The-old-perfectionist-and-bossy-me would go mad and disappointed, cause I couldn’t control thing so that it can turn out the way I plan and imagine it to be. But have since learn to accept God’s plan.

Take an example from the recent happening. Hubby and I have decided to free ourselves up from work on this holiday season; which means no design/developing/dealing with deadline/anything biggie, only providing support work. We envisioned this whole December as a laid-back month, settling some of the house projects (especially upstairs) and have activities from our Advent Calendar.

The perfect scenario started with the Langkawi getaway, we’ll come back home to tackle the upstairs project by freeing up a week for it; from moving ALL upstairs stuffs to downstairs, have the flooring guy comes to do his job for two days and we’ll sleep on the couch during that two days, preparing to move all the stuffs back upstairs, go shop for iqair hyperhepa filter, and getting ready for Christmas. Easy peasy!

But, the unplanned thing comes in and the process becomes so much tougher than we expected. The upstairs cement flooring was poorly done (nothing is right with our renovation) so it affects the work today. The flooring guy has to do double job and we have to add wall skirting to cover the hopeless area. We’ve been sleeping on the couch from two days to freaking two weeks, spending the weeks DIY-ing the skirting, painting, touch up, etc and falling sick in between. No time for vanity or Advent calendar’s activities.

See, one man’s irresponsibility & incapability to do his job right at the first place has result and affect so many things. We can only regret for handing the job to the wrong person though we have quite a few candidates. In hokkien, it would be “keng lai keng khi keng tiok chau geng geng“.

Now with days away from Christmas, we’ve been crazily busy getting the house (and us) back in shape. And that’s it, the last big project of the house, the rest will be decor only, promise.

Starting the advent calendar’s tradition
Oh yea, count down to Christmas with activities! With so many jars in the house, we decided to use one and filled it with 24-mini-paper-wrapped-with-straw. Didn’t write any number, we’ll just pick one randomly each day and do the activity written in there; from baking Christmas cookies to charity donation. Hope it’s gonna be fun!

Got our first Christmas tree
After searching artificial Christmas tree through department store, gift shops, and IKEA, it’s clear to us that IKEA is the winner. Not in terms of cheaper price but the tree’s quality, so looking forward to use it for many many years to come. We’ve started to decorate the tree but still looking to add lighting and more.

Slowing Down
We’ve been crazily busy making a living + realize our dream project for the past 11 months; with sales target, list of things to do, etc. No complain, it’s good to be busy doing the things that we love and see how it pays off. But I just see that we need to slow down and take a one month ‘break’ instead of keep on rushing and lost our initial intention. It’s about do what we can, when we can. Make time for each other. Enjoy the present’s moment. Reflect back and see what really matters to us. Pushing away the thought of “need to earn more money, so we can do this do that”. A pre-retiring life.

More House Projects
House project is so addictive; from creating wall art to painting old stuffs. Also, with Pinterest nowadays, we’ll never gonna short of interesting DIY projects to work on from upholstering a 24 inch round table to painting laminate furniture. Anyway, we’ve just made a crazy decision, I foresee it will involve lots of energy, sweat and sleep like in a warehouse; the trouble that we get ourselves into just so we don’t regret in the future for not doing this project. Can’t wait for it!

End of July
- Finally receive the house key! We’re oh so happy, our mind and days were filled with house-renovation-and-decoration-idea. Can’t wait to celebrate Christmas in the new house and have our first Christmas tree. Basically we were one happy first-time-house-owner!

August
- Paperwork: register water & electric bill as the previous one was cut after house sales was final and change address for the broadband. All’s done in a timely manner.
- Found a few renovation contractors and have them quote us; we’re so much into budget that we forgot about quality work and others. We were torn in between choices but finally made a decision (which we regret BIG time now!).
- The renovation work commenced. First week was all about hacking and dismantle the old-wooden-windows, grill, etc, progress was pretty good so we just came after/before lunch time and still get to work most of the day.
- Approaching end of first week, things didn’t go on the right track especially the work quality. That’s when the nightmare began. We can’t let things go down the drain, so hubby went to monitor the work starting from the second week and his work time was shift to the evening. Thank God our work allowed us to have such flexibility.
- The renovation work was completed in 3 weeks, just in time before our flight back to hubby’s hometown where I had my pass renewed – still for one year only, bummer!
- Too busy for shopping mall, think we only go out for once.

September
- Basically it’s a cleaning month, we’ve never been so hardworking before. Thank God we didn’t go with a larger house. The hardest part is on the upper floor as we turned it from parquet to cement-based, so it’s pretty hard to clean up all the debris – take so much time. At one point, I’d love to hire a one-time domestic helper but hey, it’s our house, we know it best and we’re still young with so much energy *confident*.
- To avoid running around like a headless chicken, we made a to-do-list and plan the week ahead; from cleaning to buying lighting fixtures.
- Mid of the month: brother-in-law came to KL and help us to install the lighting fixtures, that includes which line goes to which, earth line, etc I have no idea about electricity. It took one whole Sunday from morning to night, whew!
- So, we have lighting and the house is in a clean state, ready for moving in! But, one thing leads to another, we said f*ck off the budget, let’s do electrical wiring now for the whole house. That means, we’re back to square (read: making the house dirty again with all the debris from wiring work).
- We got busy packing the entire stuffs in our apartment and wrapped them nicely (learn from previous moving experience). Packing tips: categorize things in boxes and label them and don’t hesitate to get rid of items that you no longer need/use – throw or donate away.
- Wiring work was completed in four days. On our moving day, the workers were still doing the final touch. So, imagine all the wiring leftover, luggage, aluminum briefcase, boxes here and there, CHAOS! I almost break down, but thank God for friends who help us with the moving and unpacking.
- We spent the first night after moving in without curtains and the rest of September without window-and-door-grille (it’s not completed yet). So much so for the insecurity feeling.

October, 4th quarter of the year but let’s just put it in
- We finished unpacking in less than two weeks.
- My parents came here, my brother had his mid-semester break, so family gathering it is!
- This month is all about settling down, filling up the house with necessary stuffs from Air-con to sofa. Paid a visit to IKEA twice to buy a few stuffs here and there. Decided to make a complete list from the online catalogue site before making a 3rd visit, that way it’s more efficient.
- Finally have our front yard done with Philippine grass and pebbles – just a small car park area. We bought them from a plant nursery and DIY by hubby. I foresee that cutting grass will be our post office-hour activity along with evening jogging or strolling the park.

All in all, it’s been a hectic months, juggling between the new house and our work. Yet some people really think that we have time to do all the above stuffs because we don’t need to work *looking at the imaginary money tree at our backyard*. Worse, the opinion doesn’t come from a stranger, ironic eh? It strengthen my belief that “they can’t do it, therefore they think you can’t too”. Oh well..

As we’ve served the house (read: cleaning, fix plumbing issue, fill in furniture, etc) for quite some time, I’m looking for the house to serve us back – I mean, let us sit back and enjoy the home sweet home.

Anyway, last two weeks in the middle of the renovation madness, I took the time to sit down at a corner of the house.

Admiring the almost-finish work, the living room looked so much spacious with the 2×2 tiles and it hit me that the two storey house is actually quite huge for our little family (the two of us currently) if compares to our apartment now.

There was a slight of emptiness hitting me, but I shoo-ed it away and imagine how we’ll fill the house with life and laughter; where we work, live, cook, grow our little family, have parents come over, etc. By then it will be more than a shelter to us.

Two weeks before the house moving, in the agenda is cleaning the new house (renovation leaves us with so much debris, help!!), packing the current apartment and shop for lighting fixtures, hope we won’t be sidetracked with chauvet min spot led moving head fixture.

Definitely need to keep a good stamina til the moving day!