Saturday, December 31, 2011

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Meet my new baby, a fifteen year old contoneaster Bonsai. The seller was a grandpa that cared a great deal about his plant and spent quite a few minutes teaching me how to take care of it in the summer and winter time. 

Thursday, December 29, 2011

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If I don't spend some time in the garden, I feel as though the day is incomplete.

Monday, December 26, 2011

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Got a glimpse of the bird feeder's customer:)
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I had a wonderful Christmas time with my family. We spent the entire morning unwrapping gifts, took the doggies to the park and then cooked Chinese hot pot instead of the traditional American Christmas dinner.  My husband hid all my presents in his car just in case I couldn't resist the urge to dig through the whole house for presents before the holiday arrives. This year, one of my favorite presents was the salt and pepper grinder by Perfex. I absolutely love them! My husband told me that the sales lady's son got them as his wedding gift in 1964 and still uses them today. Maybe they will last me 50 years too?

Wednesday, December 21, 2011

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There are some things you can't live without, like a cute bird feeder with a umbrella top!
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Fiefie is a cute little gardner:)

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My band of fairy gardens... it's a growing monster.

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My latest creation is always my favorite!

Monday, December 19, 2011

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Homemade Okonomiyaki. Yummy!
What's been happening at the fairy garden?

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At this point, between all the making and remaking, I lost count of how many I've made. But definitely over ten, a few more on the way...

Sunday, December 18, 2011


I love this table, it can be custom made into the size that fit your home. From here.

Wednesday, December 14, 2011

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Pictures of home sweet home. I had a really fun day with my husband and mother-in-law unwrapping Christmas gifts, drinking wine and eating cheese. It was a blast!

Tuesday, December 13, 2011

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I finally spent some regular hours practicing last week and finished learning the second half of Islamey, this made me feel a little less guilty about fairy gardening since it is a completely frivolous hobby and I can't think of it benefiting anything or anyone but my own entertainment. I'm planning out a few new pieces to learn, one of which is the Prokofiev sonata and the other is the Shostakovitch prelude and fugue, I'm putting my focus on Russian music for the next few months. In my personal experience, nothing is more difficult to learn than the Beethoven sonatas. Somehow his composition is just too hard for me to grasp, everything else that I play seem to come through much easier... I hope I won't have to play another one anytime soon. Sometimes I ask myself what is the point of keep learning, but after all it is a lot of fun to explore new pieces.

Thursday, December 8, 2011

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Fairy garden #7... in progress:)

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And a sneak preview of fairy garden #8, I think I got my fix of fairy gardens after this one. This REALLY is the last one, maybe.

Tuesday, December 6, 2011

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Fairy garden #1 has been remodeled... again. Every time I saw it, it made me cringe, so I had to redo it. I like it a little better this time.

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Last night I added little birds to the mini carriage, saving it for the next fairy garden project!

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Completed fairy garden #6, took a while, but it's worth it.

Monday, December 5, 2011

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I'd been looking forward all day to be able to sit down, sip a glass of wine while sharing some popcorn with Kelly and Alfie, and super-gluing together some broken fairy garden decoration. It's been really windy lately, this morning I took in all the tiny small parts inside the house. It's always a good idea to glue things down in case the wind or our gardener blew them away:)

Friday, December 2, 2011

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My husband spent many trips to the Home Depot store and then many hours in the garage making a large wooden box for me as a fairy garden container. I've been working on it here and there, and now it's almost done. Now I just need some grass...
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I can't believe December has rolled around! This has been one crazy year with one thing after another, what will come next year? Who knows. I will admit that it has been quite a stressful couple of months. The night I lost Bobby, I thought the whole night was just ruined and I was never going to get through the night, but now two whole months had passed, I somehow managed through a muddle of stress. My health has taken a nose dive, the house is in shambles, but I hope things are all going to get better from now on.

Monday, November 28, 2011

This past Thanks Giving, while at home cooking turkey, smelling the Cinnamon coming from the kitchen and eating sweet cranberry sauce, I couldn't stop thinking about the dogs who still desperately in need of a good home at the animal shelters. Speaking of giving thanks, I can't think of anyone more deserving than our pet companions that give so much love to us and turn a house into a real heart warming home.

When I went to visit the animal shelter last time, I was struck by the extraordinary eyes of a three months old pit bull puppy. He had beautiful blue eyes, pink chubby paws and a little white dot on the tip of his tail. He looked like a real angel, he reached out his paws to grab me,  crying to beg me to let him out. Since I was there just to look, I couldn't really take him home. Later I wondered why I didn't go and ask for a visit so he could at least come out and play. When I came back to see the puppy the second time, he didn't come up to me, instead he was curled up at the back of his cage, looking very down and broken hearted that no one had come to his rescue.

Here are some of the many many beautiful doggies from Orange County Animal Shelter at 561 The City Drive  Orange, CA 92868

(714) 935-6848

There are many simple ways you can do to help a puppy to be adopted such as posting their profile on your facebook page and spread the words around to family and friends. Sometimes the best ways to receive love is to open up our hearts to a little darling in need. You will find that the love they can give back to you is a hundred fold more!


 ROCCO
Pet ID: A1136419
Sex: N
Age: 10 Months
Color: WHITE - BLACK
Breed: AMER BULLDOG - MIX
Kennel: 292 

CHEWY
Pet ID: A1135483
Sex: F
Age: 4 Years
Color: BROWN
Breed: PUG - BEAGLE
Kennel: 291
MANNY
Pet ID: A1136481
Sex: M
Age: 4 Months
Color: BLACK - TAN
Breed: MIN PINSCHER - MIX
Kennel: 330
CHRISS
Pet ID: A1137306
Sex: F
Age: 6 Years
Color: GRAY
Breed: SCHNAUZER MIN - MIX
Kennel: 365

Sunday, November 27, 2011

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Dim sum for breakfast and Christmas tree shopping afterwards. Since Christmas tree is an American tradition and I didn't grow up with it, it was such a novelty for me when I first came to live here. Putting up a Christmas tree in my very own home has been a dream for years, it's a dream come true, in a trivial kind of way. For me this is happiness, so I'm going to enjoy this moment:)

Friday, November 25, 2011

The night before Thanks Giving, my husband and I were reading upstairs in our own rooms. Around midnight, we suddenly heard a noise sounded like something had slide over the fence. I thought it must be a burglar, we turned off all the lights to look outside, Kelly got scared too and followed us closely instead of laying in her bed by her lonesome. We were too afraid to go out, so we locked the doors and went to bed. The next morning we got up to check the backyard when the neighbor called me across the fence to come outside and have a look. And this is what that mysterious noise was...


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Apparently, the tree root had rotted so much that there was barely any root left to grab a hold to the ground, so it collapsed and crushed our neighbor's car. We joked around that it must be the squirrel jumping up and down a little too much because there was certainly no wind or rain that night. Our neighbors got positively excited, all took out their dslr cameras to record this exciting moment in the neighborhood, I'm betting some money that we'd finally make our 15 minutes of fame at the neighborhood newsletter.

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So, the first thing that popped into my head to solve the problem was to call Louis, our fix-it-all gardener, to come in and saw the tree apart and change the roof and plumbing while he's at it too. While that didn't seem like too good of an idea, we decided that we might just be able to lift up the tree, plant it a little deeper into the ground and scotch tape it, and then it will be just fine. We toyed with the idea for a little bit, then decided that our neighbors might just not like it so much, finally, maybe we should call some tree expert to take the tree apart so we can have some nice firewood.

Yesterday was Thanks Giving, our neighbors were nice enough to let us deal with it today. Since the tree blocked out their front entrance, they had to dug a walk way through some bushes to let their guest in for their holiday party, one of the owner's friend said to us, "you know, it's always on Christmas or Thanks Giving that this sort of things happen!" Our neighbors were really nice about it, or maybe they are settled with the fact that their new neighbors are just young and stupid!

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This year I wasn't planning for a full on Thanks Giving dinner, but it just happened that my mom bought pre-made dinner for us. I still had to cook a turkey and make cranberry sauce, but it was the easiest Thanks Giving dinner ever, all I had to do was stuff the turkey to the oven and relax. I think cooking some but not all of the dishes is the way to go!

Since this is my third time cooking a turkey, I've gotten a few tips that seem to work well.

1. Rub the turkey skin with generous amount of butter (come on, it's a holiday, you can think about diet and health later), stuff it with a mixture of apple, onion, cranberry, carrots, rosemary, cinnamon, seasoned with all spice, salt and pepper. Cook the turkey in the oven at 500˚F for 30 minutes or whenever the skin begin to look crispy and golden.

2. After that cover the turkey with a aluminum foil cap and set the oven for 350˚F for 2 1/2 - 3 more hours or however it requires to reach 200 degrees on the thermometer.

This way the skin is crispy but the meat stays juicy and tender.

Did you have a nice Thanks Giving day?

New Year Preparation

I always like to do a bit of preparation at the end of each year to welcome the new year, although this year things were very challenging, I...