新年新希望

In the blink of an eye, we are more than 2 months into the New Year and 1Q2010 will be over before we know it. But as they say: better late than never. Having been feeling a little low more often than I think I should, and after having pondered some time about the meaning of life and what I want out of life, I've been thinking about what I can do to make 2010 a better year.

So here's a list of my not-so-new year resolutions aspirations:

1. Spend more time with family and loved ones

2. Spend more time with Mischka

• more regular walks and off-leash time
• swim at the beach once a month 

3. Eat healthier

• home cooked meals at least twice a week
• more nutricious food - more fish and greens, and pick some organic battles!

4. More exercise

• more regular stretching: no pain no gain
• more foam-rolling
• don't be lazy - increase resistance on the gyro machine!
• increase dance class attendance to twice a week
• swim once a week

5. Improve wellbeing

• go to bed earlier, try for 7 full hours of sleep on weekdays, and 8 full hours on weekends
• think happy thoughts
• spa indulgence once a month

6. Try new recipes

•  one new dish a month (not ready to attempt a 365-Julia Child project just yet)

7. Brain food

•  try to finish 1 book a month - floozy magazines don't count

8. Learn a new skill

•  Argentine tango!

9. Refresh old skills

•  Sail!

It's probably not too late to work towards making this perhaps the best year yet!

P/S: And if there's enough goodwill around to spare, some dreams I hope will materialise at some point:
* consistent double pirouettes!
* complete my career grandslam and watch the French Open live
* climb Kilimanjaro and do a Nepal trek

The quest for white cottony softness

Anyone knows where to get plain, large, white, fluffy bathroom rugs? The ones currently stocked at Ikea have a rubber non-slip backing which I don’t like – it disintegrates after a few times in the wash. I’ve looked at BarangBarang and Spotlight but nothing there.

From Pottery Barn and West Elm

Rainy days are good for snoozin...

Mirror Mirror On The Wall

I've been meaning to put up a mirror at our dining area for the longest time. It's a teak framed rectangular mirror. I've been pondering and pondering, at what height it should be placed? Horizontal or vertical? Flat against the wall or at a slight tilt forward... and still haven't come to a conclusion.

While surfing around for ideas, I came across this sunray mirror which I really like! And I'm on the verge of abandoning the old one... haha... Any idea where I can get something like this?

Amongst other obssessions, I'm also hoping that the Canon EOS450D finally goes on sale this weekend. I called up Canon in Singapore who say that it's already been launched yesterday, but a check with several of their authorised dealers yielded nothing. I've left my name/number with one of the shops and they promise to call as soon as they have stock. :)

In between

So there goes 4.5 years of my life and this chapter is coming to a close. I'm halfway through my end of year break and counting down the last few days at my first job. Time flies and in a flurry of more work and more late nights, my 3-month notice period is almost over! I never imagined I would leave. After all, I was happy. But I have to try this out. I need to make this change, so I won't look back one day and wonder what if...

Yesterday, I went back to the office to pack. I'm amazed at how much I managed to collect and stow away within the confines of a 2m x 2m space. Box after box of documents, precedents, books, memories... Good thing I don't have to lug it all home since the husband will be inheriting most of the Singapore-law related stuff. But that leaves me with another .... five boxes to deal with. And I'm not done packing! Will just leave that to Friday...

Meanwhile, I've been tasked with prettify-ing the apartment so that it will finally (after more than a year of occupancy) be in a presentable enough shape for visitors at Christmas, and the tougher job of getting the little one reliably toilet trained, amidst the other housewifey things to do...

For a start, the last few pieces of our furniture finally arrived on Monday! But because we installed the TV before the console and shelves arrived, we now have to shift it, cos it is so totally not centered....

Last Weekend

What are the chances of us BOTH getting off work at 7pm on a Friday night? So we made it an impromptu date night Whee!!! Had a great dinner at Shunjuu – eating there always makes me happy, what with the smoky aroma and faintly charred bits on each skewer… yummelicious!! And the weather was just lovely, cool and breezy. We ate so much we could hardly stagger home with our very full tummies… ;p as if that wasn’t enough, we polished off the remaining Royce choccies in the fridge when we got back. Haha. *piggy*

Had to wake up (rather) early on Saturday cos the developers were coming in to inspect the defects that needed to be rectified before legal completion takes place end of the month. We’d spent a few hours frantically sticking fluorescent coloured post-its all over the walls of our apartment, and it now looks rather hilarious – check out our fuschia/cyan/magenta feature walls… [will upload a pic soon] So much for a home that exudes elegance and class. Hah. We’ll have to live with this until the developers send workers to come fix the flaws. Bleargh. Also called the F&P service people – the handle of our less-than-1-year-old refrigerator has gotten loose. I’m hoping they won’t be able to fix it or find replacement parts and will have to give us a new fridge. I’m lusting after the 519-litre bottom freezer one now… ;p [Editorial Note: Oh. I’ve since been informed by me mum that it’s wishful thinking on my part. They probably won’t even change the door. Dang.]

Afternoon was spent shopping for a birthday pressie for Char – didn’t know a diamond cross pendant was so difficult to find! We went to at least 3 different jewellers and what they had all looked kinda weird. The dimensions were somehow all wrong and the only decent looking one was way out of our budget despite the painfully teensy blingblings, cos it was fashioned totally out of ideal cut diamonds. In the end we got this luscious coin purse from her favourite label instead. Lurve the pearly iridescent finish! (hmmm, not so evident in this pic though…) Shopping, even if not for oneself, can be very fun. :)

2^nd pigout session of the weekend was our early father’s day dinner with Mum and Dad at Iggy’s. It was an enjoyable evening, and I liked the cosy setting and the oil paintings on the wall. The food was good, although some of it was, I think, a little overrated. Daddy and I liked the char-grilled quail best – it was crisp on the outside, juicy on the inside and slightly gamey (to mum’s horror…), and served with XJ’s favourite white asparagus. Piccies will follow when I download them from the camera. We missed out pics of a couple of courses in our eagerness to tuck in though.

Now I’m looking forward to BBQ seafood and roast piglet(s) in Bali. Yummy yummy yummy….

We now have a study table....

Yay!

No more iMac sitting on its own box on the floor.

No more drafting documents crouched in front of the screen.

No more backaches! :)

But… do we really want to have to work from home?.... =S

Retail Therapy

Hubs and I woke up this morning (more like 1pm...) and declared we were going shopping - for what we didn't know yet. But we were on a mission.

First stop: pet shop. We fell in love with a honey colored goldie with the most beautiful eyes, but it would be too big for our apartment. I would have wanted a Weimaranner! such a gorgeous creature, silver-grey coat, sleek and muscular... but the lady in the shop said that it would grow so huge that it would be almost my height when fully standing. Yikes! Well, anyway, we decided to do a rain check on a pet - didn't want to be impulsive - but I can't take my mind off that cutie in the shop....

We headed to Great World City and after much pondering over colour, texture and pile, finally got ourselves a silver/grey/brown Bayliss rug for the living room (er... ok... didn't really mean for it to be a pup-substitute!). To top it all off, we bought this! *happy* I've been eyeing it for half a year now... I would have preferred this, but then we would have had to paint our bare white walls a different colour - too much trouble.

No new shoes/bags/clothes for me this month... =S

Wednesday Afternoon

Mum's really ill :( -- woozie and weak, so I took the afternoon off to pick her up and drive her home. We're waiting till she feels stronger before we head off to the doc's.

It's nice being back at JPB, sitting here in my old room - nothing much has changed. The peeps complain that I don't look like I've moved out at all, what with all my junk still lying around... haha...

Anyways, some random afternoon surfing...

iPod got stolen - how about this new Nano? With some red-hot music for company, I promise I'll gym more often... ~ Apple Store ~

Larabee dot cake plate - ok... i can hear hubs screaming... "not another one?!?!" ~ Kate Spade ~

Mum's awake!! More laterz...

More bedroom inspiration

From Pottery Barn (L to R): Putty-green walls; Photo ledges; and Cappucino walls

btw, our chandeliers have arrived!! Going to check them out at the shop tonight, hopefully and make a final decision

Colour my world

We've been thinking about painting our rooms for a long time. Yes, i know... possibly a little late to do anything now, seeing that we've already moved in for close to 4 months, and a lot of the furniture is in place. But I've always wanted our room to look somewhat like the room we had at the Kenton Palace Hotel in Bariloche, but with a little more colour - creamy latte walls, pale olive drapes, dark espresso wood, plush white bedlinens, moody black and white matted prints and the soft glow of warm light from ivory lamp shades.

A few complications - no budget for painters, lack of time to DIY, moving the furniture around and away from drips. Maybe textured wallpapering would be easier?

Anyways, a friend recommended Domino, and i found these lovely rooms:



I like the "Cafe au Lait" wall colour in the first picture and the contrast of the dark wood picture frames. The botanic floral wallpaper in the middle is pretty! but i don't think DH is really into that. And finally, i wish i had space for a feature wall in our home - so many photos and so many mementoes from all our travels that we'd love to display. Maybe our next home, darling?

Domestic Goddess?

Jules is a sweetie! She’s home from NYC and has brought back the stash I ordered. Yippee!!

1 x Scrubbling Bubbles brush wand + starter pack of flushable brushes – for a clean toilet
12 x Scrubbling Bubbles flushable refills – for more clean toilets down the road
1 x Bathtub caddy with adjustable bookstand, wine glass holder and taper candle holder – for a relaxing bubblebath at the end of long week
1 x ALIAS: the Final Season DVD Box Set – for the thrills and spills we missed during the season

Oh ok, alright, the last item isn’t exactly household related… no, wait… it plays in the DVD machine, hooked up to the TV, which hangs on the wall in my house. Definitely household item. ;p

And then there was light!

DH and I have been hunting for lights for our new home for a really long time. Several trips to Balestier and visits to the new lifestyle hub at Marina Square yielded nothing. Perhaps it was just me being fussy, but nothing caught our fancy. We were so desperate for pretty lights we even contemplated shipping them in from the States – except that the voltage is different and shipping cost too much. We were almost convinced we’d have to live in semi-darkness for the rest of our time in this apartment… until we chanced upon the Laura Ashley sale! We didn’t even know they brought in lights – always thought it was just girly floral dresses and bedlinen…

We’ve paid for (but haven’t decided on which) one of these petite chandeliers for the spa/guest room:

A touch-sensitive (cool!) floor lamp with ivory drum-shade for the living room:

And a pair of these for our bedroom:




Now all we need is for the furniture people to deliver our bedside tables….

30

Hubs turns 30 today and we had a little dessert party last night to celebrate. Grand plans of baking a cheese cake and a chocolate tart fell through when the oven tripped the electrical circuits in the apartment. So I cheated and got a double chocolate praline birthday cake from the patissier and an assortment of macaroons from canele to stand in… heee…

Wines, cheese, fruits, desserts, and great company made for a very lovely evening indeed!

Happy Birthday, dear!!

It's Christmas! and i'm inspired...

Don’t think I’ll be having a very Christmassy Christmas this year, what with all the work that’s coming my way – the long weekend looks burnt – BUT that’s no reason for not dressing up the home, right? :)

Am in the process of “making” a wreath too. Didn’t very much like the prickly ones that the artificial Christmas trees are made of, so I picked a plain deep-green leafy bough mounted on dried twigs – love the forest-chocolate colour contrast, and will be adding on some of my own berries, acorns and red poinsettia (unfortunately all artificial though…) to complete it.

DH didn’t want a Christmas tree this year (time and space constraints), so I’m settling for 3 antique-bronze finished candle stands in the corner, adorned with festive holly and berries and a silver platter of natural-finish and gilded acorns!

Sunrise, sunrise...

Looks like mornin' in your eyes...

The First Week

So we’ve moved into our new home, and over the past week or so, it’s taking shape. The curtain man came in over the weekend to install the drapes and blinds so we don’t wake up at 6am anymore, and we’ve started stocking up the kitchen with some decent food and the necessary apparatus to prepare them. There are still some inconveniences here and there that need to be fixed, and we haven’t entirely moved all our stuff from our parents’, but I’m sure it’ll work out slowly somehow.

Sorry, can’t post any pics at the mo, cos there’s no internet connection at home, and I’m posting via email on the blackberry. But we’ll hopefully fix that tonight when I get the router.

On a separate note, the haze has been really depressing. We woke up on Sunday morning feeling like we were in Genting Highlands when we looked out the window. Comfortably ensconced in our air-conditioned room, wrapped between luscious sheets and looking out the window to Fort Canning, it looked like mist, but as soon as we opened the windows, the sharp smell of smoke hit us. It was so bad, the PSI reading hit 140 by late afternoon, and we couldn’t even see Swissotel. We really need some rain here…

Lazing in the jacuzzi pool at the rainshower trellis

Sneak Peek

view from the living room

rooms at the back look out to town

balcony looks into bathtub?!

rainshower trellis - we can pretend we're on a spa holiday! :)

...the sale worth waiting for...

So my nesting instincts went into overdrive today, and mum and I headed down to the Robinson's preview sale.

In just a little over 2 hours, I managed to amass a fortune of bedlinen, feather pillows, down duvets, more bedlinen, bath towels, kitchen towels, and a whole set of crockery. Mighty pleased with meself, I must say.

Best thing about this shopping trip? I didn't have to lug any of it home - they're delivering for free! Can't wait to hug those fluffy pillows and run my hands over the cool sateen sheets when they arrive this Saturday... mmm...