Katie Annas Home

I have a confession....

The lovely blog of Andrea Nguyen is a bit of an addiction for me, I will explain why...

I love adore and worship dumplings. Every time I make them for my family I feel like such a women. As I finely dice the ingredients for the filling I relax into the process and give into the time commitment ahead of me. The meditative process of folding the filling into each delicate wrapper and sealing it with your wet hands brings a calm peace into my body. I always make at least a hundred dumplings and either freeze some of them or give them away to friends and family, no one will ever turn down a gift of dumplings.

I like to sometimes fry the dumplings in sesame oil to make sinful pot stickers but I usually just boil the dumplings in water and then serve them with this insanely delicious and simple Chinese vegetable and broth soup.

Its safe to say that our kids have also inherited our feverish love of the dumpling as they can eat dozens of them at one meal! It worries me sometimes!

So what got me thinking about dumplings today? well a dear friend of mine is moving back to australia so I'm hosting her a little party this saturday night. The menu...well dumplings of course

> Dumplings with soup

> Pot stickers with a chunky sauce

> Mung bean noodle stir fry with gluten

For dessert I've shied away from the Chinese dinner menu and am planning on a very western indulgence overkill.....

> Lilikoi chesecake

> Blue berry cobbler

> Homemade vanilla icecream

Morning...baby

Leaving on a Jet plane....soon.....but we will be back again

Whenever we are going on a plane I start singing the song Leaving on a Jet plane by John Denver, I break into the song in the kitchen, in the bathroom and dance around the house with my little babies singing "I'm leaving on a jet plane, dont know when I will be back again" .... further evidence that I'm a strange bug.

So we're headed to Boston to see two specialists, my wonderful Scleroderma specialist Dr. Kissin at the Boston Medical Center and one of his colleagues Dr. Theadore who is a pulmonologist who specializes in Scleroderma induced lung fibrosis. 

We're leaving Hawaii on the 23rd of Oct and returning on the 4th Nov. We will be in Boston for 6 days and then we're going to head over to California for a little family vacation, we plan on making it a nature vacation. Yosemite is on the list of to do's and of course we're going to go apple picking and pie making. Because of my lowered immune system, which is a result of my chemotherapy treatments, we stay away from public places and crowds etc to help prevent from getting sick. But that aside I think it will still be a lovely vacation exploring what California has to offer outdoors. My husband grew up in California so it will be wonderful for him to go back and see it as an adult.

I'm so happy we decided to make it a family vacation and not just a trip to see the doctors.

I plan on taking millions and millions of photos so prepared to be bombarded when we return.

Daily Painting

Not yet finished but this will be another one in my series of personalized family paintings

Morning... in dada's "office"

We ventured into my husbands office this morning to try and drag him out for some breakfast and instead settled in for some impromptu photos. So I bravely share...

My darling little girl...

... doing what she does best....

Check out that funny face on yanti!

I could just eat them up for dessert

hehehehe.... funny face again and my chubby bubby little boy...

Hey dada if I smile at you like this will you let me play with your camera?

Oh hello their little monkey boy

 

Daily Painting

This painting is apart of my new series of personalized family portraits. I'm trying to get them up in my store in time for christmas orders. I've been painting them off photos of my friends, I love the idea. I started by painting a family portrait for my mom of our family and liked the idea so much.

I often paint at night times when the little monkeys are sound asleep, I put my ipod on with either music or a podcast and get lost in time till my husband taps me on the shoulder with a gentle reminder that the world is indeed passing me by.

Morning...self portraits

Morning...in the bathroom

 

 

 

POPCORN!!

We love popcorn in our house, we love the sound of the pop! pop! POP! pop! 

But we don't just love any popcorn, we have an obsession, passion and intense affection for  savory yeast, olive oil and spike seasoned popcorn. We will not have it any other way. We also manage to eat popcorn about 3-4 times a week.

I pop popcorn as snacks when we go out and put it in glad bags to seal in the freshness. Its always all gone by the time we head home.

So as you can see we have a little bit of a popcorn love affair going on in our little house.... here is today's evidence.

Dama digging in, whats that spoon for!?

Chubby little hands

Yanti steals the bowl and heads up on top of the table with it, queen of her castle...

Mamaaaaaaaa! she stole the popcorn!

Yanti, is always dressed up as one little adventurer or another... all day long. Her little wardrobe of cute adorable dresses goes untouched for weeks as she raids her dress up drawer from dawn to dusk. She loves this headband that I made for her a few weeks ago with flowers and white feathers. As long as its bright and colorful shes happy! :-)

"And so yeah there was this big frog who liked to ride a horse that was pink which lived in this big cave that had blue walls..........." if you where wondering, yes she talks ALL day long just like that :)

Morning...

 

 

Morning...

blog revamp... motivated by marisa

I listened to week 2 of marisa's e-course and it really got me thinking about my blog. She was making the point that she believes your blog should be thought of, by yourself, as a room in your house. I believe her point was that as you are inviting people into your life what room in your life are you inviting them into, what part of your life are you sharing?

I instantly connected with this idea and knew right away what room I am inviting you into when you visit my on my blog. The hub and center of my creative life and family life is my studio/bedroom/garden.... you may be wondering why those three places and I will explain a simple thing about my house. We have this big long room on the back of the house and on one end of that room is our bedroom and the other end is my studio in the middle of the room there is a big sliding glass door that steps directly out into my garden. This  is the place and space in my life where I spend my days with my children and where all my creative juices and inspirations flow through me.

I do love to wonder off into the kitchen and really enjoy cooking but we always find ourselves drifting into the back room and we eat all of our meals just outside that big glass door under a bright umbrella outside in the beautiful Hawaiian weather.

This is the room I invite you into, the space I want to share and this is the feeling I want to portray on my blog.

So in honor of this I present to you my new blog design...... a few things may be missing but dont worry I will be pulling it all together soon.

Please do let me know what you think, I welcome feedback!

Here is a screen shot of the previous design I had on my blog....

Morning...

 

 

 

My day...my garden...a naughty lunch

Our visit to the Zoo

We went to the Honolulu zoo yesterday because yanti has been bugging me for months to go see the animals. We took a delicious lunch of Vietnamese summer rolls packed with salads and tofu and the divine peanut dipping sauce we also had the famous gluten drum sticks and yeast popcorn.

We stopped in at the little shave ice shack to get our little treat - which btw is not so little. This made yanti as happy as a bee but dripping from chin to toe in sugary syrup. So we had a change of clothes amongst the animals :-)

I apologize that the photos where taken with our little point and shoot camera.

Oh so that's a gorilla eh? It amazes me how little fear my children have, I don't think I would put my face that close to a gorillas under any circumstances.

The giraffes where so beautiful, my next painting is going to be of giraffes now :)

 

The real elephants where no where to be found so the little guys made do with well this little guy

Me with yanti the silly grinner

Did anyone mention funny faces?

Watching the monkey, check out the little nappy wedgy on dama! Too cute

Heading out of the zoo after a long but fun day of walking

a little ladies perspective

My daughter, yanti, who is 3 years old recently had a sneaky moment with our little point and shoot camera. There where dozen and dozens of these crazy blurry photos of odd things and I had such a good laugh when I downloaded the stick and found this little surprise on it.

Here I share with you the world through my daughters eyes.

Watching grandma garden

That would be her foot on the dirty kitchen table

Her little brother most likely trying to get his own hands on the camera

Uh Oh a shot of the stove top!

Change is in the air..

There is a definite change in my artwork recently. I've been changing up their faces as I learn how to paint a little better pretty much everyday. My characters look so much better! I'm really happy about this and feel such a sense of accomplishment to see that through hard work and sticking to this I am getting better. yay!

Here's a custom order of my blocks, the request was for blond hair so we accomplished that but also have some much sweeter little faces.

Here are the original blocks that I painted.

A yummy meal

This meal was Salad, Rice, Dhal and Corn Chips.

For anyone who has not had the pleasure of eating Dhal or know what it is here's a little info on Dhal which I got from wisegeek.com:

Dhal is a main dish in India and Pakistan, and certainly one of the most popular. Pulses are inexpensive, which makes Dhal widely eaten among all classes of people.
Dhal is made with the aforementioned pulses, or lentils, and spices such as cumin, cayenne, garlic and garam masala, to produce a thick soupy consistency. The dhal is then served with naan (flatbread) or over rice. It can be a side dish or a main dish and is another ethnic food that can be adjusted to the cook’s tastes.
Dhal is often a mainstay in vegetarian diets, because it is so versatile and such a good source of protein. It can be cooked with spinach, or coconut, with green peppers or cheese. In Indian restaurants that feature a buffet, dhal may be offered with any of these ingredients.
The secret to good dhal is the same as with cooking any bean: long, slow cooking times. Dhal could be made in a slow-cooker, or on top of the stove. It should be cooked a minimum of three hours, perhaps six or seven in a slow-cooker. Cooked portions may be frozen and reheated, if the cook wants to make the most of the long cooking time and make dhal batches in bulk. Dhal is cooked like most beans: add enough water to cover the pulses, turn it on low and start the cooking process. The pulses should be rinsed and sorted, as with other beans, beforehand.
As with other beans, dhal makes its own “gravy,” and this should not be discarded. It is also nutritious and is eaten right along with the pulses. Indian lentils may be black, brown, red, yellow or pink, creating a dish that is as colorful as it is delicious. Indian lentils are available at some supermarkets, and often in Asian markets that sell Indian ingredients.

Its been way too long!

I have not posted for a few weeks, life has been a little crazy and I've been painting like a mad women. Oh so many new paintings and fun stuff that Ive put up in my store recently.

My little boy, dama, has been teething so hes been whinning and complaining and upset all day everyday. His nighttime routine has been completely turned upside down and hes up all night crying and having a hard time, hes a late teether and it takes weeks of owies for those big ones to breakthrough. Its sad to watch.

My first, yanti, had all her teeth by 8 months and they came through so fast, she would teeth for one day and pop them out overnight.

My 2nd to last chemo was a tough one, I think the worst so far. It took me 2 weeks to get back on my feet and I just felt really off track.  Good news though was that this last one that I did just this past Tuesday has been a breeze so far, Ive been really tired and wasted and just a little nauseous but none of the pain and vomiting so I'm really happy and hoping this is a sing that things are looking up.

The garden is coming along well, we're still prepping the soil and mulching the beds but we finally got these two big huge palm trees removed that where just planted in the wrong place. It was a big affair to get them taken out, it took 6 big guys and about 4 hours of digging and pulling and dragging. Now that they are gone the yard is like a different place, its open and has so much more potential. Very nice :)

My dear hubby is promising to build me some gardening boxes, its hard for me to bend down to garden in the beds so he's promising me some raised beds, maybe 2 feet raised up. That would be wonderful so I cross my fingers that he does it! :-)

Ok I'm going to be running late for my hair appointment, need a trim, so better go.

Lots of love and care

Katie

Yummy fresh divine fruit salad for breakfast

Freshly made fruit salad tops my list for breakfast, the only thing missing from this one is two of my favorite fruits, mangoes and passion fruits (lilikois) those two fruits would have sent this bowl of goodness into heaven!

This one has:
1 Papaya
2 slices of watermelon
10 green grapes
1 nectarine
8 Strawberries

I didn't get a photo of it but I put some freshly roasted granola on top which was still warm. It was soooo good!

Here's the mother bowl :-) its all gone now.