~ More Fun and Weird Japanese Products ~

I was reading The Beading Gem and just fell in love with these cute bejeweled chopsticks Pearl wrote about. They are retractable too!

These chopsticks are sold at Japan Trend Shop, which I wrote about previously. So, I looked around again and found some more cool and/or funny stuff! First, here's something for your cup-of-noodles, the cupman! Here's the description: "This is one of those fun, cool products that only Japan can make. From designer Akira Mabuchi, theCupmen fits snugly onto the lid of your pot of instant noodles. Not only does he keep the flap closed while the noodles are heating up, he also changes color to white as the temperature of the paper rises, letting you know three minutes have elapsed. Waiting for your noodles to be ready has never been so fun". I love it, but it's a $58 for 3 and it's $16 for shipping! If I have much money to buy stuff like this, I wouldn't be eating cup-of-noodles.

I also love this Zojirushi Zutto rice cooker! This will look awesome in any modern kitchen! It's cheaper on Amazon though.

This one is weird! From the website: "The Beauty Voice Trainer helps give you the dulcet voice you know you've always wanted, in just five minutes a day. The system works in three ways: without training, the human throat is restricted. The specially designed mouthpiece positions the tongue to open the voice passage, allowing a much stronger sound." Really???

This one is weird too.... a beauty bottom cushion: "Say “sayonara” to secretary spread, the Beauty Bottom Cushion from Cogit promises to maintain and encourage a shapely bum while you work. Sound too good to be true? This chair cushion works by guaranteeing correct posture, properly aligning your pelvis and spine, which in turn ensures that your bottom muscles become, and stay, taut enough to bounce a 100 yen coin off of. " I wouldn't mind trying it though.

This one is funny. A Tokyo hairstyle wig for men!

Of course, they have one for women too.

This one is pretty cool though. It's a paper cherry blossom tree! Add "magic water" and it'll bloom within a couple of hours and last for about a month!

Ok, I don't know who wants this. It doesn't sound appealing to me at all. It turns your bath water into "Honey": "Honey Bath Gel turns your bath water to a thick, sensual collagen-infused gel just minutes after adding it! With seven colors available, match the flavor to your mood and relax in the tub on your own, or (even better!) with someone special. " Weird!

Which one do you think is the weirdest?

~ Dim Sum at Asian Delight in Silver Spring ~

There aren't a lot of dim sum restaurants in the DC/VA/MD area. Some are pretty horrible, but there are a few that are good. One of my new favorite dim sum places is Asian Delight in Silver Spring. They just opened in April and the inside is so pretty! On the weekends, they even have the dim sum rolling around in carts like the traditional style!


Asian Delight has a big variety of dim sum to choose from. Steamed, pan fried, deep fried and lots of baked desserts too! Just check out these pictures and try not to drool on your keyboard! This is eggplant stuffed with fish and shrimp.


Here are some steamed dishes.



Chinese broccoli. Very healthy!


My mom loves dessert, so we got a lot! This was really good. There's like peanuts and other yummy sweetness inside this soft bun.


This is Tofu Flower. It's basically very soft and silky tofu in syrup. It's very good and even though it has syrup in it, it is healthy I think. The tofu balances it out.


I don't remember what this is called, but it's a lil bit sweet and it feels bouncy like tapioca balls.


More buns! These are the BBQ pork buns. Yum Yum!


I also love the rice noodles with the fried dough inside. But I forgot to take a picture. You need to specially order it. The wait staff is very nice. Their service is so much better than most Chinese restaurants. Let me know if you try this place and what your favorite dishes are!

~ Wedding Cupcakes from Cake Dreams ~

It was hard to decide between Georgetown Cupcakes and Cake Dreams for my wedding cupcakes. But, at the end, I picked Cake Dreams because it was just closer. The price was about the same. I got the cupcake tree on Save On Crafts.com. Here's my purple and yellow cupcake tree! I wish I have better pictures of the whole tree, but I don't know where I put them.


I spraypainted the cardboard tree with acrylic, non-toxic spray paint from Michaels. It took 2 bottles! Then, I used double sided tape to put ribbons around the circular disks. I didn't like the spray paint very much. It took a few coats and it was still uneven. I think putting wrapping paper on it would have had better results. By the way, if anyone wants this cupcake tree, let me know. It can be reused for sure.


I have a 8lb cake on top. I was going to put some organza flowers on top, but I forgot. There was space to put some around it though. One of the reasons I picked Cake Dreams was because they can make this cake for me to put on top. This way, we have a cake to cut. Though we actually didn't cut the cake. But that's another story. Can you tell there are 2 flavors?


This is lemon with regular yellow cake.


This is peanut butter with yellow cake. I love them both!


Everything was awesome! I had a lot left over though. I ate cupcakes every day for a week! That's right, the cupcakes still tasted awesome even after a week being in the fridge. So, if you want cupcakes for your special occasions, head over to Cake Dreams. The owner, Michele, is very nice. She sat down with me and found out exactly what I wanted. She even ordered special cupcake wrappers because I wanted yellow wrappers. I had to pay extra though. It was worth it. They look so cute! She's also very flexible. I had a last minute color and flavor change and she was very accommodating. She was also very clear with my order and provided a detailed invoice. Everything was great. Thanks Michele!

~ Back and Married! ~

Wow! It has been a month since I last blogged. Guess what I did!!


It's been a crazy month and there are a lot of food, and wedding stuff I would like to write about. But, first, a short post about the outfits I wore on my wedding day. First, my mom and my Auntie Tina said I have to wear a brand new red pajamas to bed the night before. Should I wear it every year for our anniversary?


Even though it was 90 degrees at 9:30am, I had to wear that red pj underneath this super traditional Chinese wedding dress. Good thing I only had to wear it for the Chinese tea ceremony! Also a Chinese tradition to walk underneath a red umbrella held by a woman with a good life (I think?). That was fun :)


Here's a sneak peak of some pictures the photographer took before we went to the church. The wedding dress was a rental, but it was brand new! I was the first to wear it so I felt special :)


This is a dress I changed into during the banquet. Another red Chinese dress. This one was custom made for me when I went to China a few months ago.


Last dress is just a lavender, sparkly, puffy evening gown for the cake, bouquet toss and saying thanks and good byes to the guests. Note how tired I looked. I had been up for 15 hours by then.


I have learned a lot from planning this wedding. I will be talking about the venues we chose, some DIY wedding projects this week. I know a few of you are planning weddings too! Let me just say that things go by quickly! First tip? Don't procrastinate! :)

~ I Love LanoLips Lip Ointments! ~

I know I am not supposed to shop anymore. I know I know I know! I really need to stop reading all the beauty blogs because they always make me want to shop! I was reading Lipglossiping and I saw an article about LanoLips with all the benefits and swatches and I was sold! I had a mild obsession with lip glosses a few years back. I have suppressed it for a while, but it really flared up when I read the article. So, I shopped around and got these.


Basically, these are only sold in Australia. There were about 3 websites that sold these and I ended up buying from Addicted2LipBalm because they have packages which are a pretty good deal. Plus they have 10% off for first time buyers and free gifts! I became a Facebook fan and just in time to see that they were giving away free Palmer's Cocoa Butter Dark Chocolate and Cherry Lip Butter. I didn't even know Palmer's made lip products!



Here's the other free gift I got. Haven't tried it, but I will. :) It looks so yummy!


Anyway, I got these in Dark Honey, Rhubarb, Apple, Sunshine and the original 100% pure Lanolin. So far, I have only tried Rhubarb, Apple and the original. I love Apple! It looks really red in the tube, but it's a beautiful sheer color on the lips. It looks like what I would like my natural lip color to be. Rhubarb is also pretty nice. They are all very sheer and I think they looked more sheer on me than the pictures I see on Lipglossiping. But I wasn't building it up for color. I also love how my very long hair doesn't stick to my lips when the wind blows my hair onto my face. That's a big plus for me. Another big plus is the SPF15. It's not much, but at least it's something. None of the lip products I own right now has SPF so that justifies my purchase!


I think I bought way too many. But, it's ok. I am going to share with my mom. And maybe my cousins if they are nice. Lipglossiping stated that the original can be used to eczema so I may share some with my friends who have eczema. Or maybe, I should have a blog sale and sell all the stuff I got from Hong Kong that I will probably not use like nail art stickers, boots that are too small for me, pandora style bracelets, earrings and such. Dilemmas, dilemmas :)

~ I Ate Momo at Ma & I Thai Restaurant ~

Yes, that's right. I ate Momo. It was yummy!


I don't know why that sushi roll is called Momo. It doesn't even have peach in it (momo means peach in Japanese). But, I saw it and I just had to have it. I never had asparagus in sushi before It was pretty good!


If you want to try Momo too, then head over to Ma & I in the South Loop of Chicago. It's a cute little place on Michigan between 13th and Roosevelt. The food was good. The staff was polite and service was quick. What I love the most is the layout though. They have these huge windows that were open when we were there. It was a nice, quiet Chicago evening and it just felt great to eat in that relaxing, urban environment.


Besides Momo, I also tried their curry. It was decent. Not too spicy. Overall it's a great little place to go to. If I live in the South Loop, I would probably walk over there for a relaxed dinner a few times a month. Sometimes, I do envy the urban life.

~ Stats from My First Month on Artfire ~

It's been a month since I paid my $14 to Artfire for a Pro account. No, I am not abandoning Etsy. But for selling low priced items like supplies, just the listing fee is daunting for Etsy. For example, I like to sell these lover dolphin brass bells as a package of 2 because they are cute that way. Listing fee for Etsy is $0.2 which is about 10% of my selling price. I try to make my packages bigger so all my items are at least $3.


Even so, I have tons of supplies to list. Right now, I have 221 items in my shop. 221 x 0.2 = $44. That's about $44 in listing fees!!! Granted, it's not like I list 220 items a month, but still. This kind of math makes Etsy look pretty bad as a venue for selling supplies. But I think, that's the only major disadvantage for Etsy. Yeah, Artfire has global editor and coupon creator and all that. But, I just like how my Etsy shop look and feel. This just doesn't look good to me.


Anyway, let's see some stats. It's pretty much expected that I would sell more on Etsy since it's a more established shop. However, I closed my Etsy shop for 2 weeks this month when I was on vacation. I left my Artfire shop open. The dollar amount sold on Etsy is about 3x what I sold on Artfire. My Etsy fees was only twice as much as my Artfire monthly fee. I definitely get more traffic on Etsy, about 5x Artfire traffic.


Here's my Google Analytics for Artfire


Google Analytics for Etsy. Note that my Etsy shop was closed during the last 2 weeks of May. During the 2 weeks that it was closed, it was still getting more traffic than my Artfire shop which was not closed.


On a side note, in my Artfire shop, there are 79 (27%) visits resulting from Artfire directly. In my Etsy shop, there were 384 (25%) direct visits. And yes, that's with 2 weeks being closed. So, it looks like there are just less people finding my shop on Artfire. Notice that I didn't say there are less people shopping on Artfire in general because this is just my stats. I can't make a general statement like that with the limited set of data I have. But, if you want to know which community is more active, you can just check the forums. On Etsy, you can always find posts that are less than 1 minute old. On Artfire, that's rare. Maybe Etsians are just more talkative.

In conclusion, I am definitely not making as much money on Artfire. And the monthly fee is not justified at this point. It's still early though. I am going to try it for a couple more months. It is more work to split the tweeting between Artfire and Etsy and having to list items on both sites and keep the inventory in sync. Sometimes, I think the amount I sell doesn't justify the time I spend running the shops. I love running the shops though. But, perhaps a price increase is in order?