Booties for your footsies

'I see booties!  They're rubber.  You can use them like galloshes, but they're easier to slip your feet into.  Make them strange looking enough that people will realize they're for private, in-home use, not to wear to the market.  Did I mention the feet holes must be extra large?  And what's great is when you're done cleaning you can cut a whole in the toes and use them as pipes.'

---The creator of Japanese cleaning booties (as imagined by Ajumma)

Bars, bars, bars

If a dessert represented your home state, what would it be?  I'm from Minnesota.  I say that s'mores and lemon bars generally represent the Land of 10,000 Lakes.  Slate Magazine disagrees (slightly).  Writer L.V. Anderson tasked herself with naming official desserts for all 35 states (15 of them already had them).  According to her, seven layer bars represent Minnesota don't cha know!  She may be right on this one.  Seven layer bars made appearances at every church event, funeral, holiday party, and potluck I attended growing up in the ice box state.  Apparently Germans and Scandinavian Americans love the combination of chocolate chips and coconut.

Illustration by Jess Fink

Daniel, Emma, and Rupert

Photo via Business Insider

* Origami wall flowers *

We get keys to our new, one bedroom apartment tomorrow.  I've been freaking out about how we'll fit all of our stuff into the space.  While it has more cupboard space in the kitchen than our current abode, it's sorely lacking in closets.  (Plus we found a guinea pig dumped on the grass a few weeks ago, which means we now have a gigantic cage on IKEA tables, a plastic bin full of hay and pellets, a stockpile of polar fleece, and (truly the piece de resistance) a full size plastic trash can for her refuse.)  I wonder where the hell we're going to put her items, plus our books, coolers, ironing board, mini Christmas tree, box of ornaments, framed art, my husband's office furniture, electronics, volleyball net, and his knick knacks from his Army days.  But, I digress. 

Every wall in our new apartment is white.  I'd like to spruce things up with adhesive wall decals.  I am thinking of buying origami wall flowers by MyVinilo USA.  They remind me of a Korean bojagi pattern.  I can even select my own custom colors!

Previously on Ajumma's Pad
Bojagi mania
We sold our house!
Before and after: Ajumma's kitchen

How to say "ukulele"

Right way to say ukulele: OO-KOO-LEH-LEH

Wrong way to say ukulele: yoo-koo-lay-lee

We Americans have really mucked up the word ukulele, like like how we call karaoke CARRIE OKIE.

Previously on Ajumma's Pad

How to say Kim Yuna's name

That's how they say it (Steven Yeun and Sung Kang)

Hoosier kitchens appeal to the clean freak in me

 

In the 1920s and 30s, Hoosier cabinets helped homeowners (read: the woman of the house) to stay organized in the kitchen.  Everything was off the floor allowing easy sweeping and mopping.  (I get a serious case of the willies thinking about spaces under modern-day stoves and refrigerators.)  My dad uses a Hoosier cabinet base and table in his art studio.  Someday I hope to inherit these pieces.

Previously at The Pad: I'd totally live here: Bluff Park
I'd totally live here: Hong Kong
I'd totally live here: Ortega-Vigare adobe
Heck yeah, I'd live here: Echo Park

Other home features:
Newport Beach cottage makeover
Neutra home my idea of heaven
San Diego Cinderella home for sale
One house, three exteriors
Venice home restaged, back on market
Dream midcentury house: 1966 post and beam
Report: Lee Snijders at Home & Garden show 

Photos courtesy of 1924 Hoosier Kitchen, PR Log, Live Auctioneers, Etsy blog, Pinterest, and Gallery Hip

♥ Daniel Henney, animal advocate ♥

World news has been utterly depressing lately.  A bright spot is Daniel Henney's support of animal adoption and spaying and neutering of pets via PETA.  Thank you, Daniel Henney.  Aja, aja fighting!

What celebrity would play you?

If you had to cast an actor or actress to portray you in a movie, who would you choose?  While writing features on three colleagues, I asked two females and one male this question. Their answers were Scarlett Johansson, Kristen Bell, and Daniel Radcliffe.  Fascinating to me is that all three colleagues are Asian American.  Apparently their essences can best be captured by blondes and a guy with giant blue eyes.  I'd choose comedienne Charlyne Yi to play me.  Granted she's now thinner and comes off as more endearing than myself.  She's an actress, though, so I'm sure she could pump up the paranoia and hostility needed to play me.

Update: I asked my husband if Charlyne Yi could play me in a movie, and spun around my laptop to show him her photo.  His reaction?  "OH MY GOD.  Yes!"

Photo via Zimbio

Words I learned recently

I am now making an effort to note and remember words that are new to me.  I usually come across new vocabulary when reading news articles.  To make new words stick I have to read them and then immediately look up their meanings.  If I don't do that, the words become, '...that D-word that means a place that is bad and ugly like in Blade Runner.'  Pronunciation guides in dictionaries are amusing because how many English speakers actually understand them?  They're like using hand signals while riding a bike. Riders can use them, but unless others understand what the signals mean they're pretty much usless.

Rod Man loves his Mexican neighbors

Rod Man dished on his Mexican neighbors on Last Comic Standing, last night.  He had me howling.  I am moving to a ritzier neighborhood in Orange County next weekend.  We're moving to minimize my commute to work.  I'm already lamenting the loss of our working class Asian and Mexican neighbors (although many of the Asians drive like sh*t), the eloté cart that a couple occasionally rolls down our street, and being so far from our favorite fish taco restaurant.

Watch:Rod Man and Mexican neighbors

Previously on Ajumma's Pad:
¡Viva eloté!

Pic via Vegas News

Farewell to Robin Williams

We all have our favorite Robin Williams roles.  They seem to vary by age.  My twenty-something companions like the comic in Aladdin and Mrs. Doubtfire.  I favor Robin Williams' quieter roles such as his portrayal of English professor John Keating in Dead Poets Society (1989) and real-life neurologist Oliver Sacks in Awakenings (1990).  It's a shame Williams' internal pain and hopelessness reached the point he no longer wanted to go on.  I'm thankful for the many characters he brought to life, and appreciate how he positively affected people across socioeconomic and color lines with his entertaining and philanthropy.

Actually, one of my favorite Robin Williams moments is one of his more physical ones.

Photos via Pauline Hughes Ceramics, Reason & Reflection, FW, and Walk in the Dust

Returning to "Breaking Bad"

"Felina," the Breaking Bad series finale aired in September 2013.  The grand finale of five ridiculously intense seasons left me completely satisfied.  I had no desire to read anything about the episode, the stars, or reactions from other viewers.  This was the opposite of how I'd been operating as the AMC series progressed, scouring messages boards for posts by BB fans. However, after a year's hiatus I found myself taking great delight in Glenn Whipp's interview with Breaking Bad creator Vince Gilligan and the show's stars Aaron Paul and Bryan Cranston.  The trio quips about what happened to Jesse once -- SPOILERS!!!! --he busted down the gates of the supremacist compound.  They also discuss alternative fates for master chemist Walter White.  My only bone to pick is I feel they exaggerated the threat Gale posed, but Gilligan is the show's creator and harbors in his mind the corners Gale could have turned given the chance.

Read the L.A. Times interview.

Previously on Ajumma's Pad:
Breaking Bad stars out and about
I'm seriously addicted to Breaking Bad
If I were Giancarlo Esposito
Men in cars
Men in pork pie hats
Breaking Bad stuff I like from the web

Photo from Business Insider