Archive for the ‘Home’ Category

We visited the Japanese garden at the zoo that we visited yesterday. Spring seems to be the perfect time to be visiting this spot. Serene and beautiful. Even the pictures don’t do it justice in my opinion. The place is not that popular to the visitors (because people go to zoo to look at the animals) that’s why it is empty except for one or two people.

It is a personal dream of mine to have a little Japanese themed garden. A small koi fish pond, a tiny bamboo gazebo/hut, lined with 4-5 cherry blossom trees. Though I know that the dream may be a little far away to come true, if ever it will happen, but it still would be nice to go around and check out the available real estate and do a little bit more dreaming or visualizing (which ever one would like to call it). They say if you know what you are aiming for, dreams won’t be too far fetched.

I can imagine sitting in the garden in Summer nights, listening to the crickets and the small water pond in the garden, while enjoying the stars at night. At least when the time comes to really make the dream come true, I would know exactly what I want to have for my little dream abode.

The internet plays a huge role in the lives of many these days that people turn to it for companionship, for networking, for shopping, for work, for business and most of all looking up for information. It is a treasure trove of information. So much so, I can imagine how sales for encyclopedias may have dropped. You just ‘google’ for everything you need to know : can lemon bleach acne scars? do testosterone boosters work? does eating chilly help increase metabolisme and lose weight? and the questions can go on and on.

Personally I google for information at least 2-3 times a day. That is the minimum. I sure do have a lot of things that I need to find out everyday. LOL Someone mentioned a type of drink I never heard of before, google it. I wonder whether a certain language expression is appropriate to be used at a certain time, I google it. I’m bored and I need to entertain myself, I google.

No suprise that ‘google’ is not only a name of a search engine but it ends up being a verb for ‘search’ or ‘explore’ for information (of course using google search engine which nearly everybody I know is using). Well, after having ‘google’ as a part of my life for years now, I can’t imagine how we could live without it many years ago.

Weekend is here again. I slept till about 10 today. It was the best rest I had all week. Now that I’ve regain most of my energy, it is time to do some recollection.

I’m rechecking all my blogs – time to revamp and rethink about the contents. I hope after all that I would still have time to re-evaluate my Japanese self-study program. I’ve been slacking since Christmas holiday as workload has increased at the daycare and at home. I’m feeling tired every day.

I love my job but God knows how much I miss having plenty of time to do all the things I want.  Weekends are indeed precious times these days.

Now that we have entered the month of November, Christmas is indeed a lot nearer and it is never too soon to prepare for the Christmas gifts if you are not a last minute person type. This year as we are trying to cut our budget for holiday gifts we decided to at least make some home-made gifts ourselves. House deco, cards, home-made video cd duplication etc.

I just bought some Fimo clay yesterday to try my hands on clay modeling. In case if you don’t know what Fimo clays are, they are polymer clay that you can mold into anything you want then you can bake it in the oven for a few minutes and it will harden into polymer plastic. Perfect for making your own diy keychain, phone charm, fridge magnet and the list goes on according to your creativity.

Blocks of 56g of Fimo clays.

Sample of a fimo clay cat.

First, I’d try to make phone charms and later on will move on to something else perhaps if my first few experiments is successful.

Perhaps, just like most animals, human beings have the tendency to collect things be it food or items that makes us happy. Be it antiques, collectible sports memorabilia or even rock collections. At the moment, I find much happiness in collecting Pez dispensers. Currently I only have about 20 over dispensers but my collection is growing somewhat.

Sample pic.

People who collects sports memorabillia like, sport helmets, jerseys or equipments from their favourite sports teams,collect the items for the love of the sport. As for me, I love pez dispensers not because I love Pez candies – I don’t really have a sweet tooth – but just for the cuteness. Yes, I really do think they are cute. So most of the time I give away the candies to the two family members with sweet tooth, and I keep the dispenser. They are so interesting that even my little daughter is helping with the collection.

At the moment I just keep them in a drawer, but as soon as it grows bigger, I would like to build a few shelves for display. Well, what’s the point of collecting when you can’t share them right?

One particular interest that both my husband and I share  is watching football. Though he plays football too, I only watch the game. So we are looking forward to the 2010 World Cup this June. There aren’t any favourite teams, we just love to watch the big players of the football world play. There can be lots and lots of drama on the football field.

In preparation for the World cup, we intend to get one of those cool hard drive recorder or digital recorder to replace our obsolete VCR. Got the idea when I came upon harddriverecorder.org.uk. I think it would be brilliant. We won’t have to miss any of the big matches if there are 2 important matches to see or when we can’t be at home to watch.

Young children sure do love to imitate what adults do. They love to play pretend games. I can still remember how I love to play house with my friends. Now, my young daughter loves to pretend making coffee or cook something for me. And sometimes we would even play shop together. For now we would play using real money and some items we find around the house as merchandise.

So now I’ve decided to get her a toy cash register. I have to say even I myself enjoy play shop with a cash register. Even though it is just a toy one.The cash register is simple – no Epson tm-t88iv – but it provided us hours of fun.

As a child I never really like dolls or play with dolls. Even now as a mother, I even prefer my daughter to play pretend games like this rather than dressing up dolls. I think she learns more this way. She practice counting the money, learn about what having money means, etc.

I just wonder when can I be the shopkeeper sometimes.

In less than two weeks we will be celebrating the women in our lives whom we call mothers. Most people around the world celebrate mother’s day in May. My own mother passed away nearly 6 years ago and it was one of the saddest events in my life.

My mom was a good cook and great at sewing. So good that she made a living out of these two crafts that she so loved and brought up 9 children. I can still remember helping her out with the donuts and currypuffs and also being taught how to sew a simple stitch when I was 8-9 years old.

Although I was given the opportunity to be with her for over than 20 years I still felt that it was such a short time. The moment I lost her I felt envious of those who still had their mother’s with them.

It was not easy to get used to not calling someone ‘ma’. But perhaps I can be considered luckier than many for I was granted a new mother in the form of my mother-in-law. All these years that I’ve known her, she has been such a sharing and caring person.

I still haven’t got her anything yet but considering a surprise delivery gift. I have 1-800-Flowers gift delivery in mind. I myself am a mother now. Has been a mommy for nearly 4 years. I wonder what my little girl will prepare for me.

I have heard people saying to me that if you don’t take up loans these days, you may never ever own things – home or car. I agree, especially when you are from a middle range income group. Some things are way to expensive to pay cash and for a house it can be cheaper in the long run to buy a house than to rent.

However there is a danger when taking up loans. If you miscalculate and did not handle your finances well, you may end up not being able to pay up and lose everything. Unfortunately of all the important things in life that they do not teach us at school is financial education.

Due to lack of financial education, some people do get into serious trouble with debts – debt collectors calling, foreclosures etc. Owing to this growing problem of  people getting into serious debt problems you can find companies that specializes on giving solutions to these people to settle their debt easier. One of such solutions, I’ve read, is Debt Consolidation.

To summarize a little about what these people at Debt Consolidation do is, they provide free financial consultation, free financial and budget planning, assist in debt management and also help people to consolidate all their debts into one monthly payment. You can read in details about this at Debtconsolidation.com about this.

If anyone ask me about financial control, my main solution would be not to take any loans for as long as I can and help.