I'm a hacker!

I submitted my tray post to IKEA Hacker and they posted it over the weekend!

Here is the link to my Skala tray hack!

Congrats Ben and Maureen!

Ben and Maureen are getting married today. I wish Glenn and I could be there to celebrate with them because I know it is going to be an awesome party. 

We hope it is a wonderful day!

It's going to be a great 4th!

I'm so happy that the ship decided to make another port call over the 4th of July weekend at the last minute! Their timing couldn't have been better!!! Get here quick Glenn!!

How do you like your melon?

Expensive? Then your in luck...

This pair of musk melons comes in at 10,500 yen. With today's sucky exchange rate, that's just under $120! I better find a prize in the middle at least...

Some beautiful ladies (and Mike)

Last Sunday, our OSSG (Officer Spouses' Support Group) took a group photo (minus a couple) just for fun. A chance to remember the group and our time together here in Japan. Although, since the group is ever changing, it seems like we'll have to take a few more while I'm here. After our photo op, we headed to Father's Day Brunch at the Officers' Club. No fathers were present in our group, but it didn't make me enjoy the chocolate fountain and mini creme brulee any less.

A wonderful photographer, Kazu, took the pictures for us. Thanks!

Shizuoka Prefecture - Birds, Castles and Caves (oh my!)

On Saturday,  I took an MWR tour with four friends from the squadron. We headed south to Shizouka prefecture. When I have subsequently talked about this trip to students in the past few days, I've noticed that the tour sounds kind of lame, but I thoroughly enjoyed myself and I'm sure that's because of the company I was with. We made everything a great time despite the all day rain. I'll probably break this up in to a few posts because it was a 13 hour day and we saw lots of things!

First, we stopped at Kacho-en Bird Park. This is an aviary/zoo and it was a wonderful place because the animals are free to roam and fly (except for the owls that will eat the other birds/hurt people). I think this is my favorite picture of the whole trip:

Nicole was not a fan of the birds landing on her at first. Oh and Lauren got pooped on, that was funny.

We got to feed the penguin-san! They were so cute, I want to take one home with me!
Then we saw birds, birds and more birds. Some outdoor birds:

There was even a bird "show". The secretary bird was my favorite. It eats snakes and kills them by stomping on their heads! They did a demo with a fake snake for us.

Then we went inside and saw some of the water birds. Who knew flamingos were aggressive? One of them bit me while I was trying to take a picture with it!

This is much better:

Aren't they cute?

This is my oldest brother, Adam, and his family- Laura, baby Brooke and Connor. 

Aren't they cute? Glad we got to talk on Father's Day!

Tray Hack

I bought the Skala tray from IKEA when I went there a few weeks ago. I thought IKEA would be the perfect pick-me-up after Glenn left again on deployment. Who doesn't love IKEA? Just me? That's fine. I love wandering the room setups and imagining the house that Glenn and I hope to own someday. So many options and at prices I can actually afford unlike most Japanese home stores.

I liked the design of the tray, but I thought it was a little boring and I didn't think the finish was very durable. I often eat at the coffee table especially when Glenn is gone so I thought a tray would be useful for carrying my bowl of cereal dinner and glass of wine.

We have an entire drawer full of travel brochures, maps, tickets stubs and all sorts of Japanese memorabilia. I thought it would be fun to use all of this to dress up the plain tray.

Here is the entire tray and an up close shot. 

I used Modge Podge to glue down the paper scraps and then 5 coats of the Podge on top. Waiting for it to dry between each layer. I had high gloss Modge Podge so it has a glossy finish. I hope we have it for a long time and it reminds us of our time here.

What's for Dinner? Chicken Curry

I never knew I liked curry until I moved to Japan and tried it for the first time, but it is delicious! We have several Indian restaurants around base that we like. I also know that most Japanese restaurants serve curry over rice so even if everything else on the menu isn't appealing, that is usually a winner.
I bought curry rue a few weeks ago and decided to try it out the other day. The curry rue comes in a package of 8 cubes. It looks similar to a giant bouillon cube. First, I set the rice cooker to make about 3/4 cup of rice.Then I cooked some chicken and added some veggies. You could use pretty much any veggies you have.
Once the meat and veggies were cooked, I added about 2 cups of water and 2 of the rue cubes.
Cook until the mixture is a thicker than soup, but not too thick. I cooked mine a little too long so it was more stew like.Put some rice into a dish and cover with the curry mixture. I was pretty happy with how it turned out although my entire house smelled like curry!

Huh?

What do you think they teach here?