Sewing&reaping

Ooooooooooooo. Our balcony is gunna be a wonderland. It’s 5meters-ish long by 1meter-ish wide. For us, it’s huge!
So we went to Nitori today. SO much BETTER than Ikea. We only took ¥20000 with us (only, ha) but our total came to ¥26000…. It was a bit embarrassing. The cash register chick was nice about it. Big purchases/ non-negotiables were light fixtures & curtains. And the essential cushion shaped like a cupcake for Winie. But still SO much CHEAPER than Ikea.
Oh, apologies in advance for the cheesy borders & photo editing! I took screen shots on my phone & there was all boring product info so I tried to pretty it out of sight. Ha

Winie’s room is the only fully curtained room. I went into Nitori knowing exactly what I wanted for her. Lace with cute little colourful bows & the curtain is black with shiny pink polka-dots. Black seems a little odd?? Keeps out light amazingly though!!
Ahh but balcony? Oh!! Oh! We, well Jared had a plan. He wanted to put wooden slat type tiles out there so it wouldn’t be so hot to walk on or dirty. And when we were looking at the pieces we discovered fake grass tile squares.

But not tacky fake grass. We tested it with our bare feet. Soft amazing fake grass. Oh yes. So we are going to have one half of the balcony grassed & one half wooden. We will get Winie a pool & it can sit on the grassed side. And a little round table with 2 little chairs over on the wooded side. Aaaaand the air conditioning unit bam-smack in the middle of all the joy… Ohwell.
I’m not sure when this will all happen, there are still a few more necessary items to spend our money on, like getting the above mentioned air conditioning unit here. Next weekend. Poo. A whole week with only pedestal fans. Luckily our new place is breezy & cool.
If only we had just a ton of money laying around :p

Oh my my my. Today was a wee bit epic. Is that actual even possible? Cancels itself out? Anyway. Today was intense. SO HOT. I’m talking beading back sweat hot. Ewww.
But, I’m in my new apartment now 🙂 moving in is done.
I learned some lessons:
1) Do everything, anything you can to get the baby somewhere else, somewhere that isn’t the house, while you pack.
Packing with a baby is a whole new world. I would usually have 1 or 2 baby free hours after work, but I had alot of paperwork I needed to do leading up to the move. And then darling baby changed to a temporary daycare situation near the new apartment so I had to pick her up & take her home with me. IE, I had no baby free time. Until today. So our friends rock up to help us move & I’m doing the last chunk of the packing. Felt like an unprepared idiot.
2) Pack a special overnight bag for baby.
I was running around like a headless chicken tonight trying to figure out which box the diapers where in. I kept her drink bottle handy but that was as far as my brain took me. And I also realised I hadn’t planned her dinner, so she ate pizza (our treat for our helpers) for dinner. I’m a super responsible mum uh huh?
3) There is a right way to tape up boxes.
The thought had actually crossed my mind as I was layering tape in each & every direction on the bottom of the boxes. Which also explains how we went through 8? rolls of tape. Jared taped up one box & without even knowing about my tape-aggedon method told me that he was doing the pro method & he should know coz he has a book about taping. True story, he worked for a technical stuff company, had to transport stuff & yeah. So the right way? Little flaps in, big flaps on the top, one line of tape down their joint & then one line at both edges of the box. Done. Simple.
4) Pack yourself an overnight bag.
Shower time? What shower time? Towels? Hahaha. It’s treasure hunting time more like it. You wanna brush your teeth? Teeth? Who needs them.

You know what, I should be a professional packer or something. I lived in the same town for like 3 years & in that time my family moved house 10 times. In Japan we moved to 4 diff places in the first 2years. And have been in the last place almost 4yrs. So I guess I lost my packing edge. And we started out there with nothing & slowly accumulated. So it’s my first time packing some of this stuff. Give me a break :p

That photo was what I was going for. I followed her directions I used 2 boxes of ‘soft & easy’ lightening dye. I think it’s more for gray coverage. Way too ‘soft’. My friend bought it for me from Australia. Still better than what i can find in Japan. I wanted a very definite blonde at the bottom, kind like Drew’s, but not so high up.

Didn’t end up with that lovely blonde 😦

The first box didn’t seem to do much.

The next day I put the next box on further down the hair. And decided to leave it in for longer.

The blog I followed, she said to do some lighter pieces from the top, to help it blend. Kinda like foils. so I did. But coz it was so subtle the previous night I left the blendy pieces in for as long the tips. Whoopsy… Big golden chunks. Eww.
So I debated for the next couple of days & decided to buy brown hair dye & do just the top/roots of my hair & over the top half of my golden chunks. I didn’t take a pic of the process. And I haven’t got an after pic yet. It’s really awkward trying to take a picture of your own hair from behind. While holding the camera.
But I like it. It’s way subtle. I guess that’s a good thing. Maybe 3 people have noticed all week & only 1 noticed exactly what I’d done, other people just asked what was different.
It was really easy to do! And fun.

Just read over some old posts, thought I’d catch you up to speed.
My little love bean has had 2 hair cuts now. Finally her hair is all the same length. Well around the sides is longer. I’m keeping the back as short as her hair line at the nape of her neck coz it’s just so hot, she was scratching at the back of her neck & she isn’t into having it up. So chop chop. But it looks cute.
I haven’t touched my sewing machine in oh so long. I need a normal needle on it.
I’m still knitting the big blue chunky scarf. I realised towards the end of the first ball that I’d need more yarn & the colour wasn’t selling anymore so I bought gray. And then that made it look really guy-ish so I dedicated it to Jared, which made me slack off. Haha. Sounds so selfish. And now it’s really really hot. So it’s like 4/6ths finished. And it will stay that way probably till it cools down.
What else? Oh, I tried to do finger painting again with Winie. She was so disgusted. Hahaha. Ah. After I put her fingers in the paint she just held them out towards me to be cleaned. She’s so mature. Hehehe. She’s still not so into the crayons, but she loves using pens & scribbling inside of books.
I think that’s everything. I haven’t been so crafty since working 😦

On pinterest recently I’ve been exploring gardening boards. Something about moving to a new apartment makes me feel like I should start a new garden… Neglecting the fact that I don’t have an old garden. But I’m excited! I’m gunna have a little herb garden on the balcony & a few plants inside that purify the air.
The herbs I’d like to grow: basil, parsley, mint, coriander, thyme, rosemary, comfrey, chamomile & lemon grass.
I’ve seen basil, parsley & mint around, not so sure how I’ll go finding the others.
I’d like to grow strawberries too.
Actually just today I saw this –

And it’s probably the most realistic way I can have a few different types of plants on our little balcony. AND I have a similar shelf unit in my kitchen now which I won’t need anymore! Yay. I think all the herbs I listed can live well together. I’ll have to brush up on my companion planting knowledge again just to be safe.
My mum always had crazy flourishing herb gardens. She wasn’t into flowers. I’ve had a few plants. Yep. HAD. Apparently I’m quite good at killing them. And yet I’m excited about this new endevour!

Loved that game. On the iPhone. For like 2 months. But it doesn’t really go anywhere.
Anyway I took pics of my drawings I was a little proud of. May aswell post them & then clear out my camera roll.

First, this is a super old post that I just discovered was never published…. Or maybe I never finished it? Wow, that means its been a long time since I was over in this neck of the woods……….
Ah yes, read last post. This was a half finished unposted post.

At my work the pre-school class is used as a punishment.
“do you want me to send you back to pre-school?”
“if you don’t do your worksheet, you have to go to pre-school”
And then I realised, hang on! Pre-school is where it’s at!! Pre-school is he most funnest class EVER! And not only coz I’m the teacher.
So to instil some pre-school class pride & to aid motivation for doing class work
(“as soon as everyone does our class work we can work on the..”) I decided some awesome classroom decorations were in order.
We made a birthday cake with our birthdays on the candles. I let the kids go nuts decorating it. A bit too hectic looking but they love it.

Oh dear. I was going to add photos. But I deleted them coz I thought I’d already put them on here.
I’ll get some fresh ones!

Haven’t forgotten you old buddy. Haven’t stopped crafting either, even have another post half way through about all the fun stuff I’ve been making with my students.
I’m responsible for all the crafts at my work. Woot-hoot-hoo-doo!
So hang tight.
Mwa
xoxox

Oh! So I’m in charge of crafts at my work. I gotta find them & then teach them. For 2-5 years olds. So I can’t be too ambitious.
On pinterest I found an awesome tutorial for making string Easter eggs.
My teachers assistant thought it would be too difficult for all the students to do together (16 of them) or maybe it was more that it would be too hard for the teachers to deal with all the students & all the glue!
So I did it just in my pre-school class with 5 kids.
One boy wouldn’t do it, he kept saying YUCKY! I shoved his hands in the glue & he almost cried.
Oh… Yeah. Glue. And the tutorial calls for like paper string stuff but we used yarn. And home made corn starch glue. And water balloons which I almost died blowing up.
The kids didn’t completely understand what was going on, but I had fun.
tutorial here 🙂

Some are a bit sparse & wonky, but I love them!