Showing posts with label Creativity. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Creativity. Show all posts

Sunday, 2 March 2014

Last week of holidays in photos

Dad comes back from Canada, mum cooks him a feast! We love crab!

Pec flys - did three of them and the next day my
pecs were hurting :(

Jeff does not look happy, but on the inside he is radiating because
he's so happy he gets to spend time with me

Auntie Alice's birthday dinner. Bumped into Huldah and her friends
there. Lots of yummy Japanese food.

The best place to get three colour drink! So
refreshing in this hot weather!

We were craving pho.

Hotpot buffet. So good, but so much food.

pandan//chocolate//coconut//green tea crepes. which one should
we make? We ended up going pandan. 


Ikea to get decorations for the party. Purchased
mandatory hotdogs on the way out :)

The best laksa for only $9.50. I am definitely coming back for more!

Last Saturday night of holidays spent with two awesome people.
Mandatory selfie. I had fun guys, I had fun.

Monday, 17 February 2014

Mum's Birthday | Valentines

There's always something special about having your birthday on a widely celebrated date. Whether it's the hype of celebrating two events, or the moment of realisation when people make the connection after you tell them when your bday is. Judging by the title of this post, you probably know already that my mum is born on Valentines day a good half a decade ago. Due to that, J and I had a bit of trouble trying to juggle between mum's bday + vday. It worked out well in the end, and we had a great day.

In the morning, I made my mum a surprise breakfast of pancakes and tea. She was out when I woke up, so by the time she came back they were cold :( But she was very thankful and happy about that.



























































Wahoooo!!! This is the first valentines day J and I celebrated together. We were unofficially dating last year, so we decided not to do anything exclusive. Instead, we had yumcha with a bunch of friends from church instead! This was worth the wait :D Throughout this year, our commitment to each other has grown as our relationship has deepened = vday more meaningful to celebrate! J isn't a very secretive guy, he won't lie to conceal facts for the sake of making things a surprise. I like that. I guessed straight away what he would get me and where he got them. I even got an approximate price. The only thing I didn't know was how many roses there were. At least that was a surprise! The roses were BEAUTIFUL - dark red and luscious. They were arranged simply, but that created a very sophisticated and classy look - nothing too over the top (I've seen people put fake diamonds in their roses...). He also wrote me a lovely card :) 


J has a soft spot for anything 8 bit, cartoonish or iconic. I tried to incorporate that into my gifts (as you can tell by the photo). The cup is of a little Jeffy talking on the phone. The phone cord loops to form a big Jeffy and continues around the cup. I have a matching one (that I haven't made yet). 

We decided to have lunch in the southside - we are chill people. For some reason, the topic of hotpot came up and we were like "let's just eat hotpot!" And so we did. We went to this new place called Top Hotpot for a $20 lunch buffet/all you can eat! It's like yumcha - they give you a piece of paper with all the foods listed, to which the fattie proceeds to tick the items of their choice. Everything was quite delicious, although the cleanliness of the place wasn't top notch. 


After lunch we went to ikea to find a cheap vase to put the roses in. I quite like this one. It's tall, sleek and transparent :D Throughout the day, we (namely I) went a bit polaroid happy.


We had a lovely dinner (curry, fish, deep fried pork chop, asian veges, rice) and present-opening time after that. There's no candle because my mum bought the cake to be a valentines day present for my brother and I. My mum was so happy to receive a cake stand from me (I know she's been wanting one for a long time now) and a phone case from my brother (my dad got her a new phone). All in all, a good day. 


But wait... there's more! I organised a birthday party for my mum. We set it for the day after vday because we figured her friends would want to be with their hubbies on the day. There was no theme to the party, but since my mum likes pink, there were pink invitations, pink decorations and a pink cake. The ladies had hk style bbq in our backyard and from what I heard from inside (loud laughing/giggling), I think it's safe to say they had a great time. My mum was so excited and happy, which is what I aimed to achieve :) Here are some snaps: 

 

I made a pink ombre cake for mum. Jeff was a great assistant - he smoothed out the cake when I couldn't do it :) We make a good team.

Decorations and presents - our mad setup


The cake didn't turn out the way I had planned, but nothing major went wrong and people liked it, so eh :) Everybody was so tired by the end of the day, but well worth it. I had so much fun planning and enjoying the party.


Tuesday, 4 February 2014

Ambitious Baking

Borthi and I set out to make a checkered cake inspired by one of those cake blogs. It turned out that the cake was light and crumbly, so it would've been hard to form checkers. Instead, we made a layered cake featuring 100,000s :D



Buttercream filling between cakes

We didn't have a cake leveler, so this is how it turned out!

Visiting the chooks to collect a few eggs for the royal icing.


Very proud of our creation!



When we first cut the cake, the layers weren't very distinct, but after I put it in the fridge, it turned out perfect! Next time, that's what I'll do! All in all, a good morning of baking with Borthi. :) I'll drink a whole bottle of water now to balance out the glucose.


What's been going on these days?

These couple of weeks have been fairly eventful, with things to do and places to go (as compared to other holidays where I get bored). I was scrolling through Facebook and found a page called Rik Lee Illustration. This person is an amazing artist who features realistic drawings of females, tattoos, animals. Taking a particular linking towards the style, I decided to see if I could replicate one of the simpler pictures. 

I hadn't picked up a pencil to do a proper drawing in years, so it was a hit/miss kind of thing. It turned out alright - I didn't need to use a rubber yay! If I had, I would've fixed up the eyes instead of drawing on top of my mistakes haha it looks like she has really thick eyeliner! Nonetheless, I enjoyed this activity and decided to do more these holidays. 


The next day I woke up and just started drawing!



   This sketch turned into a watercolour artwork! I went to get watercolour pencils to colour it in and paint over it. I think it turned out quite well! :) 

I can identify with 'the hermit' - enjoying staying at home, chilling, reading with
a cup of hot chocolate/tea :)
Jeffy and I replicated the same picture as a competition haha. We clearly have different artistic styles, so it was
interesting to see how the picture would turn out. 
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It was also CNY a couple of days ago, so J and I decided to head off to have yumcha and visit our Chinese roots. There weren't many people there (as children have gone back to school), so it was a stress-free situation!


My favourite egg tart - crispy and buttery :D



The arrival of February brought about a sense of excitement as my mum's birthday approaches. I suggested to organise a celebration with her friends, and she happily agreed. She's always been a fan of Hong Kong style BBQ, so we decided to have a test run in our backyard. We borrowed the BBQ from our friend and got some firestarters going. It actually went really well, as we could test things out and get a great meal out of it. The menu consisted of sausages, meat + cuttlefish balls, crab sticks, chicken wings + drumsticks, prawns, pork, steak topped off with honey + lemon lime bitters. We had a lot of fun!





Charles came along after his own dinner and we had a nice time :) He was matching clothes with Jeffy
(on accident haha)

Jeffy is looking for a new car to buy and found a potential car online. Today we went to the seller's home to check out the car. It was a very good drive performance-wise, but in terms as aesthetics, not as nice as the Type R. We decided to use this trip as an opportunity to visit the beach and get some sunshine!