My Laundry Room Gadget

I recently found this cool intelligent remote control clothes hanger advertisement in the newspapers.

I thought it was cool because with just a touch of a button, you are able to lower it down to hang out your laundry and then raise it up afterward to save space and let it dry! I think one of the scariest thoughts about moving into an apartment after living your entire life in a house is how best you can maximize your space so that you won't feel like you're deprived in any way. This clothes hanger really seemed like God-sent the moment I read about it because I am now able to dry our clothes properly in our utility/laundry room without taking up precious space! I will still be able to go about every day life despite having 5 kilos of laundry hanging above me! :D If you look closely, you will notice 2 UV-light points at the roof of this gadget, which is suppose to take away the funky/damp odors from your laundry and kill any germs that might be breading as well. Keke! Ok, that is debatable. I am not banging my buck on it.

To have an Orlant intelligent remote clothes hanger installed at home, you must first get your electrician to pull a new electrical point to the spot where you'd like it installed. Alternatively, you can also replace any of your light points (ie: florescent light) in your room because this gadget also comes with a light of its own.

Why do we call it a Honeymoon?

Have you ever wondered why a honeymoon's called a honeymoon? Why not a post-wedding holiday? Or a newlyweds' getaway?

I took the liberty to ask my friend Google, and found this:
"It (honeymoon) comes from the Native American culture. When a man and woman were married, the woman had made their wedding hut in a place off and away from the group so that the newly wed couple could have privacy. The new couple would live in this temporary home for the span of a changing moon, one month. During that time they also drank a special wedding drink that was made from fermented honey and ate the honey itself with meals. This was thought to encourage the fates to give the couple a sweet life together. So to start off right and ensure a sweet life, new couples would go off by themselves and live off honey for the span of one moon.... honeymoon."

After a few weeks' worth of research and getting in touch with various agents in Bali, we finally found ourselves a 1-bedroom villa, complete with a kitchen, living room and private lap pool! The highlight is having our very own butler come every morning to prepare breakfast for us in the villa! How cool is that?!?!?!?!? ... Well, not very cool lah after I found out that most villas in Bali actually offer similar kinds of services :D

God is good. We managed to get zero fare Air Asia tickets last Nov, so we're basically all set to go! We've got nothing planned for our 6-day stay in Bali. We just want it to be a brainless getaway... to relax and unwind after the wedding. We need our rest! So I guess, for me, a honeymoon is a honeymoon because I'm gonna be with my hunney under the MOON!

Best Shopping Place in Damansara Uptown

We recently found a new favorite shopping place in town. Its got floor-to-ceiling wall-shelves packed with stuff. Each item comes in a variety of choices to choose from; you can find almost anything you need, provided you do not faint first from looking at so manyyyyyyyyyy things. Prices are really reasonable too -- plus, there is still room for discount!

The hardware store is truly a shoppers' paradise!!!! :D

This is our favorite hardware store located in Damansara Uptown. The owners are really a bunch of helpful people, always ready to recommend you what they think would best meet your needs. We spent about an hour there yesterday browsing through everything. They really DO HAVE everything we needed -- except for this coackroach house/cockroach catcher which I've been hunting for for the longest time :( It seems like very few places are carrying it now, as compared to a few years ago. Could it be that the chemical they use in it is harmful to health? Or could it be that the Klang Valley has less roaches now -- so fewer retailers are importing it from China?

Wedding Invitations

FINALLY!!! Our invitation cards are ready. Its taken us 2 months from design phase to production and delivery -- In fact, we missed our targeted dead line by a week because we returned the first batch of prints. Its truly been one of the more challenging wedding prep items thus far.

That being said, the delay and wait have definitely been outweighed by the joy of seeing the end product. The cards have turned out exactly the way we envisioned it to be. For some, it might be an overkill. HAHA. But we absolutely LOVE it and can't wait to send it out.

This is Acai, the creative brains behind our invitations.

Here is what it is like at our printers' :) 700 cards in the making...

^ This is the final stage of production where you will see about 6 girls gluing and folding the cards.

Now... writing all the names and distribution is the next headache!!! :P I brought out my jelly-pens to help keep me happy throughout this tedious process...

Our very first spring clean!

Renovation works is still work in progress. Despite being a really small job, its been taking forever to complete. Four weeks has passed by us since we started, and by the looks of it, we need another one more week before we can see 'daylight'-- that's also if we are lucky. The thing about renovation and contractors (and ID's, all the same) is the need to breath down their neck everyday, even if you didn't want to. Missing even one inspection might cause another weeks' delay because by the time you find out the mistake, they'll need to reschedule their workers and redo everything again. Not good at all.

Ok. Enough ranting already.

^ IRWIN AT WORK...

Irwin and I started our very first spring cleaning activity this past weekend despite the delay. I managed to convince him to use a high-powered water jet to 'jet' down all the THICK dust and debris from the balconies surrounding our condo. HEE HEE! It was so therapeutic being able to see the before-and-after effects of our hard work!!! Black-suit-covered railings turned white instantly. We also gave all the walls a good dust down with a feather duster. I tell ya... that five Ringgit thing is an amazing piece of invention :P It takes down all the fine dust particles from every nook and cranny -- you don't even have to exert much strength. Unbelievable!

^ THE AMAZING HIGH-POWERED WATER JET!

Lastly, we also decided to start the 'uphill' task of assembling all our IKEA furniture. It was quite fun :) In fact, it was just as therapeutic as jetting down the balconies! HAHA! We're still working on assembling them this week... so far, we've only managed to get half of every thing we've bought done.

In all honestly, we are really quite exhausted already. Seven more weeks and counting... Keep us in your prayers :)

"What color do you want?"

Remember that game we used to play as kids using a piece of paper folded up into 4? :D

Curtain shopping was somewhat similar in nature to that game -- only that it took longer than we thought it would. What we thought would be a 2-hour affair turned out to be five instead, leaving my poor baby in THIS state! .... *oops :P

But I was no better either after spending 3 hours looking at what seemed like a MILLION types of fabric and :-

1. Deciding on the Look-and-Feel & color scheme for each room
2. Matching fabric and borders for each selected scheme
3. Deciding on the type of curtain tracks/rods to be used
4. ... plus a million other variables.

Anyhow, our account person Pamela from Baagus Curtain was really helpful and PATIENT! She met me early in the morning at the condo to take measurements of the whole place, as well as brainstorm some ideas with me before heading back to her HQ in Kepong for fabric selection. I guess it will be all well worth it when I finally get to see them hung up in the condo in about 4 weeks' time.

Question #7. When it comes to household chores, Irwin is anytime better than Vanessa when it comes to...?

Once upon a time, I looked forward to redeeming Raoul vouchers using my HSBC reward points. I even redeemed an eye massager once! But of course, redeeming it was just as good as using it. I hardly ever used it twice. I don't even know where it is today.

These days, whenever I flip through reward catalogs, I scan the home essentials section meticulously -- and then find myself in a dilemma for weeks about whether it would be a smarter choice to get the Corningware set or the hot water airpot. But after much discussion with my mama, I finally settled for the Tefal Superglide Steam Iron and the Panasonic Vacuum Cleaner. MUAHAHA!

I had only submitted my redemption form to HSBC not more than 5 working days ago, but I was pleasantly surprised to find these 2 items waiting for me when I got home last night. Oh! The joy of being able to test out my veryyyy ownnnnn FIRST vacuum cleaner and iron!!! (plus the fact that it was redeemed. I'm a sucker for steals.) It was... a nice (10-minute) experience. Can't wait for Irwin to test out the iron! ;) I can't iron for nuts.

My New Addiction to Photobook

I've been hearing a lot about Photobook. Seen quite a number of Photobooks -- but never had a chance to get down to compiling one for ourselves, although its been one of the many things on my To-Do list for a couple of years now!

So with about a hundred over photos filtered out from both our pre-wedding photography shoots now, I thought it would be the perfect kick-start for our very First Photobook! But of course procrastination always takes the better of me. I just realized I only find the urgency to do something if I am jolted out of my sleep at 3am and making a mental note to get it done by such and such a dead line.

So that got me going :P I recently surfed onto www.photobook.com.my, downloaded the software and started compiling our pre-wedding photos!!! Its pretty straight forward; nothing near rocket science, and its now become my new addiction -- although I must say, a rather pricey addiction if I continue at it. I find myself Photobook-ing at any spare time I can find... and even late into the night :D Mind you, I am that sort of person who sleeps before midnight... but Photobook keeps me awake!

Labour-Day Weekend

Ever since attending the last HomeDec, we've been anxiously waiting for the next one -- looking forward to the time when we can actually snag all the good deals instead of just scouting around and doing research. Well, at least that was how I was feeling lah. HAHA! I won't speak on behalf of Irwin... because if you were to catch us on one of our regular coffee breaks during the fair, you'd find him updating our budget spreadsheet!!! HEE HEE!!!

He had to make do with tabulating the updates on a piece of serviette while referring to our online budget spreadsheet on Google Docs. SEE! Another good reason to get the iPhone! :P

... Then you'd find me sipping a cup of coffee with my face buried in a stack of brochures -- looking out of STEALS!!!!!!!!!!

One of my favorite items purchased at HomeDec is my Philips artificial intelligence rice cooker!!!!!! I LOVE IT!!! Irwin's gonna be eating rice 24/7 when we get married. Just rice. HEHEE!

Blast from the Past

Rummaging through old photos is a really good form of therapy. It helps relive precious moments from the past and amazingly jogs one's memory of stories/incidences relating to that particular photo.

For me, it brought a perpetual silly grin to my face and I couldn't stop giggling for most part of the night spent digging through our baby and childhood photos. Our video editor has limited us to only about 30 odd photos to include into one of our video montages, but as we looked through all our albums, it was hard to filter out just the 'good' ones. Up to date, we have scanned like 100 photos -- thus requiring ANOTHER round of filtering before submitting our final 30.

As we continue our wedding preparation journey -- counting down the last 100 days; preparations can get a little bit intense at times... there are days when we find ourselves at each others' necks :P ... So there!!! We found a good form of therapy! :)