Tumblr Tuesday: Arrested Downton

Another Tumblr Tuesday devoted to a recent Anglophile obsession of mine. Two days. I blew through both seasons and the Christmas special in TWO DAYS. I blame Almathea.

I’m generally not a big fan of image macros that try to jam two different cult favourites together, but for some reason this one just works. Enjoy.

This Week’s Menu

Miraculously everything on last week’s menu was a keeper. Rick was particularly proud of his Pad See-Ew and was a little disappointed he never got the chance to show it off at work because they kept buying him lunch. The lettuce wraps were especially delicious, but I served them with hoisin instead of the dipping sauce in the menu.

Monday: Bok Choy with Chives, Black Bean Sauce and Chow Fun
Tuesday: Cantonese Chicken and Mushrooms with Steamed Rice – Rick’s Night to Cook
Wednesday: Mushroom Ragu with Ziti
Thursday: Brown Sugar Spiced Pork Loin with Roasted Potatoes and Green Beans
Friday: Pumpkin Seed Encrusted Tilapia With Bok Choy and Steamed Rice

Happy Caturday

Don’t Let Your Husband Do Your Make-Up

This was mean’t to be a “smoky-eye”, not, “I got beat up by a sparkly drag-queen”.

The backstory: Rick’s been listening to these “soft-spoken” make-up role-play videos before bed to help him relax. Apparently there’s this whole subculture on YouTube of “soft-spoken”, “whisper” and “relaxing” videos, of which role-playing is a further subculture. It sounds a little spooky and weird on the surface, but it’s actually harmless from what I can tell and listening to them in the evening really does seem to help Rick relax and has become an integral part of his pre-bedtime routine.

Now, since he found these make-up focused videos, he’s gotten it into his head that he knows about make-up. He even knows the names of the different brushes and stuff, so I figured it would be fun to let him have a go at doing my make-up. He was all into it too, and if nothing else it would be a cute way to bond and probably have a good laugh over.

And laugh we did. I tried my best to keep a straight face, but as soon as I felt that big fat brush smearing across the bottom of my eye I knew that Rick was in trouble. The panicked look on his face only reinforced my fears, but he was a trooper and insisted on continuing until my cheeks were highlighted and my teeth caked with lipstick. And while I did have to remove most of it before our friends came over, I was shocked to discover that the upper eye liner was actually pretty much fine.

So no, Rick hasn’t found his true calling, but we did have a good time and a very good laugh.

Vignettes

A few snippets from around the house…

Comfort Cat by Marjji, porcelain squirrels by Michiko Shimada.

Rémi, Ta-Ta & Morgan keep watch over the bed.

The beautiful, infamous print that Brendan gave us in Vancouver that we had to lug home in a suitcase (with minimal damage ).

Tumblr Tuesday: Ask Dr. John H. Watson

For all you fellow Sherlock addicts. WARNING: Contains many spoilers, so if you aren’t caught up on Series 2, wait until you are.

This Week’s Menu

The absolute hands down winner of last week was the Panko-Crusted Salmon. So crunchy, so tasty, so yummy. Also, Rick ate about a pound of green beans on his own that night, so go Rick. The only change I would make in the future would be to marinate the salmon overnight with the mustard to give it a little more oomph. Other than that, total keeper.

Rick also had great success with his dish, the Chicken and Mushrooms in Garlic White Wine Sauce. He was a little intimidated by taking on three dishes at once, so I helped out with the noodles, but I’m pretty sure in the future he’ll have no trouble at all. His confidence in the kitchen is soaring and he’s becoming quite the little chef.

We didn’t get to the tacos or the pork chops due to a minor meltdown near the end of the week, so I threw the pork chops onto this week’s plan and we’ll take a rain-check on the tacos.

Monday: Vegan Lettuce Wraps
Tuesday: Pad See-Ew – Rick’s Day to Cook
Wednesday: One Pot Rice and Pork Chops
Thursday: Simple Salmon Curry with Steamed Rice & Spinach
Friday: Vegan Chili (with this as a template)

Mario Bead Sprite Stop Motion Awesome

A little smile on a chilly Friday.

Made by: Marcus and Hannes Knutsson.

Pixels XL

Regular readers of GamerWife might remember that modular system for creating wall sized pixel art I posted a few months ago called Ixxi. While undoubtedly cool, my one issue with the system was that it seemed a little fiddly with all those brackets and whatnot, as well as the fact that once the picture was in place, that was sort of it, unless you wanted to start wrestling with widgets again.

Then, I saw competing system Pixels XL, which replaces the proprietary brackets with a surface coating system (basically a type of magnetic primer), that allows you to place and replace their coloured magnetic tiles as many times as you like. The tiles come in two sizes, 5×5 cm and 10×10 cm, allowing for increased design creativity. You can even choose from project Bags which contain all the tiles needed for a particular pattern, mix and match colours, or download a PDF with instructions on how to design your own Pixel art from an existing image using Photoshop.

Super neat! They’re adding new colours to their roster all the time, so I’m definitely keeping my eye on this one.

Tumblr Tuesday: Rebecca Dart

Full disclosure, I actually know the lady behind this awesome art tumblr, but I wanted to bring her to the attention of the rest of you unfamiliar with her work, not to mention exclaim how excited I am that Battle Kittens will soon become a 150 page graphic novel! I can’t wait!