after a year

The ducks are finally out! Ha!
Actually I was talking about those gorgeous shelves, supposedly my Christmas present last year.
Not that the delay bother me over much. The point is that it's finally here, no?
And it's beautiful!

The shelves extend almost the whole length of the dining room. I am hoping that they would finally remove the (ever-present) clutter from the dining table: the various arts & crafts material, half read books, and whatever knicks knacks that found its way to the table.

At the same time, we are also hoping to relieve the overcrowding over at the ugly ahem, bookshelf.

We bought the old shelves from a local store and the Mister assembled them himself. My complains regarding that particular shelf, however, ranged from the sheer poor workmanship, bad quality material, wobbliness, to simple plain ugly.
Especially as compared to our old shelves in our old apartment:

Mmm... Yes, our old apartment was full of Ikea stuff. The consequences of living barely 15 minutes away from an Ikea store, I suppose.
In any case, both the shelves and the brackets were on sale that day, so we bought them and my handy Mister installed it and it made for a fantastic focal wall.

Much to our regret, we did not have enough presence of mind to actually take off those shelves and brought it with us across the sea. If you ever try to find decent furniture at reasonable prices around here you'll understand our regret.
In any case, we settled with buying the very same bracket from Ikea on our trip to Hongkong. For the shelves, however, we settled with locally sourced wood planks, which the Mister then had to sand, prime and paint himself.

T'was a long process spanning many days in which layers of primer and stain dry off before getting layered again the following day.

At the end of the whole painting process, I guess we got a bit tired, so it took a while before we continued to the next step, which was to prepare the wall for the shelves. After painstakingly marking the wall, the Mister found out that his drill couldn't handle the thick wall. Ugh. And so the shelves and the brackets stood in the storage for many months before we 'remembered' to ask the rental office to do the job for us. Duh!
For some reasons, we never thought of that before!

In any case, the carpenter appeared yesterday with his Makita drill (!), and finally finished the job after just a few hours.

For today we are just cleaning up while we take stock of our stuff: which one to stay, which one to move to the new shelves and the likes. The dining room already feels different with the addition of the shelves, and hopefully the dining table would get to see more use apart from repository of stray items in the house.
More pics later once we fill up the shelves. Until then!

Out of curiosity, do you prefer standing shelves (which can be used as room divider too, by the way) or wall shelves? Standing shelves require less work, most definitely, yet I love the wall shelves as they just create a focal wall in the house. What do you think?

Christmas Corners

Decoration for the house, selected by the little decorator...

With Christmas barely 5 days away, I am finally sharing my Christmassy corners of the house.
The usual excuses abound, you can pick for your own favorite, from December being in general a busy month for most people, I have 2 exams during the month, to not having much success with photographing the tree.
Seriously, who would have thought that taking a picture of one stationary tree in the house would be so difficult. I don't even put running lights, for goodness sake! But oh well... here they are, all ready for Christmas.

Let's start from the door, the front door, on which I have stuck a permanent hook. So it was a matter of picking a decorative item and hanging it on the hook. The particular piece has bells that do not make any sound, so I had to put some 'real' bells. Works for the little Kid, works for the Mama. Not a big fan of fake bells, thank you very much.

Then comes the photo wall, one of my favourite spot in the house, if only for the aesthetic value (or, should I say, potential? Ha!)

Here's another bell ornament on the closet door.

Don't forget the laundry room door.

Some slight green on the staircase....

A little Christmassy touch on the window treatments...

And of course, the august, but somewhat elusive Christmas tree.
Sorry guys, I am afraid this is about as good as it gets for the Christmas tree picture.
I don't know whether it's the color combination, the camera setting, but I can't seem to get a decent picture.
Maybe it's ugly. Oh well... but at least the tree makes me happy.
We keep the lights on all the time, so when the house turns dark in the evening, there's that bright corner with the tree.
When we come back from walks in the evening, we see the lights first on the kitchen windows.
And when I sigh and plod with whatever dishes that need washing, those lights would reflect on the kitchen windows, and I can sigh happily and continue.

Well.... on to more Christmas stuff tomorrow then.
Four days to go!

Corners of my house #7

Trying to grow lemongrass

With my affair with the basil plant still going on, I've decided to take on a new plant, lemongrass. Maybe we'll use it for teas and such. That part is not quite important. More important is the fact that I would have yet another herb in my garden.
By the way the window in the background is easily one of my favorite things in the house. In the morning, it overlooks my blooming flowers (they close their petals from around noon onwards). Near Christmas times, such as now, at night, the glass would reflect the Christmas tree lights from the dining room. Such lovely sight!
Which is good. For if there's anything I hate, it's washing dishes. And not having full time helper, I DO spend quite some time in front of this window.

Corners of my house #8

The Dresser upstairs

Early morning sun... (and by that I mean like... 10am-ish? Cos I usually rise only around 9-ish?) In any case, well.. it's not much. But then again, Mama does not really wear make up. Never really did, except when work required her to put on some. In the mean time, all those make up stuff can hide in the drawer, away from little hands, leaving space on the dresser for Daddy's stuff. And sun light. 

Great stuff.

Corners of my house #6, a note

I have to admit that I enjoy doing this series on corners of my house.
Not only these are relatively short entries that I can do in almost no time,
I believe that I do benefit from trying to take good pictures of the house.
Lastly, I suppose the exercise is also a sort of wake up call to keep me working on beautifying the house.
I really should. After all, just like everything else in my life, the house is a Work In Progress.
Now as for that corner number 6....

The 'Dresser'?

I'm actually not too sure what to call this piece of furniture. I often call it 'dresser', but its position being somewhere near the front door rather than in the bedroom, I don't think it's really appropriate.
In any case, we (or rather, I) love having a piece of furniture near the door to put the mails, knick knacks, a few photos, etc. I guess this is pretty common in Western culture, but neither my parents' nor my in-laws' house actually incorporate something like this. We use one of the space for Doggie stuff. The bottom space is actually often used as the Little One's hiding place. Maybe I should take a picture of that some other time.

Corners of my house #5

The Baby Gate

The Baby Gate was intended for the staircase. 
Back in Singapore, we used it to prevent the Dog to go into the kitchen. It was useful against the Baby too.


We brought it here for the staircase, which, according to all the parenting textbooks, is supposed to be accessorized with one, minimum. Well, the staircase turned out to be too wide. Anyway Baby got a better accident prevention measure: Mama. So there.


It's current use? Demarcating adults-only-area. The Husband set up his hobby space in the room, which means fragile models, sharp objects and dangerous tools. The baby-free demarcation lasted about a day. Apparently Daddy can't resist the little girl. Nowadays, the gate is the Little Girl's swing. But at least she still hold a healthy respect for Daddy's stuff. Strictly no touching. 


How? Oh, we are dog-owning parents. So... we trained her the way we trained the Dog, with some shouts, some 'love pats', and of course, lots of hugs and explanations. It's cool.

Corners of my house #4

The Book/Everything shelf

Ah, currently the only bookshelf in the house, not even a proper one. For one, it's kind of wobbly. Two, it can't fit all of our books. Of course, we had to keep the books AWAY from the Little Hands' reach, so that might account for the lack of space. Still, some of those boxes contain more books, like that Harry Potter set right at the bottom left.

Wishing for proper bookshelves, and yet other shelves for beautifying my home. 

Treasure...

Treasure

In so many ways...

In the way my heart swells at the sight of my two 'babies'

In the way the timing gives me some time to get centered today...

And to use a phrase often used by SouleMama, be still my heart..





Updated a few minutes after the picture was taken:
The Dog moved away. Then the Baby moved too, leaving a small puddle on the floor.
Aah, I guess the Dog has more reason to move. I thought she was just bored. Kekeke....

And for the curious one out there, yeah, the Little One is still on potty training, and I am 'sacrificing' that sofa. Please refer to that corner of the house post.

Corners of my house #3

The Thermostat

I find it funny sometimes that here we are, living in the Philippines, and we have a Honeywell thermostat in the house. Not a split aircon, like what we used to have in the Apt back in Singapore, mind you, a thermostat, connected to a central air conditioning system. Well, at least we don't have a central heater. I suppose that is saying something.

Corners of my house #2

The Little Couch

What's with all the flour? Ahm, actually it's baking soda. As to why? 2 words, my friend, potty training.
The Little One is on potty training, and it so happen that Mama forgot to put her back in her pampers when she took her nap the day before. Let's just say there was an accident, which can be smelled right from the front door. No can do. 
Oh, and if you are curious, the baking soda worked like a charm, although the potty training is still ... on going. Don't worry, I still have more baking soda in my pantry.

Corners of my house #1

I think SouleMama hit the sentiment on the nail when she started her 'Corners of My Home' Flickr group. We tend to forget the tiny details of our homes as years pass us by. Especially for people who move around. Like me. I've stayed in various locations in Singapore, and currently I am in the Philippines, without even any guarantee that I will stay here very long.

There are indeed times when I missed our old apartment in Singapore, on which the Husband and I spent so much effort beautifying and homifying (if there is ever such a word), and alas, there were so little pictures of the various corners where we spend a lot of time. The Husband's hobby table, the kitchen tops, the always filled to the brim sink, the puny toilet at the back.

I really should make an effort to go around and capture this place the is our 'home for the moment' just so the memories are not lost. I don't know if I will join the Flickr group, but at least here, in my own blog, I should keep those corners alive.

An added benefit, this kind of postings should come in handy when life simply does not allow me to ponder and write pages of wisdom. Such a brilliant idea, indeed.

So, without further a due, I present, a corner of our current home.

the hallway between the master bedroom and the Kid's bedroom upstairs. See the Teddy bear at the corner? One of our best investments for the Kid. She loves running away from Daddy and Mama, across the hallway and straight into the Teddy whenever we want to do things that she does not want, like putting her in her clothes or getting back Daddy's phone. Taken from about 30cm above the floor, this must be her view of the hallway. a lovely view indeed.