Oh! 2012 Tiong Bahru

A rather enjoyable time spent at Oh! yesterday. Being so used to HDBs, given an opportunity to look into these art-decor architecture and actually compare the differences between a SIT and HDB, was just maximum plus points for the exhibition with me.

No disrespect to the artists who participated, I've got the most out of the traditional grilles.

 

Compared to our modern grilles, these are just spectacular. The amount of thought put in them, especially the ones with their sir names pictured together to form the design of a grille (didn't manage to snap a photo), is thoroughly impressive. Modern grills are absolutely lifeless in that sense.

Chopa-chop!

IF: Fluid

This week's Illustration Friday's theme is Fluid.

Immediately the first thing that came into my head was gaseous states in glass bottles & how applicable that was to life in general.

Whether or not you have a hard time at life, depends on how fluid you are as a person. There is a pre-formed mould of what our individual lives should be, already pre-determined for us. It is the purpose of our lives. As gas filling a bottle, you wouldn't know what your life entails till you encounter it.

You might have narrow bits to go through. You might not. You might have more than one narrow bits to go through. You might not.

Question is, are you willing to accept that? If you're willing to bend, be fluid, you'll see in stages the beauty of the glass bottle that is your life.
If you're un-malleable, hard as steel, you will never go through that glass bottle, and will in the end shatter it completely.

There isn't a choice of not going through our glass bottles though. That's equivalent as choosing not to exist.
It's folly, because you already exist.

Shields and Stars

Oh! I'm just ever so grateful for my neighbours!

My engagement ring by Satomi Kawasaki is finally going to get resized!! I've been wearing an insert with it for so long now! No shop I've went to seemed keen on resizing my ring as it's so thin. But, Jon (God bless him), for him to be willing to resize my ring for me like this, it's just, I'm absolutely grateful.

Please check out his website here. I mean, with clients like the Sultan of Saba and Princess of Brunei??? This guy is real top notch master craft jeweller stuff.

Sale price buttons

Not that my Shiny isn't great, but really. Manually loading that thing one tiny letter by another, can make me snappy real fast (especially, if a letter should ever fall out and go missing). Shiny served me well but I decided , it is time to move on! So, I've came up with a design logo, and headed down a place to get it carved.

I'm terrifically excited and I can't wait to collect my rubber stamp on Friday. If this place does it well, oh! would I have (wedding invites) plans for them!

Speaking further on wedding plans: I'm on a hand-stitching frenzy making bridesmaid invites! So far, I've churned out one for my sister. Handed it to her just before her flight back to New Zealand. I'm not some hand-stitching queen, so I hope my bridesmaids will appreciate my efforts and say "YES!".

More Porcelain Rings

Yay!

Valentine's Day 2012

I don't cook on a regular basis.

For some reason, I felt particularly inspired to prepare dinner on the night that so happened to fall on Valentine's Day.

It was a really good day spent with my sissy, preparing a meal for our mom and my fiance. I would, too, prepare a meal every night, if cooking weren't so expensive. Ingredients cost so much! Take for example: a bunch of avocados. They would cost $3.50, which is more than the cost of a packet of chicken rice I get from the hawker center!

Anyways, I decided to try out a couple of Jamie Oliver's recipes off his mobile app. Since I've had past successes with his recipes before, and they were always pretty much easy to follow, I had full trust to embark on them without going through a preliminary tester.

And what did y'know? By the grace of God, we got ourselves a very delightful dinner, which surprised even me (despite, a few minor disasters with our food processor over heating and almost cooking with spoilt butter)!

For mains, we served up a roasted rack of lamb with Dauphinoise potatoes.

Not all the potatoes were thoroughly cooked through, even though I've popped them back into the oven for an extra 20. Yet the lamb! Oh! Unimaginable success I've had with them! Perfectly pink and tender right through! Lamb could have been a lot less fatty, but hey. What were we to expect from Fair Price?

For desserts, we served up a simple affair of Banana crepe Suzette. Can I also express my shock in finding out how none of them has ever had it before?

All in all, a good day spent cooking for my family.

Hope everyone enjoyed theirs and had a meaningful one too :)

Announcement to make:

A tiny shop update

Have been wanting to mess around with polymer clay for a while now.
Took the opportunity of transiting at Buona Vista to pop in at Art Friend.
Combined my love for complex geometry (the look of it, not the maths), got busy, and this is what I came up with!

More about it here

Anyways, isn't instagram just grand? I absolutely love it! 

The almost perfect app to engage myself with when commuting.

:
:

Speaking of engagement (month old news, but)....

ヘ(^_^ヘ) THAT'S WHAT JIAN & I ARE!!! (ノ^_^)ノ



We've also, finally, decided on a date!
-Re Do Do Re Do Mi-
YAYYYY!!!!!

＼（＾∀＾）メ（＾∀＾）ノ



And now, I can start on the part which I looked to the most!




DESIGNING INVITES!

＼（＾ ＾）／

Feline Friends

Last night, we met one of my neighbours, a good soul who takes care of the resident cats. He had names for every cat that loitered around the block, and even knew the history of each. (Particularly so in the cat romance department.) Not only does he feeds them, he brings them to the vet to get them neutered as such. Feral, one of Jian's and mine fav cats, recently gotten into a terrific cat fight, which left her with bare patches and open wounds above her left eye and underneath her chin. Crazy Cat Uncle brought her to the hospital and he just released her back to the void decks.

Obviously, we got into the topic of the cats we keep. I call him Crazy Cat Uncle, only due to the fact of how much he loves cats, showing us tonnes of pictures of his cats on his mobile, even renovating his house to suit his feline friends' comfort! He has window grills with cat faces cutout for his cats to lookout from, a measure which prevents them from falling out of his 14-storey apartment, cat doors installed in all his rooms' doors, cat figurines displayed all over his place, and was even wearing a I Love Cats T-shirt.


When we mentioned Lights, he was all too eager to meet her.

Jian and I agreed that yes, he is a bit loopy, but an alright, almost lovable, harmless kind of loopy. Plus, he's such a big heart for the cats downstairs. Seems like it too, that he's a cat expert. I'm glad we're getting to know more of our neighbours :)


To commemorate this event, I'm putting up my extra cat tote left from Spur up on Etsy too, along with its K9 counterpart.

Shop Launch

Wow, I've been talking about this setting up an online shop for ages! (Possibly now, years and years of gibber jabber!) I finally sat myself down, punched my head through all the nitty gritty adult things required of me, whipped up some of that good o' online guts and - here!

A proud present - Gracie Chai on Etsy

 

Response was overwhelming! Rings were close to selling out! BIG thank you to everyone who bought one, whether it be on Etsy, FB or offline! :)