Product Launch!

 Wohoo...! I finally launched my natural skincare brand " Kkum.Creation" and I am super excited about it You may wonder why is it called Kkum? Weird name.. It's actually from Korean language and it means dream. I have always wanted to have my own business, tried few times and failed that many times. This time, it really is the manifestation on my dream and passion and I am happy that I launched it.

Born from my own passion in using natural skincare products and encouragement from people around me so I really hope people will be able to experience the amazing benefits from pure essential oils and natural ingredients that are free from toxic chemicals for themselves. I myself have stopped buying skincare products from the market and have been making them myself from 2019.

My vision is to help the people to start caring and loving themselves by using products that safe for them while improving their skin and wellbeing. I truly believe that we all have been guilty of neglecting ourselves most of the times as we got caught in real life. Too busy to stop and relax, or to lazy to care for ourselves. I personally have come to realise that we truly need to stop sometimes and start enjoy the little moments in life. It can start from simply from soaking your feet after a long day at work. Or sit back and relax while sipping a glass of wine in the tub. This is where I started to get inspired to gift my friend self-love kit and they have been loving it. There goes my business ideas and here I am now with my own product line.

Start loving yourself from inside out before loving others. I cannot agree more with this quote. Come and visit us at IG @kkum.creation for more information. Hopefully you can start your own self-love journey with our products. 

I maybe biased but aren't these ritual kits beautiful? Check them out at IG @kkum.creation.

https://www.instagram.com/kkum.creation/

xoxo

The end of Plastic Free July = The END of Single-use Plastic Habit

It is August already and before you know it, it would be Christmas soon, cray cray. Well, if you have been on social media lately, you may have come across posts about Plastic Free July and hopefully you have been implementing it one way or another in your life. July has been a month full of creating good habit to reduce our single-use plastic consumption and it is a habit that we seriously need to have moving forward.

There have been a lot of distressing posts about how plastics have seriously damaged our environment, wildlife, and tons of researches showing how plastics have negative impacts on our health as well. It is really sad to see how marine animals got trapped by plastics and how they consumed plastics because they mistakenly thought plastic bags as their food. 

People may also not realise or choose to be ignorant about plastic pollution. Mostly because plastic is everywhere and has become such an integral part of our daily life and most of us never see how bad the impact it has to our environment. 

I came from a country where plastics, all kinds of rubbish, and air pollution are part of our daily lives so I am not that new to this. However, I never stopped to analysed and be bothered to question it, not until these recent months where I finally “see” the devastation it caused to our wildlife especially. This is probably the same for most of us, we know we have this issue but never taken any action until we realise it down the track. But now time is critical for us to make positive changes, for us and for our next generation.

The scary thing about plastics are their longevity. They can live in this planet for hundreds years. See below table for their lifespan.

Most plastics do not decompose, overtime they just break down into smaller particles called micro plastics which get absorbed into the soil, flushed into the ocean, and eventually into our body. In fact, a study carried out by University of Newcastle that was commissioned by WWF, people may have consumed an average of 2000 tiny pieces of plastics every week. It is an equivalent of a credit card, how crazy is that.

(Source: https://www.wwf.org.au/news/news/2019/revealed-plastic-ingestion-by-people-could-be-equating-to-a-credit-card-a-week#gs.buvq1j )

I hope Plastic Free July has raised much awareness in the global community and kick started positive habits in our daily habits. I have done lots of swaps in my own household like:

1. Using my own shopping tote bag and muslin bags for grocery shopping. I always have them ready in my everyday bag.

2. Use stainless steel straws instead of plastic ones. I carry this as well.

3. Make DIYs for all my cleaning products and reuse my glass containers for them.

4. Use silicone and beeswax food wraps and ditch the cling wraps.

So what swaps have you done in your daily life, comment below and share the positive acts. I would love to hear what your plastic free swaps. 

How to save $$$ and get healthier at the same time?

I don’t know about you but I spent lots of moola on skin care amongst other daily necessities and I don’t even put any make up on. If you were to count how many skin care products you currently have sitting on your dressing table and in the toilet plus calculate how much money you spend on these products on average, you could probably save enough money to travel overseas or a nice short getaway. Truth to be told, we are brainwashed by companies out there thinking we need all these “magical things’ that can make our skin radiant etc, where in reality we just spend heaps of money on things made of synthetic chemical that are completely harmful to our health. 

I never realised the extent of harm these daily products are until I started my swap to low tox options few months back. I am still learning new things everyday when it comes to green living. Now I stop buying all of those skin care products and completely make my own, courtesy of the workshop that I attended last year. Given the options, would you choose to make your own skin care products or still buying them? I challenge you to google the ingredients listed on your current skin care products and read through what each ingredient does to you.

If you are still sticking to the conventional products, hey it’s your choice. I am not judging you, truthfully I don’t think anyone cares especially if you don’t even care about it yourself. I care so I made the conscious decision to change for the better.

We are now surrounded by so much chemical in our lives in the air, in the daily products that we use, in the water that we drink, and it’s like there is no way out. The only thing we can do is to minimise our exposure to them. Aside from skin care, beauty products, body care products, the other main source of chemical products are found in our household cleaning products. Kid you not, the ingredients that listed in each of these cleaning products should really be banned from entering our home. Again, do me a favour and start researching the safety data sheets (SDS) for the cleaning product you have in your cleaning cupboard and see what they can do to your health. Some can cause damage to our eyes, irritate our skins, and some are very toxic to marine and aquatic life. People often did not realise that every thing we flush down the drain eventually end up in the ocean. It is that scary. I actually first learnt about researching the SDS from when I was working as the Workplace Safety Coordinator at the company that I previously worked for. It was a big part of the safety components that need to be followed through to be legally compliant. Strangely enough I still didn’t think of the consequences of using these products back then even though I obviously know what it can do to our health. It was not until I changed my lifestyle these past few months where I finally realised how brainwashed I was, thinking that all these cleaning products are good and we need them in our lives. That is a big BS. We can totally ditch all these products and either make our own cleaning products or opt for low toxic ones that now readily available on the market.

Again I am not here to judge you and your life choices but if you do care about your own and you family’s well-being, I really suggest you to do your research and make informed decision about which products you should use in your home.

The fact is making DIYs save me a lot moola ($$$) and it seriously not that hard. Some products require less than 5 minutes to whip up and may consist of 2–3 ingredients. The most important part is that you have the ultimate control over what you put in each product that you are making and you know for certain that these are completely safe for you and your loved ones. Nothing is more precious than your and your family’s well-being.

Here are my DIY skin care products I use at home. 😌

So if you are interested, drop a comment and follow me on my journey where I can show you what I have done so far.

Why do we bother with sustainability and how i started my own journey?

If you have been paying attention to what has been happening to our environment, you should not be even asking this question. We have seen so many natural disasters happening around the world. In Australia alone, the bushfires had devastated many lives, the community, the environment and wildlife, and the economy. The plastic pollution, the melting ice and rising sea-level, the river and ocean pollution. The list goes on. we really cannot stay passive and wait for others to take action. WE need to take action.

After seeing the movement started by Greta Thunberg and so many distressing posts on social media about the effect of pollution have on our planet, I got really inspired to change my lifestyle to a sustainable and low toxic journey. For me, it is not just for the environment, but for myself, and people I love. It has been a life changer for me and I have been loving all the processes, the changes, and the results.

I actually started my sustainable journey from stumbling upon this beeswax food wrap workshop that I decided to attend. Really random but it was fun to connect like-minded people and make something pretty awesome for daily use. We can use beeswax wrap to replace cling-wraps, something we use a lot at home and got thrown to the landfill immediately after, this will cut down our plastic usage. It is the first easy step in reducing plastic in our household.

The second workshop that I attended was the natural anti-ageing skin care workshop. This was a absoulte gem, totally life-changing for me. I learnt to make my own face skin care routine from scratch and they are totally low toxic, natural, and much cheaper compared to buying conventional skin care available in the market. This workshop introduced me to the magical world of essential oils and that opened up so many new possibilities for me. Nowadays we have so many skin care products sitting in our counter where most of them cost a fortune and filled with many toxic chemicals. We are probably never question what exactly is in each product that we use at home and the scary things are they probably contains loads of chemicals that can cause cancers, hormone disruptions, etc. After the workshop, I totally ditched all my skin care products and made them myself, I save so much money, cut out so many toxic and synthetic chemicals from my life, my skins are now amazing and really, I never even consider of going back to those conventional products.

Since then I have completely ditched all my cleaning products for my skin and my household, my perfumes, and also started on other things like composting.

All in all, there are so many benefits from converting to sustainable and low tox living such as saving money, reducing our carbon footprints, saving the environment, promoting better health for ourselves and our family, feeling good for accomplishing all these amazing things all while inspiring others to follow our footsteps. There are now so many people going into the lifestyle and it is something we need to celebrate as sustainability are about collective effort. If everyone starts taking action, no matter how small it is, we will eventually make a big difference.

Being sustainable is not about following a trend, it is something life-changing and requires commitment and continuous effort. It is a marathon, not a sprint. Most importantly is to know what is it that important for you and why. Some people go sustainable because they are concerned for their children’s welfare in this chemical-laden environment. Some changed because they are genuinely want to save the environment because they see the devastation around us. So before you start your own journey, find out the what, how, and why for yourself and start making the change in your own pace.

If you have decided to make the change, come and join me in my journey where I can show you my stories. Together we can make this work.

I’m Stronger than this!

Have you ever feel like you hate your life, or like the world owe you something, or like you get stuck in this dark place with no way out, or just feel plain miserable? I have and I’m sure some of you out there have as well. 

When I was in my mid to late-twenties, I was once in really unhappy place. I was constantly stressed and very unhappy,  easily triggered by the smallest thing, and have bellyful of complaints about everything. I had a hard time dealing with people, had zero patience, had bouts of panic attacks at random times and a really bad insomnia as well. 

This unhappy me was hanging around for about 3-4 years until I finally got help from the people around me. 

So what changed? How did I manage to crawl out from my little dark hole? At that point, I reached the breaking point and decided to take an ACTION. That is to leave the source of unhappiness. I was actually really lucky because just at this point in time, one of ex-colleague offered a “ticket” to get out of my ‘hell”. And I grabbed that opportunity with no hesitation. 

Just by taking that action, my life completely changed, to the better. 

You see, when we are down, when we feel we are in a dark place, when we feel we have no one to help us out, when things are just not working well even though we have tried our best. There will always be a moment where you start to see light on the other side. Be it somebody suddenly reached out to you, or the universe heard your call and gave you a new lease of life (you may think I’m joking about I’m not). It happened to me and I am forever grateful. 

Why am I telling this story? I want to share my own story for others to see that there is light at the end of the tunnel. But we also need to realise something. We also need to reach inside and really look at why we are in this dreadful state of mind. Look deeper, and see whether it is because of a toxic relationship, a stressful job, peer pressure, high expectations from family members, financial situation, study overload, negative comments/criticism (esp from the online world), or whatever it is that you cannot cope with. See if you can do something about it. Back when I was in my unhappy place, I hid it from my parents as they live apart from me and they are really old. I also felt like at my age I should really handle things myself and not adding more worries for them so often times I cried, I pulled my hair out all by myself at home and no one knew. I am sure some of you also may have experienced similar things. 

In this regard, again I am very lucky and super grateful to have very supporting group of friends and family. They believe in me when I lost faith in myself. They gave me an advice, company, and continuous support. I probably annoyed them to death during that dark period, but they stood by me until now and I am forever grateful for their presence in my life.

Maybe you can reach out to somebody, be it a friend, another family member, or even stranger from a dedicated organisation like Beyond Blue. Start writing your thoughts out. Pick up a new hobby. Adopt an adorable pet like an otter (I swear they are THE MOST adorable creatures, if only it's legal here to adopt one).

The point is to do something about it. Take action. Walk away from toxic environment. Cut off everything that no longer serve you, that holds you back from healing and moving on. If you don’t take action, none of this will matter and nothing will help you. No amount of complaining will help aside from

dragging you even deeper to that dark hole you are in. At the end, only YOU can change YOU, no one else. Everything starts from ourselves.

I decided to write this to see if I can help in anyway. Please don’t suffer in silence. Don’t put everything on your shoulders. Share, share it with adorable otters. In this big bad world, they are people who care about you. You just have to reach out and ask for help. Once you see the light on the other side, you will walk out STRONGER and hopefully be a BETTER version of you! 

If you know someone who is going through a hard time, please offer help. ❤️. 

 

The FIVE words that describe you

HAPPY FRIYAY, peeps!

I am the most excited when it's weekend coz I get to stop thinking about work and do whatever I like.. such as hibernate inside my blanket, eat, sleep, repeat... Don't judge me ^^..

 

This time I want to do something fun instead of talking about food. Let's do some positivity exercise so to speak. I want you to ask few of your friends this question:

"HOW WILL YOU DESCRIBE ME IN 5 WORDS?"

I have done this few times before with my colleagues at work and just recently while doing a marketing coaching session. Do you think this is a scary question? Do you fear of how your friends or colleagues think of you? Or do you feel excited to hear what they say about you? For me, it's all of the above. 

It's even better to actually ask this question in person and to get them spit out the answers without thinking to see how honest they are (scaryyy feeling). Most people go for the positive sides of you when they answer this question, at least from my experience.

Here is the few answers from my closest friends: 

Firstly, I want to say Thank You to my friends for thinking such amazing words to describe me, and No I did not bribe them on the side for this exercise, lol... ^^

Secondly, how uplifting is this exercise? I get it, people are fickle in nature and it seriously hard to make REAL and TRUE friends. Somedays you feel like you want to smash your head to the wall after dealing with them and any other day you miss them like crazy. I love this exercise because we can see how the people around us perceive us and how amazing we are in their eyes. It's empowering. It's motivating. It's just sending GOOD VIBES all around. 

I guess what I'm trying to say is that we are not alone, we have amazing friends who care and think highly of us, we all are just perfect in our imperfections. Everyone is allowed to have bad hair days, mental breakdowns, and just down right crappy moments. But let's think back to these answers, and pick ourselves up. Simply because WE ARE AMAZING. YOU are A.M.A.Z.I.N.G.

Hope you have a wonderful weekend!! I'm now off to my intensive webminar sash...

Brunching at Bare Witness

Finally it is brunch time with friends after the ease of Covid restriction and boy, the cafes were so packed over the long weekend. The 4 of us decided to have brunch at Bare Witness, Rhodes this time around for a change of scenery.

I am super lazy myself and tend to stick to CBD area or close-by area as I relies on the train ( don't we all hate track work on weekends) so I only go to other suburbs when meeting up with friends. It’s a mini travel in itself to go to other suburbs. Mind you, even grocery shopping feels like a treasured holiday trip these days  ^^.

It was such a pleasant surprise to find Rhodes as such a nice place to chill aside from having IKEA in the mall, that is. I love Ikea and can spend hours inside. 

I love Bare Witness as soon as I stepped into its premises as it was very spacious with high ceiling and its proximity to the water. As spacious as it was, the place was jam-packed with people dining in and had long queues for takeaways. 

We had to wait for our table and so we decided to get some takeaway coffee first. I love their branding and the coffee cup design. Their little bakery section also looked amazing with scrumptious pastries like cookies, croissants, and bread On display. I was so tempted to buy some just from looking at them. So sinful 😆.

We hung around while drinking our coffee for approx. 45 mins before finally got a table by the window facing the water, really nice view I must say. Luckily the service was very prompt and our waiter was super nice and good-looking too (A big + in my book hahaha). Our food also didn't take that long before they got delivered to our table. We would be a hangry bunch of people otherwise ^_^. 

The four of us ordered different dishes and they all amazing, just a shame that I didn't get to take pictures. Mind you, we all were hungry so we just smashed it as soon as we got served.

I ordered an iced latte and Katsu roll with chips shown in this picture. Let's be honest, my dish didn't look picture-perfect, in fact it looked pretty average really, but the katsu was cooked to perfection. It was juicy, well-seasoned, and crispy. The bun was soft and the coleslaw was crispy and creamy. The picky eater in me heartily approved ^^ . I am actually thinking if only they could make it spicy, it would be even more amazing (hahaha for me that is). As for the coffee, it was pretty standard. I personally drink my coffee strong so I would prefer to have more coffee shots in such a big glass. 

All in all, we all really enjoy the food and service here despite the long wait. We could have bought takeaways and do a little picnic by the water but the weather was not conducive, too cold. I would love to go back and try the other dish on the menu. 

Iced Latte 

Katsu Roll

 

I Like it HOT!! Do you?

How spicy is spicy? How much chilli is too much? 

I personally love my food to be spicy...In fact I probably eat the spiciest food amongst my friends. The feeling of your mouth getting burn, the rolling sweats and fallen tears are the BEST, at least for me.

This spicy fried chicken noodle soup is from The Dainty Sichuan Noodle Express. To be honest, I walked past this restaurant so many times, contemplated to walk in and try it that many times but I never did. So, how did I end up in here? Me and my friend actually were planning to eat Korean BBQ but the queue was taking too long so we decided to eat elsewhere. On the way, we saw this restaurant and felt that it’s a time to have a change as we don’t really eat Chinese food normally. We luckily got a table straightaway. 

We each had a noodle soup, a deep-fried rice cake with brown sugar syrup, and deep-fried chicken. 

It was delicious, affordable, and filling. Definitely worth trying I say if you are wanting some spicy Chinese food. It may look super spicy but it actually was not, ehmmm at least in my opinion. I didn't cry or sweat, lol, that’s kind of my benchmark for spiciness. The soup was flavoursome and not greasy despite how oily it was. The noodle was chewy. The fried chicken was still crispy and well-seasoned. To be completely honest, I would like it to be even spicier ^^.

I guess this is one of the examples of things don't always go as planned and we may actually get a nice surprise deviating from our original plan. 

In saying that, I would also encourage people to support the local business as much as possible to keep these businesses afloat during this pandemic. 

Oh, and in case you are wondering, I don't get paid or sponsored by any company in my food reviews. I am only offering my opinion on things I have experienced and tried. 

Kind reminder that everyone has personal taste, do not bash others if you disagree with what they say. 

Location: Dainty Sichuan Noodle House

TRADING HOURS

Monday - Sunday  11.30am - 8pm 

The little human behind this post

Warm welcome, guys!

My name is Novi Ng, a Chinese Indonesian chick who is based in Sydney. I'm here to share my story as a DIY maker and an advocate on sustainable and low toxic living. Mixed in with some good food, travel posts, and motivational quotes sprinkled in here and there because life is boring as hell without them. Gotta keep it real and fun.

So first, why DIYs? Why sustainable living? Why low toxic living? It is simply because these few reasons:

1. DIYs gives you control. I love making DIYs gifts for my closed friends. It's made with love, very personalised, and not boring. 

2. Toxic environment. Our beloved earth is loaded with toxic chemicals and micro-plastics and it is just not right. Because of this and the inspiration from Greta Thunberg, I started a sustainable journey from last year to make my own positive impact and to reduce my own carbon footprints.

3. Better health. For me, the magical world of essential oils was the key for this. The benefits are so amazing and there are so many ways we can use them in our lives to improve our overall physical and mental health. I fell in love with Doterra essential oils because of the amazing quality and what they stand for. I simply can't wait to share with you all the oily goodness. 

If you want to know more, hit FOLLOW button or go to https://linktr.ee/Kkumcreation

4. Save money, Seriously, by just making swaps and knowing the tips and tricks in creating a sustainable and lox tox home for yourself (Yes, I'm single and doing it for myself) and your loved ones. 

5. Super easy. No brain cells get fried when making these changes. Just a sound judgement and lots of fun experiments. I know when we are taking the first step in anything, it can be daunting and complicated but with the right information, it can be as easy as 1, 2, 3.

Ups, this starting to look like an essay and you may fall asleep reading this. Time to change to my other fave topics to lighten up the mood. FOOD and TRAVEL. I was born and raised in Jakarta, Indonesia until I was 17. Then I traveled all the way to Australia for my study and ended up living in Sydney for more than 17 years. I will share with you my fave cafes, recipes, and travel spots. Can't wait until we all can go travelling again. 

Until then, Be Happy, Be Content, and Be Your True Self!