A Wedding, A Charity and An Election

The Wedding - He was just a little boy when we and his parents, first  moved into the neighborhood. He and his little brother is just a couple years older than my boy then and went to the same school both in primary and high school.

Today, Adrian is a fine young man and has found a life to share with the girl of his dreams. The elder of two boys, Adrian weds Angeline on the last weekend of April just before our intense 14th General Election.

Two souls but a single thoughts, Two hearts that beats as one.
Congats Adrian and Angeline, wishing you both a blissful life and happiness always.

The Charity - The Penan Charity Drive is back !
Held at the same venue as the last, The Verdant Hotel in Kuala Lumpur on March 5th
I volunteered again this round  and like the last time couldn't resist not buying a few more to add to my collection . Well considered that  my contribution to the Penan caused.

This dish known as Sarawak Tomato Koay Teow (Flat noodle)

originates from Sarawak in the Borneo Island

June my partner in crime (Black dress) at the Charity sales with my long time friend, Datin Sally (in White overcoat) from college who came to shop in support of the Penan's plight managed to steal some time for lunch.

The Election - A moment of history : For the first time in our history, the opposition coalition Pakatan Harapan not only won our 14th General Election but saw a huge wave of millennials going to the polls for the first time ever ending a 60 years rule by the then governing Barisan Nasional  who had ruled this country since our country's independence. It also saw our overseas voters was ever so determine to have their votes included despite some received their ballot papers late. A facebook was even created where  people  volunteered to be personal courier  from airport to the voting destination  so that overseas voters could reach out to ensure that their ballot papers arrive on time. That was how determine we are to want a change in government.

Since this Election date fell on a Wednesday, with much criticism and outcry from the people , the then PM announced the day as a nation's public holiday.

The win scored a historic shift of power and our now newly elected Prime Minister Tun Dr Mahathir who was our longest serving premier of 22 years and 4th Prime Minster from 1981 to 2003 is now the world's oldest premier to return to power at age 92. Another first in our history, is the newly appointed Deputy Prime Minster;  Dr Wan Azizah is the first lady Deputy Prime Minister in the country.

With the win, the newly elected Prime Minister announced a two days public holidays 

With a total of five days off from work, my kitchen was finally smoking , LOL

On election day I made lunch

Nyonya Herbs Rice served with Mustard Green Stew (Chai Boey),

Fried sesame chicken in soy sauce and Salted eggs

Breakfast for the day after

Blue Pea Kueh Sago with shredded coconut coating

(Steam Tapioca Pearls in Blue Pea Flower color coated with shredded coconut)

For afternoon tea on Saturday

Taro and Sweet Purple Potato sandwich with Sweet Sticky Rice Cake (Nin Gao) fritters

Sweet Dessert Nyonya Bubur Cha-cha

(Potato, Taro, Pumpkin in coconut Milk)

Lastly, my mother's day bouquet from the kids and the five days break ended

Thank you everyone for coming by and leaving me your comments in my last post. Hope you enjoy looking into another non-crafty post.

The countdown : 10 days

Countdown to the festivity : 10 days to the eve
My demon bake ! The most difficult bake will have to be this Kuih Bangkit, it's part of Nyonya delicacy, Kuih Bangkit as in Coconut Cream Cookies or literally translated to Rise Cookies takes days ahead to prepare and I need to be prepared mentally to embark on this " melt-in-the-mouth" cookies. So for the third year, I am with my obsession again and some how my dough didn't felt good to begin with. The recipe said knead into a pliable dough and how pliable is pliable when I have not seen one ? Unlike many people who had this hands me down recipe, I had none, for the women from my mom and her generations are the liberal women who actually had careers and don't actually sweat it out in the kitchen.  I failed to obtain that "melt-in-the-mouth" texture, thou it's very aromatic from the coconut cream this round, so something is rightly done here, it's just that I failed miserably to achieve that  "melt-in-the-mouth" texture. However the cookies improved with a decent softness the next day. Threw away what remains of the dough after two trays. Sigh!

Nian Gao - Always, there is some thing new that caught my interest.

The Sticky Glutinous Cake is a welcome sight every Chinese New Year and it only appears once a year. Traditionally it is a must have in every household as it symbolize progress, advancement and growth. I made my first Nian Gao this year instead of buying from the market. The process is said to be tedious, well, not after one tried at baking the Kuih Bangkit. The hardest is getting the sugar to caramelize to a certain degree (great amount of patient here)  to obtain that distinctive color so to pass it onto the Nian Gao when it's done, and the next is most probably time, it takes about 3 to 4 hours of steaming and constantly checking the water on the steamer meaning no sneaking out of the house for a Starbucks grande.  I think I am addicted to this !

Project Pyjamas, a charity drive by NWUKMSIA (Nordic Walk UK-Malaysia) to raise awareness for a little bedtime comfort for the children in the foster homes or orphanages held  at our Perdana Botani Lake Garden on the last weekend of January. It's been ages since I went for a walk or a jog at this garden in the city. This was a  fun  Charity project, with people coming in all sorts of their ideal pyjamas wear.  SpongeBob , Mickey and Minion print Pjs including some traditional PJs  appeared on the scene that morning; spotted also a lady in robe and rollers in her hair, a lady in kaftan, some sporting guys in their sarongs and even teddy bears came along too. The shy ones are in tee and trousers or short. Mommies and kids came too and the seniors came in a groups. The charity drive is aimed at providing pyjamas for the kids in orphanages and the walk is open to the public by registration.

The Lake in the park

 The stream

Cascading waters

The weather was beautiful, the sun came out late which made the walk even more pleasant

 Jaimis who went with me found the clown who made each of us  a baloon crown, LOL 

Spotted too are these few ladies who came in their make-believe see thru lingerie 

My last bake will be the crunchy seaweed crackers which is house favorite and a cake to bake and getting the house ready for the festivity in 10 days. I still have the curtains to sew and my "cai" to put up.

Thank you Carol, Vickie, Brigitte and Meari for visiting and  leaving me your sweet comments in my last post. Seriously, I will need to improve the shape of my Doggie Cookies.

My Cherry Blossom wreath is done Brigitte only that  I will need some help in getting a good photoshoot of the wreath , hopefully I have another last blog post before I take a break for the festivity 

Till then, take care everyone and have a wonderful weekend

January

Festivity countdown : Chinese New Year in 20 days today

It is uncommon and almost a trend today to simply go out and purchase your cookies for the Chinese New Year celebration.  Cookies by the jars and tins are already on displayed on the shelves from sundry shops to the malls weeks ago.   It's been some ten years since I started baking my own cookies for the festivity simply because I wanted to introduce some traditional cakes and cookies to the kids then. It's like I found my reasons to bake. 

Having the kids around is like it's never too early  for a sweet treat, only it disappear too quickly and might not last till the festivity, since I don't intend to bake a lot this year, the two not so little mouse in the house are warned about the "Do Not Touch" labels  the moment the last tray comes out of the oven, LOL

 Green Pea cookies is replacing my Peanut cookies this year

It's a doggie year, so the Horlicks Doggie are here to stay. It's a house favorites and these doggies are personalized with character, can never get two a like and definitely not when it's a tray full of doggies

I didn't get to make any Roosters shape cookies for the Roosters year but made a few with this batch to bid the Rooster year a farewell while Diane thought that the doggie should get some extra fun characters away from my mostly frowning doggies, LOL..

I 've learned to fold a doggie origami from the "hongbao " (red packet/envelope) that you see in the above picture.

Cherry blossoms are always associated with the Chinese New Year, after all it is also known as the Spring festival. I'm making a cherry blossom wreath this year. This is still a work in progress.
On a happy note,  I have completed my gift exchange for the girls meet in March, now that I got a piece of my mind taken off, it back to the kitchen for more bakes.

The Tun Razak Exchange building caught my eyes for a month or so every morning on my route to Diane's internship at the hospital. I never knew then that this will be our soon to be tallest building in the country surpassing our Twin Towers at 450m above ground due for completion mid of this year. It will be the tallest in South East Asia and top 15 in the world until the next skyscraper made it's debut somewhere. 

Till my next post, thank you for visiting and I truly appreciate  your time taken to leave me your comments in my last post.

Wishing you a blessed day !

Sew can do

It has been some weeks of waiting anxiously for news of my Christmas in July package swap. It has a long way to go and I hope it arrived safely. A few more days to wait. While waiting, I had allow myself to be in this "flatness" and therefore made no impressive progress in crafting. These are only bits and pieces of this and that where lack of enthusiasm can still manage .

A little design I scribble while waiting in the queue out of boredom and thought I made into a red stitchery

Finishing it into a pincushion on a small palate

I had to wait till the eleventh hour to create a birthday card for a July baby

Took me 2 attempts at the sewing machine to complete upcycling a bag from an old denim

This is as near to an autumn scenery we get

Occasionally we see the hilly terrain changes colors to such, naturally we are oblivious to the minimalist changes of our foliage.

A route I took almost weekly on my way to the pool

We are having afternoon thunder storm rain again after some weeks of hot spells, when it's hot it's hot and humid.

Thank you all for your visits and have a wonderful weekend.

Here comes rain

We are experiencing some heavy downpour lately from early afternoon to late evening resulting in flash floods in several areas in the city. The thunderstorm rain had caused unexpected flash floods. On days such as these, I am glad I no longer work in the city but closer to home.

Mid year brings fruit season. The first to flood the market and night market towards the end of April or early May are the various variety of Mangoes. It's seasonal and by now it's almost end of it's season soon to be taken over by the foul smelling spiky skin durians and the purple mangosteen. In between these fruits season, we see a little more of blueberries and strawberries as well as cherries with it's rate going a little cheaper than usual.

Catching the last lot of mangoes, I made a batch of Mango Chutney to go with my roast chicken.

Chinese Dumpling Festival aka the Dragon boat festival falls on Thursday, 9. No work holiday for such festivity.  Dragon boat race are part of the festivity held at state level only at certain states where there's sea or large enough lake.  I am contented with another year of polishing my dumpling wrapping skill.  I made only 700gm of Glutionous rice dumpling this round . Like last year,  I made the  Nyonya version plus testing out  a small batch of Ginger Chicken flavor this year. I didn't soaked the rice blue but left it white instead. Made this last Friday so I can have some delivered to Diane during the weekend.

Prepping the ingredients. It takes 2 days to prep. First the ingredients and the leaves need to be boiled followed by washing and soaking the glutinous rice with the bunga telang (blue pea) to give the rice it's blue color . Day 2 sees to the finishing and boiling the wrapped dumplings for some three hours. I have posted about this festivity before. You can read more of this festivity here . This is only my third year at wrapping the chang.  

A little peek for a swap. I have also crochet a little something to go with my swap.

Last Sunday I went to our old Railway Station to fetch mom home from her a week long visiting her sister. This is the administration building located opposite the train station which is contrast with the station. Designed by Arthur Benison Hubback, a British who incorporated the unique Anglo - Asian architecture in the region with the Neo-Moorish/Mughal/Indo-Saracenic style that was completed in 1910.

Today, this is no longer the main station as a new one, known as the KL Sentral was built to take over it's function. A bus operator running the North-South Express route has taken office here.

 View from one of the arch. I had always wanted to take a shot of a bird's eye.

This week I manage to finish two Christmas design.

Actually one, the reindeer is still short of 2 snowflakes

Bent Creek and Lizzie Kate design.

My poor princess making her statement, LOL !

Wishing all a wonderful good week ahead.

Thanks for coming by

Catching up and Finishing up

About the WSG Birthday Exchange

These are the fabrics I picked for my finishing

and these trimmings

which I ended not using it

RED HEXA SAL

Six more done, completed just in time before November ends

Counting 45 Hexa Flowers 7 more and 1 month left

Thirty-Two years later

A welcome home luncheon for Michelle (sited in the center) 

who flew in from Kansas, USA for a visit and

for this meet up at PUTIEN, Chinese Restaurant

Our afternoon lunch

Top Row

Fried Toufo/Yam Fritters/Bittergourd with Honey

Middle Row

Steam Chicken/Pickle Papaya & Hazelnuts/ Chinese noodle

Last Row

Steam Fish/Fried Vermicelli/Pork Ribs

 Desserts by Putien
Variety of Yam and potatoes in
Pumpkin or Coconut Milk and Jelly

Hereafter, we adjourned to Betjernm & Barton for Tea

The motifs crocheted tunic for Diane in Lilac is finally done

and fitted. Just hope one day she will wear it and I'll remember to take photo. 

For now, she ain't gonna model it for me. 

Our WSG Birthday Exchange meet is this weekend.

It's finally happening!!

My exchange are all done and packed. 

The shops are now filled with all things Christmas

and my boxes look Christmassy too as I wanted the same box design

Sorry the pictures here are a little dull as we  have entered the Monsoon season, which means higher rainfall and gloomy days and shorter sunny day light. As I am writing this now, it's raining very heavily outside and it's kinda chilly inside.

Thank you all for coming by again and especially to all who left comments in my last post.

September,

I thought I would have a bit more of me time in September with Diane in hostel.
I thought I would have more time to concentrate on crafting since I no longer have to chauffer her around and wait on her. I thought I  could also keep up with blogging and my blog rounds. But no, I just don't know how the time went by so quickly leaving me feeling a little lost for not being able to finish what I had planned. There was so much to do without actually accomplished anything worth mentioning except those that came with a deadline like the Halloween Mail Art and my Red Hexa SAL. By the way, Diane is home on sem break for a week but she will have her stuff to keep her busy.

Speaking of which, I am a little worried that I still have no news of the Mail Art reaching it's new home. It flew slightly over two weeks now and the postie track and trace records at my end here recorded it boarded the plane on 15 September, until todate the destination postal department has not provided a feedback on their delivery status.

September has been depressing, imagine waking up in the morning with a blurry skyline . I thought it was my eyesight that's failing. But the sky is shrouded with a thick pall of smoke and smelling burnt of organic material . Our air quality in recent weeks  deteriorated  and worsen tremendously with the prevailing winds continued to blow haze from the Sumatra fire. The light thunder shower in the late morning and early afternoon only provide temporary respite. The sad part is that this is becoming  like an annual haze season for us which should never even have existed, if only 'the government concerned' had exercise some form of enforcement and worked their MOA. At one point the Air Pollutant index breached over 200 in unhealthy mark that forced schools to closed.

Our skies turned grey, smokey and gloomy.

The effect of haze exposure may caused a variety of adverse condition where health is concerned
and thus forcing people to abandon outdoor activities. Sadly the thunder showers in the late morning and early afternoon is not enough to overcome the situation.

This was mid morning at the Lake Gardens when the sun should be shining brightly and full of joggers and children in the playground but now looking almost deserted.

The eight moon has come again, according to the Chinese Lunar Calendar. It's celebrating the moon , known as Mooncake Festival or Lantern Festival that falls on last Sunday

I bake my mooncake again

no Jelly mooncake this year

The before and after bake

Traditional Mooncake with White Lotus paste and Single Egg Yolk

I haven't been into any serious baking lately

I received a box of mooncakes by RT Pastry House which look like the Penang Tau Sar Peh that's worth giving a mentioned because it's not shaped like the traditional ones.

Thanks to Edwin

Four more done for the month of September

My hexies now totaling 37/52

Found this Mooncake box from Baker's Cottage Bakery to display

Vincent bought me this when I asked him to check it out at Kino two weeks ago

Me and some crafting ladies; June, Margaret W, BJ and Jackie finally had our long awaited meet-up when we decided to go stashing at Spotlight at IPC Centre

Here's my haul

All kinds of stitching and paper craft notions including a ball of  Patons Cotton in Off Cream

for doily crochet for SuSee. I'm not a doily person actually, I think I had enough of it along time ago.

 MW also became the 'unofficially Spotlight spokeperson' for these grinder cum shaker

She's so convincingly good and I am sold without second thoughts, LOL

A lil'surprised from MW.

Open lid Mason Jar

Endless possibilities

Some books I picked up this month

I'm very sure  I don't have these titles

A black tunic lacy blouse I started 2 years ago finally saw me finishing it a week ago

This is before wash

An afternoon English Tea at TWG Tea at Sunway Pyramid earlier of the month with Alice and Kimmi

A new toy, my smoothie blender

A visit to an Aunt, DH's who now occupy the ancestral home had me wondered into her garden. Besides growing vegetables, I found this rose bush

and this sweet pink daisy

I am currently working on my Annual Exchange, hopefully I get it completed by December this year, so that's WIP for now.

That's all I can squeeze in for this month. Hopefully in the coming weeks I get to be a little more regular with my blog rounds and with my blog post.

Here's my furbaby snuggled up on a seemingly cold, gloomy day. Even she stays indoors a lot lately.

Wishing you beautiful bright skies where ever you may be.