Blood Orange Panna Cotta

Here again to share another cooking/baking adventure with everyone! I’ve been itching to try to make panna cotta for a while now since it seems pretty easy and is no nice and smooth when you eat it! So a few of my friends and I decided to do a potluck and I volunteered to make panna cotta – more specifically – blood orange panna cotta! Now, I’ve never eaten a blood orange in my life, but the color is just so vibrant and pretty and the fresh cirtus flavor was perfect for the heat wave we were experiencing in L.A.

Aren’t they so pretty?

I followed this recipe from Bon Appetit. It was pretty simple and easy to follow! I think the hardest part was the waiting

Gather your ingredients & tools

I followed the recipe and bought 12 blood oranges (about 2.5 lbs) from Whole Foods but I really only needed about 9. I highly recommend a juicer or else you’ll be squeezing all those oranges by hand and trust me – it gets tiring!

They’re just so pretty!

The insides are gorgeous as well

As you juice your oranges, you’ll notice that all the pulp starts to clog up your juicer, like so:

Not good for juicing

I scooped the pulp out periodically and kept it aside in case I found a use for it (I didn’t). And continued following the recipe.

Here’s the panna cotta batter all mixed together and ready to be poured – so pink and cute!

Here’s the syrup right after I turned off the heat – it does clarify once it cools down.

The panna cotta all set up and firm!

I left them in the fridge overnight to set completely. The recipe makes 6, but since the potluck was only 4 people, I only finished preparing 4 of them.

The syrup is much clearer after it’s been cooled

Spoon a small layer of syrup on top

And garnish with some blood orange slices!

I loved the way they turned out!

I did modify the original recipe a little bit. I halved the sugar in the panna cotta itself and in the syrup as well since I prefer desserts to be less sweet. It worked out perfectly! The panna cotta was fresh and tart and the syrup helped to balance it out with the sweetness. And they were a big hit at the potluck!

P.S. I had to transport these about 20 miles on a twisty winding freeway – I highly recommend having a friend help you. I covered each goblet with plastic wrap, put them in a square baking pan and wrapped towels around the base and had my friend hold the entire thing in her lap.

This was probably not the cheapest thing to make for a potluck – mainly because blood oranges tend to be rather pricy and are smaller than regular oranges and so you need more. But it wasn’t difficult to make! Definitely would make this again for a refreshing dessert for hot weather.

-Happy panna cotta making!

Yenny

Pizza-dillas!

I know that I started this blog to share my crafting projects but lately, I’ve been taking more pictures of my cooking & baking creations. And I thought – why not share this on the blog as well? Cooking & baking are definitely forms of creativity and I’ve been doing more of that than crafting lately. I think I’ve run out of inspiration/motivation to craft at the moment =/

But anyways! If you’re on Pinterest and scrolling through the food & drink section, I’m sure that you’ve seen pizzadillas and all the variations that people have pinned and made. So I’m sharing mine as well! Although mine is SUPER DUPER simple, I still had a lot of fun making (and eating) them!

Gather your ingredients

I got a 10 pack of tortillas, a bag of Italian shreds cheese, and 2 packs of pepperoni (not pictured because I’m a bozo) at the 99cents store (I know some people have something against buying food there, but I love the selection at my local store!) and a jar of pizza sauce from the grocery store. Now you’re all set!

Step 1 – take your tortilla and fold it in half just to get an eyeball for where you want to stop spreading the sauce.

Spread the pizza sauce on half the tortilla – be sure to get it all the way to the edge!

Add your ingredients – don’t go too crazy or else it will fall apart.

 

 

Sprinkle a little more cheese on top if you wish

And then fold in half and transfer to a medium pan. Check after 1-2 minutes to see if the tortilla has browned and carefully flip over to finish. I like to press on the pizza-dilla to make sure the cheese fuses everything together.

Ready to eat!

I cut each pizza-dilla into thirds and dip into a small dish of warm pizza sauce.

The simple version

Delicious!

An easy and quick meal for lunch (I bring mine to work) that is infinitely customizable!

 

Meal Breakdown

- 10 pack of tortillas – $1 from the 99cents store

- 1 pack of Italian shred cheese – $1 from 99cents store

- 1 jar of Ragu pizza sauce – $1.59 from Superior Grocers

- 2 packs of pepperoni – $2 from 99cents store

Total Cost: roughly $5-6. Can’t beat that! I eat 2 pizza-dillas for a meal and so this gives me 5 meals!

 

Happy cooking!

- Yenny

 

DIY Ombre Kitchen Art

I’ve FINALLY finished my latest project! I waffled back and forth while doing this and finally made a decision and stuck to it!

Ta-da!

Cook & Create!

I now have new kitchen art! I was eco-friendly again for this project and reused the canvasses that used to hang above my futon before I replaced them.

Before

The color scheme in my kitchen is a little different than the main room of my apartment – I went for the orange-citrusy tones there. Once I decided that the canvasses would go in the kitchen, I headed over to Lowe’s and grabbed myself some paint.

My sample pots

I went for an ombre effect and chose: Sun Shower, Fall Gold, and Pumpkin Pleasure from the Olympic Paint collection. I chose real paint over craft paint because I wanted really good coverage and better quality. Then I started the prepping process:

Even with the cardboard, I had a little overspray onto the ground. Whoops!

I used Kilz Odorless spray primer to prime my canvasses. Ordinarily you wouldn’t need to prime, but I had to cover the art underneath.

Then I sprayed sprayed sprayed! Many of my curious neighbors came out to take a peek at what I was doing haha

First coat

After the final coat – I think I did 3

Then I got to bust out the fun paints and go crazy! I did two coats and it gave me great coverage!

All painted and ready to go!

It was this point in the process where I got stuck. I originally thought I wanted to pick a script-y font and trace it onto the canvas and paint over that. So I went through a TON of fonts before I settled on one and I traced it on the first canvas, started painting over it and I HATED it. Imagine how I felt after ALLLL that agonizing and then hating the finished product!! So I painted over it. Good thing I used real paint from Lowe’s because it covered right over the tracing and painting and looked good as new afterward!

So the canvasses sat there for a while and one day I got my butt in gear and decided to freehand the words on.

I googled images of ampersands and liked this one the best!

Here they are all done! This is after 3-4 coats of white craft paint on the letters.

Love it!

So the proportions are a little off and the “create” is off center but I love it way more than I would have if it was perfect!

Here they are hanging on my wall!

Before and after

Project Breakdown

Canvasses – Free, already on had

3 sample paint pots from Lowe’s – $3/pot = $9.00 total

White craft paint for the lettering – $0.69 from Michael’s

Kilz Odorless spray primer from Lowe’s – $6

Paintbrushes – Free, already had

Total: $15.69 (maybe about $15.00-20.00 more if you didn’t have the canvasses or paintbrushes)

Totally worth it!

Now if I only I could figure out what to do with the leftover paint samples….

Happy crafting!

-Yenny

Giant Brown Beanbag Beautification Project

My friend Allen recently bought a giant brown beanbag:

In his words – “it looks like a giant piece of poop.”

And I couldn’t agree more! (Please excuse the horrible picture quality for this entire post – they were all taken by Allen!) One day, Allen happened to come across this picture:

The Baked Potato Beanbag

And he asked me to help make his giant poop beanbag into a more aesthetically pleasing baked potato beanbag. He gave me a budget of $100 and I danced and screamed in joy because this project would definitely NOT cost that much! But it still felt nice to know he was willing to spend that much!

 

Allen is 6’3″ – which mean whatever blanket I planned on making for the “inner part” of the potato would have to cover all of him. It ended up being cheaper for me to go buy a cream colored micro-plush blanket than making it, so that’s what I did! Allen requested a full sized blanket to accommodate him and his girlfriend as well (adorable, right?)

I got the blanket at Ross – that was the easy part. I went down to the Fabric District and bought 2 yards of yellow cotton and a pillow insert. I made a square cushion pillow – but envelope style so Allen could take it off and wash it.

I didn’t think to take a picture of the back

A regular 18 inch pillow insert fit into the square shape perfectly! And here’s the finished product:

Not quite like the inspiration picture but a big improvement!

Much better!

Project Breakdown

Giant brown beanbag: $250 (no idea where he got it, but it’s not a LoveSac)

Full sized cream micro-plush blanket from Ross – $12.99

2 yards of yellow cotton ($1.99/yard) – $1.99 (I only used 1 yard)

18 inch pillow insert – $3.00

Total: $21.00 + $250 beanbag

 

Definitely under budget and Allen bought me a meal as a thank you! Yay!

 

Happy crafting!

-Yenny

I Love L.A.

Sometimes I take it for granted that I was born and raised in the great city of Los Angeles. No, I did not grow up in the Valley or any of the outlying neighborhoods – my parents live in the heart of Los Angeles, just on the edge of downtown L.A. (south of the 10 freeway, if anyone is wondering). I love this city and so does my fellow L.A.-native Caitlin! Caitlin currently lives in NYC while she finishes up grad school at NYU. I took a short vacation to New York in December and she had this GREAT poster of L.A. on her wall. I wanted it! As luck would have it, the etsy seller she bought it from (sorry, I don’t know the name of the seller!) had sent her two copies! So I took one home with me.

Ta-da!

Los Angeles!

Isn’t it perfect?? I love how it depicts the industrial-factory side of Los Angeles instead of the typical skyline that we usually see. This is L.A. to me

I hung it on my front door, covering the peep hole that was too tall for me to use anyway and I love seeing it every time I leave my apartment.

Need another reason to love L.A.?

Beautiful sunset outside my apartment building!

Enough said!

-Yenny

How to Take in a Coat and Add a Bow

My sister and I clean out our closets pretty often and we always go through each other’s rejects to see if there’s anything we want to steal from each other So I got this gray coat from my sister:

Front

Side: note the faux flap pocket – there are real pockets on the seam!

Back

So there was nothing HORRIBLY wrong with the coat, it was just too big (my sister bought a medium for some reason) and I hated those faux flap pockets that had NO use. So I decided to fix it! The faux pockets were easy – I just used my seam ripper and detached the flaps. Then I started pinning darts in the back to make the coat more fitted.

I pinned it and adjusted it until the darts formed even pleats above and below the waistline. Luckily my dress form is about the same size as me!

Close-up

Then comes the fun part! Making the bow:

I used 2.25 inch wide grosgrain ribbon to make a 6 inch loop

Then just pinch it in the middle and pin it to make the bow:

Just sew the bow in the middle to keep the pinched shape

Now it’s time to make the little wrapping part of the ribbon to cover the middle and make everything pretty!

I just cut a length of ribbon , folded it into thirds and pinned it

Sew it together and then wrap it around the middle of the bow. Sew that together and you basically get a bow-tie!

Cute, right?

Then I sewed the coat and made the darts permanent. Make sure you keep your stitches small and neat so it doesn’t show up.

If your stitches do show, don’t worry – that’s what the bow is for!

Then sew the bow on!

Ta-da!

So cute!

Close-up

Front now: much more fitted and flattering

No more useless faux flap pockets!

Side by side comparison: Such an improvement!

I’ve gotten a bunch of compliments whenever I wear this coat now and I’m so much happier with the fit and cuteness level!

Project Breakdown:

2.25 inch grosgrain ribbon: $2.99 for the spool at Joann’s.

Dress form, needle, thread and pins: already owned.

Total: $2.99 plus tax (and gas used to drive to Joann’s)

This is a super cheap project if you already have the basic sewing materials. The dress form is completely optional, but EXTREMELY useful!

Happy sewing!

-Yenny

DIY Spoon Mirrors

If you’re on Pinterest, then I’m sure that you’ve seen the really cool spoon mirrors that have been popping up everywhere! Like this one from Addicted2Decorating and this one from craftaholicsanonymous. I chose to follow the 2nd tutorial because I liked the idea of spray painting clear spoons instead of painting them individually and that tutorial was also the perfect size for my apartment!

Ta-da!

The finished products!

This is what my wall looked like before:

I crafted those “ironwork” pieces

I lived with those paintings for about a year until I realized they weren’t very me at all! (Red is just not my color) So I began the crafting process.

 

Clear spoons and round mirrors

And following the instructions from craftaholics anonymous, I cut out two 12-inch circles out of cardboard.

I got a box from work and used that – make sure to mark the center!

Then of course, cut the handles off of your spoons – I used my kitchen shears and carefully cut them off and it was pretty easy! But my hand did get tired after a while and sometimes the handles just fly off all over your apartment. Then start glue-ing! I used hot glue and spaced them relatively loosely in concentric circles.

I did have some gaps in between the spoons

Then I went over to my parents’ house to do my spray painting! (As usual haha)

This is after 2-3 light coats of spray paint.

I highly recommend spray very thin coats of spray paint and pulling off all the annoying hot glue strings in between coats. The spray paint will dry faster and you get more even coverage.

All done! The sun has also set by now and I think I ended up doing 4-5 coats.

Then you just hot glue the mirror in the middle, and hot glue a loop of ribbon on the back and they’re ready to hang up!

The tiny imperfections aren’t really noticeable!

Here’s how it looks with both of them!

I’m so happy with them!

Project Breakdown:

4 boxes of clear plastic spoons (from Target): $2.40 each = $9.60 but I only used 3.5 boxes.

3 inch round mirrors (from Michael’s): $3.00 but I used a 50% coupon so $1.50!

Cardboard: free!

Hot glue, glue gun, spray paint, ribbon (to hang them): already owned.

Total: $11.10!

Totally affordable and fun project! Also, I hung them so the mirrors are the perfect height for me to check my makeup or my teeth!

Happy crafting!

-Yenny

 

 

 

 

DIY Candy Cane Wreath

Tis the season! Is everyone feeling the holiday spirit yet? Christmas decorations have been up in stores since before Halloween in my neck of the woods but I do not like to skip holidays (makes it quite unfair) so I didn’t make any Christmas-y crafts until December had officially started!

And ta-da!~

My candy cane wreath!

I followed the instructions from here but I had to make a few adjustments. But it was otherwise fairly simple! First, you start with the basic materials:

2 packs of candy canes and ribbon

Then start hot glue-ing the candy canes back to back like so:

I ran a line of hot glue down the center and then pressed them together. Once that dried, I added glue on both sides to really hold them together. Repeat this step for the rest of the candy canes and then arrange them!

Pretty, right?

But as I started to assemble the wreath and glue all the candy canes together, I quickly realized that I would need more reinforcements in order to keep this wreath together. The original instructions calls for 22 candy canes but I used all 24 that I had and STILL had a gap!

I used leftover white yarn to wrap the candy canes together. But see the gap??

Also, the entire wreath was rather wobbly, so I cut leftover foam board that I had into small pieces and hot glued them to the back around the center ring to make it stronger.

Totally worked!

Then I strung the ribbon through the reinforced center (luckily my ribbon was wide enough to hide the gap!) and hung it up.

I hung it indoors overnight to see if it would hold together and it did!

Then the next morning it went onto my front door!

Added a bow in the middle and took off the bell (I didn’t want it to rust)

It’s not perfect, but I love it!

Project Breakdown

2 boxes of candy canes – $1 each at the 99cents store

3 inch red velvet ribbon – $3 for a 50ft spool at Big Lots

Yarn, foam board and hot glue – already owned.

This took me about 3 hours total, but I was watching tv while glue-ing so I worked mostly on commercial breaks.

Happy holidays and happy crafting!!

-Yenny

DIY Fabric Wall Art

Hello all! I’m back already! I’ve been obsessing over my wall art lately – especially the area over my futon which used to look like this:

Before – Not bad but not what I wanted anymore

I had these three 12×12 paintings that I got from Ross for $9.99, which served its purpose for a while but then I decided they were too small and red is just my least favorite color. I don’t what I was thinking when I bought them!

And the after!

After! Love it!!

This was a relatively easy project! I did a lot of research on ways to have large art without spending a fortune and finally decided on this method.

First, go to Home Depot (or Lowe’s or any other hardware store) and buy a sheet of rigid insulation. I bought the 3/4 inch thick 4ft by 8 ft sheet for $7.65.

Image courtesy of Home Depot

A super nice worker named Josh helped me cut the sheet down to size for me! I wanted 3 sheets of 20 inches by 36 inches (yes, I know, I was a pain in the butt) but he nicely cut it down to size for me. Then he asked for my number, which was a whole other story. This is what I ended up with:

5 sheets of 20 inches by 36 inches and some random odds and ends.

I also picked up a light duty staple gun and staples at Home Depot:

This staple gun is super light!

Then pick your fabrics. I’m lucky to live in L.A. right by the Fabric District. So I got these awesome fabrics at the Michael Levine Home Fabric Store.

Green Waverly Damask

and

Golden Celtic Knot

for $8.00/yard. I got 1 1/4 yard of the green and 1 yard of the golden. Then assemble everything and begin! Remember to IRON (or steam, like me) your fabric before you attach it to the foam! Measure and make sure everything is straight and aligned and your pattern is how you want it.

And staple away!

To hang them up, I hot glued ribbon to the back of the foam and that’s all it needed! Then measure and make sure your hooks/nails are level on the wall and hang them up!

You can see my flower poms!

Project Breakdown:

Fabric: 2 1/4 yards total – $18.00

Sheet of rigid insulation – $8.00

Staple gun – $10.00

Staples – $3

Total: $39.00 for 3 pieces of custom, personalized art!

Happy crafting!

-Yenny

DIY Toilet Paper Wallflower Art

Whew~! That title was a mouthful! And I still don’t know if it makes sense… Anyways, toilet paper crafts are all over the Pinterest universe and I’ve already jumped on the bandwagon once with some super simple toilet paper frames for a couple of my wall paintings. But THIS time, I had a new idea!! I was super inspired by Billie Monster’s Paper Wallflower downloadable template.

This is what she made:

So pretty!

I was originally going to do what she did and use pretty scrapbook paper but I had SO much leftover toilet paper rolls leftover from my earlier project so I thought – “what if I used those??” LIGHT BULB! So I cut them open and traced the template on to the cardboard and cut them all out. A paper towel roll could fit the large template, a toilet paper roll could fit two small templates, or one medium one. I had taken pictures of this step but I drowned my laptop and lost everything

But this is what I ended up with!

Spray painted and ready to go!

My spray paint collection grew a little for this project:

Rust-O-leum in Navy, Brilliant Blue and Spa Blue. Thank you Home Depot!!

And here they are on my wall!

Cute, yes?

And some more pics:

I love it!! I originally had them randomly scattered but it looked too messy so I rearranged them to be a gradient I think I want to shift them lower a little but now I am too lazy Luckily, these flowers are super light so I stuck them on the wall with painter’s tape and voila! Easy peasy

Project Breakdown:

Toilet paper (and paper towel) rolls – free! Get your friends & coworkers to help you save!

Spray paint – Home Depot’s spray paint aisle is one of my favorite places – around $4 per can.

Painter’s tape (or poster putty would work too) – $2-$3 at Home Depot or Target or wherever you can find it.

You will also need scissors, the free downloadable template from Billie Monster, marker/pen to trace the shapes and a well ventilated area to spray paint the flowers (both sides!)

Be patient! It’s totally worth a cheap way to dress up your walls! Happy crafting!!

-Yenny