Tray of treat

I have developed a new habit.

Tea on bed before sleep. I have loads of tea to finish - bought in Sri Lanka earlier this year. 

Tonight is extra special as we are ushering a long Deepavali weekend. So I assembled a tray of treat.. 

I used one of my dainty tea cups that I secured from eBay during my UK days. It says 'Aynsley England Bone China' at the bottom.  The design reminds me of the Renaissance.. or the Russian aristocracy eras..

The cake plate is a saucer from Royal Albert bone china, also from eBay. It comes with a matching cup. 

The fruit plate is a cute leaf-shaped autumn colour. It comes in 4. I got them from a second-hand shop in PJ. 

The vintage metal tray belonged to my arwah mak. I actually spray painted 'Let's Bake' on it and used it for display. 

Hot peach cuppa tea...yummy sponge rolls...fruits to lessen guilt....cooling after-rain air outside... my legs are warmly tucked under the blanket... Nigella Smith's Christmas is on tv.... and my head is busy making plans for the garden. 

I am ready for the weekend!

889 days!

889 days since my last post!

Truth is I forgot my password.

Now I'm back! So much has changed. Moved into a new house. New purpose.. new priorities.. but still the same passion for making beautiful things and enjoying a simple life.

I promise to write more.

Bobbins storage

A short post before bedtime. I made this bobbins storage out of a chopping board. The wood is quite soft so nailing it was a breeze. It can store 50 bobbins.

Total damage = RM12.05

• Chopping board = RM5.90 (from Daiso)
• Nails = RM6.15 (got nicer ones from Ace Hardware)
• Paints = Free (used Imran's school's watercolor supplies)
• Brushes = Free (Aisya's paint brushes)

This is a shot during the process. 

A fun project to keep me through the week. Huhu..  

First Garden Love Never Dies

We had very fond memories of our lives in Skudai. We had a pretty garden!  These are some pics. We moved in there in 2004 when Imran was almost 1 year old.  These pics were taken in 2006 when he was about 3 years old, Aisya was just born, and the garden was lush. 

See the bandage on Imran's hand? It was from water drip -
he was just discharged from hospital for high fever.
We thought he couldn't accept the arrival of baby Aisya. 

The garden was quite immaculate. My husband, Ian, had a back-breaking job every day and night doing up the garden. The land was originally full of big stones, cements, etc. 

We had almost every plant they sold at the nursery there. Close to 100 types if I'm not mistaken. Some made it. Most died. We spent a lot on the garden. We had the same routine every weekend - wake up, McD big breakfast (euwww, I know but somehow we enjoyed it back then), nursery hopping, gardening, gardening, laundry, minor cooking, goreng pisang for tea in the garden, gardening, gardening, out for dinner,..

Imran was complaining to MahMah about baby Aisya..
MahMah and KongKong used to come down to Johor regularly
to visit us. We didn't mind having free gardeners!  

We designed every aspect of the garden ourselves. I wanted to create an English garden. We didn't know a lot of the plant names, so we called them... white snake plant, the japanese plant, the lalang, I can't remember anymore.. We had Imran's 3rd birthday party cum housewarming party there. Everyone was quite impressed with the garden (and food of course hehe). It was a nice day, breezy afternoon. The garden was perfect as our lot only received morning sun. 

This sitting area was opposite to sliding door at the side of the house. I wish I had a better pic of it. The idea was to create a focal point, a view from the house. We planted morning glory as the backdrop. The flowers bloomed pretty purple every morning, up to 11 o'clock. That bench we bought from a second-hand yard for either rm100 or rm80. It was actually a school canteen bench. I painted it green to cover the original horrible, shiny, orangey paint.  That round pot that looked rustic was intentional - got it from one of the nurseries. I hated shiny, new things last time. So anything old and weathered found itself into my car trunk. 

Hello budak bulat... we used to call him Imran Doong

After staying in the house and slaving ourselves to do the garden for 2 years, we decided to make our lives complicated. We moved to the UK when I had to study. After one year, here's the garden in 2008. Abandoned and sad, but was still full of characters.

Aisya was bigger - almost 3 years old. Cheeky monkehhh. That's
the stone table we used to have our weekends' afternoon goreng
pisang and Mondays' pasar malam dinner. 

Ian built the bbq pit himself. Perfectly crooked but functional.
He even built little cubbies with doors at the bottom. The white
and red combo was intentional to suit the whole eclectic feel
of the house.  There used to be purple lalang behind the pit.
We buried our dead kittens there too!

Here's the whole layout of the garden. It's quite a good size.

I've got 8 fingers!

We bought the stone table for RM500, I think. Bloody heavy. Great investment.

The raw brick wall was also intentional to create that English garden feel. Ian chose the bricks himself. We wanted something which was quite rough and uneven in color. I remembered we told the contractor that we didn't want it plastered and even taught him how he should do the cement joining roughly. I'm sure he thought we were crazy. The un-plastered brick wall gave our house an identity. It was very easy to tell people where we lived. 'Oh rumah yang dinding tak plaster tu ke? Kenapa macam tu? Dah siap ke tu? Haha.. it was very different that time. Everybody else's house was smooth and nice with flowery and shiny wrought iron grill. 

The wall from outside. When we left, the ivy was just starting
to cover the bottom wall. It had grown so nicely since then. Ian also
built that plastic awning there. He was really Mr DIY then!

Didn't I tell you that we had a good life then? The house is currently being rented out. We are hoping that one day we could return.

Love you nee..abang...adik...

Cheese platter and stuff

We've been having cheese platter with baguette for dinner A LOT lately. It is very convenient, requires no cooking, and tastes heaven.
The chicken and leek pie is a new recipe tried from the internet. It turned out good - healthy version as it didn't have any cream.
Staging the food is the FUN part. The explosion of colors make it so appetizing.

this serving from the other day.. smoked salmon, cheddar,
goat cheese with filling, humous, corn salad, pistachio nuts, etc. 

smoked salmon

After 3 years... and a little sewing project

Geezzzzz.... my first post after 3 years. Truth is I did try to write something but I couldn't access the blog. Some account issue.

Nyways... just put on this bedsheet. Been wanting to sew a super wide bed sheet that isn't easily untucked like the normal store-bought fitted sheet. I found this fabric from Nagoya. Standard fabric that they normally use for hotels. Extra wide. I bought 5 meters. Took some out to make 4 pillow cases. RM29.90/meter. Quite pricey but good durable material.

She got to try it first. Oh yeah... new cat. Say meoww to everyone Lucky,, :)

Melaka nightmare

We went for a short trip to Melaka During the Chinese New Year break. We didn't plan for it. Ops redah and terjah.

We wished we never left home. 

We arrived in Melaka only to be greeted by massive traffic in Ayer Keroh. Too many attractions located on that stretch. And too many traffic lights. Melaka is really the land of traffic lights. And grave yards! We could see 1Malaysia even in the afterlife. We went straight to Holiday Inn. It was fully booked. The next one was also full. And the next. And the next. We called almost 20 hotels, pricey and budget. No availability! The kids were already whining blaming us for bad planning.

We went to Umbai supposedly famous for its ikan bakar. It was totally awful. Fish not fresh, slow service (waited 2 hours but only half of our orders came), and pricey! That's our first and last.

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Still no luck with the hotel we decided to drive back home at 10 pm (after spending only 4 hours there). On the way to the highway I saw a signboard of a hotel. Told my husband we should give it a try just in case there's availability. It was a few minutes away from the main road. We were greeted by a big porch and bright lights. I thought wow this is so grand and promising. To my delight they did have rooms! The kids jumped with joy. I chose a cheaper room as we'll only use it for sleeping.  After checking in while the kids bathing I decided to google the hotel as I never heard of it before. To my horror I found this Puteri Resort Ayer Keroh Melaka     That's exactly our room!!!!!!

Without finishing the reading I told my husband we need to change room immediately. I only explained afterwards. We took a more expensive room. It was obviously refurbished so different from the haunted one. I did more internet research next day about the hotel. Some guests reported spooky experience there. Any coincidentally my friend said one of our company's staff died in the swimming pool there!

The breakfast was horrible. And returning home we had to endure 6 hours of public holiday traffic though we took an inner road.

All in all Melaka is a nightmare.