Spring Time Hike — North Table Mountain Ecological Reserve

Spring is around the corner! Last year during April, we went on an awesome hike in Oroville. Yip knows how I love fields of wildflowers (my fantasy of twirling like the Sound of Music). He found an amazing spot for us to explore called North Table Mountain. On the other side of Lake Oroville, the snow had not yet melted. But on the North Table Mountain, it was sure spring time and even felt like summer! A nice drive led up to the top of the plateau filled with many different wildflowers, cattle grazing, little critters, plus waterfalls! What appeared to be flat terrain, actually had rolling hills, volcanic rocks, and small canyons. Being out in the wide open field with no shades in hot weather did not make this an easy hike. However, the sight of waterfall next to wildflowers and sea of yellow and green was just so pretty. Peak wildflower blooming season is March and April.

Snow Day with My Cat

Having hibernated through the winter season, we finally got off our butts to do some outdoor activities. While still cold, but with sunshine, we headed north to enjoy some snow! This time, we decided to take our cat Yun Yun on a road trip with us. I’ve always wanted to go on trips with the pets. Although dogs may be more ideal, right now I only have cats, therefore my perfect candidate is Yun Yun for her sense of adventure. We left Bumbe to snooze contently at home, knowing well that any disturbance in his rountine will stress him completely.

On our drive, we saw a turnout at Eldorado National Forest and decided to take a look. Yun Yun was most excited being out of the car and on solid grounds. We attached a leash on her and she immediately took charge exploring her environment. Suddenly the shock underneath her paws were cold and wet and Yun Yun just froze in one place. I held her and she quickly accepted and wanted my warmth and protection. I felt so needed and loved:) Yun Yun perched on our shoulders as we stroll around the winter park. I gave her the detachable furry part of my hood to wear. She looked ever so precious and glamorous. We ended the trip making a snow-kitty. After a day of new experiences, Yun Yun fell asleep on my lap all the way back home.

My Cat is a Bus — Short Clip

Here is something for the fans of Yun Yun. Live action Catbus! Our cat Yun Yun’s favorite activity is to be outdoors. She will wait by the door and meows continuously to go out and play. I usually give in to her cute persistence and let her have some outside time. Thanks to the overwhelming responses to Yun Yun as the Catbus, we have decided to make a short film of our little star, following her adventure. In her famous costume and our backyard serving as a Totoro enchanted forest, Yun Yun roams through the garden, magically appearing and mysteriously vanishes. She is definitely calling all the shots. A very short while of filming, her wardrobe malfunctions and that is the halt of production. Watch it here: https://vimeo.com/58519325 Hope you enjoy this clip! I wonder where this Catbus will take us to next!

Thank you 2012, Hello New Year

Thank you 2012 for all the wonderful memories! Early in 2012, we went on an amazing Asia trip and came back with our busiest year of weddings ever. It was sure worth all the hard work because our film of Tony and Kevin’s Tahoe wedding went viral and is featured on BuzzFeed’s “16 of the Most Beautiful Weddings of the Year”. It even got subtitled in Chinese and English by super international fans! We are so happy everyone is sharing this message of love and hope.

I also like to thank you everyone for making Yun Yun’s Catbus so loved! She now has her own Facebook page, like it here. There will be an update on her soon:)

With our busy year of work, I am grateful for the time to spend with my lovely friends, family, and cats. All the delicious meals, fun day trips, and great stories, I hope will continue. In 2013, we want to simmer down the wedding workload and focus on our personal interests and career. So hopefully, more time to blog for me:) Most of all, I want to thank my sweet boyfriend for completely spoiling me, cooking and packing me lunch every single day! This year my resolution is to cook a lot more and …. get my wisdom teeth pull out.

My cat gone viral

Do you often check your viewer stats on wordpress? Occasionally, I’ll glance at the bar graph knowing that it is pretty consistent. So recently, I became aware of a sudden huge spike over Thanksgiving weekend, increasing to thousands number of visitors for my cat Yun Yun’s Catbus costume. From the looks of it, my pictures are being massively shared on Facebook, Tumblr, and Plurk, with most traffic coming from Taiwan! Whoa, my cat went viral and an international cat sensation! You can read my original post: My Cat is a Bus

There are so many sites sharing, that it’s hard to keep track. Here are a few screenshots where I’m getting all this attention:

people2.com.tw facebook page – Over 7K likes and 4K shares!

http://hak-ka.tumblr.com – Lovely layout of my photos:)

It’s so crazy seeing her cute face everywhere when I go on Google search. And even more crazy how information can spread so fast through the wild world wide web. Here I’m thinking, it’s just me and my computer talking. Anyways, I am overwhelmed and ecstatic for the all the likes, spreading the joy, and thank you for all those who credited me for my work because that is very important to me. Enjoying the 15 minutes!

Also in other good internet news, my company Ipomoea Films is featured on Style Me Pretty California. During springtime, we filmed an absolutely beautiful DIY wedding in Sonora, California at the Union Hill Inn. Our bride and groom are really the best people you’ll ever meet and I am so happy to see their wonderful wedding featured. See their lovely wedding pictures by En Pointe Photography and our sweet wedding video highlight here: http://www.stylemepretty.com/california-weddings/2012/11/27/sonora-wedding-at-union-hill-inn-from-en-pointe-photography/

As for Yun Yun, we are keeping her humble and not letting that inner diva get over her pretty little head:) Again thank you all for liking my work!

Fall Camping — Redwood National Park

Redwood National Park is one my favorite place to camp. It is absolutely breathtaking and amazing being surrounded by the tallest and biggest trees ever. My bf and I went camping in the fall time and the weather was cool as the park sat along the coastline, yet moist. We experienced some rainfall, but being deep inside the woods, all the gigantic trees gave us good coverage.

We stayed at the Jedediah Smith Campground. Since this trip was off season, there was no reservation taken and our host allowed us to circle around the campground to find the site we liked. We decided to be nearby the river and set up tent between two huge trees to shield us from the rain. The camp site was beautiful, spacious, and peaceful. It had a nice cobblestone wall separating each campsites and acted as our front door to the home sweet home for the next few days. There were hardly any other campers around, which gave us lots of privacy and the whole park to ourselves. Our “backyard” with the river view had lots to explore like cute little frogs.

Hiking in the redwoods was such an unbelievable feeling. It was completely shocking, quiet, and time just about stopped for a while. Simply just you and nature. I came realized how small I am in comparison to this world. Some of the hiking trails were closed for the season, so we basically wandered around the lush woods, thinking we were following a trail and losing it again. I was hoping, “Let’s not get lost … let’s not go too deep.” Worried about my lack of survival skills, despite a marathon of watching Man, Woman, Wild, we were swallowed by the forest and not a person in sight. Yip would say, “Let’s walk for a little more” and a little became hours. Definitely quite an adventure, and we made it back to camp happy and hungry.

Our other favorite thing about camping aside from wondrous scenes nature offers is Camp Food! I love Yip’s cooking and so thankful he does it all. During our trip, he cooked a whole chicken, eggs and bacon for breakfast, steak and rice stew, plus perfectly baked potatoes. I contributed by making s’mores:) Plus leftovers on the ride back home were super delicious!

Our tent set up kept us perfectly dry! We really want to go back again because there is so much of this beautiful park to explore.

Have a Happy Thanksgiving!

My Cat is a Bus

Happy Halloween presenting my cat, Yun Yun as the Catbus! This year’s costume is from Miyazaki’s animated film My Neighbor Totoro. It is a classic children film about two sisters’ discovery of magical creatures and the adventures they have together. Definitely a CUTE movie … just like my kitties:) So I’m excited to dress up my cats as the Catbus and Totoro. They have the perfect resemblance and spirit of these characters.

Making the costumes was the most fun and I’m happy it turned out so well. I know dressing Bumbe as Totoro will be simple. He is already fat and grey. So I just plucked a leaf, taped it to his head and done! For the Catbus costume, I had to cut out felt fabric and cardboard, added extra legs, sewn and hot glued everything together. Plus the little mice with sparkly eyes act as headlights, which made for the perfect finishing touches. I think this is their best costumes yet! (Although Bumbe and Yun Yun look cute in their other homemade costumes too!)

Can’t wait to see everyone’s Halloween costumes!

Celebrating Moon Festival

Happy Moon Festival! This year I am making an effort to celebrate Moon Festival on my own. Since moving away from home for a few years now, certain holidays have just been casually acknowledged. Moon Festival is such a great holiday to bring family and friends together, it is definitely a tradition I want to keep and pass along. In my childhood, we will lay out fruits, tea, and mooncakes on a table by an open window facing the moon. At night, mom will gather us together to observe the bright, beautiful full moon with lit lanterns and candles. Then we’ll go ahead and eat throughout the night until bedtime. In my nostalgic endeavor, Yip and I went to the Asian markets to buy mooncakes and an assortment of fruits. Here are some festive fruits we got:

Longan “Dragon Eye” (Doesn’t it look like an eyeball with its lacquered black seed)

Star Fruit

Dragon Fruit

Lotus seed paste and egg yolk mooncakes are Yip’s favorites. Most friends I know simply eat a slice and we are good for the year! Yip is the only one I know who can eat a whole box of mooncakes by himself! So it was difficult for him to wait and not eat them before I got to perform all my celebratory duties like taking these pictures. We celebrated in our community Movie in the Park event. Instead of lanterns, kids here were running around with glow sticks:) With the beautiful moon in sight, we had a little picnic with mooncake and fruits while watching Back to the Future.

Updates plus coconuts

Yes it’s been a long time… finally feeling some urge to blog again. So what have I’ve been up to these couple of months? Short answer : work. Business is doing well, which means busy. My company Ipomoea Films have increased our number of engagement sessions and weddings this year. Thankful for the word of mouth and people liking our work:) We’re attending lots of fun events and then editing, editing, and more editing! Whenever there is a break, I really become a lazy couch potato… One bad news is my Bumbe bike got stolen. I am really sad my personalized bike and birthday gift from Yip is gone:( I’ve been riding it everyday to work for the last 4 years… But the happiest news of all, is my closest friend recently gave birth to her first baby. It’s a boy!

Now that another summer is coming to an end, I’d like to share with you my favorite treat this season, COCONUT!  Coconut water is a great refresher and feel so tropical too! We brought 2 cases of young coconuts to help us manage this crazy heat.

On my moodest day this summer, Yip made this wonderful dessert! It tastes extra creamy when you scoop up the coconut meat with the ice cream.

Vanilla Ice Cream topped with Honey Pecans in a Coconut Shell

Marshmallow Fondant

This past weekend we went camping and grilled some chicken and made s’mores. We had a fun time and finished most of the food we packed, yet we came back home with a pretty full bag of marshmallows. Aside from making rice krispies treats, I have used marshmallows to make fondant. I’m not a great cake baker, but decorating with fondant is lots of fun! Following is a recipe for marshmallow fondant. I made this two years ago during my Ace of Cakes phase. Marshmallow fondant has simple ingredients and easy steps, but makes an extremely sticky mess. Results are absolutely cute!

Marshmallow Fondant
(makes about 2 lb fondant)

16 oz (1 lb) bag of mini marshmallows
2 lb bag of powder sugar
1/2 c Crisco vegetable shortening
2-5 tb water
Food coloring or flavored extracts (optional)

Directions:

1. Melt marshmallows in microwave: add 2 tb water to marshmallows, microwave for 30 seconds and stir. Repeat until marshmallows are melted.

2. Grease hands generously. Place shortening in a bowl for easy access when working.  (The next step will get very sticky.)

3. Add 3/4 bag of powder sugar to melted marshmallows and knead.

4. Add rest of powder sugar and continue to knead.

5. If fondant is dry, add 1/2 tb of water at a time.

6. Once the fondant forms into a smooth, elastic ball, it is ready to be rolled and shaped. To store for later used, wrap it in plastic wrap and place in a cool room or in the refrigerator. Knead soft when ready to use again. Add food coloring or flavoring to color fondant.

Alright, start to play!

A chocolate cake with butter cream frosting and marshmallow fondant. I didn’t have any food coloring and couldn’t figure out how to make the Bumbe figure gray. Yip, so brilliantly suggested to use the black sesame powder that we have in our cupboard. So Bumbe is made with sesame and Yun Yun is made with chocolate! Too cute to eat!