Shoe / Sandal organiser

I knew I have posted it before.

I just want to keep this last photo of our shoe / sandal organiser before my husband take off our house number (66) and put it somewhere else.

My Potted Garden

While waiting for buka puasa, Nazran plant ginger and some potatoes. The Green Ambassador in action. 

Those are the latest addition to my existing potted garden. I have both edible and decorative plants. 

For edible plants I have oregano, (dying) basil, (dying) daun sup, onion, rosemary, halia bara, pandanus, tongkat ali, sabung nyawa, limau purut, cili padi bulat and turmeric. Oh yes, ginger and potato too!

Staying In : Part 18 - Repainting the kids room

I had enough of the colour blocking so I decided to repaint my kids' room. The kids helped me to paint with the roller. I was using the brush to work on the grooves. It was time consuming. It requires four layers of paint to cover up the purple and red stripes. We manage to complete only two walls in a few hours because we need to rush to Seremban for iftar.

My husband told me not to repaint the remaining two purple-red walls because he really appreciate my hard work painting the wall for the kids two years ago :)

These entries - here and here.

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Moving In : Part 17 - Slipper / sandal organiser

We came across a few wooden pallets at an industrial area. We brought home some. I just cant stand looking at good things being wasted. One of them has been upcycled to be the base of our bulky TV (this entry). And this one.....

We upcycled it to be a slipper / sandal organiser. Nabil painted it white and Papa mounted it to the wall. We put a wooden plank on top for shoes. I love the fact that the size of the pallet is exactly the same as the piece of wall available next to the door, underneath the window.

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Moving In : Part 16 - Hobby area

This newly-arranged space has totally took over our dining area. We just finished putting it together this afternoon. 

While Nazreen vacuumed the whole dining hall, Nabil and Nazran were busy unwrapped the new carpet. Papa installed trolley wheels to the recycled wooden pallet, to place our bulky TV so it is easier for me to move it around while cleaning the house.

This is their new favourite bonding spot where they play Playstation together, repair their remote control cars / tanks and do other guy stuff. They also could watch DVD on Solat, Iqra' and anything educational while waiting for dinner to be served.

I am glad to have this area IN our dining hall because they keep me entertain while I am preparing the meal or while I am doing the dishes. Although there are a lot of CARS, TOOLS, SMALL PARTS and WIRES, I dont mind. I am the only lady in the house, remember? I have to follow the majority ;p

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Moving In : Part 15 - Workstation

My friend from Shutterspeak Studios put up an ad on his wall to let go an old bulky table top that has been categorised as a ‘junk’ (because it has no legs) and he wanted to dispose it if no one interested to have it. 

I was like…ARE YOU CRAZY? That is one valuable piece! I immediately called him and rented a van to pick it up from his studio.

We cleaned it, bought 5 pieces of table legs from IKEA for RM10 per piece and voila! It looks like a NEW TABLE. Now we have a spacious workstation for my work-at-home husband in our bedroom :) 

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Our Moving In Adventures!

Since all of my friends are very successful in their life, career, business, successfully expanding their family and finally got their own place to settle down, some of them asked me on my experience of moving into a new house. I am more than happy to share but you have to read this entry until the end.

First of all, I am not moving into a new house. It is an old house, constructed in 1970. It belongs to my grandparents.

Secondly, it is full of old stuff that I could not throw away just like that because they are valuable to my dad and aunt, be it in term of price or sentimentally. We have to provide space for them and squeeze our stuff in between. Believe it or not, we only have one set of dining ware but we have 4 cabinets of old plates, glasses, tea sets, serving dishes which we didnt even use. I have counted them during the moving in process because I washed every piece of it with my mom. I stopped counting at the 900th piece. There are more.

Thirdly, since the house is legally my sister's now, so, I have to hold myself back from doing major renovation although we are dying to have modern bathroom, conducive cooking area and to repair some parts of the old house.

We just have to make do. So far we are doing fine and we REALLLLLY enjoy decorating the house, re-arrange the furniture once in a while, apply new coat of painting here and there and change the fabrics (curtain, cushion covers, carpet, table runner) to give the interior a new look.

Well, at least we have our own place. That's the most important thing. OK, now you can hit the green round button at the side bar to read on our Moving In Adventures. Enjoy.

Moving In : Part 14 - Cabinet makeover

I know. I know. We have moved into this new house last year. But, still, I have not blog about everything yet. 

This is an old cabinet in my late grandparent's house. My grandfather used to keep his book collection here. When we moved in, my dad brought home all the books and left me with the cabinet. Since it is in a good shape and I love the size and the height, I decided to keep it. (Actually I keep it because of sentimental value. I remind me of my grandparent everytime I look at it).

First and foremost, I took out the doors. Then, I painted it WHITE. I love white furniture, remember? But I only painted the external part white. I left the internal part brown because I love the faux timber laminate.

While waiting for the paint to dry, I pasted leftover gift-wrap so the interior will appear brighter. Usually people will use wallpaper for this kind of project but since the space it quite small, gift-wrap is enough. I love the fact that the pattern is similar to our plates'. Plus, I hate dark cabinet.

After finished with the paper, the paint is still wet and we decided to go to IKEA. We need to buy some stuff. (Bear in mind, this event took place 2 months after we moved in). I bought some fabrics. It took me 30 minutes to cut and sew a new runner for our newly-painted cabinet.

Voila.

I put my cooking books on the shelves. I always wanted to keep my cooking books in the kitchen. 

I did not took any photos when we first put our stuff in there. When it was super-neat. This photo is the recent one, during Raya 2012. This is how it looks like with kuih raya container and various types of tissues. 

I usually store my baking ingredients and electrical appliances (toaster, blender, mixer, rice cookers, coffee maker, juicer) in this cabinet. I like the fact that they are reachable and it is an open cabinet. It is also the best place to store my honey collection.

I decided not to put it against the wall. We use it as an island in the kitchen and as the space divider. Sometimes, it is a working counter top. Sometimes, it just a place where we put our plates and glasses. And snacks.

Did you see Nazreen behind the cabinet?

This is what I like about the cabinet. I re-purpose it the way the front part is used for storage and the rear part belongs to the kids. It is their doodling and playing area. Whenever I am in the kitchen, they will also be there to accompany me. I didnt have to worry about them while I am preparing food. I just love creating multipurpose space and incorporating kids' area into any space!

There are glasses on top of the cabinet. They never break any of those, after one year utilising the space. They have been trained to be very careful in that area. Dont worry.

More on our MOVING IN Adventures! Click here.

Moving In : Part 13 - Our small piece of land

We have settled in my late grandma's house for nearly a year now. We didnt have a chance to clean up the small piece of land in front of our house. There are bourgainvillas, huge jackfruit tree which sheds dry leaves everyday, palm tree, some flowery plants, herbal plants, some shrubs and a lot of weeds.

We have such a friendly neighbours. Everytime we went out to sweep the floor, hang some clothes, they will came out and start the conversation. Not that we didnt like to have a chat with them, but doing work while chatting with them seems rude (at least to me). That is the major drawback for us to work on the landscape. The last two weekends, when everyone is inside, resting at 2pm in the afternoon, my husband went out and start trimming the palm tree.

After 30 minutes, when I saw no one came out, I joined my husband to sweep dry leaves in my neighbour's compound. It started small at the beginning. And when Aril - the one in black (the best neighbour - here for more) arrived with his cute ladder and started to do serious work, everybody become more hardworking. In the end, we manage to clear the piece of land in front of our house, trim the branches and sweep clean the whole area.

My part. Only small piece of land, but it took me 2 hours to clean it, pulled out weeds, screamed over some fat worms, digged out buried trashes, cans and other unidentified stuff.

BEFORE

AFTER

In the process, there were friendly neighbours from 4 nearby houses came by and have a chat with us. Doesnt it feels great to have such friendly neighbours?????

Next project - Paint the gate. That is another pending project due to friendly neighbours. LOL! Jahatnya aku.

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Moving in : Part 11 - Pop Kitchen

Earlier, I wanted our kitchen to look modern (& monotonous) with grey wall, white tiles and black, silver & white kitchen utensils. We went through such an agonising time searching for modern /chic silver, black and white ONLY utensils. OMG, it was so hard considering our tight budget. One day, I was just gave up. This one was a minor gave up over the kitchen utensils. I rarely gave up on something - maybe once in ten years.

I need to run my kitchen and I need to run it RIGHT NOW! No time to go around looking for some WHITE / SILVER / BLACK kitchen utensils that fit my strict specifications. White chic scoop for scooping rice, black ladle for frying - so it is not obvious if it burnt, all containers should be glass (transparent) & silver...

So I started to buy a few pieces in different colours because those were the only colours available on the display shelves that time. Later on, I found out that adding a pop of colours here and there made our kitchen more interesting, well, at least for me who spend most of my time in the kitchen. Colours make me smile. Sometimes, putting a stop to a nonsense is a very good start for something better.

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Moving in : Part 10 - TV Area

Our TV Area have a very special natural daylight that penetrates through a transparent roof tile. I love it so much because we don't have to switch on the light inside the house during the day. BUT it is bright alright and we need to apply sunscreen to watch TV in our own house. LOL.

I pity the children who always find a way to avoid the glaring hot sunlight, and the heat - which hit directly on the sofa in front of the TV. Yes, it is HOT especially between 12.01pm to 2.30pm. They have choices whether to sit on the floor or other sofa or the other part of the sofa, but, the middle part of this sofa is the best spot for watching TV. We fought for it all the times. LOL. Sometimes they wear their caps and some other times, they uses umbrella while watching TV. Dramatic, yes?

This will help you to get the better picture of the HOT SPOT in our TV area.

We did a lot of sketches of all possible solutions and we end up with the simplest, fastest [and cheapest] measure, for the time being. We hang three huge Japanese rice paper lanterns. The lanterns diffuse [and absorb] the sunlight and solve the problem that was haunting the kids for quite a while. It look nice too.

We were thinking to hang a few smaller RED lantern to make it more outstanding. For the time being, the lanterns are sort of blend with the wall and ceiling.

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Moving in : Part 09 - Moving stuff with a lorry

I would like to thank a very nice neighbour of ours - ARIL, a 20yo gentleman who live across the street - for always been there for us. He helped us a lot in clearing out the house since April, taking care of our kids, paint some part of the house, be the first one to arrive whenever I had an encounter with ugly pests (and scream) and recently, he rented a lorry, drove it and move all furniture from my parent's to our new habitat, together with us. He never complaint. In fact he sings for us all the time.

This was the kids' first ride on a lorry. They were extremely excited. First trip - carry Atuk's sofa, a few cupboards and book shelves to our new habitat. Only 2km apart.

Although they are handful most of the time but they are very helpful when it comes to teamwork. (They were carrying their book shelves).

Second trip - carry quite a number of potted plants to Atuk's house. Nabil sat with his favourite Abang Aril, while others remained at the back of the lorry with the plants.

Third trip - another sofa and other small stuff. Atuk also gave us a huge frame of Quranic verses as a present. Nazreen joined Nabil and Aril at the front. The rest traveled by car.

It was tiring. We slept for the rest of the day. This was the most tiring moving in work so far, but we were satisfied to do all the work ourselves (of course with some help from Aril).

More on our MOVING IN Adventures! Click here.