Category — Live

Who doesn’t like a nice smelling home? After cars and bathrooms, the next place many look to aromatize is their living spaces. Often we find homes with essential oils burning in the background, releasing the tender smells of ylang ylang or the relaxing odor of lavender amongst the myriad fragrances available in the market today.

Metafora Home Ambience fragrances are somewhat unique in that the aroma oil permeates from a jar through rattan reeds. These rattan reeds contain channels within the reed itself to produce a capillary effect that in layman terms, sucks up the oil and diffuses it into the air at the tip of the reed

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In the world we live in today protecting your home is more important than ever for a number of reasons. The increased value of contents that people now have in their homes means that burgling a home is more profitable than ever for the common thief. Also, as we become more reliant on computers and other technology these devices have more and more value than meets the eye with thousands of sentimental photos, personal records, music and other data being stored on such devices.

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Fact- Home renovation and furnishing cost a bomb! Many always start out with grand plans for their new home up until the quote from the contractor comes in. These plans then get stripped down, contractor requotes, stripped down further, requote (well, you get the idea), until the price is right.

This scenario does not apply to those with deep pockets but certainly holds true for the majority of us out there. There are only two things one can do – find another source of income, or save up to get your home done up ideally. The former is definitely the better option- easier said than done though.

Kelly from Almost Frugal has two very real and applicable articles from her blog on things she does to live frugally in order to save more. As she’s a student in France, not all of her tips are directly applicable due to social and cultural differences between Europe and us here in the Eat, but each article offers 25 tips and is definitely worth a read.

Click on the images below to access Kelly’s articles

Polypropylene pendant lights are very popular in contemporary modern day homes. Unfortunately, for anything designer, you’d have to fork out a handsome amount of money to procure it. Despite most local lighting stores constantly putting up banners that sale ‘SALE! Discount up to 70%‘, pendant lights usually cost several hundred dollars even after discount.

Really, these pendant lights are just made out of sheet plastic. For RM129.90, you can get the KNAPPA pendant light from IKEA, which is probably one of the more reasonably priced lamps of its kind. Still, I can’t quite get beyond paying that amount for sheet plastic.

Puremodern.com sells the Asbury Pendant Light for USD120.00. Personally, I think this design is rather cool. Perhaps because it reminds me of a local thorny fruit that’s banned in all 5-star hotels here!

For a little less, Exclusivelyhome.com has the more intricate Cerebro pendant light to offer. There’s no denying that pendant lights are becoming quite the craze. Most modern showrooms often have pendant lights as their lamp of choice in living rooms and hallways. Click here to view the cerebro lamp on exclusivelyhome.com

If you’re unwilling to part with that much money for a plastic lamp, then here’s the perfect answer- an invaluable instructable. Thanks to Dan, you now have a great tutorial and an avenue to create a super cost-efficient pendant light.

Click here to go to Dan’s Pendant Light instructable.

Alternatively, here’s another great source for teaching you how to create pendant lights – Steve Lambert’s Bright Idea Shade.

Watch the video Here

Imagesource (from top): IKEA, puremodern.com, exclusivelyhome.com, instructables.com

We’ve recently been given a juicer by our parents. Our fridge has never really been filled up since it’s just the both of us at home and our guests have even commented on how unbelievably empty our fridge is. The only item that seems to be a constant is ice cream in the freezer.

Now, the fridge is brimming with fruits, mainly from the orange and apple variety. Having fresh fruit juice in the morning is a surefire way to wake one up and get one refreshed and energized for the day. Unfortunately, we don’t usually juice the fruits in the morning for the lack of time… more honestly, the lack of willpower to wake up that extra bit earlier to cut and juice the fruits. Most of the time we have ours in the night, which is also a great way to top off our meals.

It only takes several minutes to cut the fruits up and several more to clean up after. The juicer that we’ve got is pretty neat and is well designed to make juicing quick and efficient with a large enough entrance to put the fruits in (meaning we don’t have to cut them into minute chunks), and a pitcher at the other end which is an adequate size- holds approximately 5 cups of juice. It’s also cleverly designed to make cleaning a breeze. The entire top half of the juicer can be detached and brought directly to the sink to be disassembled and cleaned part by part.

Occasionally I’ll have my celery + green apple + young bittergourd juice, which YinLeng finds absolutely yucky. She likes the apple + orange or orange + carrot combo. Quick tip- if you’re juicing carrots, it’s best to wash the juicer immediately as the beta-carotene contained in carrots can leave permanent stains on the plastics.

With this, we never have to go out and drink diluted fruit juice with lots of sugar syrup added to the concoction in the local kopitiams or pay over the top pricing for juices at fancy eateries. Remember- juices should be drunk almost immediately after juicing to avoid oxidisation.

Do you have any great juicing combos? Share it by posting a comment today!

Live healthy. Drink well.

Imagesource: howshouse.com

Here’s a good post shared by Kelly from RNcentral.com- 99 Ways to Make Your Home a Healthier Place. Click here to access the article.

Some of the tips in the article may not be entirely applicable to eastern homes (e.g. tips for pools, garages, carbon monoxide detectors) but there are plenty of other tips which have been categorised logically that offer plenty of information. What’s great about the article is that it’s provides links to other information sources for many of the tips listed there.

For the ‘Monica Gellers’, you’ll find the Organization and Production section very useful whilst weightwatchers will like the Diet section which provides useful information on how to live and eat healthy in the home. If you havent’ read enough, the good news is that tips 91-99 are links to other articles and guides to aid you in your traversal of cyberspace in search for more information

Kelly, thanks for the great post and thanks too for sharing it with me to share with the readers of How’sHouse.

Many of us dread the effort required in moving house, especially if you’re moving from your old place to a new one and not just moving out into your own place. I was fortunate to have experience the latter but I do remember moving with my family when I was six, from our small little rented home into a much larger place- one that we owned. I can recall watching how busy my parents were throughout the whole moving process- I can only guess it’s the same with most everyone.

To ease your pain, here are some tips on how to move house:

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Decide on Logistics

This is the single most important decision in moving house.

Options:

1. hiring professional movers

2. getting your friends to help out

3. hiring a driver and truck to transport your belongings to the new house

Factors to consider

1. amount of time you have available/can allocate?

2. useful friends you might have that could help you by providing transportation (hence saving cost on movers)- anybody with a minivan, a lorry, a pickup truck?

3. how many reliable/close friends to provide extra hands to help you move (remember to reward them with drinks, meals, an after party)?

Click here for a list of movers in Malaysia should you decide to select option 1

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Packing

Ever had trouble packing for a 4D3N holiday? If you do, then say hello to a new nightmare. It is imperative that you plan to pack in one of the following two ways

1. pack your items into boxes and label them by rooms or spaces you would be placing them in your new home. That way, when you’re moving, you can immediately put these boxes in the right rooms to be unpacked later.
2. pack your items into boxes which are logically categorized e.g. kitchen utensils, bedding, shoes etc.

Personally I prefer option 1. For items which you are not able to decide which room for it to go to, have them placed in the ‘Miscellaneous’ category. Within ‘Misc’ you can have several subcategories as well such as ‘Misc- Ornaments’, ’Misc- Art/Books’. Personally, I would label a box ‘Important!’ for all essential items- at least I know this is the one box I must unpack if I’m too lazy to start unpacking after a long day of moving. Make sure you’re diligent in keeping track of your inventory in the checklist. The reason why a checklist is important is to avoid you having to go ‘now where did I put the remote controls?’ as well as to act as a simple audit to ensure all items have been moved from origin to destination

How’re you going to pack if you don’t have boxes? If you’re hiring movers then they’ll provide you with boxes but if you aren’t, you can always obtain boxes from appliance stores, furniture stores, If the store you approach is reluctant to give them away, then change your approach by suggesting to borrow it from them and return them in the same condition, for a small deposit fee. This saves you the trouble of having to take them to be recycled.

You don’t need as many boxes to fill EVERYTHING you want to move. Stuff clothes and other items into every cavity or orifice in your furniture, washing machine, storage solutions (e.g. cupboards) but be reasonable with the weight if your friends are going to be the ones helping you move. Fill up your luggage bags and your car. Fill up your friends’ cars too.

Get rid of unwanted and unnecessary items. Be firm, be decisive. Often it’s hard to throw things away because it’s so easy to build an emotional attachment with any item. However, ask yourself if you ‘need’ the item or what impact it would have on you if you didn’t have it. YinLeng and I moved in with only the bare essentials and we did just fine. It’s great to start your new home without clutter or items you will never use or need.

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Moving

Select a suitable time to move. By suitable time, I don’t mean a time where the height of the sun is exactly at a tangent to the moon but more so to select a suitable time such as off peak traffic periods and early in the day so you have more daylight hours to work with. However, I’m aware that some may be culturally inclined to select a predetermined exact time to start/end moving.

Perform a quick count on the number of boxes going out and have someone at the new house confirm your figures to ensure nothing is missed out, The checklist will be useful for individual items at a much later stage.

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Unpacking

First things first- you should clean the house before unpacking. Rid the dirt and dust.

Then unpack box labeled ‘Important’. Then start with unpacking items for your kitchen and bathrooms followed by your bedroom then living room before proceeding to other rooms. There’s really no hurry with unpacking because you’ll need time to plan where to put what if you haven’t already been anal enough to have done so beforehand. However, if your friends are around to help you, by all means squeeze a little more out of them- you’re already gonna give them a treat/reward later on anyway! (I work in a consulting company that has taught me this trait well).

Give yourself a break at the end of it all and treat yourself (and your partner(s)) to something nice- spa, hearty meal, wild night out, whatever tickles your fancy.

Congratulations to beginning a new an exciting chapter in your life. Lots more home furnishing to be done from here on so perhaps it’s good advice on my part to get you to continue reading my blog!

More resources to help with moving:

Help, I Am Moving- a site dedicated to everything on moving house

A comprehensive list of to-dos from 6 weeks before the move to the actual moving day (note: not all items are applicable as this is taken from a UK website)

Happy moving!

photos courtesy from:

pic01: funnyphotos.net.au

pic02: boxbundles.com

pic03: wheelersmovers.com

pic04: 1clickconveyancing.com

Love to indulge yourself in a longbath every so often? For mood- add music, dim lighting, some candles, perhaps even a glass of wine or champagne (bordering on overindulgence, i know!). For effect- bath bombs!

Bath bomb? What’s a bath bomb? Sounds ‘bahaya’ – I can only associate it with the toilet bombs during my high school days which the mischievious and daring would throw a firecracker down the toilet in one of the cubicles (remember ‘jupiter’ or ‘petik mancis’? yeap… those were the standard issue firecrackers for toilet bombs). I’m sure you can imagine the after effect of the explosion. Okay, I’ve digressed to grosser topics… bath bombs are certainly not high school grade toilet bombs. So what are they? Here’s what wikipedia has to say on defining bath bombs.

A bath bomb, one form of bath fizzie, is a bolus which, when placed in bath water, dissolves partly or completely and effervesces, also in some cases adding scent, color, and/or other properties or materials to the water

source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bath_bomb

Bath bombs aren’t cheap if you buy them commercially and since I’m talking about them in a HowTo blog post… you guessed right… I’m going to provide you guides on how to create your own bath bombs or bath fizzles. In fact, I’ll provide you three different guides to achieve the same goal. Take your pick:

1. Here’s SoapyHollow’s guide to making bath bombs via Instructables. Click here for instructions

2. Here’s another guide on making bathboms via TeachSoap.com. Click here for instructions

3. Here’s the version from About.com. Click here for instructions

Personally I like SoapyHollow’s version more as it’s not as longwinded as About.com’s version but more detailed than the TeachSoap variety. You decide which guide suits you best to achieve super economical indulgence in a longbath after a long hard day’s work. Fire the candles and cue,,, music.

Wine is the the new social elixir of Asia and many of us tend to keep a few bottles stowed away in the home for functions or simply to consume when friends and family come over for dinner. Here are a few tips on how to store wine properly at home.

The first thing to know is that it is NOT true that all wines will mature and taste better with age. The rule of thumb is that wines under RM70 should not be kept for more than 12 months. Australian wines such as most variations of Hardy’s and Jacob’s Creek will not benefit from extended keeping. The same applies for wines labeled Vin de Pays (France) and QBA (Germany).

Temperature - most wine can be stored at room temperature. The more important thing to consider is that the place you’re storing your wine should not be prone to temperature fluctuations of more than a few degrees a day. Don’t store wine in a place within the home that can have dramatic temperature changes.

Humidity - Experts reckon the ideal humidity level is approximately 70%, to prevent the end of the cork from drying out. In Malaysia, we are fortunate not to have to worry much about this factor

Light - Do not expose your wine to direct sunlight or strong artificial lighting. Light could heat the wine and spoil it. Best to keep wine in dark corners (especially white wine which is at higher risk of light exposure)

Vibration - This is usually a non-factor, unless you’re keeping your wine on top of your fridge! Make sure you store your wine in a vibration free zone (e.g. cupboard/shelf). Vibration causes internal movement which could adversely affect the ageing of the wine.

Here’s a useful article from The Wine Anorak on how to store and place wine bottles

Here’s an article from My Wines Direct with tips on wine storage

Don’t like to read very much? Then watch this video on tips on how to store wine

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To start storing wine, you can get VURM, an affordable 4-bottle metallic wine holder from IKEA for RM39. It’s got a contemporary look and can look quite nice if hung up in a set of 2 or 3. A simple way to help decorate or fill up an empty wall.

For several times the price or VURM, you could consider buying this opulent looking wall hung wine rack from Relish for USD65.

Got stuck in several traffic jams and it took me almost two whole hours to get back home today. I sung to Jason Mraz and the Click 5 whilst my left foot was getting excessive clutch action. Methinks my next car will definitely be an auto transmission. For now, my zippy little Proton will do just fine- provided it continues to behave well. Saves me a bundle on petrol anyway what with the rising fuel cost.

I was knackered by the time I got home and decided to watch a bit of the telly before having my Kuchai Lama fried beef kuay teow (thanks Mom and Dad for bringing it over!). As usual, they were showing the morning’s matches on channel 817 and 818, of which I’ve caught the live games so I decided to channel surf. There was nothing interesting on AXN, StarWorld, AFC or Disc Travel so I decided to go further up the 700 channel range. I stopped at MTV because the blue program display bar showed ‘Footballer’s Cribs’ and I was secretly wishing that ‘Footballer’ here would not mean the American variety. Wait a minute… could it be? PASCAL CHIMBONDA!?!?! Woo hoo, ‘footballer’ = ’soccer player’!!!

What could be better- I LOVE football and I am into home decor- a perfect match. Chimbonda’s home was in a penthouse in Manchester (this must’ve been when he was still playing for Wigan) with a view of overlooking what I figured was Arnsdale Shopping Centre (FYI- Ryan Giggs is the official image ambassador for Arnsdale). During the show, the camera would follow him whilst he showed off his abode in little english he spoke. What I didn’t fancy was the swaying action of the camera- MTV, that may be cool to you but some of us really just want to see his place without having to feel like we’re on a ship at sea.

Anyway, I’m really excited about this show and I’m definitely going to tune in every Thursday at 830pm on channel 714. You should too because I believe many of the footballer’s homes are ultra-modern, mainly featuring contemporary themes as the majority of players in their peak are in their 20s or early 30s. The reason for sharing this little find is because I am certain that you will be able to extract many ideas on home design and decoration from the show.

Here’s an article on MTV UK about Footballer’s Cribs

Get MTVasia’s TV schedule here

Don’t watch the show thinking you can never afford the things these footballers have. You’re probably right (for now, at least). But watch the show to get ideas- themes, color schemes, shelving, furnishing, art, fixtures, furniture etc… rich people always want to differentiate themselves from their social group peers so there’s bound to be lots of unique design elements in their homes.