A Little Car Incident

Something crazy happened after church yesterday. We finished at around 8:30pm and one of the girls car from church got smashed- but she saw the guy who did it. So she ran back in to tell Robin- an older lady at church. Robin rang the police and called out to 3 guys at church including Greg and her husband (whom just become an elder of our church an hour earlier). Well... they went and chased after the culprit towards the general direction he was running to, and saw him when they were running down a hill. They yelled to the guy, "Hey, someone's car just got smashed!" the dude just ran faster and yelled back, "I'm gonna stab you in a minute!" So the guys followed him at a safe distance to where he was living- which is to a government housing/apartment area.

Meanwhile, some of the girls and I were trying to calm each other and waiting for the boys in the foyer, thinking, "So... what are they going to do when they caught him? They won't beat him. Maybe they'll pray for him?" haha... how funny would that be?

Thankfully they all came back around 10 minutes later unharmed. I started packing my keyboard but Robin told me that Greg might not be back for awhile because the police thought they caught the guy and they want him to identify if it was the right person.. It wasn't the guy, but fortunately nothing was stolen from the car. There's a lot of car theft going on in Canberra, but the police said it's a rare situation when the person got caught in the act.

Oh well... I'm just glad that my husband (or anyone) didn't get stabbed... I will cry.

Plants, Books and Photography

On May 1st, I received my Etsy update in my email, aaand it hits me. In the month of April, I've only listed 5 new items and had re-listed $18.20 worth of items (91 items).

What...have... I, DONE?!

I have to admit that listing things on Etsy is not my favorite things to do. I envy people who loves photography and gets excited when it comes to taking photos of their own jewelry. I love taking photos for fun, but when it comes to taking Etsy photos, I really, really, dread it- and I don't realize when I don't do it. So from now on, I'm going to restrain myself from making jewelry on Fridays and will dedicate that day into taking photos and listing new items on Etsy.

I have been sketching a lot and have been coming up with new designs.My recent one is the butterfly wings earrings. It's been hard and fiddly work- doing sketches has definitely helped me map out of what I'm making. I really like the result, especially the multiple colour combination.

Mariposa in green and purple

Mariposa in red and black

I’ve been having an awesome following weekend. Greg and I decided to go to a nursery to spend a gift voucher we got from a friend. When we got out of our unit to the car, Greg went to take the recycling out and guess what he found at the dumpster?!

Taraaaaa...!!!

You know, I've always wanted a one, even though I can't sew for the life of me. Greg looked up on the internet to see how to thread the cotton through, we test it on a piece of rag and it still works!!! It's so awesome that we haven't got out of the house yet and we're already getting free stuff :p

When we arrived at the nursery, I was pretty much in heaven. We got lots of basic gardening things- and some fun things like- tulip and hyacinth bulbs, lavender plant (so that I can stop stealing Suzanne’s and eat my own lavender), 2 camellia plants (cause it was 50% off) , and a mushroom growing kit!

On Sunday morning, I did my first half a shift of minding our tiny Christian bookstall at a market in a parking lot with my friend Chloe. Our stall were located in a place where people sell their whatever. We’re not there to make money. It’s a way for our church to bring out Christianity and raise conversations with strangers... except I was a bit shy and were'nt familiar with the books. I hope I’ll get more shifts soon and practice a bit more. Our main priority is to talk to people about Christianity. So when someone is interested of a book and money is an issue, sometimes we just give them away. Or sell a book for $2 when it’s meant to be $7, like we did that day. But we do sell other things outside of this to cover our losses.

That afternoon I did some gardening, which I enjoyed immensely. I bought a basil plant weeks ago which are growing in clumps, so I spent time splitting them and re-planting it. I planted some seeds- properly this time with individual mini pots and super fine dirt- with labels. Most of the seeds are various winter salad seeds that I got for my birthday.

Btw, if you ever wanted to do some gardening and think that it’s hard, here’s a tip: plant grape hyacinth- you won’t fail! I pulled out some grape hyacinths bulbs last year and chucked them in a bucket to replant. I saw some of the bulbs started to sprout in the bucket, but didn't realise that it had grown inside the bucket feeding on each other. This plant is seriously persistent for life and they somehow know that when autumn comes it's time to grow. While still in the bucket the bulbs did get some sun, but I didn’t water them at all. I could just left them the way it is and put it in a glass jar to see how it grows, but I'm not that game so I just end up replanting it.... Maybe next year I'll prepare for it.

what we 'made' on Easter holiday...

One of the many reason I started a blog is so that I will be able to challenge myself in appreciating my life experiences by writing about it, no matter how simple they are. I’m not sure why I was so uninspired I couldn’t think of anything to write in the past couple of weeks. I need to shut my brain in thinking that way because I overlooked something awesome that we did on the Easter long weekend: making my long awaited jewelery holder!!!  

Greg’s parents own a huge farm 3 hours away from Canberra- ...aaand a shed in their yard full of wood-turning related equipment. On Monday morning, as soon as Greg and I are up, we rode on a motorbike around the farm to find wood. Greg showed me this old broken shed and we picked out a single long wood that was nailed to the roof. I couldn't believe my luck! A genuine, properly aged and weathered piece of wood that has been sitting there for decades- and it looked amazing. The wood was no less than 2 meters long but we somehow managed getting it back on the motorbike. 

Back in the house, me and Robyn (my mum in law) swept all the umbrella weed and dead caterpillars out of the wood turning shed. We got some chicken wire from the farm and Greg’s dad helped us cut the wood. As soon as we figured out what to do, I became the useless one and Greg did the rest of the work. 

...so Robyn and I organised a special outdoor lunch for the 4 of us! Robyn is a master in creating the perfect fire. With pieces of bricks and rocks put together, it is just as good as using a proper barbecue. 

This is one of our favorite camping food: potato wrapped in aluminum foil then placed inside the fire's hot coal (not the flames). When it's all cooked you can easily peel the skin, put butter and salt on it and scoop up the soft hot potato inside. Oh yuuum....  

'

oh, and the cat gets to enjoy the fire too but not our food. 

We took the jewelry holder back to Canberra and it is now sitting on my desk. I'm not quite finished with it yet, but right now... I'm just happy that I can see the things that I made displayed than just piled up in a bag. And when I feel like I'm not being productive I could look up to my jewelry display and be happy with what I've got. Yay! =)

Saturday bake day

From 11:30am till 6pm today, Simon and I hung out in the kitchen to bake cookies for our team's bake sale tomorrow. We made melting moments in 3 different flavors: lemon, berries and lavender, using the lavender sugar I made 2 days ago. The smell was at least twice stronger than when I packed them. The powder is still green, but I end up using colouring to make look violet-ish. I also tried to make lavender muffin- they failed completely and went straight in the bin... must be something to do with me with not following the recipe again.

This is Simon in the kitchen. He said he can't cook, but it's great that he's willing to have a go at it anyway. He's come a long way in 1 day. This photo proves it! 

lavender, lemon and berry icing. 

and... voila! 

Quest for the Perfect Lavender Sugar

If you're reading this blog to look for the perfect lavender sugar recipe: stop reading now, you're going to get disappointed: I am still in the middle of my quest and I'm not sure if I've found it yet. 

Lavender had just recently caught my attention when I saw that sparkleskitchen is making lavender flavored macaroon, then a series of events began to happen that fed my interest. My friend Rohan from Bible study mentioned that he tried making lavender ice cream saying that it taste different in a 'posh' sort of way. A couple of days later, Greg and I went to Mick and Suzanne's house. They have lavender at their front yard, so I took some home determined to cook them. Mick pretty much cut me a whole bush to take home!

In risking my food to smell and taste like soap, I started cooking with lavender last Friday. My plan was to make lavender icing to put inside my melting moments cookies. Making melting moments are kind of my baking specialty. I skimmed through a couple of recipes online for lavender icing but then decided to get all courageous and just make one up. I mixed some lavender flowers and leaves with milk, sugar, water... and (an idea that came to me from hell): corn flour- which I believe is the culprit behind making this mix into one really disgusting gooey mess that smell bitter and nothing like lavender. So yea... they end up in the bin.

Refusing to take this defeat, on Monday I went to Suzanne's house, and we baked lavender muffins together. It was basically lavender fed in the food processor then mixed in a normal muffin mix. It tastes nice- but I couldn't really smell the lavender that emerges from the oven that I imagined in my mind.

Nigella's recipe

To raise money after the marathon we did over the weekend, we're having a BBQ and a bake sale- lavenders are definitely going to be involved in this! I found Nigella Lawson's lavender cupcake recipe that is going to rock this bake sale! Noticing that this recipe involves lavender sugar, I tried making it just tonight. I know that mixing lavender and sugar in a food processor is meant to be easy... but for some reason I don't see it that way.

I've got more fresh lavenders from Suzanne the generous, and today I managed to blend lavender and sugar in 3 different ways. I blended 2 cups of caster sugar and 5 sprigs of lavender together. Instead of getting a nice purple sugar as I saw in this recipe, the powder looks more green-ish. Maybe it's because I use fresh lavender instead of dried ones. But anyway, it is in an air tight jar now, and we shall see if it will live up to its expectation when I open it in 2 days time.

Sure enough I got curious and started blending more lavender but this time in icing sugar. I'm hoping that I can use this sugar to make more lavender icing hence redeeming myself from the last one that ended up in the bin.

As you can see, I just put all of the flowers and icing sugar and blend it just as that. When I taste it, it tasted bitter and only smell faintly of lavender. Thinking that this is probably because there's too much stalk and not enough flowers,  I decided to take the buds off the stalk, and do it again:

After doing this, it still tasted a bit bitter. I decided that maybe using fresh lavender isn't the way to go. So I picked some dried lavender that my friend had given me months ago. This is sort of my last resort because I'm not even sure if it's safe to eat after it's been drying for so long. But it still smells nice, and after I blend it, it does look more purple than the other mix- but it still taste bitter.

5 different jars of sugar later and a bench that is covered in white and purple- and nothing to eat in the end, my kitchen felt more like a lab than a kitchen. If I ever reach the end of this quest, maybe I can write a book about 'how many different ways can you butcher a lavender'. When I worked in a florist, I used to treat flowers like kings. I felt so evil when I found myself putting a perfectly well bloomed flower into a food processor- and eating them.

So, lavenders aside, we'll leave the kitchen and move to the studio for a sneak peak of what I've been doing this week: spiral bracelets!

I've made a yellow spiral bracelet to match the existing choker that I listed on Etsy last week. Looking by the variety of coloured pearls I have, I can't resist making them in several different colours. This means that there's a lot less designing and sketching involved in my job this week. But I would like to see them in different colours and if I don't do it now, I might never will unless someone asks for it- I'm not waiting around for that to happen.

These spiral bracelet consist of  13 small spirals, 52 or more tiny swarovski pearls and it takes around 4 hours to make- depending on how many mistakes I make and how distracted I am that day. I've been listening to Esperanza Spalding new CD over and over in the background and watching kitchen nightmares at lunch time. Life's good this way. =)

A Fun Run Experience

I thought this weekend is going to be horrible, but as it turns out, I got to the end of it feeling refreshed and happy! I haven't felt like this in awhile and it feels like I've been saved by someone.

This weekend is our church camp. I couldn't go because of the initial commitment I had to do a 10km fun run as part of the Australian Running Festival with a group of people that I hardly knew. If I knew that it was going to clash with the church camp, I would have given it a miss. It's a no-brainer decision really. Would I rather be running 10km with some random people or having fun at the beach with 20 of my close friends? It was definitely an obvious decision for Greg, he went ahead for camp without me.

But things seem to work out in the end. Greg's parents decided to stay over for 1 night on their way back home from New Zealand. My friend Liz is also staying over for a night on her way back to Sydney from her parents house in Tathra. Turns out that I was anything but lonely while Greg is away. My guest arrived on Friday night, and the next day at 3pm, it was time for me to meet up with the rest of my team mates to stretch our muscles and pull our minds towards a positive direction.

We have been slowly training for this event. My training had been a bit choppy because of my health and my stupid weak ankle. I never trained up to 10km, but I've been training regardless up to 7km. I find a lot of people are skeptical with the term "fun run" for this event, including me. But after experiencing the event first hand... it is actually kindda fun. The second they fired the gun, you're in the middle of hundreds of people running together, you have crowds on either side of you cheering like there's no tomorrow. Of course, we got sifted pretty quickly. The serious runners went way ahead and all the slower runners fell behind, but it doesn't mean that people stop cheering for you.

We had to run 3 and a half lap of this route. The moment I finished my first lap, some crazy dude had finished the whole run! That means this guy had run passed me 3 times and I didn't notice it. He did 10km in 30:52 minutes, which means he ran in the speed of 20km/hr... and now I'm just speechless....

I thought I was going to stop and start in this run, but I didn't! I ran the whole way through! As a very slow runner I thought my speed was going to be 1km for every 10 minutes, but I finished the run in 1 hour and 10 minutes, so in average I jogged 7km/hr. For a relatively long run, I'm quite happy with that number. I have definitely underestimated myself in this run, I really didn't know I had that in me!

100 meters to go, and I think it's time for me to pick up the pace a little. Having my in laws there at the end is priceless! They were so excited! Simon and Estelle had reached the end cheering as well. Crossing that finish line was definitely very satisfying! I immediately joined Simon and Estelle as we wait to cheer for Emilia. It was all smiles from then on. We all went to a pub together for a toast and a much needed team bonding session, then for dinner mum and dad took me out for dinner in my favorite restaurant near our house.

Emilia, me, Simon and Estle, jumping for joy jumping for joy with our medals!

The next day I woke up from a well deserved sleep in a lovely rainy Sunday morning- just the way I like it. Mum and dad left at 11am and I'm finally alone. Now it's time for me to do some work....

In my last post I mentioned a certain tip that I'm trying to apply in my Etsy shop that forced me to rearrange my plans. I was basically challenged to make my shop stand out among others by creating something that is unique. I realize that when I first opened up my Etsy shop in Oct 2008, I tend to view other people's product and get a feel of what sells and what doesn't- then based my design from there. It's not quite the opposite but now I have to look for what's unavailable in Etsy and make that. I assumed finding a gap in jewelry making is not so easy because most handmade artist in Etsy are jewelers. But on the contrary, I immediately knew what I had to make: wire wrap chokers.

Thus, I went to town with this idea in the past 2 weeks. Today I listed 4 chokers and 1 necklace on Etsy. It seems small, but it was very time consuming. Armed with a tripod, SLR camera, a mirror, and Sara Bareilles grooving on the background, I got trigger friendly experimenting pose after pose. I felt like I've nearly exhausted my wardrobe with all the different jewelry. Not surprisingly, after hundreds of photos I took today, only 28 lucky shots made it to Etsy today.

I decided to put photos of my face as the main photo of my chokers on purpose. I felt that photos of necklace or earrings can easily make sense without an actual model, but chokers are different. I need to see it being worn to know what it is otherwise it just look like a very small necklace- hence the sudden explosion of my face all over the shop.

Alright, it's almost 2am now and I'm falling asleep. It's time for me to do just that... somewhere else... a bed maybe.

Good night!

1st April

Happy April Fool's day everyone! Anybody receiving a good prank today?

I've had several blog ideas this week, but I must admit that I found it really hard keeping up this blog in sync with the events in my life.

This Monday night, I played piano for a choir the first time, ever, ever, EVER, in my whole life.  I was sooo terrified, but I took the job anyway. I had to learn 12 songs in a week for this choir session and even though I've put in many hours of practicing the songs, I didn't finish learning them all by the time Monday comes. I walked in the choir room literally shaking. But God is good to me. The choir members that I played for are the nicest, supportive group of people, EVER! In the middle of playing "autumn Leaves" I got lost in the page turning and someone from the choir had to come up to the piano and helped me. I spontaneously sang the piano fills on the parts that were too fast for me to play. With that being said, I had SO much fun in the end. The choir sounds great and Greg caught me smiling in the bits where I can actually play. They were very encouraging, gave me an applaud for learning all those songs in 7 days, and what's more, I'm singing alto next week when they have their original pianist back. 


So many little things are happening, and I feel like I'm finding it hard to keep up. Maybe it's because I'm a really slow person and it takes a really long time for me to do anything. 


Things that occupied my mind a lot is of course my jewelry business. I couldn't stop criticizing about the way my shop looks. I am, truly my own worst critique. Also, I've picked up a certain tip that caused me to set aside  my previous ideas/ sketches and take the shop into a major detour...in which I will reveal to you when I finish making and taking photos of them! =) 


After a month of focusing my time on making jewelry and developing my Etsy shop (with a bit of a break in between) I've started applying for casual jobs again this week. I've learnt my lesson not to put all of my hope in one job, or updating everyone about my interviews and trials news because I've been told I will fail a lot before I can succeed in one. I really, really hope I can get a proper extra income soon before it gets extremely freezing here. >.<


Right now, I'm lounging on the couch with the news on tv waiting for Emilia to come over for a small meeting. My friend Estle had managed to gather a few people up to do the Canberra marathon fun run. We're running 10km to raise fund for "Lifeline" a suicide prevention call service in Australia. Estle had been pretty diligent in training. She tries to go running everyday even. I need to be more like her, having been sick didn't exactly help either. I'm gonna die next week. I really should be running instead of blogging. Hopefully by the end of the meeting tonight we'd be able to find a way to raise funds.


That's all from me now...