Thank-You Cards and Cooking

I was hoping my blog post title might intrigue some of you to read this, but, as a matter of fact, these two things have absolutely nothing to do with each other, other than they were both apart of my day yesterday. :)

I'll start with Thank-You Cards. I would like to start off by admitting to all of you that I am horrible at writing/making thank-you cards. I know I should get better at this. I love making cards so why don't I write thank-you cards? It seems I always forget about it. However, yesterday my sweet friend Aaryn sent me a thank-you card in the mail for letting her and her husband stay at our apartment about a month ago.

Isn't this so cute? You will also come to know—if you continue to read my blog—that I am fairly obsessed with purple. I don't really know why or how it happened, but I just really love purple! It's so fun and colorful! Also, there are so many different shades of purple and they are all so pretty! Moving on...

It definitely brightened up my day and it got me thinking about needing to get better at thank-you cards myself. It's such a simple and easy gesture yet it's so hard to remember to do. Having given some thought to this yesterday, I was a bit surprised to find out what was in my Paper Pumpkin this month, which I received in the mail today—thank-you cards!

[Side note: Paper Pumpkin is this awesome product by Stampin' Up. You subscribe for a Paper Pumpkin and you receive one in the mail every month that you are subscribed to it. They send you a clear block for your stamp in the first kit, and in every kit you receive some fun craft to do, a stamp to use with it, ink for the stamp, and sometimes buttons to add some dimension to your card.

And what's so fun about this is that it's a new craft every month and you never know what it's going to be! I can't wait to get started on this one! For more information you can visit my demonstrator's promotional page for Stampin' Up here: http://www.stampinup.net/esuite/home/ngayle/promotions. They have a special going on on this for the next week and half. Catch it while you can!]

Anyway, my goal is to get better at making and writing thank-you cards! I'll be sure to post some of the cute ones I make on here for you to see! And now that I've told you I hope to get better at this, hopefully that established some accountability for me to actually do this. :)




Next, I wanted to share yesterday's cooking experience with you. I will also let you in on a little secret—although it's actually not that secretive—I'm not very good at cooking! I am improving, I will say that, especially these past couple of months when I have been home most of the time just doing freelance work. I think Aaron is fairly impressed with how much I've improved on the cooking front! :)

Anyway, I went to World Market the other day with a friend and I found this marinade sauce for Satay Ayam. It is an awesome delicacy I had when I was in Southeast Asia a couple of summers ago. You marinate chicken and grill the chicken on a stick. It is soooo delicious! So after I calmed myself from jumping up and down over finding this sweet recipe and sauce, I bought the marinade and decided I would make it for dinner. Let me just say, it did not look very good starting out. WARNING: Gross photo to follow!

Now, does that look appetizing to anyone? Anyone? Bueller? Bueller? It took everything in me to keep going after seeing this. Surely this had to be wrong! I can't cook that and then expect Aaron and myself to actually eat this!! Gross! But I told myself to just suck it up and make it and I would see how it turned out in the end. I also reminded myself that Aaron and I had spent a couple of summers in other countries and we were used to eating foods that weren't the norm for us. We are adventurous! We could try my attempt at Satay Ayam and live to talk about it, by golly!

And you will be happy to know that the meal was, in fact, especially delicious and looked much better after the chicken had been marinated in that sauce and cooked on the grill. I shot an after-meal photograph so you would also have something pretty to look at after the disturbing photo I just posted.

SUCCESS! Aaron loved it, I loved it, and I am here to tell the tale! :D I was a little disappointed I forgot to get the peanut sauce for it, but only I really understood what this meal was missing—Aaron hadn't ever had it before so he thought it was great just the way it was...he has no idea what he's missing. :)

Until next time...