Great Finds for the Home

For that perfect round sunny-side up fried eggs, we use Egg Rings at home. I’m not fussy when it comes to the shape of my fried eggs, however, my Husband is. He wants them perfectly round (like the ones he eats at Mc Donald’s) so he bought me these Egg Rings as soon as we moved to our new place last year.

An egg ring is used to contain the egg in a perfectly round shape while it cooks. This tool is also useful when you want to cook more eggs in the pan at the same time as it keep the eggs from spreading in the pan. It is usually made of stainless steel and some have attached handles that allow the rings to be lifted easily from the pan.

Some tips on how to achieve a perfectly round fried egg:

1. Before placing the egg ring on the frying pan, lightly grease the inside of the egg rings with butter or oil to avoid cooked eggs to stick too much to your egg rings.

2. For eggs cooked sunny-side up and you are not confident with your egg-cracking ability, crack each egg on a small bowl first before placing the egg on their individual egg ring. For those who want to perfect cracking an egg, all you need is practice. For me, it’s having a gentle but firm hand when cracking an egg.

3. Cooking eggs using Egg Rings usually take a longer time than the usual, about three to five minutes. Keep in mind that eggs are thicker when cooked in egg rings, so it requires more cooking time.

4. The longer the egg is cooked, the browner the bottom of the egg will become. I usually lower the heat so the bottom won’t burn.

5. You can also use Egg Rings for scrambled eggs, perfect for a breakfast sandwich made with an English Muffin.

6. Remove Egg Rings before serving your fried eggs.

For months since we moved in to our unit, the guest room had been the storage area of our place. Come February this year, it was time to transform it to its real designation, a Guest Room.

We did a lot of work on the Guest Room (as compared to the work done on the Master’s Bedroom) as we didn’t avail of any bedroom packages. We bought a bed and painted it to have a more earthy-color. Bought two matching bedside tables that didn’t match the color of the bed (because we painted it) as we wanted a break from unified colors this time.

So this is how it looks now…not matching and yet there is harmony of colors.

Since in this room, we had a lighter shade of neutral colors, I decided to make the bedsheets red.

And since this is the guest room, we wanted our little furry friends from Australia to welcome our guests….

Our photographs in this room’s theme is Travel, which shows the places we’ve been to. In this photo, you’ll see (from top to bottom) Bohol (Chocolate Hills, Cebu (Magellan’s Cross), Dubai (Burj Al Arab), Hongkong (IFC Building), Singapore (The Merlion), Melbourne (Yarra River) and Canberra (Parliament).

The Guest Room doesn’t have a built-in closet but we didn’t have to buy a cabinet for clothes. It so happened that the Husband’s office moved to a new building so the company decided to give away some furnitures. So the Husband took home his big filing cabinet (which I transformed into a clothes cabinet) and mobile cabinet (which I transformed into a mini-bookshelf. Voila, instant home furnitures!

Since the cabinets are made of steel and gray in color, I bought some wooden placemats and used it as cover for the cabinets, to somehow in-synch them with the bed and bedside tables. I also used a Black vase and Brown-striped tealight candles as accents for the room.

I placed two more travel photos on top of the mini-bookshelf, this time, it’s a photo of us in La Perouse (one of our favorite places in Sydney) and a sunset photo of Boracay taken during our honeymoon in 2007.

Transforming the Guest Room took six weeks to complete–we just finished last Sunday. It’s all ready now.

We’ve always dreamed of owning funky furnitures when we have our own home, but we never thought we’d own an Ottoman furniture this soon…

…but due to some surprise blessing, we did!!!!

We never really planned to put any furniture in our balcony, but because of some happy surprise, the Husband brought home two Dice Ottoman sofa about two weeks ago. Went back to Ikea (for the second time in just three weeks) last Saturday and found this dark chocolate side table that we converted into a coffee table. Voila! We now have a mini-lounge in our balcony.

On Sunday morning, Husband and I had our very first morning coffee date in our balcony.

Heaven on 3rd floor.

I used to put my Scourer Sponge in a dishwashing container, but since it is a sponge, it absorbs the dishwashing liquid and I find that a waste. Plus, it didn’t look neat to me.

Thank goodness, last Friday, I found this little wonder….

a suction basket for dishwashing sponges!!!!

No more wastage and looks very neat. I love it!

The Suction Basket is available at Big W for only AUD$2.76. Could be available at other department stores too.

Last month, some bloggers and I were sharing tips on how to effectively wrap sandwiches (click here.)

Since I lived here in Australia, I learned to like wrapping our sandwiches in aluminum foil, it’s easier to wrap sandwiches and it never makes it soggy. However, I also know that aluminum foil is not environment-friendly and can be costly.

During the Christmas Holidays, I finally found a solution to wrapping sandwiches…

…a Plastic Sandwich Container!!!!!!

I found this in the Chinese Store for only AUD$2.00. It’s microwave safe and re-usable. What joy to find a cheap alternative to wrapping sandwiches.

This sandwich container can hold two sandwiches. Not bad huh?

I started using it last week and I’m happy to say that leaving my sandwiches inside the sandwich container does not leave it soggy and it prevents my sandwich from being squeezed in-between stuff inside my bag. And best part is, it lessens the use of aluminum foil in our home, so less costs for the household.