Happy birthday Daddy!

(I just found out there's no sound in this recording! I made a new one here.)


Today is hubby's birthday and he's far, far away in Sea Cucumber Land @ Papua New Guinea...

This is for you Darling:





Happy Birthday from all of us! We love you!

Spelling bee

Claire is now at the stage where she can recognize letters individually, but has yet to master the art of putting them together to read a word. So now she has a habit of reading out the letters in words, and assuming that they say what she thinks they should say, like this:



The other day, we were in the car, at a red light, when a huge bus pulled up beside us.

Claire began to read the printing on the side of the bus, "B-A-S P-E-R-S-I-A-R-A-N."
"School Bus!" she announced.



Another time was when we had just landed at the KL airport, on our way to Genting Highlands Resort.

Claire looked out the window at a hangar and read, "M-A-S K-A-R-G-O."
"Genting Airport!"



Clever girl...

Jaw-ache

I have a jaw ache from eating the Lebkuchen (German Christmas cookies) I made last night. They turned out very pretty, yes, what with the ribbon and all... but they're seriously hard! The taste is great; a warm spicy fusion of cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg and allspice. Really Christmass-y... makes you want to break out all the old Christmas CDs and put up the Chrismas tree right away!

However, once you bite into one, it's like chewing old leather! I really do not know if its texture is supposed to be like this, because I have never been to Germany to eat Lebkuchen, or otherwise. I did read in one of the comments on the site where I found the recipe that hers always turns out real hard. So since mine is just hard, not real hard, I guess it's supposed to be like that? Hmm... Germans must have very strong teeth and jaw bones.

So the kids have rejected the Lebkuchen and now I have to make kid-friendly gingerbread men cookies for them. I'll be sure to use a sugar cookie or similar recipe so I don't end up stuck with a batch of uneaten rock-hard men... sorry, rock-hard gingerbread men ;)

Oh yes, notice my photography-with-camera-phone skills are improving! Hubby has absconded with the camera and will be going diving tomorrow with it. He managed to find a diving centre there at Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea and is hoping to take some nice underwater macro pics. He has no idea what the terrain, visibility or reef life is like there. Let's hope it's beautiful, so PNG won't be such a painfully boring (did I mention dangerous as well?) place to him.

Okay, signing off here. Anyone want to try a Lebkuchen? I could post it to you where ever you are. It wouldn't even need a box or bubble wrap! Seriously...

Alien cakes

Yesterday I baked 2 chocolate cakes (= 4 layers) and 12 chocolate muffins for Claire and Annie's school year-end parties. Annie wanted to give a cake each to her class teacher and assistant teacher, so I gave her free reign in decorating them (the cakes, not the teachers) :)

Here are what she aptly calls her 'alien cakes'!




Claire's class party is tomorrow, so I'll let her decorate the muffins tonight and we'll see what she comes up with...


Here's the head pastry chef hard at work.

Meet the sous chef.


This is assistant no.2 whose job is to eat the floor clean!

Eva missed out on all the messy fun because she's down with the flu and fell asleep early last night.

Christmas baking

http://www.channel4.com/food/features/around-the-blogosphere-baking-christmas-goodies-07-11-30_p_1.html

I'm dreaming of baking lots and lotsa Christmassy stuff! That's what always happens when I spend too much boring time at the shop. After getting sick of Facebook and it's multitude of applications, I'll never fail to end up browsing recipes and gorgeous cake decorations!

Eventually, I will have a whole long list of things I want to make and at that moment in time, genuinely believe that I will indeed turn these delicious dreams into reality.

Thus armed with great fervour, I will then make a shopping list of ingredients I need to buy. Since I frequent the supermarket almost every day, and am a stickler for lists and getting everything on my lists done ASAP, I will complete this mission pretty quickly.

The next step however always proves to be a bit more tricky. That's the step where I have to find time to actually bake the goods! When I am under such circumstances, you will find me lying with the kids at night hoping and praying that they'll take a fast track ticket to Dreamland. As opposed to tossing and turning (or singing and talking to herself, as in the case of Eva) for an hour or so!

If they do sleep early, I'll have a couple of hours to myself. This is my glorious baking time.

However, things don't always work out the way you want them to, do they? More often than not, the kids will go to sleep late and I will be too tired to even contemplate exchanging sublime sleep for baking. Sleep still ranks far above baking for me, hands down!

This is the reason why I have ingredients like condensed milk, bread flour, ground hazelnut (just to name a few) sitting without a purpose in my fridge. I did have intentions for them initially, but had no time to carry them out. Alas, they have now been forsaken for other newer, yummier culinary dreams.

So here is my current list of baking aspirations:

1. Lebkuchen - a spiced German Christmas cookie. I'm thinking gingerbread men...

From the Brown Eyed Baker @ http://www.browneyedbaker.com/2009/11/12/lebkuchen-german-christmas-cookies/




2. The famous Neiman Marcus choc chip cookies

From the Brown Eyed Baker @ http://www.browneyedbaker.com/2009/09/21/the-famed-neiman-marcus-cookie/




3. Sugar crusted ginger chewies. Jingle bells, jingle bells...

From Joy the Baker @ www.joythebaker.com


4. Bittersweet cheesecake torte - a combination of white chocolate cheesecake and milk chocolate cheesecake and brownie! Yes, you heard right...

From Better Homes and Gardens @ www.bhg.com








5. Caramel frosted Hummingbird cake - yummy cake contains pineapple, carrot and sweet potato!

From Better Homes and Gardens @ www.bhg.com

6. White chocolate brownies - with macadamia nuts! Need I say more...

Also from www.bhg.com










Actually there are a few more... but you get my drift.

Now, I hope at least 2 of these things on my list will eventually get to my dining table before Christmas is over...

Sports car

Annie had an interesting conversation with Aunty no.3 this afternoon:


Annie: My Uncle Gumgum bought a car and it cost 150 dollars!

Aunty: Are you sure? I think it must be 150,000 dollars.

Annie: No, it's 150 dollars!

Aunty: I don't think so. It should be 150,000 dollars.

Annie: No, it's not that expensive! It only has 2 doors!



Let's hope she doesn't ask Daddy for an 'inexpensive' 2-door car when she grows up! :)

Super power

Boohoo... hubby's really left for Papua New Guinea... *sob* Worst thing is, he doesn't know yet when he'll be back!

The trip was postponed sooo many times, I was hoping Boss would just say,"No need to go liaw lah..."!

Eh... so much for that!

So now I'm focusing all my powers on getting hubby back in time for Christmas. He's already missing the upcoming Genting Highlands family trip which I planned in FEBRUARY!!! (Yes, Air Asia zero fare and all that) And also his own birthday... poor thing. He already missed Chinese New Year the last time he was there!!!

There are so many events lined up, birthdays, high school reunion, Christmas, New Year's Eve, his "brother's" wedding, Chinese New Year... I must really crank up my powers!

You're wondering about this 'powers' thing right? Well, have you read "The Secret"? Where they basically say that the energy from our thoughts can manifest into matter? Nonsense you say? A lot of theories which we know to be true today in the field of science, especially physics, were labelled nonsense in the past. Heck, some of them still sound so far-fetched it's hard to wrap our brains around the concepts.

Anyway, I find this theory surfaces in many different guises. In the Bible it's 'ask and you shall receive'. Some however, refer to it as 'mind over matter'. Still others deem our thoughts to be an energy that beams into the universe and gets a corresponding response materially/physically. Interesting isn't it?

Whatever it is, I'm keeping all the bases covered. I shall be praying to God that hubby comes back soon and also visualize him home for Christmas. I do believe in God as the greater being, so it doesn't matter if they call it 'The Universe' or 'The Collective Human Psyche' or whatever New Age creepy crap; I do think that if you have faith, and believe you have already received what you asked for, you will indeed get it.

Sooo... let's see if I can "magic" hubby back for Christmas eh? Hehehe...

Oops... I think I'm going about it wrongly.

Faith.

No doubt.

He'll be back.

So there.

Gingerbread house...

Christmas is coming! I've been listening to Christmas music trying to get into the mood to decorate my shop! Then I got a great idea; I love the gingerbread door and window in Pet Society (Facebook game), so I decided to try and replicate them!




I used plenty of coloured paper, glue and lots of tape. After 2 days of messy paper everywhere, I finally finished. So now my shop looks like a giant yummy gingerbread house! :)




Here's the source of my inspiration... a picture of one of the rooms in my virtual pet's house!

Let's just hope there won't be a dip in sales due to the fact that my shop looks more like a candy store rather than a pharmacy right now!!

Crashing the party

On Saturday night our diving instructor, Edward, celebrated his birthday at his scuba shop. I 'borrowed' cousins Michelle and Allyson to come over and have a pyjama party with the kids so that we could escape! I supplied plenty of 'incentives' like fizzy drinks and packets of 'keropok'! At times like these, I'm glad I control their intake of junk food during normal times, because they were so excited that they kept hurrying us to leave so they could start their own party!

So anyway, our party was like any other barbecue party with good food and good company... that is, until the psychiatric ward fugitives broke out the water balloons! :P

Sis nos. 2 and 3 and friend Jinny spent the whole afternoon filling and tying 100 water balloons each! That made a total of 300 water balloons hidden in 3 separate cars, waiting for action!

The initial idea was to ambush Birthday Boy only, but with such an abundance of ammunition, it quickly escalated into an all out war! Most of the guests hid inside to avoid being bombed either intentionally or accidentally in crossfire! Even the peaceful barbecue chef was not spared!




Thank goodness I had a spy; Annie spent the afternoon at Sis no.3's place and told me they were preparing water balloons for that night! Thus Hubby and I went prepared with a change of clothes! Hehehe...

Anyway, it was a fun night. I haven't run along the roadside screaming and laughing my head off since I was a kid! There were however, some people who were not happy to have been bombed, or stranded inside the shop while the armed maniacs were stalking about outside! I guess we should have informed them to bring a change of clothes, or at least given them a bucket of balloons for a fair fight! But as I said, the balloons were initially meant for Birthday Boy alone! Even Sis no.2, a bomber herself, did not bring an extra set of clothes!


Happy (most of us anyway) and drenched...


It was a potluck party, so obviously I brought a cake... with Birthday Boy sitting on top.

Photos by Ben Lau, taken from Facebook.
(My camera is at hospital... I broke the LCD display!)

Attack of the mini ghosts and goblins...

Last night, a band of mini ghosts and ghouls of all sorts descended upon us! They were accompanied by an assortment of fairies and princesses!

We were at the Sarawak Club's children Halloween party :P



Solomon wore the cute hand-me-down bee suit which was missing an antenna. I spent ages making the girls' witch costumes. Annie made the hats (or rather conned her aunty and my staff into making them...)! We made papier mache pumpkin goodie baskets with black ribbon handles. I bought cheap black cloth and cut a slit in the middle to put their heads through, then tied a ribbon at the waist.

For the brooms, I had to pick up dried palm leaves from the outside of someone else's house! Then I tied them to broomsticks. The hair is made of orange wool and taped to the inside of the hats. The toe socks I found were wonderfully cheap, RM4.50 a pair. I was worried that they were too big for Claire and Eva, but it turned out to be for the better, they now had oversized striped feet! How cute!

Anyway, it was worth it when Annie won second place for the best costume. Claire however, refused to wear her hat, or carry the broom and basket during the parade. Eva was excited and paraded all by herself and even joined the screaming competition! Only her scream was just a fraction of what she is usually capable of at home!



Hubby ran away to the swimming pool because all the screaming was giving him a headache! He asked me how I could stand all the noise and I told him I do it everyday!!!

There were also other games like the keropok-eating, mummy-wrapping and also hair-tying which Annie and her friend Samantha won.

The kids had a blast and I presume they'll want to attend again next year! Fine by me, but I'm worn out from costume-making, so it'll just be white bedsheets with 2 holes each!

The night's loot! 'The Diet' was put on hold for awhile...


Happy Halloween!