How to throw a sushi party

During the Australia Day holiday, we invited Paul's sister and her family and had a sushi party. It's a great way to celebrate our multi-cultural country :-)

Over the last ten years in my life in Australia, I noticed that many Aussies worry about handling raw fish. Of course you should be careful about it, but you don't have to be scared!

Go to a fish shop on the day you're serving. They sometimes have sashimi pre-cut in a pack. If they don't, just ask them if they have sashimi-grade fish. A fish shop won't want to risk food safety, so they should answer honestly.

When you get home, keep the fish refrigerated until you serve. If you find it hard to cut soft raw fish, put it in the freezer for a couple of hours and it will make it easier to cut.

We got salmon sashimi from a fish shop in Chadstone shopping centre this time. Also they had a whole sashimi grade king fish, so we asked them to cut it for us.

Paul's sister has a teen-age girl and I wasn't sure if she liked raw fish, so I prepared other options - teriyaki chicken and tuna mayo.

Prepare nori and sushi rice. You can get sushi seasoning from a local supermarket usually. You cut nori into four pieces so that your guests can make their own sushi rolls in their hand.

I usually prepare heaps of cucumber for garnish. This time I prepared some lettuce for tuna mayo too.

For the two toddlers, I made teriyaki chicken rice.

Everyone enjoyed my sushi party except for little kids. They were distracted too much ;-) but they had a great time too.

I hope you feel more encouraged to have a sushi party now!


With love,
Allie

My birthday weekend

Unlike during my childhood, the last several years I didn't really enjoy my birthdays that much. It's not that I didn't want to get old, but as an adult, I just felt bad that everyone had to buy presents for me and sing "Happy Birthday". I usually don't like to be the centre of attention.

But this year, I really enjoyed my birthday because my boys enjoyed it very much. My birthday became an excuse to have fun together and celebrate this happy family.

Thanks to Paul, I had a nice sleep in and brekky.

On my birthday, Paul took the day off and we went to Mornington Peninsula. Paul's parents came with us too. Paul found a lovely pie shop called Johnny Ripe in Red Hill. With a 2 year old boy, having lunch at a nice restaurant can sometimes be just torture, so this choice was great and their pies were really lovely.

After that we went to my favourite homeware shop "Red Hill House" in Red Hill South and bought a couple of things there, then we went to a farm called "Rain, Hayne & Shine" in Balnarring. This place was really great!

It was a Friday, so not many people were there. Nico had his first pony ride and he really enjoyed it. There were many baby animals and Nico loved touching and holding them. It sounds like Nico's birthday rather than mine, but when Nico enjoys himselves, we enjoy ourselves most.

The next day, we went to Brighton beach. The last time we went there, Nico was still a tiny little guy in his pram and he was just gazing at the beach. This time he enjoyed digging in the sand and putting his feet in the water. We had a lovely walk along the beach too.

For dinner, we went to a new restaurant called "New Shanghai" in Chadstone shopping centre, with Maria, my sister-in-law and her family. It was my favourite Chinese restaurant in Sydney. The original restaurant was in a dingy looking shopping arcade in Chatswood but now they have shops in Brisbane ,Shanghai and Melbourne too! Their fried pork bum is really yummy!

marimekko placemats I got for my present

My birthday wasn't only about presents (although I got some really lovely presents) but more about spending time with my favourite people. I'm already looking forward to my next birthday!

With love,
Allie

Little Keeper's Market

Now we've finished our (maybe) annual Little keeper's market this year. Phew!

When we organised this market in April, some people asked if we were having it again, and we said "maybe before Christmas". It wasn't a promise or anything, but I was feeling a little bit of pressure that we had to do it. Now I'm so glad that we could do this again. I feel free from the pressure!

Last time, I organised the venue, stalls and my sister-in-law Maria helped me with the preparation. This time Maria got even more involved, and she organised the venue and stalls!

Yet Paul and Maria were still calling this market "Allie's market", so I felt a bit strange. This is becoming more "everyone's market". We could raise some money for wonderful causes (this time we raised funds for the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre and El Salvador Action Group) with everyone's generous offer of money, time and effort. Our friends helped us with coffee making. Paul's parents, their friend and Paul's uncle did the sausage sizzle. Fr Dave at St Benedict's offered the venue for free and our lovely friend and one of the stall holders, Charmian donated all her workshop money. How generous they are! The people who came along to support this market were great too! Some of them brought their family and friends too. Paul's workmates also came to support us. Some friends helped us with packing up and cleaning the venue after the market too.

The preparation wasn't easy, but I think this became a really great event.

Are we doing it again? Well I don't want to make a promise, but I hope so! We had great fun ourselves in the end :-)

Our little boy turned 2!!

Last week, our little boy, Nico, tuned 2. My sister visited us from Sydney and spent whole weekend with us. We went to Healsville Sanctuary on Saturday, an indoor play centre on Sunday, and Collingwood Children’s farm on Monday. It was full of fun!

I was so excited about his birthday and was singing and dancing whole week. He doesn’t get new toys often, so we knew he’d get super excited about his presents.

It’s funny that now his happiness is our happiness. We enjoy Nico’s birthday more than our own birthdays. He changed our life completely.

Since he came, I lost my

Sleeping time

Work

Some pleasure – shopping, movie, catching up with friends, fine dining etc…

But I found none of them are important compared with the time with my little guy. He sometimes makes me cry and upset, but he always makes me happy.

Thank you very much for coming to our home and making us your parents.

We love you so much!!!

Handy Japanese baby goods!

I think Japanese people are the "laziest hard working" people. They love something handy, so to make things easier, they try their best to make something convenient. Whenever I go to Japan, I check the local pharmacy's baby section to see what's available there and end up buying heaps of handy baby goods.  When I read a Japanese person's blog and found that she's starting a Japanese baby goods online shop in Australia, I thought it was a great idea. As far as I know, Australian people are sometimes a bit lazy too, so they should love these handy Japanese goods!

photo from "Little Snook" This 360 degree tooth brush looks amazing!

Then one day, I got a message from the online shop owner. When you get message from your favourite blogger, it's like you're getting message from a celebrity! It was a lovely surprise. I know how hard it is to start up business in a foreign country, especially when you're a mum with small kids. She has 16 mo boy and works a couple of days a week too. We decided to meet up and exchange some information while our kids made friends.

I wanted to ask her a lot about her interesting products but we ended up chatting about all sorts of different things. I always liked her Japanese blog because her writing was always positive. It is really nice to see someone with good vibes. It was a shame that I had to admit I was a bit lazy with my business, using Nico as my excuse, but I got good energy from her, so I will try my best again ;-)

Are you interested in Japanese handy baby goods? Check her online shop "Little Snook".  If you like her products, please share this with your friends! Word of mouth is really important for new small businesses. I hope her new shop will be loved by many Australian people for a long time!

With love,
Allie

Big decision as parents

Recently we had to make a big decision as parents. Probably it’s not a big thing for some people, but at least for me, it was really heartbreaking, hard decision.

About a week ago, I noticed Nico often touching his front tooth. I thought some food was stuck but when I saw it, I noticed that his front tooth had a crack. He used to like rice crackers or apples, but when I gave him those, he started crying after one bite. I told Paul about it and he said maybe Nico did that when he bumped his face on ground in front of our house when he was playing with a ball with Paul. Because Nico was crying so hard after eating something hard, we decided to take him to a dentist. She told me his front tooth was split and we have two choices.

1. Pull out the tooth and not worry about it anymore.

2. Fill the root with medicine and put crown over the remaining tooth, which leaves some possibility for infection and when it happens, it’s worse.

The dentist told me it’s totally our personal decision, but from her explanation I knew what’s best for Nico – pulling out the tooth. When I imagined Nico having no front tooth until 6 or 7 years old, that made me cry. He’s not even two yet!! The dentist said that it’s normal and I was a good mother. She said I cried because I care about Nico.

I told her that I’d talk to Paul and make a decision.

I wanted to keep his tooth. He looks cute with his tooth. I don’t want him to change - so I tried to think of a good excuse to keep it. “I feel sorry for him if he didn’t have his front tooth in all his childhood photos.” “He might be teased at kindy." "If he worries about it, he won't want to show his teeth, so he might not smile. ” I told a couple of people these things, but their reaction was “small kids don’t care about those things!” --- and then I realized I wanted to keep his tooth for myself, not for Nico.

I didn’t want to feel sorry for him when I saw him with no front tooth. People might think it’s strange that he has no front tooth. We might not get any more compliments about Nico’s looks.

Paul’s way of thinking was more simple. He didn’t care about Nico’s looks or those things. He only cared about Nico’s health, so he preferred pulling tooth out. I knew it.

Paul said to me that wanting to keep Nico’s tooth is not a selfish way of thinking. He said that some parents might choose pulling out the tooth only because they don’t want any trouble or it’s cheaper. But I knew what’s the right thing to do.

We don’t need to think about what other people would think about Nico’s looks. The most important thing is Nico’s health. Besides, to us he’s the cutest little kid even without his front tooth!

So we made a big decision. He has to go to hospital for the procedure and have general anesthetic. It’s going to be a big thing for his little body. I’m pretty sure that we made a good decision – but when I see him laughing with his mouth wide open, I probably can’t stop thinking about his cute little tooth.

I still remember when we saw this white thing in his gum for the first time. From teething, he (and I) had some sleepless nights. I was really annoyed when he bit me with his sharp teeth when I was feeding him. But now those things are very good memories. I love every part of Nico and I really love Nico’s little front tooth.

When I was looking at Nico’s old photos, I noticed that he looked super cute even when he had no teeth. It’s really heartbreaking for me, but I will be okay. At least I can be proud of myself making the right decision.

With love,

Allie

Our special birthday! Our day in St Kilda

July 18 was my husband Paul's birthday! He had to work on the day, so we decided to have a special birthday weekend last week. We thought about what we would do carefully and decided to go to our old favourite place, St Kilda. We asked Paul's parents if they wanted to come and Paul's mum joined us (dad had something to do..) so it became an extra special fun day.

We started our day in St Kilda East to get lunch. Last time we went there, we found a super nice burger shop called Ziggy's. We saw this shop on Broadsheet and it became our new favourite. Their Blue cheese burger is the best! We also didn't forget to get our old favourite bagles from famous Glick's (but not for lunch..)

 We took the burgers to the St Kilda botanic garden and had lunch there. It was lovely weather that day, so we had a wonderful time there. Nico also enjoyed playing with the play equipment.

lovely father and son

Lion King??

this is where we took our engagement photos 4 years ago!

 

 After lunch and play, we walked to the beach. We're not usually beach people, but we love walking alongside the beach - especially on a warm day in winter! We had hot drinks and walked on the pier while chatting. It was a really relaxing time.

 On the way home, we couldn't forget to get an ice cream tub from Messina in Windsor and a jar of salted caramel from B & P in South Yarra.

 This is a kind of our perfect day for us. Paul's mum really enjoyed it too! Don't have any plans for the weekend? Try this route and you will definitely love every part!

with love,

Allie

Our new cupboard!

Our storage space is finally ready and now I'm keeping all nuno and stitch products here :-) I got so much stuff for markets to display, so some of them are still in our little study/bedroom, but it looks much better now.

As you know already, our home is very small, but we've got quite a lot of storage. I think this is the key to live neatly in a small space.

As I was organizing this space, I made an inventory and feel a bit more organized. When I sell my products online, it's easy to track of my stock, but when I sell at markets, sometimes I forget to keep records and lose track. The worst nightmare for shop owners might be having no stock when you receive an order..well at least for me, so it's good to know how much stuff I've got. I think I'm stocking too much at the moment, so I might be able to do some stocktake sale soon. Stay tuned!

Now we also started using our cupboard door to record Nico's height. This was Paul's idea originally. At his parents place, one of the doors have heaps of height records for all members of the family (and sometimes friends too!). We wanted to do something similar, but we didn't have the courage to write something on our new doors! Now see what we did. We're using washi tapes. It's easy to peel off, it's colorful, neat and cute! We're looking forward to recording more and more heights for Nico in the future.

cookpad

I hope everyone had a lovely Mother's Day last Sunday. Me? I had a wonderful day with my boys. I got lovely gifts, cards and flowers from Paul and Nico and also Paul made yummy breakfast for me. I was spoiled!


My Mother's Day gifts

-IKEA iPad holder

-double gauze hand towel from nuno and stitch

These two items make my cooking time in the kitchen extra fun!

I often use a website called "Cookpad" for some great recipes. It's a Japanese website so you might not be able to read it, but people can post their own recipes to this website and you can find thousands of recipes there. You often know which one is a good recipe from the number of reports from people who say they used that recipe.

They upload their own dishes and leave a comment on that recipe like " I cooked this dish twice already and my family absolutely love it! " or " I made this dish using apple instead of strawberries and it works well too". I think most Japanese mums are now using this website...even my mum!

Hopefully I can write a report on some of the cook pad recipes here and share them with you someday:-)
With love,
Allie

Something I learned through our renovation

I am a typical Japanese person. I can't really rock the boat. I'm not good at speaking up at all, but I learned something new through our renovation experience. If you don't say something, you don't get anything! 

For our carpets, we used a local shop. I went there and paid in full before the installation because they said they needed to cut the carpet to the size once I ordered. I didn't argue. 

We booked the carpet installation for Thursday morning and we booked our move in for Friday. I went to our new home Thursday afternoon to do the final cleaning before moving in. I was pretty impressed by the carpet and was happy with the work they'd done, but when I was vacuuming I noticed one part of Nico's bedroom carpet had a big cut. I was a bit panicked! I was sure that the carpet shop would fix it but wasn't sure they could do it before Friday morning. 

I called up our project manager Maria but couldn't get through, so I went to the shop (it was nearly 3 pm) and told them there was a big cut on the carpet and showed them the photo. The shop owner said "ah, that's easy to fix. I'll send someone tomorrow morning" and then I said "Ok! Thanks." After that, Maria called me back after reading my text message and seeing the photo of the carpet. "How do they fix it?" she asked and I said "dunno, but they said it's easy." 

She came to the site and said "I think it's not that easy. They shouldn't just cut one part and join it, they should change the whole thing because you paid for carpet without a join. " Probably the carpet shop took advantage because I didn't know anything about carpet and didn't argue at all. They must have thought it's easy because I'm the EASY one.. 

Maria called up the carpet shop and asked how they would fix it. The carpet shop said they have no more of the same carpet and it's a discontinued item, so there's no way they can change the whole thing. Well maybe that might have been true, but their attitude made us think that they just didn't want to change whole thing. 

Maria and Paul's dad went to the shop and negotiated. In the end, we had to have one join but got $200 back. That was pretty good for us. 

Paul's dad advised me not to pay in full before the job's done from next time. Once they get money, sometimes they can just walk away from this kind of trouble. 

There's one extra story behind this carpet trouble. When Maria was calling up the carpet shop in Nico's new bedroom, I was putting a lampshade in our new bedroom. When Maria finished talking, she went to the lounge to see what her 1year old son Luca was doing and then I heard her scream!! I could tell something really serious happened from her scream. I thought Luca fell down from a ladder or something. 

When I went in the lounge, I saw that Maria and Paul's dad were trying to grab Luca's hand - he was holding a paint brush. And then I saw red paint everywhere on our new white kitchen cupboard - I was painting our front door in red and left the brush near the kitchen. 

Thankfully all the red paint was removed with turps, so now we can laugh about it. We even think we should have taken a photo of Luca doing that. It was definitely the most dramatic and funniest thing that happened throughout our renovation. 


With love, 
Allie 

We've moved!

We finally moved to our new home two weeks ago. We also had our own charity market "Little Keeper's Market" last weekend, so since we moved, we've been very busy, but now we have some time to sort things out around our new home and watch TV after Nico's gone to sleep...

Our linen cupboard isn't ready yet, so all my boxes with nuno and stitch products are in our spare room and there's no space to walk through there. To cut the costs, we asked the cabinet maker to cut all the boards for the shelves into the right size and Paul's dad and his sister are putting them together for us. Also in our lounge area, we have heaps of chairs and it still looks messy. We're making our dining table now so that all my collection of chairs can fit around the table (now we have 80 diameter round dining table and can accommodate only 4 chairs-we have 6 chairs! ).

So I wanted to take a little bit styled photo of our new home to show off to everyone, but all we can show you now is our messy home photo unfortunately:p we will need a little bit more time before we invite our friends over too.

This is our kitchen. The kitchen and the lounge were separated before and each room looked dark, but now with two big windows, it's much lighter! I really love this open space because I can see Nico and Paul playing while I'm cooking.  We love these square subway tiles and black kitchen handles. We love the colour of our bench top.

Nico's enjoying his brekky in our light filled lounge

 

 

 

This is our bathroom/laundry. Our basin is quite small so I'm using the kitchen sink for washing, but I like it because I can see Nico in the lounge while I'm doing the washing too! It's quite a small space, but not over crowded thanks to our designer Maria:-) we love the skylight!

 

Nico's room
This was the room with paint over wallpaper! Now it looks great:-) we love having carpet in bedrooms.

All our renovation went pretty well but we had some dramas just the day before moved in. I will write about it soon!

With love,
Allie

What is little keeper's market? My new challenge

One day my sister-in-law and good friend Maria told me about how her friends were impressed by the softness and quality of our "herringbone scarf" and talked about how difficult it is for online shops to show the quality of their products. Her friend suggested that something like a Tupperware party, where I can show and tell about my products, might be good for my shop.

When I started to look for a venue, I found that: a) it's a bit pricey to hire venue for myself and b) it's too big just for myself - so then I decided to get someone else involved. I didn't really mean to organize a market myself, probably that's the last thing I wanted to do, because it's too challenging for someone like me who has "0" confidence in English (read here..) and no connection to locals. Well, probably I wouldn't do that in my own country Japan either...

When I tried to find people interested in a "Tupperware party" on Facebook, most of the other shops who were interested in my idea were "Tupperware types" of people.. I thought that's okay as long as we can share the cost, but Maria suggested that I stick to my branding and find some businesses similar to mine. I didn't have many connections, but I knew some lovely business people who have their own brand/shop, so I started asking them if they're interested. Probably how many people I can get to the event is the most important part of their decision making, and I didn't have confidence around that part..but somehow they agreed to join my event. That was very exciting. We decided that all the stall holders do their own marketing and invite friends and family and I would do a little bit extra by putting flyers to locals.


And then how did this event become fundraising event? My husband Paul said he could borrow a coffee machine from his work and raise money for charity and I thought that's a great idea. Around the same time, I heard from my best friend Yuri in Japan that one of her close friends got cancer and that she was in critical condition. I met that friend only once at Yuri's wedding in Japan a few years ago. She was living in Shanghai with her husband, but she came all the way to Japan for Yuri's wedding and I still remember she was in a beautiful kimono.

When she found out about her cancer, it wasn't really at an early stage. She had to come back to Kyushu, her hometown to have a surgery. When Yuri told me she went to Kyushu for a day trip to see her at hospital, I realized that her condition was pretty bad because Kyushu is not a place where people make a day trip from Tokyo often (it's about 850 km away). When Yuri also told me she has a two year old boy, I felt like crying thinking about my own boy Nico. No mums want to leave such a small kid behind.

I used to say to Paul that I didn't care about my health. I could sacrifice myself for my family, so I didn't need rest. I always wanted to look after my family. But if they lose me, what would they do? I have to stay healthy for them...that's what I realized from Yuri's friend's story. Then I wondered if many mums might be the same, being too busy to think about their own health.


We picked the National Breast Cancer Foundation from many charities to support their good work, but our main purpose for this fundraising is to inspire people to think about their own health. I think everyone wants to make their family and friends happy, but without them, those people will be sad. 

Looking after yourself is not a bad thing. To treat yourself, have some afternoon tea and workshop at Little Keeper's Market and maybe get some nice pressie for yourself!

With love,
Allie

Our renovation updates

Probably some of you might be wondering how our renovation is going, so I'll keep you updated. All the work by our builder has been done, but we're still painting walls and the ceiling. I know it's very slow compared with those renovation TV shows, but this is the reality. Lucky we've got just a small space, but there's still many parts to paint.

I don't know what other people do, but what I learnt from my Aussie family is this.. If you want to do a proper painting job, for each room you need to do wall undercoat cutting-in, rolling, ceiling undercoat cutting-in, rolling, wall first topcoat cutting-in, rolling, ceiling first topcoat cutting-in, rolling, wall second topcoat cutting in, rolling, ceiling second topcoat cutting in, rolling. 12 steps for each room!!! (+ window frame, skirting boards, architraves and doors.)

Paul's parents are away quite a lot this month so one of us always had to stay with our little boy. Paul's sister (aka our project manager) Maria is helping us quite a lot, but she has a little boy too. Every night after our boys have gone to sleep, Maria and I go to the new house and paint...FYI Paul has just started his new job and he's pretty tired from it, so he stays with Nico. We still need to get up in the middle of the night for our toddlers so it's not easy. I used to do some of my work like writing my blog after Nico went to sleep, but I don't have time for that now :-(

Probably we'll be painting over this Easter long weekend. No time for fun. I'm so much looking forward to sitting on the couch and watching TV after dinner at our freshly painted new home!

Allie 

Sweet Home Project -Renovation Week 6

At the start of our renovation project, I wrote that this was going to be a 6 week project. So, did everything finish now? The answer is no!  But we don't blame our builder, because his work has almost finished before week 6. What I found during this project is that there is always some waiting time for other tradies, like the plumber, electrician, tiler etc. . It's difficult for them to come to our place at the exact timing we need them. If we ask for any plumber, any electrician, maybe some one could come I guess, but all builders have preferable or trustworthy tradies to work with and it's better to use them for a successful renovation.

our laundry cabinet in the bathroom

Anyway there are still some things to be done at our place.

Shaft for skylight (builder)
Kitchen doors (cabinet maker)
Laundry cabinet doors (cabinet maker)
Kitchen tiles (tiler)
Kitchen bench top (stonemason)
Floor sanding (floor specialist)
Carpeting (carpet specialist)
Painting (us)
Bath screen (bath screen specialist)

Probably if these people could come at the same time, our renovation would finish in one day even , but there is certain order too, like before floor sanding, we need to paint all the rooms, before carpeting, the floor needs sanding and after floor polishing, we need to leave a week to dry...etc.. We will need to wait 2-3weeks to move.

But actually this is much better than I expected. What I heard or read about renovations in Australia was worse. Like lazy builders who finish work at 2pm, tradies who never show up on the day they promised, inexperienced tradies who ruin everything and takes ages to fix up all the bad jobs... We never had these kinds of trouble. All the tradies who got involved in our renovation project did such wonderful professional jobs so far. I guess we are not just lucky. It's because our project manager Maria is organizing the right people and sometimes making sure they come on the right day.

Nico loves climbing boxes!

Our painting preparation is still going and our friends and family helped us with sanding over the last weekend. My sister even came from Sydney to look after our Nico for us to do some work. But I think she actually just missed her nephew too ;)


The worst nightmare we found at our new place was that the previous owner painted over some wallpaper in one of the bedrooms. Some parts of the wallpaper started to peel off or showed an ugly line, so we had to remove them, but since it's painted it's difficult to remove. Paul's parents, his sister, my sister and me were doing this scraping job in turns last Sunday, but it will take more time to finish this.

With love,
Allie

Sweet Home Project -renovation week 5

So, the bathroom floor and wall tiles are installed. The kitchen cupboards are installed. Now what else?

Week 5 was a bit too hot in Melbourne and our cabinet maker postponed painting the cabinet doors. So we've only got basic cupboard at the moment. They will finish the doors and the laundry cupboard in week 6. They also have the template for the bench top so this will be installed next week or after, and then the kitchen tiles. I heard the bench top takes about 2 weeks after they get the template.

We will get the skylight installed in our dark bathroom too so that's very exciting. Now we've started painting one of the bedrooms!

Well...not quite painting yet. I never expected the preparation for painting to be so hard. Sanding..sanding..sanding! Sore hand, sore neck, sore shoulders. But in a way, I am so glad that I can learn a lot of things from my father in law and sister in law. Before I got married to Paul, I didn't know anyone who could do a handy man's job. All those skills seemed to be passed down in a family, but my parents don't do any of those jobs.. That's quite normal in Japan. 

makeover: bathroom into bedroom

new window is installed and looks lighter!But still the old toilet is there

Now I got this chance to learn about sanding, filling and so on and I'm super excited! We do these painting preparations and painting after Nico goes to sleep on weekdays too. It's not easy after a long day with a 16 month old son and my business but it's all for our future home. I will try my best so that we can move into our new home in two weeks!

With love,
Allie