Jan-chan’s Tidbits

Last week we had a tone of snow and for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day I didn’t get to go anywhere so I decided work on yet another paper craft project. This time is the Santa’s house. I found the pattern on Canon’s Creative Park website. It’s got lots of interesting projects you can make as gifts.

Here’s a look at the interior of the house. The neat thing about this house is that there are three main components, the exterior of the house acts as a box, the interior of the house can slide out showing two levels, then the lower level can also be pulled out making it easy to see all the details inside.

[Completed house with the first floor tucked inside.]

It took about 25 hours to finish the house. There were many little components to cut but I had fun making it, especially near the end when I was decorating the house with all the presents and little details.

I’ve posted more photos of the house, with shots of individual rooms, in my Picasa Album.

PS: Kaya ♥~ the gold fish pattern is from the Yamaha paper craft website. Have fun! I’d love to see photos of your completed project!

Ok over the past week, aside from going up to Whistler for a snowboarding trip (I’m still waiting for MH to get me those photos…), I’ve been working on another paper craft project to give to Al’s mom as birthday gift. I made a gold fish that sits in a basin. It’s pretty neat once it’s completed and definitely looked much better than my bike since now I got the hang of cutting the paper super close to eliminate most of the black outlines.

I’ve posted more shots of the parts from this project on my Picasa Album.

We had a family dinner on Christmas Eve and I was playing chef that night. Since there was a snow storm warning, I picked up the ingredients the night before. However I underestimated the power of crazy shoppers. I went to Save-on-Foods at around 7:30pm and there was almost no more meat (that I wanted). All that was left was a whole bunch of frozen turkeys, huge packages (bulk) of roasts, chicken and lamb.

So I thought, maybe I’d head over to Superstore for a try. I’m not exactly a huge fan of buying meat there but maybe they’d have the ones I need (beef or pork tenderloin). Well they have the meat there but…I had trouble with securing my veggies! There’s nothing left except potates and brussle sprouts! (Well there are some others like onions…even the bunched carrots were near extinction…)

I still managed to find enough food for the dinner. The menu is really simple because I didn’t expect the store to have next to nothing! Usually I like to plan for a 3 course meal but this time it’s main course plus a super simple dessert. Here are the items on the menu:

[Balsamic roasted pork tenderloin with caramelized onion jus & Roasted yam (top)]

[Jumbo garlic & rosemary prawns]

[Balsamic roasted fingerling potatoes]

As for dessert, I made strawberry & lime jello (one layer on top of the other). Picked those two because of their colour. I only spent about 2.5 hours cooking this meal which is pretty fast consider I usually spend about 3+ hours cooking (with about 75% of the time just chopping food…I cut slow…)

My apologies for disappearing without notice for the past month. I was kept busy with work and other interesting activites. MH had showed me the Yamaha paper craft site which had realistic bikes, animals and other paper models you can download and make. After a couple of weeks, one entire glue stick and lots of paper cuts, I’ve finally completed the Yamaha YZR-M1 model. If you know me, you’d know why I picked this one out of all the ones there. Yes, it’s the colour! I love yellow bikes. Hehe.

Here’s a few shots of the finished bike:

I’ve posted pictures of the parts in my Picasa album.