Wednesday, December 29, 2010

Gingerbread house workshop


The holidays were jam-packed with activities, I barely know where to start!

Okay, so when the kids were over at Grandma and Grandpa's for the night, around a week before Christmas, I found myself with plenty of time and nothing to do (Hubby was in Bintulu). So I decided to try making a gingerbread house. It worked out well and proved to be quite simple actually, so I decided that we would have a gingerbread house workshop with all the kids and cousins.



We made a gingerbread house for each family and the kids had fun sticking on the candy. The smell of ginger and cinnamon wafting through the house was heavenly and really got the Christmas mood going!




I think I'll try to make this a yearly Christmas tradition. Wouldn't that be lovely?

Friday, December 24, 2010

MERRY CHRISTMAS 2010!!

It's Christmas eve! I've plenty of cooking and baking to do and lotsa family lunches and dinners ahead! I LOVE Christmas!!

So..

MERRY CHRISTMAS EVERYONE!!!

Thursday, December 23, 2010

Cake, cake and more cake...

Last weekend was totally hectic. Over Friday, Saturday and Sunday, I had a total of 5 cake orders to fulfill! Amazingly I managed to get them all done on time. One of them even got into the newspapers!! Okay, just an obscure, small town, Chinese daily, but a paper none the less! :)


These are the cakes I made...

 This was made for a friend whose music society was celebrating its 12th anniversary.

The next three were for another friend's two kids and sister-in-law who were all December babies.

 I had to make the high heel way ahead of time to make sure it hardened right.



These are my favourite!

This was for another friend whose two kids and husband were celebrating their birthdays...

Wednesday, December 22, 2010

Macarons


The other day when I brought the kids for a treat at the bakery, "Everybread", I spied macarons! I have only ever seen macarons on the internet and in magazines. They're so gorgeous and look like they must taste absolutely divine! Since I've never tasted one, I just had to buy a packet. They came in packets of 6.

Despite all the hype about macarons, I was thoroughly disappointed with my macarons. They were just way too cloyingly sweet and were more like candy rather than cookies. I had expected the delicate flavour of almonds to come through, but all I tasted was sugar! Moreover, the macarons were filled with jam. I think it would have fared better if filled with a rich buttercream or bitter sweet chocolate ganache.


The cookie was crunchy on the outside and chewy inside. It was very well-formed though I must say, with a nice domed shaped and well-defined foot (the rough bit at the base of the cookie). The colouring was also a little overdone in my opinion.

So do all macarons taste like this or did I just unfortunately try a bad one? I guess I must simply look for more macarons to sample, otherwise make my own someday!! :)

Saturday, December 18, 2010

Another week

Phew... another week of school holidays down. It's been trying, to say the least, having 4 bored kids at home 24hrs a day. Annie however, was away at Miri, visiting Sei Ku and Hughie with Popo for 10 days. So that eased the chaos a bit...! :)

So let's see what we did recently...

We packed the goodie bags for the kampung kids Christmas party again this year.

 We packed 600 of these. This year we were much faster, we finished in a 2-hour session. We must be getting better and also the smaller ones are bigger now so they can really help! :)

 We've also done most of our Christmas shopping...

 I managed to sort and wrap them up in a night.

 We also went for the SSPCA (Sarawak Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals) Christmas Charity Bazaar. Sis no.2 had plenty of coupons to share with us.

 Grandma's birthday was on the 14th. We celebrated with dinner at Sarawak Club's Hornbill restaurant.

I brought Alaena and Claire for their optometrist appointment with Aunty Monica. Alaena is just slightly long sighted and does not need glasses.

Claire's astigmatism is stable with no deterioration so far. They also took their height measurements because apparently if they grow very fast, it may cause long-sightedness! I never knew that!

Brought them for a chocolatey treat at a bakery nearby after that...

 Solomon was supposed to have a school year-end party, but he fell sick instead and had to give it a miss. We dropped by his school to pick up the present (cool Winnie the Pooh shades) which I left with his teachers a few days before.

"Santa Claus" (his principal) himself/herself came out to the car to give him the present. Solomon was initially speechless and kept staring at "Santa Claus"! After a while he had a big smile and shook Santa's hand and waved goodbye happily!

He was overjoyed to discover the sunnies! He didn't have his own pair and kept snatching his sisters' pink sparkly ones! :)

We've also been digging up clay from an empty lot by the roadside near Kung Kung Titus' house. We're going to process the raw, dirty clay into clean, workable clay for modelling. Right now they're in chunks, ridden with stones and grass. The kids are impatiently waiting for them to dry so we can move on to the next step. Will write more when we finish the all the processing and modelling.

Anyway, Christmas is coming soon! Busy, busy busy...

Monday, December 13, 2010

Jas & Shan


Last week we celebrated Jas and Shan's wedding. Jasmine was my classmate when we were in form 4 and 5 Science1... right Jas? (my memory ain't that great anymore!)

If I'm not mistaken, when we were in Form 5, in SMB St. Teresa, she, Dianne, Sharifah Azizah, Claudine and I shared a table. We had the physics lab as our classroom then, hence the huge table.

Wow, that was 1994, 17 years ago! Omigosh...

Those were the fun times, fooling around and not paying attention in class! Of all the funny little details I remember; I recall we had a table flag (made from a pen and a piece of string?) and table song! We were very creative indeed, since classes were super, super boring, *trust me* (that, I can definitely remember)!!

We had interesting teachers, one who was almost legally blind with a torturous, monotonous voice, one with tight pants who put his mini test papers in his shirt pocket and more quaint characters, who nevertheless tried their best to put some stuff into our brains! (which, I can imagine was no easy feat)

I also remember Azizah used to have very bad bouts of migraine and we always happily volunteered to bring her to the Red Cresent room. It was a free pass from class! :) It helped that Alice, our classmate had the keys to the room...

I will always remember that Jasmine is super talented when it comes to music. She was my assembly buddy; I said the prayers and she played the piano so beautifully. So we were both backstage together.

Anyhow, our table was at the second last row in the lab, and the girls behind us were even worse! Jou, Geral and Audrey were forever singing away while the teachers were teaching! They had the lyrics to just about any song!

*sigh* those were the days...

(I think I really should get a scanner to add in old  photos eh?? 80/90's hairdo and all... maybe not such a great idea...)


Anyway, fast forward 17 years and here we are, at Jasmine's wedding. It was great to see old schoolmates who came back for the event. Some had not been back for years! Everyone is older (of course) and it's scary to think how fast time passes us by!

The wedding was held at St. Joseph's Cathedral, right next to our alma mater. It was then followed by lunch at Sarawak Club which was just up the hill from church. This was also where 'teenage discos' and New Year's eve dances were held regularly during our high school years, and they were 'cool' events not to be missed! I remember mum was very strict and I left parties at 9pm, when other people just started coming!! :)

Anyway, later that night was the dinner at Hilton. There was plenty of alcohol, form beer to 'tuak'. 'Tuak' is a Sarawakian native rice wine and is some serious liquid! It was a great dinner, with superb entertainment. There were memorable speeches, traditional dance performances and some great singing!

I have never been to a wedding dinner which finished at midnight! And the great thing is that everyone was enjoying themselves so much that they did not even attempt to sneak off before the last dish! In fact, most of us stayed back for the after-dinner dancing and drinks! I suspect the sheer amount of alcohol served that night also had a hand in promoting the high spirits everyone was in! :)


Jasmine and Shan, that was an amazing way to start this new chapter of your lives. We wish you both a beautiful life ahead, blessed with even more loving family and friends.

Friday, December 10, 2010

Baa Baa black sheep



Translation:

Baa, baa, black seep, huh huh huh huh wooo...
Yes  sir, yes sir, tee bag fooo...
One, hamster...
One for dame...
One, yittle boy...
Yive down the yane...

Wednesday, December 8, 2010

Second wedding cake


Remember when I said I would never make a wedding cake again? Well, I did.

An old friend asked me to do the honours and make the cake for her wedding lunch, and me being me, I couldn't say no... :)

So she gave me an idea of what she wanted and also sent me the invitation design. They were going with a 'tribal chic' theme and the colours were red and black.


It is always nerve wracking to make wedding cakes. Since a wedding is a once in a lifetime thing (with the exception of Hollywood stars), we must make sure it is nothing short of perfect!

Anyway, this one was a bit smaller than the first one I made, so it wasn't as much work. Most of the time and effort went into making those two small hornbills! They're made of gumpaste so they're edible! It was very delicate and time-consuming.


I love the end product. The black and white cake tiers were an excellent setting for the red hornbills. My friend was happy with my handiwork and that was, in the end, the ultimate goal...

Monday, December 6, 2010

Ee Poh's 70th birthday


A week ago we celebrated Ee Poh Teresa and Kung Kung's birthday. It was lovely catching up with cousins and aunties and uncles who came back for the celebration. Here are the photos:


First, we had thanksgiving mass at Holy Trinity church...


followed by dinner at Lok Thian restaurant.


The kids...


They were all psyched up and ready to perform a lion dance, but there was a problem with the sound system, so it didn't happen...


 Mum is missing from this photo, though I'm sure she was there in spirit...

 Sis no.2 bought orchids for Ee ee.. she adores flowers, just like mum...
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