The year that was - 2011

I knew 2011 was a big year for me but I hadn't realized just how exciting it's been!

In 2011, I...

moved to my first home
watched my first opera (Carmen)
watched my first ballet (Romeo and Juliet)
went glamping
went bollywood dancing
went for a flying trapeze class (and failed really badly)
learned to make candles
tried a new recipe every week
got engaged!
got married!
honeymooned in the Maldives and didn't want to leave

It was a year of many firsts for me.

What did you do in 2011?

Christmas wreath cookies

It features edible glitter stars!!!I could admit that I've been lazy or perhaps uninspired, but I rather say I lost my baking mojo. But all it took was the ingredient "edible glitter" that turned it right back on for me.



If you like to bake these little glittery goodies yourself, the recipe is as follows.

Ingredients:

3 cups self-raising flour
125g butter
60ml milk
2/3 cup caster sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 eggs
Edible glitter (I used stars!)

For lemon icing
3 cups icing sugar
2 tablespoons lemon juice

Steps::

Preheat oven to 180 degrees Celsius. Grease oven trays; line with baking paper.
Sift flour into bowl, rub in butter. Combine milk and sugar in saucepan, stir over low heat until sugar dissolved, add extract; cool 5 minutes. Stir combined warm milk mixture and egg into flour mixture.
Knead dough on floured surface until smooth.
Roll rounded teaspoons of dough into 13 cm sausages. Twist 2 sausages together, form into circles; press edges together. Place about 3cm apart on oven trays.
Bake about 15 minutes. Cool on wire racks.
Meanwhile, make the lemon icing. Sift icing sugar into small heatproof bowl; stir in enough juice to make a paste. Stir over small saucepan of simmering water until pourable.
Dip wreaths into icing; set at room temperature. Sprinkle with edible glitter.

Happy baking! Wishing you a happy holiday season!

The garden

One of the first things Stu and I did as man and wife was to visit the Hunter Valley gardens to smell the flowers. We also thought it was a nice place to visit with my parents, brother and sister-in-law, who had crossed continents to be at our wedding.

The rose gardens was our first stop and also my favourite.It is amazing how many rose varieties exist and how they come in all different shapes, sizes and smells. I would very much love to have a rose garden of my own one day.Then there were some others that caught my eye, though I couldn't tell you their names. So, feel free to help me out here.

Ask me 5 years ago to visit a garden and I probably would yawn in your face. But I actually really enjoyed my walk in the gardens. Some things you just grow into with age, I guess.

Handmade candle wedding favour

I've always liked the idea of making a gift for my wedding guests, so I signed up for a candle making course and poured away!

For my wedding favours, I opted for a single scent (lime, basil and mandarin scent), used soy wax (more eco-friendly, I hear) and did not use any dye (I like it au naturel). Here's a little tutorial if you want to make your own too. You will need:

Soy wax
Cooking pot
Candle glassware
Wicks
Fragrance
Stickums
Safety sticker
Paddle pop stick (you can buy these pre-holed or drill hole in centre yourself)

Instructions:

Heat your soy wax in the cooking pot over low heat on stove.

While the wax is melting, attach your stickum to the bottom of the wick tab and place the wick in the centre of the jar and press down.

Measure out your wax and wait for it to cool. The amount of fragrance you add is about 10% of wax. (Note: if you are using essential oil, only use 5%). Stir well.

Pour into jars/moulds. Use paddle pop stick to centre your wick until your candle is completely set.

And then Viola!

Your house will be smelling divine at the end of this exercise. Remember to trim the wicks when completely set.

I added ribbons and labels with my guests' names so they functioned as a placecard too.

I hope you have fun making them!

Signature scent

This year sometime, I decided I needed to find myself a signature scent. You know, the perfume that is truly perfect for me. It's taken me a while to find Hermes' Un Jardin Sur Le Toit but I knew it was 'the one' at first sniff.I love it when fragrances do so much more than just make you smell nice. Truly wonderful fragrances make you feel special or sexy or beautiful. Others conjure up memories, images, feelings. My signature scent takes me to places truly magical and unexpected. Like a secret garden, a rainbow, or a castle on a cloud. It's quite lovely, I must say.

Do you have a signature scent? Where does yours take you?

At first sight

On my recent trip back to Singapore, I fell in love with this Celine bag. It is the perfect shade of jungle green that is an easy match for all my outfits and also a handy size for my essentials.

I very nearly missed out on it though, what with the waiting list and the bag being out of stock. But on my last day in Singapore, I ventured into the store once more and to my sheer delight, I was told that stock had just arrived that morning! Some things are just meant to be.

I have been using it everyday since and has brought me so much joy. I love that it has a happy face and a little bit of drool down its zipper mouth (Can you see?). Ha. Maybe this is what love is all about.

Have you fallen in love with anything lately?

A Maldivian dream

I fell asleep to the lull of lapping waves and dreamt a Maldivian dream.
Well...except it wasn't a dream, It was our honeymoon - a wonderful week spent in paradise, where the water glittered in a thousand different shades of blue and turquoise. When days were spent wondering if the sea or the sky was more beautiful...
and swimming amongst baby reef sharks and schools and schools of fish.

This is where we stayed. What we collected. What we did. What we saw. It was a dream. A wonderful, perfect, crazy beautiful dream.

Have you been to paradise?