New projects

It is late and it has been a long day, so I will keep the words short. Basically, I started up two new projects today, first one with the neglected garden and the second with some furniture. Both are still only halfway finished so there will be some more updates in the future, but I got a few pictures taken of the progress. Also I have some other pictures from this past week so lets just let the pictures tell the story.

So, the garden didn't get done yet, but that's because it got dark and I had to go in. As for the painting of the little night stand, I got it primed and then I put one coat of paint.. tomorrow I'll do another coat.  

And if anybody is wondering, I don't know why the lettuce is turning into trees.. that's just weird!

Off to bed I go.

Home stuff

It's weekend for me, and today morning I started the day Skypeing with my friend Paivi in Finland. I was on the laptop so I walked around our house with it to show her and Mikko our place through the camera.. They got to see that we still had our Christmas tree up (without decorations though) and they saw the  messy kitchen and random boxes in every room among other things, haha. After the chat I was inspired to clean the kitchen and also did some rearranging in the space between the kitchen and the laundry room. When I was walking through that area earlier, Paivi asked what room that was and I didn't really know what to answer. I had a  book shelf in there and  a bunch of boxes and bags and cleaning stuff and it just looked like we had way too much stuff unorganized. It's not really a room, it's just an extra area where I guess you could have a small breakfast table or something. I didn't have an extra table so I did with what I had. Basically just cleaned the extra stuff, moved the shelf and added a chair and a few small things. It looks so much better now, and I'm just regretting I didn't take a 'before' picture.. oh well, here's what it looks like now. At least Paivi will be able to tell the difference. ;)

As you can see I finally figured how to take the date off of the picture. :P

We haven't really spent any money in home decorations or furniture since moving here in June because we've had a feeling Florida is just temporary and spending money in something we'll be able to keep a year at most is just not worth it when we could use that money into our long term plans. So about 90% of the things in our home is stuff people gave us. I gotta say at times it drives me crazy because a  lot of what we have is not really my style (like the sofa, yuck!) and I love home decorating and going to Ikea and other home stores. Anyway, lately it's been very relieving to actually go through things that we have and take them to Goodwill. When we move to Finland we'll only bring ourselves, our cats and our clothes, and not much else. We'll put a few things here and there into a storage box to get later, but most of our stuff will be given away (since it's not really anything that we would get money selling). We call this the "operation elimination", since we are slowly eliminating things from our home, and the goal is to not bring in anything new. I guess I really need to add the Christmas tree in the elimination list though, hehe. 

I am planning on a few projects including painting some furniture in the next few weeks though. That's something I've never done before and I need a little project to do. I'll just need to study on the paint products and do some planning before I can actually do it. So more to come later about that.

Here's a picture of Sammy earlier this week. He loves boxes and anything he can go in. We put that basket on the floor and he would not leave it before the next morning!

 What a silly cat our Sammy is!

I am hoping to send out my citizenship application next week, and after that, it will be a little waiting game. The average waiting time is five months, so that means we won't make it to Finland in time to take any entrance exams this year. But I'm not too worried about it, we will have things going on over there, I will get a job for a little while, and Chris will attend Finnish classes. So it will all work out. 

Chris is playing Uncharted so I can't concentrate to write any more.. the game is too exciting!! :D

First post of the year

Yeah, January is almost way done already. I have a feeling this will be a fast year (again). We got some big plans for the second part of the year, but seems that for right now the theme is work hard and hold tight.. we'll see.

We went to Busch Gardens today so here's a few pictures of some animals we saw. We've got passes so we can go as much as we want for a whole year.

 

 

 

Here's also some updates on my garden. The cucumbers are gone, some weird bacterial disease killed all the plants in a few days. But everything else is doing good. The lettuce is crispy and tastes delicious on sandwiches, the baby carrots are sweet, the tomatoes are still green so still waiting for them. The parsley I planted inside back in June was almost gone but when I took the container out, it started growing like crazy. Even the dill that died moths ago in the same container is now coming back! 

 




To finish this off, I wanted to shine light on one of the most ridiculous behaviors I have experienced in the American society: giving and receiving gifts and the rituals related to it. There's actually a lot that could be said, but I'm even going to get into all off it, just to point out the weirdest parts.. Anyway, the first thing is the thank you cards people send after getting gifts. Give somebody a wedding gift here and next week they send you a card in the mail that says "thank you for the toaster". Or how about this. I went to somebody's first birthday party a few years back and  some lady in the party was writing a list of all the gifts the kid received and who it was from, so the parents can send everybody personalized cards as well.. how about just a simple thank you to the guest in the party?? Somebody I work with told me her mom gave her a thank you card for the Christmas present she gave her.. and they live right next to each other and see every day!! All I can say, sorry people, think I'm rude or whatever, but I'm not gonna be a part of that nonsense.

 The other thing I wanted to mention is the habit of returning the gift somebody gave you back to the store. Yeah, you read right, after the thank you card is posted, they take the toaster to the store and return it or exchange is for something else instead. This is why December 26th is a crazy shopping day here: it's time to return the presents. I think it's just way too sad and there's not a whole lot to say about it. Not everybody does it, but seems that most people do.

There is some odd things people do for their social purposes  here that's for sure.

Oh well, time to go. I will now go and make a smoothie, yay!!