Chap Chae…gluten free too.

:: Take care when chopping. Uniformity makes a nice presentation.

:: Don’t ignore the nuances, squeeze all that water out of the blanched spinach before you begin the sauté.

:: Never bother to measure your seasonings…let the nose and tongue be your guides.

:: Be sure to make the dish your own. Let it’s flavors, textures, and smells, suggest your personality, style, and heritage.

:: It is never too late to learn. I learned how to prepare this traditional Korean dish, in addition to how to locate those sweet potato noodles in the Korean grocery, in my 30s.

Here is my recipe.

**Chap Chae**

• 2T cooking oil – like expeller pressed safflower oil (don’t use olive oil, you’ll get a weird Tuscan-Korean blend thing going on.)
• 1 med yellow onion julienne
• 3 med carrots julienne
• 1 lb ground beef, browned and drained
• 8 oz fresh shiitake mushrooms julienne
• 1 lb spinach, blanched, drained (squeeze all that water out) julienne
• 2T minced fresh garlic
• 1 lb sweet potato noodles, cooked per package directions and rinsed 2-3 times in cold running water, then drain
• 2T sesame oil
• 1t sesame seeds
• 1/4C soy sauce (use a wheat-free variety to make this dish gluten-free, yes, wheat is the second ingredient in soy sauce after water…and before soy.)
• 3T sugar
• salt and ground black pepper to taste

1. Heat cooking oil in a 12″ heavy bottom fry pan over medium heat. Add onions and carrots and cook until onions are translucent and soft but not brown.
2. Add beef, shiitake mushrooms, spinach, and garlic and heat through.
3. Add noodles, sesame seeds, sesame oil, soy sauce, sugar. Toss and heat through.
4. Taste! And season with salt and ground black pepper as needed.
5. Serve warm or at room temperature.

Serves 8

*  *  *

And to change continents, with the help of my husband, I prepared Tacos al Pastor for dinner. You can find this deliciously smoky, spicy, and sweet recipe here. The zesty lime flavor and fragrant ancho chile salsa took me back to the time my friends and I stopped at this road-side taco stand on the side of a highway not far from Tampico, Mexico. Under a killer sun and among sandy grasses they ordered tacos, un kilo de puerco. We drove in a beat up vintage VW bug back to an apartment with folding chairs and aluminum edged card table to feast. Roasted onions–blackened to beat the pungent bite into sweet, mild submission. The salsa was a smoky mix of flavors and the heat lingered only for a moment. Fresh, pungent cilantro and the smoky charcoal pork clashed to make a fresh, slightly mysterious explosion in the mouth. Beautiful I say. Mind you there were 8 or so of us that finished those 2.2 lbs of that tasty barbeque.

I am so excited that I just received these in the mail yesterday! Planning ahead of course, I had ordered a couple pairs of these beautiful earrings from Dallas Designs to give to Tyler’s pre-school teachers as end-of-year gifties. I just love Dallas’ simple, chic jewelry designs, and I got them lickety split in the mail. Thank you!

This month Dallas, who is 8 years old might I mention, is donating her proceeds to St. Jude Children’s Hospital. She has already raised $73. So, take a peek at her ArtFire page and help her raise even more. Thank you Dallas for the wonderful earrings! Congratulations to you and keep up the great work!

just starting this one, but I am already dreaming of tiny figures embroidered in the corner of a tote, or the hem of a sundress, or centered on a placemat, or decoratively adorning my favorite wall space in a frame. I have some experience doing counted cross-stitch stuff, but the embroidering a traced image is totally new to me. now which to choose first…this book alone has over 1,000 motifs!

Photo by runekrem from Flickr

So, my son loves playing games on the Nick Jr. Internet site…and unfortunately clicks on anything that comes his way. Yesterday, he broke the computer. I don’t know what happened, but some error message game up in that DOS mode, and something about the motherboard (and that mom’s shouldn’t let 3-year-olds play Max and Ruby hide-and-seek games without sitting IN FRONT of the computer screen themselves.) Anyway, I rebooted the laptop, logged in, and then the screen went blank, and then it sort of melted away to look like this amazing view of the Northern Lights…hummm…NOT GOOD. I think it is still under warranty, but until we get a working laptop that 3-year-olds aren’t able to touch, I will be taking a forced blogging vacation. (We have a desktop computer in the basement area, but I don’t get down here much.)

So, for now, have a wonderful Thanksgiving, and a pleasant first week of Advent. I hope to check in periodically, and to read around the blogosphere nonetheless! Keep creating.

Last week was definitely one of the most difficult parenting weeks I have ever had. (Although, I haven’t had that many considering that my children are only 3 1/2 years and 20 months old.) As the stay-at-home parent I was dealing with my indoor allergies, kid-illnesses, and tried to begin a concerted effort to potty train my son.

My son had a runny nose on Monday so I decided to keep in home from pre-school. Although we have tried a little potty-training with him, he isn’t yet adept at getting-the-clothes-off to be able to sit down in time to actually do his business. So, I let him go around without anything on and kept the little potty near at hand.

The first time he went #2, I think it actually made it into the potty. I didn’t see this because I was making lunch for two children, talking on the phone with a relative overseas, and trying to eat my own lunch.  By the time I got to it, the potty had been tipped over and the contents had spilled out into the lid and on the floor. I cleaned up my son and said to him that I would clean up the mess after I put my daughter in her crib.

I ran upstairs for 15 seconds to put my daughter down and upon my return was greeted with a wad of poop in his hand. We put that in the toilet and went upstairs to wash down. I still didn’t think to put a diaper on him because he usually poops only once in a day. So, I Lysoled the floor, the leather sofa, toys, chairs, the carpet floor, door knobs, and any other surfaces I could see, and then I bleached out the potty seat. As I was rinsing the potty seat, I turned and saw he had pooped on, and decorated, the carpeted floor right outside the bathroom.

I just dissolved into tears as I washed him down again, put on a diaper on straight away, plopped him in his bed with a bunch of books, and pulled out the wet-vac, meant to clean up messes from pets, to clean and disinfect the floor. It took 45 minutes to hand-wet-vac the 3′ X 3′ space and clean out the vacuum.

I thought why me? Why do I get this extra burden? Why can’t my husband ever experience this? Why can’t my son tell me when he needs help? Why can’t he understand it that poop belongs in the potty? Why can’t he get it there himself? Why am I so frustraited that I can’t even see straight?

This is what I realized…I am just not cut out for this job of potty-training. When my patience runs thin, I get angry, and I show it. Imparting stress on my little guy probably doesn’t make him want to cooperate. And, maybe we need two potties. He has pooped in the potty before when there were no clothes to wrestle down. I think he pooped on the floor because his potty was unavailable. I also have very high standards. Very high. And when they aren’t met, I am disappointed, frustrated, angry, negative…etc., etc. Potty training isn’t going to be a perfect thing and I can’t ever expect perfection from my son, or myself for that matter.

So, my husband and I decided to that the potty-training experience would be a daddy-son time. He has chosen to throw a potty party for our son and take an entirely different approach, which I think just might work.

At the moment, I am not even mentioning the potty, unless my son does. Now, he usually makes it to the bathroom, closes the door, and stands in the corner to poop in his diaper. He’s getting it slowly. Now we have to enable him to get up there by himself. I keep reminding myself, **just remember, he isn’t going to go to his prom in diapers.**

The upside of this, there is a Korean saying that if you dream of poop that you will come into money. Well, even though this wasn’t a dream, I have to say that this old adage was right. I found $200 in my basement last week, my husband made some money in the market, and we received a $5k reimbursement. Would have I foregone the money to have had a poop-free week…emphatically, YES.

After 60 hours+ of sewing (80% of which was spent with my iron pressing seams), many battles with invisible thread, and numerous not-so-appreciated-try-ons-so-I-can-see-how-it-fits, Halloween costumes finally finished…this year anyway…

Speed Racer

Tinker Bell

I am working on a lot of new things these days. Above you see how messy product development can be! I am working on a new owl design created lovingly out of recycled felted wool and cashmere sweaters.

As a family, we are also working on introducing new healthy foods to our family’s weekly menus (though this has turned out to be more of a pre-schooler fasting episode since he refuses to eat 90% of what we put in front of him). We are working on potty training (which has been pretty messy and gross) and re-child-proofing our home to save those special things from 20-month-old fingers. I am working on Halloween costumes for the kids. Here is a photo preview of my daughter’s semi-completed Tinker Bell fairy outfit.

And we are learning to cope with fewer day-light hours, cooler temperatures, and a new pre-school schedule.

On the blogging front: I am reading Tara Frey’s book Blogging for Bliss: Crafting Your Own Online Journal: A Guide for Crafters, Artists & Creatives of all Kinds.
I have to say thank you Tara for giving my fingers renewed inspiration to keep blogging, writing, and creating for myself. This space is a creative outlet I didn’t fully appreciate before. I am glad to say that I am almost back, with some new enthusiasm, excitement, and ideas I can’t wait to explore and share with you. I hope you will keep reading and sharing with me what you have to say in the coming months. I look forward to it.

Hello all! I am taking a blogging vacation to finish out the last weeks of summer. My family and I are trying to squeeze out all those last drops of dappled daylight, vibrant colors at the market, sounds of chirping birds, and the smoky aroma of the barbeque. I hope you too consider taking a break and meet me back here September 8th for more Organizing Life. I can’t wait to check in with you and reading for a while with a glass of iced tea.

I am excited for the fall when I hope to share with you some crafty ways you can organize your health and green your home. I am also looking forward to introducing some of the sources of inspiration I turn to when I am organizing what is important to me in my life. I hope to also share with you some frugal, stress-less, green, and soulful ways to celebrate a truly meaningful holiday season with your family. So, stay-tuned to Organizing-Life.com. There is a lot to come in the months to come. Until then, Happy Organizing!