Off to PAX Prime 2010!
September 2, 2010
Posted by AnnaTheRed in Everything else add a comment
I’m off to PAX (Penny Arcade Expo in Seattle, WA)!
My boyfriend and I are at the airport right now. As usual, I spent my night before the big event sewing, packing, cleaning, and not sleeping at all. (I did take a nap though) I guess I will never learn…
I was just too excited to sleep!
My cat wasn’t amused by the fact that we wouldn’t be home for the next couple of days.
Where do you think you're going?
I’m taking my netbook, and I’ll try to post some photos on my blog/flickr, but PAX is usually super fun/packed with events/fun/tons of games to play/fun/so many panels to visit (average of 30-40 minutes in a line for a panel!)/oh and did I mention ‘fun’?… so I might pass out as soon as I come back to my hotel room each day.
BUT! I will definitely upload photos on my twitter as much as possible!
You can follow me here -> http://twitter.com/theannathered
Farmers’ Market
August 22, 2010
Posted by AnnaTheRed in Everything else Tags: farmers' market
2 comments
PAX is less than 2 weeks away!
YES! My boyfriend and I are going to PAX Prime in Seattle this year!
We were so extremely amazed, satisfied, and moved by PAX East when we went in March, we decided to go to PAX Prime, non-work related and completely for our pleasure. It’s going to be so much fun!!
I’ve been working on something to bring to PAX! But, I’m not sure if I can finish it, so I’m not going to post it here just yet to save myself from embarrassment… Besides, this is a bento blog, and I feel like I should write something food related for a change. 
My boyfriend and I are a 3 minute walk away from Grand Army Plaza in Brooklyn. We totally don’t take advantage of living so close to Grand Army Plaza like we should. They have farmers’ market every Saturday morning and you can get so much fresh local produce food there.
We usually sleep in on Saturday morning, but we got up early and went there last Saturday. The food we got there was so good that we decided to go to the farmers’ market again this morning.
I’m not going to lie. I don’t always know what’s in season. If you go to a regular supermarket, you can tell which food’s in season by a slight difference in price. But at a farmers’ market, it’s so clear and easy to know which food’s in season because you just see it EVERYWHERE! It’s perfect for a lazy food lover like me.
Peaches are in season!
We had some and they were absolutely amazingly juicy. You bite into a peach, and it kind of explodes with juiciness and melts away in your mouth. It was sensational.
Sweet corns are in season!
We boiled them, and ate it with a bit of butter and salt. It was very sweet.
Tomatoes are in season!
Unfortunately, we didn’t get any. There were just so many different kinds of tomatoes we’ve never even heard or seen before and we couldn’t pick one! We might look up a good recipes for tomatoes and get them later this week.
Heirloom tomato. It looks so pretty I don't think I can eat it.
Also this is one of my favorite pickles you could get at farmers’ market and also at Whole Foods.
Windy city wasabeans by Rick’s Pick. They’re not as hot as you’d think from the name. They’re crispy and you can’t stop once you start eating it. The Whole Foods at Union Square used to carry them but they didn’t have them the last time I was there. I got this one at the farmers’ market at Grand Army Plaza. They have so many different great pickles and you can get them online too! Go check out their site! (You can also check the list of their retail partners in your area.)
My boyfriend’s been making lunch for both of us recently, and he loves avocado.
Delicious avocado, turkey, lettuce, cheese and mayo sandwich by my boyfriend.
Scrambled egg and avocado on a toast by my boyfriend.
I feel spoiled but he looooves cooking and not lazy like I am. Maybe he’ll start making bento someday…
IKEA hack!
August 9, 2010
Posted by AnnaTheRed in Everything else Tags: IKEA hack
6 comments
Once again, I haven’t been doing much bento making but I have a little surprise for bento loving people tomorrow. But for those who are just bored, read on!
We’ve been trying to “finish” our apartment since we got a little free time now. We moved into our place February 2009. We unpacked, got furniture and our place was 80% done within a week! Then a year and a half passed…
We were using an IKEA TV stand I got for free when I moved into my old apartment. It had four fixed shelves and it’s served its purpose, but if you’re a gamer and like to watch import DVDs like us, you know you need to have a media center that’s almost custom made for your Xbox 360, PS2, PS3, Wii, GameCube (which basically a decoration now), a multi-region DVD player, and all those plastic paraphernalia for the games to fit in it.
The most important thing about getting a TV stand for game consoles is ventilation. Game consoles get really hot!! The PS2 had an infamous problem in which the console would get so hot that if you were using it in a hot room, it’d just shut down. During the Summer my boyfriend used to stick his PS2 into the fridge for a while to cool it down before he could play it.
The second most important thing is accessibility. If you have your Xbox 360, PS3 and Wii hooked up to your computer and TV, you know how messy the space behind the consoles can be. If you have a back panel on the TV stand and a cord or wire gets loose, it’s a pain in the butt to fix.
We didn’t want to spend too much money on the furniture, so we measured almost all TV stands in IKEA to find a good TV stand. But the one we wanted to get was a bit too pricey for IKEA furniture ($250!!), and still not exactly what we wanted. So I searched around IKEAhacker.com and found the perfect solution.
The original hack was a LACK table with L-brackets which holds the middle section of consoles and electronic equipment with copper tape. (See the website for how they did it.) But I found out that the Container Store in NYC will cut their elfa wire rack for free. The elfa shelving system wasn’t exactly the cheapest option, but they are very sturdy, so we decided to splurge ourselves and paid about $11 per rack.
A little bit of drilling and screwing and voila!
For now, I only have the PS3, Xbox 360, Wii and PS2 in this hookup, but I'm going to put my multi-region DVD player and add another rack under the Xbox 360 and put a Wii fit board.
The rack from the side. (I will take care of the cords behind the table...)
I was originally going to use a screw and bolt to secure the wire rack onto the L-brackets, but I ended up using a wire because that's what I had in my toolbox. It works perfectly fine! If you don't move your electronics around too much, even a little twisty will do a good job.
I wanted to have the lower shelf be the same as the top shelf which is supported by L-brackets, but the first time I had the wire rack cut, I made a huge mistake, and it came out too short to use the L-brackets with. T_T “Measure twice cut once” had totally slipped out of my mind. I was a sculpture major in the School of Visual Arts, and I had built staircases, rooms, etc… so I was pretty embarrassed by this. But I didn’t want to waste the wire racks, so I bought 10-inch nuts and hung the shorter rack from the top rack, securing the rod with washers and bolts.
The mistake aside, I do like the industrial look. I might add L-brackets where the bottom rack is, and place wooden or metal rods across it to support the shelf's weight though.
Now, if you’re thinking of doing this, I want you to know one thing…
The legs of LACK table are hollow inside! The leg is made with 1/4 inch thick piece of particle board.
I realized this when I was pre-drilling the holes in the legs, and it was AFTER I already got the wire rack cut. I really wish the original hacker mentioned it in his hack. The wire rack is sturdy but not super light and the Xbox 360 and PS3 are pretty heavy. So I was worried that the screws on L-brackets would come out if I put anything heavy on it. I’m always worried about how much weight a screw/nail can hold, so maybe I’m just paranoid. It’s been a week, it’s not loose and it’s holding up fine. But I won’t recommend putting a bunch of heavy stuff on it. If you have the right tools, you can just cut a lighter wire rack or wood piece for the rack.
Anyway the total cost of this hack is…
TV stand with one rack
IKEA LACK table — $7.99 each
L-brackets — under $2.00 for 4 pieces
elfa wire rack — $11.99 (I had a 16-inch deep, 24-inch wide rack cut to 21 1/2 inch wide for the top rack)
Total — about $22 before tax
TV stand with two racks
IKEA LACK table — $7.99 each
L-brackets — under $2.00 for 4 pieces
elfa wire rack — $11.99 each
10-inch nuts, washers and bolts — about $10
Total — about $32 before tax
Even with the hollow legs, this little table is actually extremely sturdy. We have a 46-inch flat screen TV on it, but it won’t wobble at all. Just make sure you screw the legs onto the table really tight.
Since I’m doing my IKEA-hacked furniture, I’m going to post some pictures of my other hack.
When we moved in, I wanted to a get coffee table that had a lot of storage space. We have at least 2 controllers for each game console, and we wanted to keep them very close to our sofa. So we got this coffee table which has pretty big drawers on the both ends.
RAMVIK Coffee table - before hacking
But the problem was that I didn’t want to put this box-like coffee table directly on the floor. So we got legs from IKEA ($10 for 4 pieces, I used 6 pieces), and screwed them onto the bottom of the coffee table.
Hacked! Now off the floor!
It has a glass top and you could put your favorite photos, prints and such between the table and the glass top. But I wanted to display my boyfriend’s alphabet robot toys he has had since he was little. So I got a bunch of Rubik’s cubes online for very cheap, and put them between the table and the glass top.
They are very cheaply made, and not very good as Rubik's cubes, but they make a great and nerdy glass top riser.
Can you spot a wireless WaveBird? 
I love the drawers on this table. They’re HUGE and hold tons of stuff. The picture is the inside one of the drawers. These are only the half of controllers we have. I keep my boyfriend’s school journal from when he was 5~12 years old at the bottom storage part. It’s so much fun to read and look at his drawings.
The next one isn’t really a hack, but when we moved in, we also got this shoe bench thing from IKEA. I wasn’t crazy about the country look, so I decided to make cushions for it. First I bought foam and blue fabric. I found images of the stars and mushrooms from Super Mario Bros., blew it up, cut felt, sewed it onto the blue fabric. Then I made cushion covers with the fabric.
One side is a Mario mushroom.
The other side is the star.
I put a zipper so I can even wash the cover.
I like mixing them up though.
So yeah, a little tweak here and there can make your boring furniture unique and very practical! Don’t be afraid to modify your furniture, and more great ideas for IKEA hack, check out ikeahacker.com!
For more pictures of my IKEA hack, visit IKEA hacked furniture and other stuff! set on my flickr page.
Happy Birthday to me!
July 6, 2010
Posted by AnnaTheRed in Everything else Tags: random stuff
4 comments
Before I start blabbing about my birthday…
I managed to make the bentos for the Dream Bento Contest! You can see them at EpiCute and My Food Looks Funny.
They just posted them today, and I’ll write a blog post about them later.
Anyway, those who are following me on Twitter might know that July 3rd was my birthday!
Since it was my birthday, I tried to tweet as much non-important information about what I was doing as I could (with a total of 4 tweets! I guess I’m very bad at this.), because other days I probably wouldn’t have much stuff to tweet.
My boyfriend made me a birthday card as usual. 
My boyfriend, me, my cat and her favorite/creepy panda toy
He got me a new digital camera, the Panasonic Lumix ZR1!
Red and shiny
I own a Canon PowerShot SD600 and always carry it in my bag. My boyfriend uses a Canon Rebel XT to take photos of my bento, and I also have an old SLR which I rarely use. I usually don’t get new gadgets until they completely break down, but I’ve been complaining about how it’s hard to take photos with my PowerShot in low light. So he got me a Lumix because it’s supposed to be a good low light camera. It’s got all sorts of settings, from portrait setting with a slimming effect, babies, food, pest, etc… I still haven’t figured out what everything does yet, but I’m going to learn everything about my camera this time!
We had one more movie from the NY Asian Film Festival we needed to see, and we decided to go see some other movies we haven’t had the time to see. The first movie we went to see on Saturday was Jackie Chan’s new film, “Little Big Soldier”, starring Jackie Chan and also was written by Jackie Chan.
Sorry for the quality of the photo. This was taken inside the dark theater with my cell phone camera.
It was surprisingly well written for a martial artsy movie based on Chinese history. Unfortunately, Jackie doesn’t show off his moves that much in this film but we enjoyed it. Like all his other films there were outtakes in the end of the film. The film itself kind of ends on the sad note, so the outtakes were especially funny.
The second movie we saw was “Iron Man 2.” I know we’re very late, but we don’t like crowded theaters so we tend to watch blockbuster movies a while after it comes out. The movie was fun as we expected.
The third movie was “Prince of Persia.” It’s based on a video game and had a huge budget so we wanted to see what they came up with. When they were promoting this film, there was no mention about the game, so we weren’t expecting to see any game elements in this film other than Dastan (the main character, played by Jake Gyllenhaal) jumping across wooden poles and some climbing. So we giggled when the camera showed what the characters needed to do to do stuff like open doors, sometimes with narrated instructions by the princess just like in the game. In some scenes, it almost felt like we were watching the tutorial for the game. We felt like the movie had too many climaxes and too many “looking into the eyes, about to kiss” scenes. It was pretty silly.
Not so exciting photo of my movie tickets? But they have my birthday on them, so they're special to me.
After the movies, we went to Minca for dinner!
Best. Birthday Dinner. Ever.
We also went to Minca on my birthday last year. I usually don’t like eating hot food in hot weather, but ramen is an exception. Any season is good for ramen.
After dinner we stopped by at Best Buy where I bought myself “Super Mario Galaxy 2″ with a gift certificate my friend gave me for my birthday! I was encouraging/making my boyfriend play Uncharted 2 online multiplayer during the long weekend because they were doing a double-cash event where you could earn twice as much in-game cash as usual, and I love watching him earn money and level up. So we haven’t played Mario Galaxy 2 yet, but I can’t wait to play it!
Again, shot with my cell phone camera in the dark living room.
It was the best birthday ever! As usual.
This doesn’t have to do with my birthday, but we saw this posted ALL OVER in East Village.
I took this photo on July 3rd. The posters looked very new.
Walking from Union Square we probably saw at least 30 of them on the way to Minca (5th street between Avenue A and B). I can feel the owner is very desperate, and I know how it feels when your dog/cat goes missing. So I’m going to post it in here, hoping that people who live in NY and also read my blog tell their friends, and pay closer attention to a dog wandering on the street.
Well, I hope everyone had a great long weekend. Make sure you check the bentos I made for the Dream Bento Contest at EpiCute and My Food Looks Funny!
Oh noes!
July 3, 2010
Posted by AnnaTheRed in Everything else Tags: random stuff
2 comments
As you may notice, the bento for “Dream Bento Contest” didn’t happen on July 1st!
Oh noes!
(*It’s Shiva again in the photo. And my other old kitty Fu-jin in the back.)
The deadlines for many other projects and a business meeting (?) fell on around the same time, I just couldn’t do it. T_T Argh! I feel awful missing a deadline. And it’s completely my fault. But the people at EpiCute and My Food Looks Funny are very understanding and forgiving, and they extended the deadline to the 5th. So yes, I’m still making it. Or “them.”
All the projects I was super busy with are non-work related, so I’m tired but not stressed out and I’m super excited! Hopefully I can write about these projects in the future.
I’ll be back to blog more later.
Have a happy fourth of July, everyone!
