Birdsong Ruffle Dress - Sweet Plume

For more beautiful children clothings at Birdsong, click here.

Happy Friday!

Fawn Polka Dot Decorative Throw Pillow

Silver Ruffle Throw Pillow

Embroidered Flower Pillow

Jenna Pink pillow

Ruffles Pillow - Sand

Palmetto Pillow

This and some nice hot vanilla tea and a good read… ahh, my kind of a good afternoon!

Spilt Milk Bowl

Half Pint Creamer

Tasto Chip and Dip Set

Icecream Keeper

Nab one for yourself if you have guests over often, or to give away to your party hostess.

Now, the Icecream keeper will be just perfect for a picnic on a warm summer’s day. Hint*

CareBears wide deco tape

I love CareBears!

Use the new lovely deco tapes for packing your parcels, decorating your notepapers and scrapbooks.

White cotton & silk dress by Agnes B.

All pretty this season. Check out the 2010 Agnes B collection here.

Been up to some offline work, including two roadshows at the Science Faculty, National University of Singapore in January, and attending my real estate night classes. I hope the Chinese New Year break was good for you, wherever you are. And if you’re in a place like China, lucky you! The hols are a total of a week, ain’t it? Here in Singapore where I am, it is for but two days, but I think it was good enough for me. I haven’t been enjoying the Chinese New Year as much for decades, but this year turned out to be quite enjoyable. I put it down to cos my kids are old enough to enjoy the visitations and the fun with their cousins, discovering new houses and munching on a whole lot more of what I call ‘rubbish food’. Ah, the festivities.

Online, I’m grateful for the upward climb of the Happyshop FB fans (almost 600 now!) and the kind comments from customers, some of whom I’ve come to know a bit more personally. Also new in the shop in March will be new pens and deco tapes and other adorable brickbracks — the new pics have been uploaded on the Happyshop facebook page. On the Shinzi Katoh Design front, there’re some really great new bags coming our way. Katoh-Sensei has illustrated a brand new Fairy-flowers series of totes which exude a class of elegance coupled with much kawaii. These will be featured at our 3rd roadshow with our friends at Borders, at their upcoming Borders Fair in Apr/May 2010 at the Singapore Expo.

Here’s a sneakpeak!

New Shinzi Katoh Design illustrations

Hope you enjoy the rest of fabulous February! More good stuff, I promise.

The highlight has got to be the offer of a shop space — a brick-and-mortar store– at a nice area, which honestly had me sleepless a good decent coupla nights with hard thinking. But after some serious thought, I finally conceded that it didn’t make sense, especially in the Family Department. And so I decided to give this a miss. For now.

Managed to zip off to Tokyo with the family (I love Tokyo Disneyland!) cook for my dad, did a lot of Christmas shopping and ate too much of ‘nonsense food’ at my sister’s party, which is probably OK because after growing to a hibernation shape, I will probably/try very hard (at some point) to get back in size with some kind of exercise plan.

Ah well, sure there were a few spanners in the works, but on the whole it was good.

Hope your end-of-year is turning out splendid too.

Happy holidays everyone!

Muji to Go at Hong Kong International Airport Departure Lobby. Fairly big store with a lot of travelling companions, such as nifty laptop bags and even cute alarm clocks.

At Hong Kong airport — in transit to Nagoya.

My stay at Miel Parque Nagoya. I love it here plus the fact that it’s just 10 minutes drive to the Shinzi Katoh art exhibition.

Dependable service by the hotel front office staff, smiling even as I approach the desk from far, and always ready with polite greeting and a bow.

My workstation in the mornings and late nights. The closet on the left is small but perfect for a short trip. I love it how everything is so compact just against the windowed wall — closet, desk with standby torchlight below, electric heat-top, digital lock safe, drinkware store, fridge, and tv on a rotational top. Love the urban night view too.

Even space to put in a coffee table! Nice touch to the room.

A clean and compact have-it-all bathroom. And the bathtub is deeper than the norm!

Electric heating top for hot water! Stainless steel tumbler provided. Perfect for my late night cup noodles. There’s a vending machine on every even-floor for drinks (beer included) and cup noodles. Ah~ wonderful solution for them after-hours hunger pangs.

Too hungry on the first morning to hunt for anything more. Settled for a quick and cheap bite at a crowded cafe at an underground subway station. The crispy toast was only 130yen, and was really yummy too. Stuffed with ham, cheese, sunny-sideup and cabbage. Wolfed down the other half before remembering to take a pic. Actually this is one of the very few photos I took of my food. Busy concentrating on the eating!

The sushi display that really was just a quarter of the work with the clever use of mirrors! This was at a Japanese restaurant at the NHK building 1F. There was another restaurant nearby with special takeaway bentos for just 500yen. Quite popular with the office workers in that vicinity.

On my way to Shinzi Katoh Design office in Aichi a day before the Shinzi Katoh art exhibition.

Door to studio — our meeting room.

Mr Shinzi Katoh and me after our meeting.

Shinzi Katoh Design studio. Snapped this pic while waiting for Sensei and the co-workers. They were in the office to get ready to leave for dinner together.

Day of the exhibition! But first, to check out the new Shinzi Katoh store at La Chic mall. Remember I posted about this Nagoya mall last month? I thought no way I’m heading back to Singapore without taking a look for myself! No photography allowed, but Shinzi Katoh Design office very kindly made a call to the store to let them know I was coming with my camera. Look at all the goodies!

Sweet staff at the shop! For more pix of this shop, view the album on Facebook here. 

Reached Jill D’art Studio later that day — that’s where Sensei’s art show is held. What a crowd!

Cat hatching a plot! This is my favourite ~

Sensei talking to one of the many guests who came to this opening party.

The Shinzi Katoh Design team! I was very honored to be seated next to Sensei.

Right-o! When it was say sayonara Nagoya! I took the miu-train back to the Nagoya International Airport. It’s an express with a flight-inspired interior. I topped up about 300yen to my commoner of a Meitetsu train tix to enjoy the ride.

It was a very comfy and fast ride, all done too soon. Why, that’s the control tower!

Back at the busy Hong Kong airport, in transit back to Singapore.

I spent a total of 4 days away from the family, that is, 2 days at the airports and on the planes, and 2 schedule-filled days in Nagoya. This was a work trip no doubt, but I managed to fulfill my bit of Singaporean duty and visited plenty of shopping malls, and tried out plenty of Japanese food from crispy deep-fried snacks, quaint bread and desserts, delish ramen to a grand 5-course dinner at a cool jazzy eat-in. Got lost once on foot, and took the wrong train once. All in all, it was a good trip out.

Hope I was able to share a bit of my outing’s fun!

Photo from Cocca, Japan

What a cute chair! Though it doesn’t do much (like swivelling or have adjustable height) it looks comfortable and pretty. A quiet confidence in the room. Check out the fabric:

Photo from Cocca, Japan

Cocca specialises in printed textiles and handcraft materials. Other than upholstered furniture, you can find fabric notebooks too, like this one:

Photo from Cocca, Japan

For online purchase, visit its online store here. Do note that there are transaction fees imposed, from 315yen and up.

I like reading up on tips to keep my space and stuff. Here are some of the cool quirky tips I chanced upon this week: using the binder clip to hold your money and keys, or use your nail polish to color-code your keys!

Photo from Real Simple

This napkin/menu holder works great to hold your bills and other documents calling out for your attention. You don’t wanna look at ‘em yet but you don’t wanna lose ‘em either. Perfect. And this is really inexpensive too. I’ve seen acrylic holders like these at Daiso which sells most of its stuff at S$2.00.  

For other practical tips, visit Real Simple.