All posts filed under: Making of Arcadia

Oscar is 10 months!

Published by

3 doggie beds, 2 cushions, 4 pairs of bedroom slippers, 3 slippers, 1 shoes, 2 food bowls, 1 leash, 1 tshirt, 2 sweatshirts, 1 sock, 1 roll toilet paper, and uncountable number of toys. Gone. Oscar is 10 months old today. And he weighs 16.5 kilos. He is a strong boy now. And he is truly a part of the family. He has learnt a few commands and also figured out that I am the “soft” one that can be dominated and SS is the “master”. He plans his stubbornness accordingly. You know what I mean? Anyways, I thought I should share some updates on Oscar. One thing that we can’t seem to properly train him on is not to jump. He doesn’t bite, but he will jump and hung, and lick any friends or stranger that approaches him. This behaviour terrifies my little nephew and in fact terrifies us to see this 16 kilo animal get hyper active. Not sure how we will get him trained up on this. Wish us luck.

Nails, Fleas and Nipples

Published by

That title sounds absurd but will make sense shortly. We took Oscar to get his nails clipped and found out that our assumption of long nails is actually not long for puppies and he did not need clipping. And he has got fleas instead. Poor guy. We knew something was wrong when he was the only guy scratching away at his puppy school (yes, there is such a thing). I feel we have let him down. He was on a once a month “dose” of Advocate, which is a treatment for fleas & worms and we’ve had to increase this to twice a month. And lastly, those tiny lumps you see next to his groin are not tumour. They are his nipples. Sorry no pictures of his nipples. No matter how cute some things are, its best not to share them publicly.

Nepali Dhaka

Bringing some life to our hallway with Nepalese ‘dhaka’

Published by

In the hilly regions of Eastern Nepal, women weave this gorgeous fabric called “Dhaka”, using traditional handlooms. I love the fabric for its uniqueness and beautiful patterns. While this is mainly used for making traditional clothing in Nepal, I thought I would frame it up (it deserves to be framed) and bring some life & charm to our otherwise boring hallway 😉  I had this piece of fabric specially ordered from Nepal and have carefully framed it. I’m loving it so far. Can’t wait to hang it up.

The mini paint job

The mini paint job

Published by

Anything DIY, we are hopeless so any little project completed is a big triumph. Like this little ceiling paint job. All we needed to do was just repaint small areas of the ceiling where the old lighting had been removed and gyprock re-patched. But SS was hardly bothered by the little marks and basically lazy to work on it. And I was so nervous to do this myself. Nervous that repainting the patch was going to make the ceiling took even worse and we would end up needing to paint the entire ceiling. But it was so easy peasy – just as the Bunnings had told (convinced) me. I was advised to buy this tiny tub of paint and mini size roller brush – the size of the tools gave me the confidence that it really WAS a tiny job and I was just overreating.  2 coats, 2 hours apart and the patches were almost invisible. I almost feel confident to repaint the whole ceiling… but naah, that definitely is over ambitious.

Tools

Built-Ins – Thats how its done.

Published by

Its strange that this 3 bedroom house only has one wardrobe. Because of which, the third bedroom was serving as a storeroom for most of our stuffs – until we got this built-in installed. We really did not think much over this. Send out quote requests on hipages.com.au to a couple of companies with good reviews, called in 2 companies to give me a quote, chose one, set appointment, setup work from home then in 3 hours we had it installed. We used Sydney Design Wardrobes and cost us $1050 – this was a Christmas special price, I  believe. Competitive pricing and nice folks.

Not quite right

Published by

I recently purchased a wall art from society6 website and I was so excited to get it hung up. And, I bought a frame for it yesterday from Ikea. But unfortunately, after all that measuring & googling around, I still did not get the right frame. So now it looks rubbish. Here is why: The art size is 56cm x 71cm. The frame sizes in Ikea either allow for 50cm x 70cm or 70cm x 100cm. So I bought this largest one because it’s mount opening was 49cm x 69cm & it would have fit the artwork – but I missed considering the fact that I was measuring the artwork including the borders!!  The print area of the artwork was only 46cm x 61cm. So now the picture looks like I have it cut it out of a magazine and stuck it to the photo frame. And this particular large size ikea frame does not have a glass for front protection! I didn’t even notice this while buying because it has a plastic covering and I basically assumed the glass front …

Fibaro System - Motion Sensor

Sensing things

Published by

Another update on getting our home more smarter – We can now detect “presence” – for real! Nope, we have not become ghostbusters (it would be pretty interesting if we did though), so let me explain. We have basically installed sensors in the hallway and living room. In the hallway ceiling we have fit in the AEOTEC Multisensor. It is a powered by mains electricity (via a mini USB connector) so we had to get an electrician to do this. In the living room ceiling corner, we have mounted the Fibaro Motion Sensor. This one however is battery powered. And it literally only needed to be glued into place. Super easy to install. They sense motion: Both of these sensors are able to detect motion. And it feeds that info back to the ‘home controller’ device, and then on to our phones apps via the openHAB software. This means that via the openHAB app on our mobile devices, we can see if there was “someone” at home. And I just learnt that detecting presence by sensing motion is called the Wasp In a Box technique …

Digital Print Wall Art from Society6

Society6.com is now in my good books

Published by

I was a paintings person – as in, I used to prefer hand painted canvases over any other form of digital print. But with this move, since I have quite a number of walls to pretty up, the budget factor plays a big role… so out goes my preference. They are just too expensive. Anything that can give my bare walls some colour will do. Thank you very much. So I have been looking to buy some digital prints online instead. I recently ordered 2 digital prints from Society6 website. I really liked this online store for the variety of choices and the best thing of all it allowed you to sort the arts by colour theme. And the price was also much cheaper than some similar other websites like Temple & Webster (which I also like a lot, btw). And guess what, I even managed to scoop the free delivery option – free international delivery! I suspected the delivery to take a long time but I was pretty surprised to receive the order in less than 2 weeks. The only thing …

Living room wall in need of some inspiration

Published by

I am a decor dumbo. Its been 4 months since we moved and I have not been able to figure out a wall art for the living room. I could really use some help here with some ideas, blogs for inspiration, sites/shops where I could buy some (reasonably priced) art – digital print, canvas art, textile art, etc? Please do not tell me to DIY – I am not good at it. On a scale of 1 to 10, I am probably 3. So far I have been browsing/visiting these stores: http://www.westelm.com.au/ http://www.freedom.com.au/ http://www.templeandwebster.com.au/ http://society6.com/ Bought a couple of prints from this site but then realised its going to take 5 weeks to be delivered to Australia 😦 Help me people.