All about Mint

Order  "Mint Original Watercolor Painting"

Plants are so magical, especially the herbal plants. I am amazed by the various kinds of fragrant they carry.

In searching of  some healthy snack for my 4 year old, I come across the mint plant and some healthy snacks and drinks it can make. I planted some in my garden from cut out that I bought from supermarket that are meat for cooking. I just insert them into port soil and magically they grow.

Mint in Balcony

Now they thrive in my balcony. They need only a lot of water and sunshine.

Afternoon Snack

This is a healthy, delicious and easy to make afternoon snack with oat cracker, low fat high calcium cream cheese and mint. The strong taste of the peppermint I pick from the balcony somehow disappear when mixed with cheese. The mint makes cheese very fresh and not so sticky in your mouth. My daughter loves it.

Order "Mint in Port Original Water Color Painting"

 They are also so pretty to paint with bluish green, golden yellow and dark purple stems . I painted two today.

Tree in April Collage Print, Baby Drawings and My Garden

Order the Print

This is another version of Tree in April. Few weeks ago, I painted the acrylic version of Tree in April.

I like newspaper collage very much and also the music notes. It is very fun to play with them in this collage print.

The is the large print version. It adds very warm touch to the living area.

 Baby loves to draw these days. She spent hours and hours on drawing. Most of them are little people with boys and girls, princess and prince. The small people are very energetic and you feel the strong flow in the drawing. It amazes me every time.

My garden is flouring these days. The murraya tree suddenly blossoms with so many white small flowers that attracts many bees. It has very strong fragrance lingering in my balcony.

The herbal garden is grown very well. The newly planted lemon balm from cutting stems. They all survive very well. I like to make a lemon balm leave tea everyday. It is very soothing.

The rosemary and Thai sweet basil are growing very well as well. I used rosemary to bake or fry chicken and potatoes. The dishes are totally changed once the rosemary is added. The smell and taste are so much better that the rosemary gets ride of the original unpleasant tastes of the meat or potatoes. The basil is used to add into tomato ham spaghetti. The pretty Lantana is nearby with beautiful bright yellow pink flower.

Home Maintenance and Lessons

I was sick with sore throat for a few days and spent most of the time resting. Meanwhile I tried to build up my balcony garden and fix some of the house problems.

I used to put a lot of green plants or trees such as palms in my garden. But this time, I feel that it is much more interesting to have trees with flowers. I bought a wrightia last time that has small white flower and sweet scent. It gives us a lot of pleasure to look at the flowers and feel the fragrance.

 

Today, I bought a tall murraya tree with fragrant small flowers. Murraya tree is type of jasmine and medicine plant in India. It can be used to treat many problems according to Ayurvedic practice. I hope that I will have success with these type of plants.

Just share some stories about my home repairing jobs. I have some problem again with pluming and lighting. I found that the bathroom washing basin cabinet bottom is wet after every use of the basin. I asked some plumbers and they all told me that there must be pipe broken. They need to break the wall to repair it. The price they quote to me is about SGD$1900 to fix it.

It is really expensive and I think I better do some research myself. After try and error, I found and fixed the problem without costing one cent. The problem is due to the leaking of edge of the basin top and also the connection point of drain pipe from the basin outlet to the wall inside the basin cabinet. I use some teflon tape and silicon gel and the problem is fixed.

I also have problem with a chandelier that its dimmer is broken again. This is not the first time that the dimmer is not working. It was repaired two times and every time it costs about SGD$50. This time, I was wondering if I should keeping using dimmer because I thought that probably dimmers are not good to be used with chandeliers. I asked my neighbor who is very good at electrical job to take a look. He immediately told me that the dimmer has not enough power. My chandelier electricity load is exceeding the maximum  dimmer load. I need to use a more powerful dimmer. I never knew that there is such thing as dimmer load and the electrician neither mentioned this to me nor use a dimmer with correct load.

The lesson is that for every small job in your house, we better do some google search to equip ourselves with basic knowledge about the job. Otherwise you end up wasting money and also not get the thing done correctly.