The Pink Blog

Europe Trip - Part 3

2012-01-28T03:16:00.002-07:00

Helloooo I'm back to blogging after a really long absence hehe. I've been busy doing the usual - watching tv, surfing the net, going to the gym, cooking, and lately, obsessively playing Sims Social on Facebook LOL.
Ok I shall now continue blogging about my Europe trip :)

So after day 1 and day 2 in London, we met up with our tour mates to proceed to Paris. We got on our coach to get to the port in Dover. Then we had to board a ferry to get to Calais, France. The ferry ride took about 2 hours. I'm pretty prone to seasickness, but I've heard that you won't feel seasick onboard a large ship. Whoever said that should be shot. The ship we were on was big but I felt so queasy throughout the whole journey!!!! I even threw up and totally lost all appetite.

This was taken before I started getting seasick

At the top deck of the ferry. It was so cold, I had my thin jacket zipped all the way up.

After our ferry docked, I was so relieved to finally reach land!!!!! However, the seasickness basically screwed up my appetite for that entire day. I had no appetite to eat anything.

We then boarded our coach to get to Paris, it was a few hours' journey to get there. Whenever we had a long journey on the coach, our Tour Director would use the time to tell us about the history of the place we were going to visit. He had a flair for telling stories, and made dull and boring history really interesting!

This tour had a number of optional excursions. Meaning there were some excursions where we had to fork out extra cash. We had an optional excursion scheduled for that evening, which was the Seine River cruise.

After taking a few photos, I retreated into the inside of the boat where it was warmer. I was still feeling jetlagged. And guess what, I started to doze off. Dear joined me, and the both of us slept in the boat while the majority of people were on the upper deck taking in the sights. What a waste! Sleeping on the Seine river cruise. And we paid extra to go on this cruise. Damn you jetlag!

After the cruise, we hopped on our coach to head back to the hotel, but not before catching a glimpse of the Eiffel Tower at night. At night, the tower is lit up and on the top of the hour, it would 'shimmer' and shoot a laser beam for like 5 mins. It was a really pretty sight. It started to rain heavily so I didn't manage to get good photos of the 'shimmery' Eiffel Tower.

Hoards of tourists taking photos

This was taken using my camera's Night Mode, looks much clearer

After that, we concluded our first night in Paris.

Europe Trip - Part 2

2011-11-08T15:38:00.002-07:00

On our second day in London, we set about visiting the major tourist attractions in London.
I wore a sleeveless top and jeans thinking that it wouldn't be that cold. I was fine when there was no wind, but when the wind blew, brrrrr it was chilly.

We took the Tube to get to our destinations.

First stop, Tower Bridge

We didn't want to waste time, so it was literally just, take photo and go!

And off we went to the London Eye

Then, Big Ben

Parliament House

Westminster Abbey

I remembered I read somewhere that London telephone booths weren't exactly the best smelling. Which was why I didn't dare go in.

Dear did go inside the phone booth, and he said it smelt like urine. Ewwww...

Inside the famed department store, Harrod's

This is the queue to buy tickets for the Buckingham Palace tour. Took us about 2 hrs, just to buy tickets!

We weren't allowed to take photos inside the palace, but once we exited the palace, photos are allowed.

Part of the palace gardens

After the palace tour, I was really tired, so we went back to our hotel room for a nap. We only woke up around 10pm. There was a restaurant opposite our hotel, so Dear went downstairs to buy dinner back up to our room, or so I thought. He didn't bring his phone and took 1 hour to return. OMG I almost freaked out. Finally he returned at 11pm, and I was so relieved. Well, it was late, and turns out all the restaurants near our hotel were closed, so he walked and walked, and finally found a place that was still open.

We didn't know it at that time, but that night was the night when the London riots started. And our hotel was in Islington, which is not far from Tottenham, where the riots started. I thanked our lucky stars that we were both safe.

We then slept in preparation for our early start the next day where we would meet our tour mates and go to our next stop, Paris! I was really excited to see the Eiffel Tower. It's always been my dream to go there :)

Europe Trip - Part 1

2011-10-20T02:31:00.000-06:00

Ok finally blogging about the Europe trip that husband and I took in August :p
We went on a guided tour of London, UK; Paris, France; Lake Lucerne, Switzerland; Venice, Florence & Rome, Italy. (Well, actually the London part was free and easy.)

And off we went on our European adventure! Our flight arrived in London around noon, and we went to check-in at our hotel. After showering, the bed called out to me and I plonked onto it for what I thought would be a short power nap. I aimed to wake up at 3pm, get out to do a bit of sightseeing and then do dinner. We were both so majorly jet-lagged that we only managed to wake up at 7pm. This meant we only had time to grab dinner -_-

So we set out to take the Tube to London's Chinatown for some decent Chinese food. The Tube's pretty easy to navigate, I quite like it. It's slightly cleaner than NYC's subway, but of course the Singapore MRT trumps in terms of cleanliness. Anyway, back to London Chinatown -

London Chinatown

See, I was so jet-lagged that I didn't even bother to put on my contact lenses and make-up.

Four Seasons Chinese Restaurant. Not to be confused with the luxury hotel chain LOL.

This was the restaurant where we had dinner. Yums!!

We had quite possibly the best roast duck ever in this Chinese restaurant in London. The food was really good. I know, we went all the way to London, and the first thing we ate was Chinese food?! Well, we've been really deprived of good Chinese food! Why can't we get decent Chinese food in Idaho?! Anyway, we ordered too much food for 2 people, so we brought back leftovers to our hotel. We would be really thankful that we brought the leftovers back later on.

After dinner, we walked around the vicinity of Chinatown and chanced upon the M & M's store.

This is so cute. The M&Ms crossing Abbey Road, modelled after the Beatles' famous album cover.

After this, we called it a night and headed back to our hotel. We slept around 10pm, and guess what, both Dear and I woke up at 2am due to the jet lag!! I was hungry too, and was so happy that we had leftovers from Four Seasons. The food was cold, but still yummy, plus I was THAT hungry. After filling our tummies, we went back to sleep, in preparation for our exploration of London bright and early the next day.

September Update

2011-09-08T00:54:00.000-06:00

Ok I can't believe it's already September. I've not been blogging for eons.
Went to Europe in Aug, and after the trip I shifted house. So I've been busy. Will blog about the Europe trip and also about new house too.

On another note, I'm so glad it's gonna be Fall soon. I've had enough of this darn heat. Give me cool weather, so I can wear leggings, cardigans, layers, coats!!!!

But it also means I'm gonna be going back to Singapore soon. We're due to return in May 2012. It'll be nice to see friends and family again and have all my favourite Singapore food. But I'm gonna be sad to leave the States. Gonna miss 60 channels of tv, watching my fav shows as they air first. Gonna miss the shopping here, Abercrombie & Fitch and Victoria's Secret are really cheap here :p Oh and I will also miss not having to work! I will enjoy the remaining 8 months here to the fullest! LOL

Ok will blog again soon!

My Pretty Roses

2011-07-22T14:00:00.001-06:00

Roses from my yard -

So pretty! I think there are more flowers this year as I deadheaded the spent blossoms from last year. Deadheading basically means cutting away dead flower blossoms. I did that sometime before Spring, and voila, so many pretty roses in the Summer :D

New Blog Design

2011-06-14T00:36:00.002-06:00

Changed the blogskin! :D It's a pretty pink!

I did a new blog header too. Changed out my wedding photos which are from 2 years ago, lol, to the more recent one hehe.

I used pixlr.com for editing the images. It's a free online photo editing programme, so no need to download and it's really good. The features are similar to Adobe Photoshop. Did I mention that pixlr is free?! LOL
Free is good!

No-bake 'Cake' Pops

2011-06-10T01:05:00.000-06:00

I recently chanced upon this website, selling cupcake pop molds. The mold looks so pretty, and it easily shapes little cupcakes for making cupcake pops. Bakerella's method uses a cookie cutter to shape out a little cupcake. But using this mold seems easier.

As great as the mold is, I was more interested in the recipe to make no-bake cake pops. You can watch the video on the website for the recipe. I was like, 'Why haven't I thought of this before?!' The recipe on the website called for using ground up oreo cookies mixed with cream cheese to form the cake pop mixture (if you can still call it cake). Using cookies saves the hassle of having to bake a cake and then crumbling it. And then there are the endless possibilities of using different types of cookies, mixed with cream cheese or different frostings. This is such a great idea!

I haven't tried out making cake pops using this method yet, but I hope to do so soon. Not sure if my little food processor can chop up cookies finely...

I can't wait to make no-bake 'cake' pops!!!

Eye on Florals

2011-06-10T00:40:00.000-06:00

Spring, the season of florals is already over. But I'm still obsessed with florals, especially on dresses. I had bought a floral dress from Forever 21, but had to return it as it didn't fit me very well. Boo hoo.. I was so upset when I returned the dress. :( I searched the internet, but couldn't find an image of the dress anymore.

My obsession with florals inspired me to do a set of floral dresses below. It kind of satisfied my urge to play dress up.

The F21 dress I returned looks similar to the 1st dress from the left - the white dress with pink roses.

I shall end this floral-laden blog post with photos of roses from my yard -

The One That Got Away

2011-06-02T00:00:00.000-06:00

for now I hope...

Kate Spade Shimmer Evangeline (pink)

Boo hoo.... I had my eye on this bag for quite some time. It originally retailed at USD 395. I waited till it went on sale, it was USD 277. I waited some more and guess what, last Thursday the price went down to USD 177. I initially wanted to buy the pink Shimmer Evangeline bag together with the Dizzy Dot Sophie, which was USD 147.

Kate Spade Dizzy Dot Sophie

However, my bank account balance was running low, so on Friday, Dear and I went to deposit money into the bank account. Now this is where I feel like banging my head into a wall - I was then preoccupied with other stuff, like enjoying the barbecue for two we had on Friday, going to the movies in Boise on Saturday, friends coming over to our place on Sunday, and just simply slacking on Monday.

It was on Monday night when I finally realised that I forgot to order the Kate Spade bags online. I went to the website and found that the pink Shimmer Evangeline bag was sold out online! A call to Kate Spade revealed that the bag is sold out in-stores as well. I looked everywhere on the web and the pink bag was nowhere to be found. Noooooooo..... Ultimate upset :'(

How could I FORGET to buy the bag that I have been lusting after for months?! How could I???? How could I????

Maybe, just maybe, it might be available in the Kate Spade outlet store. Might get one of my friends going on trips to the outlet stores to see if the bag is available there. The Dizzy Dot Sophie is still available, but I don't feel like buying it as it will just remind me of the one that got away.

Now excuse me while I go bang my head against the wall.

Life's Simple Pleasures

2011-06-01T23:22:00.000-06:00

Last weekend was the Memorial Day weekend here in the States. Dear had 4 days off from work - Friday, Saturday, Sunday and Monday. Yippee, lotsa quality time with me :D

On Friday, we slept in till afternoon, but still accomplished quite a bit of errands. We went to the bank, got the car serviced, brakes checked, and also mowed the lawn. It was drizzling almost the whole day and finally (we thought) the rain stopped in the evening. So we decided to have a spur of the moment barbecue in the backyard, just the two of us. We set about preparing the food for the bbq. We scavenged whatever we had in the fridge - chicken, shrimp, hotdogs and fishballs. Quite a good spread for two people.

However, when it was time to start grilling, it started drizzling again!

What a bummer! We were both looking forward to the bbq. It was so disappointing. So, having no choice, we fired up the oven and set about cooking our food in the oven. Five minutes into broiling, it stopped raining. Guess what we did?! We stopped our oven cooking and headed out to the backyard. Yeah, finally we were grilling!!

The rain gods must have been jealous, because it started drizzling again. Luckily it was only a light drizzle. But can you imagine how crazy it sounds? Two people bbq-ing in the cold rain?! However, I really enjoyed the bbq, lol. Barbecuing with my husband, just the two of us... albeit in the rain. At that moment I felt absolute happiness. I guess that's what life's simple pleasures are all about.

We stayed outside to finish bbq-ing all the food then quickly headed indoors to have our dinner. Yummyyyy.

Pirates Ahoy!

2011-05-21T00:12:00.000-06:00

Last Friday was the Singapore Air Force Mountain Home Squadron's 2nd anniversary dinner. They call themselves The Buccaneers, so the dinner was pirate-themed. Everyone was to dress up in pirate garb. Same deal last year too, but I didn't dress up, just donned pirate accessories like a pirate scarf and a sword. This year's dinner could very well be my last Buccaneer's anniversary dinner, so I thought it'll be fun to dress up.

I bought a pirate girl costume online. It looks like this -

From the costume website www.zoogster.com

This costume is one of the cheaper costumes. There are a lot of more glam costumes but they are a lot more expensive. I'm probably only going to wear the pirate costume once, so I didn't want to spend too much on it. My budget was USD 20 and this costume cost me about USD 21 including shipping.

I searched for pirate make-up tutorials on Youtube, and they mostly feature dark smoky eyes and red lipstick. So I followed suit, except that I didn't have bright red lipstick. Here are my make-up pics -

A fierce look

Close-up of my eyes, I didn't want to go too dark as I was afraid of looking too over the top.

(The photo quality is really bad, I took these with my macbook, and it looks like I didn't blend my eyeshadow)

The entire outfit after donning accessories

Arggghhhhh.....

and a smiley pirate look, hehe :)

And then it was time to leave home for the dinner. I made sure to bring my pretty pink Sony camera to take photos at the dinner.

Pirate 'sisters'

Me & Michelle :)

Take 1: Dear and I

Take 2: Dear and I

Me, Emily & Michelle

This backdrop was just before the entrance of the dining hall. The idea was to let everyone pose in front of the backdrop and take photos as souvenirs. I like this idea, like some Hollywood gala event lololololol.

Once inside we had to wait quite a bit before dinner. There was the usual giving out of awards, speeches before we started on dinner. I was soooo hungry. Same thing happened last year, I should kick myself for forgetting to eat before going out.

While waiting for dinner, we took a few more photos.

Me, Agnes, Baby Charlotte & Michelle

Me & the lovely pirate girl Charlotte

More photos are on my FB. Overall, I enjoyed the company of my friends and I loved the dressing up. My eyeshadow looks better in photos taken with my camera right?

Spring's Here!

2011-04-27T00:38:00.000-06:00

And I'm back to blogging... Have been busy, hehe.

Remember the flowers I planted last year here? The ranunculus and snapdragon probably died last summer from the heat. (I wasn't very diligent in watering) Ultimate sad :(

Luckily the tulips made it! :D

This photo was taken last week

And today, 2 of the tulips bloomed

The tulips are supposed to be pink, but they look more red...

Bake Night - Curry Puffs

2011-03-05T01:01:00.001-07:00

Curry puffs fresh from the oven

After a few weeks of hiatus, I've started Bake Night again. This week, I baked curry puffs with potatoes and hard-boiled egg filling. I was deliberating whether to add chicken, but Dear likes dark meat which has fats,while I like lean white meat.

I hate biting into chicken fats or skin when I'm eating a curry puff. Back in Singapore, my favourite curry puffs are from Old Chang Kee. Ninety percent of the time, I get lean meat in my curry puffs. A1 curry puffs, on the other hand, I think, use chicken that has fats or skin attached. All of the times I had A1 curry puffs, I bit into squishy fats/skin. (No idea if it was fats or skin, all I knew was that it was disgustingly squishy). I think I gave A1 3 chances, and it disappointed me all those times. Anyway, that was at least 1 year ago, so I'm not sure if their standards are still the same.

So back to my dark meat / white meat conundrum, should I use dark meat or white meat in my curry puffs? I finally decided in the interest of fairness not to use any meat at all. LOL.

I referred to these 2 recipes from Rasa Malaysia and Lily's Wai Sek Hong, and adapted their recipes.

Here's my recipe below -

Baked Curry Puffs

(makes 12 puffs)

Ingredients:

Filling:

- 3 medium potatoes

- 1/2 an onion (finely chopped)

- 2 tablespoon curry powder

- 1 teaspoon tumeric powder

- 1 teaspoon chilli paste*

- 5 tablespoon oil

- 1/2 cup water

- Salt and pepper to taste

- 2 hard-boiled eggs

Pastry:

- 1 package of Pepperidge Farm frozen pastry sheet (2 sheets in box)

- Egg wash (1 egg beaten with a tablespoon of water)

Method:

Peel and chop potatoes into small cubes. Then boil the potatoes till cooked.

Heat up the oil, add in the chopped onions and let them sweat. Cook the onions till they are slightly browned.

Add in chilli paste, stir-fry it with the onions for a few seconds.

Add in curry powder, tumeric powder.

Add in the potatoes. Stir-fry the mixture to combine. Then add the water and let it simmer for at least 5 mins. Add salt and/or pepper to taste.

The potatoes will then look like this -

Cut the hard-boiled eggs like this -

Now for the pastry, lay it out and cut it into rectangles. I cut them into roughly 12cm by 8cm rectangles, but you can cut them into any size you like.

Now to add the filling onto the pastry dough. I realised that arranging the egg on the side of the potatoes makes it easier to fold the pastry over. So learn from my mistake, please do not place the egg on top of the potatoes. Now fold over! And crimp the sides with a fork. If the dough sticks to the fork while crimping, just dip the fork in some flour and continue crimping away.

Here are the puffs all crimped and brushed with egg wash.

Into the oven it goes at 400 oF for 20 minutes.

Tadah!

*Dear blended some chilli with garlic some time back, so I used this chilli paste for the curry puffs filling. You can use chilli flakes instead.

Detox Diet Week 2

2011-03-03T00:43:00.000-07:00

So Week 1 of my Detox Diet has passed. And I embarked on Week 2!
Week 2 has a shorter list of foods to avoid. So the food choices are much wider. I can reintroduce forbidden foods like wheat, dairy and eggs.

Here are the Week 2 food -

Chickpea, tomato, zucchini and millet soup.

Recipe here

I was a smart aleck and replaced the spelt in the recipe with millet. The millet absorbed the liquid in the soup and it became like a porridge. Imagine eating a tomato porridge... Not very yummy...

Spicy broccoli (a variation of the spicy cauliflower in Week 1),

and grilled teriyaki salmon on whole wheat bread

Quinoa hash with fried egg. Recipe here

Baked potato with butter, cheese, bacon bits and spring onion

Ok this isn't exactly healthy, but it's one of my favourite foods :) Yums

Low sodium chicken broth with chickpeas, carrots, tomatoes and dried anchovies

I didn't really follow the recipes for Week 2 as much as Week 1. I mostly created my own menu using 'approved' foods.

After 2 weeks of detoxing, I can't say I really feel any difference... Well, mainly because I didn't complete the full 28 days of detox, and also because I ate forbidden foods on weekends.

However, at the start of Week 2 when I reintroduced previously forbidden foods, I did get some stomach bloating. According to the Whole Living Action Plan, the discomfort is due to food intolerance. This detox plan is intended to cut out junk that our body is used to consuming, giving the digestive system a break in the process. Common allergens are also cut out, so nutritional intake is boosted.

So when I reintroduced foods like dairy, my body is reacting to the allergen. According to the Whole Living Action Plan, I can consider abstaining completely from the foods that caused my body discomfort. I've not been having discomfort anymore. So I'm not going to eliminate any foods from my diet, it's way too much effort. But I am going to eat healthier, up my fruit intake, and cut down on processed food.

All in all, this detox diet's been a good experience. I've had a chance to try out foods that I would otherwise never have tried, like millet and quinoa. (I really like quinoa!) Most importantly, this diet has kept me occupied when Dear was away on detachment in Florida.

More Winter Looks

2011-02-24T01:15:00.000-07:00

Here's what I wear when I go to the supermarket on Sundays -

Depending on the weather, I'll either wear a long-sleeved top or a t-shirt underneath the hoodie.

Normally in Singapore, I would just wear a t-shirt and shorts to the supermarket, hurhur...

It's still cold here in Mountain Home, but when the weather warms up, I hope to be able to wear tights underneath a skirt or dress like Blake Lively and Leighton Meester on Gossip Girl. Wait, isn't it cold too in NYC? How do they manage to wear tights? Won't their legs feel cold?! Sacrificing comfort in the name of fashion, I guess.

Anyway, I've got my eye on lace tights. I've never worn them before and would love to wear them, like here.

But first, I've got to buy those lace tights, and maybe a sparkly skirt. Gonna go online window-shopping now. Ta ta!

I Curled My Hair.. Again

2011-02-23T17:39:00.000-07:00

This time I used curling tongs instead

Compare the difference between the 'cheat' method and the curling tongs method -

Ok, the curling tong method looks so much prettier.

It took me at least 45 minutes to curl my hair, so it IS time-consuming! But the results turned out so pretty...

I Curled My Hair

2011-02-21T13:59:00.001-07:00

Not permanently though.... I followed Xiaxue's method here.
Basically, just need to twist hair into 2 buns, tie them with scrunchies, and sleep. Then by the next day, you'll get wavy hair! Ok so I didn't have scrunchies, I used rubber bands so the waves didn't turn out as pretty as Xiaxue's. Anyway it's a GREAT way to curl hair!!! I love this method!

Can you see my eyeshadow? Should have used more eyeshadow. The lighting in my room sucks, I would think my make-up was alright, but when I go out, I would realise that my make-up was barely visible. FML

I realised that the above photo wasn't very pretty, so here's a nicer one to end this blog entry.

XOXO

Detox Diet - Week 1

2011-02-17T01:59:00.001-07:00

Dear is on detachment to Florida, boo hoo hoo :(
So, I'm occupying my time by going on the Whole Living 28 Day Challenge. I'm only going to follow it for 2 weeks... My main aim isn't to lose weight, but to see if I can make my body healthier, and to occupy my time. Not sure how effective the detox is gonna be, just doing it halfway LOL.
It's a gentle detox diet, no drastic fasting. However, no added sugar, no preservatives, etc. The full list is here.

Anyway, I've been on the detox diet for a week now. I've strayed off the diet on weekends when I eat out, and also when I had a 'teppanyaki' Valentine's dinner with my lovely Valentines, Chrissie, LingLing, Chloe, Vell and Charlene. So, I'm not sure if I'll get the full benefits of the detox.

One significant change I made during this past week - I cut out my favourite Cafe Nova coffee!!! I normally MUST have coffee first thing in the morning. During the past week, I substituted it with hot green tea. Surprisingly, I didn't have a major headache. I felt a light manageable headache though. It was still tolerable. Yay! This means I can quit coffee if I want to, and drink green tea instead. However, Cafe Nova coffee is too yummy to give up. I'm gonna go back to it once the 2 weeks are up. LOL.

The first week of the detox diet had quite a bit of restrictions, especially the part about no added sugar. You won't believe how many foods has added sugar in it, even dried cranberries. Anyway I pretty much stuck to recipes in the Whole Living detox recipe guide. Through this diet, I had the chance to try out new foods like millet and quinoa.

Here are some of the detox food I cooked -

Day 1 breakfast: Green tea with salad in olive oil and balsamic vinegar

Day 1 Lunch: Millet bowl with steamed broccoli, carrots, celery and mushrooms, garnished with sunflower seeds and red onions. Recipe here

This was the first time I had millet. It didn't really have a distinct taste, its texture was kind of like rice. It tasted ok.

Day 1 Dinner: Salmon with Spicy Honey-Basil Sauce and salad. Salmon recipe here

The salmon was yummy :)

Day 2 Breakfast: Millet with honey and sunflower seeds

I broke the diet for a few days after this. (I still drank green tea instead of coffee and had detox-friendly foods at breakfast, but ate 'normal' foods at lunch and dinner) I resumed the detox diet yesterday when I had a healthy dinner of shrimp-stuffed portobello mushroom.

Dinner: Shrimp-stuffed Portobello Mushroom

Insides shot

(At this point, I kind of stopped counting the days, as I already broke the diet LOL)

See the little flecks of green in the shrimp? It's homemade pesto. I blended basil with garlic and extra virgin olive oil (or EVOO as Rachel Ray calls it). Traditionally parmesan cheese was added, but I omitted it as the diet calls for cutting out dairy too.

It was huge... I was very full after eating this. It would have tasted better with cheese... Still it was not bad la.

Breakfast: Quinoa Salad. Recipe here

This was my first time trying out quinoa too. I think the bell peppers overwhelmed the whole salad. I might have added in too much of the peppers, or cooked it for too long. The quinoa had an interesting texture, it kind of 'popped' as I bit into it. The taste of peppers was too strong this time, I'm gonna cook the quinoa again in another recipe and see if it has any distinct taste.

Dinner: Spicy cauliflower, oven-baked salmon with pesto and quinoa salad.

Cauliflower recipe here

The spicy cauliflower was yummy! I was surprised it turned out so flavourful considering no soy or oyster sauce was added. I might cook it for Dear as part of a regular dinner, but swap broccoli for the cauliflower as he doesn't eat cauliflower.

I actually don't feel any major difference when I'm on the detox diet. However, when I take 'forbidden foods' like sugar after a meal of detox food, I get headache-y, like a little tolerable dull headache. Interesting.... I have no idea what this means.

Anyway, I'm gonna continue the detox diet for 1 more week, the second week allows more foods into the diet like dairy and eggs. I'm not sure if I should continue detoxing with the week 1 list of forbidden foods or relax and go into week 2.

Either way, I will update again :)

My Winter Clothing Guide

2011-01-21T20:39:00.001-07:00

Back in 2009 when I was still in Singapore preparing and shopping for clothing to wear during Idaho winter, there weren't many websites featuring what to wear during winter that was fashionable as well. Coming from tropical Singapore, I had absolutely NO idea what to wear.
Going to places like Universal Traveller and Winter Wear was depressing. The coats suitable for extreme cold were all puffy and made me look fat. Ewwww....
The sales person there recommended me to buy thermal wear, sweaters, gloves and a fat puffy winter coat. Not very exciting. (So far, I've not felt the need to wear gloves when going out. I normally stick my hands in my coat pocket.)

After a year here in Mountain Home, where I've experienced subzero temperatures, I can say I've kind of gotten the hang of dressing for cold weather. Most importantly, I've discovered sites like Fab Sugar and Fashion Under $100, where they showcase latest trends and show celebrity styles for less.

Let me share what I wear during the winter -

When temperatures dip below zero, I'll wear thermal wear underneath my clothing that look like this:

Thermal Wear, nothing fancy there

When temperatures go above zero, like 1 - 3 oC, I skip the thermal wear, anyway because most of the time I'll be inside the car or a heated building, like the mall. However when it's below zero, even walking a short distance feels sooo cold.

On top of thermal wear, I'll usually wear a warm sweater, jeans and a thick wool coat. (I've banished the puffy fat coat that I bought from Universal Traveller to the back of my closet. LOL)

Basic winter look

Recently, I like to wear a dress over leggings and a coat, like in my previous OOTD post.

Or a sweater dress if it is colder

Sweater dress winter look

The warmest combination is the basic winter look. Mainly because the jeans keep legs warm. When I wear leggings, I do feel the cold in my legs. But I wear them anyway because I just want to be able to wear dresses in winter!

When it's not so cold anymore, like towards the end of winter, I switch the coat for a leather jacket. I hope to do those transition from winter-to-spring looks soon. Right now, it's still winter weather.

I hope the above serves as a rough winter clothing guide to people who are in the same situation as me more than a year ago :)

(The above looks are created using polyvore.com. The outfits are what I would wear. I tried to select items that are similar to clothes I have in my closet.)

OOTD

2011-01-18T23:42:00.001-07:00

OOTD = Outfit Of The Day
This was what I wore on one of the Saturdays when we went to Boise.

Coat from Bebe; bag from Aldo

(Both bought from a recent trip to Las Vegas and Salt Lake City)

Dress and belt from the newly

opened H & M at Caesar's Palace in Vegas. I love that store :D

That first photo doesn't do the coat much justice. Here it is again:

I love this coat!!!

I first saw Cobie Smulders, who plays Robin Scherbatsky on How I Met Your Mother, wear a similar coat in one of the episodes. I thought it was so gorgeous. Imagine my delight when I saw this coat at the Bebe store at the Las Vegas Premium Outlets. It was USD 50, I thought quite a bit about it. I probably have too many coats. But in the end I couldn't resist, I knew I would regret not buying this coat. And I lurrrvvee it!!!!

My Christmas Lights

2011-01-03T13:11:00.000-07:00

I've been waiting for some snow so that I can take a prettier photo of my house with Christmas lighting. But... there's not been much snow lately. It's just been cold. As I'm typing this, the temperature outside is -8 oC. Brrrr...

Here's my house with Christmas lights.

My camera takes shitty night pics :(

Xmas Party 20 Dec 2010

2011-01-03T12:54:00.000-07:00

Happy New Year! ... and here I am posting about Christmas 2010.. Super slow. LOL

Anyway, there was a Christmas party for the Singapore Air Force on 20 Dec, and I was all excited because that means I get to dress up!
Nowadays, the only chance I get to dress up is on Saturdays when we go to Boise. So I was glad to have one more excuse to put on make-up and wear nice nice :D
I obsessed a bit over what to wear, just a bit... and what eyeshadow to apply. Decided to do a basic smokey eye, so watched Michelle Phan and Xteeener's eye make-up tutorials.
Ok enough of words, here are photos of what I wore and my make-up:

White sweater dress (present fr Ah Beth) with a belt and leggings

Topped it with my Gap orange-red coat

I wore grey heeled boots with this outfit. I was so glad when I found this pair, the heels aren't that high so they are fairly comfortable. Only thing I didn't like was the fact that the opening at the calves are too big for me. Oh well...

I don't have a full-length mirror, so I wasn't able to take full-length shots of myself. And, Dear was part of the Christmas party planning committee, so he had to go to the party earlier, and leave later than me. There was no one to take a photo of my full outfit. I tried, but I just couldn't take a full-length photo with my 3-quarter length dresser mirror. FML.

Camwhored with Macbook Pro's Photobooth while waiting for my friend Chloe to pick me up to the party.

I used Dollywink liquid eyeliner, it was a birthday present from my friend, Michelle. I also did a light smoky eye, as I didn't want to look too over the top, or like I was trying too hard.

Here you can see my new Forever 21 earrings

At the party with LingLing & Chloe

The below photos were taken after the party, I must say the eyeshadow was pretty long-lasting. Alas, the Dollywink eyeliner did smudge a bit. :(

Act cool, no smile;

Slight smile, no teeth;

and wide smile with teeth showing!

Happy New Year Everyone!!!!

Cake Pops

2010-12-22T15:34:00.002-07:00

I've been a fan of Bakerella for quite some time and I've always wanted to try making cake pops. I even bought Bakerella's book, Cake Pops.

Since Christmas is just round the corner, I decided to make Christmas-themed cake pops.
I used a Betty Crocker Devil's Food cake mix and cream cheese frosting. But you can use any cake and frosting combination you like.

Here's the cake batter after beating in eggs, oil and water

Into the cake tin it goes

Fresh from the oven

Now let the cake cool for awhile. I think it took about 2 hours to cool.

Now comes the fun part, if you're feeling stressed or frustrated, it's cake destroying time!!!! Ok, basically just crumble the cake with your hands or with a fork. Then mix in cream cheese frosting.

I only used half of the cake and added in about half a can of the frosting. After mixing thoroughly, the mixture will resemble dough.

Time to prepare the candy coating. I used white candy melts and popped them in the microwave for 30 seconds to melt them.

I got an assembly line going for the cake pop making

Starting from left: The cake+frosting mixture; melted candy coating, bottle of red, white and green sprinkles.

The green blocks at the top right corner, are actually florist's blocks. I used them to stick the pops in. Next time, I'm gonna use styrofoam blocks instead. The florist's blocks left a green powdery residue on my hands each time I touched them.

I rolled the cake mixture into little balls, and then dipped a lollipop stick into a bit of the melted candy and stuck it into the cake ball. This is to let the cake ball adhere to the stick better.

Here are the cake pops without 'make-up'

At this point, I made a mistake. I immediately dipped the cake pops into the melted candy to coat. The cake pops fell off the sticks. It was a disaster.

The failed cake pops

I went to re-read the cake pop making instructions, and realised that I've missed one important step: refrigerating. After sticking the cake balls on the lollipop sticks, I was supposed to stick them in the fridge for awhile. Oops, I missed that step. So I placed the cake pops into the fridge for around an hour.

After that, I dipped the cake pops into the melted white candy and them sprinkled them with Christmassy red, white and green sprinkles.

Tadah!

Back into the fridge for an hour again.

The inside of a cake pop

Wrapped in little treats bags and tied with ribbon

My Pretties

I only used half the cake and made 30+ cake pops. If I used the whole cake, I might have been able to make double that amount. But I was tired, and stopped.

In the spirit of Christmas, I gave the cake pops away to friends. Hope they like them :D

Chocolate Chip Crescent Rolls

2010-12-22T14:06:00.000-07:00

Baked with Pillsbury crescent dough which I used previously when baking Pigs in a Blanket here. I added semi-sweet chocolate chips to the dough strips, then rolled them up. I brushed the tops of the crescent rolls with egg wash and sprinkled some sugar on top, then popped them in the oven at 350 oF for 15mins. This time, the rolls came out flaky and more like croissants.

Yummy....

The rolls were flaky and yummy. I think I must have under-baked my previous hotdog rolls. The next time I bake them I'll increase the temperature and baking time.

I baked these on a weekday afternoon, so technically, they weren't baked on a Bake Night, LOL.

My Birthday in USA 2010

2010-12-17T16:07:00.000-07:00

This year is the first time that I'm spending my birthday away from Singapore. Dear took a day off on my birthday, 15 Dec, to bring me out for a spot of shopping and dinner at Boise.

I received a little surprise in the morning as I was getting ready to go out. My friends surprised me with cake, sparkling grape juice and a pressie!

So sweet of the girls <3

After they left, Dear and I went out to Boise. We did a little bit of shopping and when it was dinner time, we went to Cottonwood Grille for dinner. It's a restaurant with really pretty decor :)

The pretty lamp at our table

Pot of poinsettia above my head

Our appetizer of crab cocktail.

The presentation reminds me of Cendol. LOL

A scoop of white crabmeat rested on a tomato horseradish dressing and salad at the bottom of the glass. The dressing was a tad too spicy for me, but it was still yummy and shiok.

Yummy Clam Chowder

My sea scallops with spinach & pasta

By the time my entree arrived, I was almost full. Haha.. The scallops were tender and juicy, and I liked the spinach too. The spinach was seasoned slightly on the salty side. But I think it was perfect when eaten together with the pasta. Needless to say, I couldn't finish the pasta.

Dear's Kurobuta pork chop with mashed potatoes & vegetable medley

I seldom eat pork, but the pork chop was surprisingly good. It did not have the 'porky' taste that sometimes pork can have. Dear enjoyed his dinner thoroughly. However he was unable to finish his food too. LOL. We got a box and took his and my leftovers home for Dear's lunch the next day.

Where'd All the Snow Go?

2010-12-14T15:40:00.000-07:00

Is winter over already?!

Just a few weeks after I snapped the photos of my snow-covered yard, the snow melted. Temperatures have rose to above 0 oC, so all the snow has been melting over the past weeks. Luckily I haven't built a snowman, otherwise I would have to report it stolen like this woman from the UK. Haha...

Maybe the weather gods read my previous post and stopped all the snow. Ok I'm sorry... can I have a little snow so that I can build the biggest snowman in the neighbourhood?

Thank you ;)

Its Started Snowing

2010-12-07T15:13:00.000-07:00

A blanket of snow at my backyard

The trees covered with a white veil

Even though I've seen snow earlier this year, I never fail to be mesmerized by falling snow. It's pretty, but snow does make for some major inconvenience.

We need to shovel snow from our driveway and pathway. Of course, Dear does the shoveling, LOL. It's pretty back-breaking work though.

Me just posing with the shovel, hehe

Apart from shoveling, snow makes driving dangerous. I've mentioned before that it takes an hour's drive to get from Mountain Home to the city, Boise. Not fun to drive when it's snowing heavily. Luckily, the past Saturdays when we drove to Boise, snow's not that heavy and the highway's been cleared of snow. I suppose the highway is a heavy traffic area, so the snow plowers would keep the highway pretty much snow-free.

Last week when there was quite a bit of snowfall, there was pretty much snow accumulation inside the base and in Mountain Home, so cars skidding were fairly common.

That's the downside of snow. Scary...

When I was in Singapore, I couldn't wait to see snow. So even though snow's pretty and all, sometimes I do wish that the snow would stop already. But I do love winter fashion, love love coats! Super mixed feelings about winter, LOL

Bake Night - Chocolate & Strawberry Pillows

2010-11-20T00:52:00.002-07:00

No, I mean I made chocolate pillows and strawberry preserve pillows, not chocolate AND strawberry pillows. LOL

I was inspired by this post by Joy The Baker. (Of course hers turned out better looking)

Anyway, the recipe called for 1 frozen puff pastry sheet cut into 36 pieces. I had a hard time trying to cut the pastry sheet into uniform sizes.

Take 1 puff pastry square and drop a few semi-sweet chocolate chips in the centre. Dab the edges with water, then cover it with another puff pastry square. Crimp the edges with a fork to seal it.

Do the same with the strawberry preserve.

I did 14 chocolate pillows and 4 strawberry preserve pillows.

So pretty after the crimping! Don't they look like ravioli?

Because they're so pretty, here's another pic of the pillows after crimping. I used a dab of strawberry preserve to differentiate the strawberry from the chocolate pillows.

All prettied up with eggwash and a sprinkling of granulated sugar

Into the oven it goes at 400 oF for 12 minutes.

Tadah!

Because of the uneven size I cut them into, some of the pillows were golden brown after 12 minutes, but some weren't. I baked those that weren't golden yet for an additional 3 minutes.

And here's a close-up of a chocolate pillow:

These chocolate pillows are so yummy!!! The strawberry ones, not so. They were a bit too sour.

Hooray for yummy yum yum chocolate pillows!

So That's Why It's Called Fall

2010-11-12T13:40:00.000-07:00

That's one of the trees in my yard. It's Fall and leaves are turning yellow and falling.

Check out the yard covered in yellow leaves.

The road is covered in leaves as well

We've got to rake up leaves from our yard and driveway, otherwise we'll get a 'summon' from Housing. Luckily, we don't need to clean up the road :)

Here's the 'happy' raker LOL

Dear says he hates Fall because of the raking. He say's it's even harder than mowing the lawn.

He took 2 hours just to rake and bag up the leaves from the front yard. There are a lot of leaves, so I guess it's really hard work. Poor thing....

Dear's Birthday Celebration

2010-11-11T13:09:00.000-07:00

Every Sunday, we get together with some friends and Dear plays DOTA with them. Dear's birthday was on Monday, so we had a little birthday celebration for him on Sunday during the DOTA session. He's a low-key guy, and didn't want a huge party. It was mainly a regular DOTA session, with the birthday celebration on the side.

Some of his friends didn't even know it was his birthday, as Dear didn't inform them. LOL He is that low-key. Actually, we're both not very big on birthday celebrations. We'll be happy just to spend the day with our loved ones :)

Anyway, here are the photos -

Happy Birthday Dear <3

Bake Night - Portuguese Egg Tarts

2010-11-11T13:05:00.000-07:00

I previously mentioned that I was gonna bake brownies on Bake Night... But I realised that I ran out of eggs, FML.
(This was one of those times that I wish I had already got my driving licence and could drive out and buy eggs.)
So I didn't bake that Friday night :(

The next Bake Night, I decided to bake Portuguese Egg Tarts. (The pack of brownie mix had already expired by then.) There are tons of different Portuguese egg tart recipes on the web. I finally narrowed it down to this recipe from Rasa Malaysia. I bought prepared frozen puff pastry for the tart shells. Not gonna make the tart shells from scratch, LOL my skills aren't that advanced yet.

I divided the puff pastry dough into pieces and pressed each piece into the muffin tray. TMD it was soooo difficult pressing the dough. Then I filled the tarts with the egg custard mixture.

See how ugly the tart shells look

Into the oven it goes, at 400 oF for 15mins according to the recipe. After 15mins of baking and 2 mins of broiling, the egg tarts look like this:

Looking fairly decent

BUT.... when I cut into the tart, I realised that the puff pastry was not fully baked. The tart was still raw. TMD. So I popped it back into the oven and continued baking, and baking, and baking... for a grand total of 30 mins. The pastry was still not fully baked! However the egg custard had already been burnt. $%@$%#@$%@%$^%^&$^%#$@$%#!!!!!!!!

No, I didn't take photos of the burnt egg tarts -_-

All the recipes I found all said to bake the tarts at 400 oF for 15 mins, so I don't think the problem lies with the recipe. I think maybe I didn't press the puff pastry dough thinly enough into the muffin tray. It was probably too thick, so maybe it didn't bake up in the 15mins.

In conclusion, Portuguese egg tarts FAIL!

My Kitchen BFFs

2010-10-20T23:52:00.001-06:00

Earlier in the year I wrote this blog entry on things I hate about cooking. One of the things I hated was washing dishes. I've since found a solution to this problem - the dishwasher!

the interior

Initially I was hesitant about using the dishwasher, I was afraid that it wouldn't get the dishes clean enough, and that there would be detergent residue on the plates. And it didn't help when I found a white film over the dishes and cutlery after using the dishwasher to wash them. After searching on the internet, I realised that the white film was the result of hard water. My area here has hard water, basically it means that the tap water has a high mineral content. So the minerals left a white residue on my dishes in the dishwasher. Funny how that doesn't happen when I hand wash the dishes.

Anyway, the solution is to add Rinse Aid and Lemi Shine. After the addition of those, my dishes came out sparkling clean! Now the dishwasher is one of my BFFs. I heart my dishwasher!!!!
It's especially useful on Monday (Gossip Girl), Wednesday (Law & Order: SVU / Criminal Minds) and Thursday (CSI / Mentalist) nights. The shows start at 8pm, which means I have just about enough time after dinner to load up the dishwasher, then kickback, relax and watch my fave tv shows. Yippees... I love the dishwasher so much. Saves me so much time and hassle. Love love love~

My other BFF in the kitchen is.... the oven!

I use the oven to make oven-baked chicken, pork chops, shrimp, and for baking. There's just so much you can do with the oven. It's super convenient to use the oven for cooking. For example, I can pop some chicken to bake in the oven, then use the stovetop to cook other dishes. When I've finished cooking, the oven's done too. Perfect!

This oven's larger than the convection oven I have in Singapore. A lot larger, lol. Anyway, the main difference is that you need to preheat this oven before using it. I didn't need to do that with my smaller oven. Anyway, I love this oven so much, it's a real help in the kitchen!

I guess I've learnt to love cooking. I'm finding it really fun to try out new recipes.

And I've also recently ventured into baking. I'm gonna bake brownies this Bake Night, and hope to someday attempt cake pops a la Bakerella. Cake pops seem so daunting... will try to make them after some more baking experience under my belt.

Friday Night is Bake Night

2010-10-08T23:14:00.000-06:00

On Fridays when Dear is on night shift, I get pretty bored. That's like the only time I'm bored because Dear's at work, I don't need to cook his meal for the next day, and there's nothing exciting on TV.

So I've been baking! The previous Bake Night I baked banana walnut muffins.

No... I didn't make them from scratch hehe. I used a pack of Mrs Field's muffin mix. They're really cheap here. A packet goes for under a dollar, and you can make 6 muffins from it. I was a smart aleck and used slightly less milk than the instructions called for. (I thought the batter looked wet enough.) The muffins turned out slightly dry. The moral of the story is, just follow the damn baking instructions.

And for Bake Night tonight, I baked Pigs in a Blanket. They're basically hotdogs rolled up in a crescent dough and baked. I got the idea to bake this after watching an episode of Down Home with The Neelys. Here's the recipe. However, I didn't use mustard as stated in their recipe though.

The crescent dough - super convenient

Oops, tore a gaping hole while unrolling the dough

Next, I cut the dough into triangular strips. Then rolled a combination of regular hotdogs, cheese dogs, and ham and cheese into the strips.

Finished rolling the crescent dough strips

I made 2 regular sized rolls, one with hotdog and the other with ham, pictured at the top, the rest are finger-food sized.

Prettied up with egg wash, sesame seeds and black pepper

Then baked them at 350 oF for 15 mins.

Tadah! The finished product fresh from the oven

I didn't take photos of the ham rolls as the cheese oozed out and they looked messy. Next time I'll leave out the cheese.

Okok, here are a few of the ham rolls that look quite decent

Regular hotdog

Cheesedog

The baked crescent dough turned out tasting like regular bread. I was kind of expecting it to be more like flaky puff pastry. Anyway, still delicious :)

I'm Still Here...

2010-10-07T00:25:00.001-06:00

I've not been blogging much... well mostly because there's nothing much happening. Sure I could blog about my Toronto/DC/NYC trip, but I don't really feel like it... yet. Will do that soon, real soon :p

Mostly been busy with tv. LOL. The new season of Gossip Girl, CSI, Criminal Minds and Law & Order SVU have just started. Yippees!

Anyway, I'm loving the fast food here in USA. MacDonald's, Jack in the Box, Arby's, etc. The MacDonald's here has a different menu compared to Singapore. And, I'm loving it! (Ok, except for the fact that they don't have curry dipping sauce for McNuggets. Boo!) One of my favourite items on the menu is the Angus Mushroom & Swiss burger. The burger has angus beef, mushrooms and yummy swiss cheese in it.

Yummy yum yum!

It is so yummy! It beat out the BK Mushroom Swiss burger in my books.
Whenever I eat at Mac's I'll have a sweet tea. Mainly because, they don't serve jasmine green tea here. Sweet tea is basically sweetened black tea served chilled.

Loves

I was so happy when I discovered sweet tea. It's a pretty good substitute for Pokka green tea, which I MISS!!!! Anyway, sweet tea saves me from green tea withdrawal syndrome.

One of my other favourite fast food restaurant here is Jack in the Box. My fave item from their menu is the turkey, bacon & cheddar grilled sandwich. Description of the sandwich from their website: Roasted turkey, bacon and Cheddar cheese with a Sun-dried Tomato sauce on grilled artisan bread. Doesn't that sound yummy?

I want one now

One of my other favourite item from Jack in the Box is...

Curly Fries!!!! Aren't you jealous? LOL

And my absolute favourite fast food restaurant is.... Arby's!!!! Their roast beef sandwich is super yummilicious!

I always have the Beef n' Cheddar sandwich

And guess what, the meals come with curly fries!!!! Arby's has a horseradish dipping sauce that resembles wasabi mayo sauce. Yums!

Another reason I love Arby's is that it's open 24hrs! Dear and I sometimes go out to Arby's for supper when he comes home slightly earlier from night shift. We'll try not to make it a habit :D hehe.

I heart fast food. Damn.. All this is making me hungry :(

I'm Falling for Fall

2010-09-09T00:22:00.001-06:00

After a few months of HOT weather, summer's coming to an end. The past few summer months have been really hot. Temperatures hovered around 35 oC. Yes that's right, there was even one day when temperatures hit 40 oC. OMG ultimate.

Only a few days ago, the weather changed for the cooler. Today's temperature was around 23 oC.
Yippees, Fall's here. Fashion blogs are all abuzz with excitement over layering clothes for Fall weather. Gonna have to consult fashion sites for dressing for Fall. I'm a newbie at it. So happy that I can wear coats soon!

I don't know why but I'm always attracted to coats and jackets whenever I go shopping here in the US. Why do all the coats look so gorgeous?! Noooo I can't buy anymore. I'm only gonna be here for 2 years, not 20! I can't have so many coats and jackets, they'll all get moldy back in my wardrobe when I return to Singapore. Must.. TRY.. to control.. self. Probably just buy one more coat? LOLOLOL.

Anyway, I'm really excited that Fall's here. Maybe it's because I've never had a chance to dress up for cool weather back in Singapore, so I'm feeling that surge of excitement when I think of dressing up in layers, boots and a cute coat. But... I have a boot problem. Remember the pair of boots that I bought in Singapore, well I don't exactly love them. Only bought them out of necessity. I've been boot-shopping ever since Jan, and I've not bought a single pair. Either the heels are too high, or my size has sold out for that particular design, or I just haven't found a pair that I love love love. Sigh. Why can't I buy a pair of boots? Is it because I'm fated to only own 1 pair?! FML.
NO! I'm not gonna give up! I will persevere and find MY pair of boots. Wish me luck :)

Anyway, before we move too far away from summer, just wanted to post this photo of roses from my yard. I didn't know that there were rose bushes in my front yard until the flowers bloomed in Summer. The roses were so pretty, just too bad that they aren't pink. ;) Anyway I cut the flowers, popped them into a jar and displayed them inside the house. Aren't they pretty?

Los Angeles and Las Vegas May-June 2010 ->Part 6

2010-08-26T00:10:00.000-06:00

Before we go into Vegas, I have to post this photo:

See the purple tree on the right? So pretty!!!!

The purple trees were everywhere in LA. I have no idea what the tree is though. Pretty!!!!

Moving on.......

Viva Las Vegas!!!!

After watching my favourite tv show, CSI, I've always wanted to go to Vegas and see it for myself. Excitedness! :D

Coca-Cola Store

M & M Store

Inside the Venetian

Bright lights of Las Vegas

At Madame Tussauds' Wax Museum with President Obama

It was really HOT in Vegas. I mean 36 degree celsius kind of hot. And it didn't cool down when night came. I almost melted when walking along The Strip. FML

I guess because of the weather I didn't enjoy Vegas as much as I thought I would :(

Anyway, Mountain Home is just 10 hours' drive away, I'm sure I'll be seeing more of Vegas during my 2-year stay here.

And that concludes the posts about LA and Las Vegas.
Stay tuned for posts on my next trip to Niagara Falls, Toronto, Washington DC and New York City.

Los Angeles and Las Vegas May-June 2010 ->Part 5

2010-08-22T17:18:00.000-06:00

Let me start by saying I was MIA because.... I went on another trip! LOL haven't even finished blogging about the LA and Vegas trip, still go travelling. Went to Toronto, Niagara Falls, Washington DC and New York City. Will blog about that trip soon... really soon. (I hope)

Anyway, the day after we visited Disneyland we went to Disney's California Adventure Park. This park has more thrilling rides compared to Disneyland next door.
I surprised myself by going on this scary ride: the Hollywood Tower.

The Hollywood Tower ride behind me

This ride's pretty cool. Once we entered the building where the ride is housed, every attention was paid to detail to make us feel like we were entering the twilight zone. We were then ushered into a 'lift' with seats. The lift goes up and down several times at high speed. That's not all. When the lift gets to the top floor, the window of the lift opens up to show us how high up we were. Then, it goes down.... For someone who's scared of heights, I'm so proud of myself for going on this ride. It's really fun!

We did go on a rollercoaster too.

The roller coaster's on the left

Bad idea to go on a rollercoaster after lunch. The ride was fun. But after it I felt a bit queasy.

We went on a number of rides here, but didn't take a lot of photos. Hehe.

The next day, we left LA for Vegas. But before that, we had lunch at Orochon Ramen. This ramen place in LA was featured on the Travel Channel programme, Man vs Food. The host, Adam, challenged the spiciest ramen on the menu - the Special No. 2. He won the challenge. Good for him. As for me, I chickened out and took the non-spicy no. 7. The ramen's pretty yummy :)

The red awning made everything red

Los Angeles and Las Vegas May-June 2010 ->Part 4

2010-08-05T22:06:00.001-06:00

Disneyland!!!!!

Disneyland Resort California is actually made up of 2 parks, the Disneyland Park, and Disney's California Adventure Park.

We spent Day 5 at Disneyland Park, and the next day at Disney's California Adventure Park.

I specially wore my Mickey Mouse T-shirt to take photos with Mickey at Disneyland :)

The below photos were taken after some queuing. It's not as easy as it looks.

Inside Mickey's house

With Mickey!

Winnie the Poo, ok ok Pooh ;)

Tigger

OMG, Minnie's house is soo pretty. So much nicer than Mickey's.

Minnie's fireplace

Her dressing table

Super pretty kitchen

She even has a wishing well in her backyard!

Lunch was at Big Thunder Ranch Barbecue. They serve all you can eat ribs, chicken, coleslaw, baked beans and cornbread. The coleslaw and baked beans are the best I've ever had. They're so hard to describe. The coleslaw had a special zing to it that made it so refreshing. The baked beans had an extra sweetness, but not the cloying kind. So yummeh!

Here's Ros and me with the yummilicious lunch

Every evening at Disneyland, there's some sort of parade going on. It's a major thing with all the visitors stopping to gawk and kiasu people chope-ing places right in front of the parade route so that they get a clear view.

Look at all the people gathered to watch the parade! Can you spot Mickey?

Donald, Winnie and Daisy

After the parade, we watched the fireworks. Once again, it was 'people mountain people sea'. Luckily we 'choped' a good spot.

The pretty Disney castle lighted up at night

I recorded a video of the fireworks. Gonna figure out how to edit it and then upload on the blog. Hehe.

I wanted to combine the Disney's California Adventure Park into this post as well. But it seems this post is too long. That's another post then ;)

Los Angeles and Las Vegas May-June 2010 ->Part 3

2010-07-15T23:53:00.001-06:00

Day 4 in LA was spent walking. LOL. That's right we really walked a lot during this trip, I wished I had worn better walking shoes.

We started the day with breakfast at Griddle's Cafe, a popular LA breakfast place.

After breakfast, we went in search of the famous Hollywood sign. We drove past the atas neighbourhood of Hollywood Hills to get to a park where we could see the sign. (Maybe we passed Ho Yeow Sun's house, hehe.)

We then proceeded to high class shopping district, Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills. Many branded labels have a store there, it's where the rich shop. And noooo, I didn't buy anything there. That tells you about my financial situation, haha.

After the high-end shopping district, we went to the other end of the scale - LA Fashion District. It looks like Bugis Street in Singapore, LOL. I did not expect to see such a scene in LA. However the clothes are not very cheap. There were cheap accessories for sale like a pair of earrings at USD 1, but they looked, well, cheap. I bought a travel toiletries pouch there, only because my old one was spoilt. Almost got lost after the Fashion District, we couldn't find the carpark where we parked our car. LOL.

Needless to say, we found our car and then went to dinner at LA's Chinatown. The LA tourist website highly recommended this restaurant, Yang Chow. I suppose it was recommended by an angmoh. The food at Yang Chow was American-ised chinese food. It didn't suck, but it was just so-so only. Another tell-tale sign that the food was not authentic, was that the majority of customers were angmohs.

Rosaline and I at Yang Chow

After dinner we headed to The Grove Shopping Center. It's really pretty! See the photo below.

That's my new cardigan from H & M. It gets a bit chilly as soon as the sun sets.

Next to The Grove is Farmer's Market. Pity I was too full from dinner, there was this stall selling handmade ice-creams. Looked yummy :(

Farmer's Market

After one whole day of activity, you would think that we would head back to our hotel and rest. No, we had one last stop. And it was Umami Burger! This place is recommended by chef Giada De Laurentis from The Food Network on the show, Best Thing I Ever Ate.

The four of us shared 2 burgers. I was still too full to really appreciate the burgers. Tasted normal to me. However, Dear, Roy and Ros all said the burgers were the best they've ever had. Haiz, sometimes I wish I had a higher metabolic rate.

And that concludes Day 4 in LA.

Los Angeles and Las Vegas May-June 2010 ->Part 2

2010-07-07T14:00:00.002-06:00

Oops, have not been updating this blog for awhile ;) hehe. Alright I'm going to continue blogging about my LA and Vegas trip.

Day 3 in LA was spent in Universal Studios Hollywood. I know, I know, there's also a Universal Studios Theme Park in Singapore. But I can't visit the Singapore one, boo hoo hoo. So I console myself by saying that, never mind, I'm visiting the original Universal Studios Hollywood. Wahahaha :)

Before we visited the theme park, we went to this Thai restaurant, Siam Sunset for breakfast. They had Thai-style Kway Chap on the menu. Yippees! Here's my breakfast:

Thai-style Kway Chap

They didn't have pig intestines in the Kway Chap, bummer. There was pig's blood though, but I don't really fancy that. Anyway the Kway Chap was pretty good, probably my only chance to eat it here. They also had Hainan Chicken Rice, which we tabao-ed for lunch. Yum Yum!
After breakfast, we set off to Universal Studios Hollywood!

It was incidentally Memorial Day and the start of the summer vacation the day we visited Universal Studios. We were worried that the theme park would be super crowded. It was crowded, but luckily not unbearably so.

We did have to queue up to take photos with the theme park characters, but it was just a short queue. We took photos with Marilyn Monroe, Shrek and Spongebob Squarepants!

Marilyn Monroe

Shrek

With our travel companions, Roy and Ros.

Oohhh... who lives in a pineapple under the sea?

SPONGEBOB SQUAREPANTS!!!!

We went on rides and watched a few shows, of which the most memorable are the WaterWorld Show, the Studio Tour and the Mummy Ride.

The WaterWorld show is adapted from the movie WaterWorld. (It's like from eons ago) It's a live action show performed by actors, and as its name suggests, it takes place in the water.

Set of the WaterWorld Show

The show features stunts, pyrotechnics and some comedy. There were wet zone seats where the audience were bound to get wet. Of course we sat in the dry zone. However we were seated just one row behind the wet zone -_- The threat of getting wet kept me on my toes. The actors who warmed the audience up were really good. They thoroughly entertained the audience while we were waiting for the show to start.

The show was great!

On the Studio Tour tram, we were brought to the sets of Jaws, Desperate Housewives, Psycho, etc.

Studio car from the set of Knight Rider

Car from The Fast and The Furious Tokyo Drift performing stunts

Subway station studio set. This is really cool. When the studio tour tram stopped here, an earthquake and flood was simulated for us to experience. I screamed like hell cos the 'floodwaters' was gushing towards my side! LOL

The 'earthquake'

Can you spot 'Jaws'?

Whoville, the set of the Dr Seuss movie

Whoville has a scary neighbour, and it's none other than the set of the movie Psycho. The Bates Motel set is one of the oldest in Universal Studios.

They placed an actor here acting as Norman Bates. When our tram passed by, the actor took out a 'knife' and ran towards our tram and attempted to stab one of the visitors. So cool!

One of the high speed rides I enjoyed was The Mummy Ride. The ride is set indoors and is fast and thrilling. Apart from going forward, the ride goes backwards at high speed as well. Ultimate cool. I only wished the ride was longer.

All in all, I had fun at Universal Studios Hollywood.

I'll continue blogging about the trip in the next post!

Los Angeles and Las Vegas May-June 2010

2010-06-16T23:41:00.001-06:00

So I'm back from my trip to Los Angeles and Las Vegas, it was shiok eating lots of asian food, exploring the 2 cities, and not to mention my great shopping haul :) more about that later!

Did you know that it's a 14-hour drive from Mountain Home, Idaho to Los Angeles, California? That's right 14 fantabulous hours in a car! - _- I think my butt got numb from sitting for such long hours. We did take frequent breaks la, but still I hate the sitting in the car part. I know I have it easy, sitting in the car is better than driving the car for long hours right?!
From Idaho, we drove past Nevada, stopping by Las Vegas for dinner, then proceeding on to Los Angeles in California. You might need Google Maps to comprehend the long, long drive. Here are some photos of the scenery during the drive.

After 10 hours' drive, we reached Vegas and went to this restaurant, Penang Cuisine for dinner. Yummy fish head curry, sambal kangkong. Yum yum :)

After 4 more hours on the road, we reached LA, checked into our hotel and had a good night's sleep.

The next day, we went for breakfast at Roscoe's House of Chicken and Waffles. This place was featured on the Travel Channel. Yes, I know fried chicken with waffles is a weird combination, especially for breakfast. LOL

The fried chicken was not bad... I dunno, it was pretty early for fried chicken so I can't give an accurate review for the chicken. The waffles are yummy, have you ever had waffles that aren't yummy?!

After breakfast we headed on to popular Santa Monica beach. It's beautiful! I'll let the pictures speak for themselves.

There were a number of advertising blimps like this one flying over the beach.

Posing with the Muscle Beach sign

We continued on to KoreaTown, where there's a Face Shop. Yippee! I was so happy when I saw the shop. I had already bought some Face Shop beauty supplies before leaving Singapore. But I think they aren't quite sufficient. So I was glad to replenish my Face Shop beauty products.

They are more expensive here than in Singapore, for example, a mask that sold for SGD 3.50 is USD 3.50 here. Oh well, if I didn't buy it in LA, I wouldn't have a chance to buy Face Shop products in Idaho. So I guess it's worth paying the price.

For dinner, we dined at Western Doma Noodles. It's a Korean restaurant in.... KoreaTown. Along with our yummy mains, the friendly waitress auntie served us 11 small dishes like kimchi and other korean side dishes. Dear enjoyed it a lot. Most yummy Korean meal evar.

The next day was a shopping day!!!! Went to Desert Hills Premium Outlets, stores located at outlets sell products that are cheaper than the stores located at shopping malls. Here are some of my buys:

My 1st Kate Spade bag!

The original boutique price was USD 395. But after the outlet discount, I got it for USD 115. The items sold at outlets are so cheap mainly because they are from the previous season.

Loves!

I'm gonna stop here for today. Coming up in the next blog post will be Universal Studios and Disneyland. Watch this space!

On Leave

2010-05-27T14:10:00.000-06:00

I'm going on vacation! Going to the City of Angels and Sin City, ie. Los Angeles and Las Vegas. Hehe.
One of my favourite shows is CSI, so I've always wanted to go to Vegas. Now I finally have a chance to go see the city for myself instead of seeing it through the tv. Yippees!

We'll be visiting attractions like Universal Studios, Disneyland, Santa Monica Beach, Hollywood Walk of Fame, Vegas Strip, to name a few.

Please approve my 9 days' leave starting from this Friday. Haha....

Lavender

2010-05-11T13:28:00.000-06:00

My lavender plants (and toothpicks, haha)

Today, I was using toothpicks to support my skinny lavender plants when I detected.... a hint of lavender scent!!!! OMG so happy! The scent is quite faint but it's really fragrant. I heart lavender!

I wonder when I should transplant the lavender plants outdoors. They're so skinny and fragile, I don't know if they'll be able to withstand the strong winds that are so common around here...

Trap Shooting on 28 Apr 2010

2010-05-04T00:02:00.000-06:00

I went for trap shooting with my wifey friends on Wed morning. I actually woke up late and forgot to bring my camera. Sorry, no photos :(

It was my first time firing a rifle. OMG I have to say the gun recoil was very strong. My shoulder ached a bit after the shooting. The aim of trap shooting is to shoot the disc that is released from a 'house' on the rifle range. You had to shout "Pull", the staff will then release a disc for you to shoot at. Out of about 6 shots, I managed to shoot 1 disc. Not bad for a first time :)

Anyway it was quite fun except that it was freezing cold that day, it was 2 oC with very cold winds. Brrrrr....

The Patio Project Part 2

2010-05-03T23:39:00.000-06:00

Before I start on the patio updates, let me explain why I've not been blogging. Dear was down with the flu last week, that's why. He's better now, but he still has a sore throat and a stuffy nose. Hai, the angmoh medicine isn't working on his throat and nose. So he's been taking Pi Pa Gao and drinking honey water and barley water. I've also been cooking lots of 'sick food'; namely porridge, bee hoon soup, and soup with rice.

Ok back to the patio, Dear started work on it when he was on night shift the week before he fell sick. He did a bit of the patio building every morning before he went to work.

Each household is allocated:

10 square pavers, 10 round pavers, 8 timbers, 30 gallons of river rock and pea gravel each, 10 ft of weed barrier fabric and some cedar edging (I forgot the allocated amount of this). Naturally we took our full allocation to build the patio.

Measuring out the patio area

That's the cedar edging, we used it to border around the patio

See the black fabric at the bottom? That's the weed barrier, to prevent weeds from growing underneath the patio. We laid it over the grass without digging up the soil. In proper patio building, you're supposed to dig up the soil, instead of just laying the patio on top of the grass. Hehe. Anyway, I took this photo from inside my living-room window. Please excuse my dirty window ;)

Laying out the square and round pavers on the weed barrier

Adding the cedar edging and timbers

Then added river rock and pea gravel around the pavers and timbers, and....

Completed patio

I know, I know, looks like a rock garden right?! We had to make do with our allocated resources mah. Haha...

We had initially bought a USD 20 canopy to put over the patio. Unfortunately, it broke due to the strong wind. Seems like strong winds are common here. Strong winds of up to 50mph, (that's 80.5km/h) were reported today and they are expected to continue tomorrow. We've since decided to do away with a canopy altogether. Even if we bought a more expensive canopy, it would be bound to break from the strong winds.

We'll probably wait a week or two for Dear to get well first before organising a barbeque session :)

I've got to start thinking what kind of food to bbq first, so I don't get into a panic when the time comes.

Hello Spring!

2010-04-22T23:02:00.003-06:00

Spring's in and everywhere I look, flowers are in bloom! So pretty!!!! I bought some flowers from Walmart recently. Guess what colour they are? Pink of course!

My Ranunculus plant

Close-up of the Ranunculus

Snapdragon

Pink Tulip

After buying the plants, I placed them indoors on a windowsill. They've since been transplanted by Dear to a planter box outside my front door.

Yes, that's the front of my house. Looks super old right?!

Anyway, close-up of the planter box with my pretty pink flowers :)

Apart from the above plants, I'm trying to grow lavender from seed. I got a mini greenhouse to start the lavender seeds indoor first. The mini greenhouse is a little plastic container which comes with little soil pockets. All you have to do is add water to the soil and then drop the seeds into the soil pockets. Then, watch your plant grow!

My mini greenhouse with lavender buds

Close-up of the most promising lavender bud

(The others are still so tiny)

The lavender buds look so skinny and malnourished :(

I'll just wait and see if they grow 'fatter' as they grow taller.

I've got some mystery plants in my front yard. I have no idea if they are weed or flowers. Here's what they look like -

Don't they look like little blackcurrants? So cute!

I strongly suspect that they are weeds. However, on account that they look so pretty, we've left them alone to grow. Call me shallow, but looks do matter. Hahahahahaha.

The Patio Project

2010-04-22T00:43:00.002-06:00

Patio:
Definition from Dictionary.com:- An area, usually paved, adjoining a house and used as an area for outdoor lounging, dining, etc

Guess what?! Dear and I are building a patio in our backyard!
Well, he'll be doing the building actually. Hehe. Our backyard is mainly grass, so we wanted a paved area to hold barbeques.

We had our eye on a canopy to shade the patio. The canopy we liked measures 10ft by 10ft and costs USD 99. Then, we were in another store to check out a cake mixer, (that's another blog post) when we saw a canopy with the same measurements costing just USD 20. This cheaper canopy didn't look as glam as the USD 99 one, but it's still decent-looking. So, even though we haven't even started on the patio building, the kiasu Singaporean in me immediately told Dear: BUY NOW!

Since the canopy measures 10ft by 10ft, we decided our patio would be the same dimensions.

To start building the patio, we had to get approval from the Housing Office first as we are staying on base housing. So the Housing Office sent an inspector to take a look at our backyard. After that, he approved our application.

Then we had to get the materials to build our patio. Each base family is allocated a certain amount of stone pavers, gravel and timbers for diy projects. We intend to use the allocated materials to build our patio. While Dear's on night shift this week, we've been going to the Self-Help office before he goes to work to get the materials. It took 3 days to finish collecting all the materials, as we couldn't fit them all into the car at 1 shot. On one of the days, we had 8ft timbers poking out from the backseat window. That was hilarious.

Ok so now we have the materials, Dear will start digging up the soil tomorrow. Will update more on the progress of The Patio Project. Photos too!

Saturdays in Boise

2010-04-07T00:45:00.003-06:00

For the first time, Dear and I drove to Boise by ourselves two Saturdays ago, ie. 27 Mar. (We used to drive to Boise with friends in our car guiding us.) It was a good first time :)
It's about 58 miles or 93km to the city of Boise. The drive takes around an hour. While Dear drove, I keep myself occupied by snapping pics -

Stretch of land next to road just outside the airbase

Highway

Camwhoring

Driver concentrating on the road :)

Needless to say, we arrived in Boise safely. The roads in Boise are more crowded compared to in Mountain Home. We get a bit stressed when navigating through the roads as we're not familiar with them even though we have GPS.

I did a bit of shopping, then we had dinner at this restaurant, Red Lobster.

We shared an appetizer, the New England Seafood Sampler

New England Seafood Sampler

Lobster, crab and seafood-stuffed mushrooms, lightly breaded clam strips and a skewer of wood-grilled, bacon-wrapped sea scallops

I didn't really like the stuffed mushrooms, but the rest of the appetizer platter was not bad. Especially the bacon-wrapped scallops ;)

Dear's entree:

Grilled Maine Lobster and Jumbo Shrimp

A wood-grilled split Maine lobster tail, paired with skewered, garlic-grilled jumbo shrimp topped with creamy lobster butter sauce. Served over wild rice pilaf

My entree:

Lobster, Shrimp and Parmesan Scampi

A garlic-rosemary-grilled Maine lobster tail and skewer of jumbo shrimp, with Parmesan shrimp in a garlic butter sauce. Served with crispy Parmesan red potatoes and fresh broccoli

I felt that the food was over seasoned. In fact, I feel that most of the angmoh food in other restaurants even, are too salty for our asian taste buds. Anyway we did enjoy our dinner at Red Lobster.
Strangely enough, my favourite item was not the lobster or shrimp but the crispy baby potatoes from my entree. I think they breaded the baby potatoes and baked them. They were just crispy enough on the outside, and soft and moist on the inside. Yum yum...

Remember I mentioned I did a bit of shopping earlier, well I bought 2 jackets and 4 pairs of earrings at Forever21. The jackets were on sale. One is a simple thick black jacket which will come in handy next winter. The other jacket is a...... leather jacket!

I can haz leather jacket!

Closer view of the leather jacket

Last Saturday, ie. 03 Apr, we drove to Boise by ourselves again. It snowed the previous day. So weird, it's supposed to be Spring already, but it snowed! So the scenery enroute to Boise was covered with a light layer of snow.

Obligatory camwhore photo. Hur hur..

On this Saturday, we watched a movie at the cinema. It's our first time watching a movie in Boise. We caught 'Clash of the Titans'. (Not very fantastic, by the way) Movie tickets are priced at USD 7.50, and it is free-seating. Not like Singapore where seats are assigned when you purchase the tickets.

We had the most expensive popcorn combo there. We ordered a medium popcorn and drink combo, then realised that it cost USD 12. OMG. The popcorn was quite large though, so I guess it justifies the price... But still, USD 12 for popcorn and a drink is super ex! Anyway, now we can say that we've had American popcorn, haha.

Terrorised!!!

2010-03-27T00:26:00.001-06:00

(Should I spell it with a 'z' since I'm in USA?! Haha)
I've been terrorised these past few days! And here's the photo of the terrorist standing on my backyard fence:

Osama BIRD Laden

This stupid bird has been disturbing me at home since last Friday. It flies and knocks against my front window, living room, kitchen, laundry room and bedroom windows repeatedly! The worst thing is that it attacks my bedroom window in the mornings, waking me up in the process. TMD. And it likes to hang out at my front window, turning my window ledge into its toilet. I sweep away the shit, but after awhile the terrorist comes back and bombs the window ledge again. I super HATE birds. FML. The stupid bird does all the above actions repeatedly. EVERY. SINGLE. DAY. It only stops around noon. Probably got hungry and went to get lunch.

Stupid bird, what are you trying to do? Trying to fly into my house is it?! Bird-brained! There's a piece of glass separating you and my house ok! Go and knock against someone else's window la! My left and right neighbouring houses are both empty, why must the stupid bird choose me? I don't want to be the chosen one.

So I asked my good friend, Google, why the stupid bird was behaving this way:

1. My windows are reflecting the bird's image. So being territorial (and bird-brained), the stupid bird thinks that there is an intruder in its territory. So it attacks and pecks at the 'intruder', aka my windows.

2. The second explanation could be that the bird did not see the window and is trying to fly past the window. Not a very likely explanation in my case, my windows are dirty (haven't cleaned them ever since we moved in). I don't think the bird just didn't see the windows. Also it doesn't explain why the stupid bird persistently pecks at my window.

To solve the problem, this site recommends that I put up curtains or blinds, which I already have in place. It still doesn't stop the stupid bird from attacking my windows, and terrorising me.

Another solution would be to put up pictures of the bird's natural predators on my windows. WTF I don't want pictures of owls and cats all over my windows.

How now, brown cow? Anyone want to gun down the bugger? I'll offer a reward!

Active Weekdays

2010-03-16T13:28:00.001-06:00

I've been busy recently, so had not had much time to blog. Mostly been busy with aerobics and yoga classes hehe :) The gym here has free classes like aerobics, yoga, spin and kickboxing. So far, I've only not tried out spin.

Just tried kickboxing yesterday, it's really fast. And with my poor coordination, sometimes I use the left leg instead of the right leg and left arm instead of the right arm and vice versa. I still prefer aerobics and yoga. The aerobics classes are on Tuesday and Thursday afternoon, yoga class is on Wednesday morning. This means my Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays are pretty much occupied. Busy busy hehe... I go to the classes with a group of wives who stay in my area. Thank goodness for them otherwise I no friends haha :)

The aerobics class is pretty tough. I really sweat during the class and always get muscle aches after Tuesdays and Thursdays. Yoga on Wednesday is more relaxing, but it's still pretty tough. The yoga class is advertised as a beginner's class. But the yoga stances are quite advanced compared to the beginner's yoga classes I took in Singapore. Anyway, it's still a nice break from the cardio aerobics.

So happy that I'm getting so much exercise. Back in Singapore, I don't even exercise once a week. Now I'm exercising 3 times a week! Hurray I am so on track to getting trim and fit.

On the subject of losing weight, I found out last month that Dear and I have both lost 3 kgs each since coming to the States. I suspect it's due to us cutting out supper. When we were in Singapore, Dear and I frequently take supper either at Simpang Bedok, Bedok Blk 85 or wherever Dennis and HuiBin had a craving for. You see how harmful supper is?! Just cutting it out made us lose 3 kgs!

I Heart TV!

2010-03-02T12:11:00.000-07:00

I love watching tv here! I get to watch the latest episodes of my favourite shows like Supernatural, CSI, Gossip Girl, The Mentalist and Criminal Minds. Yippees!
I also get to watch the Rachel Ray and Martha Stewart shows every weekday morning. The Martha Stewart Show airs at 9am, sometimes I oversleep and I miss the show :( The Rachel Ray Show's at 11am. I watch it everyday. Hehe...
And there's an entire channel that I absolutely LURVE! It's the Food Network! I've always loved watching cooking shows even though I didn't use to cook. Now I can watch all the cooking shows I want on Food Network!!! Loves...
Ok I'm gonna go watch tv now ;)

Things I Hate About Cooking

2010-02-25T11:49:00.002-07:00

I've been cooking for almost 2 months now, and there are things about cooking that I hate:

- Touching raw meat
The feel of raw meat is slightly squishy, damp, and just indescribable. Eww.. Working with red raw meat almost makes me want to go vegetarian. Kind of difficult when husband's a meat lover. Hurhur.

- Peeling garlic skins
Looks so easy on Food Network shows - Just take a knife and slam it on a clove of garlic. The skin comes off easily... NOT. When I try to slam the knife down on a clove of garlic, the clove slips away and either falls into the sink or ends up on the floor. With the skin 100% intact. #$#%^$!!!

- Chopping onions

They make me tear. Enough said.

- The clean-up
I'm afraid to use too much oil and high heat on the stove for fear that the oil might splatter onto the stove. It sucks cleaning the grease from the stovetop. And I haven't mentioned the dishes... We do have a dishwasher, but only use it when we have a lot of dishes. Most of the time I do the dishes in the sink. Washing dishes suck. I've recently started wearing gloves while doing the dishes as the detergent was really drying out my hands.

Maybe one day I'll write a post about things I love about cooking. At the moment, the only thing I like about cooking is the experimentation. I get to experiment what happens to a certain dish when I add or subtract ingredients.

Celebrating Chinese New Year Away from Singapore

2010-02-18T15:38:00.000-07:00

Gong Xi Fa Cai everyone!
As mentioned previously, this is the first time I'm celebrating Chinese New Year away from Singapore. Firstly, I would just like to say that it's really ironic that, here I am wishing I could celebrate CNY in Singapore, then, I go on Facebook and see that so many friends left Singapore during CNY. WTF?! You don't appreciate what you have until it's gone.
Anyway, on to how I spent my CNY here.
On the eve of CNY, a few friends came over to have steamboat dinner at our house. We had quite a spread! We had prawns, chicken, pork, beef, veggies, mushrooms, Alaskan crab legs, lobster and the dumplings I made.

See the crab?! Yummy!

I didn't get all the food in the photo.. I'm a very bad food photographer! Once I see food, I just dig in and forget to take photos. See the shui jiao I made in the bottom left-hand corner of the table? Here's a close-up:

Dumplings I made (Shui Jiao)

I made 2 versions: Version 1 had minced pork, prawns, water chestnut, and spring onions; Version 2 had just minced pork and prawns. (Version 2 is mainly for Dear, he doesn't fancy water chestnut and spring onions.)

I then seasoned the dumplings with sesame oil, some chicken seasoning, salt and pepper. In case you were wondering, I asked my mum for the recipe la. Hehe.

Sorry no photos of the cooked dumplings, I was very busy eating! Anyway, the dumplings didn't have enough seasoning. Next time, I'll add more salt and pepper.

Here's another photo of the steamboat party. I didn't get everybody in. There were 6 people altogether, 4 friends plus Dear and I. Ok ok, I will take better photos next time!!!!

And there was a special appearance by THE steamboat chilli -

Yummy yummy... Recipe for the chilli here.

I still have about 3/4 bottle of this chilli leftover, don't know what to do with it....

After dinner, we played Blackjack... Haha, what's CNY without gambling!?

The next day, which is the 1st day of CNY, Dear and I went to his colleague's place for steamboat... again. Haha. And, gambled again!

2nd day of CNY, Dear and I cooked up the CNY eve leftover veggies, prawns, chicken, pork and beef for dinner at a friend's place.

Dear cooked Stir-fried Veggies, Butter Prawns, Ginger and Spring Onion Beef, and I attempted Kung Pow Chicken and Pork again. This time I had the rice wine and cashew nuts which the recipe called for. But... I think the dish still didn't hit the spot. @#$#^%*^*&%#$#@!!!

Guess what we did after dinner? Blackjack!!!

Anyway, on CNY eve I called back to SIN to wish my mum a happy new year. We chatted for awhile and she told me what she had for her CNY eve dinner. One of the dishes included my aunt's Wu Xiang (Ngoh Hiang) OMG... My aunt makes yummy wu xiang!!! I miss it!!!! Arghhhh....

Counting Down to CNY

2010-02-11T12:50:00.000-07:00

The first day of Chinese New Year falls on 14 Feb this year. It will be the first time I spend this holiday away from Singapore. I do feel a little bit sad that I'm away from friends and family during CNY. Anyway, I'll still have many chances to spend it in Singapore after 2 years...

Dear and I are gonna have a steamboat dinner on new year's eve with a few friends at our place. Can't wait for steamboat. I'll be preparing THE steamboat chilli. Yums! I'm also thinking of making dumplings (shiu jiao). Will post photos of the dumplings.

By the way, I cooked chicken rice for the first time yesterday -

The rice was a bit too dry. I also left the chicken soaking in the soy sauce and sesame oil gravy for a bit too long, the chicken became a little bit salty. All in all, Dear gave me a 7 out of 10 for this maiden effort. Not bad at all... I used Sin Sin brand chicken rice chilli, it tasted a bit too sweet. So I added some lemon juice. But the taste still wasn't right. I think maybe there isn't enough garlic in the sauce. Hmm... next time I'll add some garlic.

1 Month in Mountain Home, Idaho, USA

2010-02-04T18:05:00.001-07:00

It's been a month since Dear and I first set foot in Mountain Home, Idaho. Let me start by revealing more about our life here. We are staying in the Mountain Home Air Force Base. I guess the bases here in the US are very big.

The base I stay in has houses inside the base, a supermarket, Burger King and even a bowling alley, to name a few. The supermarket in-base is about 5 mins away by car from my house.

Twenty minutes away by car from the airbase is the town of Mountain Home. There are a few supermarkets there, like Walmart, along with restaurants and fast-food places like MacDonald's, KFC and Pizza Hut, etc.

One hour's drive away is the city of Boise. It's the capital of Idaho. There are a lot of restaurants, shopping malls, a cinema, etc. It's like Orchard Road. Most of the Singaporeans go to Boise during the weekend. There's nothing much to do in Mountain Home.

As you can guess, a car is essential here in the US. The only time I've seen cabs is at the airport. I don't know if anybody hires them, cos almost everybody has a car.

Which brings me to this question - will I learn to drive here? OMG I'm super afraid to drive. I don't know if I can handle driving here. Driving in-base and in Mountain Home's not so bad, the speed limit is pretty low. Traffic in Boise is pretty much like Singapore. I guess I can try to learn driving in Spring or Summer... OMG scared...

Another thing, the freeways(expressways to us) here are only lit at certain locations like the entrance and exit. Other than that, the whole freeway is dark. Super scary la. It's so unlike Singapore, everywhere is brightly lit.

This place is ok lah, I don't dislike it. I guess I'm adapting well. I do miss our friends in SG. Miss lunchtime gossip with Jal, and supper with Dennis and HuiBin.

I hope I will feel more at home soon here.

Cooking Updates

2010-02-04T17:21:00.001-07:00

Initially wanted to chronicle my daily cooking on the blog in the style of The Food Pornographer. But I haven't had the time to blog daily. Hurhur I sound very busy hor?! I've been busy watching TV, Facebooking, unpacking, cooking and cleaning.
Anyway I did take photos of food that I've cooked.

Kung Pow Chicken; Stir-fried bean sprouts, asparagus and mushrooms; with rice

The Kung Pow Chicken was a FAIL. It was due to a number of reasons -

1. The recipe called for wine, but I didn't have any at home, so I omitted that.

2. According to the recipe, the chicken needs to be marinated for 30 minutes. I marinated the chicken for 1 hour, but it still wasn't flavorful enough. The recipe cheat my feelings! Next time I'll probably marinate it overnight.

3. The dish wasn't spicy enough. Next time I'll add more chilli

Overall, it It tasted more like soy sauce chicken. Edible la... The veggies were alright. I've gotten the hang of cooking veggies :)

Garlic prawns with dried chilli

Sawadeekah! These pawns are from..... Thailand. What the hell, I come all the way to USA to eat Thai prawns. The prawns were bought frozen from a supermarket. I was afraid that the frozen prawns wouldn't taste good. But they turned out surprisingly well. They were bursty and sweet. Yummy. I packed these prawns with rice for Dear's meal the next day. Unfortunately, he said they were ok only, due to the fact that they had been stored overnight.

Spaghetti with asparagus, mushrooms, ham and meatballs

The meatballs are homemade ok! Made them using ground beef. I thought they were too beefy, next time, I'll probably mix in some pork or turkey. Here's a close-up of a meatball -

They aren't exactly Ikea standard, but edible la. Will wait for Dear to get home and hear his verdict on the meatballs. It was fun making the meatballs, if there are no violent objections, I'll like to make these again :)

UPDATE: Dear gave a thumbs-up for the meatballs. Hurray! I made the meatballs again on Sunday when we had some friends over for dinner. This time I added pork. But Dear preferred the 100% beef version. Anyway I'm just happy that Dear liked the meatballs :D

New Toy!

2010-02-04T16:39:00.000-07:00

My new MacBook Pro

Bought it at BestBuy in Boise for USD 1325 incl. taxes. That's about SGD 1855. I saw on the Apple SG website that the MacBook Pro retails for SGD 1988. So savings of about SGD 133. Actually we saw a HP laptop retailing for USD 700, that's SGD 980. Super cheap la! But.. the major drawback was that the HP laptop had an integrated graphic card. What this means is that it can't support Dear's RPG games graphics. So... I took a leap and bought the MacBook Pro. I am a total Mac kuku. Was real difficult getting used to the new laptop. But I guess I'm getting the hang of it and am now blogging on it!

Shipment Arrived!

2010-01-29T13:50:00.000-07:00

So our shipment arrived on Tuesday, I've been busy unpacking.
My living room is no longer so bare. We've got a sofa now! Bought a sofa bed from Ikea in Singapore with Jal and Is' help, and then we shipped it over. See what I saw when the sofa box was opened -

Haha... That's Jal's handwriting

Have assembled the sofa and shoe rack. My living room now looks like this -

Shoe rack next to front door

Living room

and the view from another angle

(The computer table is temporary until we get a coffee table.)

It was kind of fun unpacking, felt like opening christmas presents hehe. We were really happy seeing so many of our stuff. It reminded me of our home in Tampines. The familiar stuff makes this place feel a bit more like home.

I've not finished unpacking yet, we shipped over 13 boxes and I'm not even halfway through yet. So I'm afraid I'll not be blogging so much...

It's Snowing!

2010-01-22T11:38:00.001-07:00

Actually it snowed this morning. The snow had already stopped falling by the time I started blogging. Luckily I managed to catch the snowfall on video.

It had already stopped snowing ever since we arrived here, which is 4 Jan. The snow that was initially in my backyard had already melted. So I was majorly surprised to look out the window this morning, and see it covered in snow!

Shopping in Salt Lake City, Utah

2010-01-20T13:39:00.001-07:00

18 Jan is Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday, it’s a public holiday here in the States. So we took a road trip to Salt Lake City for shopping over the long weekend. It takes about 5 hours to drive from Mountain Home, Idaho to Salt Lake City, Utah. No, Dear did not do the driving. His friend, Qingyao did. I just sat in the back of the car and took in the scenery. Hehe. Speaking of which, here are photos of the pretty sights during the drive –

Camwhoring

(More photos on FB)

After we arrived in Salt Lake City, we went for Dim Sum. Yum yum. (Actually, we had Dim Sum for breakfast for all 3 days. Good thing I like Dim Sum.)

After that we went SHOPPING!!!! Headed to Tanger Outlet: http://www.tangeroutlet.com/parkcity
There are lots of brand name shops there. Most importantly, there’s a Coach store there. Shopped and shopped on both Sat and Sun, till my back ached.

Here’s my shopping haul!

Tadah! 2 Coach bags and 1 wristlet. They were having a 20% discount storewide. The larger bag on top costs USD 95.20, the smaller pink handbag is USD 71.20, and the pink wristlet is USD 39.20. Loves :)

Left to right: Hooded Oakley sweatshirt USD 25; Columbia white long-sleeved top USD 12.60; Columbia pink hooded sweatshirt USD 17.90; Gap hooded sweatshirt USD 21.

Left to right: Gap long-sleeved top USD 2.10 (Yes two dollars and ten cents!); Rue 21 red sweater USD 6; Tommy Hilfiger purple sweater USD 18.

Also bought a white shirt from Old Navy to wear with the Tommy purple sweater. Old Navy white shirt USD 17.15

Old Navy yellow top USD 3.24! (Only gonna wear this top in summer)

And here’s my favourite buy:

Gap coat USD 28. I love the design, but I wasn’t so sure about the colour. But what the heck, I bought it anyway. Looks great teamed with a black sweater.

Of course, Dear also did his fair share of shopping, but I shall not post photos of his buys. Too many photos to take. Hees.

I initially wanted to buy a new pair of boots. But I didn’t see anything suitable. There’s an Aldo store there but the pretty boots are all too high-heeled for me :(

I'm Cooking!

2010-01-14T13:17:00.000-07:00

I started cooking on Tuesday. Most people know I can only 'cook' salads and sandwiches. Hur hur. Guess what was the first meal I cooked?

Clockwise from top: Salad with balsamic vinaigrette; potatoes with corned beef; chicken wings.

Salad dressing was from a bottle, the potatoes with corned beef looks different from Jal and Shirley's version, but luckily tasted the same. Chicken wings were from a frozen package, I heated them up on the stove.

I also cooked Dear's lunch for the next day. (almost everybody brings a lunchbox to work)

Spaghetti Aglio Olio-style with turkey breast, cheese sausages and mushrooms

The spaghetti was too much for Dear's lunch. I kept half of the pasta for his Thursday lunch -

I added cream sauce to the spaghetti, to give Dear a bit of variety. I cheated with the pasta sauce, made it using Campbell's Cream of Mushroom soup. I scooped up about 2 tablespoons of the concentrated soup and added a little bit of water to make a creamy sauce. Ta dah.. pasta cream sauce in minutes! Also boiled some broccoli to ensure Dear gets his daily serving of veggies.

(unfortunately, he forgot to bring his lunchbox to work... this might be his dinner later)

I also made mashed potatoes on Tuesday initially for Dear's Wed lunch box, but thought that it was too much food. So saved it for Wed's dinner.

The gravy for the mashed potatoes is from a bottle, not very nice though... Anyway we haven't got a peeler and potato masher, guess how I made this dish?! I boiled the potatoes first then peeled off the skins by hand. Then I mashed the 3 potatoes with a fork. Ultimate hero! Haha.
We've since bought a peeler now. I can't wait to get a microwave oven. It's such a pain heating up food on the stove.

Our House

2010-01-12T13:01:00.000-07:00

We've been assigned to stay in-base at a 3-bedroom house. Here are photos of the house we'll call home for 2 years -

Excuse my poor drawing, here's a rough layout of the house

Living/Dining Area

Kitchen

Other side of the kitchen

Laundry room, we'll place our washing machine here once we get it

Master bedroom

Bathroom

The 2nd toilet

Bedroom 2

Bedroom 3 - currently using this as a storeroom

Left side of the backyard

Right side of the backyard

As you can see, the backyard's quite big. Dear will have a hard time mowing the grass in summer. From the backyard photos, you can make out some yellow houses in the background. My house is exactly like that. (Lazy to go out and take a photo of the outside of the house, it's cold...)
The house appearance is super old and very unglam. The cabinets are also in an ugly colour. Luckily the interior is still liveable, and it's also fitted with new appliances like a new fridge, stove cum oven and dishwasher. Haiz.. just have to live with it for 2 years.
Yesterday and today morning, I've been afraid to get out of bed. It's just that I'm in a foreign place, I'm alone in the house and I get scared to leave the bedroom. Immediately after getting up from the bed, I would go straight to switch on the tv. So that there's some noise in the house.
It's not so bad today, so hopefully the stupid fear will fade after a few days.

Day 2 in Mountain Home, Idaho

2010-01-11T19:23:00.000-07:00

Last week was a busy busy week, which is why I'm only blogging now :)
When we reached the base last week, we were housed in the Temporary Lodging Facility before we got our house keys. The apartment in the TLF was really nice, like a 4 star hotel. I was sad to check out. Photos of the TLF -

Living Room

Flat screen tv in the living room

The kitchen

The other side of the kitchen

Dining area

The bedroom (sorry very messy)

The other half of the bedroom

Bathroom

... and me!

We checked out last Friday and moved to the house we'll call home for 2 years. Photos of the house in the next post!

Hello from Mountain Home, Idaho, USA!

2010-01-11T13:16:00.001-07:00

I'm now in Mountain Home! Blogging from our house while Dear is at work.

Let me start my story with our flights to the US -
Went to the airport on 4 Jan for our flight from Singapore to Tokyo, then Tokyo to Portland, and finally Portland to Boise (that's the airport closest to Mountain Home). Both our families went to the airport to send us off. Jinfu, Dennis and Shirley sent us off as well. Thanks guys! Especially Dennis, who helped us to send our luggage to the airport.

With Dear's parents, sister and neice

With Dear's sister

With my mum and brother

With both our families

With my mum

With Jinfu and Dennis

With Shirley

And here's a pic of my boots

The flight from SIN to Tokyo took around 7 hours, it was alright except for a crying baby when the plane was taking off. Wah lau eh, irritating to the max. Luckily the baby quietened down after take-off. Otherwise I would have gone crazy. We took some photos at Tokyo Narita, so I can say that I've been to Japan. Hurhur..

(Btw, that's the SGD 9.90 Uniqlo sweater)

For the next flight from Tokyo to Portland, Oregon, the flight took 9 hours. It was loooong.. The highlight was the starter on flight. It was smoked salmon with marinated onions and pasta with pesto. Super yummy! When we reached Portland, we had to take a domestic flight to Boise. We had already boarded the plane and were taxi-ing towards the runway when the pilot announced that there was a generator malfunction and asked us to alight and wait in the airport terminal for further instructions. Luckily, our flight was only delayed for around an hour. Dear and I slept throughout the one and a half hour flight. Hehe, we were so tired. When we reached Boise, we had to travel to Mountain Home air force base by bus. The journey took an hour. Again, I slept throughout the ride.

More posts coming up! Watch this space...

Happy New Year

2009-12-31T12:21:00.000-07:00

It's 01 Jan 2010, 3 more days and I'll be flying off to Idaho. OMG I can't describe this feeling. It's a mixture of anxiety (did I forget to pack anything, will it be very cold over there, will we exceed our baggage allowance?!) and also I can't bear to leave our family and friends in Singapore. Oh well, just have to live with it.

On 30 Dec, Dear and I attended Danny and Eva's wedding dinner at Raffles Hotel. I wanted to curl my hair and style it into a side ponytail like this -

Carrie Underwood Photo courtesy of Instyle.com

It was an ultimate FAIL. My curls kept on going flat no matter how long I used the curling iron and the amount of hairspray I used. Also my ponytail was tied messily. I was so pissed with my hair that I decided to untie my ponytail and just go to the dinner with straight hair. So I ran a comb through my hairspray-ed hair, leaving my hair with white flecks of hairspray. OMG, I almost had a meltdown. Dear told me to put lots of water on my hair, to dissolve the white hairspray flecks. I was still worried that the white flecks would show up later when my hair dried. Anyway we only had 30mins to get to the hotel, so I dashed out of the house. Dear had to reach the hotel by 5pm as he was helping Danny with some preparations. We waited almost 15mins to get a cab, in the end we were slightly late. I felt sooo guilty and so pissed at myself. Luckily the white flecks did not re-appear later in the night. Note to self: Next time, let a professional style my hair.
The rest of the night went smoothly, Eva's dresses were gorgeous, and the food was good. The wedding cake was from Pine Garden. There were 2 flavours, Lychee Martini and Baileys. Finally got to try the famed Lychee Martini cake. Surprising, I preferred the Baileys flavour. Yums!

Now I want to rant about the stupid terrorist who tried to bomb the Northwest flight from Amsterdam to Detroit on Christmas Day. TMD because of him I'll be subjected to more stringent security checks when I fly on 4 Jan. What good have the terrorists done anyway? Dunno what they are fighting for. All they have done resulted in airports stepping up security and causing inconvenience to travellers. KNN hope terrorists rot in hell.

Alright I hope 2010 will be a much better year. It's also the start of my adventure in USA. My next post might be written in Idaho. I will update when I get internet connection there, hopefully with photos :)
Happy New Year everyone!

Shopping (almost) Completed!

2009-12-24T11:57:00.000-07:00

I completed most of my shopping on Xmas eve at Parkway Parade. Yippee!
I bought:
- Pair of black boots at SGD 63 (will take pics and post up soon)
- Beauty products from Watson's:
Neutrogena blackhead removing mask
Simple deep cleansing mask
Maybelline Angelfit 2-way foundation (I think they don't have this in the US)
LipIce lipbalm - strawberry and apple flavours
Spent around SGD 100 at Watson's.
- Beauty products at The Face Shop:
12 pcs sheet masks
Aqua Water Pack
Precious Jewel exfoliating facial scrub
Oriental Flower body moisturiser
Raspberry Roots Sleeping mask
Pore minimising clay mask
Also spent around SGD 100 at The Face Shop.

OMG I've never spent so much at Watson's and The Face Shop before!
I do feel a bit of 'pain' from spending so much. Oh well, these products are supposed to last me for 2 years.
I've almost completed my shopping, just need to get Biore blackhead removing porepack and some more body moisturiser from Watson's. Gonna be cold and dry over in Idaho, so need to apply moisturiser all over the body to prevent dryness.

I had dinner at CompassPoint where I passed by this shoe shop, D&C. It had below-the-knee boots priced at SGD 50+. Cheaper than the boots I bought earlier. Sigh, it's alright, I'll buy cheaper and prettier boots in the States. Heh heh.

Oh yes, it's Christmas day already, Merry Christmas everyone!

Seafood Dinner in JB

2009-12-17T04:43:00.000-07:00

I'm so gonna put on weight! Had seafood dinner yesterday in JB with Jal, Is, Nana, Shufen, Huzaini, Dennis, Huibin and Dear. The drive there was very 'happening' we almost got lost after passing through the Malaysian 2nd Link Customs. Luckily Dennis had a GPS system in his car. Hurray for GPS!

When we were nearing the kelong seafood restaurant, the stretch of road leading up to it was so dark. The road had very tall grass on either side. Felt like a horror movie scene man... I was so thankful to finally see civilisation when we saw the seafood restaurant. However, our troubles did not end there. While parking, some of the resident kids (about 5-6 years old) came to ask Dennis for money. We declined, they then stood behind Dennis' car, not allowing him to park. He eventually honked and parked at another spot. After we alighted from the car, another boy tried to block our way and ask us for money. I walked past him without giving him a glance. They did not bother us as soon as we entered the seafood restaurant. Same thing happened when we were leaving, they asked us for money again. We just said we didn't have any, then got into the car and left.Irritating sia.

Alright, on to the food! I did bring my camera, but I was so busy eating I didnt take any photos. Boohoo.. Jal did take a few photos though.
The 9 of us had: chilli crabs with deep fried mantous, steamed fish, fried baby sotong, salted egg prawns, gong-gong, sambal kangkong and the special tofu. The chilli crab was yummy! The crab was large, and the flesh was firm and fresh.
I was most impressed with the deep-fried tofu. I think there was waterchesnut and other ingredients mixed into the tofu. It actually didn't look very extraordinary, but once I bit into it, I knew I shouldn't have judged the book by its cover. The tofu was yummilicious and the waterchesnut gave it a crunchy and refreshing taste. Yum yum...

Thanks friends for treating Daniel and I to dinner yesterday.
And thanks, bestie for the pretty pink present! :)

Friends have been treating us to food recently. Paiseh lei.. Please spare a thought for our waistlines ;)

I am no longer 25

2009-12-16T00:20:00.000-07:00

I'm now 26 years old... Celebrated my birthday yesterday with Dear, Dennis and Huibin at Coffee Club near Cineleisure. Dennis and Huibin called us after 12am and jio-ed us to Coffee Club for supper. I had already showered so didn't feel like applying make-up.It was the first time I went to town wearing glasses, shorts and NO make-up. Ultimate! Haha, I will remember this birthday.
For dinner, I went back to my mum's place for a home-cooked birthday dinner :)

It's so unfair for those people whose birthdays fall towards the end of the year. Take me for example, I have just celebrated my 26th birthday, but come 01 Jan 2010, for ease of calculation, I will have to start telling people I'm 27 already. Haiz... Soon I'll be approaching 30. OMG... I used to get a bit irritated with some women who decline to reveal their ages. I thought, come on, age is just a number! I wonder if I would turn into one of those women in a few years' time? I am starting to feel a bit old looking at my age.

What have I accomplished this past year?
1. Held my wedding dinner
2. Went to Bali with Dear
3. Started this blog
4. Resigned from the job I have held for 6 years

That's all the significant achievements I can think of. Hope I'll have more next year as I type my 27th birthday post ;)

I Confess...

2009-12-14T01:56:00.000-07:00

I'm a closet Hello Kitty fan.

Bought these bedroom slippers on Sunday at Jurong Point. They'll be keeping my feet warm in Idaho winter. They're so pretty :)

What was I doing all the way at Jurong Point? Had dinner there with Dear's God-parents and family to celebrate God-father's birthday. We had the buffet at Zhou's Kitchen. I ate quite a lot during the dinner. The fried mantous dipped in Chilli Crab sauce was supper yummy.

Gonna be eating more this coming week, going to JB for seafood on Wed.. Hehe.. Oh my waistline!! Must try to do some exercises at home. Otherwise I'm sooo gonna put on weight!

Dear and I did something we don't normally do on Sat - we went to Orchard Rd. We hate squeezing through the crowds so we seldom go to town unless absolutely neccessary. Went to Orchard with Danny and Eva to do a bit of shopping and ended the day with a movie. I, being super vain, wore heels. My feet were sooo super tired loh. But I was proud of myself. I did it! :) We watched the Aaron Kwok and Ekin Cheng movie, Storm Warriors. I fell asleep towards the ending. Haha it was that bad. All the fighting lulled me to sleep.

Alright, to reward my feet for enduring the heels on Sat, I'm gonna give myself a pedicure.

Till next post. Byeee.

Winter Shopping Continued

2009-12-11T09:25:00.002-07:00

Done a bit of shopping at Tampines Mall and Tampines One today. I bought:
- Brown hat from Esprit
- Black winter hat from Winter Time
- Black sweater from Uniqlo for SGD 9.90 only!
- Pink fleece jacket also from Uniqlo

Next week is gonna be our shopping week, still need to buy our luggage cases and also my face masks, etc from The Face Shop and Watson's. Hehe.
By the way, Dear thinks I should wear boots for our flight to Idaho. He thinks boots are better for keeping feet warm instead of the shoes from Cotton On that I was eyeing. I told him that boots would be difficult to remove when going through Customs in US. He then said that I can get ankle boots. It's not everyday that I get 'approval' to buy another pair of shoes ;) I Googled and found these ankle boots I like -

Bitterr from Steve Madden

Ankle Boots from Yesstyle.com

Ooooh so pretty! However, I think my feet will die from wearing the above boots for the flight to Idaho. For comfort's sake, I might get boots in this style:

Vestedd from Steve Madden

I saw a pair of ankle boots with low heels at BHG just now selling for SGD 39.90. Shall shop around see if there are prettier boots elsewhere. So it's shoe-shopping time with Jal! Need to set a day to meet Jal for shopping...

Busy Busy

2009-12-10T10:21:00.000-07:00

Have been super busy with packing our shipment to Idaho. The shipping company is collecting our shipment this coming Sat, so have been busy in order to finish packing before then. Dear and I started packing since last Sat. Our packing schedule goes like this:
- Wake up around noon
- Have lunch
- Start packing
- Pack all the way till around 12 midnight
- After showering, head out for dinner
- Sleep around 2am
Continued like this for 3 days, then finally took a break on Tue. We've pretty much finished the bulk of our packing. Now just checking to see if we missed anything.
Even though I've stopped working, it feels like I'm busier than when in the office.

Speaking of which, I still really can't believe that I don't have to go into the office anymore. I miss seeing Jal 5 days a week. I miss the breakfast, lunch and teabreak gossip sessions. Haiz...
Anyway, met up with Jal and Is today. Sooo happy :)

Farewell Party on 04 Dec 09

2009-12-08T09:52:00.000-07:00

My colleagues threw a farewell bbq party for me on my last day at the office. Got lovely presents from my lovely colleagues (or should I say ex-colleagues). Thank you everyone for organising the bbq and most importantly... cleaning up. Photos:

Presents Time

My present from my ex-boss, Mark. (It's so weird typing 'ex-'!)

Lovely watch from May Ling

Jacket from Uncle Edwin

Accepting the present from the company.

It's a bling bling watch!

Me giving an impromptu thank-you speech

Jhing looks so fierce here. Alright alright, sorry for eating up all the food!

The Sistahs

My awesome friends

That's it for this blog post. Have been busy packing our shipment to Idaho.

Till next post. Tata!

Triple Date

2009-11-30T18:57:00.000-07:00

Dear and I went on a ‘triple-date’ with Dennis+Huibin and Iskandar+Jal on Saturday. We had dinner at Tambuah Mas in Tanglin Shopping Centre, then watched Ninja Assassin at Downtown East. I can use one word to describe the movie – bloody. OMG there was so much slashing and blood. If not for Rain’s chiseled abs, I would have covered my eyes. Hur hur... In typical male fashion, Dear enjoyed all the blood and gore in the movie. *rolls eyes*

After the movie, we went to Beach Culture @ Watercross in Pasir Ris Park for a drink. It was my first time there, quite a nice place.

Ate so much that day… gonna put on weight man! Must try to do some exercises at home. Maybe I’ll burn some calories when doing the packing for our move to the States. Haha. Seriously, I’ve not started packing yet. Only started buying stuff to pack. Stressed…. Must start the packing this week. Looking at the shipping documents to fill up also makes me stressed. So many forms to fill, so confusing...

This week will be my last week in the office. My last day will be on Friday. Haiz… Jal’s pretty upset. Don’t worry babe, there’s still msn!

Ladies' Day Out

2009-11-25T08:11:00.000-07:00

Today's the ladies' day out! Woke up abnormally early today... Haiz, can sleep late, don't want to sleep late; only when need to work then cannot wake up...
Anyway, met Jal, Shirley & Jhing 2pm for a massage at Step by Step in Pasir Ris. Shiok...

After that we went to Tampines One to walk walk. Found the perfect hat in Esprit. I also tried on the coveted Esprit purple jacket. OMG.. loves! No... must.. resist.. temptation!!!!!

In other news, my living room now looks like a warehouse. Hahas. The packing boxes for shipping our belongings to Idaho have just arrived today. We have 2 weeks to pack the shipment. Stressed... I need to think what items are not easily available in the states, and ship them over. Loads of shopping to do over the next week...

Ramblings

2009-11-23T08:08:00.001-07:00

Was working over the weekend and today cos of the NOSS Sailing C'ship. Super tired, I couldn't wake up today and had to take a cab to work. I'm only taking my day off on Wed, because Jal, Shirley, Jhing, Nana and I have planned to go for a massage that day. Woo hoo! Gals' massage day!

The NOSS c'ship is my last event before I leave my workplace. So many mixed feelings. I feel happy that I won't need to work for the next 2 years. But I also feel sad that I'm leaving my friends behind. My colleagues have grown to become my friends. We have gone through so many happy and tough times. From when we were single, to married now. And some are even proud parents. We have all grown so much. I remember all the fond memories like, how we handle the KCS, 8-legged spider, Cat 1 on land, AYG, drinking at Georges, etc. There are too many to list out.

Wah, so sentimental today. Anyway, I enjoyed myself at the prize-giving ceremony today, especially during the lucky draw. I love conducting lucky draws. Even though my voice is now hoarse from announcing winners' names, it was so fun!

Tomorrow will be a quiet day in the office. After tomorrow, it'll be Wednesday - Massage day! I can't wait :)

Winter Shopping Part 1 Completed

2009-11-21T19:44:00.000-07:00

Yay, finally did some real shopping on Friday. Unfortunately, I had to buy a coat that I didn't really like. I bought this brown coat:

Hi I look like a ba zhang

I decided on functionality over glam. OMG, it was such a tough decision. Boo hoo hoo.

I still have a few more items to buy:

- Hat (Esprit has nice ones)

- Scarf

- Sweater(s)

Oh, we also haven't bought luggage cases. I want a pink one! ;)

Haiz... I can only console myself that I will buy nicer coats in the States.

Worst Movie Experience Evar

2009-11-19T08:34:00.000-07:00

Last Sunday, I went to watch the movie 2012 with Dear and his family at GV Tampines Mall. Dear and I normally watch movies at Cathay Downtown East. They have comfy couple seats there with lots of legroom. We only went to GV Tampines Mall as it was more accessible for the family.

The seats at GV were uncomfortable, and legroom was limited. I already don't have long legs and I find it cramped, imagine how Dear felt. He was fidgeting in his seat towards the end of the movie. Two and a half hours in the uncomfortable chair. Awful! What's more, the movie theatre got so stuffy towards the end of the movie! The aircon seemed to be on a high temperature, I actually felt warm during the movie. I brought a jacket there in case I felt cold. Oh the irony! Ok, so I could have went out of the theatre to get one of the GV staff to adjust the temperature, but I didn't want to miss bits of the movie. So I endured the stuffiness. Seriously, it was the worst movie experience ever!

As for the movie, it was loaded with lots of special effects. But at the end of the day, it's just another end-of-the-world movie. Like Armageddon, Day after Tomorrow, etc.
Spoiler alert:
I hated how Kate instantly forgets her boyfriend, Gordon, as soon as he dies. Come on, she didn't even grieve for him. Almost immediately after Gordon's death, Jackson and her got back together like they were never divorced. Wah lau eh.
Ok enough of bitching.

In other news, I bought 3 magazines at the Tampines One atrium sale mentioned here. They were 3 for SGD 10. I'm still halfway through 1 of the magazines. Hehe.

On Friday, going to the winter clothing warehouse with Hui Bin and Dennis. Hui Bin's gonna give me a 2nd opinion for the coats. Yay! Finally I'm gonna do some real shopping!