Loving Trash

Sometimes I feel very righteous and want to buy things that are going to be good for our lovely Earth. Well, okay, not really. Well, in a way.

I want to be a gardener. Well, just partially because I only want to plant some herbs that we can use. I don't have a big old spot in my backyard to have many veggies garden. My backyard is 90% concrete. But you ever notice how much it can cost for soil and such? I thought, well, what if we can make our own.

And that's when the composting idea came in. You ever use banana, tomatoes, garlic, onion and have lots of left over to toss away? Of course you do. What do you do with those food scraps? We tried to keep ours in a bag and then put it in the green compost bin on Sunday. BUT during that week, the food scraps attract bugs and the smell is not very pleasant. So, we were looking for a place to store our food scraps. Well, nothing really panned out and we started putting our food scraps in the garbage can. I know it's bad ... but I can't stand the reek nor the bugs.

I looked into compost machine to place in our backyard and to start our own composting process. But it will require a big bulky container and bugs. Eeek!

And then .. I saw this:



Doesn't it look very cool? Oh my god! OMG to the fullest! Can I register for this as our wedding gift? How about as part of my birthday present? Please oh please!! How cool is this! So compact and so good for the earth. After composting, I can use the left-over composted product for my garden. All the nutrients from the food scraps to grow my own herbs and such. Cool, right?

Is it bad that I so heart this compost machine? ;)

to honeymoon or not to honeymoon?

When you get married, what do you look forward to besides spending the rest of your life (until death do you part) with the man/woman you love ever so dearly? HONEYMOON!

But guess what happened? Our economy!

When I started school two years ago, I thought I would have a job lined up by April. Yeah I know. I have big dreams. Well, two years later, there are many hiring freezes all over the Bay Area and new grads are having a hard time finding jobs. And April came and went and I still didn't have a job. BUT I still had to plan a trip to Hawaii no matter what.

And when we talked about honeymoon a few years back, we wanted to go outside of the country. But because of the recent changes, we thought "well, we can just go to another island and enjoy our time together". And that's when Kauai came. It was just about $1500 or so (I think) and we will have 6 days/5 nights with each other. That's nice, right? We were looking forward to it..



And then...

Da Da Dum...

Mr. JB and I went caving with a couple of my HS friends. Then they started talking about going to Australia for a week, with 6 nights hotel and flight from LAX. All for the price of .... $1000 + tax! WHAT WHAT WHAT?? No way!! Australia for $1000!! You've got to be kidding me! Mr. JB and I talked about it for a few minutes and he said we should go!! WHAT WHAT WHAT!!! Really!!!!????

You see, in September, I'm turing a BIG 3-0! Yes! Mr. JB knows I love travelling and he knew I wanted to go to Disney World. So, he was going to take me there for my 30th b-day. And then this Australia idea came about and he said he's going to take me there!! WOW WHEE!! He said he knew I want to go to Australia more than to Disney World. Um....YEAH YEAH YEAH!! Of course I want to go to Australia. It's on my "MUST GO" list. Disney World is too but Australia takes precedence over Disney World.

Well, that coversation with my HS friends was just this past weekend (6/13). And the next day, we were watching TV and we saw Bizarre Foods with Andrew Zimmerman. Guess where he was? Australia!!! Yeah..!!!! I emailed my friends right away and I said "it was meant to be". So, we kept emailing each other this whole week, trying to figure out what / how we want to do things and my friends were able to find cheaper way to get to Australia/New Zealand.



If we booked it with the tour company we were thinking of, we will get to go from SFO to Sydney, then Sydney to Auckland, then Auckland to SFO. We will get to stay 3 nights in Sydney and 3 nights in Auckland. All for $1250 which includes tax and such. BUT my dear friends found a better deal -- 4 nights in Sydney and 3 nights in Auckland for .... $1150 per person!!! WHAT WHAT WHAT!!

I didn't think Mr. JB and I will make it to Australia for a while. A long while. And to have this opportunity to go to one of the places of our dream is just amazing! I don't know about Mr. JB but I'm speechless and amazed!! So, this Australia trip is for my 30th birthday and for our honeymoon. I'm so blessed to have someone like Mr. JB who's willing to travel anywhere with me. He's so flexible with everything. He always says: "whatever you'd like, honey". AWWWW!! And I love the fact that he is willing to go anywhere and everything because my ex bf was such a freaking anvil. He always wanted to stay home and crap. Good thing I dumb that loser for this fine ass flyboy! ha ha.

Also, mind you, because I was feeling bad about spending too much money in Kauai and going to Australia, I tried to cancel the Kauai trip. To cancel the trip, it will cost us $500+ because:

1. the flight from Maui to Kauai is non refundable
2. the flight we need to go home from Maui need to be rebooked since we were going to fly from Kauai to home and United will charge us $150 per person for changing the flight PLUS the difference in air
3. Costco will charge us $75 for "change" fee

So, why would I want to pay $500+ on something that we're not going to be using? Crazy, huh?

A little bit of this..a little bit of that..

What do you get when you combine 0.5 yard of orange satiny fabric, 0.75 yards of green satin ribbon and a 6" of round foam?



You get .... a ring pillow.

Well, okay, it's not really a ring "pillow". But it's good enough for our plans. You see, we have these little jewlery boxes which are going to be holding our wedding bands in. And initially, we were thinking of having a ring bearer hold those rings but Mr. JB was afraid that my nephew may drop them. I wasn't worried about my nephew dropping them but I was worried that I wouldn't like the way he would look if he was to hold two jewlery boxes in his hand.

And we also looked into having Diane of DKDesigns make us a ring "pillow" as well with all her clay flowers. It would just be a simple arrangment of flowers which will cost $80. She would just put a little ribbon in the flower so that we can have our rings tied. AND we get to keep that arrangment AFTER our wedding too. I really liked that idea, a lot. BUT not the budget.



(isn't this really cute? Our arrangment would be without the beading.)

And I wanted something different; something not so wedding-gy. I thought about another idea. But I didn't know what it will really look like or if I can pull it off. So, today, we were making plans to go to San Bruno so that Mr. JB can buy the drumset, guitar and mic from this couple who were selling them. In case you don't know, Mr. JB has been wanting to play drums for a while. And since he doesn't want to get a real drum set, he settled for playing Rockband instead. So, the couple was selling those three items for $50! Of course, you can't have the drumset, guitar and mic without...THE GAME! ha ha. So, we went by Westlake to buy the game.

While at Westlake, we went by Joann Fabrics to find out what items they had there. We bought a circular foam, 1/2 yard of orange fabric and 3/4 yard of green ribbon. Then as soon as we got home, I got to work on my project, while watching Narnia. After about 30 minutes of working on it, I got this:



It's pretty good, I think. hee hee. What I did was this:

1. place the jewlery boxes in the positions you want them to be in
2. trace the jewlery boxes
3. get a knife or something sharp to trace the shape out.
4. scrape the foam pieces off so that you have about 1/3 inch of cut out hole
5. place the glue in the cut out hole
6. place the fabric in the cut out hole, on top of the glue (be careful because the glue is really hot if from glue gun)
7. keep gluing the fabric on to the foam and repeat until all the foam on the top has been covered
8. keep gluing the sides
9. then glue the back. You can make the backing as pretty as you want by pulling here and there. (mine wasn't all that pretty but it will do.)
10. glue the ribbon to the side of the foam.
11. make small bow. use Mrs. Emerald's instructions. *
12. glue the bow to the side. And TA-DA! You're done!

* We had orange ribbons left over from our wedding invitation and I make the loop big enough to my own liking.

Easy right? So, another DIY project off my list.

And we make this for <$12!!! <-- GREAT savings in my opinion!! We may put some flowers on top of our pillow but we shall see!

first comes love, then comes marriage, then ...

Then..nothing.

Not for a while..

Not now...

Maybe not ever.....

But we shall wait and see.

I'm sure you've seen this before: two people fall in love, then they get married. The next thing they do is... to have a baby. For some people, they may not have fallen in love with the other person before creating a baby. For some people, the sequence may be a bit different.

Well, for Mr. JB and I, we know where we stand in regards to babies: we don't want any. For now. I said "for now" because we can change our minds later. We reserve the rights to change our minds whenever we please. But the thought of having a baby is scary. For both of us. Maybe we feel this way because we don't feel financially ready. Or because we don't know what stress the marriage will bring. Or because we don't know what kind of stress a baby will bring. And imagine all the hormones. Ahhh!!!

I have 2 nieces and 1 nephew. Mr. JB has 2 nieces and 2 nephews. And we love them. But after visiting them or them visiting us, we'd like them to go home to their parents. We love them but we also love our peace and quiet. We want to be able to just get up and go somewhere -- whether it's a short day trip or a long vacation. We don't feel like we're well traveled and we definitely want to travel to all the places BEFORE it's too late.

You know how Mr. JB and I have three loves -- Princess Bashee, Princess Skittles, and Prince Brandon. Well, planning this two weeks vacation for us (for our wedding/honeymoon) was a bit hard because we wanted them to be with someone that was going to treat them (translation: spoil them) like we do. Also, we spend a lot of our money on them, to buy treats, toys, and all other "necessities". Of course, we don't mind because they are all we have.

And imagine if we had a human kid. We won't be able to spend as much time with our three loves because our attention will be on the human kid. And it won't be fair to my three loves at all. Also, having a human kid will put a damper on our wallet. For our three loves, if we don't buy them treats, they are okay. But if we don't have the money to buy formula or diapers, the human kid would be considered neglected. And if we wanted to go on a trip, who will take care of our human kid? We can't just leave him/her with the grandparents. These grandparents have their own lives too. For our three loves, it's true that they are going to be with someone while we go on vacation but these people don't really have to change their lives just to take care of them. I guess we can just take the human kid with us on the trip with us. But that would mean, more luggages and more moola.

I also have to say: I thought I was going to have a "let's have a baby" moment when my niece (my sister's kid) was delivered since I was close to my sister during her pregnancy. But none what-so-ever.

But of course, we can't saying everything with certainty. There might be a time when we may change our mind. And we reserve the right to. But for now, we will say "no kids, please!"

Monkeys here and there...and even a giraffe

When we moved into our place 2 years ago, we noticed that our backyard fence was the victim of a storm. And we tried our bestest to fix it so that it doesn't look like crap. We tried to nail the boards to the posts and also put some concrete blocks in front of it so that the whole fence doesn't tumble on us. But this winter, it was bitch slapped again by the storm and it started to go towards the neighbor's yard. They didn't care...and they never mentioned anything to us to fix it. BUT we felt that the fence needed to be fixed because it looked like this when we removed the concrete blocks:



(our neighbor still didn't want to pay...so we had to pay for everything.)

Anyhoo, since we removed the concrete blocks from the fence, we had to put them somewhere else, right? We decided to use them to "decorate" the area close to our deck. After working on our area for a while, we decided call it a night. So, I came into our bedroom..and Mr. JB laughed, while pointing to my feet. I looked and laughed as well. Guess what we were laughing at?



My toes were sticking out of my socks! I didn't even know it ripped. =( It was one of my favorite socks. My previous boss gave it to me as part of a Christmas present. So, I tossed it away, without thinking anything about it, of course.

Then, the next day, Mr. JB came home and said "Ohh..I have something for you". I said: "HUH?" He said: "Yea, I have something for you." Since I wasn't expecting anything, I said: "what? what do you have for me?" And then he gave me this bag:



Hm..a Paul Frank bag? I wondered what was in there...

And when I opened the bag, I was so excited:












Cute socks, eh? I thought so.

And you know what I got Mr. JB when I went to see my dermatologist?



Hee hee. Yeah. That's for acne. He sweats a lot and because he wears hats all the time, his forehead is prone to pimples. So, I got him that, to help him out. =)

Well..is it really?

I used to think blogging is kind of like doing a "dear diary" type of thing. But is it really?

Not at all.

There are a few differences. One MAJOR difference between blogging and "dear diary" is ... PRIVACY. Anyone and everyone can read what you are thinking when you are blogging. So, if you're talking about someone or have an issue with something/someone and you blog about it, you'll end up either hurting that someone or hurting yourself.

Also with blogging, you can't REALLY express how you are feeling. Not totally. You're sort of "fake". You can't vent or cuss up a storm. Well, I mean...I guess you can but that won't be really nice.

Another thing with blogging is that because you're trying to be "sorta vague", nobody really knows who you're talking about. This vague-ness makes people who are subconscious wonder if you're really talking about them. In reality, you may NOT be talking about them at all.

And also with blogging, since it's on the internet, you KNOW it's out there some where...where it can be retrieved years from now. So, if you are going to run for a public office, then don't blog. hee hee.

Bye for now.