Valentine's Day Decor

Hope no one bored with my wall trees yet.  Inspired by The T&Co colour, here is our wall decor for Valentine's Day.  I didn't count how many butterflies there, but it took 2 days to cut and stick them there.

And of course, more decor for adding the details! We love Cupid's arrow and there are a couple of awesome tutorial around the web. From the vintage inspired arrow to cute arrows with chevrons(!!!) feathers.

Mine are made of coloured paper for the feathers and plastic straw. A very budget friendly project.  I love how the colour bring softness to the room. Now, I think it's time to repurpose some old furniture I saw in Mr Chai's family storage by painting them some pastel colour.      

My plan for home office

Been living in LLG for 3 months now but our target to lay the first stone of our house seems still far away. My back and behind are actually hurting because I 'work' (read= browsing internet *sigh) sometime in dining table and recently since our wireless modem teleport itself to NextFutsal office, I have to wire myself and Mr Prostaffelees to a cardboard desk. Like this..  I think it's so hip!

As I mentioned before currently we only use half of the house, there is still a huge empty room facing the road where Draco always has his afternoon play there.  So, I decided to use quarter of that room for my 'home office'.  Here is the sketch, since we don't have IKEA here, and buying from Informa is just going to hurt my weak heart because of the price - I'm planning to contact local carpenter and ask him to make the furniture.  I don't mind with half done quality, rustic effect is awesome.

I'm still going to bring the trees in - just to remind me of my old bedroom.




Cross my finger I can make this happen! 

LLG house - bathroom

This probably the last room we have at the moment. We used to have a water tub which is a common item here because we life in a tropical country, we usually store some water and keep it cool in this tub before using it for shower.
But that have to go together with the terracotta/brownish wall and floor tiles. We change the bathroom with black and white colour scheme. Natural stone (Andesit) coated in black, white with grey stain wall tiles on bottom half of the room and white painted wall for the rest.

The only thing I left from the previous bathroom was the koala on the bathroom door. So I could imagine taking shower in Australia. LOL

Durian Hunting

Dry season that stretch from May to October has already started and we can see lots of typical summer fruits sold everywhere. And for Durian, their spikes and smell are everywhere in this town since two weeks ago.

An unexpected hunting. We were lucky to get a chance to join a small family group went for Durian hunting last weekend. We were buying lunch at the canteen next to Mr.Chai's monastery and decided just to jump right in with them to Blalau, about 45 minutes drive from LLG.

I didn't actually understand when they said they were going for Durian hunting. I thought they just going to visit some market then look for the best durian, but this trip was more interesting than that.
We drove through some rubber plantations, tall grasses and small roads only fit for one car, but the view are magnificent even under this thick heavy humid hot weather (God bless car air-con).

After driving (and lost twice) for almost an hour, we finally reach a small village, here are some photos. See.. it's clean and so quite, even people are still have their bath in the creek together with their ducks.

After a short rest then we went in to the small wood behind the village. We met the owner at his small hut and kind of stay there for a while and then.. BOOM!! and everyone cheer.. one of the boys run deeper to the wood then came back with one durian on each hand.
Now I get what they said durian hunting.  We were suppose to sit there waiting the durian to fall down from the tree and eat them directly. But I still think that the process were dangerous. Imagine a mature durian tree can reach, what.. , maybe more than 25m high, what if a durian feel down and hit your head while you picking the fruit!

Anyway,we all had fun. I only eat three fruits, better stop before get nausea and vomiting, right? We stayed there until we get more than 10 durians. Some photos here while we were waiting for durian...

 

Above are some photos of the rubber trees around the wood and the cut on the tree's skin to get the rubber sap.

I love what I see on the way (lots of trees and tall grass), crazy about the timber houses in the village, and the experience of waiting durian fall down from the trees are priceless. 

33B33/16 - host a dinner

We had a little guest tonight. A young lady who live next door to my in law. Her name is Tina, a really chatty 10 YO girl. Her family own a grocery store where I usually get some eggs or small stuff from. Today she had a school day off and her dance class was reschedule to tomorrow. She's been hanging out with me the whole day, from attending the cooking class with Sico at Hotel Royal, helping me out washing and cleaning some vegies, sharing mango smoothies (which she loves) and she gave me a little tour to a local supermarket not far from her house.

Here are some photos from the cooking class this morning.

It was actually just a promo/commercial session. Not actually interested, but I had my eye on the noodle machine! I imagine it would be quite handy to make fresh pasta... and the good news is, my MIL already have it.

Just before Mr.Chai and I head off home, Tina came in to the store and said she had her parents permission to play at our house. Mr.Chai was quickly nod his head because he thinks Draco needs to be introduced to 'small people' as early as possible, so he will be more family friendly.  Suddenly I have to host a dinner LOL.
Tina is a really smart little chef. She shared a yummy sauce recipe that could go with any fruit salad.

Sweet Sugary Sauce for Fruit Salad ala Tina

Ingredients
- 3 tbs white sugar
- salty soya sauce

Method
Mix both sugar and small amount soya sauce together in a small bowl. The mix should not be wet, if it is wet means you put too much soya sauce there. But Tina said you could put it the fridge and leave it for a minute, then there.. you'll have some watery sugar mix.

Here she is, helping me cut and stir fried the vegies. Cute, right?! We had Indonesian fried rice and stir fried broccoli with vegetarian oyster sauce.  I promised her to make cookies together next time. 

LLG house - bedroom

Another quick tour, this time to our bedroom. We are keeping a very boring natural colour in here. similar to the dining room. Previously there were some request to specially made all fitted furniture, but since (we think) we might move to new house, we decided to use some old furniture and new loose furniture instead, so that means we could use them again next time. So here the photos...

This is the bed, with nice timber artwork above it - somehow this is kind of a big hit in JKT espc in Informa and the other interior/furniture store. We managed to snitch this from Chantique, hopefully it's the only piece! I love the spiky leaves tho Mr.Chai once questioned about the fengshui.. he said spiky things in bedroom might not good. Ideally people put some romantic, calm and soft artwork. But we couldn't help it, we did walk around every stores for days to look another options but finally we came back standing in front of this white big spiky leaves.

All linen are self made, I choose the colour and material and my mom made them together for me. There are suppose to have nice big baroque pattern on the brown fabric but my camera couldn't capture it, and you should feel them - they are quite soft and cool. And the big news is we spent only 1/2 price to made the linen compare to the retail price. Awesome huh?!

Those giant big toes and duckies are my sleepers. You can't get enough of big toes!

That big mirror there is my favourite. I bought it in local shop here in LLG and sprayed black paint. This will remind me of my mom white mirror that I made while back - just to give me a little something attached to my parent's house.

The only rules I gave to Mr.Chai before was there should be no TV in bedroom (but other gadgets are allowed LOL). I just don't like noisy sound because you know how guys usually watch TV, right? They put the volume so loud until you can't barely talk to each other. About untill last week was ok, but Mr.Chai was looking a bit more restless these days because he haven't seen his favourite TV channel - the animal planet - for straight 2 weeks, plus there will be some kind of soccer match happen very soon.  So, yes.. since 2 days ago we had a TV in the bedroom, and soon there will be a new one coming too which will sit nicely above the timber bench in front of the bed. I'm not sure how to handle this *rolling my eyes..

And here is a shot of my morning tea and yummy yam crackers... *Oh, yes... no meat at all in the house except for Draco.

Hope you all have a lovely weekend ahead..  

LLG house - kitchen and dining room

Finally I have time to post this. I think we pretty much settled in our (temporary) new house.

Our house is actually a shop house, means the first floor is an open plan for store/shop and the rest of the floor above it are for house. But so far we only life on the second floor, the third and forth are closed - strictly for swallow bird, they keep the floor locked, dark and humid to create ideal environment almost like a cave for the bird making their nest there. Yes, in the afternoon the roof looks like in one of those scene in Gotham city. Lots of swallow birds flying around before they get in to their nest inside.

For now, allow me to give you a short tour to our kitchen. Before, we had nice dark red ceramics wall and top table. But I would like to change it with a lighter colour and we did some extention. So here it is.. before and after - errrr.. didn't get much better isn't it. :P 

I keep most of the kitchen tools in the drawers - believe me, there are tons of them. I only put the essential on top table - for this photo session. Here's my cooking ingredients which I always use in most of my cooking.

Babushka in the kitchen - wedding gift from the Khalidis. YAY!!!!

And this are the shots of the dining next to the kitchen. All are from Informa, can you tell how much I miss IKEA...

Proof that I'm no good with pets

Trying to make him sit.. He never listen to me, but we are bonding.. LOL

Paddy Field

{photo taken at dawn while walking with Draco}
View to my backyard... *hahahahaha I wish.
This is why I love living in this small town. Paddy field and wide open sky..

The Surrounding

Just want to show you around our temporary new house to be - before we actually build the new one which not sure when.. :P

Here is the view from our 'hall' - looking at the road and Bukit Sulap on the background. We had big windows with grills.

This is view from the roof top. You can see there - the only main road run straight in the middle of the town.  Lots of crazy motor cycles. 

And this is the top of the mosque right next to our house - photo taken from the roof top. 

Although this will be our temporary house, but we are doing small renovation. I'm not in town at the moment and no one actually supervise the process because Mr Chai is coming to Jakarta tomorrow, but hopefully they all be ok.  - not so much hope there.. 

Will post some photos once they are done.. :)   

Ceng Beng Festival

End of March until early April in every year Chinese people usually celebrate Ceng Beng Festival. This is the time when Chinese people pay respect to their ancestors by remembering them, cleaning their grave or tomb and burning hell money or other "luxurious" stuff.   This is also the time when everyone come to their parent's home and do family gathering.

Eventho my family is from Chinese line but we - the last 2 generations - didn't actually celebrate Ceng Beng that much.  We do still visit our grandparent's grave in Bogor and usually end up having lunch in one of my aunt's. The last proper Ceng Beng celebration I see was when I was around 10YO. My uncle's wife had lots of colorful food on the table with red candles and lots of burning incense. I waived three incenses each to every single photos on the table, and would patiently waiting there until she said I could eat the food! I didn't like burning the "money" because the smokes hurt my eyes.
However since she joined a certain religion I started to miss those steam chicken, roasted pork, eggs, various chinese cakes, basically the whole food; because she didn't do those ritual anymore.

Last week I had a chance to join Mr Chai's family to celebrate this festival. We woke up early in the morning and went to the Chinese Cemetery at the bottom of Bukit Sulap. Suddenly the memory stikes back.. minus the steam chicken and roast pork (they all vegetarian food) but MORE money! I've never seen so much money like that before. There were some gold plates, dollar from hell bank, suites and dresses with watch and mobile phone and shoes.  After the family gave the respects, all those stuff were burn. The heat was so hot - I had red face after that.

It's great knowing back the culture.. :)  

LLG second visit - The boy and a dobbie

Another visit to LLG.. but this time I had friend to come with. Draco, our 'tall' dobbie puppy flew with me from Jakarta to Bengkulu, He will live in LLG with Mr Chai now.

The trip was quite tiring because we have to make a couple of stop for Draco to stretch his legs and paws.  Mr Chai strict order was not to give him any food, except some biscuits and lots of water, during the trip to avoid any nausea or vomiting. 

After a lot of pee and poo, he was running around his new house and had a nice sleep finally. I cant imagine how he could ever survive the first trip from his hometown, transit and a week in lousy quarantine before. 

Above are pictures taken where we had a stop at the local restaurant, and the water lilies was taken at the Lake Dendam Tak Sudah - the translation probably will come out quite funny: The Unsettled Revenge Lake...  LOL, post a better translation please... 

I asked about the story of the lake to our driver, Sri. He began the story saying "It's all about a boy". He fell in love with the local Princess and get rejected because she already had her heart set on a Prince. The lake was where all this love triangle happened.  But on how the Lake ever appear, Sri couldn't tell me anything about it.  


It's all about a boy.... I like how the story started. Not often I heard something like this, usually all the stories I heard were always about a girl...LOL  

LLG in sketch

Above is my sketch about LLG. There are four significant points.
Here you can see Bukit Sulap (Magic Hills) on the background. Mr Chai once told me that the native called it like that because it is visible from where ever you stand. I guess this is acceptable since that hills is the tallest point in town - which soon, I think, this cute statement will Poof! once more taller buildings appear in future.
Point A and Point B, this is important because the town basically just growing linearly around the main road (Yos Sudarso) where at point A you can find mostly people still living in timber single storey houses with some banana or coconut trees in their front yard. Whilst the other point there are lots of commercial shop/houses spreading like mushroom in rainy season.