Tag Archives: lockdown

It’s So Tedious, Part 2

3 Jul

The DIY house project has been such a challenge. While it’s a nice change from carving, it’s truly a test of patience and skills. Putting little pieces of furniture and accessories together is not the easiest hobby on earth, especially when it comes to gluing fabric. It’s so darn hard!

My two kitchen chairs took several days to complete because the fabric, upon gluing, wasn’t bonding with the wood well. I had to use clothes pegs to hold them down so that they can set properly to dry. And it took several attempts as I ended up having more glue on my fingers than the pieces!

Once the kitchen chairs were finally completed, I worked on another equally aggravating set of chairs for the bedroom. And if I thought this was the ultimate test of patience and skills, making tiny pillows take the cake! I’ve managed only three pillows so far and have procrastinated on the last two.

Tiny chairs and tinier pillows to aggravate you!

On a brighter note, the ground floor has been completed and it looks impressive despite an initial misalignment of the chandelier. The chandelier had to be moved so that it’s directly over the coffee table when the sofas were put in place. All’s good now. Phew.

Top: Chandelier was off; bottom: my pretty ground floor

A few days later, the first floor was also completed as I got those darn chairs glued properly. It’s only a matter of time now to shift my energy and focus on the open-top floor with the swimming pool.

Fancy staying in this place? Hehehe

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It’s So Tedious

29 Jun

When it comes to furnishing the little DIY home, it’s so tedious. It’s not as easy as the instructions show. And it takes patience and accuracy to ensure the alignment is precise.

I started off working painstakingly on the itty bitty pieces of furniture and accessories once the main structure was put together. Then focused on the kitchen area.

The kitchen: before and after the wall cabinets, light and top floor were up

When that section was completed, I worked on more itty bitty pieces of furniture and the bathroom on the first floor.

Shower area walls are not straight!

The wiring of the whole structure to be lighted up was tough because things were very delicate and fine. Generally, while it has been slow, I’m rather pleased with the progress.

 

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My New Normal?

26 Jun

Last weekend’s plans to walk 18-holes was derailed by the rain. On Saturday, my flight had three holes left to play at the Hills course when the skies opened up. Luckily the halfway hut was close by and we got there on time to wait out the downpour.

When the rain lightened and there was a slight reprieve, we quickly made our way back to the clubhouse. It certainly wasn’t comfortable with the pants and socks all wet. Luckily, the weather on Sunday was better and we completed a full round but I had a terrible game. I am very inconsistent. Sigh…

Despite being another slow week at the office, I played only one game (on Tuesday), giving the Thursday game a miss so that I could sleep in. And today, I will be in the office.

I now wonder if this will be my routine for the next few months. Once or twice to the office, an additional Tuesday game on top of the weekend games and an occasional Thursday game thrown in. Welcome to the new normal.

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A New Activity, Part 2

16 Jun

M2 and I were aghast at the challenge ahead with my DIY home that arrived first. All the furniture pieces are so tiny!!! What have I gotten ourselves into?

Checklist of all items to construct my mini 3-story bungalow!

The mess working on the kitchen chairs

I had to put aside finishing up the Monument piece to focus on this. So the two of us worked on my house at every opportunity available. But it has been slow because cooking and cleaning the real house takes priority over fixing up the toy house. Don’t forget, there’s all that golf to play too during the weekends. The DIY home was merely to fill up any free time available.

Props are tiny beyond tiny!

However, there were days we didn’t look forward to the daunting task because the pieces were so minuscule to handle especially the props and materials. Half the time at such close proximity, I had to remove my glasses to see better. But I felt we couldn’t abandon the three projects just like that simply because things were tiny.

Everything here was so hard to glue! See the size in comparison to my glasses

Clips to hold and to hold down the fabric after applying glue

At times, I had to use a clothes peg when working with fabric to hold the pieces when applying glue. And the clothes peg also doubled up to hold the material down to bind with the glue. If I didn’t do this, I’d end up with all the glue on my fingers instead! And it’s rather time-consuming because the glue needed to dry before we could progress further.

When the second shipment arrived, M2 moved on to fix her house, whilst I concentrated on mine. And both of us agreed that hubby will not fix his house up because the parts are way too tiny for him to handle.

The incomplete first floor of M2’s DIY 2-story home. Check out the books on the bookshelf!

Once the two of us have completed our homes, we’d work on his together.

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A New Activity

15 Jun

My latest online purchase was done on a whim. After purchasing a couple of kitchen appliance/utensil items, I itched to buy something for myself. After all, those kitchen things were more for hubby to use, and we’ve hardly gone out to do any shopping, let alone go out.

So what did I buy?

A do-it-yourself home! And I had to buy the biggest house with teeny weeny parts to be put together with glue and tweezers. And as if that’s not enough, I bought two more houses too, one for M2 and one for hubby to fix! Crazy.

My house arrived slightly squashed but all contents were intact

The DIY house kits arrived separately – mine first, at the end of May and the other two several days later.

These two came more squashed but nothing broken

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This One Takes the Cake

9 Jun

Hubby’s baking skills have improved. He’s gone on to bake cakes besides bread, cookies and scones as well. He’s done carrot cake a couple of times already. Don’t forget there’s also the team effort apple pie and apple bread bomb.

The scones’ texture and taste were just right

I have to admit, I have gained a pound recently despite the vigorous weekend golf games. Maybe this is insufficient and I need to step up my exercise regime even more if I am constantly savoring all the baked temptations.

The latest effort is a sponge cake with a twist. M2 requested a Victoria Sponge and hubby obliged. But he didn’t want a whole Victoria Sponge cake because he felt that the jam filling would be too sweet.

So he improvised and instead of having a one-flavor cake, he did a half-and-half whereby one half had mixed berries for the Victoria part and the other half had Gula Melaka with coconut shreds. The second flavor was more suited to our tastebuds because the Gula Melaka was drizzled sparingly while the coconut shreds had hints of saltiness to counter the sweetness. Yum.

The half and half sponge cake

Such ingenuity as everyone was able to enjoy their preferred sponge cake without any guilt.

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It’s Rather Monumental

8 Jun
My eight inch Monument of Gigglesville

As expected, I didn’t take long to complete carving my latest Monument. I am proud to say it’s rather monumental. At a towering height of eight inches, this piece is by far my biggest monument.

I’ve also decided to put it to good use rather than displaying it on the shelf like the rest of the other Monuments.

The wedge

Supporting it will be a wedge that I had painstakingly used the wood planer to shave off to get the correct angle as a door stopper! Clever, ain’t I? It should look good and certainly very practical.

Stay tuned for the final piece!

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Goodbye Cat Condo!

5 Jun

Last week, I finally completed unveiling all 40 of the cat species in the Cat Condo game. Along the way, I managed to amass 555 quadrillion dollars! Crazy wealth right there.

555 quadrillion dollars… wow.

Towards the end of the situation, I sped things up by spending my dollars (for a faster unveil) on higher level species. And like the saying “money makes money”, the more I spent, the more I earned along the way.

With the last unveil, there’s no more challenge. So I have decided to delete the game. It’s been fun, time consuming yet mundane at the same time.

As for Cat Condo II, I am still at it because there are six more species to be unveiled. And now, there’s a new side mini Adventure challenge. So I will play on and will stop in due course when the Adventures are completed and the remaining six unveiled.

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Nothing Goes to Waste

2 Jun

Ever since the MCO started, hubby learned how to bake and as such, the eggs in the fridge are used up very quickly. It used to take forever to finish them but now, they are always on the grocery list to be replenished.

The best part of this is recycling the eggshells as fertilizer for the garden instead of just throwing them away. And I seem to enjoy fussing over the eggshells.

I’d remove the membrane first before pounding them up with my mini mortar and pestle. Fine but not too powdery, the eggshells act as a good deterrent for the slimy snails in the garden. They are also a good source of calcium especially for the habanero chilli peppers and it shows with the healthy harvests.

Besides the eggshells, other food waste is also recycled to be natural fertilizer for the garden. Rice water for instance. Whenever I wash rice grains before cooking, the water from the washing is kept a day or two in a container to be fermented before being used.

Occasionally if there are juice pulps from juicing, these are instantly sprinkled around the garden amongst the plants. And banana peels are always fed to the staghorn fern for nutrition. Nothing goes to waste in our home.

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The Next Piece

1 Jun

Soon after the ginormous Gnome was completed, a change on subject matter to carve would be good. After all, I ran out of wood for Whales. However I do have an abundant supply of long Meranti wood pieces, why not carve a Monument?

Honestly, it’s been a while since I last carved a Monument. A quick check on the carving log and my… my… the last one I carved was 2 June 2019, a year ago! So carving another Monument now is apt.

It should be good fun and not too difficult, this piece should not take too long to complete.

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