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.

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.

Frozen in the Australian Heat

A while ago I told myself that movies were a waste of my money, and that renting from civic video was a much better option - namely because of the price difference. I had always come out of movies thinking to myself, "that was not worth $13" or "I wish I had just had the patience to wait for it to come out on dvd so I could've just rented it instead". There came a point where I could not take this horrible feeling of regret any longer. I was not going to watch another movie in the cinemas. Little did I know, that Frozen would be an exception to this. 

Let me explain myself. When I first heard of Frozen, next to nobody had. I watched the trailer on YouTube, it looked alright - wasn't that keen. Just another movie that tries to copy Tangled. After its release when more and more people started watching it, I heard pretty good things about it. People posted the songs on their Facebook, and YouTubers started doing covers of the songs - not bad. A few people asked if I would watch it with them, but I told them I wouldn't (due to my informal oath). I was determined to persist with this one. Under no circumstances, for no movie would I pay a bucketload of money to watch. Until Borthi asked me to... I kind of said yes because (let me explain, I'm innocent here!!!!) this would be my last opportunity to see her before she leaves to Townsville. She really wanted to watch it, and I guess I did too. So, I gave in and crumbled. Right at the last minute. :( We managed to get $5.50 tickets, which is pretty good (inclusive of free parking). 

Here we are, sitting in anticipation.

**** SPOILER ALERT****

Some memorable scenes of the movie!

Yes - I cried. The plot was okay, but I loved the music. That's as much reviewing I'll do. We did quite a bit of walking to the CBD and back, but we took a polaroid on the way. I'll miss this girl :)

At small group that night, we played three rounds of MAFIA! I was policeman in the first two rounds and mafia in the last round. It was so fun! First time, mafia won (I think) because no-one suspected Charlene as mafia because she was so quiet and innocent! I did my best and killed off Kwany the mafia before I died. Second round, similar jist. People were getting the hang of the game, so at the end it was left to a few of us still standing. I suspected Wells to be the last mafia, but I wasn't sure whether to listen to him or to Charles. I was the police, so in my sleep I checked if it was Wells. It was. We voted him out/I killed him (can't remember). WOOOOO!!! 

Last round was the most fun! Alex, Charles and I were mafia this round. I tried my best to remain my vocal self and placed my civilian façade on as best as possible. I acted clueless as to who the mafia were, verbally ruling out possibilities and voicing out my speculations. Charles and I had no idea Alex was mafia because at the beginning Kwany was waving his arms around so we thought it was him. We actively and unintentionally voted him out to be killed. This turned out to work in our favour. People didn't suspect us because we didn't hesitate to vote Alex out. No-one had any major accusations against Charles and I during the whole game. I guess we acted well. Everybody believed me when I said I was innocent because I said the same thing in the previous games and I ended up to be the police. I guess consistency works. Charles did a great job at communication. We were sitting directly across from each other, which made things easier I suppose. He would use the dolphin soft toy to point to people and do particular actions unique to different members of the group. In a previous game, I had suspected Melody of being the mafia because she was stroking her hair as if nervous. In this game, Charles stroked his hair so as to indicate for me to choose her to kill. He also pretended to read a book (I don't know how nobody saw that). I didn't get that one at the start, but I figured it was Kwany, since he's a teacher. Anyways, job well done. I can't believe we won. Ace of hearts and Ace of clubs man. gg

I was going to bring a mango turd tart with toasted coconut crust to small group, but turned out it needed to be refrigerated overnight. Oh well. Here is the completed version. 

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.