DIY Studded Converse

Boo-yah! My Converse is now blinged with studs!

I love it! It wasn't too hard to do. I did it while sitting in the passenger seat on the way to wave rock!

Now, what to do with all the left over studs?

Fancy Pot

Terracotta pots are always the cheapest pots, but ohhhh so boring. It's just so blah! So I decided to paint one of my pots.

Here are some examples that left me drooling!

{Source: Marry This }

{ Source: The Proper Pinwheel }

{ Source: Dellie }

I really love the pastel colors! Cheery and bright.

Unfortunately, I only have a red spray can and gold acrylic paint. Even then, there doesn't seem to be much in the spray can, so gold it shall be. 

There's not much contrast between the gold and the orange terracotta. I was a little sad that it didn't have that pop of color. Hmmm... maybe I'll update the pot later on with better colors, so in the mean time...Ta-dah!

white t-shirt make-over

I have this white cotton t-shirt from Uniqlo. It was cheap, something like $5 bucks! Anyway, I bought it and haven't worn it since. It's a little too baggy, a little plain and pretty much non-flattering. It's an okay shirt to lounge about at home or to sleep in. But no way was I gonna wear this out. I had some sequinned fabric from a skirt that I hemmed, so I decided to add some jazz to lacklustre t-shirt.

I used a fitted top as a template and cut around it. I also trimmed the sleeves as they were a little long.

And here was Panya eyeing me from the hall way. She just woke up! And wanted a snack!

So here is my jazzed up top! It's way better than before. More fitted and a little bit more interesting than a blah baggy t-shirt! 

Repetitive annoyance at work

Does somebody’s repetitive annoying behavior grate your nerves? It’s funny how a simple, innocent act of putting your cup down can annoy the hell out of someone. But if that person BANGS his cup down after every sip, really, how can you not get annoyed? BANG…. BANG… BANG

Why? Are you trying to reinforce your existence?Bang = Hi, I’m still here, not going anywhere!

Do you have some motor skill deficiency? You can’t control pressure, grip, speed? But you play cricket rite right? Oh! I get it. You’re too strong is that what you are trying to get at?

Your sense of weight a bit wonky? A cup weights, oh I don’t know, a couple of grams, a few hundred grams? Definitely not the five thousand grams by the way you are banging your cup on the table

Orchids

Oh! Bought these orchids at Ikea. It was for mothers day but I decided to keep them for myself!
Aren't they pretty?
I want to start a hobby cultivating orchids!
But maybe I should make sure they don't die before I decide to go buy more orchids!

Finally!

Panya is in her pet bed!
I removed the legs ages ago because when panya jumps out, the whole thing would scoot away from her and freak her out.
But even then, she hated it. We would put her in and out she jumps immediately. Booo.
I even contemplated turning the pet bed into a planter. Really.  The pet bed was just collecting dust in the corner.
But hey! She is in it! Without us forcing her into it!

Laundry reno

Our laundry was in serious need of an overhaul! It had pink walls, and pink linoleum flooring. Panya's kitty litter and food were in the laundry too and it's annoying having little bits of kitty litter and food get stuck under the linoleum.

Here is a pic of our laundry with the linoleum flooring ripped out. Should have taken a pic of the old ugly pink linoleum flooring. But anyway, here's the pink walls and pink tiles.

We had some left over white paint, so that's the wall color. And we also had some left over tile paint, so that's the tile color. I didn't want to re-tile the edging, and besides, by the time the cupboard, laundry cupboard and washing machine go in, there's really not much visible tiles. And painting was easier. :)

Ahhh.. now it looks a little bit better.

Then the hard work begins, tiling. We opted for large porcelain tiles. We also bought a tile cutter, as we had to cut  around the drain and all that.

Oh it was hell. 

Here are all the tiles we broke trying to cut through the thick porcelain.

 Hey, that's how the pink linoleum flooring looked.

 

In the end, we ended up hand sawing the tiles. It was pure hell.The screeching noise, the sawing that took off a millimeter every 5 minutes. We sure were regretting using thick porcelain tiles.  We were too cheap to go rent a wet tile cutter. So a couple of hours we spent trying to sawing off a 10 x 10 cm square. 

The next day, our neighbour asked what that noise was all about.  erm..... 

But it was allllll worth it when your laundry turns out like this! complete with little mosaics for edging. 

 

Pretty, no?

Panya  checking out here new food/litter area. Yay! Grouted!

We put in an Ikea cupboard for some storage space, and we can say that everyone, including Panya, approves of this laundry! Not bad, hey? 

Here I am

OMG, where have i been? I have been slacking off. But you know how laziness is. Once you start, it's hard to pull yourself out of it. My laziness started with a 2 week holiday to Malaysia, both East and West, Kota Kinabalu and Sipadan and KL.  

Sipadan was the highlight of the trip. We stayed at Mabul Water Bungalows and it was simply stunning. Our bungalow was on stilts above the water. We had a resident sting ray swimming in front of our bungalow. That made me smile.  :) 

Our Water Bungalow

 Every day we had 3-4 dives. Turtles, sharks, barracudas, bumphead parrot fish etc.

1Q84

So I finished reading Murakami’s 1Q84.

And now my co-worker is also reading, on her iphone at work! She just started and she is already on book 3.

The one thing that annoys me about Murakami’s books are that he never ties up the loose ends. What’s the point of reading a book, getting to the end and going, “Is that it?”, very annoying. And for the whole duration of this book I was hoping, please let it not be like Sputnik Sweetheart, please!

I have a story to tell about Sputnik Sweetheart. I read it twice. As in, the second time I read it, I had no idea I had already read it. Everything about the book seemed new to me, up until past the middle of the book, when one scene of the book hit me in the face, and I realized, I know the ending. I hated the ending. I hated the book so much that after reading it the first time, my mind obliterated its existence in my head.

Anyway, back to IQ84. Thank god it wasn’t like that… in a way, only one element gets resolved, everything else is just… well, you just accept it. After all this is Murakami and he does this metaphysical, blurring the edges of reality kinda books. Everything starts off normal and slowly, bit by bit, he introduces snippets of fantasy, in a way that is kinda acceptable to the reader, and suddenly the reader is sucked into a new world and the reader has got to just accept this new reality. As with most of Murakami’s books, the reader is left to figure out the loose ends, I guess that’s Murakami’s ways of forcing the reader to accept the reality without question, just like how we accept this reality that we are living in right now. It just is. No one is going to help you explain it, you do the deductions and come to your own conclusions. Coz, that’s what the main characters have to do, and so will you, as the reader.

But it is a good book. The elements of the unknown hold the reader captive. Just like how a cat is drawn to a dark tunnel (as says Murakami in the book, I like that analogy).

I wanna see this be made into a movie!

light up!

While on our way to spotlight, we passed by Beacon lighting.

I implored Adam to stop by. He hates side trips; he thinks we'll just spend more money stopping by every shop.

But how can i pass up this light that was on SALE! Well, neither could Adam!

To be happy

I have never been a really thankful person. By nature, I am a pessimist; why set yourself up for disappointment when you can avoid that by just assuming the worse outcome. By defining yourself as a pessimist, you go about life not really being thankful of anything, not the rainbow after the rain, not the salty sea breeze on a hot summers day, you get what I mean?

Then I read these articles written by thankful happy people, about how a red ladybug on a vibrant green leaf cheers them up, how the clouds in the sky reminds them of fairy floss. And then I go wow. I wanna be happy with little things too, I am a little too sad every day.

So everyday, I am going to make a note of one thing that makes me smile. I have a feeling it’s gonna be Panya almost all the time, or my weird wacky weirdo for a husband.

Ikea Hack!

From the above. (image from fastcompany.com)

This light below, Adam hacked!



It was on sale from Ikea for something crazy like 6 dollars, down from something insane like 60 bucks!

It’s almost a year since we got Panya. Look at how much she has grown!


How did we come across Panya? Well, I always had cats when I was growing up! At one time, in primary school, I had five cats! One mother cat and 4 kittens. Our family kept them all. Anyway, around this time last year, I was flipping through the Quokka, a classified Ads paper, and saw an Ad for RSPCA. There was this cute orange (I love orange cats) kitten peering out from the paper with big beady eyes. His name was Ninja! Perfect. I love cats, orange cats. We love Japan and Adam wants to be a ninja! It was a sign.


We drove to RSPCA, which was faaar. We got there and looked around for that orange kitten. No, can’t see any orange kittens. We asked the staff about Ninja, but alas! He was just adopted! Nooooooooo…. But that’s alright, I am sure he has a good home and, in his place, another kitten will have a good home. We looked around this huge play area filled with kittens. I saw a semi-long fur kitten called Matt that I liked but Adam wasn’t too impress. He left and wondered around the other cages. Adam came back a short while and told me he found the one! At the back, there was an enclosure with 3 black kittens and one “Bengal” looking kitten. Ohhhh, Adam and I have been looking at Bengal kittens - a sleek mini wild cat in our house-how cool would that be, but at $600-800 they were expensive! And I rather rescue an abandon kitten. So this kitten in the cage was brown and had a marble coat – three strips down the back adidas style and a circle on her tummy, just like a marble Bengal! SO CUTE! I went in and played with her. She batted my feet with her tiny paws! Yes! We chose her!


She was such a cute itsy bitsy kitten with big curious eyes and huge ears. Now she is HUGE with an even HUGHER gut – and that circle on her tummy just emphasizes her gut. She is still playful! She still pounces at you from behind the door or shower curtain. And she has developed a habit of jumping into sinks and drinking water out of the faucet. Cute!


We just changed her dry food from kitten to adult. My baby has grown up too quick! And the size of those dry adult food is big! I hope she doesn’t choke on it. Anyway, Panya is throwing a hissy fit. She doesn’t like her adult dry food. And she cries and rolls around on the floor waiting for kitten food when there is a mountain of adult food in her bowl. I hope she loses weight that way!