New Year and New Stuff

Happy Chinese New Year! Normally we'd have people over for steamboat but we didn't quite feel like doing that this year. Not that we completely gave up on tradition, Saturday was a fully packed day of pre-New Year cleaning (love a good bit of superstition to kick us into doing housework) and we braved the crowds in China Town for a set dinner on Sunday to see the festivities. The mall was redone just in time for New Year and it's looking good, if still a little gaudy. Tossed together a few clips and pics from our night out into a movie.



When we were doing the renovations we knew that an increase in storage space would coincide with a need to fill that space. Of course we promised ourselves that we'd exercise some restraint with our purchases, which lasted all of about a month it seems.

The old dining table has proven to be too big for to use now that we have a sliding door leading to the patio. This new breakfast table for four seems to fit quite nicely though, perhaps even providing enough room for the odd dinner when it's too cold to sit outside.



Our backrooms are now cleaned out and rearranged, with the computer desk coming out of the "guest room" to make way for some book shelves and a new set of drawers. I'd post some photos, but our attempt at cleaning up did not extend to putting away the mountain of filing that heaped on the spare bed. Good thing we have a filing cabinet coming in this weekend.

We also got a new carpet and a hat rack (need somewhere to put those gardening hats and daily bags). Quite a bit of use out of the power drill as you can imagine.

Even the vegetable garden has had a few improvements. We now have a chilli plant, a lemon tree and some rapidly growing rows of eggplant, zuchinni and tomatoes. Well, perhaps not the tomatoes as something seems to be eating the new leaves every night, but the eggplant and zuchinni are doing great.



Oh yes, and there's a tiny papaya tree growing in the back there. Apparently they're fast growers so we should have some fruit by next season. Sweet!

Couch for the patio is still to come. Can't wait as it's been scorching over here and we'd love to just lounge outside with the breeze. It might also spur on yet another trip to the stores in search of a coffee table though... hrmm...