What a X'mas dinner!



Little Beanie also joined us in the X'mas feasting!



Home-cured salmon with poached quail eggs and caviar 



Choco lava cake, absolutely YUMMZ!



Cheers to Chef Han for the very delicious X'mas dinner!



Wines for the night. These people sure can drink!

 For the past few years, Hub and I have been organizing charity Christmas dinners where we would provide the food and wine, and the guests would donate accordingly. We would then choose a charity organization to donate the pooled money that we had raised during the charity dinner.

This year, we will be donating to Lions Home for the Elders.

And I must say that this year, we had the best X'mas dinner ever!

First, we had the best fortune to have Chef Han, a promising up and coming chef, who is looking to open a restaurant next year, to prepare and cook for us. For the very first time, I wasn't slaving away in the kitchen and could actually sit down and enjoy the food and wine. ;)

Secondly, the food prepared by Chef Han was like a hundred times better than mine. It was RESTAURANT standard with restaurant presentation. We had 5 courses and everything was exquisite yet home-made by Chef Han. Even the cured salmon! It was the best "private kitchen" dinning experience ever.

Beanie had a lot of fun too, mingling with everyone and raising her water bottle to "cheers" with the guests. Very very cute!

All in all, it was a wonderful X'mas dinner. We can't wait to throw another one next year. However, by then Chef Han will most probably have opened his own restaurant, so I doubt he can be our guest chef anymore...

Nonetheless, it was a wonderful evening to have my hubba, Beanie and good friends with me on Christmas's eve. What a X'mas dinner, a perfect close to 2012!

"Peek-a-boo, mama!"

A cheeky photo of Beanie, just wana share with all of you. ;)

Merry X'mas and a Happy Happy New Year ahead!

Beanie's update

A little update on Beanie:

She is hitting 16 months soon, Geez! My baby is officially a toddler at 1 year 4 months. She has started to exert her independence and at times, insisted of doing things her way.

Example:
We were supposed to head out for an outing, and so I got her to wear a pretty little dress. Beanie got very upset that she had to wear a dress and started a melt down. She pulled and tugged at her dress while screaming her head off. End of the day, I had to change out the dress and she wore a pair of tights and a T-shirt instead. Ok... Beanie is NOT into dresses.

Beanie has also started to say a few words. Below is her list of words:
1) MaMa
2) PaPa
3) Car (she will say "CAR...." whenever she sees a car. She will climb on the sofa everyday to look out of the window to spot for cars)
4) Bus (Same action as above, just that instead of "car....", she will say "Bahhhhh")
5) Turtle (We have a puzzle where she has to match various sea creatures to their respective cut-out shapes and somehow, she has taken a fancy to Turtle)
6) Bear (All animals are "bear" to her. When she sees a dog, she will go "BEAR!!!". When she sees a cat, she will go "BEAR" too)
7) Milk (sounds more like "ilk" actually)
8) Bird (She will point out pigeons and go "Bird....")
9)马 (the only chinese word so far, thanks to a picture book)

Beanie has also began to connect pictures with actual items. Just earlier this evening, she was trying to tell me that she wanted to eat grapes. She kept pointing towards the fridge but both my maid and myself had no idea what Beanie was trying to say. Exasperated, she fetched one of her picture books, flipped to a page and pointed to a bunch of grapes.

"Ohhh, so you want to eat grapes?"

Beanie nodded and ran to the fridge. And so I gave her a little bunch of grapes to munch. She took the bowl of grapes to her picture book, pointed at the picture of grapes again and begun to eat her grapes quietly.

All these while, I was very amused by her. My little Beanie is growing up so fast!

Missing Cookie... ...

Cookie has been missing for the past 4 weeks. I've looked around the whole block for her, asked a few neighbors whether they have seen Cookie, but nope. No signs of her and none of the neighbors knew her whereabouts either.

Sigh. I really hope that she is well and alive.

The day when we adopted Cookie as our cat, I kind of knew that this day would happen. Although we took her in "officially", she was still free to roam out of our apartment whenever she felt like it. Many a times, she would spend her afternoons chasing after birds at the void deck or I would catch her eating grass at one of the grass patches at our car park.

As much as I always call her "Cookie, the Stupid Cat". I really miss her a lot and wish that she will somehow find her way home.

A short getaway to Phuket

A little garland to welcome Beanie to the resort

Family Photo!

Mommy, can I order this?

So after various rounds of debates with the Hub, both of us finally decided to lug Beanie along to our short getaway to Phuket. Luckily for us, our neighbors came along with us and the extra 2 pairs of hands came in very handy to carry Beanie around.

We stayed at JW Marriott Home Vacation Club 4-days-3-nights FOR FREE?! But there was a catch, we had to sit through a 90 mins sales pitch for the hotel's "vacation club points purchase scheme". For Hub and I, both of us went for this free stay with our eyes open but ears closed. So, after 2 hours, we still walked out of the presentation without buying or signing anything.

Yay! *do a victory dance*

But seriously, for a free stay. It was totally worth it. The hotel room was more like a service apartment with a fully a equipped kitchen, 2 bedrooms and decent size dinning & living area. Hotel service was prompt and every staff was polite and helpful.

All in all, this short getaway was very enjoyable. So much so that, we are planning for another short trip to Penang at the end of December!

Haha! And yes, Beanie will go with us too!

Beanie, the little coffee connoisseur

"Mmmmm... the coffee tastes good!"

"Wah! The Pecan Lime Tart looks yummy too!"

Chye Seng Huat Hardware: A very cool and chill-out place.

Check out the retro laps and window grills!

Beanie is acting cute in front of the camera again

We checked out 2 very cool coffee joints recently: Chye Seng Huat Hardware (a review by chubby hubby) and Loysel's Toy Cafe (review by Lady Iron Chef). Both blogs wrote excellent reviews on the cafes, thus I will not repeat.

What I will add is that both cafes are opened by the same guys who are behind Papa Palheta, so the coffee is good. Both cafes are situated at really "ulu" places but they are always packed??!! Both cafes have really cool vibes and are surprisingly very baby-friendly.

And yup, we did bring Beanie along to conduct our baby-friendy-or-not tests and both cafes passed with flying colors! Both cafes have open spaces for little tykes to run around, so parents can actually sit back, relax and smell a decent cup of coffee.

Ahh..... .... bliss.

So if you are looking for a chill-out place for a lazy sunday brunch or a catch-up with friends, both cafes are recommended if you are adventurous enough for something off the beaten track.