absurdly peculiar

Musui and I in Yosemite - October 2019. Just wanted to say:  Long time no see! A couple of updates since my last posting include: 1. We moved to a new place. 2. Due to Covid-19, we started working from home on March 3. I was placed on furlough recently - once a week out of the month. As a result, I have a lot more time on my hands and so many projects - food recipes and DIY projects to update this blog with. Can't wait to share that all with you!

I've been dealing with a lot of "adult" things this past month - oil changes, air filter replacements, car battery replacements, taxes, amending taxes, and lastly, my phone dying on me. There were many days this month where my face looked like the picture below. BUT it is nothing I can't handle, but i'm glad that they are finally being crossed off my list of things to get done!!! Me (left) and my cousin. Wonder why I look so grumpy.. maybe I didn't get a nap? Late last month, I started to notice that my Pixel phone that I purchased through Google circa 2016 in order to use Project Fi was having issues; when I wanted to switch from Bluetooth to my phone I could no longer communicate with the person on the other end - which was never an issue before. Then, I would make phone calls from my phone and the person on the other end couldn't hear me but I could hear them. So I called Google support; the first time they told me it was a WiFi issue and I h...

After coming back from a trip to NYC, I was greeting by a bell pepper growing on my front porch! Even though it was very exciting to come home to a bell pepper growing after a successful self pollination.... it has been a couple weeks and it hasn't grown any bigger.  My daikon radish has been growing pretty successfully for a while. I decided to pull them out this past weekend to pickle them. I felt pretty proud of myself for growing this one. All of these plants I have been planting from seed and so it is pretty satisfying seeing them grow.   Look at my beautiful babies!! My boyfriend and I decided to pickle a combo of carrots, daikon and jalapenos in a mix of rice vinegar, sugar, and water. We decided to taste the daikon before we pickle it... and to my disappointment they very bitter. There is a trick to removing the bitterness from a daikon that I just learned about; it involves washing the daikon in salt water 2-3 times and then wa...

I planted a bell pepper plant over 3 years ago and I was able to get it to grow some leaves but nothing beyond that... that is, until this year! This year, I noticed it grew some flowers and like the idiot I am... I pinched them off right away (I read somewhere at some point when a plant is growing flowers you should pinch them off so the plant won't taste bitter. I didn't realize til later.. that you need the flowers so that your plant can pollinate and produce fruits... and whatever I read was for herbs). After a few months, I gave up hope that flowers would come back for my plant, but sure enough they did! I used a self pollination technique that I read about online. Here is a video of me trying to self pollinate for the first time. I was definitely nerding out! I'll need to update you if all of this actually works and I get some bell peppers! (I know it's not in season technically... but we live in Southern California.. so anything goes!)

I've moved into my new place for over 5 months and our place just looks like I just moved in. When my boyfriend went away on a work trip, I decided I needed to update the space. I am cheap and so I didn't want to spend a lot of money. I chose our bedroom to update - I chose a space that we spend a lot of time in and felt I could do a couple changes for cheap. This is what the space looked like before in our bedroom (see below). My friend and my boyfriend use to live together.. and this use to be my friend's room... and I have no idea what he was thinking. First, the rod is TOO short for the window... and he was cheap and only bought one panel. Yeah, friend.. if you ever read my blog... I called you cheap! And so this window has been looking pretty sad for a while (and if you haven't looked yet, see below for evidence of its sadness).  The only changes I made to this space since I moved in was add those 3 little organizers to the right of the window and ...

Yup, $500 is the budget I had to work with. If you have the time and friends to help you... decorating on a budget is doable. Here is my breakdown for expenses: Welcome Poster and Chalkboard Markers 20 J&J sign 15 Wisteria garland from Amazon 50 Rope 3 Card Box 5 Table Number Tags 13 Wine bottles from Amazon (36, 3 boxes of 24)  66 Beer bottles from homebrew store (66 bottles, 3 boxes of 24) 45 Baby's breath from Costco 102 Mason Jars (14 jars, 2 packs) 16 18 Bouquets from Trader Joe's 120 SUM 455 Total plus tax 500.50 I found delabeling bottles to be time consuming and decided to buy the rest. I also realized during the wedding that I did not have enough mason's jars.. thank goodness the previous wedding party left theirs behind! For buying your own flowers, I advised buying them a couple days ahead of time and if you are doing flowers...

Just wanted to share a couple pictures from the wedding! I wish I was able to take more pictures but there was a bit of an emergency and I didn't have as much time as I thought to decorate. Keeping in mind it was like 100 degrees F, I think we did a pretty good job decorating. Being a wedding decorator is a lot of work and it gave me deep appreciation for what they do.