Home Sweet Home through the Seasons

It's been about a year since my in-laws came to visit us for the first time since we moved in. They helped us so much with the place and since then quite a few changes have taken place. Given how fast things change in our home, I thought I'd document bits of the journey here to enjoy them just for today.

My mother-in-law has so many great ideas. She was brainstorming on the location of my food processor, its parts, hand mixers, hand blenders and the lot. I must say this is one of my favourite ideas of hers yet. She relocated the items to a drawer right beneath our oven and asked me to lay it with some wrapping paper. I used this pretty cupcake one (befittingly) which I'd saved from a gift by a friend of ours. The location of the electrical items is just perfectly in reach of the power sockets beside the oven so every morning, our smoothies are so easy to make. It is also so convenient to whizz or mix things up as all we have to do is open the drawer, plug the appliance in and off we go! No more heavy lifting. Once done with the task, just unplug and close the drawer. Brilliant!

For the drawer beneath it, she decided it would be a great place for all the baking ingredients and pans to call home. Everything was directly under the electronical items and the oven. Again, so convenient. Since then, I've expanded on her organization. I've added personalised labels and more jars to make finding things even easier. I love this drawer and use it quite a bit. She also taught me to grind up chia and flax seeds to make full use of their nutrients.

My father-in-law is the genius behind BIYs (Build-It-Yourselves). As my brother-in-law aptly remarked in his wedding speech, most things at home when turned over do not say 'Made In China' but 'Made By Papa'. Here are the highlights of his brilliant handiwork. After brainstorming for a bit, he came up with an awesome design for my husband's weights. They have always been lying on the ground and taking up alot of room, sometimes rolling diagonally making them such a bother to restraighten. This design, I must say is the best use of space I've seen. Also, my in-laws are proponents of recycling. This wood was a combination of some leftover pieces we had in the garage and an old tea-table that we got off Freecycle. The most admirable part was that he sawed everything from the giant planks to the hooks for the weights manually! Being so far from home, we were only building up on our tools so every tool we have is basic including our saw. Since this picture below, we have painted this white and my father-in-law has added some plastic covers in-between the grooves to prevent breakage.

He also helped us replace our leaky tapheads. 

There was a DIY idea which I'd want to do for a while i.e. laptop/charging corner for us given the lack of space we have for an office/study. My father-in-law and husband helped make it a reality. They got a piece of wood along with some shelf holders and a cable trunk from Ikea. They put the table up at a height suitable for bar stools which we acquired from Ebay off someone living very close to us. I was thrilled that the stools we ended up finding were cushioned and very comfortable. They made some holes in the middle of the wood for the chargers to go through so that we could hide all the wires and cables below in the trunk which was balanced on the shelf holders.

I hung up some pictures on the walls which change all the time as well.

This was last year's inspirational picture.

Since then, we've painted the table white and put a top coat it to protect it from dirt and stains. The wall pictures have also changed since the photo below.

A quick peek at the previous layouts of our home. 

This is the other side of the living room. This layout was back in Autumn of last year. Our plants were all brought in to escape the impending winter.

We harvested some mini tomatoes.

A general view out onto the balcony. 

On one of those sunny days, a pigeon decided to visit the balcony and take a long stroll across the beam. Made my day watching it.

Seasonal changes bring new features to our home. My husband had begun heat-proofing our place. He started attaching draught-excluders and thermal layers to curtains. Thanks to a suggestion from the builder who did our bathroom, we got this folding door from Argos and my husband fitted it to the kitchen entrance. This helps keep out the odd combination of smells that would waft out the kitchen sometimes and also keep the heat in. 

Christmas was upon us and we put up some lightings my in-laws gave us. These are very fun as there was a button to switch up the pattern of the lights. This picture was taken before we got the giant Christmas tree which changed the entire layout.

Had to put this up as this is a lampshade hauled out every Christmas for display. 

It was a gift from a friend. 

Snowy January arrived.

As winter started to go away, we managed to obtain a really good bookcase from a kind soul to keep our expanding collection of books. We tucked away the cosier furniture and hauled out our speakers to make for a more reader-friendly space. We finally managed to get our speakers to ear-level thanks to a kind soul who gave us some speaker stands. Thanks to another kind soul for giving us the lovely armchair which was in my original wishlist when we first moved in. It is the same series as our couch. 

We had an idea to attach the Benno tower to the bookshelf to hold more items as they were  the same height. We always love to see bookcases with overhead lighting but the prices of what was out there in the market was too expensive. Also, the wiring was a problem as all our outlets were closer to the ground. My husband did a mini-DIY by attaching some lighting we used previously for the underside of our kitchen cabinet. We didn't really end up using it in the kitchen so he built a holder for the light to shine over the books. He also cleverly hid the wires and plugs away behind the Benno. 

Chinese New Year approaches as you can see the cards on display. I was enjoying my morning smoothie to this view.

A snapshot of our tea-table.

We had our neighbours over recently and they gave us a bunch of beautiful chrysanthemums. Yes, I have buried my nose in this. :) We also removed the giant rug as the warmer weather approaches.

We decided to move the bookcase to the other side of the living room as we missed our gallery wall and also wanted to create more room to walk about.

What the opposite side of the living room used to look like.

. This is the current space.

Here's a photo of me enjoying an even earlier morning smoothie. I've switched out some of the pictures on the wall to reflect the floral Spring that we were having.

We have grown and learned so much about our space and how to best enjoy it. There's definitely no end to this learning curve but it's so much fun every epoch of life especially when thought and effort is put into making the home an enjoyable space. We really thank God for all the undeserved and unexpected help we've had to making our home. From ideas, to items to treasured guests that pass by our space, we are really grateful. A post like this is a really good reminder not to take anything for granted and to labour in love.