Finally!

Today is the day of our second appointment with HDB. Was really quick and painless. just sign a few times on some papers and we are done! We are now the OWNERS of the flat! Yay!!!!! No more feeling like partial owners...

We have chosen all the tiles for the home and also bought a kitchen sink, bathroom sinks and also the toilet bowls. Quite a bit done in a day, how tiring after all of that! I do hope that the tiles we chose will look nice once laid.I do not want to step into my flat and start regretting our choices. Hahahahaha!
The actual day of renovation will start this coming Wednesday, will 3 days of non stop hacking and noise. I am so glad I am not my neighbour! Can't wait!

Hoarder's Therapy

I have succumbed to the cleanliness freak in me and cleared a whole lot of stuff in my room. I threw away plenty of stuffed toys and gave up a few for adoption to Nick. Strangely, it didn't hurt and all! Ha, I thought I wouldn't be able to do it, but I did it, and with great gusto I must add! I even found some stuffing for my ring pillow in one of the toys...

I have been trying to recycle paper since I was in secondary school. I hate throwing away exercise books that still had some pages unused. What I would do is, I would tear those pages out of the exercise books and keep them for rough use later. Boy, I have plenty of those papers in my room. So, when I cleared up some work stuff last night, I did the brave thing of not doing that! I just threw away paper that I know I can recycle. No mean feat for a hoarder I tell you that...

Into the garbage bag went the bridal mags I bought and some home design ones as well. I have no need of them now! I tore out the pages I found useful and chuck the rest. Oh and also some toiletries. Especially those samples that beauty counters love giving out.. That was pretty painless too. I cleared out some of my books some time ago, I have yet to make the trip down to Salvation Army to give it to them. They are still in good condition, most of my books are, unless they are really old or if that book has been lent to someone else. I do take care of my books a lot, if only I have the time (more like if I am not too lazy) I would have my books wrapped up!

Tonight will be another round of clearing. This time, It would be my cosmetics (gasp!) my clothes (sigh!) shoes (argh!) and my bags (yikes!) not expecting a whole lot of stuff to be thrown away since I do clear those things pretty often. And Regina has developed a habit of conveniently borrowing my make up and not returning some of the items now and then. Not that I'm upset about it. She does not touch the expensive ones just those that I told her that she can use if she wants to. I am thinking of buying her a nice set of brushes since my blusher brush is always missing. Maybe a Body Shop set, nothing too expensive still affordable. :)
I do feel very good after the massive cleanout! Perhaps even better after tonight's cleaning. Cleaning does have a strange therapeutic effect on me...

I am guessing that I would need say about 6 or 7 boxes for all my stuff. Ha! That is a quite a modest number don't you think?

The Dining Table

I have been spending quite a lot of time just talking to my mum lately. That is one of the things that I will miss home when I moved out. I would miss sitting round the dining table with a few of the people dearest to me, talking about nothing and everything all at once. Sigh, just thinking about it makes me miss that already!
The thought of not being at home to have reunion dinner next year makes me kinda sad in a way.. Not that I am not looking forward to having my first reunion dinner with the Boos, just well, it is not the same... I will miss the constant chaos in the kitchen, the chattering, the noise my silly siblings make, aunty Amy coming into the kitchen not helping at all and making loads of comments that were not helpful at all.

HAHAHAHAHA! Going to the market in hougang with my mum to buy flowers, crabs and all.Having the stamboat dinner we always have every year with roast chicken from Far East Chicken Rice from Ubi. Then after, some gambling on the same old dining table, always us winning and my dad always losing, just to keep us happy.

I didn't know that this year was going to be my last year, so I didn't take any pictures at all! ARGHHHHH!!!!! If I knew.... I would have taken dozens!

Making Home

Now, getting a place of our own is the easy peasy part. Making it a home, now, that is a tricky one! It starts with getting quotations with contractors, meeting with interior designers (they are a huge waste of me precious time!), space planning yadda yadda.. you get my drift. Looking for that person whom we are going to trust with our 5 room resale flat is tough! I guess, after actually having some sort of an idea what we kind of look we want for our home, it was easier talking to the contractors.

We agreed on getting a contractor instead of an interior designer since we both think that most interior designers are a bunch of horseshit, who just wants to turn our home looking like some boring chelate that we are see from local interior magazines. The "condo" look, whatever that means... We have gone through enough local interior design home decor mags to know that we can't trust going to an interior design firm. I actually fell in love with this kitchen I saw in Oprah Home magazine. Beat that! The kitchen is designed by Nate Berkus, gosh, I LOVE THAT GUY! So we will adapt the colours and all to fit into our kitchen.
Best source of ideas actually came from the library. I borrowed quite a few from the library, poured through numerous... Plenty talk about themes, Zen, Scandinavian, Modern, Resort, Beach, East Coast, West Coast, Urban, Country.....

What is with the themes?? I hate having a theme! A lot of people asked me what the theme of my place is going to be. Well, I always have no answer for that. I guess we want the place to be "US". Things that will say that is so them! or her or him! we want the place to speak back to us. I want to be reading one day and be distracted by a piece of furniture or wall colour and smile because it reminds me of my husband or myself or the both of us. I guess I am a romantic in that way. That is why I have no problems buying second hand bags and vintage items, I like the thought of the item having a little history of its own. I would wonder about where it may have been, who may have owned it..

Digressing......

Oh yes, we want the place to be adaptable as well. Like a great place to lounge, have a party, have an intimate night in, or a casual family gathering. so things have to be able to be moved around easily, so more weird partitions, wall features(so tacky!) and no no water features! We may be asthetists but we practical people too!
All these do get to us sometimes, and we end up not really enjoying our everyday life as much as we used to, mainly from thinking about the design and who to do the flat. I do catch myself smiling, thinking about how fantastic it would be after the place has been done up. The kitchen disasters, the first night in, the constant cleaning, the progress of seeing the flat being done up a little each day, the packing and unpacking of our stuff... and the furniture buying!

I am so looking forward to the day it is finally done. For now, I will be going back to looking through the quotations again.....