Viet trip, part 2

Impressive stone carvings at the temple court yard.

The next day, right after breakfast, we went on a HCMC tour whereby we went to Tien Hau tample in Cholon, built and rebuilt since 940 A.D. Its surprising to see that its still standing to this despite the war here. The wood carvings on its entrance and courtyard is really impressive!  We managed to do some prayers while we're there. :)

There's more stalls and tiny aisle once you go in...

Look at the "mountains" of dried prawns!!! But why are they so PINK?

A short visit to the Ben Thant market was next. Why short? Coz there wasn't enough time for me to go fabric shopping! LOL! The stalls were so tightly packet that its virtually IMPOSSIBLE to pass if we were to walk side by side! Fabrics and other items that were sold were PACKED vertically and did I mentioned that most of them looks like its going to topple over if one were to touch them? Was a hot and stuffy as it is, but there were so many people around. The place one could get a breather was either at the ground floor where food and jewellery were sold OR at the locally produced souvenir section. 

"Implating" them egg shells is hard work.

Worker sawing thru the mother of pearl

Just some of their products. There are more cramp into the next room!!

Then its off to the lacquer factory and shop. Honestly I've never got to know how lacquer good were made. So this was a chance to find out. It takes so many work and days for the primary lacquer to set. And not to mention the second procedure where one paints on it or set it with egg shells for a particular design. And then its another process of making the item shine. Those craftsman are really talented. And hubs being so impressed, bought 3 miniature paintings.

Me, happy to arrive here nevertheless

The visit at the War Museum saw a sad one for me. After seeing photos of dead children, I had to stop and get out of the room. Its just so sad and even now hearing about war and recent horrific crime, I'm thinking how can one human do that to another human being? Its just pure EVIL!! But still managed to take some photos of tanks outside the museum.

Hubs thinking of what to order! ;)

Replica tanks on the grounds

View of the main street from the Palace top floor.

Needless to say, my appetite for Huê province food ( a region in central Vietnam) at this restaurant. I did however managed to taste some delicacies wrapped in banana leaves. It was delicious although I've completely forgotten the name! LOL!

Part of the basement; look at the type writers!

We when make our move towards the Reunification palace. Looks as if it was frozen in time. There's 2 replica war tanks just on the gates of the palace. The tanks crash onto the place on 30th April 1975 and it ended the war. The recreation room was really late 1960s looking. And the basement. OMG! It looks eerie with the telephones, telegrams and other machines still looking in perfect working condition!

After having some photos taken on the grounds of the palace, it was the national post office building stop. This building was opposite the Cathedral of Notre Dame, which incidentally looks like the one in Paris! Only smaller... hehehehehe...

Hubs: we'll be back next time for sure!! :)

Soon after the tour and being dropped off at our hotel, we decided to go out on our own since it was rather early to meet up with hub's uncle for dinner. We went for a coffee at this Trung Nguyen coffee chain about 15 minutes walk from the hotel. As I don't really drink coffee, theirs are like a kick to my system! LOL! I couldn't sleep still late that night! And all I had was coffee with milk.... :p

As our plane are only leaving at 4pm, we decide to walk towards the HCMC Fine Art Museum. They were showing paintings and drawings of kids at the ground floor, contemporary art from local and international artist on 2nd floor and 3rd floor holds the museum's permanent collection. BUT at the basement, there's local artists galleries. Hubs ALMOST wanted to purchase one but I told him, how are we going to transport it back even in an art tube? That brought him back to earth. We only have hand carry with us this time. Perhaps next time when we have checked luggage as I think we'll go back there for sure the next time we return home.

Hamburg trip

The Rathaus: Mayor and city council building

I know this is a LOOONNNNGGGG ago post. Well what can I say? Better late than never, right? :)

Was there for hub's cousin's wedding which was on 9th of July. So it was sort like a long weekend with his side of the family only difference is that this time around its with his aunts and uncle.

View from a veiwing deck near Unilever HQ.

We flew with Lufthansa airlines this time since there was on sale when I booked this trip a few months back. The flight there was good my only complaint was that of the really small plane from Geneva to Dusseldorf airport; lots of turbulence, and that the next flight from Dusseldorf to Hamburg was delayed for 2 hours! Nice. :p But then again this is still better than having to missed a flight and awaiting for the next one for 6 hours at the Orly airport, just because they have a strike. Got to know about it when we met by chance one of his cousins that just arrived an hour after us. 

The many overpriced apartments along the river...

We didn't managed to get to see much of the city on our 1st 2 days when we were there. That's because the very next day was the wedding and by the time we check into out hotel it was really late. Thank goodness I've booked us a triple as we managed to get a glimpse of the several rooms that were being made up, it was TINY! Breakfast was the typical German continental style; choice of cheese, choice of hams, hard boiled eggs, fruits, cereals, milk and yogurt. Love their hams, cheese and the breads were different as well. Like the fact that its full cereal type and using unbleached flour in their breads. :)

Really like the shape of the windows here.

As with any typical Chinese (they are Vietnamese Chinese) wedding, there's the tea ceremony at home in the morning and then followed by the couples church ceremony in afternoon. It was a really nice weather for a wedding that Saturday. And since I didn't really understand the whole wedding, they were always spoken in either Vietnamese or German, I had a ball with the kids! ;p

Some apartements along the river view from the boat ride.

Since the youngest did not rest well, he was pretty edgy the whole time. And the older one decide its funny to irritate the hell out of mummy by running around, causing trouble and of course making noises during the church thing. I was pretty much worn thin by the time we reach the hotel at 1am! Until now I did not know that my 1 year old can scream and scream for 1 hour non-stop in a moving car on our way back. :( No mater what I did, it just made him scream louder still! Sigh.... The best part was how Owen managed to sleep through the ENTIRE screaming!!!! LOL! It just amazes me.

The pier.

Sunday was a LAZY day for us. I some how manage to wake up at 8:30am despite the fact I slept at 3am! So decide to let the boys sleep in while I ate breakfast and surf the net at the breakfast area. We then met up with another aunt who came to "pick us up" to head towards another aunt's restaurant for a late lunch.



Rickmer Rickmers; built in 1896 and now a permanently moored as a museum ship.



The S bahns were really well maintained and clean. Its even better than the metro in Paris! We went to window shop in the city after lunch and we've notice that the prices displayed on their windows is cheaper compared to Paris. Even eating their traditional hot dog (wrust with a slice of bread), french fries and drinks costs us less than having a sandwich in any Parisian side walk vendor. The city itself is very clean. Must be the clean and tidy German mentality? Any mind you, Hamburg city has a 1.8 mil population, coming 7th place while Paris ranked 5th with 2.2 mil. Paris is really filthy, with dog poo, so called gang tagging, over flowing rubbish bins, smell of pee in and around the metro stations.... Must be their French, laissez faire attitude? Anyways, don't let my statements put you off visiting Paris. Its really a beautiful city if you close one eye.

One of the many WWII relics

The following day, we went to tour the city again this time going a little bit further the city limits towards the Elbe river. We went for ice-cream at the Walls store right in the Unilever Haus. I made an order for a really delicious cherry jam, cherries, berries mix fruit, with chocolate chips, crushed nuts and natural yogurt mix! It was YUM!!!

One thing that strikes me is that the new area where the Unilever building was built on, there's a lot of creative architectural office and apartment buildings all round. There's also a lot of really wide pedestrian walk paths along the river as well. Which was a nice change. And topped off the day, we took a boat ride along the Elbe river. The boat is like a bus as is stops at its "stations" to drop and pick up passengers along the river.

Lunch at the street walk with hub's aunts.

As our flight is only late in the evening, we met up with another aunt of his for lunch and some last minute shopping before our taxi arrives. Did some walking about at the nearby park before we realised that we're going to be late to meet up with the taxi driver! LOL! How time flies when you're having a good time eh?

There's still a lot of places we didn't go to due to lack of time and having small kids is not really ideal to travel with when one wants to do the walking tour. May be next time we'll return there for a longer and well planned trip.

My 1st sale!

My little girl and big girls clips and bands. :)

After "slaving" for few weeks, I've finally made my 1st sale of hair clips yesterday at the open market at Vevey. This market is actually like a yard sale market but one could still sell handmade wares. 

I joint a South African friend,Carmen, who makes little bags and scrunchies for little girls and some beaded jewellery. She makes South African sweeties as well. But unfortunately in this market we aren't allowed to sell food and drinks as its strictly non-food items.



Some of our wares. And that big "pot" behind is a pincushion I made in case you're wondering.

We had to set up shop by 8 am therefore in order to get a nice spot we were there by 7:15am. I've not woken up at 5am plus in the morning for "work" since the last time I quit my job in the F&B line. Only for my babies. :)

As this was a free and easy market, the rest of the stalls were very quickly set up by 7:45am. Just opposite us a little girl who just set up her stall on the floor displaying all her toys to be sold. The fact that no fee was charged for sellers makes it easier. One can display their items on top of overturned cardboard boxes covered with a blanket or on top of a picnic blanket on the floor. The only rules are to registered a week before, to show up before 8am and stalls have to be within the marked area or their "boxes". But after that one can leave in the afternoon or even stay the whole day.

Carmen: Hello everyone!! :D

This time around since its August, there's not much crowd. People normally take August Summer holidays its the warmest month of the year.  And plus the weather was playing passing rain clouds and hand and seek sunshine with us! :p Rain came and went, but was a good thing it wasn't heavy. Just light showers. Then the sun came up finally nearly lunch time and by 1pm, it was HOT!!

I actually sold my 1st pair while setting up shop, then the second when the sun came and the 3rd a few minutes before we decided to close shop. My friend, Carmen actually didn't managed to sell anything until we were starting to pack up. A lady came by and was asking if her bracelets were taken seeing that there's none of her stuff on the table. She finally took 3 and promised to take some more of Carmen's stuff the next time if she makes necklaces. :)

The next date for us would be 10th of September. We'll be making a few changes here and there to improve our stall image for the next time. Well, we have to since it'll attract more customers. We'll have to make more clips, hair bands, bags, scrunchies and jewellery for this day as well since there'll be a neighbourhood party at the same venue. :) I'm all excited just thinking about it!!! :D

The trip home

I can't believe that it was just last month that I was home for the total of 4 weeks! And it was just Sunday that we touched down at Geneva... I'm missing home already! :)

Droollllllll.....

This time around home was super HOT! Thank goodness it rained a few days after the boys and I arrived. They (the boys) seems to take in the heat well. I was really worried that with so much difference in temperature (it was about 20°C when we left), they'll end up with a fever or something. We had to shave their heads due to the hot weather here. BUT they look oh so cute! Like little monks! LOL!

The flight over to KL was OK. They did not give me back my stroller when we arrived at Heathrow, which was BAD. I had to carry Kevin (who is nearly 8kgs) throughout the vast airport! We did not have enough time, contrary to popular beliefs AKA hubs's thinking. The 2 hours of transit time just flew us by! On flight, we managed to change to a row of 4 empty seats (YAY!!). So Owen, Kevin (the ONLY lucky devil who gets the bassinet for the entire return flight!) and I get some much needed rest. Despite getting some shut eye on flight, we still feel like SHIT once arrived at my parents place.

Fry squid...



Marmite crab. One of the must have food on the list I made myself for this trip! LOL!

So I really thank my lucky stars that I made plans to meet up with friends after several days of lazing around at home. This trip I can say that I managed to meet up with most of my friends from collage, secondary school, my crafty group (TWICE!) and some of my family members.

Melaka trip. Mini Malaysia. Owen didn't seem too happy here... :p

After about 10 minutes, he's still deciding which one of the crêpe cake to attack 1st.... :p



I'm happy to say that I've spent some quality time really talking with lots of friends during these meet ups. This is a huge bonus for me as I don't get to see them very often and I want to know what's up in their lives.

And I've also learned to make a bag for my mum from Josephine Yap of NNC. It was really nice of her to take time to teach me and let me use her sewing machine. I really enjoy our sewing session and I wonder if I can have sewing sessions next time when I come back? Perhaps to make a dress? OR another bag? LOL! I know, I'm pushing my luck here!

It was one of my 1st bags that I actually make WITHOUT a print out instructions or a pattern to follow. So I'm kinda proud that its a finish product! I hope mum will use it often. I told her that if its worn out or nearly worn out, I'll make another improved version as a replacement. Here is a photo of it and here as well. The zippers seems complicated at first but after having done it 3 times - the bag has 3 zippers, I'm more confident now to face this "situation" in the future. :)

As for shopping, I did mainly on books, fabrics and other crafty items. Not so munch of clothing this time; a dress, 4 tops and a pair of dressy shoes which I'll have to improve on the looks later.  And not so much on food either! I didn't get my dose of ikan bilis (dried anchovies) and some prepared mixes. Which I'm regretting it now: how to face another 24 months or so minus my comfort food?!?!? I think when I'm desperate, I'll have someone mail them over! Muahahahhaha.....

So that's the report for the moment. More on our little trip to Vietnam on my next post.

Just lemony!

Lemon buttermilk cake

This is a back post. Was supposed to publish this BEFORE our trip home... Oh well!

What do you normally do with buttermilk? This 500ml of buttermilk that I decide to get has been sitting in my fridge for the past week! So since this week I'm on OFCO (Operation Fridge Clean Out), I have to use up at least half of the buttermilk by today.

So made some searches and came up with Lemon Buttermilk Cake from BestRecipes.com.au. I happen to have some lemons sitting around on my fruit basket, so this is a good way to use them up. We love bio lemons here and I tend to get them by bags of 4s. Ever tried drinking lemon juice in the morning? It'll sure wake you up! LOL!

Owen hard at work! :)

The ingredients are pretty easy to find and its rather a straightforward recipe to follow as well. If there are certain key items that isn't available, its easy to make your own as well.

Proud little pastry chef with his cake! :D

1 tbsp of white vinegar or lemon juice + under 1 cup or 240ml (or around abouts to bring it under 250ml) = 1 cup or 250ml buttermilk. Just make sure to let it stand for 5 minutes before using.

There's no such thing as self-rising flour here in Switzerland. So I made my own by mixing flour, baking powder and salt together.

This cake is just so moist! To delicious for words...

Here's the cake recipe to try out. It came out PERFECT for me.

250 g butter
1 tbsp grated lemon rind
1 cup caster sugar
3 eggs, separated
250 g self-rising flour *250 g plain flour + 3 tbsp baking powder + 1 tbsp salt
1 cup buttermilk

Lemon syrup
1/3 cup lemon juice
3/4 cup sugar
1/4 cup water

Method

1. Grease and lightly flour a 20 cm ring tin.
2. Cream butter, lemon rind and sugar
3. Beat in egg yolks one at a time until combined.
4. Shift in half the sifted flour and half the buttermilk.
5. Add remaining flour and buttermilk.
6. Beat egg whites until soft peaks form, then fold lightly into the cake mixture.
7. Pour mixture into pan and bake at 180°C for and hour.
8. Pour HOT lemon syrup over the HOT cake.

So that's half of it gone, the other half to go. So what shall I make? Red velvet cake? Buttermilk pancakes? Hmm....

Seems like

life just whizzes by and I for the moment just have some time to sit down and "reflect", or rather blog about it! LOL! So let's see what we've been up to in April....

My Big Shot and friends...

Got to play with my Big Shot machine, bought in January!! Yes it takes me that long (not to mention some motivation) to actually have time to sit and play with it. Found out that Sizzix dies are bloody expensive! :p Will have to look for alternative. The machine came with 1 flower die, 1 heart shape die and 2 envelope style flowers and wines embossing dies. However, it did not cut my felt like it suppose to. Its either did I not pass it through enough OR the felt was to a little bit thick?

Lovely stuff from Anna of NNC! Thanks girl!! hugzz



Received my really lovely bookmarks from Anna of my Needles n' Craft group. It was supposed to be a surprise exchange partners. Anna made me a beautiful crocheted flower bookmark and the other was an embellished felt - also really pretty! One who reads can NEVER have enough bookmarks.



Made little colouring book as loot bag filler for Owen's birthday. Found a tutorial here but had to tweak it a little bit since I don't have fabric sticky tape. Made paper loot bags as well. Just can't stand plastic.They look cheap most of the time. Photos soon.

Got gastroenteritis from Owen, who caught it from play-school a week before. Can say that the whole family caught it within a few days. Thank goodness what Kevin got was not as bad as I thought it would be. Poor baby lost weight also but good thing he got over it in 2 days. Lost 3kgs due to a forced diet of weak slightly sweet tea, water, plain rice porridge and bananas! LOL... It is NOT a healthy way to loose those left over baby bumps. Although I'd try to keep my current weight now.

 

From my kitchen: a blueberry blue velvet cake. I actually tried making blue velvet cake in March but it turned out GREEN!! LOL!! This time I made sure that I have gel/paste food colouring before I venture into making coloured edible goodies. BTW, the cake was so GOOD! :D I actually got this recipe from here but inspiration was from here. Would you believe it when I totally FORGot about mixing in the blueberries into the cake batter? Lesson learnt: never bake/cook when distracted with cries of the little monsters. I just loovvveeeee foodie eye candy. Some people can very creative with camera and food unlike me! I got frosting almost all over the cake caddy, thus the close up. LOL!


Fresh blueberries and it was on SALE! :)

 



That's about it for the month of April. At the moment I'm trying to think of how I'm going to make a mug rug for a friend. Photos soon since it'll be a surprise gift. I've also made a pinata for the party. A Piston Cup pinata. Albeit a "wonky"/wacky one but Owen seems to like it very much. It took me a week to finish it and in four parts. Now all we have to do is to fill it with goodies when we get back from our trip! :D

I still can not believe that its only a week and 4 more days to go before the boys and I take our month long trip home! Just feels like it has been ages since I last saw my family and friends back home. 



Will be busy preparing the trip back though. Got some Swiss dark chocolates for family (spent about CHF80.- only on chocolates!), new sandals and swim pants for Owen, a pair of new bermudas and sandals for me (grew a size after Kevin. ARRGGHHHH!!) and a pair of sleeveless bodysuits. I just LOVE how babies look in their summer bodysuits. I'm still not sure if hubby will want to get a new suitcase though. The one that he'll be carrying are rather heavy even when its empty. I think it'll be a good idea to invest in a good quality light weighted ones. 

Free threads anyone?



Image from threadrosace.com



There's a giveaway from this site . Its Rosace embroidery threads made from 100% pure Egyptian cotton. Priced at 0.30 Euro per skeins and you could order direct from them. I certainly DMC provide such direct order as well. It cuts off the need for middle man which most of the time make more profit than the manufacture.    

Crème à la mandarine et croquant aux amandes

Literally meant: Mandarin cream with crispy almond. Dish names in French almost always sounds better in French then English doesn't it? Have you tried naming Fois Gras in English? It'll be called duck or goose Liver Fat in direct translation!! Who wants to eat that??!? BTW, ever wondered how its made? Here's the link and frankly I find it barbaric. So does finning shark's fin. We are defined who we are by how we treat others, and that includes treating the animals that feeds us.

So personal ethics aside, got this recipes from my weekly supermarket newsletter, Coop. Tried it over the weekend and its super delicious!

Ingredients for 4 persons

Prep time: 20 mins

Cooling time: about 1 hour

Cream

6 or 8 Mandarin oranges OR clementine oranges, only for their juice; around 300ml

2 tbsp of lemon juice

80g of clear marzipan/almond paste, shredded

1 piece of vanilla pod, scrape of its grains

1 tbsp of corn starch
2 eggs
50g sugar

100ml of cream (double cream preferred)

Crispy Almonds
20g of almonds, chop into "matchsticks"

50g sugar

1/2 tsp of water

For the cream
Mix together all ingredients, including the sugar and simmer it on top of low heat while constantly stirring.

When the cream seems to have thicken in consistency, remove from heat source and continue to stir for about 2 minutes. You then strain the cream mixture, cover it and leave it aside until coll enough to pop it in the fridge for about 1 hour.

Crispy almond
Toast your almond sticks on medium heat and pour them onto baking paper. Then boil sugar and water together while stirring continuously on medium heat. Lower the heat when sugar has melted and let it simmer while "shaking" the saucepan occasionally until you get a caramel texture. Pour it over the almonds and let it cool for 15 minutes.Crack them and to decorate your cream. 



The main point here is to strain of the lumps.



Lovely lemony coloured!



Whip it!





An aunt gave a big bags of sliced almonds. Got to use it finally...

 

Its not so sweet but still a great quick desert.



BEFORE serving, whip your cream and gentilly fold them into your mandarin orange cream mixture. Then ENJOY!

La Redoute - La Rubbish!!

A little history about La Redoute. Its a French based home shopping website, which started out as a catalogue shop. Now as most of us know catalogue shops never really went into main stream, but still they manage to stick around for years. That is until Amazon made it BIG in the 1995, BEFORE eBay on 1996. Click here for a little of online shopping history.

So this La Redoute started to mail us a catalog sample sometime back in 2006. There's always lots of interesting stuff in their catalogue but I never really wanted to buy from them as I've heard horror stories of bad home shopping experiences.

So one day, against my better judgement and also what hubs told me, I went ahead to buy from them for the very 1st time. It all went well. So did the 2nd order. BUT just fairly recently (November 2010 order - it was on sale), problems started to come up. The main problems with catalogue shopping are ; returns, exchanges, no customer service, package mysteriously got lost and of course my personal favourite, refunds.

With my Nov 2010 sale order, it came on time and all clothing items are intact. But I had to return a really bad quality turtle neck T-shirt and exchange a to big a size blouse. So went ahead to return the items and exchange the blouse. The blouse exchange came back 2 weeks later, which is expected. BUT they charge me extra! I was fuming MAD!

Who ever charge customer the original price for an exchange for something that was on SALE in the first place???? And by the way, there wasn't any notice saying that items on sale can not be exchanged or returned. I wrote them an e-mail before I even made the return and exchange transaction just to be on the safe side. And customer service assured me that the price for the exchanged item will remain on sale.

WTH!!! So wrote them another e-mail to say that its unfair to charge me the original price when you've promised me that it will remain on the sale price. That was 2 weeks ago. Up till now I've not paid the extra charges (which was due on the 31/01/2011 at the amount of CHF17.40). Its NOT because of the menial amount that I refuse to pay BUT for the principal of doing honest business.

Seriously just STAY AWAY from La Redoute!!!!  What a way to began the new year.

New 2011

I'm the king for the day! After finding the hidden "treasure" in the cake celebrating the 3 kings.

Happy New 2011! It has been along while since I blog any thing at all these few months. Having to juggle time between my 3 boys, my crafting, my reading, my trial & error cooking/baking and seeing friends for coffee/tea mornings is not really that easy.



Owen borrows the "crown" to little Kevin.

2010 seems to just fly by with 2 kids now. Kevin is now 6 months old and he's already trying to stand by holding onto something! He gives me the loveliest proud smile whenever he does! Big brother Owen plays it cool now with his brother. There are a few times I caught him hitting/pulling little brother. I do hope this phase will pass soon when Kevin gets a little bit older. 

Since Owen will be starting school end of August, I'm looking forward to that (for the 5 days week 3 hrs crafting time OR play time with Kevin). And I think he's looking forward to being 4 as well in June. As you know how kids can be; always counting down when they'll be older next! I'm certainly NOT looking forward to being older but still that's life.

So things to look forward for us would be:

1. Going home for a holiday
2. Owen starting school in August
3. Will sign Owen up for his 1st swimming lessons
4. Attending hubs' cousins' wedding in Germany
5. more things to look forward to but aren't just what is in store yet! :) Hope its a good surprise... 

May 2011 will bring more luck, better health and more prosperity for everyone!

Macadamia and mango cheese cake

Cheese cake and snowy out doors; nice combi!

This is my 1st time making cheese cake. I've always want to make but decide against it since there's just 2 of us at home. One of my close friend, Regina came to our place last week for a visit. She's a dear Filipino friend who just finish her internship at Euro Disney. And she brought with her, Eric, the boy friend, and Yanina, the younger sister.



The crack... :(

So made the cake a day earlier since it needs it "resting time" in the fridge to taste better. I 1st made the crust but some how it seems that I did not push it enough into the pan that it came out at the sides. the cheese filling was easy enough to make. 

The "cover up"



Now here comes the delicate part; the baking. Apparently I baked it for too long -15 more minutes instead of just 30. So it decided to "punish" me by cracking in the middle while I left it to cool off in the oven!! LOL! And I did put a bowl of water underneath in case you're wondering. Apparently to prevent cracks. But it didn't prevent this crack on mine.... Its HUGE if you wanna know. So what did I do? 

The next day, I "cover it up" by topping it off with jelly pureed mango and some chopped macadamia nuts! LOL! It made up with me the taste if not in looks in the end.

So lessons learnt: do try to stick to regulated times and to REALLY tighten up on the crust in the pan. Will be making a more improved cheese cake next time. And this time I'd wanna make a smaller one, just so...

My little sous chef



Our blueberry cake with blueberry frosting....

It was a pretty depressing Sunday - it RAINED ALL DAY!!... :( So to cheer almost everyone up (the almost is my side ways expanding waist line), I decided to bake a cake with Owen. YUP! He's my little sous chef at the pastries department. The hot kitchen could get a little bit more complicated for the time being. Perhaps when he's a little older and ONLY if he's interested.



Looks yummy no?



More milk mama?

The last time he helped, he was soo... PROUD of it that he kept on mentioning to his dad that he made the cake with mama! LOL! This time round, he tells me that we should make another cake soon....



Pour SLOWLY!

Hmm..... not a very good idea for our ever expanding waist line but then again, I think its a good idea for him to get involved in the cooking process. That way he'll learn that things has to be done step by step and all the way to the finish. I feel that its important for kids to learn what goes into their food. Proud to say he knows now that eggs is not just eaten as hard boil but in cakes as well as making noodles. :)



Our chef having a slice of his own cake... :)

So this Friday we're going to bake a chocolate orange cake with orange cream cheese frosting! :D

Another pair of hair clips

Hubs decided to go visit a close friend, whose actually an ex-colleague of his. They live about 45 mins drive away from our place and have a really pretty little girl named Emily.

Now Emily was born a year ago, exactly a day after we went over to their place for summer barbecue! And she wasn't due till a week or two later. I guess she knows that we're having a good time eating, laughing and enjoying ourselves that she wants to come meet us! LOL!

Anyways, I made another two pairs of clips just for her. I just hope that she likes it...

Shelagh Duffett's Blueberry Orange Cake

Me and my pink glaze...

Got this recipe from HERE. She takes really NICE food photos, something I'd want to do as well as. But then again, she probably invested in a pretty hi-tech type of camera. Which for the moment I could not afford to get, seeing that there are tons of other stuff I'll be spending on:, like stitchable stash and other equipemet!! :D LOL!

Tried it out and I really do like it. Its jus so moist. I opted for a pink coloured glaze instead of orange, as I don't have frozen orange concerntrate (used orange juice, its zest instead and some food colouring). I will make this cake again but may be instead of blueberry, I'll be using frozen mix berry just to see.