chomp-fest

The past few days has been a bit of a baking-fest for me! :) The school term is always so insanely tiring and busy that I seldom have the time to bake stuff though it's such an enjoyable hobby for me. (Which reminds me, how will I ever become a domestic goddess a la Nigella if I don't practise now huh??) So I took the opportunity over the past few days of the Christmas vacation to create a mess in the kitchen and indulge in a major chomp-fest.

First off, chocolate chip cupcakes stuffed with chunks of hershey's cookies and cream chocolate and topped off with rainbow sprinkles. A friend gave me this recipe once and it's actually REALLY SIMPLE :p as it doesn't really involve baking entirely from scratch (coughcough I use the Betty Crocker devil's chocolate cake mix) but it does allow for some creativity in terms of what you add into the mix. Trust me on this, the Hershey's cookies and cream chocs are divine and go soooo well with the normal chocolate flavor.

These ginger snaps actually look better than they tasted. :( I dunno what really happened but there these were just an overdose of baking powder. 'Nuff said. SIGH.

The chocolate cupcakes in a pile! :)

Then came the fun part. This was the first time I've actually made gingerbread men by myself (previously it was with my aunt in Seattle a few years back and we always simply used the ready made cookie dough) and boy, was it a challenge! I found a recipe online which called for the use of 1/2 cup of honey but TYPICAL blur me read it as 1 and a 1/2 cups of honey syrup and the boy only realized it when 1 cup had gone into the batter and the entire thing was so runny there was no way of making a dough out of it. So in order to salvage it, I had to double the batter and repeat all the steps once again in order to make up for the extra honey and in the end, I just kept adding FLOUR FLOUR FLOUR and more FLOUR. Must've used up more than 4 cups of flour for sure. Sure it was an ordeal but you know what? It was so fun. :D I LOVE making gingerbread men now! My favorite part is rolling out the dough and pressing the cookie cutter into it and then peeling the perfectly cut piece of dough and placing it on the tray. Totally tedious but so fun.

The gingerbread men are actually pretty ginormous! About the size of my palm? I didn't realize they'd be so big but the cookie cutter I bought just happened to be a larger than average. While baking in the oven under the glow of the oven light they all looked like little expanding monsters. *shudder*

Felt like a total kindergardener in an art class! :p Not great at icing them but what the heck. It kinda sucks too that my family is on the whole pretty health conscious so I had to limit the number of cookies I decorated lest no one in my family eats any of them because of the icing sugar.

In other news... I'm in HK now! :) Meant to post this yesterday while I was packing but in the end I just ended up doing all sorts of other stuff. Just felt all happy and excited because finally -- I'm able to wear my new f21 beanie and Frye Engineer boots!

One of my favorite things about HK is the weather. I love how it actually gets colder during the winter such that it's just the right weather for boots, scarves, hats, coats... layers, layers, layers! Fun things that are impossible in Singapore. I just arrived in HK a few hours ago and am going to be staying at my aunt's place for the next week or so and there's wifi so hopefully I'll be able to update daily! =) Stomach's totally growling now... can't wait for breakfast to come soon...!

So how's everyone's Christmas coming along? 2 more days! :)

Here's something I put on my Christmas list and openly hinted to my sis, my mum AND the boy yet nobody paid any attention to my pleas:

1. DOMO CHRISTMAS LIGHTS!

And these would be so multipurpose too because you can use them to decorate the place for all sorts of parties, not just xmas ones! But did they listen to my very tempered and well thought out reasoning? NO.

If I were a guy living in the U.S. with an Urbie store right around the corner, I'd so get these two shirts.

So what's on everyone's Christmas list? :) Do tell!

xx

At Christmas :)

I'm so happy that it's the Christmas season!! It's just my favorite holiday of the entire year. Even though I don't really get anymore presents anymore :p but since I was a little girl, I've just always loved the idea of gift-giving, present wrapping, cookie baking, eggnog drinking, merry making... I know it's the commercialized version of Christmas and that the real meaning behind everything is supposed to be the religious one but I happen to love the former a LOT. And it's so FUN. :)

I just started making ornaments again today. We don't have a tree at home unfortunately and we've never had a real one before (i doubt my parents would know what to do to keep it alive) but we DO have some pretty xmas lights. So I decided to take one of the new bookshelves that my dad recently procured and give it a makeover in time for Christmas.

Felt ornaments are my favorite to make. Simply because they're the easiest. I love putting on some music/switching on the television and making them at the same time. Today I listened to some old school HANSON music on youtube (because I can't find their CD in the mess that is my room :( ) and gosh it brought back memories! They released a record entitled Snowed In '97 and I used to play it every single Christmas as a Hanson-obsessed tween while laying on the couch fantasizing about Zac Hanson WHOM I JUST FOUND OUT IS HAPPILY MARRIED and he and his wife just gave birth to their SECOND CHILD on 15 Dec! Oh my wasted heart...

I remember flipping through a craft magazine once many years ago when I saw a "Santa's laundry line" ornament on a page and I just thought it was adorable, especially the long john's.

(Yeah, I know, that gingerbread man is just creepy. The next one will look more benevolent, I promise!)

So tomorrow I think I'll start baking some Xmas cookies. :) Anyone has any good recipes to share? I suppose the usual butter/sugar cookies would be the easiest to bake as well as decorate but my whole family's the more health conscious type so I don't think anyone will be lapping up the gorgeous colored icing any time soon. Are there any "healthier" cookies I could bake? :P Guess that's kinda an oxymoron.

Shall end my night by watching another episode of Party of 5. I ordered the first 3 seasons and had them delivered to my sis who's studying in the U.S. and who's now back for the holidays. Scott Wolf and Neve Campbell are simply gorgeous! I never actually watched the series very intensely before but I think now I'm in a better position to appreciate it. Recently I've been reminded of all the good times I had as a tween. Hanson... Party of 5... Baby-Sitters' Club... Thank god for those days.

xx

it always comes back to this

HOLA~~!

:D We are officially back in business.

Today's the last day of the school term for now and I'm starting an extremely precious 2 week Christmas vacation that I'm determined to live, breath, CHERISH like nothing before. It's been an incredibly tiring 6 months of school. Can you believe we've had close to 30 weeks of school without a single break till now? I could cry.

But there are so many things to do now. :) First of, I thought of continuing where I left off from. Back in Seattle!

One fine morning, my lil' cuz Teagan, and I decided to go for a cycle. I don't even own a bicycle now so the only time I ever cycle would be the occasional trip to the park with my friends where we rent bicycles for 2 hours. I wish I had one though! It's so much fun though Singapore is definitely one of the most dangerous places to cycle in. Horrible weather, a severe dearth of bicycle lanes, the WORST bunch of angry drivers who don't even give way to other cars... Seattle is so much more fun. Neighbourhoods seem built for cycling around.

(That's my cousin and she's 7. I'm 21 and not much taller than her. HATE MY SHORTIE GENES!)

HERE'S MY VERY FIRST GIF! :DDD (It took me AGES to get this figured out but now I realize how it's actually really pretty simple. Silly noobie me.)

(and off we go!)

When I accompanied my cousins to their swim class and was freezing in the blustery weather (outdoor pools in cold weather = torture) while waiting for them, I decided to walk around and into the neighbouring park. Met the most adorable retriever there.

One of those days, my aunt, the cousins and I, went for a hike up the SNOW CAVES - so called because in the winter it's apparently covered in snow and there are little caves that can be explored. When we went it was late spring/early summer so there wasn't any snow but it was a pretty walk nonetheless. Though I do remember feeling ill then and after the hike I ended up getting a full blown flu that kept in the house for the next 3 days. In hindsight though, it's the good things that stay. :)

Who was the artist who left his mark here eh??

One night my aunt brought me for some Mexican food since that's one of the few cuisines I haven't tried very much before.

Nothing beats freshly baked tortilla chips...

and salsa!

This was some special Mexican drink which, for the life of me, I cannot recall. I think it was some rice drink? Or if anyone has drunk this before and would care to enlighten me on its name/origins, I would really appreciate it! :) It had a little bit of an eggnog taste to it...

THIS... WAS THE MOTHER OF ALL SALADS. I made the amateur/tourist mistake of ordering a "Mexican Salad" when I could've ordered something quintessentially Mexican like a BURRITO or something. So I ended up with the HUGEST salad I've seen in my entire life. It was literally three times the size of my face.

American food portions never cease to amaze me. ;p

Finally memory for tonight -- eating a pesto pasta and salad dinner out in the backyard with my aunt, uncle and cousins. :) It was one of the highlights of my trip really. I love spending time with them and the weather was PERFECT for an alfresco evening meal.

(Haiying with her annoying camel toy which she KNOWS I hate! Press it and it launches incessantly into a LOUD and annoying song in a weird language I can't even understand.)

They have a playground in their background. :) How perfect is that?

I keep posting photos of my travels (well, this blog is pretty much just all about stuff that's happening to me/things that I like) and I suppose to some people it may come across as self-indulgent or narcissistic? But blogging is, at its heart, an extension of the blogger's own self. Every word, picture, quote, song that's posted here has something to do with me that I'd like to share and connect with someone else who has an affinity to it too. I'll keep doing this, because at the end of the day, looking back and reflecting on things that mean something to me... sharing little frivolous things such as likes and dislikes in fashion/photography/food...these are all forms of expression that keep me happy. At the end of the day, perhaps that's all there is to it. :)

XX. More tomorrow! :) I daresay I'll be able to post twice a day now that it's the holidays. Can't wait to have the BEST NIGHT OF SLEEP i've had in a looong time tonight.

it's been awhile...

...But I'll be back! :)

Still alive here. Just really busy with so much school stuff. Almost coming to the end of a posting which means there're a couple of tests that I'm going to have to take... and it just so happens that so many things are coinciding around the same period next week! Next Friday, my end of posting test. Next Saturday, a play that I'll be acting in (definitely hope my class wins. ;p it's an inter-level play competition so each class is really going all out this year it seems). Next Sunday, my Japanese exam. Deep breath... *SILENT SCREAM*.

Just now I was eating dinner with my dad and we happened to be watching the grand finale of this show -- Step It Up and Dance. I love dance competitions. They're my favorite sort of competitive television series. I mean if I were to choose between So You Think You Can Dance and errr America's Next Top Model... I think I'd definitely go for the former. Just the way they always give so much constructive feedback to the dancers already shows how it's all about nurturing and bringing out the best in the participants.

So to cut a long story short, one of the final 4 participants, Cody, performed his solo dance to an incredible song that I tried Shazam-ing (free iPhone app that identifies songs on the radio/tv :D) but wasn't able to find out who the singer was. So I did what I always do when I try to identify songs that I'm interested in - I googled a line from the song along with the name of the show and voila! The first link that came up highlighted the exact thing that was in my mind: "In the Step It Up and Dance final, what was Cody's solo song?" :p I think it's pretty amazing how somewhere across the world, a million miles removed from me, someone else had the exact same feelings and thoughts about a song.

So here it is:

my heart's in so many places

Ta-dahhh! Finally a continuation of my posts on my travels this past summer. :p It's about 4 months overdue and there are still about say 500 photos I'd love to go through and eventually post so... at least that's something to look forward to till the end of this year.

So here's the next bit about my Seattle trip. I left off at the FIRST day of my time in Seattle. Now we're making the momentous leap into day 2 of the epic chronicles.

(coat: ebay, boots: shop in Hong Kong, scarf: Ruche.com)

Half opened eyes and face drenched in sleepiness? Puts the time of the photo taken to anywhere before 12 noon. That was pretty much my default outfit every day in Seattle because it was chiiilllly. I love though, the feeling of cold air so crisp and biting that it startles the senses every morning upon leaving the house.

First stop? Nordstrom Rack!! That was the first time I'd been into one so I had no idea what to expect. Racks and rows and shelves crammed to the brim with clothes, shoes, accessories... in so many different sizes and designer labels too!

Biggest score of the day? Swedish MIA clogs at a discounted price of about $60. I later found out the exact same ones were being sold in Urban Outfitters but for close to $100! Thank you, God of outlet shopping.

It probably wasn't on the same day but eventually I did manage to stumble in a drunken haze of happiness into the Urban Outfitters store at Alderwood Mall.

(BEST SIGN EVER. I just couldn't resist.)

(new basic striped shirt!)

Was really tempted to get this multicolored striped tee for my boyfriend since, who doesn't love a splash of color? But then I remembered most boys are timid and conservative when it comes to fashion. My future son, however...

(I love how they displayed all the shirts in that manner against the wall! :D Another reason to be in love with UO.)

So Alderwood Mall is pretty much one of my favorite malls in the entire world. Granted, I haven't really been to that many malls in the world but this one basically has all the stores I love under one roof. I remember the first time I was brought there by my aunt a couple of years back. I'd painstakingly written down a whole list of the stores I wanted to go into ("American Apparel... GAP... F21... Urban Outfitters...Payless") and didn't know how lucky I'd get with this mall. By the end of the day, with every turn of a corner inside, I was greeted with multiple surprises as I managed to locate store after store on my list, eventually striking almost everything off. (I think Anthropologie and H&M would be the only two missing ;p. That's still a dang high score rate!)

It seems that every time I go to Alderwood Mall I end up getting a Charley's grilled beef sub. ;p I remember being incredibly famished the first time I tried it out and it was SO good I've not really tried anything else every time I go back.

(Colors colors colors. I just brighten at the sight of them. This one was in the AA store.)

So this was just a random shot taken in a supermarket. Isn't it amazing, the sheer number of choices available for something as simple as burritos? I was just bowled over.

This Ted Talk I viewed recently discusses the paradox of choice and how too many choices actually overwhelms us, makes us indecisive, and paralyzes us in a state of inaction. :P Thoughts about it? I still say there's no question about it - the more choices the merrier.

Bye for now. I wish I could spend more time blogging but then reality always wins. School stresses and sleep beckon.