I looooove sushi. And miraculously within the last year I've been able to convert Stephen to the ways of sushi as well! [Which was a miracle in and of itself.] And although Stephen will oblige me when I've got a hankering for the good stuff, we don't eat it nearly as often as I would like - namely because it's a bit on the pricey side. I've been trying to work up the nerve for over a year now to make it at home, and although I've assisted others when they've made it - I never had the confidence to really go for it without anyone there to oversee. Plus I was worried that if it was a complete disaster, I might run the risk of Stephen thinking it was gross. He and sushi have had a good thing going lately, and I really didn't want to mess that up. THAT BEING SAID, Friday night date-night, I faced my fears. I called a few people on the phone to give me words of encouragement, I read a few blog tutorials, watched a few youtube videos... and I'm here to report: it turned out way better than expected! 

We are by no means experts, and as you will see from our first attempt...it totally fell apart. But we kept with it and by our fifth roll (they were that good!) I felt like we got the hang of it-ish. Since I'm this weird paradox that loves sushi and is actually really grossed out by fish - we opted to make our sushi vegetarian style. That is, until we were making our last roll and Stephen decided to grab a bag of leftover barbecue chicken in the fridge (leftover from when we made these puppies night before) and put it on. We were both pretty afraid, but as inauthentic as it was - it was delicious!

A few things (just in case you're lacking in confidence and need a little encouragement like I did!):

-using regular long-grain rice worked just fine! I mean, I didn't have a lot to compare it to, but we had rice and I felt silly buying MORE rice so we just used what we had and I would totally do it again. (We used this recipe for the rice.)

-If you're afraid of your rice because it smells REALLY vinegary, just let it sit for a few minutes and it will be fine. Once you get all the other flavors in there you really won't taste it that much.

-You don't need one of those bamboo mat things unless you're putting the rice on the outside and the seaweed paper on the inside. We only did rolls with the seaweed on the outside, which are much easier to make, I think.

-A sharp knife is pretty important if you don't want your rolls to fall apart. This little adventure really drove home the fact that all of our knives are less-than-desirable in that area, haha. We still made it work though! 

-Make sure you let the roll rest for 5-10 minutes before you to cut it into pieces.

-Cream Cheese is key. We may have gone a little overboard in this area, but have no regrets.

^^first attempt. HAHA. Even though it fell apart, it still tasted delicious so we knew we were on the right track!

^^Barbecue Chicken Sushi! Maybe we should recommend it to Happy Sumo? :) 

^^Camera focus FAIL. He's still really cute though ;)

YOU CAN MAKE SUSHI AT HOME! Seriously, you can do it! It is way less hard and scary than I imagined! 

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-han

I think I finally figured out the reason behind why I hated making crafts all those years. It was the hassle of buying all of those darn materials! Not to mention all of the silly amounts of who-knows-what that's leftover at the end. I've come up with the solution: only make crafts out of stuff I already have. This is a particularly good system for me because I've had too many experiences destroying a craft I just spent $15 buying all of the supplies for. HA.  Maybe someday I'll be confident enough in my craft-making that I can buy materials specifically for the purpose for making crafts - but for now I'm having fun trying to be creative with the materials I have at hand. 

With that being said: I present to you my first-ever completely-made-up-and-randomly-assembled Classroom Holiday Banner! 

These are the materials I used:

Cardstock (to cut out in the penant shape and then use as stencil)

red construction paper

white cardstock

thread from a piece of burlap

two pencils (one with a BRAND NEW eraser)

ink pad

little baby clothes pins (originally used for lunch-count but then too many broke. I got them at Wal-Mart by the way, aren't they ADORABLE???)

scissors

glue

The main thing that I thought was pretty exciting about this craft was the fact that I used a [brand new] pencil eraser as the stamp to make my polka dots. ((TELL ME I'VE CLEVER. ;))) Also, I feel it would be dishonest if I didn't mention the fact that I had the assistance of a Cricut to cut my 2" letters. BUT the "E" you see in the sample below was done freehand so I know it's possible!

The best part is that when I sent a picture of my cute-lil-sign to Stephen all he said was, "Cute. But you don't really want it to snow." HAHA. Truer words were never spoken. I let my class vote on what they wanted to the banner to say. My favorite option was "falalala" but sadly it only got three votes!

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han