homealone

The only thing that I do around the house lately aside from the occasional real work that I do, is tend to my garden. I transplanted a few bell pepper and tomato plants and they’re all doing fine. I also have  a basil plant that had been blooming flowers but the whole plant doesn’t look good. I wanted to keep the blooms because I often see bees around them and you know me and the bees, i want to preserve them as much as possible. Anyway, I did a little research on how to grow basil. Turned out that you should preven the basil from blooming for as long as possible, by harvesting or pinching off the top sets of leaves as soon as the plant reaches about 6″ in height. If the plant sets flowers, it is on its way to going to seed and will not be bushing out with leaves. Once a basil plant goes to seed, the existing leaves lessen in flavor.  Yikes! I cut off all the flowers. We’ll see if my basil recovers.

We have been trying to finish our dining room and I think we’re finally going to finish it today - after two months of working on it on and off. Last Saturday, we primed the whole room, ceilings and all. Then yesterday I put on some sample paint  of the two top colors that we wanted. We went for the Behr paint. Even though we loved the greenish color it seemed like it’s a little too bold for the whole house.  So we ended up getting the Behr Creme Brulee paint. I think it would look good with the Crate and Barrel Madison dining table. Of course my husband just agrees most of the time. Smart guy! :) . So today, it’s back to my alien costume - mask (AO safety reusable respirators), gloves, goggles, long pants. My husband is a little anal about safety for both of us which is good, right? He’s extra careful when it comes to me because he doesn’t want to have an alien looking baby (birth defects).  We’ll see how it goes.

 Since getting the house a few months ago, we tried to clear the bushes and trim the trees but it just wasn’t enough so this weekend, we hired people to clean our yard. We felt really bad because we have this bush/tree that was bearing a lot of flowers which seemed to attract a lot of humming birds and bees. Every morning, we would hear buzzing in the backyard from these bees and humming birds.  We felt particularly sorry for the bees because of the unexplained cause of dying bees (see Colony Collapse Disorder) and we wanted to protect “our  bees” as much as we could but for now, it seems that we failed. Sorry flying creatures!  We’ll try to bring the flowers back as much and as fast as we can.  

I have just found my favorite house tool to date. It’s so amazing, it makes me feel like Supergirl! I have been trying to figure out what works and what not with the house like the furniture setting/placing. I couldn’t do a lot of it before because, obviously, most house furniture are very heavy and also, most of these furniture are on the carpet so I can’t just push/pull it to place. Well problem solved – we have the mighty mighty movers/furniture skate. (we actually have the ‘generic” version but it’s the same thing). It’s a plastic disk that makes It was awesome! I just moved our couch and this super heavy mable coffee table last week. And today, I moved the queen size bed! Of course moving the mattress was a real challenge (hopefully I didn’t break my back!), but I made it. Once we get our new furniture set, these little discs will definitely be put into overdrive.

Since the appliance guy (not the Maytag repair man) came out yesterday to check on the dishwasher, I got curious as to how my appliances work. So I looked it up online (and of course, howstuffworks.com) has all the answers. If you wanna read up on them, just go ahead and search it. If you want the quick answer since you’re here anyway, here’s what happens inside your dishwasher after you’ve filled it with dishes, added the detergent and choosing your wash cycle:

That’s the very basic of it. All those processes has more detailed, scientific, mechanical explanation behind them. I guess I’d rather have you check out my source instead of me re-writing them.  Learn.

The first time I saw our house when it was still on the market, I saw a lot of potential in it but I also saw the outdated kitchen.  We still got the house, though but now the kitchen is starting to bug me. All the appliances are old and as many old things do, they break. Our dishwasher broke, our oven had a problem. Luckily, the house has a one year warranty and all these problems can be resolved by filing a claim. We filed a claim because the dishwashers doesn’t wash properly, we’re missing a lid, and we’re missing a spring or something. I saw the repair guy open it and saw some corroded parts. He said he can’t do anything, he can’t replace them so he’s going to report it to the insurance company and see what they say.  I am thinking (I AM HOPING) that we get a replacement dishwasher.  That’s it for now. One appliance at a time.

The husband’s mother came for a visit. Since we are fairly new to homeownership, house maintenance, and arts and crafts (we are both artistically-challenged) and all that stuff, we -particularly me, the woman of the house- got bombarded with all these ideas, suggestions, comments, and opinions which were mostly unsolicited and criticisms. The result was a feeling of disappointment and depression on my part. It now feels like we’re living in a dump, like we bought a fixer-upper house even though we knew in our hearts that this was/is a good house.  I would have gladly accepted all the help and suggestions if only they were given in bits and pieces, and none really required actions.  We knew we needed to do some work on the house, but not that much, and all at the same time.  Ayayay.

Our compost bin is looking pretty good, I think. There’s no stench - one thing I was really afraid of happening, the composting material look like they’re decomposing nicely. I did notice that we’re letting it dry up a lot more than we should. Apparently, that’s bad. Moisture content should be 40-60 percent because microorganisms can only use organic molecules if they are dissolved in water. I am keeping that in mind and promise to water the compost bin almost every day :). I am so proud of what we’re doing - composting, recycling what’s recyclable. We are definitely minimizing our carbon footprint by a lot!  <pat on the back> .

Do you know what a damper clamp is? We didn’t know what it was until our house got fumigated which meant that the gas lines had to be shut off. And when the gas company was called to turn it on, they said that we need to put damper clamp on the damper. They said we could just get them from any home improvement store (Lowe’s, Home Depot) so we went to get a couple. Turned out nobody knew what it was! We searched online for it and it took a while before I found one on Ebay. It’s called a flue damper clamp and here’s a photo:

Our house needs major grout cleaning! The previous owners didn’t clean the house well. Everything around us is kind of dingy. I had tried using typical stain removers (scrub free, clorox bleach, etc) but they didn’t seem to do the job. I am now trying this Stain Solver that I found online. So far, it’s looking good. My test area showed positive results. Man, it better work because I bought a little too much of this product. The good thing about this is it’s environmentally safe and I don’t have to worry about messing up my clothes from splatter! Oh my. I can’t believe my life has come just thinking about house cleaning products and cleaning the house itself!