((HooOoOlidaaayyyYY)) - argghh!!

Work have been stressful..

life have been more demanding..

relationship is getting strained.. which ultimately lead me to this blog..

When do you say enough is enough..? Its time for me to take a holiday!


I don't understand how working mother's do it! They do deserve an award each time they survive a day.. its soo tiring waking up in the morning; have energy to whisk the kids all to school; put on make up go to work, work, work, work, back home listen to the kids whine, husband complain about his job and then cook for the family and then wash up... clean up.. and then do more work and go to bed to repeat the routine again! How can anyone in the right mind do that?

Don't get me wrong..i don't even have kids! So eliminate all the above with kids and what do I have? Let's seee....

waking up in the morning; have energy to whisk the kids all to school ; put on make up go to work, work, work, work, back home listen to the kids whine, husband complain about his job and then cook for the family and then wash up... clean up.. and then do more work and go to bed to repeat the routine again! How can anyone in the right mind do that?

Seee.. even without the kids portion.. it still looks pretty demanding to me.

Living in a foreign country..far from close family and friends... our holidays tend to be usually heading back to the hometown. This means sacrificing potential holidays that you could have spend doing nothing relaxing.

Well.. there's no happy conclusion in this story. Like every normal human being there's always a downside and an upside. If you want a proper holiday; just go and don't visit your family and friend for the next 10 years. If you want to visit them; stop complaining you haven't had a proper holiday forever.

Oh well.. I'll end up my whine with a picture of thissss...





MALDIVESSSSSS>. now that's where I want to be now..

No worries.. I'll be able to make the flight if I go to bed now. I'll reach by the time its 11pm and have a relaxing holiday..

Will still be able to make it to work at 8am tomorrow too.

Banana Cake

Weekends are the 2 days in the week that your allowed to laze around. So what activities occupy your time?

My time without doubt is spent on two things.. shopping and cooking. Which I was surprised I managed to do all in one day!!

I made a simple banana cake yesterday. It doesn't take a genius to make it and it will be gone before you can say b-a-n-a-n-a. Its a small cake and can be placed in your ordinary small tin loaf OR a small round cake tin. For ease of removing I've placed baking paper across the small round cake tin.

This recipe is from Women's Weekly Magazine that I've always followed and have never encountered any problems. Eight easy steps that even kids will be able to follow.
Ingredients:
2 very ripe banana
125gm of butter
1 egg
1 1/2 cup of self-raising flour
1/4 cup of milk
3/4 cup of sugar (Daryl (my soon to be hubby) doesn't like too sweet stuff so I usually cut them down to approximately 2/4 cup of sugar)
1 teaspoon of vanilla essence

1) Mash the banana. Don't worry if there's small lumps on them.
2) Bring a small to medium pot and melt butter, sugar and vanilla essence
3) Add in mashed banana stir well
4) Keeping the fire to small - add in egg. Mix well
5) Add sifted self-raising flour and stir
6) Pour in milk and ensure its combine
7) Turn off fire and transfer into baking tin
8) Bake in oven 170 for 40min.

End results: Yummy-licious simple banana cake perfect for afternoon tea or morning breakfast.

((Shopping Bonanza))

Went with Jane to DFO in Homebush on Saturday as well. They had a pretty massive sales. For Esprit lovers they are having 50% off on all marked reduced price. I managed to snag myself some pretty t-shirts, a dress and a working shirt. For 5 items it was less than $80 (ka-ching!!)

Oakley is having sales too.. any two fleece jackets was only for $100. That's approximately $50 a jacket. Bought one for Daryl and Jane bought one for her partner too.

Got some PJ that's nothing to brag about as its the same price..

One very very important purchase I made that I was extremely happy about was my ramekins. I got 4 mini ramekins for $12. What a bargain! I'm excited to try the ramekins next week.. I'm debating what should I be making with the ramekins. sigh.. creme brulee? Or maybe a souffle? I'll keep reading all the blogs and recipe books and hopefully when next week comes I'll be able to make up my mind. I can't wait..

Anyways, that's it for Sunday 16th of May 2010.

xoxo,
Bee

Wedding Preparation - Decorations

Countdown to my wedding: 125 days.

** Decorations**
Have you ever wondered how your meant to be decorating the wedding hall on your special day?? Especially in Asia countries where the hotels have very strict rules in what they allow and don't allow in the halls.. so can you have candles? No.. can you put something up (yes if you don't use nails).. I was planning to decorate around the hall a hanging bubble tea light. Yes you have read it correctly; its HANGING. Attached is a picture of it..imagine it in its full galore.. with candles and soft lighting.. that will be uber romantic..
Its very small.. so it will look neat and tidy like bubbles in the air. I really wish I could get it.. another thing that bothers me is how expensive wedding decorative items are..

Oh well.. so now I'm still stuck in a rut.. I'm really after wedding decoration ideas for my garden theme wedding. Please for anyone who thinks having flowers everywhere will suffice as garden theme wedding please don't be naive.. it won't work. Creativity please..

-SPOTTED- Dome like fairytale garden. Oh.My.God. GORGEOUS..


They are from a local Malaysian decorator call garden fairies. Now; I'm impress with this decorations.. it really does fit my garden theme.. its outrageous.. its gorgeous.. its fabulous... its.. (think nice adjective and add in here).. so my only set back. RM8000 for the DOME. How can i justify paying RM8000 for a DOME. *sigh* Hopes wash down the drain again...








I'm back to square one.. no decorations at the moment and most likely have an inkling feeling that it will be none. Just the standard backdrops and random glitters provided by the hotel staff.

I'll keep you posted but again; if you are reading my blog for some bizarre reason (the only reason why i say bizarre is because i haven't been promoting it much).. please give me your idea on who I should be consulting to achieve my dream garden-theme wedding.

Xoxo,
Bee

Blueberry Pound Cake/Butter Cake

Before we star on serious matters I thought I'll do some ranting..it keeps me alive! =)

Ok.. so recently I've bought my own place..its great and everything BUT the only problem is furniture shopping. Have you ever wondered how expensive it is to buy furniture? OH.MY.GOD! One sofa will easily set you back to a few grand.. with my budget I probably can only afford the arm-rest (maybe half of the arm-rest) so what do you do? You sit on your old bed that now acts like your sofa!..Flip it into two and ta-dah you will get your sofa...Still not as comfy but then will suffice till get enough money for the rest of the sofa.

Rant of the day: number 2.

Today I bought a pre-marinated chicken and instructions was to put it in the oven for 30min 180c. OK; having a blond moment I put it in the oven for 30min but the wrong temperature.. so silly. After realizing the error; I placed it back in the oven and blast it 200c for another 10min hoping that it'll be able to make up the earlier error.. but noooo..after like 15min the chicken will still raw. urgh..hate it when you cannot be innovative to save your hungry belly.

In the next few days I'll start posting up photos of food that I've made and the recipe for it...

So let's start with bluberry pound cake that I made last weekend and it was not exactly a success but a good attempt. Took it to work and was well liked by colleague who helped me finish them.
Followed the recipe from this website (http://rasamalaysia.com/recipe-blueberry-pound-cake/?pid=1650#image-193) and funny enough if you read carefully..it says to preheat oven to 325degrees..again another blond moment.. saw the oven and went..hrmm..the oven doesn't go up to 325. I'll just put it to 250 and put it longer in the oven instead. LOL.. BIG error.. the website is from US!! In Australia; we use Celsius and US uses Fahrenheit.. so I was meant to be putting it in the oven only at about 160 MAX! Tsk...the crust I tell you was SUPER burnt.

But none the less; it was still very nice and very well liked.. so go ahead and follow the recipe. The picture looks divine.. mine doesn't look as nice so I didn't take a picture of it. But to give you a rough idea; I grabbed this photo from Rasa Malaysia website.


Just another note on the recipe. It calls for 3 cups of flour.. one cup of flour was meant to be just for coating the blueberry which I felt was really too much... half a cup of flour would have suffice as it was a waste to throw the flour out after that.

Next attempt would be to make cornflake cookie.. I think I'm going to try every recipe in Rasa Malaysia. LOL..

http://rasamalaysia.com/cornflake-cookies-recipe/?pid=2914#image-5727

Stay tune to hear all about my latest cooking disaster.