You gotta have cute theme anywhere you can, right? ;p

I always change up my wallpaper everytime I got bored, but I change up the whole look of my phone (custom-full-themed) only every 5-6 months or so, because changing every icons in your phone actually takes time than you think it would. Especially when I want them all to be color-coordinated and each one must have a continuity / similar theme with the others. 

I'm using iPhone so I'm not sure if this app is also available for android or not. I use Cocoppa app which enables you to make cute shortcut icons on your dashboard. It has so many cute and pretty style icons (as well as every style you could think of; from emo-style to masculine to robotic to sanrio, etc) that you can choose from.

The icons are users-generated, meaning that they were created by users and lots of them can be used freely. So if you got what it takes you can also put your icon designs in Cocoppa, I've seen a couple of designs from Indonesian users and they are very talented. 

Although Cocoppa takes up memory bytes and it makes my phone slows a bit, but I still gotta have them in my phone. It bring smiles and happiness to me everytime I open my phone ^__^

This time my theme is "purple" :

Cheers,

App of the Week: Virtual Makeover via HomeStyler

I recently had a lot of fun with an iPad app called HomeStyler which is a home designing app where you could browse for decor inspirations, see some lookbook and designs from the professionals, or you could even create your own decorating design!

You know interior designing is one of my passion, right? My dad is an architect so I am accustomed to seeing and reading interior magazines since I was a child. He always had a pile of interior magazines and design books on his office and I love flipping those magazines and borrowing them to my bedroom ;p

I guess that's where my passion for interior design started to grow. I still love browsing for interior design photos until now. So if there's any app about interior or home designing on my gadget, I would download them immediately ;p

So as I told you above, in this HomeStyler app we could create our own home decor style aside from browsing interior photos in it. I made a couple of room designs that I managed to create out of the app. Here's a BEFORE & AFTER photo of a living room that I designed:

BEFORE:

AFTER:

It's my first design so please bear with my newbie skills, LOL. I'm thinking of a coastal theme design when I decorated this living room. That's why I had the wall paint that resemble a seafoam green, a sand colored floor and furnitures, and a shell-inspired lamp and small knick-knacks. I also kept the room sleek and towards the clean look because I want to achieve a semi-formal type of a living room.

Now let's see my next try-out design which is a city apartment bedroom:

BEFORE:

AFTER:

I was thinking of another sleek and clean look for this one. A modern sleek-looking design that's perfect for an apartment bedroom in a high rise building. I also chose a neutral color theme in this room to go with the sleek look I'm looking for.

So what do you think of my decorating style? LOL. I know this is pretty standard and nothing special, it's totally a newbie style ;p But the app still has limited option of furniture and knick-knacks so this is what I came up with in the end. I like them though, especially the bedroom :p

So if you like interior design and you have an ipad you might want to check out HomeStyler. They have a website where you could also design a room via their website, so I think it's pretty cool ;)

Another interior design app that I like is Houzz, but in Houzz you can only browse for interior photos and you could not make your own design like HomeStyler does, but Houzz sure do have lots of photos collection and the photos are all in high resolutions so it's always nice to browse it for ideas and inspirations. I use Houzz a lot for my Apt Project inspirations.

What are your favorite home design apps?

 

App of The Week: Set The Mood with GAZE

It's rainy season here in Indonesia and I just did a "Wet Seasons Essentials" on my fashion/beauty blog: TWO THOUSAND THINGS a couple of days ago. You can read what's my beauty essentials for the wet seasons here.

I also wanted to add something that I usually do while staying in my room when it's raining all day outside. I always enjoy the rain (unless it's a storm or scary big rain), I love to see the rain falling softly on the branches of trees outside the window, and how the rain splashes teeny tiny water spots on the window. I also love the cool temperature it brings, it's just feels relaxing somehow.

To bring out the relaxing mood even more, I would usually set the mood by making a hot cup of tea or coffee, watching movies while snuggling underneath the blanket, or just reading a book or read some magazines while enjoying the relaxing sound of the falling rain outside. I would also usually put on some candles to help set out the mood even more...

I usually light these candles on my bedside table!

Yes, candles!

How soothing, right? They are somehow very relaxing too, especially if they are scented candles infused with relaxing aromatherapy scents. But unfortunately scented candles are not very common here in my country, so they are usually very expensive. That's a pity because I myself love scented candles :(

But anyway, if you think that I have many candles as the picture you see above, then you're totally wrong! 

Ha!

I actually only have one big candle in my bedroom ;p The rest of the candles above are just "illusion candles" that I get with the help of this amazing iPad app called "Gaze"  ^o^

Did I fool you? LOL...

I love this app, because it help gives you the right atmosphere that you want. Well, I guess this app would only work if you have big imagination, or if you believe in "creating atmosphere", because hubby K didn't seems to understand the purpose of this app  >__<

Oh well....

So anyway, this has been one of my fave app. It's free to download, and with this app you could feel like you're in a room at a resort because if you close your eyes you'd hear those birds chirping outside your window. Or you'll hear that waterfall running in the background. Or you could also feels like you're in the middle of winter or feels like you just turned on the fireplace ;p

There are similar apps like this one, and you could choose many backgrounds with real moving images and real sounds. Some of them are in-app purchases but a few of them are free. My favorites from the "free sections" are the candles and the fireplace background. The fireplace sounds like the real thing!

The crackling sounds of the fireplace are very similar to the real ones, and all of the pictures in this app are not a still picture, so the flames on the candles above really moves as if it was blown by wind. And the fire and flames on the fireplace really moves as if it's a real one.

If you have an iPad and love this kind of thing then check this app out because I think the illusion will work better in those big screen. I personally don't think the illusion would work out as well on the iPad mini.

Enjoy the app!


NOTE: 
The Ylang Ylang Candle is courtesy of Tree Harvest via Raw Gaia, I reviewed it here.

 

Apps of The Week

I figured I would do a "Favorite Apps of The Week" because I spent almost all my time with my iPhone and I do love it because of the technology (I'm a sucker for super high-tech things), and because of all the varieties of applications that you can download. You can find lots of apps  in different categories, I think you can find almost any apps you need or want!

Out of all the apps that I have downloaded on my phone I used 80% of them for games and social networking.

Here's a little review (please note that this review is based on my personal opinion and everyone is entitled to have different opinions):

• Twitter for iPhone is great but Facebook for iPhone is so-so, sometimes it runs very slow and there are Facebook activities that you can't do via your phone so you must still have to log in to your FB account via your computer. 

• For platform-crossing chat media I would recommend WhatsApp. You can chat with your friends who use different type of phones (blackberry, nokia, etc) as long as they have whatsapp on their phone. This is easier to do than using YM (Yahoo Messenger) because it's fast, it can create groups (although you can only add 10 people in each group), and you don't have to manually search for your friends who already have this application, once you set your whatsapp it will automatically search your phonebook to find your friends that already have whatsapp on their phone. Easy to use!

And as for games, I would recommend Smurf's Village and Tiny Tower. They both Free to download from the App store.

• If you like creating a city or building a village from zero like in the old computer game SimCity or Pharaoh then you would love Smurf's Village. Oh and if you happen to love Smurfs when you were a kid then this app is surely for you too. Me and hubby actually played Smurf's Village a few months ago, so now that we hear there's a Smurf movie coming out we I am ecstatic! I would surely love to see those smurfs after playing them and seeing them in my phone screen everyday!

Anyway, this game has many levels and a few challenges that's not too easy yet not too hard to get, so it's quite enjoyable to play it in your spare time or even better if you play it to kill time ;p
This game has awesome graphic display, beautiful colors, endless possibilities on how you want to create / build your village or making layout to your village (i love this part the best, making layout! :D). And this game is on real time so even if you close the application the game would still be on and your village would still be active so by the time you open the game again you will see developments on your village. Love all those little smurfs! Oh and I also love that they have unique seasonal items that can only be purchased during certain season, and they update the app pretty frequently.

• And as for Tiny Tower, you should download this because this game is trending right now! This pretty simple game is quite addictive. The goal is to build a tower as high as you can (I'm on level 38 now ;p), and you'll never know what you're gonna get at every level. So that surprise effect is kinda what makes you want to keep playing this game, because you will want to know what you're gonna get (or maybe it's just me? ;p).

What I mean is, you can choose which type that you want to build everytime you gain a level, you can choose to build either residential unit or service unit or retail unit, etc .. but you wouldn't know what specific unit that you would get. Let's say I want to build a retail on my next level, I wouldn't know what kind of retail store I would get. I could get a hat store or a music store, or even a bike shop!
Me and K both have this game on our phone and even both our towers have totally different stores and shops! it's quite fascinating, and addictive at the same time. And those Bitizens (tiny people who lives in your tower) are kinda cute! Sometimes their outfit makes me laugh. Here are a few shots from my Tiny Tower:

Oh and did I tell you that the Bitizens have their own Bitbook (which is like facebook), hahaha those bitizens are sooo funny ^__^

"How many bits would a bitizen byte if a bitizen could byte bits"

If you have any similar apps that you really love please do share in the comment box below so I can try it out too :)