Category Archives: Home Improvement

I have to admit, I am bad when it comes to house chores like cleaning, arranging, decorating, scrubbing, mopping…well, you get the ideas. I think the only thing I’m good at is sweeping (if compared to Hubby..haha!) You see, 13 years of being together and almost 8 years of being married certainly won’t impress Hubby when it comes to my skills in keeping the house (or whatever space I used to live in) neat and tidy.

However since we bought this house and I somehow read an article about how we the mothers should do fewer things at home but do them better, I decided to implement some of it. So a few hours ago I tackled a part of the “junkyard” at the family area upstairs, threw the stuffs (which must be sorted but not sure when) in the blue IKEA bag, cleaned up the shelves using broom, and dragged the shelves inside the bedroom cum play room.

Those shelves are now meant for Dear Son to practise his arrangement skills. He is supposed to arrange his toy cars, trucks, backhoe, skid steer, Lego toys and such on the shelves. Or at least that’s what I understand by reading the Montessori books that toys need to be arranged neatly on shelves rather than dump them all in toy box. Hopefully dear son will have a clearer picture and better skills than his Mama in years to come when it comes to this home improvement matter.

Errkkk, the “junkyard” is now a mess because I accidentally killed a lizard while moving the shelves and it turned off my motivation to finish up the cleaning tasks..(what a lame excuse..haha!)

It’s been a while since I do any pictorial update on this blog..haha! Well, not to count all other entries selling the second hand toys and baby stuffs of course..I have been busy with my other blogs that need to be updated that I kind of lost my mojo to update homemakerdiary.

Anyway, for the past few days, the gardenia plant (aka cape jasmine) I have in my garden has been flowering. Malays call this as bunga cina. In fact it has bloomed the week before but I was not able to take any picture. And once it has bloomed fully the flower was not very picture-worthy.

Here is the picture of a half full bloomed gardenia or its scientific name Gardenia jasminoides, the best in its flowering phase, in my personal opinion. Usually it doesn’t last very long, maybe 2-3 days. It will turn yellow once it has bloomed fully and then wither.

Last 2 weeks I forced myself to open up all the boxes containing books and arranged them on the book shelves.

Most of the books (fiction) were bought throughout the years, but many of the non fiction especially books on parenting were bought after I have a baby (the enlightenment of being a mom, I would say!)

I still have problem on how to arrange all the magazines, especially one that I collected for craft and art references.

When we bought the cheapest Flarke book shelves about 3-4 years back from IKEA, I didn’t really pay attention on how much weight each rack could hold. Now that I browse through the latest catalog, I realized that there are a few types that could hold up to 30kg per shelf.

For now I have to distribute the magazines horizontally according to type on each shelve on the right book shelve and waste some space. I wouldn’t stack the whole magazines because it would be difficult to take out one or two issues that I want to refer to in the future. If you noticed in the picture, I still have some space left on the last 2 shelves (in the middle) which means I can buy more books..haha! The left-most book shelve is Hubby’s…but you can’t really see it in the picture above.

Have you ever heard about a flower that is called gardenia?

Here is a white gardenia for you to see.

It is also known as bunga cina. Why? Maybe because it has a strong scent and white in color. You know how Malays simply put easy name on things, animals, plants..haha!

The last time my gardenia bloomed was more than 2 years ago. I saw a few buds coming out, hopefully that buds will make it through this time.

Oh, BTW, gardenia is also considered as one of the famous exotic flowers.

I really love to see any of the plants that I have in the garden blooms. They really make my day!

Just like this particular pot of rose plant. It has been blooming one after another. And every time a single bud comes out, I keep on reminding myself to make sure to snap a picture or two just for remembrance.

After all with the windy and rainy season like now, sometimes the fragile petals won’t last long.

I hope I would be able to add a few more pots of plants soon, the wish list includes a very bright red bougainvilla, cempaka and kenanga.

Hubby, one of these days, let’s go to Taman Warisan Pertanian and check out whether the nursery seller is there..heh!