Complete: 18. Make bottle cap magnets + 63. Take a dance class with Garrett

Two for you this week, despite being on Christmas vacation!

Bottle cap magnets were kind of intimidating because I needed to use resin to make them. I ordered the resin months ago and finally the pressure of the deadline helped me work up the courage to do it. I poured sprinkles and seed beads in the bottom of the bottle caps, mixed up my resin, and poured it on top. You have to let resin cure, so I left it all alone for 48 hours, then added felt to the seed bead ones to make mini pies. The sprinkles I left bare. I think they turned out pretty cute! Resin is still a little scary (I ruined a paintbrush), but this did make me want to experiment with it more. I want to preserve more tiny things.

G and I started taking square dancing lessons because it's one of the few fun things we could find to do in town. Luckily they coincided with my goal! We started in September, and we're still not officially done, but since we've been going a while and we're on Christmas break, I am declaring it good enough! We've learned lots of moves, but haven't attended an actual dance yet. Once they graduate us, I think we'll know enough to attend. We only have a few weeks left.

Hope you all had a good Christmas!

8 days left and only a few more goals needed to break my Redux record!

Complete: 3. Watch 50+ episodes of Good Eats and cook 25+ corresponding recipes + 6. Send calligraphy birthday cards to family and friends for one year + 47. Send a Christmas newsletter each year + 101. Watch all of the Yakitate!! Japan anime with Garrett and re-create a bread from the show

4 down this week! That puts me past the total for the 1st 101 list, and I'm creeping up on the 2nd. I am definitely going to do better than the 2nd one, and that's all the progress I could have hoped for.

Okay. Good Eats is such a great show that I wanted to watch more of. This is one I've been working on for a while, but I'm glad I left some to the end, as Alton launched Good Eats Reloaded this fall so I could see some new content, as well. Some of his recipes were amazing, and some were not so much. Alton also seems notorious for making things very complicated sometimes.

Favorites were edamame dip, ginger almonds, avocado ice cream, lemon curd, bruleed grapefruit, praline bacon, refresco de avena, garlic parmesan mashed potatoes, chipotle smashed sweet potatoes, and carrot slaw. Yum!

Calligraphy cards replaced sending photo thank yous, which was a great idea, but hard to make myself stick to. I tried to take pictures of the cards, but before I knew it I was licking the envelope and sealing it, so I don't have much photographic proof, hahaha. I sent 21 cards this year. :) I'm not sure if family appreciated them or not, as I only heard from like, 4 of them that they'd been received and enjoyed. Oh well!

I just wrapped up sending out our Christmas newsletter for this year (though if you still want one let me know), and I sent them out for both 2016 and 2017. I love this tradition - it's fun to tell everyone what we've been up to, and what we've enjoyed throughout the year. I will definitely keep this up. Someone was asking us about our Christmas traditions the other day, and I guess this is one of them!

Last, Yakitate!! Japan - I'm glad Garrett has seen it all now, but I realize in re-watching that it isn't as good as I remember. It drags on a bit, and poor Kawachi - though that's the same feeling as reading the manga, hahaha. Garrett did appreciate all the puns.

I decided to make Azuma's melon sushi bread, because it always looked so delicious, and I love melon. Melon pan is a sweet roll encased in cookie dough, kind of similar to conchas, if you know them. The problem that Azuma seeks to fix is that the bread and cookie dough cook at different rates, so you'll never have a perfectly cooked one - one part will be undercooked or overcooked to have the corresponding portion cooked correctly. His solution is to cook the bread and cookie separately, then combine them with a melon cream like wasabi is used in nigiri sushi.

So I found a decently reviewed melon pan recipe and cooked the portions separately. I was thinking if I pulled the cookies out and immediately let them cool on the rolls they would form to their shape, but that was a grave miscalculation. I looked as Azuma's bread again and decided to crumble the cookies to get the more crunchy looking top that he has. I made whipped cream and added honeydew syrup and bit of green food coloring to get the right look.

I think it turned out pretty okay! The cream could maybe be a bit more green. It was super delicious, too. Heck, Azuma. You make me want to try to make more of your breads!

Complete: 32. French "Fryday" blogposts for 3 months + 43. Read a biography of each President of the church + 55. No complaining for 1 week

Heck y'all! 3 more done this week!

If you follow me on instagram, you've seen my #frenchfryday posts. It has been glorious to have a reason to go eat fries, let me tell you. I wanted to do a more in depth analysis and scoring system, but it just wasn't going to happen. Maybe in the future! I also want to do a frozen fry cookoff and find the best frozen brands, hahaha.
Best fries of the project were the nori fries from Katsu Burger in Seattle, the monster fries from EZ's Wenatchee, and the fresh fries we got from local potatoes (I assume?) at our agricultural parade.

I have read 17 biographies of presidents of the church. Some were really good, but some fall into the trap of not trying to be good books because they know they're going to sell no matter what.  I suffered through some pretty mediocre writing, as well as some pretty prophet-worshippy books. I liked the ones that actually treated them like human beings better. It's more interesting to read about their humanity than to pretend they can't do any wrong. I was reading backwards in time, hoping to finish on Joseph Smith, but I had to add Russell M. Nelson in last minute. His book was a bit outdated, as quite a bit has happened since it was written, but it's the only one that's been published. It was very long and not always about him? It was also poorly organized - they jumped around in time instead of telling everything chronologically, which is weird for a biography.
My favorites I read were No Man Knows My History (I know, I know - anti-TCoJCoLDS lit), Brigham Young: Pioneer Prophet, and David O. McKay and the Rise of Modern Mormonism. They felt more complete than others (*cough* published by Deseret Book).

I decided to change my no complaining week to a month of positive self-talk. I read What to Say When You Talk to Yourself by Shad Helmstetter and decided being nicer to myself might be better than beating myself up for a weak when I slipped up and complained. I think overall, this was much better for me to do. I found a positive self-talk video on youtube and just made sure to play it everyday for the 30 days. Mr. Helmstetter says it doesn't even matter if you listen to it with your full attention - as long as it's playing it will help. It seems kind of hokey, but I think it did help me have  a better attitude, and really helped me focus on working hard as I wind up my list. Now that I'm finished with it, I kind of miss hearing it. I might just have to start it again tomorrow.  :)

Welp, that brings me up to 67 items done! I am almost on par with my first 101 list, and hopefully I will soon surpass 101 List Redux!

Complete: 2. Read all of the Yakitate!! Japan manga in Japanese + 14. Read the complete works of Shakespeare

Two big ones complete this week! I've been working on both of these for quite some time.

Yakitate!! Japan is one of my favorite anime series, and I started buying the manga of it when I was in Japan (aka forever ago). I finished up my collection at Book Off in San Diego and by ordering a few off Amazon. I wanted to actually read all of them, because I knew the manga went a little further than the anime did, and it would be a great way to practice my Japanese, though my vocab is very food focused now, haha.

This is the story of Azuma Kazuma, a young boy who is on a mission to create a bread the the Japanese people love as much as they love rice. He begins working for Japan's top bakery and competes in their newcomer's bread tournament. He then competes in a world tournament, and goes on to compete on a Japanese bread competition show. All along the way, people have crazy reactions to his bread because they're so good. The reactions are a bit better in animation, but still funny in print. The reactions get crazy in the manga, though. We go from someone having visions of curry oceans in the first volume all the way to someone literally turning into a turtle. As the series progresses, the reactions seem to last longer, as well, and I became concerned at their lack of concern for human life. One baker Azuma competes against becomes a dam, and he is never mentioned again. We can only assume he is a permanent feature in that lake now.

The ending is a bit more dramatic in the manga, as well. Spoilers obviously follow if you'll ever read it yourself (they did translate it all in English, but I think it's out of print now). In the show, it culminates with Azuma battling his inspiration to enter into baking - a previously good-hearted man who taught young Azuma to make bread with soymilk, now head of the competing bakery and very evil. In the manga, this confrontation happens, as well, but it has been discovered that this man was taken over by aliens, I think, and is now a bread-creature. Azuma is basically fighting a giant bread mech in the end. Don't worry - he creates a bread that allows Kawachi to turn into Chopin (the composer) and defeat him. But that's not the end! After this dramatic battle, it becomes Azuma's task to solve global warming. I kid you not. He ends up creating a bread that allows Kawachi to make all of the earth parts of the globe hover over the oceans, so he doesn't really solve global warming, but he does remove the danger of floods as the ice caps melt.

I wasn't looking up any words as I read (it would have taken too long), so my translation may be off on some of that, but heck. It just got more and more ridiculous. And I felt more and more bad for Kawachi - not only is he the brunt of many reactions, but he ends up living as a video game villain for the rest of his days, while Azuma gets a peace prize and everyone else lives happily. Man.

Anyway, I'm glad I've read the whole series now. I'm probably getting rid of it all now because I don't think I'll be reading it again (and the manga was a bit less woman-friendly than the series), but it was a fun trip.

Shakespeare! This has already been a wordy post, so thanks for reading this far. I love seeing Shakespearean plays performed, and I wanted to read all of them! I didn't include the plays of questionable origin (Two Noble Kinsmen, etc.), and I didn't read the entirety of his poems, but I read all of the sonnets, plus a few of the poems included in the anthology I read. Did you know the majority of the sonnets were written to a man?? I had no idea. I can't believe I called myself a Shakespeare fan. But now I am one, no question!

Perennial favorites (aka I already knew I loved these):
Titus Andronicus
The Winter's Tale
As You Like It
Much Ado About Nothing
Macbeth
Romeo and Juliet
Merry Wives of Windsor
Richard III
Henry V
Richard II
Julius Caesar
Hamlet
A Midsummer Night's Dream
Twelfth Night
King Lear

Hidden Gems:
Pericles
Cymbeline
Henry VI, Parts 2 + 3
Coriolanus
The Merchant of Venice (Portia for life!)

No thank you:
Troilus and Cressida
The Two Gentlemen of Verona
The Taming of the Shrew (as written - I did see a modern performance with a feminist bent and that was alright)

Meh:
All's Well That Ends Well
Measure for Measure
Love's Labor's Lost
Timon of Athens
Othello
Antony and Cleopatra
Henry VIII
Henry VI, Part 1
Henry IV, Parts 1 + 2
King John
The Comedy of Errors
The Tempest

Those hidden gems made the whole read-through worth it. They aren't performed as often, so it was good to encounter them in the only way I could (though I did see The Merchant of Venice performed during the list!). I will definitely be watching out for performances of them, though it might take me a lifetime to track them all down.