beloved bel

A lot of locals here are very good with DIY skills.  Listening to my previous story of our cowboy contractor M for our bathroom, you kind of understand why we need to be good with such skills ourselves.  As K says it's easier to rely on ourselves.  Yeah fist pump! Most importantly, labour work is very expensive in this country.  That is why if you recall many years ago, I said before… my first manager told me plumbers are probably the happiest people in this country.  They earn so much money!  And can get away with shoddy work… unless you are determined to track them down and demand some sort of compensation in return.  But bear in mind a lot of them are rather boorish with big arms… at least that's my impression.  And we are tiny in comparison, you know. When we first moved in, we had minimal tools.  Really minimal.  And then the wall drilling episode happened if you recall?  Last month… the Geesons came… ambitious love wall… no drill... neighbour came with whole tool box

I hope you are enjoying my house stories.  I thought I should probably blog about our bathroom/ toilet story.  And the lessons learnt as a result. This was the original bathroom upstairs.  The design was dated and the walls were fully tiled.  The floor tiles were old.  The previous owners had a standing shower and a bathtub taking up too much space.  We figured out if we should need to do some work, such as the toilet, we needed to do it before moving in and not at some point in time in the future - where are we gonna shower then? We scoured around magazines and stores for inspiration.  Finally at B&Q in one of their showrooms, I fell in love with this: My inspiration!  We worked with this classic English bathroom in mind. Getting a good contractor in this country as we found out is akin to striking the lottery.  We have heard of horror stories, and watched the local programme "Cowboy Builders" and we were very wary.  Friends back home who have got their

I love flowers in case you haven't known.  Well yes most girls do.  But ever since I did my wedding flowers with Gabby who guided me, I fell in love with this art of putting these beautiful stalks together. We always joke that we should do a wedding collaboration.  Me doing flowers and she doing make up (where her true passion lies). I chanced upon a flower school here a few months ago and have been having this nagging thought: to try out a course someday!  Life skill, friends, life skill :) This particular rose is called Rosa "Miss Piggy". What a cute name, isn't it?! I finally took to the chance in signing up for a 2h taster course in doing a hand tied bouquet last Saturday.  This place is pricey, I won't lie, but the whole experience was just so wonderful.  I went alone and met 4 other like minded ladies and we learnt from the guru, Judith.  She taught us the technique and gave us tips and educated us on flowers as much as she could in th

It's been coming to 9 months since we moved to our house and I haven't blogged too much about the place.  It's my first property and also a house which is something new for me; plus having seasons affect our lives too, unbelievable as it may sound.   We moved in in the peak of winter, at end January this year, where we froze our butts off in the new and bare space.  As it was only two of us, we decided to furnish the necessities first, and slowly extend to our other bedrooms.  I got all excited because I've never had the chance to really decorate any of the previous places I rented here, so this was the chance for me to demonstrate my love for decorating.  Painting was an altogether new lifeskill (as I call it) we learnt from the Geesons who spent a Saturday afternoon helping us paint our bedroom .  (Yes not only they helped to paint, they helped to drill holes to make our love wall recently.  We owe a lot in this house to them, really.)  Back to the bare house in

Day 3 This day, we felt adventurous and decided to explore somewhere outside Sanse. Given that Sanse is only 20km away from France, Bel had initially wanted to visit this place called Biarritz, a luxurious seaside town. However, our friendly guesthouse host told us that it was not very accessible and after getting some tips from him, we decided on a small coastal village called Hondarribia instead. It took us about an hour to reach by bus and within 30mins, we were done walking around the village and started to get bored. Not that Hondarribia wasn’t nice, but it was just really tiny. After taking some photos, we had to settle down for lunch although we just had our breakfast an hour ago to at least make our traveling time more worthwhile. Take time to stop and smell the flowers While walking along the coast, we saw a little river taxi ferrying people to another “island” across the water but did not think much of it. Anyway we had lunch at a