We went shopping today and bought a couple of stuffs!

(1) A book on making artisan breads in five minutes. No prize for guessing who the book is for. I prefer my sweet treats! Haha.

(2) An English teapot. We are both tea lovers and we were using our wedding teapot previously which was tiny! Now with this huge English teapot we should be able to serve up tea for four!

(3) A fondue set. Always wanted a fondue set for our guests! Won’t it be nice to have a sweet wine with some chocolate fondue strawberry at our mini alfresco dining space. Haha.

There are two popular outlet stores in Florence outskirt and we chose to visit Prada Space Outlet. It looks different from what I have imagined! I thought it will be chaotic but really it looks like a nice Prada store with a lot of Asians (coming from Hong Kong, China, Singapore, Japan and Korea). HAHA. It is really easy to get there, take a train from Florence Termini Station to Montevarchi Station which takes about 35 mins (express train) or 45 mins to an hour (normal train). From Montevarchi, catch a cab at the station. Prada Space Outlet is the only tourist attraction at Montevarchi and it seems like the entire town survives on their tourist spendings. The cab drivers told us there are probably only 4 cabs in this town and they run to and fro the train station to Space outlet daily!

We were told by the sales staff that they have limited pieces each day for sale and if you go on a weekend afternoon, most of the shelves will be empty already! So huge tip, visit in the morning! We went on a Saturday morning and were number 100+ patrons! They had a limit of 200 patrons per session (not sure how long is the session) but when we were there, it was busy but there wasn’t a queue to get in! So lucky us! We spent less than an hour there because we were very focused on what we wanted to get. Haha.

Our loots! Ok mine, mine loots! Haha

A leather bag for mummy! This is a classic design and it is made of full cow leather. It costs less than 400 euros!

This is for me! A small one for special events! Similarly full cow leather and costs less than 500 euros!

A wallet for me! I wanted a nice pretty wallet for the longest time! Similarly, leather and costs 189 euros

My sister wanted a long black wallet and I thought this is a classic design. Haha. Leather and costs 189 euros too.

So you roughly have a sense of what kind of things they have and their prices! All these prices were before VAT tax refund of around 11 – 13% (I can’t remember)?

He bought our Nespresso machine from Europe and all our capsules are from Europe too! You may wonder, why do we lugged them all the way back home? For one simple reason, it is far cheaper than if you bought it in Singapore. We didn’t come across any Nespresso counters in Italy and thought there didn’t enter the Italy market. But we were determined so our best friend Goggle pointed us to a Nespresso boutique in Coin, a departmental store in Florence on Via dei Calzaiuoli. So yay to that! Here’s for all like-minded people who may be looking for Nespresso in Italy. Haha.

Satisfied customer.

Look at the amount of stuff we bought!

We stepped out of the  mall and realized that once the mall is closed, many vendors lug their goodies out and start laying them out for sale! We discovered a whole new world! Their BBQ meat is not as good as the ones we tried in Beijing though!

I succumbed to fatigue and bought a trolley to lug my harvest! Haha.

I’m going to share with you a little store I got recommended to at The Clementi Mall! It’s The Good Things! It sells mainly items sourced from the UK and other European countries! Some of the random things are also from Museums all over the world! I couldn’t resist and broke the bank for two little items for our new home!

It is located at the Third Level (the level linking from MRT linkway) and just right behind Starbucks!

The “S” is cut off. Oops.

You should spend some time reading this, really funny.

They sell random clocks and vintage posters.

This owl can so add on to my collection! But no, I resisted this.

But I couldn’t resist this! We always wanted a map for our study room and this is an interactive map! A scratch map! We will be scratching the places we visited together on this map! Yippee. This costs approximately $40 and it’s made in UK!

This other item I bought is the real bank breaker!

I always wanted a reindeer head in our house and I guess this is something that is more artsy, matches our Scandinavian theme a little and adds a splash of colours to our neutral tone home. It’s designed in Italy and made in Germany and it costs more than a $100 dollars. GULPED. Someone need to stop me. This is what happens when I shop alone.

I bought these Marimo from a stall set up by Give a plant at Clarke Quay last week and I love them! Give a plant is set up by a guy who has green fingers and who strives to convince people to own plants! Marimos are sort of self sustainable with little effort required except to change the water once a month! I am going to put this in our Masterbed room’s toilet! He thinks it’s a waste of money to buy a moss ball! Haha. These Marimo are from Hokkiado!

I also bought a Terrarium from they same store! This will be in the guest’s toilet!

433 Tampines Street 43

Anyway, this store is in the least likely place for a lighting store. It is in the midst of some old HDB flats and not near any major activity or main road and it is so bright you wouldn’t miss it! It operates for less than six months and it is already so popular among the residents in our estate! The power of word of mouth and social networking sites!

Here’s a brief review of this store!

Pros

Good Service: Friendly services by the owner and his co-owner who seems to pay an interest to what you like and hopes to create! He is the one who showed me the magazine and understood what we wanted to create!

Low Price: Affordable and much lower than other stores. Hanging lamps range from $60 to $100 each (for the ones we asked) .

Cons

Limited Variety: As we are looking for clean and slick lamps for certain areas and a talking piece for certain rooms, there are not many which matches our theme.

Location: If you don’t drive or stay in the East it is unlikely that you will travel all the way down to their store. However having said that, they do serve customers living in Punggol and SengKang. Haha.

Here are some lamps which we are considering.

This is perfect for my walk-in wardrobe except that we literally missed the boat for this! This item did not managed to jump into the container and we have to wait for a couple of months before it arrives to our shore.