kai's 2nd birthday party is this sunday and i've been getting ready for his party ever since i got back from japan. for this, i just repackaged mints to his dinosaur theme this year.

カイの２歳のバースデーはいよいよこの日曜日。日本から帰ってきて以来、デコレーションを作るのに毎日がんばっています。＾＾；　これは市販のミントをパーティーの恐竜テーマのでパッケージし直しました。

thank you tags for the little party favor bags. i'm gonna put mints and few candies for guests to take home.

このタッグはゲスト用のお持ち帰り品を結んであげる物です。いれるのはちょっとしたキャンディー、ハーシーキスのチョコと↑のミントを入れようと思っています。

cupcake toppers... i decided to do double sided this time, so i had to glue like 60 of these things ;P

カップケーキの上に乗せるトッパー。今回は初めて両面のを作ったので今日は６０個ぐらい糊で貼付けました。（多分そんなに要らないとは思うけど...)

sings for the front door and kai's high chair.

玄関のドアとカイのハイチェアーにのせるサイン。

i found cute scrap booking papers in the color schemes so i'm gonna cut them up and make a bunting.　i have few more stuff to make still... hope i can finish them all by sunday!

可愛くて、色もばっちりあったスクラップブック用の紙を発見！これを三角形に切って天井からつるすバナー（旗？）を作る予定。この他にもまだちょっと作らなくてはならない物があるので日曜日までには終わってくれればいいなと思ってます。＾＾また明日からは日本の写真に戻ります...今日はちょっとした気分転換？でした。＾＾；

grass is growing pretty fast! it's amazing and it's nice to see some "green" rather than "brown" in the backyard.

芝生はぐんぐん成長中！庭にやっと緑色が現れてうれしい＾＾　この一年半はずっと土だけのブラウンだったので...

but probably we need to re-seed to fill the gap later　on.
i'm going to go pick up my mom at the sf airport tomorrow morning. it's been a year since my mom actually see kai face to face and hold him :)

だけど多分間の空きがおおいのでまた種を蒔かなければと思ってます。
明日の朝は母を空港に迎えにいってきます。カイを直接見てだっこできるのは一年ぶり。＾＾

continuation of our backyard work from last weekend...we put edging down on the grass area (20' x 40') and then opened all the soil bags (that kai was jumping on last weekend) on the ground.

先週の続きの庭の仕事をやりました。最初は芝生のエリア（約６m x 12m)を囲む物を置いて、地面に大きな釘みたいのを打ち込んで固定。その後は先週カイが飛び跳ねて遊んでいた土の袋を地面にあけました。

after raking the soil flat, we tested out the sprinkler system with the sprinkler heads on for the first time. wow, they worked really well!

土を平にした後は、初めてのスプリンクラーのテスト。思った以上に完璧に動いてくれたので、みんなで大満足でした。＾＾なんとなくみんな心の端ではちゃんと動かないとか、何かが変とか思ってたので...笑

after that, ritchard (daniel's dad) put grass seed all over the area. now we just have to water a lot and wait! ;) it was another hot day out (about 95 F) and we were so tired at the end of the day. we are just glad that this backyard project started out to be a "disaster" but turning out to be a "success" :)

それから、芝生の種をリチャード（ダニエルのお父さん）が蒔いてくれました。後は水をたくさんあげて芝が生えてくるのを待つだけ＾＾でも今日もまた暑い日で（３６度位）汗はだらだらで仕事が終わった後はみんな疲れきっちゃいました。＾＾；　

my friend trisha came back from the 2 week vacation from europe. she brought me back this awesome lamp shade from venice! she also got me the a hand-made glass bird (on side table) + t-shirt for kai from prague. i love them, thank you trish! =)

友達のトリシャが２週間のヨーロッパバケーションにいってお土産をくれました。その一つがベニスで買ってきてくれた白いランプ。その他にも手作りのターコイズのガラスの鳥（テーブルの上）とカイのT−シャツをプラハから買ってきてくれました。どれもお気に入りです。＾＾

to make this lamp shade was pretty much a puzzle... there were about 50 of these white plastic "cards" and had to put them all together somehow. it took me a day of trial and error ;P it came with the instruction but it was in italian so i had no idea!!!

でもこのランプを作るのはパズル状態！？！？トライしては失敗したりと、つくるのに１日半かかっちゃいました。この白いプラスチックのカードの用な物が５０枚くらい、それを組み合わせて作っていきます。説明書もあったのですがイタリア語だったのでさっぱり分かりませんでした。＾＾；

this is half way, outside

外側半分完成。

half way, inside
we were stuck how to put together after this for the longest time!

これが中側。
ここまでは簡単に出来たのですがこの後どういうふうに組み立てていけばいいのかとかなり迷いました。

this is the picture that trisha took in venice. so cute!

これはトリシャがベニスで売っている所の写真を撮ってきてくれました。＾＾色付きのもかわいい♥

it's been a while since we really worked on our backyard... now that weather is getting a tiny bit cooler, we are back to putting some work again.

最近は真夏の天気のおかげで庭仕事は保留になっていましたが、気温もちょっびり秋っぽく（？）なってきたのでまた始める事にしました。

we finally put sprinkler heads on and buried them in place and put neon pink strings around the soon to be grass area. kai was busy drinking a huuuuge smoothie and scattering his toys around.

スプリンクラーは先をつけてほかのと平行になるように計りながらグラウンドに埋め、蛍光のピンクの糸で芝生のエリアを囲いました。カイはいつものようにおもちゃを散らかすのに一生懸命...と 大きなフルーツスムージーを飲むのに忙しかったみたい。

after few trips to a local diy store, we managed to bring home 60 bags of soil with some help of our family members and 3 cars, we unload them to the future grass area. i think kai was trying to carry and help too ;)

芝生の種のベースになる肥料が入った土を買わなくてはいけなかったので、DIYストアに車三台、ダニエルのお父さんとおじさんと私たちで行って６０袋買ってきました。＾＾；　さすがにこれはちょっと大変でしたー。一応カイも土の袋の運びを手伝っているつもりらしい...

after when we put down bags of soil on the ground, kai was having a blast jumping on them :D so the next weekend, we are actually putting the soil and grass seeds down. stay tuned!

車から全部土を運びだしてとりあえずは芝生エリアに置いて、今日はここでおしまいでした。やっぱり力仕事は疲れる... 来週は土と芝生の種を蒔くというのが目標です。カイは袋の上を楽しそうにピョンピョンとジャンプしながら遊んでいました。こういうの好きなんだね〜　＾＾

we did a little project on the placement of the dining lamp a few weeks ago (yes, i was lazy to take pictures of it until now). i wasn't happy with how the lamp wasn't hanging in the "center" of the dining table (see the metal plate on the ceiling? way off center, right?). i mean, that lamp was in the "center" within the space (like in the ceiling space) but someone didn't consider centering within the actual usable space. behind kai's high chair is "walk way" so if we put the table as is, it'll be in our way to walk by. you might've noticed, we temporary don't have a rug in the dining room until kai stop throwing food all over the floor! i dunno when that would be...*sigh*

anyway, we had to replace the lamp cord to make it longer so that it "hooks" to the side and still have right length when it hangs (let me tell you, finding the right cord took forever!). we originally just used a regular silver hook, nothing fancy but when we looked at it, that exposed hook made it look very unfinished and cheap in a way. so when i was flipping thru dwell magazine i saw this picture and totally got inspired to cover it up somehow.

after many phone calls try to find something like that and trips to diy stores. we quickly realized that no one carries stuff like that and had think about alternatives...something light weight, easy to drill to make holes, and big enough to cover the hook. then the idea came to my mind...white pvc pipe end cap (i would never thought about it if we didn't do yard work)! tada~! we only paid 60 cents and worked our perfectly and looks finished and almost meant to be ;)

thanks for reading my very long post today. hope i didn't bored you with my lamp issue. ;)

この間の週末にダイニングランプの位置を移動するというプロジェクトをやりました。どうみても、ダイニングのテーブルを自分の使いやすい位置に置くとランプが全然まん中ではないので、前からちょっと嫌だな〜と気になっていました。＾＾；　天井にある丸いステンレスからランプがさがっていたのですが、ぜんぜんまん中じゃないの分かりますか？こういうのかなり気になるんですよね〜。笑　天井のスペースでみるとランプの位置はまん中なのですが、テーブルを置きたい位置に置くとずれてしまうんです。ちょうどカイの椅子の後ろは通路になっているので前のままでランプをおくと横を通る時にかなりの邪魔！

という事でまずは新しい白いコードを買って、ランプを少し分解してコードの長さを変えなければいけません。じゃないと、横にフックでかけた時にランプが上にいってしまいすぎて、見かけが悪い事。でも、この単純な白いコードを探すのに少し苦労。＾＾；その後無事にコードをかえて、普通のシルバーのフックを天井からつけて出来上がり...でもそのシルバーのフックだけを見た時には全然良くない！なんか中途半端で仕上がってない感じ。どうしようか〜とダニエルと相談しながらdwellというモダーンホームの雑誌を見ていた時この写真を発見！こういう風にフックをカバーしちゃえばいいんだ！という事になりました。

こういう物を探すのにいろんなランプ屋さん、電気屋さんに電話したけど、みつからず、ホームインプルーブメントストアなどにもいったけど、やっぱりダメ。どうしようか、ということで、とりあえず何かで自分でつくればいいんだと、軽くて、穴が開けやすくて、フックが隠れるくらいの大きさの物。思いついたのは白い排水パイプのキャップ、そう、さんざん庭のスプリンクラーで使っている材料です。このキャップ１個６０セントで綺麗に仕上がりました。やったー！

今日は長いブログを読んでもらってありがとうございまーす！

here is the close up on the lamp.

our backyard disaster seems to be completed (well, just the sprinkler system part). we moved all the piping/valves to the right side of the house but when we were all done with that, we took a little while to figure out how to get the main water supply turned on thru the valves to each sprinklers. but after few hours of thinking and nice deserving break with cold drinks, we did it and worked perfectly!

actually he wanted this straw hat to be off of his head after few min. ;)

yup, he was playing with the dinosaurs again! it was super hot (103 F/39.5 C) so we were sweating profusely, so gross!

hooray for the water and awesome water pressure! we just need to put sprinkler heads next time and rototill the ground so that we can put soil/fertilizer mix and grass seed to grow the grass (we decided to go with the grass seed rather than sod cuz it's significantly cheaper and we decided that we can wait to have grass). since it's getting hot i dunno when we get to work on the yard next but i'll keep you posted!

i saw these cute free bookplates on orange you lucky blog so i thought i will share! i will be printing them out and sticking on kai's books :)

this backyard thing became really a total disaster! we thought we were almost done with the sprinkler system but then we noticed that everything was pre-wired and the main water supply pipe ready to go on the other side of the house!?!?! so to do it right with no regrets later, we decide to move the sprinkler valves, more manually digging, and obviously re-do some of the piping. think we'll really be done with this next weekend and after that we gonna get ready to plant grass seeds.

here is our little helper, playing with the dinosaurs i got him the other day.

walking around with this cute silly face, totally cracked me up! :) in the background, there's stacked up soil with fertilizer for the grass, more pipes and tools and daniel working :)

very seriously checking out the "elbow" pvc pipe connector...
you see the dirt hill? that's how much we had to dig manually with a help of daniel's dad and uncle to re-do this thing!

this is after we connected everything with all the piping and valves (this thing controls the water flow like when to shut off or go. we have to wire these valves to the main controller (see the black wires coming out on the top) now). i don't know if you noticed but this time these valves are not as tall as the one we did before because we decided to put them underground with lid so it'll be out of the way! i'll put a picture next week so you know what i'm talking about! :)

yay, we are almost done with installing the sprinkler system in our backyard! no more cutting pvc pipes with the pipe cutter for a while, well let's just hope that way ;)

i dug the hole to match the depth of the trench and some so that we can put these ugly looking contraptions (it's actually called "automatic anti-siphon" which is to control the water flow and reduces fogging and overspray). after that we already assembled most of this contraptions, so we had to measure the pipes to connect them all with main water supply and rest of the pipes in the ground.

today kai was in the house with deedee for a bit. he was taking a nap for most of the time and just got up towards the end. so we left him inside since we are just few steps away and he can see us right outside of the door!

*sorry for the bad reflections on this picture...you can kinda see me with yard working clothes, ha ha.

fyi, this is why the glass is so dirty on the door! just lovely isn't it?

*sorry again for the bad reflections on the picture.

i really been liking this quote so i made myself desktop wallpapers in different colors (1280 x 800) so i thought i'll share with everyone! hope you guys enjoy! if you want some bigger sizes to fit perfectly, let me know, i'll make one for you :)

* please click to enlarge the image first then drag the picture to your desktop.

cont. reading for more colors.

this blue one is 1680 x 1050 size version

this was my weekend project to make the poster (ok, more like "trace" the poster), print it out, and frame it. i've seen this poster everywhere and i always wanted one but i really wanted to use this frame i already had and right dimension for the frame so i decided to trace the original poster i found on the internet. i made it orange to work with my decor better rather than original red color. i also see this poster in different colors who silk screen them locally here in san francisco. so cute too!

i like the quote, i think it suits well with chasing toddler around all day :) but did you know that this poster has a history behind it? well i didn't...until few days ago that this was a british propaganda poster in 1939. you can read more here.

p.s. if you happen to like this poster, i can send you high resolution pdf. it's about 11"x 14" (28 cm x 35.5 cm) and i can change colo if you want.

we were back on working on our backyard today again. mainly we glued all the pvc pipes and assembled some sprinkler stuff. we will be back again next weekend to finish up installing the sprinkler controller, wiring, and some finishing touches! keep you posted!

first thing first! we fixed that drainage pipe that we busted when trenching. good thing that it only costed about $9 to fix, yay!

this is the special pvc glue we had to use to connect them all (it was like pretty much a hard core rubber cement). very pretty color but very very toxic!

daniel and his dad glued them all one by one.

and looks like that. i guess this glue drys in 30 sec. so they had to work fast!

here is our little helper...he was "working" very hard again ;)

re-digging the drainage pipe we just covered after fixing...

stuff happens...yes i know. but this wasn't anything we expected! i was cleaning out the dirt on the trenches so it'll be more level when we put the pvc pipes. well, when i was i digging, i felt something weird then found our backyard drainage!?!?! see, where the trencher went through the pipe? i thought this was already a long project but now it just got longer to finish...greeeeeaaattttt!

this was when we discovered the disaster... :P

we started shoveling and digging.

after about 1 hour of doing that, we were done and cut the pipe so we can replace it with the new one.

here was our little helper (to say the least...), thought that count...right? ;)

we rented this trencher today with our neighbor mike and worked on trenching both of our backyards. i think we trenched about 12 to 14 inches (30 to 35 cm) deep in the ground. it seems easy but it took us all day to do it and at the end of day, they all have lots of blisters on their hands :(

i guess our next step is to clean and even out the trenches and go buy pvc pipes to put in there with sprinkler heads on the end of them. hopefully we can finish doing that on monday and be done with it!

i finally made kai's door sign, i've been wanting to but i just couldn't find the right typography (that's when graphic designer's picky-ness really comes out, right?) to put on the chocolate brown bear sign (bought it at daiso- in japan). i painted the letters with same blue paint to match his wall color, can you tell? ;)

i went to different craft stores to find the "right" type but no luck...you know, i don't want curly girly type or serifs!...so i finally ordered them online. i should've ordered them a bit smaller cuz now they bug me a little that his name is not centered within the sign... (yes, i'm getting picky again!). oh well, i also ordered few more stuff, i'll post the pics soon.

it has been exactly a year yesterday that we've been living in our house for a year. we did lots of painting and personalizing the interior the past year but we have not touched our backyard at all. it's just dirt field :P definitely not very attractive picture!

since kai is getting bigger and a lot more active these days, we decided to start working on the backyard now so that it'll be done...hmmm i dunno when but maybe in a year??? we've been planning how we want our backyard to be and with a help of mike + michelle yesterday, we roughly marked the areas. we are planning on trenching the yard this coming up weekend so that we can put the sprinkler/irrigation pipes in the ground. wish us luck!

this is our rough backyard plan how we want it to be.

cont. reading for our backyard inspirations.

probably you can tell by now, we want modern, clean line, and simple architecture stuff for our backyard. i wanna make deedee a cool modern dog house (this one is very fancy tho) cuz she gets really hot from being black!

daniel and i worked on a logo project for the last few days for my dad's company in japan. this is to encourage individuals like his company employees and clients to do some farming on the weekend (be a "weekend farmer" kinda thing, i know, might be a funny english...) especially around yatsugatake area in nagano/yamanashi prefectures 'cuz that's the area his company actually have a field to do farming and also where 2nd house is located.

if you like go here to see some pics around the 2nd house when we visited japan last october.

guess what that is? well, this was our little weekend project to install the ceiling fan in our bedroom (this was the mid way, right before wiring). we had this crazy hot weather about few weeks ago and reminded us to get it and install it before it gets much worse for the summer time! we decided to go with the same ball fan that is in our living room to match it ;)

cont. reading for our ceiling fan journey.

this was the beginning...i was like "oh man, there's so many pieces to deal with!" ;)

from pieces to this point was about 30 min., looks like it's only 3:45 pm.

after 2 accidental trips of the breaker, figuring out like 10 different wire connections (we had to go look in the down stairs one after a while :P) and last but not least, putting the top "cup" in the ceiling took as long 'cuz we had to shove the wires and remote control pad all in there. when we were finally done installing the blades, it was 5:35 pm. it took us almost 2 hours to do that!

i'm so happy that we got it done (even with daniel's "tender" knee) and are prepared for hot nights during the summer. i totally felt like i was a electrician today, ha ha ha. ;)

i saw this super cute diy easter basket, bunny and home made peeps posts on twig + thistle with downloadable templates. i don't think i can make the bunny cuz i'm not good at sewing but probably i can make other stuff?!? well, see about that!

this is officially the last cucumber update as you can see :( since it's been getting cold, the cucumber pretty much died these days... i still saw some baby cucumbers but they weren't growing at all over few weeks and kinda stopped the growth. so this is the "cucumber grave" i made today and cleaned out the garden area. remember i said that before that my goal is to pick 100 cucumbers? well, i picked 99 of them. so close! anyhoo, i'm planning on making cucumbers again next year and i'm thinking i wanna try cherry tomatoes and maybe something else too? we'll see about that.

this is what we worked on last weekend and this weekend (yes, it was hot and sweaty). here are the before and after pictures. we ended up painting the whole garage because it was super easy (just one coat of paint) and looked a lot better! then build a getabako (shoe shelf) and a step to the door so that we can take the shoes off. on the other side of garage, we used some chalk board paint for a fun play area for kai in the future.

we finished painting his room on sunday. yes!!

and we put a light fixture in there too. now we are going to decorate so i'll keep you posted.

look how big they are getting! they are more than twice the size since 9 days ago. (what you see at the bottom is sweet basil.)

they are growing pretty well.

we finally put together the crib and got ready for the baby. i know it's kinda late but it's done now :)