“Greer TaiTai(太太)”
My working and parenting lives collide with each other and sometimes sparkle.
Recent Posts
When inspirations come to a busy life, they remind me to slow down and enjoy the process.
Moon Cake Birthday Cake Tower
This year I took the advantage celebrating my birthday with Moon festival (lunar calendar) because they are just two days apart. Can't be more proud of my cake tower design with the actual "Moon" by reusing my son's cupcake illuminating stand.
Guest Bedroom Upgrade
I’ve been tackling this window in our guest bedroom for it's unique size and bright lighting for being on the second floor. Issues such as:
Too small for custom made shades, like our other cordless pull-up/down shades.
Dark window film still reveals bright lines around it and the lines from cut are just NOT straight!
Maybe some faux flowers could cover up some cut line flaws from the dark film? Not practical for decorative purposes.
Until this moment, I can finally say I did a good job and in a frugal way!
Curtain rod $15 - the shortest I can find for a 20” wide window!
Recycled IKEA curtain fabrics from our first apartment, which are already >10 years old! But still in a good condition!
Curtain strap from my previously used Macrame Plant Hanger! You don’t believe how elegant it looks until you try!
Hanging Plants Restyle
Started with the idea of self-watering device/pot and then realized how tough it was to untangle and rearrange the plants!
Generative AI Perfect Memories
Discovered the new Generative AI feature of Lightroom to remove the unwanted background so cleverly! Only in a few minutes, I'm pretty happy with the results despite some manual efforts defining the area.
Year of the Dragon 2024
Started with school's Festival of Cultures, we made together this harder-than-I-thought paper dragon craft. Turned out it’s a really good investment because later on I used them to decorate the house for Lunar New Year and added on some string lights for Lantern Festival! For the years to come, they can be hand-held dragon dance for new year celebrations Woo-hoo!
My Taiwan Sticker Design
For the second year of school Festival of Cultures, I wanted to improve passport stamp format by using customized stickers! I found some designs I liked online but I ended up designing my own for trying to avoid the intellectual property issue. It took me a while to figure out how to use the cutout sticker and manipulate the image adjustment. Finally I uploaded to Amazon to make 120 pieces of 1.5 inch stickers for $24 dollars. Can’t wait to see the results!
Playroom Transform - Creative Zone
After a long story of learning appreciation of what we have, we spent the morning decluttering the playroom and made our “creative zone”. Kids are excited playing a combination of magnet tiles and blocks. Best part is they quickly filled up the wall and happily showcased their drawings!
Before they learned and show their appreciation, no ipads for now.
Halloween Pumpkin Carving
Mick secretly bought a craft rotary tool kit for pumpkin carving this year. Of course it’s for me to try different techniques and advance my skills!?
First Trunk-or-Treat 2023
Again just like school's cultural event, I signed up to host a trunk the last minute! I made sure I could get all I needed from Amazon (bedside the inflatable dinosaur we already have) within next three days: lighting spiderweb, lighting hats and magnets for sticking the decorations to the car.
My First Custom Tailored Halloween Costumes 2023
Sewing machine on sale! That’s what triggered the following two weeks of pressure catching up sewing progress. Started with zero experience operating a sewing machine even though I'm a bespoke tailor’s daughter🫣. I went through the manual and started picking up the basic operation skills through practice on old fabrics. After a big shopping at Joann’s (costume patterns, fabrics and accessories), here we go! First policeman jacket and then dragon scale shirt.
Jensen Garden Fountain
Happened to find this garden fountain on sale (75% off from $500) and turned out it's the famous “Jensen” garden fountain! Mick has the solar power idea and it pumps the water really well. Love the sound of the fountain and the Zen feel of the backyard.
Simple Home Baked Cake with Policecar
We just came back from Taiwan for a month of vacation. Mick says we have to be fair () and we decided to make a cake in just a week of notice. Same Chantilly flavor but I need to come out with his favorite policecar decorated idea.
Photoshop Skills II
Such an excitement to see the full rainbow right after the rain. The original picture can't really express that excitement but I’ve practiced some tricks to quickly restore that WoW moment!
Yard Leveling
Kinda feel like it’s something you would do when you have nothing else to do. Mick always wanted to level the yard by filling up with the sands. I was against this idea but thought to give it try this time. I genuinely felt lost like being in the desert when seeing the grass gone but look at it now in just about two weeks! The grass is back!
2nd Year Still Dinosaur Cake but with Lego
Following my 6-year-old-to-be boy's wish, looks like I needed to continue on the dinosaur path but maybe came up with different ideas and tried not to duplicate the cake from last year. As he grows more interests in Lego, adding some “edible” Lego blocks plus Lego dinosaurs to the cake seems like a good idea. Btw a two tier cake sounds more representable for the birthday party.
2023 Adventure - Austin TX New/Popular Parks
I'd heard about these popular downtown parks in recent two years. Why it took so long to visit now? Because Mick didn't want to deal with downtown traffic, my weekend proposal had been rejected. Now I was determined to go anyways. My boys were more than happy to follow Mommy for fun. I was going to drive anyways and Mick was allowed to tag along to the second park and the following ones after he did his homework about parking and the park attractions.
Festival of Cultures - Welcome to Taiwan 🇹🇼
Success for our debut 🇹🇼 at Meridian School Festival of Cultures. Special thanks to my Taiwanese friends' support for the flags, snacks, souvenirs and the interactive games to make our booth one of the most popular ones. Taiwan is small but our heart is big! I'm glad to have the opportunity to showcase my country.
Happy Lantern Festival (Year of Rabbit)
For the year of the rabbit, I went to the craft store knowing I would at least get plastic cups/holders for the LED candles and some decoration materials. With a vague rabbit lantern image in my mind, I had these selections to begin with.
100 Days of School Kindergarten
I scrambled through pinterest for 100 days of school ideas. Seems like anything can work as long as it’s 100 items. Inspired by my son’s passion about dinosaurs, I’ve decided to make 100 dinosaur foot stamps.
We Celebrate Both New Years
Continue the party vibes from the end of last year to the beginning of this year. It's the year of rabbit 🐇.