absurdly peculiar

My cousin asked me decorate his wedding on a budget of $500. At the time I thought it was a lot of money, but after researching ideas and pricing I quickly realized how little $500 gets you for a wedding. One of my ideas was to use recylcled beer and wine bottles- the reasoning being that they have small openings and would require very little flowers for each bottle and because I could recycle some of the ones I already have. So I started to get to work and I soon discovered how labor intensive this actual is.  Here are the lessons I learned from delabeling bottles: 1. SOAK SOAK SOAK! And not just for 30 minutes... at least a day or more. You can add soap to your water or whatever trick you have up your sleeve, but just make sure it sits in water for a while. 2. Some bottles will be easy to delabel than others. The easiest bottle for me to delabel is Stella Artois followed by New Belgium. My boyfriend said Guinness is actually very easy as well but we don't really drin

I've been creating a lot since I've moved into my new place. So many empty walls and spaces makes me want to fill them. I created this painting on a canvas and using a mix of acrylic and spray paint. The base is grey and gold acrylic paint and it was spray painted over with rose gold spray paint; it felt like it was missing something.. and I got very frustrated. I didn't know what to do.. so I grabbed a bottle of black paint and squeezed it out in no systemic way whatsoever.  I wonder if abstract/modern artists, like Pollock, felt the way I felt when painting this- was he frustrated during most of his paintings? or was his paintings systematic? Anyways, every time I look at this painting it makes me laugh because I just replay how I felt at the moment of creating it... and it was not systematic in any way shape or form- but somehow, it didn't turn out too bad.

If you have been following my blog, you are use to seeing my DIY posts..but this is a different type of DIY post because this is a DIY fail post. Let's start from the very beginning. I wanted to paint over this pot my parents gave me. The first word that comes to mind when I see this pot is... Easter and there is nothing wrong with Easter, but I wanted a pot that didn't seem so seasonal. I was at Michael's debating for maybe an hour on what type of paint to get... mainly between some chalk paint and these Art Minds outdoor paints that I got in the end. I think what deterred me from getting the chalk paint was that it said for indoor use only. Then I was thinking that I definitely need this outdoor one! Welp, I made a wrong choice. Chalk paint doesn't need the surfaces to be sanded or primed... and for some reason I thought it would work exactly like chalk paint except it was also suitable for the outdoors. I came to this conclusion because they were right next to

                                                                                                                                     

I picked up a new terra cotta pot from Daiso to put my cactus in. But it looked a little boring to me so I decided to paint the terra cotta pot with some acrylic paint. I used some tape with cat images on it that I picked up at an airport in Taipei in order to keep the design clean. Then I just painted away!! And here is the finished result sitting on my porch. It looks quite lovely and it was such a simple project to do.

I thought this would be a fitting day to post about my new interest in PLANTS. Yes, I have become a crazy plant lady. My interest started when I saw an IG photo of my friend's new place. The furniture was very modern, clean, and simple. Usually, modern furniture can create this feeling that a home has a lack of warmth...but it didn't feel that way when I looked at her place and that is because she had plants! I started off with a Half Moon Cactus and Aloe Vera plant from Wal-mart. I also picked up some soil and planted a garlic clove as well. My end goal at the beginning of my plant journey was to be able to grow food that I could use in cooking, but that was very intimidating for me as my radish plant is not doing too well right now and I thought I should take baby steps. From left: Moon Cactus, Garlic Clove, Aloe Vera I also wanted to have plants that I could decorate my place with and would be easy to take care of... so of course, I jumped on the succulent boat. I h

I found a couple interesting things today while I was surfing the web: First, let's continue with the theme of women needing to be BAD ASS as possible with this video I found from Remezcla : These girls are 15 or younger... they are already bad ass and when they become older... I hope they will be even more bad ass.  The second link I have for you is about a penguin and a man...and it is about the cutest story ever. Please read about it here . My last link is something that I found very interesting. It is from VICE and it is a documentary series called Gaycation that stars Ellen Page and her friend Ian Daniel. The first episode explores homosexuality in Japan.

Guys, I gained weight about a month ago... probably around 6-8 pounds. I started exercising, but felt very discouraged after I started gaining even more weight. My pants were so uncomfortable when I would sit that I would need to unbutton them. Usually, I am not a dieter or someone who would pay for memberships at expensive exercise joints...but when I realized that it would cost more for me to buy a bunch of new clothes (work pants, jeans, skirts, shorts) I decided to change the way I eat and exercise. This included counting calories (tear*) and exercising so I could eat and not starve myself. I started going back to spin, yoga, including runing/walking like I usually did when I first realized I gain a bunch of weight, but didn't see results at first. So I got a groupon for Bar Method  and it gave me an unlimited month of classes. I attended twice a week and those classes kicked my butt.  After a month of going to Bar Method twice a week (as well as including spinning, yoga,

Because I definitely am... Jinx, Making of a Murderer, Dateline... are all shows/series I got hooked on. I first heard about Robert Avery on NPR actually... you can listen here . It is crazy how his story became so popular after the netlflix documentary of Making of a Murderer. While driving home from work.. I was listening to NPR All Things Considered and came across a story called  Missing: The Search For A Sister In China . It is about a Big Sister looking for her sister who has been missing for two years. She contacts Frank Langfitt to help her find her  sister. The story is really interesting in the sense that even though this was a person you are related to and grew up with... her life was somewhat of a mystery. Take a listen if you get a chance.  What do you think happened to Little Sister? You can find a link to the story here .

As my friend and I headed to our cars after an evening of Bar Method, she pulls out a big bag of lemongrass from her trunk to give to me. Even though I knew my mom would stuff lemongrass in chicken when she cooked it.. I had no other idea what I could do with lemongrass. Then I remembered my vacation in Thailand last November and our trek through the humidity to find our hotel.... we were greeted by hotel staff with a glass of cold lemongrass tea. It was so refreshing. So I began to do research about making this tea and it seemed fairly easy.  L E M O N G R A S S    T E A Servings: 2-3 Time: 6-10 minutes 8 cups of water 4-6 stalks of lemongrass  1 tsp of agave per cup (really it is to your preference of sweetness) Small piece of peeled ginger (optional) 1 Cinnamon stick (optional) 1. Rinse the lemon grass 2. Either cut or fold/tie them enough that they are able to fit and stay in the pot that you are boiling them in...something like this: 3. Fill a pot with

I just finished an acrylic painting inspired by the artist Nacho Diaz . It took a LOT of time because I wanted to make it different from his and coming up with the new part did not come naturally to me. It required a lot of trial and error... and error means mixing the right colors and covering up the mistake. I always wish I had more time dedicated to painting and drawing and this was definitely a challenge that I was looking for.  But after painting this, I felt like I wanted to continue painting but in a different medium. My friend had talked to my about buying watercolors...and at first it didn't seem so interesting to me until I watched a couple youtube videos on watercoloring. Check out these videos: I purchased a set of KOI Watercolors  and waterbrushes  as well as a new pad for water coloring. I painted the palette on to a piece of paper so I could get an idea of what the colors would look like when it dries. And here is my first watercolor: I reall