Showing posts with label Cooking. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Cooking. Show all posts

Sunday, August 7, 2016

Settling down, Cooking and Cleaning

This above was not meant to showcase the things we bought, but they were just placed there because we were cleaning and mopping the tiled floor.Now that most of the renovation works are out of the way, and we are just a couple of steps away from taking over the house completely from our interior designer, we would probably start to talk more about living there and also share more on reviews and feedback on the things we have bought, as well as how we felt with our renovation and carpentry after really using it. Too often, there are many scenarios where we had been blinded with looking good aesthetically, that we forgo the practicality and functionality. Such issues would likely only rise itself after really using them for a while. *cough* dyson fan.

Although our renovation is reaching the end, the things we can learn from is just the beginning.

Just flaunting our purchases. We bought this vacuum cleaner at only $29. It was one of those super sale items in Gain City Expo Sales. Seriously, one of the best places to buy anything, be it food or electronics or beddings or sportswear is to go Expo. The sales are usually competitively cheaper than any sales elsewhere, and one could always get a free gift or additional discount along the way, which is absent in their neighborhood branches. Ignore the BHG member's only sale or Tefal clearance sales. Expo beats them all. Of course, one must do their homework to see what sales are happening there and when, but it is definitely worth the trip down.

Anyway, the vacuum cleaner isn't fantastic. The cord is only 4m long which means we have to plug in and out in every room, and it is quite a hassle. But this is just a temporary thing before we invest in a robot cleaner. Definitely need one to clean automatically, because otherwise we are always spending the whole weekend cleaning the house. By letting some errands run automatically, we could get twice the work done in half the time.

The blue chair? Nothing to flaunt about just that it looked nice with our door mural haha! Got it from IKEA during their yearly sales, and it is just for us to have a seat while wearing our shoes.

Renovation wise, we finally gotten our nice looking ledge for the soap bottles. We did not want the common steel racks which looked ugly in hubby's opinion, and we could not do a long ledge below the shower because of the pipes nor could we do it at the back due to our swinging glass door, so this is the best it could get. We thought this look great though, much better than those off-the-rack steel racks. Let's hope this holds well. Loved it!

 Another super deal at Gain City Expo Fair. Got this rice cooker at just $19! We were searching around for rice cooker, and were shock to see it priced at about $60 for a phillips brand to exorbitant price of $200 for some renowned brands. We have not heard of this brand before, but it seem decent, and we have gotten cooked rice nicely so far. so thumbs up!

Bought our plates and bowls from IKEA. We had always eyed their dining sets since long ago because they seemed to be very photo-worthy. They were priced competitively too so went for it straight away. Couple of other IKEA things there too.

And finally, this is cooking our dinner in progress. We are still very inexperienced in this area, and to make matter worse, they are all new pots and pans and stove that we had not used before. It is gonna take us a while before we could whipped up some great dishes, but for now, we are going to keep it simple and light. Till next time!

Monday, August 1, 2016

Moving Into our new home

1st August 2016. The day we officially moved into our new nest. No longer coming over here just to oversee the renovation or to fixed up our furniture. The time has come for us to finally live here. We got our FSM down to our house again to help us with the moving in ceremony, and they did some prayers and rituals through the ceremony. Her mother came too, and we were really thankful for her helping us do the preparation and some cooking while we were busy doing the rituals.

Our starting ceremony revolved around the phrase, 风生水起. We switched on the fans for the wind, plant the coins on the floor as seeds, and boiled the water to bring around the house to water the seeds and create growth. We then brought our rice bucket and filled it three-quarter full so that it symbolized that we would always have food to eat, yet space for more fortune to come to us. We unwrapped our door number sign on the gate as a symbol of officially opening the house. We cooked some tang yuan as a symbol of reunion. We brought soy sauce, vinegar, salt, sugar, tea leaves, oil as a symbol of having the necessities. We walked over burning charcoal at the door as a symbol of burning the bad past and having a new start at our house.

That pretty much summed it all up.

We cooked and had our first meal of the house that night. Simple, but delicious.

And to complete the moving in ceremony, we spent our first night there at our new home. No longer do we both need to squeeze into a single sized bed. We now have a larger queen sized one which was just comfortable for both of us since we ain't that big ourselves. Beside, hubby commented that this means more coziness because we have to be closer together when sleeping haha!

WE ARE OFFICIALLY WOODLANDERS!