Our weekend with "Stanley"

As most everyone knows my husband Anthony and I are huge hockey fans.   This year marked our sixth year as season ticket holders for the Los Angeles Kings.  Earlier this year we had made a bitter sweet decision to non-renew our tickets.   We are saving for a down payment on a house and every little bit helps.  Thankfully this was THE YEAR for the Kings!!   The Kings won the cup for the first time in franchise history.    We are extremely excited for the Kings, their success this season and that we were there to enjoy it first hand.    It was part of hockey history that was truly a once in a life time experience.

 

In other related news, June 6th marked our third year wedding anniversary.  We had decided that we would travel to Toronto and New York.  Thankfully when we booked our trip a few months ago we had made the decision to postpone the trip until the end of June.  Naturally while in Toronto first on our list is to visit the Hockey Hall of fame.  We were originally a little disappointed knowing that late in the month that the cup would not be there.   Of course we are OK now as the cup will be traveling with the Los Angeles Kings 2012 Stanley Cup champions!!!     Go Kings!!

Well it just keeps getting better for us. Over the weekend a little birdie we know told us where we go see the cup and take pictures.  We went to go meet ‘Stanley’.  

 I am glad he finally made it to LA and I hope he is enjoying his “Hollywood” tour.  I also hope to meet him again... real soon.

Hello Kitty Charms from Strapya World

I have been meaning to write this post for a long while, but just never got round to it  (lazy geek!).

Obsessed with Hello Kitty? Yes I was and I still am! ^_^

I have many Hello Kitty things - stationary, key-rings, stuff from Japan, China and Hong Kong... I can't help it. Hello Kitty became an obsession when I was around 6 or 7 years old when my cousin bought me a stationary set with some glittery Hello Kitty origami paper. I still remember the red pencil rubber that smelt very sweet and exquisite, there was no other rubber like it in the whole of the UK at the time! ^_^

A few months ago (many months that I can remember), I ordered a set of 10 Hello Kitty lucky charms (plus there was 1 free one). If I just ordered one I would get a randomly picked one sent to me, which meant I couldn't get the one I wanted... I think these are limited edition because I couldn't find them on the website anymore. I remembered the parcel got here quite quickly, but it's not until now that I have been able to take any pictures (being an absolutely lazy geek ¬_¬)... 

Here's a lot of pictures of the pretty charms and the box it came in ^_^ ...

Hello Kitty Lucky Charms

Side of the box

The other side of the box

Inside the box with 10 little packages 

One of the packages

A free sweet came with each charm

This is the one I wanted!!

The free one hanged on the box

In my next Hello Kitty post I will show you some of the Hello Kitty stuff that I get from all over!

Website: http://www.strapya-world.com/

Pinning like crazy...

Last fall while planning my sisters baby shower I turned to my friends on facebook for a few ideas.  One of the comments I received a friend told me to check out Pinterest and sent me an invitation.  Once I connected I was amazed at all of the adorable crafts, beautiful things and genius ideas. I was instantly addicted!


So what is Pinterest?  Pinterest is a social site that lets you pin (save) photos from websites and organize them onto boards to share with friends.  Think of it as a google images organized however you want.  People use pinboards to plan their weddings, decorate their homes, and organize their favorite recipes. The best part is the images link to the original site so you have instant access to instructions, recipes, videos, stores etc..


Pinterest is a fun way to discover new creative ideas, gadgets, and get inspiration from other crafty people who share your similar interests.


If you join be sure to check out my pinterest boards here: http://pinterest.com/amriccardi/


I have a Tech board where I pin business ideas, social media tips and geeky things.  You will see several of my favorite infographics some of which may even appear on my blogs.


Be careful its very addictive.    Happy pinning!!

Source: pinterestdresses.com via alease on Pinterest

Making and Trying Ddubokki

What is ddubokki? That's what I wanted to know when I watched a number of Korean dramas! Well it's Korean rice cake cooked in some spicy Korean paste and other ingredients. 

After a number of searches for recipes (there are quite a few), and a search for a small pack which I could try on (I found some in See Woo Supermarket 泗和行 (si wo hong) - in Lisle street)... I forgot the price, I think it was under £2.

Korean Rice Cake - ddubokki

I already had some of the main ingredients - Korean red chilli paste (unfortunately it had some mould on it - because I didn't refridgerate it, but I used part of it that didn't mould - the paste is in the bin now)... One recipe said you can use honey, but most use sugar.

So here's a couple of pictures of my attempt to make ddubokki... I used half the packet of rice cakes. I used honey instead of sugar... And I also used a Japanese fishcake (because I forgot to buy the Chinese ones).

Rice cakes are cooking in hot paste, water and honey with some added Japanese fishcake 

Here's the final dish. I didn't cover it with all the sauce because I was afraid of food poisoning myself from the paste! Yeek!

It was nice - can't say it was spectacular!

In the end did I like it? Well... It was ok I guess. It isn't the best type of food I have had in the world... Or maybe because I wasn't hungry when I ate it.

Update 28/06/2012 - forgot to put the recipe on here...
Ingredients:
Packet of ddubokki (Korean rice cakes)
Korean chilli paste
Honey or sugar
Water
Fishcake (optional)

How to cook:
Here I improvised by reviewing a few recipes online...
1. Add water (about 2 cups) into a pan and bring to boil
2. Add the ddubokki into the water (amount is up to you!)
3. Add 2 teaspoons of Korean chilli paste (I used a new tub in my second attempt)...
4. A teaspoon of honey (I drizzled mine in - so I didn't really use a spoon!)
5. Add fishcake if you want, in my 2nd attempt I added frozen veg - but that's just me being geeky! ^_^
5. Simmer for 5-10 minutes
6. Serve in a bowl (In my second attempt I enjoyed it a lot!!)

Forgot to give myself a rating too:
My geeky rating (for my own cooking): 3.5/5 - rice cakes could have been softer on first attempt and I need to make sure I refridgerate the paste in future!

Good job I brought my eraser...

When you begin to chat up a photo-booth, you know you've lost the plot.

Hello there sexy, oh my,

what sharp corners you have...

Although, as many as you now realise, I've never found the plot. Actually, much like the 'Twilight' novels, I never had a plot in the first place.

I've never had a sparkly boyfriend or a male friend that turns into a werewolf either but hey, let's not go overboard on this whole simile business.

Back to the booth later...

It was that time again... the crew was on their semi-regular night out. 

Conflicting schedules, for the most part, is why they are not regular. 

Anyway, we decided that we were going to go bowling.

So I got dropped off at the beach, and I whapped oot my phone.

CONFESSIONS OF A MOVIE GEEK:

I am not a normal teenager. I honestly can't remember the last time I took my phone, fully charged and topped up, out of the house, let alone the last time I texted someone.

Honestly.

So when I whapped oot the phone... the reaction was... extrodinary?

KRISTINA: Oh my God, Lauren's got her phone!

THE CREW: *Gasps*

 SARA: Topped up?

ME: Yep.

ABIE: Battery charged?

ME: Yep.

Kelly, Kristina and Abie claw for my number whilst I laughed at their reaction.

ABIE: We're away for Jimmy Chungs... We'll phone you when we're finished?

KRISTINA: Okay.

SARA: NO! We'll phone Lauren!

ABIE: Every fifteen minutes! "Hello Lauren, we've just sat down!". "Hi Lauren, we've just got our food." Hey Lauren.... it's jelly-time.". Lauren will be like "Urgh... this is why I don't take my phone!"

ME: Naah, it makes me feel loved!

ABIE:  We'll phone you then, okay?

ME: Oh, my phone isn't on yet...

EVERYONE: *Groans* 

Seriously, a normal teenager I ain't.

I turned on my phone as Kristina, Kelly and I (we had already eaten and didn't need to go to Jimmy Chungs) walked away before hearing someone shout:

SARA: YOU FAIL! *holds up phone*

I look at my phone... I had already missed a call...

Again, I really am a terrible teenager. 

Word of advice:

When you have time to kill, do not spend it in Codonas.

Especially when you have change.

Another thing I learned yesterday is that if you take one of these little guys:

And put it in front of Kelly in a glass box, with nothing but a mechanical claw to get it out, she will spend all of her change on trying to free it, before basically sobbing when she admits defeat.

And when Kristina spies one of these, caught in the same transparent trap:

She will desperately attempt to win it.

She tried countless times, getting closer and closer with each attempt, before the claw began to playfully nip its ass.

I swear, she was close to punching a hole through the machine at one point... this is why those machines should be banned.

We retreated from the grabber machines by climbing over some random pipe thing, as Kristina climbed over, we heard:

RANDOM MACHINE: Oooooh, saucy!

KRISTINA: Thank you! 

From one talking machine to the next, all three of us ended up piling into this tiny wee booth and ended up staying there for twenty minutes, talking to 'Leonardo'.

Basically, the photo-booth took your photo and used 'state of the art technology' to convert it into a drawing before your eyes. This man impersonated famous artists such as Leonardo Da Vinci and 'Rye-bread' ("I don't think that's his name Kelly...") as he 'drew' you.

We watched that damn introduction on what to expect when you put £3 into the machine countless times, laughing at Leonardo's mistakes:

LEONARDO: Oops, didn't mean for that to happen... good job I brought my eraser!

ME: *flirty* Oh, Leonardo!

Instead of trusting that goof to draw us, we took matters into our own hands and took our own photos:

After saying farewell to Leonardo and co, we went for a little wonder outside. Noticing a giraffe (Sara's favourite animal), I asked Kristina to pose on it.

Let's call her Jill the Giraffe.

Not wanting to feel left out, Kelly jumped on a duck.

This photo makes me laugh because

Kelly's legs look so awkward in it

When we met up with the rest of them to go bowling, I showed Sara the photo.

By the sound she made upon viewing it, I'm supposing that she liked what she saw!

We split up into two teams: girls (Sara, Kelly, Abie and I) and the boys plus Kristina (Lewis, Andrew, Kyle and Kristina). Lewis, Kyle and Kristina ended up getting drinks to sip on whilst the rest of us had a casual bowl.

ABIE: We can't have the bumpers up... *glances at me*

ME: *Seeing where this was going* No! Don't you dare!

Abie always brings up the time when I used to slide on my knees to give my shots extra power. I didn't expect to turn into Hercules and split the bumper in two with one of these so called 'power-shots'. I quickly learned how to bowl normally after the guy came out and fixed the bumper... with duct tape.

Oh the shame.

We had a lovely little catch-up, conversations sounding a little bit like this:

KRISTINA: *To Lewis* There's a guy at my work that looks like a bit like you!

LEWIS: Oh, is he good looking?

KRISTINA: ...

LEWIS: ... 

KRISTINA: ...

LEWIS: ... 

KRISTINA: Oh look, it's my turn to bowl.

She comes back after her shot: 

LEWIS: So?

KRISTINA: I suppose... he's not bad on the eye! 

LEWIS: ... *sticks middle finger up*

KRISTINA: What? That's not bad!

As well as:

ME: *Watching Abie and Kristina attempting to bowl through their legs* Chloe managed to get a strike between her legs once... *realises what I'm saying* and that isn't some sort of sexual euphemism.

After a few throws with nothing but gutter balls to show for it, Abie began to get desperate. She hauled the bowling ramp designed for kids and the disabled...

i.e. This thing

...into the middle of the lane and plopped her ball on top of it.

ABIE: Is it straight?

SARA: Yeah.

She rolled the ball... we waited with baited breath.

She managed to roll it right into the gutter. 

She rolled it into the gutter.

I don't think you guys appreciate how unlikely that is, so I'm going to name a few things that are more likely to happen than rolling a ball into the gutter whilst using a bowling ramp:

The grand national gets bored of using horses to 

race and instead jokey's are expected to

ride on dolphins.

A chicken becomes CEO...

of KFC.

David Cameron becomes a sex icon.

All highly improbable, I'm sure you'll agree. But Abie missing the pins beats them all.

I helped her line up the next shot. There was no way I was letting her roll another gutter ball.

I took a  minute or two to ensure it was okay, rolled a tester ball, catching it before it rolled down the lane and even held the ramp for her.

ME: *Holding on tight* Go!

Abie rolls the ball... she hits down seven or eight pins.

We both jump around as if she just won a bowling tournament for Scotland. 

 ME: *To Sara* They grow up so fast.

More photo taking after that, it takes too long to upload them, so I'll post my favourite one of the bunch:

Two of my best buds, love 'em!

Had a lovely walk down the beach with Kristina whilst Sara and Kelly took that photo. There was no-one on the beach (probably due to the fact that it was high tide) and we just got to chat for a wee while.

There's something about the beach, especially

at sunset, that just appeals to me on some

deep, meaningful level.

As always, we ended up at Burger King to get Lewis his cheeseburger.

What can you say? A man's gotta eat.

Lauren xxx

The joys of being a chopstick walrus

When you turn eighteen, people tend to have certain preconceptions of you...

They expect you to be a mature, morally responsible human being who is more than partial to a couple of drinks.

For example, this is deemed perfectly normal

weekend behavior.

Except from if you're at University...

Then it's perfectly normal weekday behavior.

Of course, this isn't the case for many of us. Many of my friends would probably look at the photo above and mistake it for an extremely low budget sci-fi movie attempt at a alien abduction ('You can take my freedom, but you'll never take my keg stand!' is coming to a cinema near you February 31st 2013), and the others are more social drinkers than hardcore alcoholics. 

And as for me? Mature? HA. I was pretending to be a walrus by sticking chopsticks in my mouth. If it helps, Kelly was doing it too... 

We didn't premeditate it. It occurred quite naturally, which might be the most terrifying part of it.

I mean, one minute you're eating your chicken katsu curry like:

And the next.... well:

Hey, I wouldn't have it any other way. I enjoy being an odd-duck.

Daaaayuuum, who's a fluffy bitch?

(Private joke...for Sara's benefit)

Anyway, just decided to pop on here to tell you about the wonderful day I had yesterday with my lovely friends!

Of course, it's just my luck that I only really hung out with each of them separately... I wasn't segregating them or anything! It just happened to work out that way.

First off, I had a large linner/dunch (that's dinner/lunch for the rest of you) with Kelly at Yo! sushi. They insist on asking us if we've been there before, despite the fact that we've been there together more times than most of the staff. 

Kelly decided that no linner/dunch session was fit without a picture of a bloody knee.

To cut a short story even shorter, I'm going to use bullet points, because bullets equal danger, and danger equals speed:

 That's why this guy runs so fast in all

his movies.

• Kelly got drunk after Connor persisted in slipping 'ginger spice' into her drinks. She didn't realise that she was mistakenly referring to the drink as the spicegirl for the entire night.
• Kelly, Kristina, Connor and I decided to walk home.
• Kelly tripped and fell over, before blaming it on a pothole
• Kelly then screamed "I DON'T LIKE HOLES!" and didn't recognise the innuendo 

Anyway, Kelly's Mum had to disinfect her knee in the early hours of Sunday morning. Of course, disinfectant's main reason for existing is to be used as a torture device, but the alcohol numbed all sense of feeling away for her, so she didn't even flinch when her Mum was applying it. 

She decided to take a photo of her knee that night too, you know, because you want to prove to other people that you have battle-scars.

When she woke up later that day, her Mum told her to come beside the sink and she'd disinfect it again. This time, a very hungover Kelly felt it.

KELLY: Arrrgghh, that hurts!

KELLY'S MUM: You weren't complaining last night, and that was fresh!

KELLY: I was drunk!

I can't remember that much of our conversation to be honest... I just remember laughing hysterically for the majority of it. She enjoys doing this thing where she's decided what she's wanting to order and I'm still musing over what I should have, so she presses the buzzer to put me 'under pressure'.

KELLY: Better decide soon!

ME: *flicking through menu* DAMN.

WAITRESS: Can I help you?

KELLY: Can I get a chicken katsu curry please?

ME: Make it two, thank you. *Waitress leave* I hate you! That's so uncool.

Kelly then had to go to work, and I had to stay in town in order to get access to the olympic torch relay concert, so I ended up wandering aimlessly around town. Then I bumped into Kristina.

Love it when life does that. 

She had some time to kill before going to work, so we went for a coffee/hot-chocolate at Pret. 

Kristina was overjoyed with the star of cocoa powder the staff gave her on top of her hot chocolate, so was really upset when it began to melt into the drink itself.

KRISTINA: Did you get it? Did you get it? IT'S DISAPPEARING! Did you get it?!

 BOOM.

It was shortly after that that Kristina had to head to work, and left me alone to lull over my latte. I managed to sneak access to Cafe Rouge's wi-fi (NO REGRETS) and got a hold of Halle on twitter. She said that she was going to the Olympic relay concert, so she'd meet me on Union Street.

I'd say there was a thousand, possibly more, people there, but luckily, I managed to spot her. She was with one of her twitter friends, Gemma, who was absolutely lovely! We were all there for one reason... the pride of Aberdeen and the night's headliner, Emeli Sande.

Coca Cola handed out noise makers that resembled frisbees, the chavs in the night's audience turned them into weapons, the red frisbees of doom smashing into the sides of crowd-member's heads at random. This caused pain for those unlucky enough to get hit and mass hysteria for the rest of us. 

Chav is an alternative spelling for

fear-monger after-all.

Of course, with all those chav's around, a little bit of weed was an inevitability. I don't know how, but as soon as you smell it, you can identify it straight away, even if you've never smelt it before. It's odd. Why even smoke that in a public space? Same goes with the cigarettes. There are kids going about, dammit, just wait a couple of hours and smoke it when you're not surrounded by people!

Rant over...

The concert had lots of things going on. It started off with the red hot chili pipers (Not to be confused with the red hot chili peppers. Sadly, it wasn't them). Then went onto a dance group, then, onto a DJ set with special guests Twist and Pulse. It was this weird sports group after that (they almost dropped the poor gymnast... twice) until, the person we were all waiting for, Sande.

I seriously love this woman's hair

She waved to the crowd as she got on and off stage and, in general, was just a sweetheart. Her set was horrifyingly short but she made her mark on us all... God, can that woman sing.

The torch bearer came on stage after that, look at how proud she looks!

Doesn't that just warm your

heart?

All in all, it was a brilliant day! Just getting to see Kelly, Kristina and Halle would be enough to make me a very happy girl, but getting to meet Gemma and Lucy and see Emeli Sande too... for free? Tipped me over the edge.

Lauren xxx

work from home fridays.

In today's fast-paced world, people are constantly searching for ways to find the perfect work-life balance. The good news is that many companies are starting to offer great benefits, such as flex time, job sharing, and even work-from-home options...   Employers are finding that these benefits allow them to motivate and retain employees that are critical to their operations.

Today many companies primary method of communication is through technology.  Even employees in the same building on the same floor communicate via email, social media, blogs, instant messengers etc...  Many companies take advantage of online meetings, remote computer access, wireless technology, and conferencing systems as a way for employees nationally or globally to join conference or discussions.  No matter where we are in the world, in a clients office, at the airport, or conference, or sitting at home--- where we are physically is no longer a limitation.  We are virtually able to work anytime from anywhere.

Those that are given the opportunity have benefited from the flexibility of working from home--- even if just one day a week.

• Increased productivity: employees that work from home see an increase in productivity due to personal flexibility, commute time is reduced, and work is not limited by the traditional 9-5 work day schedule.

• Extended Knowledge:  Geographically dispersed teams have access to different market opportunities.   These opportunities provide knowledge that can be beneficial to the organization.

• Cost savings- These are cost savings for both the employee and employer, space, equipment, parking, lunches etc.  There is even a possibility of lower health insurance costs.  The link between stress and health has been proven in many studies.  Employees who have more flexibility in schedules tend to be happier.  Happy employee = Healthy employee = Lower Health insurance costs.

Of course there are some disadvantages with working from home. One of the best ways to find out if it is right for you is to start part time.   Work from home Fridays.   Be sure to set (and meet) expectations with your employer!


Would you take advantage of the ability to work from home?  Would you want to do it full time or part time?  How would you convince your employer that this setup makes sense?