Hip Hip Hooray!

My, my dream has finally become a reality! Saw this on Sunday, but wanted to wait till I received Kelli’s email before writing about it. On Sunday, as I saw the page and took my breath to scroll down the page, one designer selected at a time, I thought, sigh, looks like I’m not one of them… Till hallelujah! The last picture came on and it’s mine!!! I am a guest designer for a week in November for Pink Sketches! Wow! Though it’s for a week, it’s nonetheless, a great opportunity to work with these ladies that have been providing fuelling for my creative endeavour every week. I’m so looking forward to receiving my sketch! Thanks Kelli and all the designers for believing in me! I’m so thrilled to be part of the team! Yes! Thank you Lord!

Beautiful Weekend

This weekend was fruitful. Saturday saw my youth ministry heading to the local park for a prayer retreat.

This was the view of my estate from the park. Lovely, isn’t it? So we spent the day in prayer, seeking God and reflecting on our lives. For me, it was a good break from the hustle and bustle of work as I give thanks for His goodness, as well as consider where my life is heading. In the midst of writing while enjoying a picnic, this little guy joined me:

Incredibly happy that the camera was good enough to capture the details on this little friend. When the day ended in the evening, we were thankful that the Lord held up the skies and though there were times where it threatened to rain, it did not. Instead, we got a gentle breeze blowing through the afternoon (it should have been real hot!) and the Beloved even spied a white hawk (I think) catch a fish from the pond. Wow! We must do this more often. Gives me reason to use my dear picnic basket too=)

On a side note, my new friend, Sophia, who was generous to give a RAK (read this) sent not only what was promised, but took the time to create a card and to throw in some other goodies too! Thanks Sophia! You are a gem! These greeted me when I picked them from the post office:

So my dear Sophia, expect this to reach you soon, as I return your kindness:

This is what I really like about the creative world, where the heart is in the art we create, and we get the prvilege of blessing others. Similarly, part of our daily blessing is the joy that we get to cook our own meals, to know that we are actually provided for my the Lord. So this week’s lunch box stars my first humble attempt at chicken curry.

 

This was prepared on Sunday, where amazingly, because the Beloved and I are learning to sleep early and wake up early, got to cook, clean, read and even go to the park in the evening to cycle! Wow! It was absolutely fulfilling! I’m working on improving my cycling skills and plan to do so in the next few months. So no pics of our cycling trip for now. Instead, as the Beloved would say, “Enough pics for now!” Poor thing, my sole target for shooting!

 

So here’s to a great week ahead and I hope you have one too! We are looking forward to yet another creative and satisfying weekend!

Campaign for Creativity

Saw this lovely badge, which is now on my side bar, on Donna Downey’s blog. She is one special scrapper as I always remember the time she took the effort to reply to my comment posted on her blog. Now, this is certainly not an easy task, given the massive amount of comments celebrity scrappers like her receive on a daily basis. As such, Donna has always been a reminder on the importance of maintaining the personal touch in a world like ours today, where things move extremely quickly, and many of us are overwhelmed with the numerous stuff we have to complete.

With that said, I was completely excited when I saw this on Donna’s blog (great source of inspiration!)! Donna has come up with a campaign for creativity, where the message reads:

“believe in your creative potential,
enjoy the creative process,
try something new,
explore new possibilities,
but most of all believe.“

I echo that a 100%! For me, being in the kitchen is always a source of creativity, where through food preparation, i get to play with different ingredients and also reap the benefit of eating healthy. The same goes when I chance upon an image, whether in a magazine or online and immediately my creative wheels start spinning in my head! Those moments are definitely amazing. So with this badege placed on my blog, I’m going to make a concerted effort to act more on that inner voice of mine, instead of merely revelling in them and woosh…they are gone…

Thanks Donna for this timely reminder!

Now there’s a great crunch…..arggh!

The last few days have been rainy here. As much as I have set my heart to running home, dear Mr Sun decided to hide behind his blanket of clouds… So when the working pants showed signs of being overstretched, I decided to do a series of crunches at home. The Beloved must have found it amusing when he saw me at it, grinning occasionally, when he finally told me that “you need to curl yourself as you come up, not lift your torso.” So that meant that all the great satisfaction I felt of having been doing the crunches religiously were thrown out of the window! However, under his guidance, it all soon worked out and oh boy, did my abs feel the strain! It felt good at the end though=)

In this cool weather, it was a treat being able to eat a bowl of yummy snow fox dessert!

   

This is a dessert which some call hashima. Boiled this in the slow cooker with red dates and dried longans. It was certainly refreshing after a hard day’s work.

On the scrapping front, been doing a layout of my nephews. Been having fun playing with my sizzix to create these titles. I like how the colors mimic those on a pizza.:

Weekends & Hols

The Beloved and I enjoy cooking together. This weekend was no exception. For us, part of living simply include preparing healthy meals for ourselves. We pack our lunches for work and eat a light dinner. As such, the menu varies from pasta salads, curries, to soups. This week was good as there was the additional public holiday that resulted in Chocolate Mousse Cupcakes being baked. We adore them!

  

Don’t you just love those strawberries? These used to be the answer when I was asked “What’s your favourite fruit?” These days ,they make a very, very rare appearance at home only when the price is right. I wanted to capture their beautiful color against our kitchen floor tiles.

Last week’s menu was passion fruit pasta salad, after our grocery shopping saw us giving a go at passion fruit that were everywhere! These lunch boxes were accompanied by grilled chicken which I experimented on by marinating them with mustard, a current favourite of ours. Yup, that’s our week’s worth of food all lined up. I used to think that the food will end up not being fresh, but was proven wrong when I learnt that the trick was proper refrigeration.

 

As for this week, it’s back to once again trying out fish head curry. I have slowly learnt to eat the head, but nonetheless will prefer the meat anytime. So what you see in the picture is actually my share of the meal.

 

So with all these yummies coming out from the kitchen, I guess it was worth it bringing the cart with me to Orchard Road. It naturally led to weird stares from people wondering what is this “Auntie” doing with this frumpy cart in Singapore’s popular shopping district! Haha…In any case, I had fun on the train capturing our trusty cart that returns home with us every weekend filled.

 

On the line of food, we are working with our youth ministry to raise goodies for a project called “Rice to the Occasion”. In our bid to reach out to the poor, we are collecting items like toothpaste, oil and washing powder to give to needy people in the community. The original idea was to give rice, before we were informed by the family service centre that the families needed other items more than rice. On our planning trip yesterday, it was certainly a humbling experience looking at the conditions fellow Singaporeans live in. This was my favourite shot for the day:

 

Just as the Lord has blessed us, we want to bless others. So here’s to continually taking good care of our healths, eating healthy and living a life that is a blessing to others! Looking forward to many more creative Weekends!