LUNCH- Rice paper wraps

So on sunday as we were in the middle of cleaning and emptying our stuff in the new flat and didn't have much time for lunch, we decided to make some quick rice paper wraps. These Vietnamese wraps are so quick and easy that I always keep some in the cupboard, and the beauty is that you can fill them with whatever you have at hand.
Usually we stuff them with salad and veggies, as they are much more fun to eat than a salad.

This time I filled them with:
-peppers
-carrots
-beansprouts
-avocado
-mushrooms

I cut all the ingredients into fine stripes, put them at hand's reach and then got a bowl of warm water and the wraps, they are dehydrated so you submerge them in the water for 30 seconds or so, then place them on a cutting board or a clean surface, and fill them with your ingredients, then roll up and you're done! Make sure not to fill them too much and once you're halfway through the rolling fold in the sides.

They tend to be a bit bland on their own so have something to dip them in; we had some Srirarcha sauce as well as some soy sauce to which I added garlic, ginger,honey and sesame oil.

We sat down outside and everything was perfect, sunny, warm day, lovely food and the cat throwing up... yes...she decided to puke in front of us just as we were about to eat, which was just lovely...But other than that it was a nice meal!

DIY Bedside table sky

We have finally moved into our new house, yay!
 It has been hectic (which is why I had abandoned my blog) but we have now managed to find a place for every random little object and even started decorating...Or to be honest I started decorating first as I could not wait to paint and could not be bothered with tidying up...


My bedside table DIY started with a trip to Ikea, where I bought Tarva, which is made of pine wood and it costs 42 euros; it's not the cheapest bedside table but the other ones looked really flimsy and didn't have much storage space, so Tarva it was.

I painted it with a white coating, sanded it a little to get a smoother finish, then painted two layers of a water based light blue/turquoise varnish.

I then drew a cloud shape on a piece of paper and then copied it on plastic, I didn't have any proper material so for the stencil I used a plastic folder that I had lying around, it was a bit flimsy but it did its job, my boyfriend suggested using cardboard, which is stiffer but I was worried it would go soggy when painted and lose its definition, so the plastic  folder it was...

I then cut out some rough pieces of paper and taped them where I wanted the stencils to go, in order to get a clear idea of how many clouds to have and how to arrange them.

In this stage I decided I wanted to make another, smaller, cloud stencil, to have a bit more variation, so I repeated the process for the smaller cloud shape.

And finally the fun part! I got a cheap kitchen sponge and poured very little paint in the white paint lid which i used to dip my sponge, then with my boyfriend holding the stencil I started sponging the paint on. I could have used tape to hold the stencil (or a firmer material) but it was faster to get him to hold it...

We repeated the process for all the sides and let it dry.

Aaaand this was the final result! I'm really pleased with it and I think it came out quite well considering the use of very "creative" tools due to the lack of materials in the house...

So to summarize the materials I used were:

-wooden (paintable) bedside table

-white base coat varnish

- light blue water based varnish

-white water based varnish

-brush

-paper

-plastic folder

-sponge

-tape

The thing I like about the table is that it's a simple design which would look good in a child's bedroom as well as in a grown up's like me :)