adventures of a blogjunkie

I was pleasantly surprised at how much fun I had at the Swedecook cooking class, despite not being able to cook 😀

Pei Chyi and I attended the class last Thursday along with other IKEA Malaysia brand ambassadors, which was held at at19Culinary studio in Damansara Heights. Our instructor was Chef Khai, an award winning chef and lecturer at Taylors School of Hospitality, Tourism and Culinary Arts.

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.. is during the IKEA sale!

It’s the last week to take advantage of great deals at everyone’s favorite furniture and lifestyle store. The IKEA sale is on until this Sunday, 25th March.

Zack’s play area in our living room

Pei Chyi, Zack and I paid a visit to the store at the beginning of the sale and bought this cute KRITTER table and chair set for Zack to arrange his alphabet blocks and play with his Play-doh. It wasn’t on sale, but we needed it and there are so many other things that are on sale. Here are some of the great deals that we saw. Read More »

I used to oppose IKEA. I didn’t want my house to look like an IKEA showroom, and to avoid falling for the “IKEA nesting instinct” explained in this scene of The Fight Club, one of my fave movies of all time.

I’ve since gotten over that. I’m not buying IKEA products to define myself after all, I’m buying them because of their great value and business practices. And to make sure my house doesn’t end up looking like an IKEA showroom, I hack my IKEA stuff! (For example, see my DIY IKEA Standing Desk Hack).

Here’s another hack we recently did for our home.

The super affordable SOLSTA PÄLLBO footstool is only RM8.90, but only comes in white and gray. Not really matching with our living room’s color scheme.

SOLSTA PÄLLBO footstool

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My master bathroom

The master bathroom in our new house comes with a double sink, so we wanted to have a large mirror that is wide enough for both me and Pei Chyi to use at the same time. After looking at countless bathroom accessory shops, getting quotes for custom mirrors we decided that we would settle for the IKEA HOVET mirror.

The HOVET mirror is a beautiful thing with a sleek aluminum frame, and is suitable for use in high-humidity areas like a bathroom. Perfect! At RM349 it was still cheaper than a custom mirror too. So we purchased the mirror and had it delivered.

When it arrived we admired it and were so excited that we were going to have such a big mirror in our bathroom. Because you know, it’s huge!. So big in fact, that it was too wide for our bathroom. Facepalm! Read More »

Earlier this month I was invited to a behind the scenes tour at IKEA Malaysia. This was part of their blogger program me which I was invited to be part of as well. The picture above was taken at their very cool office. See more on their Facebook page. I also learnt some cool facts – IKEA Malaysia sells 590,000 meatballs and 300,000 curry puffs each month. Mind boggling!

There are a few brands that I would gladly associate myself with without hesitation. The first would be Apple – no surprises there. I also really love WordPress. And the other brand on this very short list would be IKEA.

The first major piece of furniture I bought was from IKEA. Incidentally, this TOMEILILA sofa is still in great shape and is part of our new living room. Try spotting how many IKEA stuff we have in our new home – it’s like an IKEA showroom!

The IKEA Way

IKEA preaches taking responsibility for people and for the environment as a prerequisite for doing good business. From my visit to IKEA I could see that they don’t say this to blow smoke in our face, they are serious about it. All their employees are trained to recycle to the point that they don’t even have trash bins at their desks – they have to pick up and deposit their trash in a common bin. That’s definitely a good habit to inculcate because I regularly see Malaysians chucking trash out their car window.. aiya! Read More »