Our Country Home

When we first bought the house, we knew it will definitely take up a lot of time in the name-changing process, thus I wasn't feeling excited at all. Ya know me, always too realistic sometimes! So I had no plans or idea at all on what to do with the house until I watched The Help, the one movie which I love almost every one of the cast members, the story and the entire settings of the American homes during the 60s'. 

If you ask me, what inspired me to the theme of our house? I would proudly tell you it was The Help. 

Look at the kitchens! Love the combination of the colours man! 

In fact I think the modern American houses we see on TV or movies nowadays still have quite the same old American country-styled design. White colour wooden furnitures, cabinets, doors, plus some lighter colour or flowery wall paper and curtain to go with it. I FELL IN LOVE right away watching the movie and I told Deardo my decision (firmly) to have American country home as our theme of the house and luckily, he agrees! :)
Of course, my love for it cannot go too crazy! For instance, there is no way I'm going change my window frames from metal to white coloured wood. I cannot have too flowery stuff because hey it will look damn girlish for Deardo. Of course I think most importantly I don't want the house to look overly-old school because who knows one day when we want to sell the house off people find our house's design too old-fashioned?

Some photos I found online which looks damn close to my dream house! 

But ideally my house's wall should be a mixture of white and some light colours paint. Following my family's tradition, I've always prefer light colour than dark because Papo and Mamo believe your house will look bigger if it's brighter. So even before I decided on the theme, I knew in the first place, things like the brownish Balinese style is a no-no to me. Sky blue and mint were the first two colours that came into my mind and we have already made them colours to our room, kitchen and living room.

We spent nights to finish the painting! 

We always thought painting the house would be peanuts to us because hey, it's just a small condo unit! It turned out to the other way round! Freaking tiring okay! One piece of wall probably takes up half a day to paint! In fact, Deardo's slimmed down a bit painting the house! And we grew lazier and left the second room unpainted until today! LOL! We are planning to paint it this weekend and I'm thinking of doing the same sky blue or choosing another light colour to go with it. What do you guys think? 

Found the perfect look for our kitchen in this picture found online! 

At the moment, our kitchen looks like it's the most completed part of the house. And yes, the cabinets are white in colour and the wall is mint! So far, I only need to buy a new refrigerator because I totally hate the old one (being very anal about it and I want my Panasonic refrigerator!!!) and I'm going to buy a small moving table as an extra work station and storage space. I will share the kitchen experience in my later post. So at the moment, enjoy the snippet of our lovely kitchen in-the-making in the photo! :p

Can you already feel the country-ness of our kitchen??? 

Our living area is kinda complete because the painting of the wall are all done and we have our Ikea sofa which I personally love to the max and had to put them all up by ourselves (Papo and Mamo are the partial sponsor of the sofa set) and a new TV. Now what we need for the living area are a new TV table and coffee table which suits the theme nicely, which means they must be either white or light brown!

Still admiring the sofa set everyday now! LOL! 

If you ask me, I would say if you don't mind paying, it's better to get professionals to paint the house for you. But to be honest, there isn't regret of painting our house ourselves. You get a sense of satisfaction looking at it and most importantly our work isn't bad at all! Deardo's dad has been very helpful helping us to settle all things electrical because well that's his profession. He and Deardo also dismantled the old kitchen cabinets so that we can paint the wall before the Ikea people came to put up the new one. So we save a lot with his help too. :)

Deardo's dad even moved our door bell's speaker (whatever you call it) from one side of the wall to their other side! 

Next thing to come is our built-in wardrobe and built-in shoe cabinet. Although they won't be too country due to the limited choices we had to choose from, I'm still very excited about having them finally in our house! Then I can put up all my clothes and shoes properly, OFFICIALLY!!! No walk-in wardrobe like Carrie Bradshaw in Sex and the City has but still! Having them built-in in stead of those small wardrobe and shoe cabinets is still damn cool! So I'm definitely not complaining!
More updates in my coming posts! :)

P/S: If you have unwanted home appliances or furniture which are still usable, you can call PASSO at 03-9021 1888 or 012-686 1633. They will come and carry the stuff away without any charges and bring them off for charity. I figured that is totally cool because even though I hate those old furniture in the house, they might still be useful to others! So far we've got them to take away the old sofa, a make-up table and an old mattress. I'll be calling them up soon to take away more stuff when we have the money to replace the old ones!

Our Kitchen Experience

So, here's the long overdue kitchen experience entry. We've been using our brand new kitchen for at least four months now and I still feel like there is a need to share my experience because 1) just in case you are also giving your kitchen a makeover or going to have your kitchen renovated, I might be able to give you some advice and 2) It's actually the most exciting part of the house to get a makeover!

So just a recap, here's how our kitchen USED TO LOOK LIKE...

Damn cheap-looking, isn't it?

I can't say it was awful but I hate the colour a lot and the material used are simply of very low quality. Deardo and I, both food lovers, just couldn't handle it to have such a failed-looking kitchen in our lovely house.
Since Deardo agreed with my choice of white colour for our kitchen cabinets, it was easy for us when we went out to do our survey... Ah, if two places still considered  as survey!
Yeah... We only went to Ikea and Aino and decided on the former for one very obvious reason -- cheaper price. Including delivery fee, dismantling fee and installation fee, the entire kitchen cost us slightly over 10k. But the best part was they were having a special promotion for the kitchens where you get a gift card worth 10% of your total kitchen price (excluding the services fees), which we happily used to partially buy our gorgeous sofa! Check that sofa out here!

Looking excited to use the gift card to buy our sofa set!

We started our kitchen journey by seeing a consultant at Ikea, who drafted a design for us using their amazing and absolutely user-friendly software. Deardo was especially impressed as we got to log into our account to do any changes that we needed to and it was pretty simple to use! It can even give you a rough total of your bill based on what you've chosen to be used in your kitchen! Now this one I must admit it is way better than Aino, which had to take more than a week to call us back to see the design and the estimated price! We didn't even bother going back to them to see the design! Talk about efficiency!

My man discussing with the guy at Ikea on our kitchen design.

We then took about two weeks to finalised our design and materials and paid for everything necessary. But because apparently they only sell the cabinets and sinks, we need to get their contractor to come and install them for us. So the cabinets and sink were delivered much earlier before the busy contractor can come to fix them for us.

Our cabinets still in pieces were seen lying on our floor for at least one week...

Well that's not all, the contractor who put the cabinets up can only put cabinets! They don't do the table top! So we had to then call up the contractor to first come to measure our cabinets then go back and cut the table top which take them another week to come back to put it on! 

I call this the handicapped kitchen...

Obviously at this stage we were both quite frustrated. I mean that means not only were we getting our kitchen fully done very much later, but it also means we were kinda handicapped without being able to use the water from the sink! And talk about the mess that we had to clean over and over again every time these people left! I think it was even worst because we were already moved in so there was no way we were leaving the house messy! 

 

Those guys messing our kitchen up like playing with toys!

So yea after  the table top was finally done, the contractor for the cabinets came back to fix our sink... Not the end of the story yet!

Adding another mess for me to clean... LOL!

We had to call up another guy to put the hose for the hood for us, which obviously made another big mess to our house because of the drilling of the hole on the wall... Phew~~~!

When everything was finally done, not only did we seriously admire our kitchen happily, there was also a sense of relief after more than a month time just to get everything done! It was a really exhausting journey which took us longer than expected to get the kitchen done. I mean I'm not sure how other people do their kitchen but the fuss of calling contractors separately to arrange for them to come do their work was really tiring. I'm sure some professional kitchen cabinets makers can do everything without much of their costumers' effort! 

Still love our kitchen a lot! :D

Well I guess that was just Ikea's principal-- You are supposed to DIY! So cheap stuff comes with a price I guess. Having to say that, I have so far no complain about the beautiful kitchen honestly. So if you ask me, I would still say go ahead with Ikea, providing you have not move into your house yet and you can afford to have a messy house for about one month time and of course that means you must have a lot of annual leaves left cos you need to take quite a few days off from work just to fix your kitchen!

I know a lot of people, including ourselves were doubtful of Ikea's products but the truth is we have been buying a lot of stuff from Ikea! I mean we tried looking elsewhere but not only their prices are often (not all the time) cheaper, their design are also million times better than those at the random furniture shops! Well, quality wise, perhaps still early to say but so far okay lar! But hey our kitchen is under 25 years warranty so we aren't too worry! :p

So, what do you think about our kitchen?

Broke but Happy :)

We just paid for our kitchen about two weeks back (and yea we were like clowns paying with three different credit cards at the IKEA cashier) and there is literally a super big hole in our saving account now! Worst, we still have a looooooooong list of stuff to buy for our little house before we can finally call it a comfy house of our own.

The list goes like this...

TOP OF THE LIST:

1) Sofa set
2) Built-in wardrobe
3) Shoe cabinet

THE REST OF THE LIST:

1) Master bedroom's bed+mattress
2) Master bedroom's make-up table
3) TV
4) TV table
5) Dining table set
6) Refrigerator
7) Kitchen work table
8) Curtain(s)
9) Chair(s) for entrance (so that we can sit and wear shoes)
10) Aluminum gate for front entrance gate
11) Steel window gate
12) Lights
13) Glass display cabinet
14) Coffee table
15) Sliding door for kitchen entrance
16) Sliding door for back toilet
17) Cupboard for keeping of documents, books and etc
The list is already minus the smaller appliances which are cheaper. We have already gotten some quotations for those that we know we want them or we know are necessary to buy. Hahaha, even those not really necessary...

*finger points finger~~~* It is seriously tempting!!! Even though I don't always drink coffee but this machine makes things so much more easier whenever I have sudden crave for coffee! True or not???

So because we are almost broke and still have a whole list of stuff to buy, we always remind ourselves to not overspend.

Here are our plans to save more money...

1) Eat more at food courts in stead of restaurants (we still enjoy nice restaurant food once or twice a week though... :p)
2) Spend less on snacks and drinks, only eat proper meals.
3) No shopping for clothes and shoes (oh gosh you don't know how I suffer from this man, looking at those 'SALES' words all over the place... Hence I succumbed to temptation and bought a skirt and a pair of sandal over the weekend! LOL!)
4) Watch movies at home in stead of in the cinema (well, nowadays either we spend time fixing the house or go out to buy or survey for stuff for the house so we have yet to find time to really go watch movie anywayz), I actually hope to catch up with some latest movies though...
5) Read free magazines at the bookstore in stead of buying them home (kiamsiap to the max~).
6) When kitchen is done, eat at home more.
7) Redeem appliances with credit cards or membership cards points or utilise cash vouchers to buy small appliances.

8) Beg for help! So yea, money and gift cards aside, you can also provide me with contacts to cheap places to buy stuff for the house! 

Staying in a partially done house, which is without a sofa at the moment, I'm very much eager to get everything in the house done so that it can be a real functional house! But until we can afford them all, we will do things one by one, step by step and enjoy the process as it is. So although we are spending very wisely nowadays because of the house, I trust that we are happy going through the process of creating our dream lovely home for ourselves! :)

Stay tuned for more updates peeps~!

The Celebrity Couple Attack KL!

Kevin Foo Chuan Yee... Are you that sick of me talking about 'dear, dear, my dear...' in my blog??? What about you guys out there who are reading my blog?

I'm sorry if you are irritated, but I have no choice! I spent most of my time with him now, what can you expect wor? I love him so much that it's already killing me not to show you guys the photos we took together. So just bear with me for a while lar, okay? Alright, you have no choice, cos this is my bloody blog! :p
Being the celebrity couple as we are pretending to be, here are the pictures taken without him on Friday night as we went for our pak-tor session after my Korean class.Pavillion KL was just putting up their Christmas deco and we were so lucky to be among the first few people to take pics over there!
At around 10 at night, I was feeling like eating something (oh man, save me please! I'm so getting fatter and fatter! :S). So we went for this Ngau Kee Beef Noodles at a street behind Jalan Alor. My dear said he used to go there back then when he was still a college student.Ngau Kee Beef Noodles... Nice supper~! Yum~!
Like he said, the noodles isn't fantastic lar, but it was really okay. There were quite a lot of people having their supper over there you know! So I guess it has attracted some loyal supporters over the years! I personally think the minced meat on top of the noodles were really good, although it is obvious they were minced with machine... I went for the soup one... Oooh look at the beef belly~! Love it!
My dear had the dried wanton noodles.
The chili is quite different too, I can see lots of onion and serai in it.

And then we just had a walk around Bukit Bintang, while trying to find a place to sit down and have a drink and spend some time together.
And then we arrived at Island Bistro at Pavillion. Wow, so happening at night man! I love its design very very much! It's a bit like a Balinese design, with some oh-so-cute green colour (yay, green is the best!) cozy sofa and the unique-looking lights! Island Bistro at a glace....
I love this pic! Look at the green colour cushion! I wish I can have that cushion at home!
Too bad the kitchen was already closing when we were there, and we can only order the snack! Cos I think their salads and sandwiches look really nice... In the menu! So we had the extremely fattening and oily Tumeric Fried Chicken Wings which was pretty good! Aaaarrrhhhh... Yummy food are always very fattening, oily or unhealthy! :(I had the house pour white wine and my dear had his favourite Heineken.
My dear's masterpiece... Nice or not??? Got potential???
The very the yummy but oily chicken wings...

So that was another great night out with my dear~! :)

Brand New Year, Brand New Look!

For our house, at least! :)

Oh before that, HAPPY NEW YEAR EVERYONE!!! :D

The last time you saw me talking about renovating and buying new furniture for our house was about a year plus ago, since then we have slowly changed a few small things but only last weekend we had quite a major makeover for the house, before we could start buying our baby boy's cot and probably a drawer and other stuff before his majesty's grand arrival.

Let's update the list that we have made earlier:

TOP OF THE LIST:
1) Sofa set
2) Built-in wardrobe
3) Shoe cabinet

THE REST OF THE LIST:
1) Master bedroom's bed+mattress
2) Master bedroom's make-up table
3) TV
4) TV table (cabinet)
5) Dining table set
6) Refrigerator
7) Kitchen work table
8) Curtain(s)
9) Chair(s) for entrance (so that we can sit and wear shoes)
10) Aluminum gate for front entrance grill door (while this is really not urgent, I hope to get this done soon too, if it's not too much to pay)
11) Steel window gate (may ignore this forever)
12) Lights
13) Glass display cabinet (not getting this anymore since we need space for baby's stuff now)
14) Coffee table 
15) Sliding door for kitchen entrance (decided not to have)
16) Sliding door for back toilet
17) Cupboard for keeping of documents, books and etc

Phew~ So glad now we only have one more item left! *punch into the air~*

Deardo and FIL were my heroes over the weekend spending hours fixing what needed in the house.

We finally took down the old, stupid-looking curtain left by the previous owner into something we really like.

No more sore eyes every time we sit on our couch! 

Chinese-style yellowish curtain... 

Now... Lovely lovely splash of colours! 

The classic lace curtain that I've been dying to have in my house!!! Yay! 

We got some quotations from Taiping at those shops that tailor make curtain, but ended up still buying them all from Ikea simply because they are way cheaper (about RM1k difference okay), prettier and most importantly they have the pretty classic lace curtain which I couldn't find anywhere in Taiping!

Ahhhh,,, Now at least it feels more like a country home-style living room! :)

We also finally changed the ugly make-up table in our room. Here's a reminder of how ugly that piece of shit that was in our room for more than two years...

Gosh, so lou tou I don't get it.

And now, drum roll please~!!!

Oh hai! From my new make-up area!

White colour big-ass mirror and a simple white shelf top to replace the old school make-up table. It makes the whole area looks so much more nicer, brighter and neater! 

We also changed the room's curtain into an anti-glare one so now our room feels like those hotel rooms every morning, no direct sunlight at all; which makes it all the more harder to wake up though. LOL.

Also changed some lights in our house. Here's a before photo of our light in our room...

Together with the old wardrobes too... LOL.

Is it Japanese style? Or Balinese? I'm not even sure. The only thing I'm sure of is that it doesn't match our theme of the house at all and it's really dark I can't do make-up or take proper selfie in the room.

New lights!!! So bright yo!!!

Well, the new lights aren't very special-looking lar, but at least it doesn't go too far off the theme of our house and most importantly, they are much brighter! So next time can do make-up, selfie and check out our baby boy properly, even his poo poo's colour! :p

Our old lights at the dining area looked like this...

Oh yes, together with the old dining table set which I hated the most! Urgggh...

Again, I still doubt the previous owner has any taste in anything! *face plam~*

Sorry, I was lazy to clear all the junk before taking this photo. :p

We changed it to a more modern-looking, very-the-dining area type of lights. I don't know about you but I think they look awesome I couldn't help but asked to have a proper dinner last Sunday right at the table (most of the time now we just sit on the couch for our dinner).

Lights are from a shop in Puchong, although most of other stuff you see in the above picture are from Ikea.

We still love buying Ikea stuff a lot and don't see any major problem with the furniture yet so far. Planning to buy baby's stuff from them also soon! Can't wait! :)

Outdated Movie Reviews

Sorry guys, been really busy at work and am demotivated to blog even when I'm at home doing nothing. Always just wanna lie on the sofa and do nothing...

Anywayz, managed to catch some movies, which are not exactly new but I still want to share out of anality. LOL

What to Expect When You Are Expecting

Didn't have high hopes for this movie but I watched it anywayz I think perhaps because of the entertaining cast list!
The title said it all, it's all about what to expect when you are expecting, both to the mother and father. The storyline is very normal although it tried really hard in the end to make me cry, which I teared a bit, but actually it could have been done way better than that. I think the problem is the presentation of the stories and the not-so-fantastic acting from the all-star cast. I won't say it is lousy, but seriously it can be much better, funnier and touching-er. Ah, my favourite part: the part where JLo went to adopt her son... That was the best and most beautiful part of the entire movie. :)
All-star cast but not the best actors, I must say. Most of them just in there for the entertainment lar. But I love Elizabeth Bank's performance in the movie, so willing to make herself ugly and all for the role she plays.I think Anna Kendrink wasted her time doing this movie. That girl should be doing better movies than this one! 
I strongly do not recommend this one.

Shame

Honestly, I really watched this out of curiousity and because I'm in love with Michael Fassbender (Magneto, anyone?).
The movie talks about Brandon (played by Michael Fassbender of course), a guy with a VERY SERIOUS sex addiction problem. It went around showing how he struggles, how he wished to control himself but often, failed. In the end, his addiction almost caused him his sister's life... There is no proper ending or an explanation of what happen to him in the end... It's like a bit of an artsy movie.
Sexy body aside, Michael Fassbender gave a really good performance in the movie. I kinda feel his pain and struggles (although I don't have sex addiction issue, woi!). It is no wonder he has been winning awards for his performance in this movie! Another notable one must be Carey Mulligan (eh hem, I love her too) who was flawless too playing Brandon's sister who is herself a bit of a psycho too.
I know, I know, it's a movie full of sex scenes but honestly, the acting in this movie is something that you should learn to appreciate too! Not too bad a movie!

Till then, will try to update more often! *wink~*

Shirlexia's Sesame Oil Chicken and the 'Lou Sang' dinner

I tried to avoid posting another food post, but couldn't help lar... :p

I made dinner for my dear again as it's weekend again! This time around it's the Sesame Oil Chicken. The dish is well known as a good nutrition source for women after delivery. It is just a very simple yet nutritious dish. It was my first try, and I went online to search for the recipe where I took some from each of them and kinda made it without the proper way... :p

Here are the ingredients:Two big pieces of chicken thigh(I removed the skin and oil), sliced old ginger, Gei Zi, mushrooms and of course black sesame oil and Chinese cooking oil.

The Method:
1. Heat up some sesame oil. Well, it can't be too little like how you stir-fry vege lar, it has to be a little bit more than that.
2. Simmer the ginger.3. Put in the chicken and fry them a bit. Don't need to make them fully cooked, but make sure all part of the chicken has some sesame oil! 4. As the chicken is about 60% cooked, transfer them over to a cooking pot. Turn on the fire and add in a generous portion of Chinese cooking wine. Add in some water too. At this point, I basically just keep on tasting and see if I need to add more sesame oil, wine or water. 5. Add in the Gei Zi and mushrooms.
6. Cover with the lit of the pot and let it boil for about 20 minutes or until the chicken are cooked. And that's it!Ta da~ Never expected it to be so simple, but it was VERY SIMPLE!
I think the dish is so easy to make! Simple method and ingredients too! The Gei Zi and mushroom were extra stuff I put in, otherwise it would be even easier! And for my dear and I, who are both fan of sesame oil and wine, this dish is just so satisfying yet healthy! You can treat it as a soup to go with your rice, I can assure you, it's HYPER YUMMY!!!My dear looks so damn happy to be home and have the lovely dinner I made! Yea, we always have to eat on the sofa with the food on a plastic chair. With a bicycle at the back... LOL!

We actually had this 'Lou Sang' dinner last night. But for the sake of showing off my successful cooking, I gotta put that up first! :p
Like I said, I kinda hang-out quite a lot with my dear's bunch of friends nowadays. Just like how he hangs-out with my sister and my relatives. This time around, it was me who suggested that he and his cell group members should have a 'Lou Sang' dinner before everyone goes home for CNY. Me and my dear in matching costumes!
That's Yapp(I think he looks like Choc 7's Louis) and Shan Shan.
Very cute Pearly and Ket Hon... Who seems to have very big nose... Holes... I mean, according to this picture...
So off we went to Pangkor Curry Fish Head Restaurant, located at Subang SS15. The owner's wife is my ex-colleague and of course this was my er... fourth visit. I kinda like their food there. I remember last year we had our company's CNY dinner 'Lou Sang' here too!
What we had...The Yu Sang... Actually I still miss the Sushi King's one. I hope I can have that when I'm back in Taiping! Yay~!
Wah... Lou ah lou ah... See how excited Pearly was! Haha.
Their Curry Fish, which is well known for without coconut milk=healthier!
The Gei Zi Dong Guai Chicken. We were making fun of the guys having this dish because it's well known that this is very good to women... :p
Our very small portion of sweet potato leaves.
The Deep Fried Sotong.
Ooopsss... Just found out I didn't take picture of the Kam Heong La La! Probably because I was mad at my dear for something stupid and I just had no mood to take picture... :p
The curry fish last night was a bit disappointing lar. The fish weren't fresh. :( The Gei Zi Dong Guai Chicken was everyone's favourite. The sotong like I always think, tasted a bit too sweet. And they were really busy they ran out of the vege we ordered so we had to order another kinda vege to go with the sweet potato leaves we had.
Plus the Yu Sang, rice and tea, it cost us around RM173. I think it was a bit pricy cos don't know how they charged us twice the price for the curry fish when I asked for just some extra of other kinda fish because ya know the Pow Yu we ordered wasn't enough to make a big portion one. Anywayz, a bit out of their normal quality lar. A group photo~! Finally~!

You might have notice in these pictures above and from my other posts, I'm currently hooked to headbands. I think they make me look for girlish since I already cut my hair short. Not to say I purposely wanna be so girlish lar, but now someone would complain if I act or wear too boyish mah... Blek~!
I'm especially very much in love with those feathered ones. This one that I wore for the dinner... One of the feathers came out and I couldn't stick it back even with super glue. So yea in the end I found my solution...Cannot see very clearly what's the solution, right? Kekekeke...