Gifts

I have received lovely gifts from my good friends – natural skin products that Joan asked her sis to get from Australia, Body shop shower gels and body lotions from 2 good friends, earrings from JerL, a pouch from sis, a pretty brooch from Adele and handmade ones from Esther and Bam.

Esther wrapped her gift in this red box and this is the beautiful little tree she hand sewed using felt cloth. I like the little yellow fluff ball and the tiny silver decoration. So sweet of Esther to make this for me and her nephews! I shall put it in my cabinet so that I can admire it the whole year round and just this Christmas.

I also waited till this morning to open the present from Bam. She has cross stitched this lovely cat and framed it up. Dad is going to help me hang it in our living room.

I think the greatest gift I get from my friends is their friendship. Thank you, dear friends for being there for me!

Night @ the Museum

I watched the movie with my friend, K on Fri night. Ben Stiller was quite funny and I find the earlier part a bit slow but I like how it develops Ben Stiller from a smart aleck to someone who begins to see the strength in himself and others and used it to fight against the baddies.

It was 11.30pm after we finished the movie and we decided to go to Ritz Carlton lounge for drinks. We had ice flavoured tea – mint for me and kiwi for him. It's quite interesting how the drinks are presented. Sperical ice cubes which we suspect contain some syrup. Cold tea in the skinny glass and the mint/kiwi essence in the little glass.

The nice waiter was there too. I'm not sure if he recognised me as I looked different on Thurs and Fri night but he did say “Thank you for coming again”. I will order the hot tea if I visit the lounge again.

Evening with FR and JerL

We girls have been talking about visiting Curry Favor together. I have been there once a few years ago with Joan and find the food yummy. On Thurs night, I made a date with FR and JerL to have dinner there. FR and I ordered drinks first. I had the almond milk tea and I really like the nice aroma of almond. JerL was caught up with work, so we 2 proceeded to order stuff mushrooms with prawn and scallop, fish with Japanese rice and curry which comes with a nice salad.

When JerL met us after our dinner, we decided to go to Ritz Carlton lounge for tea. The service by one of the waiter was excellent. The young man was very attentive and would come and refill our tea every now and then. I like my herbs and ginger tea and I added a teaspoon of honey to it.

We girls relaxed at the sofa, listening to the band playing and singing oldies and christmas songs and chatting.

Late dinner with 3 babes

On Wed, I was late for my dinner date with Fion, Ying and Adele as I had to rush out some urgent work stuff.

Ying was so sweet to make this lovely card

The girls had a heavy dinner at New York New York earlier before meeting me. I chose this cafe, Seasons Reasons at the basement of Raffles city and ordered chamomile tea with honey, crispy chicken with mint and button mushrooms as my light dinner.

Although the time was short, it was good to catch up with the girls and find out how they are doing in their lives.

Charlotte's Web and New York New York

Sis managed to get a free pair of tickets for us to watch Charlotte's web last Tues night. I think the spider, Charlotte looks very pretty and it's quite apt for Julia Roberts to do the voicing of that character. It's a heartwarming tale about how friendship can be forged regardless of breed, background and what's important is the trust and belief in the friendship and our friends.

After movie, we went to New York New York for a light dinner.

I had a bowl of chunky veggie soup. I find it too salty. The strawberry milkshake was not bad. Sis likes her ice cream waffle (I forgot to take a photo of it) but her cooler was disappointing.

Baking @ Bam's place

Last Sun's late afternoon, I visit Bam's place to bake! Bam's little girl wanted to help us too.

We tried this chocolate cookie recipe and it taste like the cookie version of brownie.


I also helped BAM to do the cut out and decoration for ginger bread men. These were the men before they braved through the fire for us (as Bam said and I find that phrase funny).

I haven't seen Nimbus for quite some time and he looks as handsome as before with more orange streaks.

After an evening of baking, I had some goodies to bring home for my family and friends to try :)

Yummy bread

Mum has been buying nice bread from some neighbourhood bakery @ Ang Mo Kio Ave 10. I like the sandwich with egg and ham. On Sun, I tried a bun with half a hard-boiled in the centre.

East Coast Park Cats

Last Sun I bought from DDxiong 2 boxes of cookies, a calendar and posters to help in her fundraising efforts for the sterilisation of stray cats at East Coast Park. I think the poster cat looks adorable!

Check out DDxiong to find out what she is doing to help the cats.

MIA

I have not been blogging the past week as my home monitor has died on me a few days ago. It feels kind of strange not to be able to check my personal emails, surf the net, read my friends' blog and update my blog.

I took leave today to accompany mum for her routine checkup in the afternoon. I managed to get my computer repairman to come this morning and he confirmed that it's the monitor not the CPU/motherboard that is faulty. He left me an old CRT 15" monitor , so I can surf and blog over the long weekend :)

Time for baking

I was wondering when I could squeeze in some time to bake some cookies for Fion and I managed to find some free time from 12 to 3pm today.

The cookies tasted quite different from the earlier batch which was softer and crumbly. For this batch, I substituted the white sugar with some brown sugar and the cookies turn out to be harder. I hope it's not too hard but sis said they taste ok. I also decorated the top of the cookies with mini M&Ms.

Lunch with BAM on a work day

Yes, it's something to exclaim about as BAM and I recently realised we could meet somewhere in between our offices and have a quick lunch together.

Yesterday, our 1st lunch date took place @ O' Brien @ Citylink and we both decided to try their new Christmas sandwich - turkey ham and cranberry. I find it quite tasty.

Mushroom dinner

On Thurs night, Joan and I were feeling adventurous and decided to venture into Mushroom Park @ 87 Serangoon Garden Way.

It was a new dining experience - the ambience, the dining ware. The serving staff seem to be from China from the accented Chinese they were speaking. They were courteous and the manager was very nice to check on us every now and then to see how we were enjoying our meal. There are 3 different set menus. We choose the economy ($26.80) and business set ($36.80+++). The business set's mushroom are more exotic.

We nibbled on mushroom crisps, mushroom floss and mushroom sashimi while waiting for the mushrooms to cook in the pyrex pot.

I had never seen so many kinds of mushroom in my life. Some of the mushrooms taste normal, some look weird and one tastes bitter.

We can choose either rice or steamed bun (man tou). Who can resist man tou with condensed milk? We couldn't! We also chose beef and chicken slices to go with the mushrooms. There were also green leafy veggies, corn and some yam/radish looking thing.


I was also admiring the chinese calligraphy on the wall and the nice white blossoms on the glass wall panels.

We left Mushroom Park with a tin of mushroom floss ($13+) each.

Mushroom park is for you if you are adventurous and want to eat more than the usual fare of shitake, button and portobello mushrooms.

Another delicious home-cooked dinner

Clockwise from top left: Dark soya sauce ginger fish, cabbage soup with egg and pork balls, steamed pork belly meat with mushroom and preserved mui choy

Gingerbread boys

BAM gave me a container of cute gingerbread boys. I couldn't helping munching on one when we were waiting for our friend's wedding dinner to start last night. Ate another when I reached home around 11.30pm. Ate one for breakfast this morning. Ate about 10 more before lunch. Yummy. I like them :)

My 1st Christmas card this year

I received this lovely handmade card from Esther. It's so sweet of her!

I'm on leave today to relieve mum of cleaning the hamsters' houses in the morning while she had to wait and queue for her turn at the polyclinic for more than 30 minutes. Then when she came home, we went down to feed the cats together.

My other purpose is also to bake a batch of cranberry chocolate chip cookies as Fion has asked me to bake them nearer Christmas, so that she could buy them and give them to her sister-in-law. I haven't been baking cookies for the past few months and thought I should have a practice session and let Fion try them first before I bake some more for her. I tried 2 cookies just now and they taste quite nice.