A Homemaker’s Diary

Lately I have been catching up on few new things which I’ve never tried before – crafts that I am able to do with less material and less concentration. I have dabbled with tatting, and for the past few days with crochet.

Fortunately on certain days, our dear son is able to play on his own most of the time, provided I am around him. Thus I can’t do things like scrapbooking or card making since such crafts I have to use a lot of materials and have to pay more attention to details to complete those layouts.

With crochet or tatting, what I need is just a ball of yarn, a crochet needle or tatting shuttle and a small scissors. Of course the step by step I have to memorize because every time I on the PC to watch the video, it will distract my son from whatever he is doing and he will start whining and making fuss..huhu!

This is the picture of the first flower I made after learning the crochet technique on Youtube. I used the yarn I bought in Daiso for RM5 which initially meant for tatting. You won’t believe how expensive a ball of yarn could be. I was shocked to see some could be as expensive as RM70 per ball..huh!

To date I have made about 8 flowers like in the picture (of course with each newer one, I made remarkable improvement), but still for me are far from perfect. I still need to practise a lot..heh!

I intend to use all the crochet flowers I made as embellishment on my scrapbooking layout and cards later.

“Dreams can often become challenging, but challenges are what we live for..”

There are many times that I feel that I am losing myself, I don’t know who I am anymore apart from being a wife and a mom. I don’t really have friends, in the sense that friends you can call, go out to lunch/dinner with, you know that kind of camaraderie which I used to enjoy during my working day and pre baby years.

And when I found a contest in one of the craft blogs I stumbled upon early this month, I thought this is something I could do to nurture my soul, to feed the artistic passion inside me. At least this kind of thing I can do at home, no need to go out, after all I already have the materials. So each available moment everyday since then, I did my research, browsed through the stack of card making and scrapbooking magazines, pondering the piles of online picture, thinking what kind of layout I want to submit for the contest.

Yet this morning when I woke up, I realized I might not have time to complete the layout. The dateline is today, 15th July. The son has been extra clingy these days, and I have been swamped with house chores. I thought, there goes my dream of entering the contest, I have a pathetic life, I can’t even do something for myself at home, something that might take 2-3 hours the most on my own. I cried.

It’s just a craft contest, I know..but it breaks my heart to come to term that I have to fight and struggle so hard to find some precious and peaceful time for myself, to do something solely and selfishly for my own sake. I vowed not to check out any of the craft blogs after this, I packed all the craft magazines and books on the bed, put them away with the intention that once they are out of my sight, it will be out of my mind. But it’s bugging me..

Hubby came home, ate something, took shower and ready to babysit. But no, the son who woke up from his nap was not happy to be neglected, he cried and cried. I tried to work out the layout while letting him play in the craft room. I couldn’t concentrate and got pissed off with some blunders I made. You can’t really be creative when there’s a crying toddler hovering around..sigh!

At 9pm, Hubby went out with our son to the nearest Mac Donald. I told myself I should finish this by 10pm, giving myself one hour of solid mind. I managed to complete both layout and card by 10:30pm, snapped the picture and then they came home at 11pm..with Hubby bringing home a pack of nasi goreng ayam for me, the starving wife!

Well, I did it! I am an enthusiastic person nevertheless. It is such a humble feeling to realize that even with strong enthusiasm I wouldn’t be able to follow my dreams if there’s no support from Hubby and son.

I am so, so very grateful for you both!

I should have known better when we (or should I say I) decided to go to Floria 2010 during noon.

You won’t believe it the crowd in front of the entrance to the pavilion..it was not that many, but the door was closed and at 2 pm (Sunday), people were queuing up, scorching under the hot sun with kids on their shoulders..

So being me, the permaisuri lilin who couldn’t stand queue and what more waiting under the heat, we walked around in the bazaar hoping the next round we came back to the door, it will be opened again to public, but alas it was still packed. So we went home with incomplete feeling. Padahal hati dah tangkap a few type of plants to buy later.

Then after dear Son woke up from his evening nap, we decided to go there again. Gigih tak aku? This time the door to the pavilion was opened to public.

One of the best exhibition is this flora and fauna. Got a few more pictures yet to be edited. Terubat la hati mak..and I got myself a kenanga plant and booked a few more pokok bunga wangi from the only stall there which sells pokok bunga wangi…jeng jeng..

Hubby will be collecting those plants later after work tomorrow. Tercapai la cita-cita ku nak create a garden full of pokok bunga wangi like cempaka, sundal malam, akar dani, kesidang, kemuning, melur..Thanks so much Hubby, muahhh! Oh, hopefully there will be mayang sari as well. In fact that was the first time I heard the name (for a plant), googled about it just now. Jauh tau, dari Kuala Kangsar pokok-pokok tu di import..heh!

Can’t wait for tomorrow’s evening..nyeh nyeh nyeh! Err..I need more pots and soil.

The Internet connection at home for the past few days has been killing me!

It took me 2 hours last night to keep on reloading the page as I lost connection every now and then. Wonder when will Unifi coming to my place? huhu..

The neighboring precint is already in the list but our precint is not..gosh! If only we have many other Internet service providers in Malaysia..isk!

I hope the situation will improve in the next few days. I hope to update about the KL Bird Park trip – Part 2 soon.

Oh, I also hope we could make it to Floria 2010 this Sunday..maybe some new pots of plants could cheer me up!

“What can we do with thirty seconds? What can we not do with thirty seconds!… Suppose your little child looks out the window and sees a collie. ‘What’s that?’ he asks you. You have five options, which will each take about thirty seconds to make stick:

1. We can tell him, “Look, baby, Mommy has to get dinner.”
2. We can tell him, “That’s a bow-wow.”
3. We can tell him, “That’s a dog.”
4. We can tell him, “That’s a dog called a collie.”

The fifth option is to tell him that it is a dog called a collie and then go on to tell him thirty second’s worth of information about that animal…

How sad it is that we put information into a computer with great skill and great precision and put information into our children’s brains in a hit-or-miss, slip-shod, and often untruthful way.”

-Glenn Doman