KuKuKawaii: A Week of R & R

Sadly, my week of Rest & Relaxation is coming to an end. As always, I thoroughly enjoyed my week away from the Office. No rushing around, stressing about deadlines, forgoing lunch hours, wasting close to 3 hours of my life doing the daily commute. No Thanks! If it weren’t for the steady pay cheque and of course, all the great people I work with, I’m pretty sure I would have packed up long ago. So I say a BIG “Thank You” to all you great people at the Office for making me stay on just a little bit longer, until I can figure out a better way of making a contribution to Society.

I started my week of Rest & Relaxation with some (gasp) housework. It's something I've been putting off for a long time but I felt it was about time I got to it. I had to tidy up the spare room and purge as much as possible. Keep in mind that I’m a bit of a packrat and purging doesn’t come easy for me. So I’m proud to report that after a couple of days, I came away with 1 BIG garbage bag filled to the brim with stuff I was finally willing to part with and I even managed to set aside an area for potential Garage Sale items. It really wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. I found it to be therapeutic even and besides, I took my time doing it, taking many breaks. I give credit to all those bloggers out there that encouraged people like me to PURGE, PURGE, PURGE. Slowly, but surely, I’m getting there.

The main reason I took this week off was so I can spend my Birthday happily doing things I enjoy most and that definitely did not include pushing paper at the Office. That was my birthday present to myself. I enjoyed it so much that I’m gonna do this every year.

My Birthday celebrations started with my In-laws dropping by and treating the family to dinner at a local Family Chinese Restaurant. After dinner, we came across a new shop in the area called DIY (Do-It-Yourself) Cutie which offered Classes to Crafters assembling miniature playhouses. Hmmm… that looks like a business I could get interested in …

We then returned home to a birthday carrot cake, lovingly baked by hubby and the boys from a cake mix box (Betty Crocker, no less). It was an excellent choice because I’m not much of a “sweets” person and I DO love my vegetables. I also received a really CUTE birthday card, some yummy snacks like dried cuttlefish, some seed packets and a mini greenhouse for my upcoming gardening activity.

My favourite present of all was a book Dick personally hand picked for me called “Agenda for a New Economy” by David C. Korten. When he saw this book, he said it had “Joan” written all over it and he is Right about that. I LOVE this book. Here’s a book reflecting many of the viewpoints I already believe in. I feel that after reading this book, it has given me the push I need to pursue a path that is more in tune with my values. I shall do a Book Review in an upcoming posting.

The next day, Dick took me to Michaels to check out some Arts & Crafts supplies and Home Depot to check out some gardening supplies. Don’t worry, these were more window-shopping excursions than spending sprees. I intend to stick to my resolution of not accumulating too much useless stuff, especially after my recent purging. My modest contribution to stimulate our struggling economy amounted to a grand total of $5.82 for the day.

Continuing with the Birthday week celebration, Dick and I went to Yang’s Fine Chinese Cuisine for a fabulous Dim Sum Treat the following day. The Service was excellent and the food was well presented and delectable. A bit on the pricier side, but is to be expected for the quality and service we received. My only objection was that there was another menu listing more dishes in Chinese only. Where was the English version? In this day and age, I find this to be unacceptable for a restaurant of this calibre.

I spent the rest of the week enjoying some more of my favourite activities like trying out new recipes, baking, reading, cross-stitching, blogging, hanging out with my family and generally kicking off my shoes and relaxing with the sunlight streaming through the living room windows. Ahhhh, life is sweet….

Dick starts things off by preparing the cake batter.

Derek brings out the baked product.

Colin finishes off with the decorations.

Here's the finished product

My attempt at tidying the Spare Room. You can start to see some carpeting. This is way tidier than it was a week ago.

I even sectioned off an area for Garage Sale items.

Here's the store that offers classes for would-be Miniature Hobbyists.

Everything here is cute and miniature. Notice the cubic watermelons on the shelf? They really do sell fresh cubic melons in Japan, grown specifically this way for easy packing.