Chungbajee has Moved

Thanks google. It's been real.

I have now moved to chungbajee.com

April Fools

Today is April Fools day.  I wasn't crafty enough to think of a fun April fools joke. But I just remembered one year that I did.  And it was the stupidest April Fools joke.  Why did I do it?  Because I was in 5th grade.  I wore this ugly wig to orchestra practice before school started and told everyone I cut my hair.  Then after, I took it off and said APRIL FOOLS!

WHAT?!!!  Why did I do that?  It's not even funny.  I just have to laugh at myself. HAHAHAHAHA

D&D visit

Dina and Dorcas came to visit last last weekend. I know my posts are getting late these days. I love having visitors because that's when I get to do new things in LA. We got to go to Magic Castle thanks to Dina. And while Dina hung out with her family Dorcas and I went roaming around LA.

La Brea Tarpits - the Dinasour museum!

The excavate every summer in this tar pit and find thousands of bones.  fossils.  

Gladstones!

We sat on the catwalk and got to have this beautiful view while we ate.

These people were having a beach picnic right under us and it looked so much better than our food.

Isn't Malibu beautiful?

The Getty!

It was raining all week and they had these umbrellas out.

See ya Dina and Dorcas!  Had a great time. Miss you already.  See you back in NYC next time.

The Magic of Magic Castle

I asked Dina to get a magic castle guest pass because she just always gets what she wants. You have to get a pass from a member who are usually magicians or like magic or something like that. I had no idea where to even start to get a pass because I don't know any magicians. After searching far and wide, Dina came through and got us a magic castle pass! I was ecstatic! The above picture is the only one I have because pictures are not allowed inside and it was raining so we couldn't take pictures outside.

I love this place. The best part was just hanging out around the bars and meeting magicians who would do all these cool card tricks for you. Awesome! This is probably one of the coolest things I've done in LA. I want to go back. So magical!

Advent Calendar

I can’t believe I haven’t blogged about my beautiful advent calendars yet. It’s a little late, but I had to get this on my blog! This past Christmas I got the urge to make advent calendars as my Christmas gifts. And as some people read this, they may be disappointed that I did not gift them one of these. I’m SO sorry (annie)! My hands couldn’t take it anymore and I had to stop making them at a certain number. And I had to get them out by December 1 as they are advents for Christmas. I promise to gift you something nice this coming December. I already know what my 2010 Christmas project will be. For sure I will start a little earlier this year than last. I think I am straying away from my Ghetto Martha nickname! This is a GOOD thing.

I started my calendar by cutting Christmas themed shapes for my pockets. This took the most time. I am pretty proud of myself for cutting all these free hand! Then I embellished most of the cut outs. I cut 300 shapes. It was very tedious but I enjoyed almost every moment of it. Gluing on the fuzzies and ropes and pom poms was the most fun. By the time I got to cutting squares I got pretty lazy and none of them are the same size or even square. More like half square, half rectangle, half parallelogram. (oh wait that doesn’t equal 1). When it got to gluing on the pockets to the big sheet of soft felt like fabric, I was pretty drained and didn’t want to finish. But I made myself glue on the 300 pockets. Then the best part…gluing on the ribbon border and the hanging rope. Because that meant COMPLETE! Hallelujah! Amen! Oh wait...not complete. Then i had to puffy paint the numbers on each pocket. Sigh.









But what goes INSIDE the calendar!? I had many ideas, but I had to keep the cost down and had to keep in mind that I had a time limit.

I made 2 things with these flat marbles. I bought a bag of mixed marbles with purple and clear. With the clear ones I made picture magnets. You glue a small picture on the flat side, and then a magnet. Very simple! I used NOT Martha's instructions. (I don't have pictures of these. I forgot to take one.) With the purple marbles I made picture/note holders. I used very thick jewelry wire and plyers to make the holder part. For the smaller picture holders I just glued 3 marbles together. For the larger ones, I cut out cubes of styrofoam, covered it with black fabric (because I had some scraps), and then glued the marbles on. I ended up using the smaller ones only and was left with a ton of large ones that I broke apart later on.

Then I made wine charms. I used earring hoops and swarovski crystal beads. The beads are pretty cheap. This is a great alternative to buying expensive wine charms.

And then upon Michi's suggestion, I went crazy with shrinky dinks! I made book marks and luggage tags. I don't have a picture of the luggage tags. The luggage tags were flowers and hello kitties. (Although, I don't think anyone knew what these were. I was getting pictures on my BBM of people hanging them on their Christmas Trees. LOL)

This hello kitty book mark was a test to see how small the shrinky dinks got!

All my bookmarks were sweet treats with everyone's favorite dessert. On it I wrote "Reading is sweet and so are you." I'm glad I learned to color in kindergarden.

for the rest of the pockets, I filled it with different asian candies, european chocolates, and random other candy. On the 25th santa bag I included a 50 cent christmas puzzle I found at Wal Mart. I love you Wal Mart.

Finally I rolled them up with ribbon and shipped them off. Merry Christmas!

One Year Milestone

Today is my 1 year anniversary of living in LA. One year ago at this time I had just dragged my big luggages into my temporary housing at Oakwood Apartments in Marina Del Rey. Then I was off to eat at BCD soondubu with Hye Young Dorothy while they welcomed me to Sunny California. I told them all about my fabulous going away party at the Lee's MTV crib while chomping on some delicious fish banchan.

After twelve months of my love and hate relationship with this crazy place called Los Angeles, it now somewhat feels like home.

Sunnie in California

As we get older, it seems like more and more of the things we do in our lives are because of added responsibilities. Life just gets busy and we don’t realize it. It’s hard to get together with all your friends and just live a little. Thank goodness for this new excuse we had to get together…Ji sun’s bachelorette! Thanks for a great excuse Ji Sunnie! With 5 lovely ladies flying in from VA and 4 lovely ladies transplanted in Los Angeles, it was an outrageous 4 day rager!
Most of the girls arrived Wednesday morning. I drew some childish posters 2 days before to welcome their arrival. I was just too excited for a weekend with my girls. I can’t really divulge any happenings of string of events or post any pictures, but I will say that it was a trip to remember.
Although this was a celebration of our dear friend jisun’s upcoming marriage, it was more of a celebration of our friendships. There was a lot of reminiscing and of thinking back on how we have all been blessed by the other. At one point, in the car with jisun, we talked about all the fights we’ve had in the past. All the crazy fights we’ve had with each of our friends. And how blessed we are that everyone is so forgiving to make the friendship stronger instead of tearing it up. I did have to apologize in the car to jisun...5 years later...for making her upset on TWO occasions that I was oblivious to! Oooops. I must be stupid.

But back to the happier situation...some non blackmail pictures for your enjoyment!











The corn. Oh the corn. I will share one story. About the corn. I was sitting next to Hye Young. There was dead silence. All you can hear is chompchompchomp. And then I heard a big boom and a big ‘GASP’. I look over and the poor corn was in the sand only 1/5th eaten and a very shocked and sad look on the girl’s face. And my reaction? I just laughed uncontrollably. Oh the corn.





The saddest moment of the whole trip...goodbye



But Ji sun stayed a few more days!!! And like i said..if you visit, you better clean as payment!



In San Diego at La Jolla.




As my final note on this post: Congratulations Jisun. May your marriage be blessed with an abundance of love, honesty, loyalty, humility, and servanthood.

**Till our next reunion the day of the ceremony. Toodles girls! See you on gmail!