Designer Inspired Furniture

Thanks to recommendations from friends, we checked out Gnee Hong Furniture and Comfort Design when we were looking for chairs for our study area. Both are in the same vicinity and good places to check out if you're looking for designer inspired replica furniture.

If you're after pocket friendly prices, head to Gnee Hong. If you prefer variety and don't mind paying slightly more for better quality, check out Comfort. We bought our Panton inspired replica chairs from Comfort because the quality seemed better than the ones we saw at Gnee Hong, although I'm not sure whether we were swayed because Comfort has a much nicer showroom.

I didn't manage to snap shots of Gnee Hong's showroom, but here's what you can expect when you check out Comfort Design. I don't think I've ever seen so many chairs under the same roof!

Our Little Modern Resort

The husband and I love beach holidays.

Our first holiday as a couple was to Perhentian Island (the less commercialized cousin of Redang Island), we chose to go to the Maldives for our honeymoon and there will definitely be more beach vacays to come in the years ahead.

So really, it’s no surprise that we both wanted a resort-inspired theme for our home.

We worked with Elton and Zoey from Plus Interior Design (coincidentally also Miss Ene’s ID!) and considering how we didn’t have a large budget to work with, we’re pleased with the results.

Our best buy for the house is this teakwood one-seater bench from Wihardja, which we only paid $39 for. Great place to check out if you're sourcing for affordable resort-inspired furniture. And yes, in case you're wondering, that's our built in shoe cabinet, which provides sufficient space. For now.

It's not obvious in this photo but we placed a pot of white orchids beside the TV console. We're still looking around for items to fill up the space below the painting but now that Barang Barang's no longer what it used to be, it's hard to find resort-inspired furniture and decor. Maybe we should go on a sourcing trip to Bali :)

Inspired by the interior decor of our water villa at Cocoa Island, we chose white organza day curtains for the living room, to let more light in. Our sofa, cushions and coffee table are from Ikea. Now, if only we had a seaview.

Our dining table. I love the landscape picture of the Flatiron building, which reminds me of our days in NYC.

  

Our study area, constructed over our bay window to maximise space. Our Panton inspired chairs are from Comfort Design, which I'll write more about in a separate entry.

 

Our built in bookshelf. The wooden letters were recycled from our wedding :)

Our WIW together with our full length mirror, which gives the illusion of space (and more clothes).

Our Master Bedroom bay windows. We saw a photo of the inclined lounge area in an issue of Home and Decor and got our ID to recreate it.

The jar of sand with seashells was another idea we adapted from Cocoa Island. The sand's brought back from Maldives by the way!

Our customised bedframe comes with drawers for storing bedsheets and side drawers at the bedhead, for our knick knacks. White bed linen was deliberately chosen to recreate a hotel resort feel.

Cooking Mama

Now that I've got my own kitchen, where I can call the shots mess things up, I've been trying to cook whenever I can find the time, after work and on weekends.

Here's what I've cooked so far in my tiny kitchen.

 

There's plenty of room for improvement (especially in the food styling aspect) but I can't wait to be my own Master Chef ;)

P.S I'm looking for more 30 minute meal recipes because it's simply too exhausting to cook a 3 course Chinese meal on weeknights. Any suggestions?

Feels Like Home

Hello from the Shire!

Tonight's our sixth night here and although the floor's perpetually dusty despite cleaning it every day, unpacked boxes in every corner and some minor touch ups remaining, we're nicely settled in and I'm loving every bit of the home we have put together.

New house keys with our souvenir keychains from our honeymoon

 More photos to come as soon as the home broadband is up. In the meantime, I'm just glad I can tap on the iPhone's personal hotspot to do my daily Internet surfing.

(P.S Can you believe slots to set up mio Home are full for two weekends? Tsk.)

Cleaning Out My Closet

It's Friday night and I'm at home enjoying some me time while the husband is having a boys' night out with his bffs.

I was supposed to have dinner with the ex-colleagues at Tampopo but I turned the invite down.

With barely a week left to the big move, I have to make the most of my free time to start packing, somehow.

But before I do so, I need to do what I've been procrastinating for the longest time - clear my wardrobe, full of clothes which I haven't worn in ages (yes, I'm a hoarder) because there's no way I'm going to bring everything to the Shire.

I think my task will certainly be a lot more fun if I could do a Take or Toss session, like the one Carrie did below, complete with girlfriends and a bottle of bubbly :)

Almost Home

Since we collected our keys, our weekends have been spent shuffling from place to place, checking out on renovation progress and settling lighting, furniture, electrical appliances and other household needs.   
 
Though our piggy banks have been emptied out, there's an immense, priceless satisfaction in seeing your home put together, like different puzzle pieces coming together, slowly but surely.

It's been a long time waiting but if all goes well, we should be moving in, in 2 weeks' time.

To say I can't wait, is an understatement. It's time to start packing, wooooooot!

P.S. I'm still on the hunt for some stuff and would appreciate any recommendations on where I can source for the following:
- A nice rug for the living room, which won't wipe out our non-existing bank accounts
- Cheap clothes hangers in black or silver. Ikea sells the black plastic at $1 for 4 pieces but those are out of stock.
- A small dark teakwood bench for us to sit down and wear our shoes

Home (Bitter)Sweet Home

Like other residents who have gotten their keys, I have numerous complaints about our new place, touted as public housing with *coughs* "a private touch".

1) The corridor leading to our unit is too dark in daytime.

2) The flat turned out smaller than we had imagined. Ok, to be fair, we made the decision to buy this flat and it’s not like we didn’t have a choice.

3) The provided laundry rack hardly has enough space for more than a day’s laundry. What’s going to happen when we return from a holiday and have a suitcase of clothes to wash? I wonder what the families with kids are going to do.

4) We can only fit a combined washer/dryer in our tiny yard. Stacking the dryer on top of the washer is not an option because this would block the gas heater.

5) The workmanship and quality of the finishings is disappointing. I found a big hole in my master bedroom bathroom cabinet. My household shelter door cannot be locked fully. The pointings (just learnt this tern a week ago) on my living/dining room floor look, in my ID’s words, “like the home has been occupied for a few years”. All my bedroom doors are poorly vanished and stained. My frosted bathroom windows have scratches on them. I have holes and gaps in my parquet skirting.

6) There is a disparity between the actual flat design and the showflat design i.e At the showflat, the bathroom bay window tiles are identical to the flooring while white tiles are used in reality.

7) There is no link bridge from the second storey of the multi-storey carpark to the residential blocks.

But despite my grievances, I still love the Shire.

It’s not the biggest of apartments and it has some shortcomings, but it is our first home, one that we hope to stay in for a while.


Experimenting with different recipes in the kitchen, weekend brunches at the balcony, playing host to family and friends during festivities and chilling at the bay window at night with a book and glass of Moscato.

I look forward to all these and so much more.

Turning A Year Older

My hatch day was a quiet affair yesterday.

I had a mini 'picnic' with the husband at the Shire (the new nickname I have coined for our tiny home which looks like it is built for hobbits, but more on that in another entry).

We spent the rest of the day checking for defects and adjourned for dinner at Momoya, a small Japanese buffet restaurant by the former owners of Hanabi.

Preparing the 'picnic'

At our balcony

There was no birthday cake nor fancy dinner, in fact the day was tiring and dusty. But I wouldn't have spent it any other way.

At Last

For you are mine, at last

On TOP of the world

Someone from said government body might have read my previous post because guess what, our place has received TOP! (sorry about the pun in the title, I couldn't resist!)

One step closer to our cosy nest.

Whoopee!

Patience, A Virtue I Do Not Have

It's been a month since we got married, but it still doesn't feel like our new journey has really started because we've been living apart (hard for some to swallow, i know), while waiting the keys to the new abode.

I've been checking the forum at least a few times a day to read updates from future residents who have been calling the developer.

From the latest update, I'm not optimistic we can hear the jingle of keys next month.

It seems the developer has only just submitted the application for TOP (Temporary Occupation Permit) yesterday. Based on some residents' estimates, we can probably only get keys earliest late March or April. This of course, is provided there are no delays from the relevant government bodies.

It's disappointing but there's nothing we can do except continue to wait.

And the wait continues.

Our block, unveiled!

Amidst clearing my work emails this morning, i was pleasantly surprised by this lovely photo of our humble abode, by a future neighbour's beau who had sweetly uploaded it on her blog without her knowledge. I hope she doesn't mind that i've borrowed the picture to share it here.

That's our block there, the fastest of the lot. A pity we can't see our unit though because we are facing the other direction. Can't wait to hear the jingle of our keys, come on Sim Lian!

Photo - Taken from Somethingboutrenes

Slowly but surely

June 2009

May 2010

I will never forget the overnight queuing we had to endure last April when Sim Lian announced the walk-in-selection. It was awful. Imagine sitting on hard, plastic chairs for more than a day! And we weren't allowed to leave. Anyone who left was assumed to have given up his/her queue number. Roll calls were done to prevent any unfairness (i.e. some people going home to sleep and coming back the next day).

When morning finally came, there was more waiting, this time in the humid heat, for our turn to select our unit. We waited a total of 19 hours, without sleep, before signing our lives away on the 2nd evening. But it sure was worth it. Looking back, i really have to thank my parents for driving all the way down to the East on that Fri evening to help us to 'chope' a queue number. And of course, his parents, for helping us to buy lunch and taking our place, as we slipped away to wash up at his place on the 2nd day.

As of our last site visit, all floors for the blocks are up. Water tanks are up for most blocks and they are starting work on the multi storey carpark and the road drainages. The window and balcony grilles for our unit are also up. Fingers crossed we will be able to collect our keys by Jan next year? :)