Indoor Flowers and Plants

I have been crazy planting some indoor plants.  My friend gave me this green plant to plant at home.  She told me to soak it in water for a couple of weeks or until  the root shows up before I plant them in a pot.

 

The orchids my husband bought me surprised me with this bloom one morning.  I was so excited when I saw the flower.  I usually don't have a green thumb and this really makes me happy.

I like to cut these flowers from our backyard and put them on our kitchen table.  I like it because I don't have to worry about falling leaves or petals and it lasts a long time.

I also picked some roses from our backyard and set them in the dining room.

To make sure the flowers last longer in the vase:

1. First fill up a vase with cold water.
2. Cut the stems at an forty five degree angle so the bottom will not just sit in the water and rot later on.
3. Trim any leaves that you submerge in the water.
4. Put roses in warm water (not over 110 degrees) for 5 minutes then transfer to the vase with cold water.
5. Put them in a cooler area so it will last longer.  If you want it to bloom faster, then put them where there is a lot of sunlight.
6. Trim the bottom of stems and change the water a week later.

Rounding up on Cosmetics

These are the things I always come back to no matter how many other brands I try.  These are the staples of  cosmetics I use everyday.

Natural Shine Lip Gloss (Pretty Pink Rose) - Sally Hansen's Inspired by Carmindy. It adds some shine but shows just a little hint of pink.

True Match foundation -by  Loreal . The undertone color is not too yellow or pink. It matches very closely to my skin tone and doesn't feel or look cakey.

Eye liner Gel - MAC Fluidliner.  This eyeliner stays on ALL day.  It doesn't rub off in the creases of my eyes and it goes on smoothly.

Small Eye Liner Brush - This is my favorite eyeliner brush. It has a very short and angle cut brush. I stumbled upon it when I couldn't find my MAC eyeliner brush. I found it's really easy to control and draws a very precise line.  It doesn't smear messily on my eye lids.

I always like Victoria's Secret fragrance products.  I received this body spray from my friend last weekend.

It smells so wonderful and I just love to spray it after applying body lotion.

Passport Renewal

We took our little daughter to the Main Post Office to renew her passport last week.  We searched online to find out the hours before we headed there.  It said it closed at 3 pm.  I took my daughter there right after school to avoid getting her out of school too early.  My husband took off early from work and got there to line up before 2pm.  There was already a long line when we got there at 2:30pm.  The lady in front of us told us that she was there the day before and had lined up since 1:30pm, and at almost 3pm an official lady had come and told her that they couldn't accept anymore people for that day. She was cut off with a couple of ladies in front of her.  We were hoping we would not be so unfortunate to have to come back another day since it's a hassle to have both parents and the kid present when applying a passport for a minor.

We couldn't see how many people were working in the passport service office as the line was so long out the door.  Everyone there just waited very patiently without knowing why it seemed like it took 20 minutes or more to see only one family left the office.  Most of the people with kids just had their spouse take the kids out and back again later to line up.  I was so tired of standing up that my feet were hurt and I had to stay in my car.  My husband later told me that an official lady came and passed out a red card to the last person to be admitted to the line up and sent the rest home at 3pm.

We finally got in to the door at 4:30pm and there was only one official lady working the office. The same lady who passed out the red card earlier.  Due to the bad economy, many of the post offices have closed down  and I guess they also cut down the manpower there too.  I have to compliment the official  lady for being so patient even though I could see she was tired but was still multi-tasking with answering all the questions from her colleagues while processing our application.  To make her feel a little better, we chatted with her a little bit while she looked through the paperwork.  She told us she had been working there 27 years and she knew the ins and outs of the whole thing.  Sure enough the bad economy did cut off the employees there.  It was good that we didnt' t need to take pictures there.  We already had 2 photos and application filled out, a check for $60 to the Passport Service and $25 for the Postmaster.  It didn't take us too long to finish, but when we left there it was already 4:45pm.  What a tiring afternoon just for renewing a passport.  I am glad we don't have to do this until years later.

The Ant War Is On

The area I live in always has ants in the house.  Every summer I have to fight with the ants everyday.   I learned these tactics from my friends over the past couple of years.  They seem to work effectively.

I tried this last year, and we did not have a lot of ants in the house:

Method 1:

• After the raining season is over , like around April, spray the outside of the house with ants Pesticide.
• Spray again in June before the weather gets really hot.
• Another spray in October before the weather gets cold.

I found out recently that there are ways to take care of the ants without using the chemicals.  Ants do not like spices and baby powder.  Here is what I learned from my friend:

Method 2:

• Place ant stakes 2 times a year outside of the house- whenever the day light saving time hour change, e.g. March and October.
• Place star anise or cinnamon sticks inside the shelf or area where the ants will most likely show up.
• Put fresh vanilla bean inside the sugar container.
• Place powder underneath the refregerator.
• Plant some peppermints outside the house.

I bought the ant stakes from Orchard Supply yesterday and they were $2.00 off and each cost $4.99 per box. I hope these tactics will help and save me from battling with the ants this year.

House Hunting

My friends wanted to move to a newer area, so we went to see some new model homes. With the economy so slow nowadays, houses prices are now in a negotiated position.  We went to see some huge houses just for fun.  Here are some of the huge houses we saw:

 Interior of one of the model homes:

New houses that are being built around the area but not sold yet:

Breath taking views from the backyard:

For resale value purposes and for those are into Feng Shui, we've learned to take this advice from the real estate agent when buying a house:

1. House with the number ended with 4 is never a choice to buy, it's a homophone of "dead" in Chinese.
   
2. If a house's front entrance is directly facing the T-section of a street. there's a safety issue.
3. If the stairway is facing straight towards the front entrance, in Feng Shui it means you won't be prosperous!
4. A house in a public area like schools or parks are considered noisy and dangerous, especially because of there are many strangers around.
5. If there's a mountain in the back of the house, it's considered good because you are in good hands and there's always something to support you or help you out.
   

Red Box - Rent a Movie

We used to go to Blockbuster to rent movies. We would walk through every aisle just to see what movies we wanted to watch for that weekend.  Then it became inconvenient  for us to spend a long time looking for a movie and possibly end up wondering if we got the right movie.  We stopped doing that for a long time.  Then we started to watch movies on Netflix where you can pay a monthly fee and they send you the movies you select.  Then it became too much trouble to deal with the mail.  In the past few years we haven't had time to watch movies.  I would take the kids to the library and check out some movies during summer vacation. The good part of going to the library is you can borrow a few movies at a time and not need to return them until a week later.  The bad part is most of the movies are not new releases and sometimes we have to wait a long time before the new movies to be available for check out.  Sometimes we didn't even have time to finish them all and ended up forgetting to return them and having to pay a fine.

Now there's this new vending machine for renting movies.  I find it very convenient.  It's called the Red Box. You can find out online what kind of movies are available for rental before going to the Red Box to rent by credit or debit card.  They are available outside Lucky grocery store for $1 a day. The best part is they are all new releases and you can return the movie no later than nine o'clock the next evening.

I like it because I get to see a newly release movie whenever I feel like watching a movie and I don't have to wait a long time to watch it.    For example, I have watched these newly released movies: Julie and Julia, Public Enemies,The Proposal. So far I haven't had trouble not being able to rent any movie I wanted.

The next time when you feel like watching a movie, you can go here to see the list online.

New Phase (face) for New Year

I begin to feel bored with the green background of my blog, and also I am ready to move on to the next phase - learn to take better photos.  It will be an interesting journey since I have "zero" knowledge about camera except for point and "click".  I decided I should give my blog a clean and simple new face/look for the new year.

I started the blog about a month ago.  It's a big challenge for a computer illiterate like me to learn everything fresh from the beginning.  I had no knowledge of how to do a blog.  I had opened an account and attempted to do a post a year before that, just to see how blogging works, but I was not able to find time to continue exploring it.

I am not a very patient person, but I have a thirst to learn.  I wanted to learn how to type in Chinese on the computer for a long time. I know for a fact that I have to learn Pin Yin (Chinese phonics using English alphabet) to compose Chinese characters. Without any knowledge of what tool to use, I  spent a fair amount of time researching online and downloading all the possible tools I can used from Windows.

I started off with doing a Chinese blog.  It's a mistake to begin with, reasons being I have never learned PinYin before and I  have to learn how to blog at the same time . On top of that, I haven't written Chinese for over 20 years.  It literally took me 10 minutes just to finish a short sentence. From composing to typing, or translating to editing, it took me 2 to 3 hours to finish a Chinese post compared to a 20 minutes English post.  With practice and playing with all the widgets whenever I had time, all the practice paid off and today I can publish a post in about an hour time frame. Maybe I will get faster in the future or maybe this is the best I can do.

Blogging is easy, from setting up an account to uploading links and pictures to changing the template, fonts and colors.  They are all self explanatory. You just have to have the will to learn and practice.  With the blogger's help, I can find most of my questions answered at this stage.  It's the Chinese Pin Yin that's killing me. So anyone interested in doing a blog, it is no biggie.  But if you don't know PinYin and wanted to do a Chinese blog, starting with the English blog and practicing/learning all the widgets here first then moving on to a Chinese blog is so much easier. 

Why am I writing all these?  Becuase I truly find joy in sharing what I know or what I like on my blog. It's also a way to keep track of the things I learned and pass them down to my children. I hope that my children will find it useful in the future when they become adults.  That's why I do not have a theme for my blog. I hope to encourage more of you to write and keep a record of what you have learned, such as in cooking, flower arrangement, etc.  All you have to do is read a little, learn a little and do a little everyday.  It's nice to share and learn from each other and that's why there are many bloggers out there. I am not a good writer, but it's the things I want to share, not my writing.  So I am having fun blogging, so should you!

Best High Schools- Fremont Mission District

Last week, U.S. News posted an article about America's Best High Schools:

"We looked at more than 21,000 public high schools in 48 states and the District of Columbia. The following are the top 100 schools that performed the best in our three-step America’s Best High Schools ranking analysis."

Fremont's Mission San Jose High School ranked No. 36 out of the top 100 schools list.  Among the Top Open Enrollment Schools, it ranked No. 4 on the list. The school's outstanding ranking has already brought many people to move into the Mission district area and they believe it to be even more crowded after this news spreads. There are currently 38 Valedictorian Candidates for the class of 2010. The candidates must maintain an unweighted GPA of 4.0 and remain a straight A student until their school year ends to qualify as Valedictorians at MSJHS.   These students are certainly working extremely hard to accomplish that.

My daughter also told me a few weeks ago that her teacher said that William Hopkins Junior High School in Fremont is also voted to be the best junior high school.  How wonderful it is to live in such a nice school district! As parents, we should all give these kids the biggest round of applause because they deserve it.  They have been put under tremendous pressure and are still trying to make it as best as they could in such competitive environment and continue to maintain the school's reputation， Not only do they continue to boost up the school's ranking but they also give the City of Fremont a good reputation. Most of all, they make us proud to be their parents.  It isn't really easy to be in their position. I have the utmost respect for these students. As I was writing this, I felt like giving a big hug to my kids and wanted to tell them I do realize how hard they have worked and I am going to treat them out to a nice dinner, just to get them to relax and have fun... of course it also means that I can be lazy and skip making dinner tonight!