daniel brought me home a bouquet of flowers from work the other day.

先日ダニエルが仕事で使わなくなった花のブーケも貰ってきてくれました。

this is the whole bouquet ;)

これが全体のブーケ。

*** i found flip clock screen saver for windows and mac os 10.5 leopard, you can download it free here.

*** ウィンドウズ用とマック OS 10.5 (leopard)用のフリップ　クロックを見つけました！もしよかったらここでダウンロードしてくださいね。

i got super excited to find out that there was a newer version (for mac 10.6 snow leopard) of my favorite screen saver, flip clock! i just love the simplicity and practicality of the design. you can get your free copy of flip clock here if you like :)

私の大好きなスクリーンセーバー、フリップ　クロックの新しいバージョンを発見！早速インストールしちゃいました。＾＾昔によくあった「パタン」と数字がかわる時計とシンプルなデザインが面白くて好きなんです。もし良かったら、フリーのフリップ　クロックここでダウンロードしてくださいね。

↓kinda related to the fireworks post... kotori-san sent me this awesome pika pika project (in japan) you tube link and it is just amazing!!! i guess they used pen lights to do this but i can't imagine how long they took to make this movie! wow.

↓花火のコメントでことりさんが素敵なpika pika projectというyou tubeのリンクを教えてくれました。これは凄いです！一体、ペンライトだけでどうやってこんな事ができたのか、どのくらいの時間と手間がかかって作ったのか？クエスチョンはいっぱいですが、凄いなぁ〜　カッコいいし！

merry xmas to everyone! hope you have a great holiday season :)

i'm not a big fan of muti-colored decorations, so i just decided to do red + silver.

今年はシンプルに（って毎年かも...笑）レッドとシルバーのデコレーションにしました。このクリスマスツリーは安い所を探して＄２０ドル（DIYのお店で切って売ってあるやつ）で高さは約２m３０cmです。家の中はもみの木のいい匂いがしてクリスマスって感じが漂ってます。＾＾でも木のニードル（葉っぱ）が落ちるので掃除機かけるのは楽しくないんですけどね　^_-

i can't believe it's already july!!! i guess time really flies when you get old (or getting older) and have a kid! now, holidays, kai's b-day, and christmas are coming sooner than later now!!! anyways, i just noticed my calender downstairs today (i guess daniel changed it) and thought it was fun and very energetic colors, so appropriate for beginning of the summer, no?

if you were wondering what that white tree is under the calender, it's kai's coat rack.

sorry, i have a little annoying headache tonight so i will comment back tomorrow :P

just a close up on the calender, i like the fun colors, do you?

this is the "w" birch wood letter (8" H x 10.5" W, just in case if you are wondering, it's our last name initial) that we got with kai's door sign letters (guess, i was lazy about taking pictures :P). i'm just happy that finally i got what i want since i searched for the perfect type one for a long time. it's sitting above the tv shelf in the living room (yes, i am aware that i have lots of stuff on there ;->).

we also got "m + d" to put on a shelf above the headboard in our bedroom. it's in the middle of the shelf on this shelf you see here. i was thinking that we could even put a letter on each one of our night stands if we wanted to but have to wait to do that until kai doesn't turn them into to one of his toys! ;)

i went shopping with trisha last weekend and one of our destination was to go to the urban outfitters. vanessa told me that she got some pillows (happen to be one i want too) on sale, so i knew i had to go! 'cuz i've been waiting for this boo pillow to go on sale for like the last 3 months. luckily, when we went, there were 2 of them left for $9.99 each, score! i just like the colors and fun illustrations by chris bettig, thought it would go perfectly in kai's room on his rocking chair. =) i just hope kai won't destroy the pillows for a while!

it's finally done! yay! we didn't like the typical oversized mirror over our master bath sinks so we decided to do two individual mirrors. it seems very simple, right? just take the big mirror off and hang the new ones. well it didn't go so easy and quick...

we had to break the big mirror off (thanks to daniel's dad for doing this for me) cuz it was glued on by this black, tar like gooey substance in 6 spots. that stuff was super strong that it ripped some layers of the dry wall off (you can see the lovely "before" picture in cont. reading if you like).

after cleaning the million pieces of the mirror, had to patch those holes with few coats, sand them, texture the spots, prime the walls, and paint the whole bathroom to muted blue grey color. it was light grey before but remember, it was lavender-y tint to it like i talked about it before...so you know, that needed it to go! believe it or not, this part took like 3 days from waiting to dry and re-applying stuff over and over again (plus, it was during the week so i was doing it by myself with kai around).

anyhoo, after that was finally all done, we hung these simple square mirrors that we got from ikea and we are ready to use our bathroom once again. i'm just glad it's done now. now i notice how i don't like the medicine cabinet :P i guess it's never ending...

you can totally see where the big mirror was... and 6 lovely holes from the gross stuff!

i painted an accent wall in the master bedroom on sunday (and finished it up on monday). we picked the paint called dolphin fin by behr and we love the color. in the past, when we picked "grey" paint, it always turned out like purple-y or hint of lavender color when it's on the wall and i didn't like that at all. so this time we picked sort of "tan-grey" and it's perfect grey that we always wanted. yay!

this scandinavian modern style table lamp is the new addition to our house. we got it at cb2 (it's one of my fav. store for sure!) and working out perfectly in the corner next to the couch.

i saw this quiz on how about orange, ikea offers online tool to find out your "ikea style." so i had to find out what is my ikea style! mine came out to be "modern minimalist" which supposedly breaks it down to 80% modern, 20% scandinavian, 0% country. i knew i wouldn't have any country influences but it was quick, interesting, and something to do kinda quiz. what is your ikea style? try it here.

remember, back in july '08, i did lots of improvements in kai's room. i decided on which nursery posters and mobile to buy and hung them, painted his room (after so many tries and paint colors :P), and put a new light fixture up. since then, we slowly furnished his room and probably the biggest thing we did were to put the wall stickers we ordered from blik. we love the stickers, they add so much fun elements to his room!

the other side of the wall is a dresser and kai's changing station on top.

love this credo pillow from cb2 cuz it's fun, simple, and best of all, helvetica!

i actually did this art project few weeks ago, i've been kinda busy (kai's b-day) and i guess kinda lazy to take some pictures until today. anyhoo, i watched the finale of bravo top design and the winner, nathan made this awesome painting by just pouring the paint on canvas. well, i totally "borrowed" his idea and did mine with my color schemes.

i just bought dark grey and orange quart of regular house paint from home depot, and used my "oops, wrong color" paint of blue from painting kai's room (the blue was by behr and was very thick and totally made the chunky spots on canvas, can you see that?).

it was easy art project but took me like 3 days to finish it (believe it or not!). i did this in the cold garage, and had to wait until the paint was dry to put another coat, so that they don't mix together. overall, think came out ok. i know some of you have see it already and gave me a good feedback. but what do you think? do you think it's kinda cool? fun? interesting? odd? or weird?

so this is what i did to the sad mantle but now i think it's a festive mantle ;) i did take vanessa's idea for putting the ornaments in the cylinder vases. it definitely worked out very nicely and i put touch of nature (pine cones) in between. also i put holiday dunnies that daniel requested on the stocking hanger and i got my reindeer in there too! i think this will do for this year and probably add more stuff next year since kai won't be eating (hopefully) the ornaments by then.

i found this fun chalk mat at target. it's a place mat but on the other side, it's a black, chalk mat. i think it's a pretty cool idea so that you can bring it on-the-go and your kids can have some creative fun. i also love the sans serif typography design (also had yellow with cute pink and lime green owls for girls) and that's pretty much what got me :P i guess my only concern would be the chalk dust on the table...ugh, that might make me go nuts!

we got our xmas tree a day after kai's b-day (so that kai's b-day doesn't get mixed up with xmas). it was raining on sunday when we got the tree, so we decided to let it dry in the garage over night. finally when daniel got home, we put the tree inside and put some lights on (don't you think that xmas lights are making the walls look like some kind of textured faux finish? kinda crazy looking).

i'm debating if i should put ornaments on it, i mean i really want to but if kai's gonna get into them, maybe i shouldn't. i thought about putting ornaments kinda higher up so that kai can't get them but maybe that wouldn't look as good...so we might go pretty simple, minimalist style this year. anyhoo, our house smells good and i'm definitely getting the holiday sprits now.

btw, i need some kind of cute decorations on the mantle...it's looking pretty sad with stockings and nothing else...any suggestions? maybe a reindeer?

kai's toy are growing exponentially so i was just looking around for cute toy boxes. man, they are super cute but they are expensive $$$. we might need to DIY toy boxes soon here (if we can make it pretty like these...) or get lazy and go to ikea for it ;)

top: Argington Fuji Toy Box

middle: Mod Mom Furniture Sam Toy Box

bottom: Chase Toy Box/Library Bench Combo