Lego Americana Roadshow - If You Build It

We love Legos!  We love them to the point of surrendering a chunk of our house to storage and creation areas and have Lego Minifigs proudly displayed on our walls.  We also have an affinity for  history and architecture. So when we heard that the Lego Americana Roadshow was coming to Alderwood Mall, we knew we had to go.

The Lego Americana Roadshow is a traveling exhibit of American monuments that travels the country to wow crowds and sneaks in a bit of history to boot (including a life-size Liberty Bell!)

 The structures are incredibly detailed with even the smallest features represented in Legoes.   The exhibit is free and will be at the Alderwood Mall through October 30th.

Archie Mcphee - Wonderfully Weird

Anytime we are in the Wallingford neighborhood, we are tempted to go to Archie McPhee. Established in 1983, Archie McPhee has been entertaining shoppers with storefronts in Fremont, Ballard and now in Wallingford.  The colorful storefront only hints at the spectacular finds inside.

Plus anthropomorphic Bacon!

The store is a smorgasbord for the senses.  Some of favorites are:

The mass variety of mints (everything from banana to absinthe, with unflavored available for your nihilist friends and brain flavored to slow down the zombies.);

Band-aids of every size and style; 

Costume basics such as mustaches, hats and embelishments; 

the plethora of hand accessories;
 

Coffee cups that strike from the deep;

The Wallingford Beast;

Caution tape for every occasion;

Soap opera music boxes;

and amazing masks such as this Banana Slug.  

Whomever you may be shopping for, Archie McPhee probably has what you are looking for.... and some things you didn't know you needed. 

Onigiri - I Will Create Food!

Making lunches, both for school and work, has never been easier than when our family learned about onigiri.  Onigiri is a staple of Japanese bento boxes. Made of rice and fillings, sometimes wrapped in nori or sprinkled with Furikake seasoning, Onigiri takes little preparation and is quick to make.  The fillings can range from tuna salad and other fish to miso and pickled fruits. Our current favorite filling is smoked salmon, cream cheese and simple, pickled cucumbers. We like to make enough for several days worth of lunches to make our mornings easier. 

You will need:
Cooked white rice - we use about 2 1/2 cups at a time
Rice wine vinegar - an 1/8th of a cup for the rice, an 1/8th of a cup for the cucumbers and a bit more for preparing the onigiri
Cucumber - 1/4 cup finely diced (We prefer English cucumbers as they tend to hold their crunch)
Smoked salmon - 1/4 cup chopped
Cream cheese - 1/4 cup
Sugar - 1 tsp 
Nori or Furikake seasoning to taste
Plastic wrap

After you have started your rice cooking, finely dice your cucumber. 

Mix the cucumbers with an 1/8th cup of rice vinegar and set aside. 

Next dice up the smoked salmon.  There is no need to be picky about the size of the pieces just as long as they are small enough to blend into the cream cheese.

Add cream cheese to a bowl and use a fork to mix the salmon in.  Once the salmon is mixed in, drain the cucumbers thoroughly and add them to the mixture. 

By now your rice should be cooked. Let it cool for a few minutes while you combine the rice vinegar set aside for the rice and the tsp of sugar.  Mix them together until the sugar dissolves.  We warm our mixture in the microwave for 10-15 seconds to help the sugar blend in.  Traditionally, onigiri is make with plain rice, but we prefer ours to be closer to sushi rice.

 Add the vinegar/sugar mixture to the rice and...

fold it in until it is mixed evenly throughout.

Using a measuring cup dipped in rice vinegar, 

scoop out a rice ball onto a small piece of plastic wrap.

Use the bottom of the measuring cup to flatten it out leaving a small depression in the middle.  Re-dip the cup in the vinegar if the rice is sticking to it. 

 Add the salmon mixture to the flatten rice.

Now grab the sides of the plastic wrap and fold towards the middle. 

After pulling all of the edges to the middle, use your hands to form a ball within the plastic wrap. 

After you have formed a solid ball, open the top back up and add a sprinkle of furikake or wrap the outside in a strip of nori. 

If you're not eating them immediately, close the plastic wrap back up and store them in the fridge. Around here we make some for the day of and several for lunches for a few days.

 These are fun to make and more fun to eat!

8-bit Fuse Beads - The Family That Creates Together

Our family has many passions: the outdoors, music, food, travel... but creating and pop culture near the top of the list.  So when my boys pulled out the fuse beads we could see an idea forming. 
If you are unfamiliar with fuse beads, they are small beads in all colors that can be melted together with an iron. (We like the Perler brand as they melt evenly and they offer an amazing array of colors)  Generally, you would use a special pegboard to lay out the design you are working towards before you iron them.   Perler's square boards also have a simple way of interlocking that allows for you to create much larger images. 

Our youngest was planning several fuse bead recreations of 8-bit video game art 

Power Up?

Apparently power-up mushrooms are big Charmander Fans

while our oldest was planning something more ambitious. 

After doing a bit of research, he started to adapt an image of  the Pokemon Snorlax using cross-stitch methodology. After one night the outline started to solidify.

The process was a study in patience as the outline slowly started to fill in.

It was truly amazing to watch as the beginning shapes filled with various colors and gradients, giving the piece form and texture. 

Once he was finished with placing all of the fuse beads, we ironed it very carefully. 

We covered Snorlax with parchment paper and, using an iron on it's medium setting, we carefully moved it over the entire piece to ensure each bead was attached to its neighbor. 

When we were done, we flipped him over and ironed the other side as well, to give him some stability. 

The completed art is awesome!  Just need to fit it in a frame. 

We now have a permanent Pokemon to join our sci-fi fantasy art wall. 

If you want to try it for yourself, Amazon has a great inexpensive starter kit. 

Treasure Hunting! - Finders Keepers @ Lincoln City, OR

Floats Photo from www.visittheoregoncoast.com

Our family loves a good treasure hunt.  Whether it's keeping an eye on the ground on our walks for discarded change or searching out hidden treasure in Geocaches, we love the thrill of hunt.  So when we heard about Finders Keepers in Lincoln City, OR we were immediately intrigued.  

Finders Keepers is an annual event along the 7+ miles of beaches that has over 3000 hand blown glass floats and other items hidden for the public to find.  Glass float hunting was a popular hobby up until a decade or so ago.  Japanese fishing boats previously used hand blown glass floats to float their nets.  During storms, and through wear and tear, the floats would come loose and people would find them along the coast.  As fishing boats turned more and more to plastic buoys, floats became harder to come by. 

As a nod to the past, Lincoln City sponsored the first Finders Keepers in 1999.  Growing to the more than 3000 glass items that will be hidden from October to Memorial Day, Lincoln City has created the perfect excuse to visit the coast out of the traditional tourist season.  So we will be heading to Oregon at some point this winter to try our luck...You should head to the beach too! 

Reese's Pringles - I Will Create Food!

There are some flavors that weren't meant to go together: cotton candy and broccoli, salmon and ketchup, blue cheese and ice cream.  There are however some flavors that you wouldn't have initially combined, but, once together, create something special. We stumbled upon this combination when we were making chocolates one day and had leftover melted chocolate.  It led us to try just about everything enrobed in chocolate.  Most combinations ranged from acceptable to "probably not the best idea".  This combination was everything we wanted the other trials to be: sweet, salty, crunchy, chocolatey. Dubbed Reese's Pringles by our oldest, they have been one of our go-to treats ever since. 

You will need:

Ridged Potato Chips

Peanut Butter (we use natural just to make it a bit healthier)

Semi-sweet chocolate-melted

Start by lining a cookie sheet with parchment paper. It'll stop the treats from sticking. 

Next dip the chips in the peanut butter. Don't cover the entire chip, you want a spot to hold them during the chocolate step. 

When your cookie sheet is full, put them in the freezer for a few minutes to make it easier to dip them in chocolate. 

Once the peanut butter has hardened up a bit, dunk them in the chocolate. 

And off they go back to the freezer. 

Give them about 10 minutes or so and you can give them a try.  Just don't wait too long, they don't last long!