I Need To Bake!

I have the sudden urge to bake.  Maybe because I just saw an awesome sale on a professional series KitchenAid mixer that I happen to have resisted to buy.  Again.

Or maybe it's the two egg whites sitting in the fridge that's calling to be used.  (Ahem, macarons?)

Well, I settled with making apple pies.  At 1am.  On a weeknight.  Shaped like fish.

I need sleep.  lol.

Christmas Presents Are Ready! (Almost)

Insomnia from the last week or so prompted me to have a bit of "me" time again so going down my bucket list of things to do, I decided to start on the Christmas presents (plus I don't think I'll ever get to bake that damn cake).  At first I was going to do a desktop or a monthly wall photo calendar for the grandmas but after getting some inspiration in the blogosphere, I decided to do a 16x20 framed, poster-type calendar instead.

I spent 2 full insomniac nights putting it together and I'm happy to say I'm pretty thrilled with the resulting product.  Although manually typing in each and every day from scratch wasn't exactly my idea of relaxing, seeing the poster come together nicely really gave me a sense of accomplishment.  I can't wait to have them printed and then framed and then I can be proud to say I've got my Christmas shopping started!

Just a few finishing touches, final proofreading to make sure I didn't give September 31 days (oops, lol) and off to the printers it'll go.  Can't wait to see the framed product!

I Did It!

小芬 is a little techy, a little geeky and a little handy, even if I say so myself.  Recently, I've taken apart my Roomba to service the clunking sound the brush assembly was making; I fixed a flashlight in which I removed a couple of corroded, exploded, stuck batteries; I installed two light fixtures and two dimmer switches in Tinlop's new condo; and my newest accomplishment: fix the scroll wheel of all three of my malfunctioning MS mice.

Following the powers of the interwebs, I found some pretty detailed instructions on how to tweak and fix the issues and now I have a whooping four functioning Arc mice (including the new red one).  Stupid MS just had to make things difficult by using one torx screw (out of 7, in which the other 6 were all Phillips) so I had to make a special trip out to Home Depot to pick up the right screwdriver.  So much work!  LOL~  The fix was actually really easy once the screw is out, took all of 3 minutes per mouse.

All fixed, yay!

On another note, I haven't worked a crazy opening in years nor have a worked a project where we sold out entirely in 20 hours.  Despite not having a complete APS (I had to make the schedules), no disclosure docs, faulty internet connection, computers that couldn't connect to our server, photocopier that stopped working, we still pulled off selling them all.  The paisans started lining up at 3am (yes, I was still at work) and it was funny to hear them exaggerate about being there since 2am.  Typical paisans.

Reception area of the sales office

Dining area

Kitchen - I love this kitchen

Living area - with a $15,000 upgraded fireplace built-in

Spacious 20ft wide, so atypical of a townhouse

The mob of people, angry that they didn't get a chance to even come in, let alone buy one

Time I left work on Friday - yes, I'm dedicated

Nick got us each a bottle of Veuve Clicquot for all our hard work!  We all deserved it!

Condo townhomes, 2,100sq.ft., $700,000... a little hard to swallow but people inhaled all 69 of them nonetheless.  Wish I had that kind of money to burn.