{"id":15708,"date":"2012-01-18T19:59:54","date_gmt":"2012-01-18T11:59:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/?p=15708"},"modified":"2012-01-18T19:59:54","modified_gmt":"2012-01-18T11:59:54","slug":"chinese-new-year-preparations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/2012\/01\/18\/chinese-new-year-preparations\/","title":{"rendered":"Chinese New Year Preparations!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The Chinese New Year festive season is just a few days away and we\u2019ve been starting to prepare our home in our little ways. One of the most common decorations for the occasion is the Pussy Willow plant, with its fluffy white blossoms that represent growth and prosperity. At about this time, the plant is readily available at supermarkets, wet markets and nurseries too. Nope, we\u2019re not normally superstitious, but what the heck \u2013 might as well get in with the rest of the crowd over here!<\/p>\n<p>Our version of the plant comes courtesy of Ikea. Ling didn\u2019t want the separate stalk versions as that would have necessitate plantation into a water vase and the usual risks of unwanted insects breeding. The Ikea version comes planted and slightly higher-priced. Here\u2019s our girl helping us de-shell and prepare the plant for us to hang ornaments around the plant.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" style=\"background-image: none; border-bottom: 0px; border-left: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; display: block; float: none; margin-left: auto; border-top: 0px; margin-right: auto; border-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px\" title=\"blog-2012-hannah-N7K_0118-CNY-plant-prep-flickr\" border=\"0\" alt=\"blog-2012-hannah-N7K_0118-CNY-plant-prep-flickr\" src=\"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/01\/blog-2012-hannah-N7K_0118-CNY-plant-prep-flickr.jpg\" width=\"300\" height=\"453\" \/><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" style=\"background-image: none; border-bottom: 0px; border-left: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; display: block; float: none; margin-left: auto; border-top: 0px; margin-right: auto; border-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px\" title=\"blog-2012-hannah-N7K_0146-CNY-plant-prep-flickr\" border=\"0\" alt=\"blog-2012-hannah-N7K_0146-CNY-plant-prep-flickr\" src=\"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/01\/blog-2012-hannah-N7K_0146-CNY-plant-prep-flickr.jpg\" width=\"550\" height=\"364\" \/><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" style=\"background-image: none; border-bottom: 0px; border-left: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; display: block; float: none; margin-left: auto; border-top: 0px; margin-right: auto; border-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px\" title=\"blog-2012-hannah-N7K_0141-CNY-plant-prep-flickr\" border=\"0\" alt=\"blog-2012-hannah-N7K_0141-CNY-plant-prep-flickr\" src=\"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/01\/blog-2012-hannah-N7K_0141-CNY-plant-prep-flickr.jpg\" width=\"550\" height=\"367\" \/><\/p>\n<p>And oh yeah; taken on the new D7000. I\u2019m missing the lever for spot-focusing. Lazily kept it at area AF and about 10% of the shots ended up focusing on one of the numerous background objects in the kitchen. At least the rest turned out quite nice.=)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Chinese New Year festive season is just a few days away and we\u2019ve been starting to prepare our home in our little ways. One of the most common decorations for the occasion is the Pussy Willow plant, with its<\/p>\n<div class=\"entry-read-more\"><a class=\"read-more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/2012\/01\/18\/chinese-new-year-preparations\/\">Read More<span class=\"cleanwp-sr-only\">  Chinese New Year Preparations!<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,13],"tags":[518,363],"class_list":["post-15708","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-at-home","category-photography-cameras","tag-d7000","tag-sigma-18-250mm","wpcat-6-id","wpcat-13-id"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15708","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15708"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15708\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15708"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15708"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15708"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}