Sick

I was down with a serious bout of tummy flu which started on Boxing Day morning and it lasted a week. The throwing up was so bad it was continuous at I had to get a jab from the doc to stop it that same afternoon. It did help but then a high fever developed for an entire night and thank God that hubby was on leave for that period so he could take care of me, the chores as well as the little girl. I was very weak and could hardly get out of bed. But 2 days after the fever stopped, I started having the runs, and till today, my tummy is still not fully recovered. But I'm more or less back to normal now, and have started preparing good bags for princess' classmates on Friday. I can't believe that she's turning 7 so soon, in less than a weeks' time.

Too long...

Wow, just looking at the date on my last posting... it's 18 Dec 08. Goodness, that is really a long time since I last updated. Well, a Happy New Year to you all. My apologies to those who have asked for recipes or details regarding caterers etc. I'll try to update those soon.

It was a really busy time the last 2 weeks of Dec, what with Christmas & the many play dates we had. There were two play dates at our place, with Princess' classmates from kindy, an art-themed one where the kids painted on canvases over at J's, and there was also a cookie decoration on over at a swimming class mum, M's, place. We had loads of fun. Every day was packed with activities. We wanted to spend as much time as possible with friends whom we won't get to meet so much now.

Mashed potatoes, salmon with bearnaise sauce, and baked chicken thighs.

Baby spinach & rocket salad, with persimmon, cherry tomatoes, dried blueberries & almond flakes, with a balsamic vinegar (courtesy of beau lotus) dressing.

We had a simple Christmas dinner this year, as always, with mum and sis in attendance. I didn't bake a turkey, no energy for that, but even though simple, mum still thought I put in too much effort into the prep. But really, I only started preparing for the dinner 2hrs' before it was due. The salad was easy to prepare, no cooking involved. The salmon too was quick. Only the chicken took a slightly longer time to bake. Oh yes, I did prepare an apple pie and served it with ice-cream, and the little flower biscuit hors d'oeuvres were filled with canned tuna mixed with some finely chopped onion.

Apple Pie

A friend, Jo, shared this apple pie recipe with me and I love it, especially the crumb topping.

I cheated with frozen pie crust like she did.

- About 4 Granny Smith apples (chopped or sliced)
- Mix apples with about 1 tablespoon of lemon juice

In a mixing bowl, mix together:
- 1/3 cup light brown sugar
- 1/4 cup all purpose flour
- 3/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
- a little nutmeg if you like
Then mix apples into mixing bowl and mix together. Pour into pie crust.

For the crumble topping:
- 1 1/2 cups all purpose flour
- 1/4 cup sugar
- 1/4 cup brown sugar
- 1/2 cup butter

Rub butter with fingertips into flour and sugar till mixture becomes crumbly and sprinkle over pie. Bake till pie has turned a brownish color at 350F.

It's Christmas

Is it Christmas already? I really wish time will go slower. I still have loads to do, cookies to be baked and sent out (very very late). Gosh, I don't even have time to think about Christmas. This year, I'm not going to bother myself with a Christmas dinner. Have not planned what to do yet, but princess has her heart set on one. She is telling grandma and I, that she is planning the dinner menu, and she mentioned stuff like turkey, pasta, sushi, fried rice (?????). What???? Oh, whatever!

Her mini Christmas tree - everything from Daiso. Oops, not the nativity scene though.

Instead of spraying snow, we used stickers this year. Love the gingerbread house and people.

I think I caught the decoration bug from KY this year. After visiting her house with all the lovely decor, I decided to do up mine with little touches as well. What have you done for Christmas?

K2C Graduation Party

My daughter's class is the only class that has birthday invites all year round. I once asked the Chinese teacher if the other classes were the same. Apparently not. As a result of these parties, the parents have gotten to know each other pretty well. And without a doubt, the entire class will be invited if anyone in class is celebrating their birthday, unless if it's a sole girls' party then the poor boys are not invited. When we found out that the end of year celebration was a joint picnic with the entire school, we decided to have a party specially for our class. And after much emailing to and fro with over 18 sets of parents, we finally decided upon a date - 30Nov. It was not easy, I can tell you that. Just arriving on that date alone gave me lots of headache. People were travelling or had this and that thing on. At the end of it, someone said for me to just decide a date and people just had to change their schedules around. But luckily I didn't have to make that difficult decision as we manged to agree on that one day. Phew!

The dessert table. One mum ordered these beautiful agar-agar (see the graduate as well as the word 'congratulations'?). They were so beautiful no one could bear to cut them and they were there for a lonnnnggg time.

This pinata was handmade by one of the kids' mums. What a fantastic piece of work!

Jacob Ballas Childrens' Garden

We had a outing to the Botanic Gardens with two mums and their kids. It's only my second time visiting Jacob Ballas but it was too crowded the first time round, as it was some special occasion, opening of the park of something. Maybe KY can jolt my memory. We didn't get to explore a lot of the park the last time as the weather was hot as well. However, on this day, the weather was fantastic! Not much sun and a little cloudy but no rain either. But even so, princess came home with sunburnt shoulders. I had forgotten to bring along the sunblock.

A mini suspension bridge.

Our picnic food - brought by one of the mums. I only brought along the fishballs and can't remember what the other thing was. We had a brunch feast. I didn't even realise food was not allowed in there if I hadn't read about it in Camemberu's blog.

This is the highlight of the park - the water play. They had loads of fun and refused to go home.

Birthday Party

For S's party, G catered from the prison's catering service. It's not the first time that she's ordered food from them. The quality of the food is great. The cereal prawns were a favourite with most.

The broccoli and cauliflower was lovely.

For me, I loved the Ayam Masak Merah.

There was a candy floss machine.

As well as a caricature artist.

Time for cake.