Challenge #1: the yard

Amongst the many things I had never done, like jumping off plane, or deep sea diving, is mowing the yard. Not just my yard. ANY yard.

True. Until two weekends ago, after finding out how much the handyman charges, I promptly told the boy "$50 bucks! No way, I'll freakin' do it and you can pay me $50." So one sunny afternoon before he left, I got a 30 min crash course on how to use the lawn mower and the weed eater.

When my friends and co-workers found out what I signed myself up for, they offered up a bevy of advice:

"Mow it often, long grass gets much harder"
"Don't try to mow the yard when it rains, the clumps of grass will cause a clog"

some are better:
"We're just a phone call away"
"You can call the FRG (family readiness group)"

and my personal fav:
"I'll be glad to come over and show you what you're doing wrong"

The weather was cooperative this Saturday, the sun was shining longer than expected and the rain kept away, so after lunch I decided to try my luck on the mowing the yard and cleaning up the edge with the weed eater.

The backyard was no problemo. The front yard was another story. Steep slopes and heavy lawnmower definitely do not bode well for me. I mowed the top as much as I can, and then let the mower slide down the slope to finish up the side walk. My big challenge came when I had to push the mower back up the slope. It was getting warm, my arms were tired, and even though I backed up a good 4 feet to get a running start, I. Just. Couldn't. get the mower back up the slope.

Finally, I took the bag off the mower, and that made it light enough for the push uphill. Thank goodness I didn't have to use my "phone-a-friend" card.

Next is the weed eater. Using that thing is like using the chop sticks for me-I know how to use it but I'm not very good at it. I tried to use the weed eater to clean up the front yard, and in my haste I left patches of bald grass spots all over. It. was. pathetic. but funny at the same time.

Overall I gave myself a 7 / 10 for my first attempt. It was definitely good exercise for the hour I spent outside. I'll have to do rinse and repeat in 2 weeks. Maybe I'll better arm strength by then. Now moving on to the next challenge... cooking a meal for myself.

Spring cleaning

I got bitten by the spring cleaning bug early this year, and compounded by the fact that I was really having shoes-overload problems.

So off to Target I went to get some shoe organizers and happened to stumble upon the Orla Kiely for Target kitchen hooks which I promptly picked up as well.

In order to add some sort of a hanging storage, I jammed the kitchen hooks in between the two piece of wood when I was assembling the shoe organizer.


The kitchen hooks worked out perfect for my belts, hat and light canvas bags. And I must say I am 99% please with the end result!


My only advice would be to not buy the shoe organizer from Target, but rather, go scour it somewhere else like Lowes or Home Depot. With the one I got, the "cubby holes" are small and they barely fit my 6.5 size shoes. If you have larger feet then the shoes may not fit in the cubby.

perfect sunday

Da boy and I had dimsum at Wei Hung this morning with Matt and Mae plus all three of their princesses... they are so fun! After brunch we headed to the bakery store couple blocks down and I stocked up on my BBQ pork, coconut, pineapple and curry beef baked goods. Yummy.

Got home and chilled out on the couch where I proceeded to polish off the bag of Flat Earth chips in Wild Berry Patch flavor.

Later in the afternoon, I baked up 6 jumbo muffins and a loaf of bread using the Amish friendship bread batter, but I substituted vanilla and cinnamon for good old chocolate flavor. Also dumped in two cups of Ghirardelli 60% cacao bittersweet chocolate chips to the mix. I love bitter chocolate.

After pulling the stuff out of the oven, da boy and I went for a walk in Tower Grove park. Even though we've been living in the Shaw neighborhood for 3+ months now, this is the first time we ever took a walk to the park.

This is absolutely my kind of weekend, eat eat eat and chill out.

Oh! Chair at Container Store

I'm in lust with these Karim Rashid Oh! Chair. I saw them at the Brentwood Container Store yesterday afternoon. They are pretty comfy and are stackable, which is a huge plus.

We currently have an Ikea dining table in the dining room but have no chairs around it, maybe the black version of the Oh! chair would work well with it.

Rave: Tubtrugs

Our laundry center was out of control. Clothes were strewn on the floor around the washer and dryer because we didn't have enough laundry baskets for the both of us.

Finally, I broke down and decided to buy some Tubtrugs to help with the clothes disaster. After doing some comparison shopping, I ordered 3 large and 2 medium Tubtrugs from the apartment therapy store.

The Tubtrugs were delivered in less than a week, and first impression I love the color. Here are all of them in the living room after da boy unpacked the giant box they came in:


I took two upstairs and started filling them up with my dirty laundry. The flexible handle makes it really easy to carry. I held it like I would a shopping bag or a big purse, and lift it with one hand no problem. No more scratching my knuckles on the wall while trying to navigate the old rubbermaid basket thru the door down the stairs to the basement.


So if you're looking for a more convenient laundry solution, or just for a pop of color, definitely consider these Tubtrugs. You can use these for anything, not just laundry. I plan on getting couple more (in different colors of course) to put gardening tools in, as well as my collection of car cleaning supplies.

teapot

I love this teapot set, it is so unique and minimalist, making it very cool in my book.

WARM Coffee/Tea Set Walnut (5 pieces)

Unfortunately, even though it is on sale, I still can't afford it. That and don't drink enough fine beverages to justify the purchase.

what color walls?

The house has a itty bitty room, roughly 9ft x 7 ft. The previous owners use it has a nursery for their baby. But this is going to all change as I am going to use this as my (to me) gigantic walk in closet.

First I'll need to paint it. It is a currently a very saturated deep blue. Because the room is fairly small, I want to open up the room with a lighter/different color.

Currently, there are colors on almost ALL the walls, with the exception of the 2nd half bath. I plan on repainting the main bath eventually. I'm undecided as to what color I should pick. I personally love green tend to gravitate towards that. But will green be a good color for a closet/room? Should I stick with the traditional off-white? I've more or less narrowed down my selection to light colors with lots of greys in it.


What do you think? Help me pick one by selecting your choice from the poll on the right. Or leave a comment.

curtains, round 2

On another note, I returned the curtains (see original post: curtains). After having them up for a month I decided they are definitely too short and a tad too dark for the room.

This morning I took them down, folded them, and headed off to Kitchen Toilet and More ('tis what I called Bed Bath & Beyond when I first moved to the States and can never remember the name of the store).

I also placed an order for two lighter color 108" panels, and to my delight they allowed me to use the same previous discounts for my purchase today.

These BB&B Newport 108" loooong window panels is schedule to arrive by mail in 2 weeks. I'm excited to see if these will turn out better.

BB&B stock photo:

trash can

This is such a great trash can idea. There are many times where I avoided using Shnucks plastic bags for the bathroom and office trashcan because it looks messy. Now this is the perfect solution.

Unfortunately, it is not available in the States yet.

Links:
Apartment Therapy article
IF product design award winner 2008

bedroom

After a week of procrastination, the boy and I finally finished assembling the dresser Saturday evening.

The room is finally coming together now, it went from a neon blue and green wall (it was a kid's room), to a nice calming muted wine color.

But by no means the room is completed, as we're still waiting for the second nightstand to be delivered as the first one was damaged in transit.

I've been looking online all evening for cool and interesting wall art. I think I want to try out Wall Decals. They are rather inexpensive compared to frame art, and it is definitely something different.

Here is how the room looks like currently, and I photoshopped one of the decal on the wall just as an example*:


Here are couple options I am looking at:
1. Vinyl Wall Art's Tree - this is the one I p-shopped above


2. Blik Surface Graphics - Anise by Ilan Dei


3. Etsy.com - Ellynelly's Panda


4. Etsy.com - Oneupdesign's Early Bird


I ma let the idea simmer for another day or two and see if I still like it. But for now, this is definitely a viable solution to the blank wall. Any frame art would likely be out of our price range for what we want to spend now.

* The collage idea came from makingitlovely.com.

furniture shopping

Has anybody in St.Louis been to HDL Furniture and Floorings? (Obviously I have never been). How is it like compared to Weekends Only Furniture?

DoubleUTeeEff

I think my blood pressure just shoot thru the roof.

I was checking the bank account and getting ready to pay it when I noticed that there is a charge from Directv for $413.01. What the f?

Everytime I call them... "Sorry mam the system is down we can't look up your account." I ma keep calling them until I get an answer.

Anybody know if I can file a complaint with BBB or consumer reports or anything like that? Not that I would get my money back, but I would like to get my story heard... however small it is.

update 10.08pm: I've called them twice after dinner. "System is still down". Wow. I wish they just DIAF. Ah yes, very mature of me to say that. BLARGH.

Finally, tv!

After a month and a half, we finally settled for Dish Network. Installation was this morning so I worked from home while the technician set up the dish and DVR.

Finally! No more staring at each other in dead silence during dinner time! How romantic!

a true test to our marriage

The bedroom furniture we ordered from CB2.com was delivered Saturday morning. In hindsight, it was easy to see how the nightmare begin.

First mistake: Assembly required. Not such a big deal usually, but we're talking about a king size bed here.

Second mistake: Told the delivery guy to put the box downstairs in the dining room. Again, not a big deal usually, but this bed is big and thus HEAVY. However, had I told him to put the box upstairs, I'll be bitchin' about the dirty carpet. This is a no-win situation.

Here is the headboard in its box. We decided to take it out of the box for easy transportation. Already there are some disagreement on how to haul it up the stairs. After some grunts and sweat from the boy (and me being absolutely no help), we got the headboard to the second floor.

Once we got all the pieces upstairs, the bed frame came together nicely. However, that joy was short lived, what killed us was screwing on the legs.

The instruction booklet calls for the bed side ways, as seen in the photo on the left. After some good old temper tantrums and blood boiling by the both of us we decided to flip it over - supported by a foot stool and baby gate (don't get any ideas, it was leftover from the seller). Thank goodness this trick worked.
About 3 hours after we started, our new king size bed assembly = mission accomplished. Knowing that we managed put together this big-ass bed, we proceeded to finish up one of the night stand as well.

The end result is very satisfying. However, if we were a new couple, there is no way in hell the relationship would survive putting together a bed. Heck, the boy's deployment was easier to deal with than this.

Thanks goodness, we survived :)

light bulbs

Early this morning, when I went to turn off the porch light I noticed the light bulb was out. So I opened a new pack of the environmental friendly fluorescent light bulb, dragged the tall kitchen tool to front door, and replaced the burnt out incandescent bulb.



I turned the light back on and the light switch was buzzzzzzzzing and the new bulb was flickering like fireflies. I had no clue what was going so I ran downstairs to the computer, and viola the answer was found on answer.yahoo.com.



Apparently, the switch on the wall is a dimmer, I HAD no idea. How was I suppose to know? And I can't use fluorescent bulb with a dimmer switch. ALSO, I'm not suppose to use fluorescent bulbs outdoors.

So another 15 minutes later, I found a regular round bulb, stood on the kitchen stool, and fixed the issue.



And that, were the 2 lessons that this new home owner learnt today. I'm sure there are plenty more to come.

almost over

I wanted to post about mascara but this takes precedent.

After 4+ years with Directv I finally cancel their service. Their installation process and the communication between the Directv, schedulers and the installation techs was just not there. I posted about the whole headache a while back.

So the boy and I thought we'll try something new, and signed up with Dish Network. The programming we got is roughly the same between the old service and the new - America's Top 200 - and the monthly charges are only couple dollars different, so it boils down to installation and customer service.

Installation is in 2 weeks. We shall see. It is an 18 month contract. Who knows, maybe after that we'll give AT&T U-verse a try.

I do wonder, if Charter Cable has the largest market share in St. Louis.

curtains

I love fashion, and it's easy for me. But home decor, dang that is a totally different story. I ventured out to Bed Bath and Beyond to get drapes for the living room, because the afternoon sun shines right on the couch, making it impossible to watch TV without holding a pillow up blocking out the sun rays.

I love the thickness of the drapes, the color is gorgeous too. HOWEVER, at 95", they are still too short. The next length up will be too long, and I would have no idea how to hem a curtain. Should I just leave it "puddle" on the floor? Gah. If only this is as easy as pants.

satellite TV

I used to love Directv. USED to. But not anymore, this fiasco has been going on for a month now.

First:
When we moved to our new old house at the beginning of Dec, I called and scheduled for Directv techs to come move the dish. The tech didn't show up and did not call to notify me. Okay fine, I figured it was cold and rainy that day, I'll cut the tech some slack.

Second:
Called and rescheduled for the second time. This time the tech was nice and courteous, however, he said he couldn't put the dish up coz he needs a 40ft ladder and a non-penetrating roof mount because we have a flat roof. Okay fine.

Third:
Called and reschedule again, the sheduler told me she didn't have my info - order was cancelled and reason given: Buyers Remorse. Bull crap. After much hollering she scheduled a tech to come out that Saturday. Tech came, was polite and nice enough. But he said "I need a 40ft ladder and a non-pen roof mount." I had to do some yoga breathing for fear of flying into a rage and strangling that poor tech.

Fourth:
Rescheduling for the 4th time, this time I called the installer directly to make sure I get that tech that specializes in the 40ft ladder and non-pen roof mount. I threatened to cancel - not as a tactic, but I am really || (this close) to switching over to Dish Network.

So where am I now? Sitting at home, waiting for the 40ft ladder specialist to come install my dish. The window is 12-5pm today (Saturday), and it is 4.35pm now. The tech has 25 minutes to show up at my door step. After which, bye bye Directv. I gave you enough chances to redeem yourself.

Grr... off to check out Dish Network's line up.

neighborhood

Wow, there is a local eco store just south of Hampton. Ever since moving into the new house I've been looking into eco-friendly choices for any home stuff. I'll definitely need to check this store out:

Home Eco on Macklind, 63109

Also another local store that caught my eye is Local Harvest - a grocery store on Morganford, across the street from Three Monkeys and catty corner from Tin Can.

Local Harvest Grocery on Morganford, 63116

Any other store I should check out? Leave a comment.

rethinking...

Wow, didn't find out till today - that there is no Pizza Hut delivery in our area. Maybe it IS a good time to start a cheap chinese restaurant right round the corner.