My Artistic Attempts

Remember that 4-month-long holiday I just had? Since the 2nd month, people have been asking me... aren't you bored at home? What do you do when you are not sleeping/eating/meeting friends? How come you are always too busy to meet up one?

The time has come to reveal what I've been secretly working on during my holiday.

I haven't been busy working on my own TV show like XiaXue.

No hush-hush trip to Korea for plastic surgery either. (Apparently that's the best place to change your face, but now why would I know that?)

But I have, I have been doing.......................... cross-stitch!

you: ??????!!! What the heck is cross-stitch?????!!!

me (meek tone): Erm, erm, it's kind of like embroidery but easier to pick up.

you: Oh.. so sewing lah? Chey.

Hehe, what? Expecting something more exciting izzit?

I picked up cross-stitch from my grandmother about 5 years ago. Did a few small projects then stopped after I went overseas. When I went home this time, I found one half-done so I decided to finish up the whole set. I bought the set of 4 in China (YH do you remember?). Managed to finish 3!

This is my favorite!

Isn't it cute? They are sitting on a tree stump looking at each other while the apples are falling out of the basket. Awwww... it's not very clear in the photo, but the girl is holding a bouquet of flowers and that's a patch on the boy's elbow.

My mum and sister says this one is nicer though.

I don't know what they just buried. In my story, they found a small blue bird (like the one stealing food from the boy's back pocket) who was injured. They tried to heal it but being pretend doctors they weren't very good. So the bird died and they gave it a proper burial with prayers and all.

This one is pretty cute too. What a way to pick up girls. There's supposed to be a quote at the bottom saying "the Lord must have brought us together" but since I'm not a Christian I didn't stitch it in.

The girl was speeding (on a tricycle!) so the traffic policeboy wrote her a ticket. Hehe, he has a gun some more. I'm guessing water pistol.

I finally framed them up today. They are now hanging in my apartment's "memory corner". It's where I put all my memories, e.g. photos, cards, misc memorabilia. Oh, and shoes too. To YY: Check out the right-most photo frame on the table. Look familiar? ;)

My Half-done Apartment

Ta dah!! Photos of my apartment!!

Actually I wasn't planning to post up photos of my apartment, since it's quite bare and u-g-l-y at the moment. But then, I promised someone I would and I'm not one to BACK OUT of a promise, unlike some people... hmph... if you say you'll call then you mighty well should right????

I digress. My apartment is pretty cosy (translate: not very big). It's a studio with some sort of walk-in closet that leads to the bathroom. The building was renovated a few years ago, so the apartment looks quite new, especially the kitchen! Almost all the other apartments I visited had pretty old-looking kitchens and bathrooms. Except for one which was simply gorgeous, floor-to-ceiling windows, huge living room & bedroom, and a balcony! But it was much more expensive and quite a bit further to walk. I think I wrote about this already, but never mind.

So here's my half-done apartment. The walls are completely bare now, except for my exercise workout poster. Hehe. Oh, and notice how everything is BROWN. So bland. Need to spice things up a bit, but why oh why does framed art cost so much? So frustrating.


The photo above was taken from the window corner. See my puppies? Hehe, I used to have 7 puppies on my bed, but I brought them home with me over summer and now I only have 2. So ironic right? When I had a small bed I had to squeeze with 7, now I have a big bed and only 2 puppies. The walk-in closet is at the far end (where the chair is), I have a study desk there as well but it's rarely used for studying. The bathroom is behind the wall with the workout poster. The kitchen is at the near right. You can't see it, but here it is:


Not very big hor? Told you it was a studio already mah. I want to get a potted plant to put in between the sink and stove. Apparently it's not good 'feng shui' to have the sink and stove next to each other. Something about water (sink) and fire (stove) clashing and bringing disharmony.

And here's my green bathroom! I love the bamboo shower curtain. Makes me feel like I'm outdoors, hehe.


Here's the view from my window. This is the south view though, had my apartment faced north, I would get a view of the Ohio river. I would have seen the fireworks during Thunder over Louisville without squeezing with the huge crowd near the river. :( Too bad there were only 2 options when I moved in, the other apartment was on the 3rd floor so it did not even have a view.

You can tell downtown Louisville doesn't have a lot of high rises. Plus the main chunk of them are to the north so I can't see them from my apartment anyway. It's quite pretty at night when the lights are up.

So my apartment quite bare hor? I want to buy sooooooo many things for my apartment, but then sometimes feel guilty because I'm supposed to be saving money. If I save now, then next time when I buy my own place I can get better furniture! But in the meantime, I'll be stuck with a not-so-pretty apartment. If I buy now, then maybe it won't fit my new place next time. Why is my world full of dilemmas???

Color Scheme for chez moi

I lurrve having my own apartment. It’s exhilarating to get to decide what furniture to buy, where to put it, and what personal touches to add. All by myself! Of course so much freedom must come at a price, and at the rate I’m going, I think I’ll be paying a pretty hefty price. But ah well, as I always say, a happy apartment is a happy me.

The big news today is… I’ve finally picked a color scheme for my apartment!! I spent so long trying to choose, there’s so many colors out there and each one has its own advantages. I mean do I want blue because it’s soothing, or green because it has “great healing powers”, yellow to invoke cheerfulness or red for la passion intense. And then they all have their negatives too, blue suppresses appetite (which is important because I have a 3-in-1 room that’s the dining room, bedroom and living room), green is just not my color, yellow makes people irritable and too much red can create aggression. You see my dilemma?

But finally, finally, finally, I have decided it’s going to be… *drum rolls* … white, red and black! Yeah I know I said too much red makes people aggressive, but since I’m such a demure and gentle person by nature, it wouldn’t be much harm right? :P Just kidding lah. Stop rolling your eyes please. And to clear all questions, this has nothing to do with wanting to create passion okay? It’s just a nice striking color that goes well with white and black. :P

I’ve been reading quite a lot of articles on interior decorating. Budget interior decorating to be exact. It says that I should start decorating one area at a time. So I’m gonna tackle my living room first! Well, actually more like my living corner since almost everything is in the same room. (I live in a studio.) Current plan is to get a slipcover for my loveseat, it’s brown at the moment and in my dreams it should look more like deep red. Can’t decide whether I should go for a lighter shade (maybe beige) and use red for the throw pillows instead, or stick to a deep red loveseat and light-colored pillows. How how? Which one is better?

Oh and I’m checking out posters too! I want to hang a sweet romantic-ish one above my bed. Found one I really like, but don’t know whether I should get it or not. It has 2 white cuddly teddy bears holding a velvet red heart together. Costs a lot to frame it up though and I don’t know if it will look good laminated. Here’s the poster, I think it looks very cute, and it fits my white, red and black scheme too! So should I frame, mount or just laminate it?

This is so fun! I think I'll be so obsessed about decorating that I won't talk about anything else for the next few blogs. Hehe.

I'm here!

It took me nearly 30 hours and 2 stopovers, but I've finally arrived at Louisville, Kentucky!!!

The trip went well. I slept through the entire flight from KL to Seoul because it started at 1 am. The flight from Seoul to Atlanta was soooo long, good thing noone sat next to me so I could stretch out. There was a Korean guy sitting 2 seats away. He was real helpful, picked the better meal choices for me. The Korean food was quite good! Flying from Atlanta to Louisville was awful though. The plane wasn't that small, but it felt sooooo cramped. The worst hour of my whole trip.

I got to my hotel late evening yesterday. This morning I went apartment hunting! A lady from Apartment Locator Services came to pick me up. She is sooooooooooooo helpful! She did almost everything for me, find out what apartments are available, what features are available in each, set up appointments with all of them, drive me to every single one, ask questions that I forgot to ask, and so patient!! What's more, the service is FREE!! Unbelievable huh? I'm going to recommend them to anyone who's coming to Louisville, i.e. noone.

So we went to 4 apartment buildings. I didn't really know how to check them out actually, and once I got there, I forgot half the things I wanted to ask. Went well though, covered all the basic stuff (I think :P) and I applied for the last one. I just got a call back from the apartment manager half an hour ago and it's been approved!!! Woohoo!! Going back there tomorrow to sign the lease and pick up my keys.

The studio apartment is not very big, about 400 plus square feet. But it's so close to work and everything else! I'm going to walk to work everyday, it's only 2-3 blocks away. :D And it has the nicest kitchen and bathroom among the 4. All utilities paid, too. Love it! Nice and cosy. Don't need to buy so much furniture too hehe. My friend keeps telling me that I only need a bed, but a bare apartment is just depressing to me.

Tomorrow I'm going furniture hunting. Hope that goes as well as today's hunt! Took me 4 hours to get an apartment. :D Got done around 1.30 pm. Exhausting though. It's only 5.30 pm now but I'm going to sleep. Jet lag sucks. I woke up at 3 am today and couldn't go back to sleep. And I only got 6 hours of sleep. Wonder how long it's going to take to fix my clock. Ugh!

It's Official!

Finally confirmed. I'm flying to Louisville on 26th September! Work starts on 2nd October, which means I have about 5 days to...

• look for an apartment
• furnish my apartment
• open bank account
• figure out how to get to work
• find out how to get to Wal-mart & Target
• etc...........

This is crazy, but I'm so excited!!!!! My first apartment, to be decorated however I want! Or rather however my bank account wants. So fun so fun, too bad there's no IKEA nearby though. I was planning to get most of my stuff from IKEA since it's cheap and nice. But the closest one is around Chicago and shipping costs a bomb. We'll see what happens. Worse comes to worse, I'll rent furniture. I found a furniture rental company that has pretty nice-looking stuff. Of course, it costs a bomb, too.

I have exactly 3 more weeks in Malaysia. *sigh* It will be a 4-month long holiday, which is 2 months longer than I originally expected, but still... I wouldn't mind having more. It's sooooooooo nice to stay at home. People keep asking me what I do at home, well...

I wake up around 10.30 am, check my e-mail and IM some friends. Sometimes I teach tuition when my mum's busy, or cook dinner, or do housework when I'm feeling guilty for being lazy. I'm finishing up my craft projects from 3 years ago (more on this later) and still have one more left. Play lots of computer games, influencing my sis who's sitting for UPSR now, one of my mum's tuition kids and my bro along the way. Occasionally surf online to check out apartments in Louisville. At night watch Korean drama or whatever my family's watching. Sometimes I go out with my mum on errands.

So you see, nothing exciting. I rarely go out during weekdays since most of my friends are working already and I live too far away for last minute mamak calls at night. Surprisingly there are a lot of things to do at home or with my family. Weekends I go to Taman Tun and that's a different story and I don't want to tell. :P

My holiday may not be exciting, but I'm loving every minute of it. I won't get another one like this for a long long time.