Thursday, August 30, 2012


A couple of days ago I was walking around in my local arts and crafts store and discovered some cheap drawing pens and brush markers. I really liked these pens and since they are so easy to carry around, I decided to learn to draw. I think this is going to be a fun hobby especially when I'm on the road stuck in a car or plane.  I'm going to do some more Victorian houses, more to come:)

Tuesday, August 28, 2012

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When Bobby died I had a lot of time on my hands to think about unpleasant things. I started fairy gardening to create a sort of magical world where beloved pets would live forever, and I wanted a backyard full of them. It was very calming and addicting to make miniature gardens, and I soon discovered that it really is one of the best hobbies ever. So one year later I have two new dogs, three total, and a backyard full of fairy gardens. A few days ago I attended a fairy garden exhibit, it was free to attend. Since it was something I really wanted to do, my dear hubby who hates dirt helped me to load a total of 11 heavy containers into our cars, unloaded them at the location, repacked everything and replaced them back to where they were when we got home. It was so much fun to watch kids and grown ups dive their nose into the little gardens to check out the details and taking pictures as they walked by each fairy garden. When I got my gardens back home I couldn't help but feeling happy. I still miss Bobby a lot, but through a bad experience in life I learned a new skill, and was able to share the fun of it with others. Trying my best to get something good out of a bad life experience, I think that was the lesson I learned.


I found a picture of Uggie back when he was at the animal shelter.The other images are pictures I took in the past several months. A few days ago I started teaching Uggie how to sit, after a couple of tries, he sat on command. I couldn't believe this was for real, so I tried again, he sat for me one more time. Two days later I showed him how to do "down," after a couple treats, he learned it. I am completely amazed at how smart he is!

Update: Uggie performed his new tricks in front of a group of ladies today and received a round of wild applause. I love him:)

Monday, August 20, 2012

I've been really interested to try out some new recipes lately. It's fun to find out new cooking techniques and learn new cooking terms. The Escoffier is an abridged version of the original book Le Guide Culinaire, at nearly 3000 recipes, it's good enough for me.


The first recipe that I want to try is the brown stock, which requires extensive cooking time and lots of material. I just purchased this heavy gauge aluminum stock pot, which is suppose to be the right material for stock making. Whether it will do fine being on the stove for two or three days, we will have to see about that.


Clean Start by Terry Walters  
Besides the fact that this is a healthy cookbook, the recipes are divided by seasons and browsing through the book, it seems that most of the recipes I would like to try at home on any night of the week. Of course the gorgeous photograph also make it a must have cookbook!


Eggs by Michel Roux

Another cookbook with great recipe and beautiful photographs, need I say more?

Tuesday, August 14, 2012


My doggies love chicken strip treats that come from a bag in the store. I've wondered many times in the past if I could just make this treat at home and somehow I found it on youtube today! Can't wait to try it at home at some point!

Wednesday, August 8, 2012

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I've been trying to establish some sort of schedule. Ideally, I'd get up at 4 in the morning, go to work out, come back home, shower, get dressed, walk and feed the dogs, water all the forest of plants in the front and back yard, make some breakfast and coffee, clean up the dishes, head upstairs and start working, for a few solid hours, and then lunch, work some more, shop for groceries, start cooking for dinner, have dinner, and then do the dishes, have all my floors magically turned spotlessly clean, all my closet organized and laundry done and neatly folded, and then call it a day. So far non of that has happened yet, my days are a non structured mess drifting between email and phone calls, errands, and cleaning up dog poop. Everything on my list feels so essential to a good life, but the idea of doing it all feels so overwhelming on some days...

Monday, August 6, 2012

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Setting up a home office was suppose to be a project over the weekend but I couldn't get that far down the to-do list. Out of everything I needed, a file cabinet was the only item I didn't already have, so I got one last week from Office Depot. It's so easy to organize paperwork with it, I wonder why I didn't get one much earlier! Now my home office is complete:)
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A few days ago Fie Fie got hit by one of our heavy falling garage door. I was trying to let go of one of our malfunctioning doors after Fie Fie got into the garage with me to get some stuff. After he heard the trembling noise of the door coming down, he got scared and tried to go back out, and the door hit him right around his rib cage. By the time I got out of the garage, he had already ran all the way back into the house and refused to come back out into the backyard for the rest of night. The next day I took him to the vet to get him checked out, the veterinarian after not able to locate anything wrong with him, prescribed me some diarrhea pills to make the office visit worth while. Needless to say I felt horrible for several days, and became very cautious of doors of all sorts. At this moment I'm just glad that he is ok and no major damage occurred as far as I know.


Friday, August 3, 2012

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I actually like this fairy garden that I made. I hope this set up will stay like this for years!

Thursday, August 2, 2012

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This is one of the fairy garden inspiration that I keep on file. I've been working on a few fairy gardens since I came back home, somehow I didn't locate my sun gardens correctly, so a lot of ground covers died from lacking of sun light. Last night I moved them to a different place, hopefully they will grow better this time!

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...