Our house continues to look more and more like an Ikea showroom. Can I have corporate sponsorship yet? I’ll settle for a lifetime supply of Princess Cake :9

Before, our desks were side by side under the window, with the shelf part of my desk in-between. We had an old, brown bookshelf piled with half books, half ’stuff,’ and plus a big pile of junk in the corner since our apartment is a) tiny and b) has no storage at all. We bought two new shelves in birch, which matches our other furniture, to replace the ugly bookshelf, and moved our desks. It feels so much more open now! I unearthed a lot of junk that needed to be thrown out, but also some treasures, like my typewriter and my Polaroid camera which still has film in it.

The maps are all from places we have visited (Tokyo, Amsterdam, Paris).

The new shelves with my colour-coded books~

My desk ♥

Somehow today a quick trip to Ikea to buy some new plates and have lunch turned into… two new bookshelves and a complete overhaul of our study! Furniture was moved, piles of junk were thrown out, and I found lots of treasures! I will take pictures soon. I’m so happy with how it turned out, our little space feels so much bigger now~

Anyway… Saturday Sweets! I save so many pictures and links of things I am loving so I decided I’m going to share them every weekend! Here are some things I am loving at the moment:

These tutorials for sweet little hair accessories at A Beautiful Mess. I want to make some when I have some free time ♥ I also really want to get some cute wool and crochet a granny square blanket for winter.

I came across a series of fan-made covers for Lolita, and I love this one. A lot of them were really tacky but a few captured the spirit of the book in a really unique way. I think if I were to make one it would be a road-map of America, with their route drawn on in lipstick, and a butterfly sitting on the paper…

Cute necklaces from Peppersprouts on etsy. I love bunnies and I love wooden jewelery. And this one makes me think of decorations for a cute wedding cake!

On the subject of etsy, I also adore I’myourpresent. I bought my Eiffel tower earrings there, and she sent me the sweetest package. I need an excuse to order more things!

This headband. HEARTS!

The fact that the Poupee Girl DS game was finally released as a ROM. Yes yes, downloading is bad, but I didn’t feel like paying $$$ to import the game from Japan. So after waiting for months, I can play it! My Japanese is terrible though, I need to go back in time to when I was still learning and refresh my brain a little.

And finally, interior design sites. I’ve been looking through all of the ’small spaces’ entires on the ‘saucydwellings‘ livejournal community, because I love to see what other people do with small (often rented) spaces. Even if the solution seems to be ‘buy a lot of furniture from IKEA’ (*check*!) hehe.

Happy new year everyone! We spent the evening with friends, watched early fireworks (and an amazing full moon rising!) at the beach and then played Arkham Horror until early in the morning. The early fireworks were so much fun, it was nice to be there with families and excited children instead of a pile of crazy drunks! We might make it our yearly tradition from now on.

I had such a nice time over the holidays, but now I’m back to work! I love the start of the year and I have lots of plans for things I want to do. I’m looking forward to studying something new, maybe finishing my thesis, and finding a new job. And drawing a lot as well~

A new year means that B. and I have passed another anniversary, eight years now! We had plans for a nice dinner and dessert in Chinatown, but unfortunately, my car had other ideas. Sigh! So instead we celebrated with breakfast at the Duthy St Deli. Mm, french toast…

Right now we’re in the middle of a heatwave, which seems to be something that happens every summer now. We have air conditioning for the first time and I’m SO glad. It’s become almost a necessity living here. I don’t mind the hot weather but I’m looking forward to a cool change. In the meantime, I will be making lots of iced coffee and preparing a big bowl of potato salad!

Since I’m on holidays I’ve finally had time to do some craft projects that I’ve been planning for a while!

I’ve seen this done in so many ways and I’ve always wanted to make my own ‘photo string’. I made some of my favourite pictures that I have saved from tumblr into fake polaroids then printed them. After only 5 years in this house the study is finally getting decorated, heh. I like that I can change the pictures whenever I want as well :3 And my other project wasn’t really planned, but yesterday I recieved a huge lot of memo sheets from a friend on swapbot and decided to put the cute die-cut ones into use like this:

Our fridge gets a lot of sun onto the door and it has started turning yellow… So this was a good way to cover up the uglyness and to make the kitchen a little more fun, hehe. I can never bring myself to use up memo sheets by writing on them, so this way I can enjoy them more than just storing them in a box on my desk!

Pretty eiffel tour earrings from ‘I’m your present‘ :3 She also sent me a cute vintage badge and some little Christmas tree earrings which I wore on Christmas day.

A tea holder from my mother in law which I planted some bamboo cuttings in. The writing says ‘幸愛夢’ (Happy Love Dream). Cute!

Lovebirds clutch by Naomi, who makes the most beautiful jewellery <3

The lights I bought to replace the ones that broke. They remind me of cherry blossoms~

Kitty-chan pillow, for napping on.