An A-peeling Habit – Reconstructed Mandarin Oranges

Living in California means enjoying delicious citrus fruits all the year round, like navel oranges, lemons, limes, pomelo and grapefruit. In fact, all of these fruits are sorely missed by me when I’m living in Korea. Unlike California, Korea has four very distinct seasons, including some very, very cold winters–and this basically translates into a lack of good, domestically grown citrus fruit. Yet oddly enough, Mandarin oranges (aka “clementines”, “halos”, “cuties”, “tangerines”, etc…) are extremely common in Korea, especially in the winter months.

Beary Good Friends – DIY Teddy Bears

If you know anything about my beloved rescue dog, Webby, you know that she is obsessed with stuffed animals–or rather, she’s obsessed with ripping them apart. Unfortunately, the teddy bear dolls pictured above are among her victims. Their loss was all the more tragic for me because I had sewn them myself years ago when my husband (then boyfriend) and I started the long distance phase of our relationship (which lasted four years!). I made one bear for each of us, and he had “custody” of the bears while I was in the US and he stayed in Korea. Once I returned to Korea, we got married, and couple years after that I got Webby, and well, sadly the rest is history. But at least I found this old photo of my lovely bears, sitting pretty with their pal Chupi Chones, the frog. Farewell, bears!

The Tangerine Room – Let the Creative Juices Flow!

 

My loveley “tangerine” room!

 

About a year after getting married, Yoongu and I moved into a brand new apartment complex in Icheon. Unlike some older apartment complexes, which sport a very plain and totally unadorned layout, the complex we went into tried to feature some…ahem…creative (i.e. tacky) design elements. This included mismatched wallpapers, mirror tiles (a la the 1980s), plastic framing spray painted metallic gold, etc… Egads, the list of design tragedies in this apartment seemed never ending!