Barbie x BCF x TANGS

If you’re popping by TANGS over the next few days, be on a lookout for these Barbie dolls on display around L2 and L4! The dolls are each specially designed (their little home in a box too) by 18 fashion designers both local and international to celebrate Mattel’s 50th anniversary. So the dolls will be up for auction on eBay Singapore come Monday and all proceeds will go to the Breast Cancer Foundation. While my point isn’t to ask my readers to go bid but if you’re wondering why I even care, is because someone in my family has recently been diagnosed with breast cancer. Yikesadoo but we stay positive!

You can view the entire range of dolls here and as for the eBay link, it will only be posted when the auction goes live.

How cute are the mother-daughter ballet flats!

I notice the designers are dog lovers, where my cats at!

So impressed with the hair! And the tiny clutch.

THIS! Has to bring back memories for most girls. The pain of losing one side of your Barbie’s shoe.

This one is by Antik Batik and is my favourite of the lot. The detailing, the eye makeup, the hair, all really grabbed me. I wish I had monies for this baby.

Go see them in person if you can make time! Do bid if you know you can!

Thanks Rae for lifting up the glass covers, heehee, always so nice to see you!

MINI BABY!

The best girls in the world, Caili & Cheryl, gave me the Diana Mini for my (belated birthday) present!! So happy pleased happy happy happy! Mini adventures coming your way and mine!

New Sponsor!

And also my very first sponsor at that. Guys, I’d like to introduce Earring Addict to you. Dawne is the lady behind these creations and what I love most about her designs is its simplicity. It’s as important to be creative as it is to have an editing eye. I like that she keeps her colours minimal. She works mostly with gold plated materials and beads and ceramic, so if that’s your taste in jewellery, do visit her shop by clicking the banner on the right!

Are You Being Served? Part 1

A quick word to the readers who aren’t Singaporean: Singapore’s service industry has a longstanding poor reputation. It’s something locals always compare and complain about. So a group of people are trying to do something to hopefully make some difference.

Are You Being Served? is an initiative started by Singapore Tourism Board and I’m so pleased to be a small part of it. For me, I get to experience service (good or bad) mostly when I dine out. I hardly shop in stores and generally am a ‘i-will-look-for-it-myself’ kind of a shopper. At restaurants, I’m usually partial to servers because I know most of them are doing it part-time so it’s easy to simply treat it as a job and not a job you love. I worked in the F&B line while in school too so I can speak for myself at least. I am digressing… So! When asked to think up a mission to put our service industry to the test, I didn’t want to do food as I might be able to predict the outcome so the next best thing was to try something real, something which I meant to do myself with or without this mission.

Industry: Retail {Electronics}
Mission details: I want to get educated on the different types of sewing machines out there in the market. As a beginner, I’m definitely looking for something pretty entry-level but not too basic. But more importantly I want to find out the difference between a serger and an overlock sewing machine, what are the factors I should be considering - maybe someone who sews clothing and someone who makes curtains require different types of machines? In my head I’m thinking of how I’ve come to learn to choose between a DSLR and a point-and-shoot camera, I’ve learnt what to look out for and what I have to compromise on. So with this mission, I’m really hoping to get in tuned with sewing machines!
Service skill to test: Knowledge of product and possibly personal experience
Estimated expense (SGD): $0 because I’m window shopping!

I will be carrying out my mission next week and to be fair, I won’t be testing some sales guy who unfortunately was lurking around the sewing machines department in Harvey Norman or Courts. So check back next week to find out how it all goes down!

P.S. If you know about sewing machines, you’re most welcome to share your knowledge and experiences!

Actually,

I was reading Sarah’s blog and she’s going to Shanghai which in turn made me go to my Pictures folder and look at my photos during my trip there in 2007.

Well actually, i’m just finding an excuse to post so i can share that i’ve found a new and very nice place to move into! We viewed the apartment early this morning and gave a deposit, looked like eager puppies and tried to tell the agent a million times over that we love the place but there were other viewings lined up for the day so we had to wait and see. I was pretty much doozy-headed all day, waiting by my phone for good news. My heart hasn’t felt this much emotion in a while, i tell ya. The call finally came in the evening and now all we’re saying and thinking is we cannot wait to move, absolutely cannot wait!!

So i’m relieved house-hunting is over which means packing will have to commence soon (which is actually my favourite part). I move end of the month and i promise photos!

P.S. Rae & Tom Tuttle, i promise photos of no hair new hair soonest! x

60s

60s dress and brogues: vintage via ebay
vintage briefcase: purchased from Eileen
socks: Zipia

I’ve been keeping an eye out for a very mod 60s dress on ebay/etsy but no such luck yet.

And my friend, Niki, got me talking about Why I Lomo on her online art community Xhatch! I’m with good company alongside two fantastic dudes who lomo as well, you can read our lomo stories here!

Ciao bellas

I am off to Bali for my birthday week! So i leave you with photos of pies because they’re unbelievably appealing to the eyes. I didn’t try them tho. This place is at L7 of Orchard Central and one of the staff told me off when i took photos which is why we didn’t bother to eat them.

Anyway! I wasn’t hardworking enough to schedule posts while i’m gone but, but but i promise photos of sea, sun and sand when i’m back. Now i have to go plant a million kisses on Fatboy before leaving!!

8.22

The medley of songs this year was pretty awesome, i was jumping up and down waving my flag in front of the telly! Then 8.22PM came, where Singaporeans stopped to recite our pledge. The Pledge Moment almost brought me to tears.

Happy 44th birthday Singapore!

Uniqloooo

Thanks to patlaw, i won myself a preview to Uniqlo’s opening at Ion Orchard on Wednesday!

I got to meet the people behind some of the blogs i read!

Sarah + Jo of Wottoncool and Nicole of Cherry Magazine

xwen of Fash-Eccentric!

And got to see familiar faces,

Jayden + Pat [Pic credit: Pat]

[Pic credit: Jayden]

Dottie of Fashion Nation

It was a little tough picking out stuff for myself, i have to admit, i’m not much of a ‘basics’ person. My eye kept going to this magenta+blue flannel shirt but somehow it never ended up in my basket so alas, it wasn’t meant to be!

This is what i ended up buying with the $100 gift voucher (how generous Uniqlo!); it all came together nicely to make an outfit. So happy to finally own a handy brolly - you have no idea - it’s one of those things i can’t bring myself to buy.

{The tote, scarf and hanky was part of the goodie bag}

By Diana

The ever amazing Diana of our.city.lights did an interview with me about photography + inspirations. She said the nicest things really! But i’m just so honoured to be a little part of her wonderful introductions of many truly inspiring photographers.

Thank you Diana!

{p.s. Do drop by Tangs if you’re in town today and tomorrow, i’ll be in the windows for 24 hours for the Blogathon (see behind the scenes photos + video here). You can vote for the contestants on location, read our blog posts and join us on twitter as well. I’ll have another post up once the Blogathon kicks off at 6PM, with all the links and details on how you can interact with all the 10 bloggers participating.}

Hello again

Some pictures from the Night Festival 2009 at The National Museum, no crazy lights action this year, that’s so 2008 they say.

In the last photo is where we buried our hamster, Dexter, last year. At a quiet part of Fort Canning Park.

It’s been quiet, i’ve been away from my computer for the past two days. I spent time with my brother, my good friends and met new people!

Eileen of Shoe of Salvation was in town for a bit and i love this lady so much, i had to put my shyness aside and get out of the house to meet her yesterday. As always i’m way too awkward to take my camera out to photograph the moment but we took one before parting ways, i’ll put it up once E sends it my way. In the evening, i got to meet plastiqgurl and the FN girls - Dottie + Stephie, because i’ll be participating in a ‘blogathon’ together with the FN girls + seven other local bloggers.

The website’s not up yet but this is a teaser. The blogathon is happening the coming Friday (17 July) at the windows of Tangs at Orchard. ‘Blogathon’ because we’re gonna be in these windows for 24 hours! It starts at 6PM on Friday and.. without using my fingers to count, it ends 6PM Saturday! The organisers are Intel x Lenovo x Tangs. There’s gonna be challenges for us bloggers to compete in every few hours sorta thing. Do come and look laugh wave at us or me; i’m finding all of this very funny yet feeling pretty much fucked at the same time!

If you’re following my twitter, you’ll be seeing a lot of these #bthon tweets in the next few days to come. So let’s engage in some blogathon madness! Stress makes me talk funny, it’s not really me.

Sweet Sarah

Sarah dropped off this wonderful jar of cookies (almost all gone now) this afternoon. You can see what she was up to all day on her blog! I get extra tingly when friends acknowledge my boyfriend, he loved them cookies Sarah, the jar’s on his table. If anyone should open a brick-and-mortar store, it’s this lady. Her attention to detail shames mine a million times over.

I’m having a working-weekend this week but at the rate i’m going… i need a four-day-weekend! It’s so hard to get in the mood i tell ya. Well i’m leaving you with some links in the meantime!

• Antipodean (am a huge fan!) is having their annual sale so head down to Holland Village

• I’ve only started reading camp comfort for two weeks now but i love love love the blog so so so much

• If you’re in West Hollywood, let’s trade places because i’d die to see this Barack Obama exhibition

• Lastly, I don’t know how many of you readers are boys. My boyfriend developed SUBERNOVA, a project management software for freelancers. I say it’s a boy thing because most girls like their moleskine + post its + to-do lists. I’m using SUBERNOVA myself right now and it’s so useful for my work-work plus he’s gotten a lot of wonderful feedback which is incredible, am so proud of his work. I thought perhaps i could reach a different group of people through my blog, spread the word that such a tool exists for freelancers!

A gnome a print

Yes i have been gone! Gone nowhere simply stumbled out of the habit to be posting. That aside, I wanted to say i’ve got new prints in my etsy store. Good night now, i’ll be back tomorrow with some photos!

Peaches and gnomes on bright white or textured paper, 8″ x 10″.

National Geographic Store in Singapore

Yay you read that right. The store opens on Sunday at Vivocity but i was lucky enough to get a preview of the store this evening. Yknow what these Ogilvy people do (the organisers) - they build up anticipation so well. The store location wasn’t stated on the invite and so the bloggers met at a carpark to be greeted by “an exhibition crew of SUVs” that would take us there. That was a little something something i appreciated.

Some of the SUVs. There was apparently one car for each blogger (about 12 of us i think) so it was a pretty cool thing to witness. A whole line of tall cars - crew gang club scary!

He’s “Big Bear” and his ride was the biggest and tallest and i was a little sad cos he didn’t hear me when i said i wanted to take his, and someone with a louder voice got it instead - haha. I get terribly awkward and shy at these things, meeting a bunch of strangers and such.

So the store is on the first level of Vivocity, and this is what it looks like from the front of the store.

Those are cushions made to resemble rocks!

This is the wind chamber for customers to try on Gortex jackets so you know it really works and keeps you warm. The screen there allows you to monitor your body temperature. I thought this box was smart! Definitely one of the popular aspects of the store.

Something i wanted to purchase, it’s a video camera of sorts. But no one seemed to be buying anything so i’ll come back next time! And a few other things i’d want for my home.

This is a first in Asia, the only other store is in London. The bigwigs of NatGeo (the man above is one of them, he’s a funny one!) shared quite a bit on the concept of the store. Go there, be inspired, be edutained (they kept using that word and i thought it was hilarious) about our life earth environment. They made it easy to do with the interior of the store. It feels like home, only 100x bigger and with very very cool things. There’s alot more to look at but i was pretty much drawn to the ‘old gentlemen’s club’ parts of the store so my pictures only say so much.

Oh! and he shared something, he mentioned NatGeoFood which is a site you can get tips/info on food from all around the world!

Thank you Pat, Tania and Brian!

winner(s)!

So i used a random number picker to be fair, alot of your comments really grabbed me, oh! i had such a good time reading them. Thanks guys!! I hope to do another one for Christmas but that all depends on my workload.

Well i caved in and picked two people instead of one cos one felt measly and pathetic. Yue and Emily L., you should have an email sitting in your inbox from me! As for the very nice people who said they’d check out my etsy store, oh i wish i had it all going my way… i was aiming to put the prints up for sale before announcing the winners so everything works out for everyone but i haven’t! I will give a shout out once i do, thanks for being supportive, really! And to Soon Lee for being so cute too.