cup granulated sugar
- 1 cup unsalted butter, softened
- 2 eggs, room temperature
- Mix-ins and/or extracts of your choosing
- 1/2 tsp baking soda
- 2 tsp vanilla extract
- Juice of one lemon or lemon juice from a jar
- 1/2 tsp cinnamon
- 1 1/2 cups blueberries
- Zest of one lemon
- 1 cup white chocolate chips optional – I didn’t use any in the photo above.
If you haven’t done so already get that oven fired up to 350. In the bowl of an electric stand mixer, beat butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add eggs one at a time, beat after each addition. If using any extracts, add and beat to incorporate.
Now add the dry stuff you can start in them in a separate bowl or just go for it and just put them right in the others. With the mixer on low, slowly add the dry ingredients into the batter. Carefully fold in any mix-ins. You can allow the dough to cool in the refrigerator for at least an hour, but I usually don’t have the patience for this and don’t. Use a small scoop (about 1 tbsp size) and place rounded balls of dough on a cookie sheet lined with a silicone baking mat. Bake for 11-14 minutes, until the bottoms are slightly golden brown (the edges should not brown). Recipe modified from original post by PiaRecipe
Follow Us!