amazing Asian dressing recipe

Oh my goodness. I just made some dressing for our salad tonight based on this Bobby Flay recipe. I WILL be making the full recipe sometime because this dressing is to DIE for. I die. It's seriously taking lots of will power not to go eat it all before our grilled pork chops are done. Here is how I slightly changed it to be a salad dressing instead of the chicken salad sauce.

Ingredients

• 1/4 cup rice wine vinegar
• 2 tablespoons smooth peanut butter
• 1 tablespoon chopped fresh ginger
• 1 teaspoon Sriracha - I subbed Sriracha b/c we didn't have the chipotle puree and put only 1 tsp.
• 1 tablespoon soy sauce
• 1 tablespoon honey
• 2 teaspoons toasted sesame oil
• 1/8 cup safflower oil - I used a lot less oil because we didn't need much dressing & to cut on fat
• Salt and freshly ground pepper 

This is literally one of the best dressings I've had. I'm serving it over a salad of lettuce, raw broccoli and some chopped peanuts. Mmmmmm!!

Tuesday tutorial!

Well, I am going to do my best at presenting a lovely tutorial every Tuesday. I find so many great craft and design project tutorials online that I might as well share them with you! I'll do my best to actually create the items in the tutorial, but mostly it's going to be used to share all of these projects that are built up in my Pinterest account. 

So, while I try to claim to be a great graphic designer, I don't claim to be a great photo retoucher. It takes a different set of skills and while I use Photoshop a lot I focus mainly on design and less on editing photos besides general cutting out, a bit of light and skin softening, etc. So I'm always on the lookout for great tutorials on giving nice soft touches to photos. I'm sometimes a step-by-step girl when it comes to things I don't know how to do and I love this tutorial I found today on adding a lovely yellow softness and contrast to a photo. I thought I would share!

Before photo: (you might recognize this from my previous dress revitalized post!)

And the after photo. Much more interesting, don't you think? I am definitely addicted to the Instagram app for iPhone. I LOVE it and you can add pretty filters at the touch of a button, but being designery I sure like knowing how to recreate them myself since I have the right tools.

For the Photo tutorial click here

Enjoy!! Happy Tuesday tutorial :)

favorite video ever ♥

we're on Facebook!

So I finally realized I needed to create an *elletrain knits* Facebook page! Hello. So here it is!! Please 'like' *elletrain knits* for me...pretty please?? ♥♥♥
http://www.facebook.com/pages/elletrain-knits/212498192130623

favorite spot

Well, as you know we just moved into our house here and there are boxes everywhere and we're far from settled. I just read this lovely post from Aesthetic Outburst though, talking about favorite spots in your home or someone else's. It encouraged me to photograph my one favorite spot. It's hard to get a great picture of it right now, what with all of the boxes in the way, but I just LOVE my 'new' vintage flag and the turquoise vases next to it. As well as the lovely built-in that our rental house came with. I've lovingly arranged all of our stemware and beer glasses in it and I couldn't be happier with this little corner of our crazy world.

getting settled

So we have been in Portland for over a week now. We are really enjoying it here, exploring our neighborhood, attending many street festivals, discovering great eating spots and breweries. I'm also enjoying (mostly) getting the house together. And even though we still don't have 1/3 of our stuff (ugh, moving companies) our kitchen is becoming one of my favorite spots already.

We bought a simple kitchen table at Ikea last week as there was a perfect spot under the window for a little breakfast nook. We have been eating most of our meals here family style, which we never used to do, and it has become really special and fun. No more eating in front of the TV for now at least. I love it :) We've also been taking daily walks after dinner, which is another habit I'm glad we're getting into.

Pictured above is my breakfast from this morning. I had most of these pieces already from Anthropologie, Pier 1 and elsewhere. I recently bought the table cloth and the egg cup on Etsy. I'm loving that I have a proper, separate kitchen here so I can decorate it like a kitchen. I LOVE Dutch and Northern European pottery and patterns. They're so bright and cheery for a kitchen but are still interesting and artistic. My favorite new purchase besides the egg cup is the egg topper! SO great if you enjoy soft-boiled eggs as I do. I recently discovered them and you MUST have an egg cup to enjoy one properly and the egg topper makes it loads easier to remove the top. Ah the simple pleasures of a great breakfast. What are your favorite dishes/routines for breakfast?

we are here

We made it! Across what felt like the entire country! It was a beautiful trip that I will soon share with you, but in the meantime if you want to see some photos, you can visit my tumblr page.

We are in our house. Spent the first night here last night and the movers came with (most of) our stuff today. Due to poor planning on their part, they had to put our stuff into 2 different trucks coming across the country at 2 different times. We have most of what we need, but will miss our grill for the next week or so! Especially with the 4th of July here. I bought a watermelon though, so we will still celebrate in true Southern style :)

Here are a couple of pictures of our place in Portland. The favorite spot (where I'll hopefully be knitting a lot!) is the front porch. Yay!

We are loving it here so far because THERE IS NO HUMIDITY. Oh, and haven't seen any mosquitoes yet either. SCORE. For those two reasons alone I think I will totally love it here. Miss you though Nashville, already.

More later! I must rest now on my REAL bed and not a deflating air mattress, like last night! Mwah!!