What June 2011 Brought

It's June already and it's the school holidays in Singapore. But my kids have a very busy schedule and it's worse than school days because there's no routine. I keep track of where everyone has to be by marking on the calendar. But I tell you, there have been a few near misses. I honestly can't wait for school days to start.

Usually I would be busy going out to craft markets to sell my stuff during the school holidays. But this year, I seem to have difficulty finding good places to sell. I'm so avoiding places which charge high rent and it seems rent keeps going up! Anyhoo, rather than stressing over selling enough to make rent, I decided I would just stay home. And focus on improving my skills in photography and photo editing.

Remember my tatted lace? I made it into a zip pouch. Do I make too many zip pouches? I really like my simple boxed bottom zip pouch. It's wide enough for a big wallet and basic essentials. I like the idea of matching lace with denim. It's a perfect match. Soft with rough.

I've been selling my items on Etsy for a while now and it seems I never paid attention to Etsy's preferred size for photos for the front photo. I've done some homework and for this front pic, I used 1000 X 1000 pixels and I do believe it makes a big difference. I don't know why I didn't bother before. I used to wonder why my photos get cropped horribly. Well, now I do. I've listed this pouch and you can go here to see the difference. If you want to read what Etsy recommends, go here.

For this iPhone zip pouch, I forgot that for a front photo, I have to use landscape. If you use portrait, your image will be cropped by Etsy. The sun has died on me so I had to make do with what I have. I have listed this pouch on Etsy and you can go here to take a look.

Me hubs says the fabric I used is very cheena. (Chinese) Honestly, when I look at the fabric, I don't think it's Chinese at all. I think it's very romantic. But that's just me. Deep down I really love fabric with flowers but it seems liking flower-flower fabric is not cool. But that's a secret between us, okay? I'm in the process of making a few more flower-flower items. Hope me hubs doesn't get a heart attack.

Just before school ended, my son's teacher reminded us that one homework due when school reopened was giving an opinion of 4 required books. Of course I almost had a heart attack. Hunting down the books took me a while as the library did not stock that many copies. Now the hard part - reading them. Part of my duty as a mom is to read the English books my son has to read. I decided to start with the thinnest book.

I read this book on the train. I know this book won awards and all but it was boring to me. I really forced myself to read it. I'm just glad it was a thin book.

On the other hand, I could not put Prey down. I'm a huge fan of Michael Crichton and he is such a good story teller. And no, this is not one of the required text my son had to read.

Yesterday was a good day for me. I went shopping with my BFF. Yes, I have a BFF. She's not a blogger so I can't link to her. I rarely get to see her so it was a treat. When we were students, we often wondered if we would grow old together and still be friends years and years later. I'm really happy that here we are with kids and all and literally growing old together.

What else did June bring? Ah yes, last Sunday, Singapore flooded. Again. I am old enough to have lived through the years when flooding in Singapore was common due to poor drainage. The drains were fixed and only very low lying areas were flooded. Since last year, it seems something changed and flooding started happening in places which had either never flooded before or not flooded for a very long time. Okay, I'm not an engineer so I don't know how the drains system works. But I wonder if it is a result of urbanization. Everytime Singapore flooded, I feel ashamed. Listening to the feeble explanations and excuses. And no, rain does not cause flooding. Because if it does, everywhere will be flooded everytime it rains. Just saying.