My All-New Kitchen Aid Baby!

Just like many other bakers (and bakers wanna be like me!) there is always this choice that you have to make between a Kenwood or a Kitchen Aid. Its a never ending debate if you log onto forums what discuss which one is more superior than the other!



I had a chance to see one of the local baking sifu at her home and she was using a Kenwood Major. It was pretty bulky and noise compared to the Kitchen Aid I was eyeing the past year. Despite it being a "Major" model and big physically, it was light! The sifu placed her Kenwood on top of a pedestal and the pedestal was moving like 5 inches away from the original position within 10 seconds of beating on high! And boy, was it noisy!


Therefore, my choice would be a Kitchen Aid! Its smaller and more svelte in size and looks really sexy with its natural curves ... hehehe. And its very stable! It does not move and inch even on high speed! And its pretty silent too, which was good cos I can whip up something late at night and my neighbours wont complaint. Oh boy! How I love it! And the colors are so vibrant and can brighten any kitchen up!


However, being a very simple me, I decided on one of the safest colors in the world. It blends well into my kitchen (ie not standing out!) and that is what I want. My focus in my kitchen is the kitchen and not its appliances *wink*.


What's your choice?

The "After" Shots of Our Renovation

FIRST & FOREMOST, A VERY HAPPY NEW YEAR TO ALL VISITORS OF MY BLOG.


I have been planning to put up some pics of the completed works of our new home, but was just waiting for the CD to arrive. My contractor managed to take some decent shots of the home, so it would only do justice to use them, rather than post up those taken from my mobile phone.


I do hope you enjoy these pics, as we love our new nest.



Wet Kitchen

Let's start from here. I prefer light wooden colors compared to dark wood. I choose this color as it compliments the original door colors of our home. I also choose to use in-built aluminium handles rather than have external handles. I feel, this way, it looks neater. The upper cabinets are white in spray paint finishing. The kitchen top is tiled and the back of the hood & hob is covered with tempered glass for easier maintenance. I have 2 compartments for the gas cylinders, which takes up the corner space, so its not wasted. It comes with a soft-close system as well and we installed an under-sink water filter, so to keep the sink top neat.


Dry Kitchen
The dry kitchen was suppose to be my baking area. But having chosen a white solid surface finishing as my kitchen top color, it requires more care and maintenance than I originally thought of. So now, its more of our breakfast area. Thank god for the grey top we choose for the external table top. It is the main area which is used a lot, and even if it scratches, its not noticeable. The 2 white shelves was bought from Ikea. Seems like its quite a good idea to have it there. Else, the wall might look quite plan right? I also had soft-close hinges installed and the semi-white/green tempered glass as backing. And 2 white bar-stools *wink*.



Living Room

We didnt do much to our living room, except the TV cabinet, lights and the sofa. We did have an extra lazy chair (the one in dark maroon) which was suppose to go down to the family room, but since we had some space, we just let it be there. One thing for sure, lights do play and IMPORTANT part in any deco. Our choice for downlights was cool white. And we like it a lot. Combined with pendant ceiling light, it looks quite "glamourous" .. hehehe.

Dining Room
Again, not much done here, except we had a "blank" frame made on the wall and painted it a different color, for us to hang up a piece of art that we bought. This helped emphasize the art quite well. On the other wall, we wall-papered it, and for this, I definately choose the wrong design. It looks really good when you are near the wall, but from a far, it is not too attractive. Hmmm ... feel like changing this to a different design.

Bryan's Play Area

We decided to convert our indoor courtyard garden into a play area for him. We removed all 3 sides of sliding door and tiled up the floor. We also covered the roof with polycarbonate roofing which brings in loads of bright sunshine! It can also be used for his homework area after school. And this is where we placed our X'Mas tree too. And perhaps our upcoming CNY deco. On one part of the wall, we built checkered cabinets. These cabinets come with push-open doors, providing us storage space for his toys. At this moment, he still does not realise that they are cabinets ... hahaha.



Bryan's Room

There was totally no renovation to this room. I just placed his Ikea bed in, and pasted some wall decals and put up a really colorful curtain and bedsheet to cheer it up. That's it.




Other Areas
Very simple wardrobe designs and an extremely simple book case and altar table suits us best.





I am really over and done with renovations. Those days, I will go through every corner of all print advertisements and see what's on bargain. These days, the moment I see some warehouse sales being advertised, I quickly flip it over! Kinda sick of it ... hahaha.


Just like 5 years ago, would visit every single bridal shop & photo studio exhibitions, but once we got married, we walk 10 miles away from it. Wuakakakaka.


Hope you enjoyed this post. If you wish to see some "before" pics, click here.

Too much?

Being my first time, I had no idea what I really needed or how much. So I ended up with 2 large boxes and 4 smaller boxes of ornaments and 4 packs of lights. I ended up using only 1/3 of the ornaments and all 4 packs of lights.




This is, of course, the in-progress pic. Too tired to take pics after it was ready. Will do so in a few days.

Is it Christmas time?

The moment month of December comes, we can instantly feel Christmassy! The lights have been up already along Ikea/Curve (now only Nov wor ...) when we visited last week. Its a nice feeling towards the year-end .. especially bonus time ... hehehe.

I have all along been planning for a tree for our new home. I intend to purchase a tree and light it up in the month of December. And its for Bryan's sake. He loves it when we visit shopping malls (the past 2 yrs) checking out all the extensive decorations while we mall-hop!

So this year, we will have one in our home sweet home. Complete with a Christmas dinner (fingers crossed!). And visits from my long-time buddies from Penang & Singapore would make it so fun! Miss them so much. Been ages since we sat down to chat. So looking forward for Christmas this year.

So Petaling Street will be my next destination - once I settle in this Nov. Heard you can find some good & very reasonably priced trees there. But tipu one lah, not the "real" tree. Here I come!

Prince's New Playground

Within our gated community, we have a small playground for the residents. Nothing fancy but just the basics to keep the young ones occupied & happy.

His all-time favourite is the "shuaaaaaat" ... meaning the slide lah ... hehehe. Every time we drive past a playground, he would say "mommy, play shuaaaat" :-)


We usually spend Sunday evenings there, just to let him run about freely and perhaps in the coming weeks, we will bring along the bicycle he got as a pressie on his 2nd birthday earlier this year. He can now reach the peddles comfortably, just that we never allowed him to ride it outdoors (too dangerous lah, cars zooming in & out) and thus, he does not enjoy riding on it inside the house lor. So hopefully, he will start loving the rides all over again.I am sure he is as excited as mommy to move into our new home.

Exciting Weekend Ahead!

I am looking forward to the weekend! I am not sure if its going to be a pleasant one or something that is going to cause me much head-ache and heart-ache .. but we will see. Hope its going to turn out fine. Crossing my fingers, toes, tonque, everything!!! Wish me luck!

April is here ... finally.

I am glad to have the opportunity to do my first post for the month of April 2009.

Since last year, I have been waiting for this month to arrive. As you may already know, my new house is ready but I am just waiting for the handover. Although it is far from being due, I have high expectations from this developer, whom I know has got excellent reputation and track records for completing homes in very high quality and known for early handovers, hence my expectations for handover this month.

On one hand, it is so exciting to know that you can have your very own home soon. On the other, I know it will have to start with lots of headache and purse-ache before it turns into your dreamhome. For me, dreamhome need not be utmost expensive. As long as it is comfortable to you and the your family, that is a dream home to us.

Everyday, I would log on to the property forum to check on feedback from the other owners to see and discuss on how we can make this place a better and safer home for us. There has been a tremendous increase in crime especially home robbery, car theft and even kidnap cases. Although my new home is in a G&G environment, it will not be an excuse for us to be complacent and assume it is safe. After all, guards are human. CCTVs are made by human. And humans err.

HomeDec will be at Kuala Lumpur Convention Centre again come 30 April. It will be my last time there to see if there are any good buys in a non-favourable economic condition ... but having been there for the past 2 HomeDec exhibition, I dont have high expectations. All I can say is do your homework well and you can be rewarded. Dont believe it when they say its a "special exhibition price" cos I know for sure, you can get it cheaper after the exhibition, at least for 70% of the items there. Otherwise, they are just getting rid of old models, if you dont mind.

Now, its time for me to sum up my budget before the ringgit actually starts flowing out.

Signature Kitchen's Showroom @ Ara Damansara

We are not totally sure if we can afford an interior design company to take care of all our renovation needs. Nevertheless, we did go around town to check out some kitchen cabinet companies just to see what is the latest trends and what kind of costings they are offering.










Signature Kitchen is pretty known for its kitchen cabinets and now, even wardrobe as well. They are also well known for its pretty expensive prices and not-so-good after-sales service. We have a friend who had a hard time calling them back to do some minor touch-up work.






But our intention is to check them out and see what they have to offer. No harm right?



I was kinda surprised to find a pretty comprehensive collection of kitchen ideas available there. Of course having $$$ makes all the difference and I enjoyed browing around their show kitchens.






They offered to do up a mock design for my kitchen (for free) and I gladly gave them my layout plan for my kitchen (which is always in my weekend bag cos only on Sats I have some time to scout around for stuff needed for the house).

A week later, the kitchen planner came out with a design for my proposed kitchen. When it comes to designers, its difficult to find a good balance of designing vs practicality. Designers want to showcase their talent in designing but not really taking into consideration whether it works in the real world.

First impression, of course looks really nice. But when you think deeper and look closely, there are many things which may not work for my needs. White? Looks good but not practical. Open concept? Hmm .. very modern but might not work for me either. Costs? First quote does not sound scary .. only about Rm20k for both wet & dry kitchen ... but beware .. lots of things not included in the quote!

Look's like I got a lot of thinking and searching to do these coming few weeks.

A glimpse of my new home

We purchased this property a year ago. Since then, there has been countless ideas of how we both wanna make this our dream home. We had all kinds of brilliant ideas ...but as usual, we try to stick to something that is workable in both our bank account vs practical use of things.

Progress wise, I think we should be able to receive our keys in Apr or so. To me, that is just round the corner!

Front view of the property (actual unit).


Many say that a practical budget for a home renovation is 30% of the purchase price, meaning if your home is Rm300,000, then a budget of Rm90,000 would suffice for your renovation plans. I surely do hope that this amount includes all furnitures and fitting as well cos 30% to me sound quite a big sum!

Having done a budget for our home, our renovation budget would be only 20% of our purchase price ... and bear in mind, the only thing we have currently that can be re-used in our new home is our wardrobe, dressing table and our bed ...hahaha! We have detailed it into a room-by-room budget (in excel sheet okay, dont play play) and I think we have to be very very careful in keeping to our budget as it is a pretty tight one.

Below is the view from the entrance of the unit looking into living area, courtyard garden area, dining area and staircases leading to upper & lower floors. (Pics taken 2 mths back).


View from the 1st floor looking down into our living hall & sliding door area. You can also see the porch area (which is not tiled yet).


Master bedroom's (below) flooring done.


















Our sunken bath area half done in the master bedroom. The sunken bath is large enough to be converted into a jacuzzi but we will skip that idea for now due to limited $$$. Moreover, dont have the luxury of time to soak in one :-(

What I really liked about this purchase is we were entitled to 3 units of air-conditioner, water heater, auto-gate system as well as the home alarm system. I do not know if those given complimentary would be suffice for our use but even if not, we only need to fork out a small sum to top them up for a better spec-ed system. So saved quite a bit there already.

We also saved up our credit-card points and after ALL THESE YEARS we plan to redeem quite a number of electrical items such as a food processor, a tower fan, and quite a few more .. can't remember, but I already circled them in the redemption book for hubby to submit soonest as they take a month or 2 for these items to be sent over. Moreover, not all items that we want might be in stock .. so let's see how this goes.

Certainly cant wait for the letter to arrive .. letter meaning asking us to go over to collect our keys lor .... so exciting. It's even more exciting than planning for my then wedding!

Hanging Gardens of Babylon?

When I was young, whenever I wanted some fancy toy, my mom used to say ... you think money grows on trees???? Hahahaha. So one weekend when I visited my friends place .. I really saw money growing wor .. money plants that is *smile*.

I really love these. She has such green fingers. All her plants are growing so well and these money plants are left to grow falling off their pots and resemble a curtain! Yeah! It even helps shed the walkway from the hot sun too .. lovely eh?

Personally I have yet to explore the joy of gardening .. simply because I never grew up in a house that has ample space around for us to have plants growing. Mom lives in an aparment and she does have some indoor plants but just a few.

However, after getting married and moving over to live with hubby & MIL on a terrace house, MIL loves gardening (in her own unique way that is) and we have lots of plants at home now. I cant recall their names but she even has a few papaya trees as well as sugar canes planted in addition to her many flower pots. She has quite a bit of herbed plants too, one of which is the "lam fei tai yip" loosely translated as South African Big Leaf .. which is known to cure high blood pressure, lower cholestrol and sugar levels.

I believe when it comes to gardening, you need to pour in a lot of TLC (tender loving care) to ensure they grow well .. just like our kids. So that is a no-no for me at the moment. I have enough on my hands with lil one.

My new home-to-be is also a landed property and it also has an indoor courtyard which I am thinking now whether I should remove it when the house is ready to be handed over to us.

I really dont fancy have an indoor garden cos I dislike mud & wet land and creepy crawlies. Yeeks! I dont mind having some nice potted plants at the porch or verandah area but they have to be of the easy maintenance type .. yeah.

Interior Designer

Time is of the essence for me ever since I had my little one. I also tend to finish work late every weekday. Both hubby & I typically spend 10 hrs each day in the office. If we add in travelling time, thats another 3 hrs bothways. Usually we reach home about 9pm and then have our shower and dinner, a short story or play time with little monster and its then bedtime (cos both of us are dead tired by then!)

Since we will in a couple of months time, be handed our keys to our very first home, I will have to now start on refining my research for our intended renovation.

Generally I will only have Saturdays to do this. It's the only day I can go out with hubby, to run errands, without my little one. Its total rest for my mom on Sundays so I do not want to bother her with my little one on that day. However, when Saturday comes, there are loads of things to attend to, like sending the car (one after another) for service, mom's routine doctor's appointment, MIL's doc appointment, dentist appointment, little ones vaccination appointment, visit my grandma, grocery shopping, post office visits, renew this & that, some banking, invitations for dinner or pot-luck parties, etc.

So where on earth can I find more time to visit tiles showrooms, kitchen showrooms, bedding & furniture outlets, lighting shops, electrical outlets, color/paint showrooms *endless list*headache*.

I wonder if I should consider appointing an interior designer for my new home. It would definately break our budget slightly but are they really worth it? Would they really understand our needs and able to create that wanted look & feel of the house? Or is it another headache I am adding on to myself? If any of you have any experience working with one, please share your experiences with me. Or if you know someone personally who provides interior design services for a reasonable fee, is responsible and wont cause me more heartaches and able to handle the contractors well, please do let me know as well. Thanks ya!

Renovation Project

We will in a couple of months' time, move into our very own home. It feels exciting to know we finally have some place which we can have it or decorate it the way we want it to be.

I have been doing some reseach every now and then and there are indeed a lot of areas to cover and most importantly, make the right decision based on our budget.

Speaking of the budget, we did the first draft last week and looks like we need to scale down wherever possible. As much as it would be great to have all the "nice-to-have" items, I think for the initial stage, we will just make do with the "need-to-have" items first.

Simple and easy to maintain would be my priority, as I dont intend to hire a live-in maid. So perhaps I should start visiting some tiles, paint or kitchen showrooms for some ideas. Will keep you posted.

Couch Potato Wanna-be!

Doesn't this look really comfy and cool!!???

Wow, when I first saw it, I really imagined owning it someday so that hubby & I can enjoy our tennis matches during our weekend TV session while little one is having his afternoon siesta.

But of course, I did not dare find out how much it cost cos I am pretty sure this will not come cheap and I also really dont know if this would fit into our living/tv room ... so might as well just enjoy the pics for now *cheeky smile*.

Analog Clock

I have never seen this again but I still remember my ex-boss had a gift from one of his friends (many many years back), an analog clock that worked counter-clock wise! Aunty Shirly - do you remember this?

It was sooo hilarious trying to figure out the time for the initial few days but after a while, we got used to reading the clock the other way round.

I find that piece such a cool gift and in fact, its quite a piece of conversation for anyone who visits the office.

I never saw it again after many donkey years and if anyone knows where I can buy it in Kuala Lumpur, please do let me know. I may wish to purchase it for my new home someday.

Ikea - value for money?

Been doing a lot of research for our new home. From interior design to furnitures to kitchen cabinets, contractors, etc. Its really a lot of work to really know what you want and whats available in the market and what you can really afford!

Naturally I started looking at Ikea as it is a one-stop centre for everything you would need in your home. Been there many times and I do love just walking through the store, browsing its very clever and innovative ideas and product designs. However, I do wonder if they really fit into our Asian lifestyle. At least not all of its products I guess.

Some people swear by Ikea for its low cost of goods and high quality. I am not too sure if its really cheap though. Personally, not all items are cheap. Just like any other businesses, there are always loss-leaders to attract people to get there and then end up shopping for other items which are priced higher.

My reason for liking Ikea is for its completeness in product range as well as its little simple gadgets that make life easier in your home or kitchen. I sure am looking forward to its year-end sale in December so that I can stock up what's really a good deal for my new home next year! Yippie!!