doggies @ reservoir

brought doggies out to the reservoir last weekend. its kinda once in a blue moon thing for me to do. tyre's occasionally bugging me to bring them out to the reservoir especially in the mornings but i pretty dread bringing them out to crowded places or outside cuz i become the ultimate control freak and it tires me out trying to keep them totally in control, wihich is also impossible.

anyway, good thing i did it cuz they were so happy prancing ard and exploring the new environment. so much so that snowy was sooo tired that she merely plopped down on the grass and refused to walk/run anymore. here are some pictures of my darlings...

managed to catch them smiling! look at the curl of snowy's tongue! :D

my three darlings posing for the picture. snowy was actually sitting with yuki but she jumped down and plopped onto the grass. i was momentarily worried/freaking out cuz she's acting a bit wonky but i guessed that's cuz she's tired

them on their way home. they are still smiling. :D

busy bug

Its been more than a month since my last post. Been busy with some serious data entry work to meet some deadlines, did some travelling to bangkok and korea, then preparing for bro's wedding end of Nov. And right after wedding, been busy clearing up backlog @ work and then crafting goodies for Ms G's upcoming fair again in Dec. Since i will be away from tomorrow onwards till end of the year, i had better craft more in case there are orders for my goodies, which are great as xmas gifts (yeah... i am 'advertising' my own products here). Handmade gifts will be a good change from those store bought ones - tho I will be giving store bought ones to my friends (i just finished wrapping the gifts! And realised i left out some... hope to find some time to buy before flying off tomorrow)

First to London, then to Paris with usual travel girl mates and then to Ipoh/Pangkor/KL with family. A bit sad cuz I wun be spending xmas eve in Singapore with the usual gang with the gift exchanges. Its has been a yearly ritual for as long as i can remember and i cant join in this time :(.

I really enjoied last year's gift exchange and was looking forward to it again this year but guess its not possible.

Anyway, if you are having a party with no idea for organising gift exchanges party - try this for a change. We call it the "Booby Gift Exchange". Its just like recycling - Bring a gift which you have recieved before but didnt like it and havent used it before. The idea was - what u dont like may be what the other like. Few of the memorable booby gifts last year were the glass trinket box (which i got in the end :( ) , the mouse pad, the comp speaker and an umbrella. The umbrella was actually one of the most useful booby gift.

On a seperate topic, Do look out for some of my new handmade goodies at the shoppe. Had wanted to take pictures of those but no time to do it today and i have already passed it to Ms G to post online. There are bendy pouches, large metal clasp pouches, small metal clasp purses and iphone pouches.

So, here's MERRY X'MAS in advance!!!

New New New!

Here's the prototype of the new purse! Its nicely-sized to hold in the hands, measuring approximately 12cm by 10cm. Been thinking of doing up something like that for a very long time but didnt know how to do the 'accordian-like' compartments.



I think, this is another useful, multi-tasker creation. The compartments allow you to categorise the cards. I am thinking - 2 slots for cards, 1 slot for dollar notes (have to fold it into half before slotting in). And the zipper compartment allows for coins.

Wanted to do a few for the shoppe and for the upcoming fair but I cant find the correctly sized zippers yet. I wanted the color of the zippers to match the purse but i could onli find black, navy blue and white so far. Anyway, stay tuned for these if you are interested.

Seperately - i do miss crafting. Have not been indulging in my daily dosage of crafting for these 2 weks, after the latest batch of carpark/cheque book coupon holders. Been busy with the house, doing some travelling and bro's upcoming wedding by month end. Hope to catch up on crafting when i am back from Korea next week! :D

Carpark Coupon/Cheque book holders

Made these about 2 weeks back and wanted to post them as soon as its done before listing in the shoppe. But dad brought my camera along for his holidays so i had to wait till he's back with it.

So, he's back now and here are the pictures. They have already been listed in the shoppe and some have been sold since then. :D

I have this little game i 'play' with tyre, my younger brother and mummy. Whenever my crafts are done, i will show it to them and ask them to arrange in accordance to their preference. And then we will 'discuss' the rankings. Tyre will usually rank the floral ones last, while mummy will rank those higher. Ha ha ha. I am quite bo liao :P

cooking workshop by 8days

the hazy weather in singapore's really bad, reaching over 100 pts yesterday evening. that explains the fogginess. its really gloomy in the normally bright and sunny island. despite the gloom, the weather's still hot hot hot. and its so easy to fall sick in this lousy weather.

it started my bro, then audrey, and me. i was down with fever early this week and am still plague by the intense headache cum giddiness for the past 3 days. normally 1 pandaol will do the trick but this time round, it doesnt :*(. kk said the weather's giving her bad headache too. @ least i feel better after hearing that knowing that i am not alone.

my head's giving out the 'wong wong wong' feeling as i type. i shld head home to rest well before my bangkok trip tomorrow. hoping that all the headaches & giddiness will go away by tonite - i dun wan it to follow me to bangkok! :(

back to the main topic of this post :

last weekend, we went to a cooking workshop organised by 8days, held @ marriott hotel where they will show us how to prepare easy desserts for parties @ home. cukoo haw signed up for it expecting a hands-on session only to be dissappointed for it is a sit down and watch from afar. hot mama hui-ee joined us too. She's looking really pretty for a mama-to-be with a pretty glow - pregannt and pretty ! - that's what i will be too when its my time :P

the 2-3 hour session would have been very boring if not for the entertaining host - michelle cheong and my excellent companions haw & huiee. and we were photographed by the event photographer! and many others were too. its pretend pretend cuz the photographer had to ask us to put up the 'twist' sign, smile and then put some advertisers products in front of us casually and look like we enjoied ourselves.

ask me if i would go for another such events again? hmm.. with the right company, why not , even tho its pretty lame :P

Ms G key pouch

was happy to see Ms G using one of my key pouch and had to take a picture of it. so pretty!!

bendy bendy again

did more bendys for the shoppe. get them if any catches your fancy.

wish i had more time so that i could craft more and newer products. I have one prototype done already.. will update soon.

Ten.Ten.Ten - Part 2

Here are un-professional pictures which i took for the day. It takes too long for the professional wedding photographers & videographers to do their editing, plus taking pictures helped to keep me occupied - so here's mine! :D

here's the happily married couple! pretty audrey & my brother (who lost quite a bit of weight for the wedding) :D

Sights spotted ard the venue

Food food food. Catered food for the day - not that bad.

Snapshots of the guests for the day , made up mostly of my bro & audrey's frens.

Kids galore! All girls and only 1 boy.

sold sold sold!

Sold Sold Sold! All these sold (and many others not pictured here, including 9 clutch purses) during Ms G's fair @ Thomson Plaza last week. Thanks to all those who have bought my crafts! Thank you thank you!

So how did i get to know Ms G and how did my crafts end up @ her fair? Briefly - earlier this year, i chanced upon her fair @ thomson plaza. It was hard to ignore her shop as its really prettily displayed with lots of goodies (very japanese zakka), I remembered spending a long time at her shop looking from top to bottom to look for good bargains and I remembered spending quite a lot of $$$. And it was not enuff to just buy @ her fair, i even bought some from her online store - which was delivered personally to my place. When she came by to drop off my purchases, i gave her one of my craft items, the bendy pouch. On that same day ( i think...), she dropped me an sms asking if i wanted to sell my craft items at her fair and the rest is history...

Yay! :D Happy to sell my crafts, Happy to know that pple are buying & using them. Happy that the money i get from my crafts goes to buying more pretty fabrics for more crafts.. and the cycle goes on and on.

Ten.Ten.Ten - Part 1

10.10.10 - a once in a century date. In singapore, a total of 830 couples exchanged marriage vows, out of which, my brother's one of them! :D He had his solemnization @ One-degree Fifteen Marina Club @ Sentosa Cove. A pretty place to get married in front of the sea, yatches and sun with a party of about 40pax.

Yeah, my brother of 34yrs finally got married to audrey after more than 7 years ( i think it 7 years). Its the first xi shi of the family. Dad must have beeen the most excited of the lot.

Helped to do up wedding favors for the day. Audrey came up with the contents while i helped with the cutting and packing. She chose a "Poker" theme with poker cards & chips in a black/red/white color scheme.

The wedding favor is includes a bottle of hard candy with "hearts" and "thank you", a stick of blowingi bubbles and ice cube thingy which lights up. All packed into a pretty white satin drawstring pouch.

Audrey ordered these handmade candies from a shop @ United Square. It comes in a pretty sized glass bottle and costs only $3.50. Pretty good priced, i think. We had to stick on our own thematic labels.

And we did up matching gift tags to match.

Will post pictures of the solemnization day itself later...

Russian Dolls Bendys

Kawaii russian dolls! :D Am using the red one for my camera - have been using my bulky camera without any pouch and its full of scratches. Didnt want to use the camera pouch that came with the camera's is heavy and boring in black. Fits perfectly! :D

Shiro comes to play

Shiro came over to my place for the night, together with her owner, cheryl of course. Such a sweet doggy who sticks to cheryl the whole night and rolls over @ a bang. Pity yuki & snowy wouldnt mix/play with shiro. Must be the territorial instincts kicking in - my doggies prob dun like shiro to intrude /vie for our attention.

Got shiro to pose the round pouch , 'fresh out of the oven'.

A funny trumatic incident happened to Shiro the next morning - Mum brought Shiro down to the garden in the morning to 'play'/shit/pee. Since Shiro had no lease, she couldnt bring her out together with my doggies for their daily walk and so left Shiro in the garden. Dad came down shortly and saw this strange unfamiliar dog in the garden. He tot shiro was an intruder and tried to chase her out of the house. Poor shiro - she must have been traumatised and refused to leave the house despite all the chasing. Lucky mummy came back in time to 'save' shiro and it all ends well. Shiro went back and stayed by cheryl side for the rest of the time she was @ my place. Must have been scared silly. :P

Making disposable chopsticks

Ms G told me during our taipei trip that disposable chopsticks arent that hygenic and clean after all. I didnt really understand it till i seen this clip. Its a pretty long clip but rather interesting. Take some time to finish watching it if you are interested.

Clutch Purse Spotted!

Spotted!


Kay carrying the "handmade by yiwan" clutch purse last friday! I was so surprised and happy to see that she's still using it! After all, I gave it to her like about 3 yrs ago!?!? And its still kept in good condition. It was one of the first batch of clutch purses which i did back then when i first started crafting. And it was like seeing an old friend again!


This vintage looking newsprint clutch purse was machine quilted. Kay added her own disney pushpins to add some character to it. There's this stain mark next to the word "Tigger", which she JUST stained it during dinner that night ! :(

And the interior. According to her, she dislike the fabrics used for the interior, including the rick racs. At that time when i crafted it, i tot it matched pretty well, but now, on hindsight, i must agree with her unwillingly that it is rather mis-matched. But still pretty nevertheless cuz its lovingly handmade by ME!! :D

And, I think this beats any branded pLada, or LB wallet! :D

La Villa

Had saturday lunch with the usual gang last weekend - sort of a belated birthday thingy for both me and tyre. we love PS Cafe @ dempsey for the laid back atmosphere and greenery but wanted a change and try out something new so Lak suggested La Villa, which was also V's old primary school. Its located along River Valley Road, next to ERC institute.

The ambience was quite good. Love the setting and that they serve warm bread with vinger & olive oil. Yumz..

The main course was at best, average. The burger was flat and dry with very thin patty, the gnocchi (Lak's all-time fave food) had a too mushy texture and my handmade fettucini had more of a chinese stir fry noodle taste to it. The seafood pasta was the best among the average. On top of the average food, the service was very average and the place was understaffed - maybe that explains the lack of smile on their faces and words.

Well, @ least there's free parking but you have to ask for the complimentary ticket yourself. They do not offer it to you upfront.

iphone pouch

made these quite some time back - fits an iphone perfectly. well, something different from the usual silicon casing, sock-like casing or drawstring type of pouch.

it may not be the most practical one to use but at least its special and different. and if u do not wish to use it as iphone pouch, it can double up as a card holder again! :D or maybe fits one lipstick, comb and mascara nicely.

Why daughters are better?

2 person having a chat on a talkshow about kids. Person A has 2 sons and Person B has 3 daughters. So Person A was very proud and arrogant and boosted about how good it is to have sons. But Person B quickly reacted ...

你知道吗?

儿子是路人
媳妇是敌人

女儿是亲人
女婿是佣人

我家有三个亲人, 三个佣人
你家有两个路人, 两个敌人!

哈哈哈哈哈

Senseless Fun

Was @ the office yesterday feeling bored. Saw a spool of strings and stack of colorful post-stick. What to do with it? Hmm..

Yay! Make it into a string of those triangular hanging thingy (dunno wat to call them).

Then, hang it up and hold a get together for Ms Labbit & Ms Red :D

(duh!)

Spotted

Spotted Mr Star Tortise in my garden. He has been living there for many many years already - wandering around the garden, feeing on plants and vegetables which we feed him with from time to time. He used to have another tortise fren but he disappeared somehow and now he's left alone. Once, we even 'caught' him at the far corner in our study room - it baffles us - how he could get there without being spotted.

Lately, dad did a little 're-landscaping' of the garden and planted new greens. If i am not wrong, these new greens are suppose to repel mosquitos, according to the description i saw at the nursery. Looks like Mr Star Tortise found them and finds it delicious. Yummz.

So yummy that he continues to chew on the the last piece of greens even after we picked him up.

Tie me up!

Lately, weather in singapore's really too hot and too humid (but then again, it has always been hot) . Anyway, I pretty much dread to step out of my nice cool room/office and am really thankful that the air con has been invented. Without it, i think i will be practically damp all day long - damp from pespiration. Ewww.


Anyway, enough talk about mundane stuffs as boring weather. "Inspired" by the hot weather and bored from crafting pouches, I decided to make some scrunchies to accesorize the hair! And since good things usually come in pairs, i made them in sets of twos.

KK: E1, the pictures u post are too small, cannot see
E1: isit? but its nice when its all small and many.
KK: but cannot see?
E1: Isit?

ok ok .. kk .. i get the hint. So, here are the closer-up pictures. Since it comes in matched pairs, i have bundled them up together already! Pretty enough to use on its on or together. :D (the one on the left matches the one on the right)

key pouches - new design

crafted these sometime back but only gotten around to posting them today. i digress abit first - I should be updating my blog with more of my crafts more often but i get lazy at the thought of having to take pictures and then loading them online.

now, back to key pouches. the reason for these key pouches cuz i think there's not enough variety out there. I have only seen plain leather key pouches in manly brown, black colors or cheap transparent plastic ones. have not seen much or any fabric/handmade key pouches till date except in craft books. although i dont use one, i tot there may be a demand for pretty handmade key pouches. here's my 2 prototypes - one with bias tape for keys & a pocket for cards (that the pinky one) and another just for keys only and smaller in size.

As usual, asked my family & frens to vote for the prettier size/format and the pink one came out tops. So, I will make key pouches using this style! :D Please do buy one or two or many from the shoppe or @ Ms G's upcoming fair @ Thomson Plaza! :D

Highlights of Taiwan trip!

I went to Taiwan again! Yes, its my second trip to the same country again and it may seem a bit excessive. But its with different company and agenda this time - went with Ms G to indulge in handicraft, fabrics, crafting and zakka related things.

So, what's the most memorable part of my taiwan trip this time? It has to be "Sew Easy", The Young Hotel and Toilet Food. All in that order.

(1) SEW EASY
"Sew Easy" that's the place where we went to 'bai4 shi1 xue2 yi4' aka learn crafting from a very experienced teacher Ms Yeats. We wouldnt be there if not for Ms G who actually chanced upon a magazine featuring this place many years back. She then filed the pages, waiting for the time to come when she can finally pay 'pilgrammage' to the place - and the time has come after many years! Sew Easy is located in Hsinchu, which is about 40 minutes bullet train ride away from Taipei. Briefly - Sew Easy has 2 shops and we visited both shops and we spent 2 days making our own "Made in Taipei" bags.

Here's the first shop we went to. Its also the one which was featured on the magazine. Lucky we had the address for its located out of no where and there's no way we would have gotten there/ chancing upon it by wandering around. Loved crafting here - the students here were very warm and friendly and chatting away like old friends and made us feel very welcomed.

And here's the second shop. The second shop has more interesting stuffs on display but more 'cold'.

And proudly presented our prized handmade in taiwan bags! Ms G's in light color,mine's in dark. and Teacher Ms Yeats standing in between us in the picture! :D We had all those patchwork pieces individually sewn onto the fabric which took us a long timeeee. The opening for this bag works somewhat like that of metal clasp purse except there's no 'knob' on top to secure it. Had wanted to buy a few more of these frames back to craft but due to the need for a very heavy duty sewing machine in order to craft this, i didnt. Super pretty and one and only! :D Beats having branded bag... :P at least for now la.

THE YOUNG HOTEL
It sure looked pretty decent on the website. But turned out pretty dodgy. I sense it was weird (not in the supernatural sense) when we were checking in - another couple came for a 3 hour stay and it was only afternoon then!?!?!? And the receptionist was pretty discreet in giving them the keys. Anyway, then when we went up to the room, it was weird to see all the doors to the empty rooms opened except ours. Anyway, we still went ahead to stay there for the night cuz its paid for and there's lack of alternative accomodation. The most sleazy of it all was when we were at the lift landing waiting for the lift, we hear noises from one of the rooms and when a guy stepped out of the lift, he gave us a head to toe lookover.. .ewwww.. anyway , all ends well & lucky thing we only stayed for a night.

TOILET FOOD
I remember watching news some time back and they introduced this novetly-styled eatery in Taipei, near XiMenTing. Ms G reminded me of it and suggested going there for dinner since we were around the area. Well, rather than to eat the same food which i do on every trip, why not try something different. On hindsight, wrong choice! Its the first time in many many years that i left my food almost untouched!! Food served in toilet bowls, urinal, sinks, bath tubs CANNOT be good! Do not be fooled by our seemingly happy faces. We are actually suffering inside. I highly reccommend that you avoid this place at all costs! ahhaha learn from our mistake :P

Well, this summarises my latest trip! And since i came back, i have been busy crafting again! See my latest batch of bendys @ the shoppe! Comes with pretty lace this time!

New bendy designs

Same shape, different style. Used to do then in a single piece of design/fabric for the shoppe but guessed pple must be tired of seeing the same style always. So, this time, will do up the bendys in matchy fabrics complete with laces for a nice feminine touch! Hope i can rush out some in time for Ms G's fair starting this friday @ liang court.

I like "The Young Victoria"

Always have a soft spot for those movies of kings & queens, duke and duchess type of era. So borrowed this movie "The Young Victoria" to watch last nite and i love love love it! Its a relatively easy plot to follow and based roughly on the life of Queen Victoria - queen of great britian , the longest reigning britsh monarch. A synopsis - "A dramatization of the turbulent first years of Queen Victoria's rule and her enduring romance with prince albert".

Catch it if you like such shows too. I also like "The Other Bolyen Girl" , "The Duchess" and the likes of these type of shows.

Boosting readership!

This post will boost readership @ my blog! I think WE believe so. We being me, kay and lak. Hahaha. A couple of weeks back, we were invited to kay's place for dinner - sort of a pre-kay's birthday celebration dinner where she cooked for us again :D

As usual, after dinner, we got around to doing our own stuffs - me preparing template for sewing my own dress, lak surfing the net and kay hanging ard. Lak was surfing for those blogshops featuring pretty girls modelling their own clothes. Anyway, then somehow then we talked about my blog and how to boost readership @ my blog... and we concluded cuz there's no interesting pictures and i am quite reluctant to post my face... dun wanna scare readers away la. but very often, THE blogger's face shd be in it in order for readers to relate to her...

Anyway, we got excited when lak showed us some of her frequently visited blogs featuring pretty girls with exciting life of shopping, drinks, cool crowd etc. And we decided to do the same! We then started taking pictures of ourselves in 'cool' poses, using whatever props we can equip ourselves with.The fun lasted about 2 hours and the other halves all thought we were mad with all the posing and weird props - lucky they were keeping themselves occupied with games while tyre was sleeping in his blue room as usual :D

Here goes! Pictures to boost readership! Enjoy!

This is the first set of pictures which kay & lak took ... sort of like a warming up thing.

Then we started getting excited . I edited this picture a bit and our skins turned out yellowish. Dunno how to re-do the edits so here's it

we saw this pose on one of the blogs and decided to recreate it. one of us deliberately created a puffy hair look just so its not so normal.

Then we decided to play around with ribbons and flowers. We have seen pple used ribbons as hair accesories so we tried it out too. Not bad i think.

I think this is cute with us labelling ourselves. Tho, i do think its meant more to mock ourselves :P .. kay = elegant? me = pretty? lak = sassy? errrr.... *awkard silence*.. well lak can be quite sassy at times tho.

That about concludes our photosession. We tried to relived it again for the next two weeks but somehow, good things happen when its unplanned. When u try to plan for it, it never seemed to happen.

Hope to see a huge spike in readership! :PPP