Goodbye Orh Nee

Will miss you both :( You've been such a pair of nice pets to keep even though you fight, bite me but you sure brought lot of fun and joy to our family.

Is such a painful experience to go through a lost. They are just pets and yet I will be feeling moody about it. What more when we experienced the lost of our love ones. I pray that God will grant me grace and mercy.

I just realized I never really blog about the 2 hamsters. Maybe i should for once.

Orh Nee is a rather yummy name given to my hamsters. Don't ask me why I named them after a dessert. I think is cute!

This lovely pair of hamsters were given by my good friend, G as wedding gift! The first thing I knew I got them as wedding gift, I was speechless. My thought was - "What am I going to do when they die?" (Such morbid thought)

KG was kind of resistance towards it.  He made me do all the cleaning of cage and feeding and refused to carry them which was perfectly fine with me. Soon towards the end, he helped out more and cleaned the cage weekly. Claiming that the hamster always looked happier and active when given a clean cage. -__-" Whenever we passed by a pet shop, Kg always said "Let's upgrade Orh Nee's home to a pent house!" I being the logical one, told him - "They are going to leave us in 2 years time, no need to upgrade. Just buy more nice treats for them."

My nephews and niece adored them.  Always asking me why didn't I bring them out to visit them. My niece was disgusted when told Orh Nee was a dessert, thinking it was mashed hamster. I had a hard time explaining Orh Nee was a name for the hamsters and were not to be eaten.

The 2 lovely hamsters will always be in my memory (and Kg i hope) haha :)

I am very much in love with....

I can't help but really love their stuffs. The way they design their bags and things they look so fun and playful. Not mentioning the colours just made me feel so happy :)

 

Recently we repainted our bedroom cos HDB came in to do repair works. We took the opportunity to change the colour of our bedroom.

From this...

back then the beginning.. no furniture nothing hahaha

to this....

Isn't this a nice katespade room :)

The Dinner

Blessings of the Day: I've just returned from the tiring 2D1N recruits camp. The camp was good with the ice broke and I got to know my squad girls better - Yun Ting, Dion, Wai Hua and Jaymin. Very sweet angels and active ones too. Looking forward to a good squad outing in June.

As I returned home, KG was very happy to see me. It felt good to see your family smiling at you greeting you at the home door. Perhaps I've never experienced that it in my own home then becos my parents would be busy with something or other things and likewise for my siblings too. This is considered peaceful and good already (becos no one is fighting @ home) So when Kg greet me at the door, I was surprised and frankly speaking I didn't quite know how to react.

As i unpacked my bag and started to wash the clothes and at the back of my mind, I needed a good comfort meal after the camp. I was thinking of something wholesome and warm, just as I wanted to tell KG that let's had the clam chowder soup that was resting in the freezer, He excitedly said to me, "Let me cook you a dinner tonight!" I was like eh, is ok, i can do it. He insisted and said rest and once ready, he would call me out.

Feeling rather stunned (since the greeting), I obliged since my muscles were aching like mad. So i rest and soon there was this nice aroma in the house. I started thinking what was he possibly cooking since the fridge was virtually empty (cos we had Seng Siong @ our home below, we can always get fresh supplies of food below anytime).

Then when he came to me, he said oki dinner ready! *very happily* This time I was really curious what was he up to?! When we walked towards the kitchen, i saw 2 bowls. I laughed.

In the bowl, there were rice and topped with a sunshine fried egg (wah very pretty! Better than mine), one hot dog, chilli and soy sauce. He said ok try it! He told me to mix around with the egg yolk. I lifted up the egg, and i saw more crab meat and stirred around and took the first bite. I know it sounds funny, but it was good. Haha. As I ate slowly, he said there were more hidden surprises below. So i started to stir the rice and lo and behold.. I found scallop. The scallop is not the scallop you are thinking. Is the small dry scallop that Chinese use for cooking soup. Hahaha. As I ate, I noticed he actually took hashbrown and mashed up with the rice!

To me that was a Chinese version of Korean Bim Bim Bap. LOL. A pity I've forgotten to take the picture.

We ate the dinner that Kg cooked for me. I was feeling very comforted. It was indeed a wholesome dinner. The best thing was this guy talked so much as we ate our dinner. He kept saying.

KG: "Wah I can't believe I cook such a delicious dinner tonight"

Me: "..."

KG: "We only have 2 bowls to wash tonight! Because the kitchen is clean! The pots and pans are washed. Including the rice cooker! "

Me: "..."

KG: "This is so delicious! You want to learn how to cook this?" as he continued munching his dinner.

Me: "Can you cook this the next time when I am feeling tired/unhappy/lazy? I like to list this as my next comfort food. Thanks!"

KG: "..."

Hahaha. I am bless to have this wonderful husband.

HappyWhitsun Home - Ep 3 =)

I realize i never quite finish up what i had wanted to do which was to share my home renovation and all sorts.

It had been almost 3 months since the renovation completed! The home looks good and cozy and ready to be moved in which KG did yesterday finally. Yeah!

The whole home renovation, furnishings and mini small items was all within our budget. We praise God that He provided people who kindly blessed us with furnishing and help us in one way of another. We thank God that the home arrived at the right time too and we managed to secure a few good bargains along the way as we built our home together.



Living Room

• Sofa from Sea Horse: This was one my favourite piece of furniture. Firstly is my dream L shape sofa and is comfy! Yes is off white and many of my friends commented is gonna get dirty or wait till kids come.. u will know. Alright, having said that while i will wait till kids come, white sofa shall stay! *muahahaha* My favourite part it comes with a extra set of sofa attachment which give me another reason to shop for ikea nice wooden/white tray. Imagine yummy cakes and tea/coffee and nice summer flowers. hmmm...
  Time spent to search and make decision: 2 months
  After 1 week we bought the price went up.. muahhaaha
  
  
• TV from Gain City Marina Road Show: Hahaa best buy from Panasonic! Comes with HDMI Cable + $100 NTUC vouchers. This is so handy. Thank God we waited patiently for 2 IT shows to pass us by before we got such a good bargain.
  Time spent to search and make decision: 3 months and countless visits to the same outlet Courts, Best Denki and talking to different guys and till now we still think TV looks the same except the size.
  
  
• Dining Table From Silver River Furniture Outlet: Ah i love my dining table! It is the first and the last impulse purchase. I am so into nice benches as part of the dining experience. KG didn't quite like it because he finds that he can't lie on his back while drink coffee. I told him that's is what sofa for. We are supposed to utilize everything at home :P Having said that, it is made of solid oak wood and so much stable than the ones we see in Ikea. This table is gonna be with me forever everytime i moved house! It is so zen looking ! Yummy!!!

Kitchen

• My dream kitchen! Ok not really since is small and it doesn't have an island. It will be nice to have one. =)
• Oven From Mayer: This was such an exceptional surprise! I got a good deal for this and it comes with a promotion price for Chef Knives! Although not very well-known brand but i think for a start, the chef knives were good enough. The Oven still had not made opened its official baking yet and yes i am looking forward to create magic! Hurray!
• One of my kitchen highlight will be spice rack where i am going to place all the dry bottle herbs there. Another highlight is the book rack where i am gonna store my cook books and the files of recipes i seen in magazines. Now i was told it was not practical because the books are going to turn yellow. Sigh ok i wonder if i shd get a proper book shelf and put in the kitchen now. hahahaa
• Now where to find a nice recipe book holder :P

Study Room

• All furnitures are from Ikea! We didn't feel we should be spending part of the renovation to built bookcases and tables. Thus everything are from Ikea instead. As the room is green, most of the furnitures pieces are dark brown oak colour. Hmmm feel so serene and forest. Like some kind of environmentally friendly room ahhaa. I wish the green would be darker though, so far it looked abit too light till. For shelves, we bought the open type like lockers format. More boxes from Ikea to store our loose items like letters and personal belongings to make the space neat. Now how I wish if Ikea got a glass box then i would have place my soft toys in. That will be nice and keep them out of dusts.
  

Master Bedroom

• Our room that can only be utilized next year Jan. Currently is the most simple one. Smack right in the middle is our king size bed from Sea Horse too. We are so pleased that we got a good price with 50% and additional 25% more. The storage bed and mattress all came under $1.2K. It was a good buy and seriously how long did we hunt for it.
  Time Spent: No need to hunt, every sunday without fail after service, we will visit compass point seahorse outlet, test the bed, jump the bed, lie on the bed, calculate and asked questions till the point the people inside knew us recognized us and can't be bothered to entertain us. We've also reccee other places and were shocked to see a good reputable bed mattress like Sealy will cost $1.5K & above. Since we both grew up familiar with Seahorse brand thus it make sense to get what we were comfortable on. After we made our purchase, we still make weekly trips in just to see if the price went up or down. haha!

Lightings

• It was one of the most memorable. I did my homework as usual by reading forum and posting questions and shortlisted to just 3 outlets. We found the outlet "Lighting Arcade" @ Balestier Road one of the best buy. The shop is small but low and behold, there are gazillion lightings inside! My favourite light would be the "ice-cube" and "netting" right @ our passageway. Hanging lights cost quite abit and thus pushed up the budget. But I was still glad that everything exceed the budget by a couple of dollars so that's wasn't too bad! =)

The rest of the home furnishings > Ikea Ikea Ikea :) I love Ikea!!! i still haven't got enough stuffs from Ikea yet! :P

We enjoyed every single moment of process from furniture hunting, bargaining and setting it up. It really put a smile on our face when we came up for cleaning for the past 2 months. Living here would be fun and yes may the home we live in be a channel of blessings to our friends who visit us. =)

Now back to my work... so much work! Oh my goodness!

Full English Breakfast

Looking forward to cook a Full English Breakfast in our new home next year :)

Food never fail to cheer me up.

main courses | serves 2 Recipe by Jamie Oliver, Photo by © David Loftus
Preheat the grill to high. Set the oven to its lowest heat and pop 2 plates in it to keep warm.Put the sausages, mushrooms and tomatoes, scored-side up, on to a large grill pan and place under the grill, about 5cm from the heat. Cook for about 10 minutes, turning the sausages once or twice.

Add the bacon and black pudding to the pan and grill for 5 minutes, turning halfway through cooking, until they are cooked and crispy. Put the baked beans in a saucepan and warm gently for 2 to 3 minutes, stirring occasionally.

Place a non-stick saucepan over a low heat. Melt 1 knob of butter in the pan, add the eggs, season to taste and stir gently until just scrambled. Remove from the heat. Put the bread in the toaster, and arrange the sausages, mushrooms and tomatoes with the bacon, black pudding and beans on the warm plates. When the toast pops up, butter it, then put a slice on each plate and top with scrambled egg. Serve with HP sauce or tomato ketchup on the side, and a pot of tea.

Served with 1 cup of english tea or Vietnam Coffee! *heaven*

HappyWhitsun Home - Ep 2 "(Dream) Furnitures wanted"

Blessings of the day: Well the renovation is completed and i still have not jot down what was the process! *Goodness* But Praise God for the work completed =)

Our furnitures hunting also brings a lot of fond memories :P and also it were also one of the many blessings that both families had given to us =)

When the home was designed with the following colour scheme, our ID told us to get the following

Living Room: White TV console, White Sofa, White Table, White Dining Table, White Chairs

Note: Shoe cabinet built in is WHITE.

Summary: Get all WHITE furnitures for the living room...

so cute! Can match my sofa :P

Kitchen: Don't mention - is white again but we can be adventure with our colours but still get white or steel colours for oven, hob and hood, and sink and fridge. If can get white, why not? But seriously i think there is too much white now in our home.

White Oven IS Not Practical


Lovely! White kitchen is the BEST and will make small kitchen looks big especially for Punggol home like ours .. space is a limitation!

my our dream kitchen also came from my our fav blogger - Chubby Hubby's Kitchen





Did ME we spent the most of our budget in the kitchen? no lar... of course

The Starbucks AKA Study room: I am inspired by when I flipped through the magazines, i saw this beautiful home office by this ang mo who lived in a HDB 4 room flat too. It just looked amazing and i want to follow: white shelves with colour books *opps white again*, beautiful beige wooden study table facing the window! I loved it i want to had the look too! Forgot to take that photo but looking at this - i think is beautiful too..

Don't you feel like working from home every day and spent ur weekend afternoons here reading a good book and drink coffee *ahhhh*

But because my ID chose green, we decided to change to dark rich brown wood colour to compliment the green walls. Hence the name starbucks room. It just need an expresso machine now to complete the whole cafe (anyone like to sponsor .... me?) hahaha

My MIL Room: Well she chose pink , and so is simple - white furnitures again! White wardrobe! hahaa

Our MBR: This time a slight change, except for the white wardrobe again, we are opting for black colour bed frame which is perfect for the dark grey walls. It will suit beautifully and posh and elegant hahaa.

If only.. is that huge in real life... hahaha :P

Next coming up - the actual furniture... !

HappyWhitsun Home - Ep 1 "Final Quote is never Finalized"

Blessings of the Day: We both enjoyed what we are doing. Confirming the designs, colour schemes and looking @ 3D designs. We are excited to hunt for furnishings, best bargains deals and building our lovely home. God has been very good to us and it brought us closer to Him than before and we just want to dedicate the whole home to our loving God :)

KG said we must really record down what we been through so that it would always be a good reminder of how the Lord had been good and faithful for providing this home for us. Great idea but it takes lots of efforts to blog everything and yes yes... with many photos :)

Collection of Keys

The day we collected our keys we were sooooo excited! Our friends had told us that it would be very a long tedious process because we would keep signing the forms till our hands were sored. But haha guess what, it was 1 hour long settling the admin mattters but we truely enjoy every single moment doing this together. When is the next time you gonna collect your very first new home keys again?


Opening the Door for the very first time

We had a slight problem with this issue as my mom wanted us to open @ auspicious hours. She wanted to also get a "Professional" to do it. After many rounds of persuasion and also pleading, we finally got "our way" and she finally relented let us opened our door by ourselves :P But we did promise her to get our door open @ the ausipicious timing just to make her happy and be at ease.

We both were so excited, happy and grateful at the same time. We were reminded that God had really given us this flat since we had tried BTO for 3 times and it was the 3rd time we managed to got it. Pastor shared that when he first got his flat with Aunty Sk, they dedicated the whole place to the Lord. Thus for about 5 minutes, we stood there and prayed and dedicated the whole place to the Lord and asked Him to fill His presence in our house to be a blessed and safe haven for us. We very much wants our place to be filled with God's love and when our friends and family who stepped into our house and leaving our place with God's love, joy and peace.

Preparing for our Renovation

When we opened our home we went WOAH! Actually *WOAH* not at the place but the amount of mailers that were lying on the floor :) We started to do cleaning up and Kg went crazy and mopped the whole house 6 times while i sweated and did the defect checking for the whole house. It took us 2 days over a week to complete the defect checking and took HDB another 3 weeks to correct the defects for us. In the midst of the 3 weeks, we made our first payment to the ID and waited for our first 3D draft designs. When it finally arrived, we were very much pleased with how it looks. I had my concerns for the colours chosen initally and finally decided with Kg that it looked decent :)

No carpet will be used, no flowers on the wall... for presentation purposes of our color schemes only

Each room in the house will have a coloured feature wall while the rest are in off white. Except for my F-MIL's room which is mulberry, our colours are quite cool neutral colours like grey, starbuck green and silver. Our kitchen took a bold step by choosing a white colour theme but many had concerns since we would love to cook and bake. Finally we still chose white because our kitchen really look tiny and the best way to maximize the tiny limited space is using white colour :)

One thing we learnt that the final renovation quote would never be the final quote. We continued to add in more items (not as if we can control the extra costs*sigh* ) and was glad that the initial stage we bargained quite a fair bit. There were frustrating moments but thankfully we had also learnt to tackle it together. There were much more intense planning coming up that involved our budget and that forced us to be even more disciplined than ever! We had to be cool headed at all times and if in doubt... just pray. You won't go wrong with that!

Next our furnishings huntings Ep 2 :)

HappyWhitsun Home

Blessings of the Day: By God's grace, a great ID was found and we were blessed with our very first electrical appliance gift by a couple :) *thank you*

The journey was a long one staring @ different types of quotations. It was interesting and how in the process we've both learnt so much and we also argued a fair bit. (on colour schemes alone -_-)

It all started last year when we first learnt our keys were coming soon in the first quarter of 2009 and it got us abit panic. As our future home is in block C so the folks in Block A will get the keys first. Friendly neighbours posted their home photos online and we were lucky to have a sneak preview of how the home looked like. It got us really excited - the living room cum dining room look decently big enough and kitchen was miserably small (there goes my dream of having an kitchen island) and 3 bedrooms and 2 mini toilets.

It began with finding out more about contractors and interior designers aka IDs ~ who do we really want to look for. Contractors were known to be affordable but design wise you would have to design and coordinate yourself. IDs on the other hand makes your life a breeze by providing one stop solution for you but is known to be expensive.

I read the whole forum - www.punggol.org and also in the process got to know my future neighbours. It is really interesting these days how this kind of social networking websites works and you can be more prepared and less blur. Kg and I looked for a total of 5 Ids and 1 contractors quotations over the period of the past 4 months. It was long but at least we wasn't rushing.

Orange Cube
http://www.theorangecube.com/

One of my neighbour recently shortlisted them and I have to say their designs are really nice and unique. I came to heard of them when I was blog hopping looking at the people doing renovation process. The discussion with them went well until we were presented a quote of close to $20K. These was abit on the high side and they promised to throw in free gifts worth up to $4k which we thought we could get a better price and even added up which would not even reach $20K. When we asked if we could use the free gifts to offset the quote, the answers was yes but would not offset $4k but the free gifts wholesale price which was less than $2k -_- Of course we never went back to them since. Side Note: the ID who attend to us very good looking.. whahaha jem is smitten by him... LOL

A&D Design
http://www.interior.sg/

This ID is located in Upper Serangoon. They are quite patience people and the person who attended us was Raymond. His quote was about $16K and quite a number of things we liked to have and they belong to the list call "nice to have" not "good to have" or "must have". If not for a friend's contact, A&D would be the one we will likely to go with. They had done about 4 projects in our blocks and that's shows they are quite good.

Baroqued Design
http://www.baroquedesign.com/

Another popular ID engaged by most forums users. By far they have the best praised carpentry by all the home users. Price was on the high side. When we asked for the quote, it was around $16K and quite a number of items was not yet counted in yet. Certainly I would have to say their works are pretty well done and judging from my neighbours new home, they really look warm and cozy :) Looked for Lawrence.




Very sweet Daddy who had made a warm and cozy home for his 2 sons. Total damage heard was $50K++ (include furnishings)

Summit Design

Only 1 neighbour of mine is using them. They were the last ID I had approached to before we made up our decision. Personally I felt the response was abit slow and we didn't really meet and we were only communicating via email. Maybe I am a very e-person, everything must communicate via email before meeting up. The quote was around $15K as well. But I have to say my neighbour new home is very nice looking and was full of praise when comes to defect checking and such - basically this ID is a very efficient person. *ironic - it just contradicts my impression*





Total damage is around $32K (includes furnishings as well)


Contractor - Friend's Contact

The contractor was quoted slightly on the low side cost about $14K+ to $15K+ (note compared with IDs this quote will cover more items). The reason why I had quite trusted this guy was kg's good friend's cousin who would be coordinating this. He was quite patience and explained to me when we met up at our friend's new home about what is needed and what's not needed. The only "negative" thing would be I had to come up my own design and tell him what I need. I was really concerned cos then I was doing my report and I felt that this would be a major Project to me - to design my own home. Of course it would be nice to design your own home and who wouldn't want? But when I had tried to create my own 3D drawings i think i was roaring away. Then I also got Kg to try to do 3D drawings too. Think he went bersek. Apparently that led us to the deciscions - pay more and let the expert plan and do. Don't bother to crack your brains till dust...

But my friend did a wonderful job in his new home!





Theme: Red & White

Finally drum roll - good friend's Kok Keong contact ...

Plush Creative Living Pte Ltd

Avee is Kok Keong's ex-colleague. She is really nice and friendly. When we met up with her, she was able to explain very clearly of what we wanted. She showed us many photos of her past works and advices what we can do and what not we can't do. As we bargained and negotiated, we finally managed to come out with the final quote which we both are quite happy with. What impressed us the most would be her persistence and professional personality. Personally she was the first lady in the IDs we had spoken to and the rest were all guys. Somehow, female IDs will have a more gentle touch and can communicate better with the customers :) Keegan and I were glad that after 4 months of marathon, we finally concluded our IDs searching and settled for this.

Of course friends really helps and i guess they had probably had gone mad with my consistence pestering. hehehe. Thanks Kok Keong :)