Bittersweet winter

Winter is officially over and spring is here! I know most of you are probably super excited but I'm a little sad winter is over. 

Yes, I'm one of those weird people that enjoy a good cold weather, contrary to what most people think about winter. 

You might be wondering why! 
Well, let me give you a few reasons and see if I can win you over :P
Firstly, you could pretty much wear anything and get away with it as long as you wear a nice looking coat. You could be wearing the tee you wore last night under your classy coat and still end up looking good. Winter is so forgiving, you don't have to worry about colour coordinating your outfits. 

Same goes with shoes, you gotta decide between ballet flats or sandals or whatever else you wear. In winter, it's so much easier because it's too cold to wear anything else :P

Just slip on some boots with any random socks you find and you're good to go!  



As you can see from this picture- I'm wearing fluro socks here but you wouldn't have known if I hadn't told you :P 

I'm usually in a rush in the morning so I put minimum effort into getting ready. 

Last but not least, winter is the only season where you can be cozy and snug and enjoy a  good sleep in! Of course, that makes it harder to leave your bed every morning but that's another story :P 

Yes, I'm a winter freak, but I know I wouldn't have enjoyed winter if I lived in countries where you get actual winter like snow or temperature in the minuses. I do love winter but my skin doesn't like it unfortunately :( I tend to get dry itchy hands/ feet which can become quite irritating at times. This year wasn't as bad coz someone recommended this Crabtree and Evelyn cream. At first, I was a reluctant to try because I'm not much of a health beauty product person but this one's definitely worth the price! This set includes- 2 body lotion, 2 hand therapy and 1 hand recovery. 




Popular posts from this blog

Black Star Pastry (Strawberry Watermelon Cake)

Image
Some of you might know about the desperate attempt I made last year for the Strawberry Watermelon Cake (see previous post at  Black Star Pastry ).  Yesterday I had the privilege of tasting this cake at a party. I got super excited as I’ve been wanting to try this for almost a year now. I was so tempted to just skip the mains but I patiently waited for dessert time and made sure I left space for the cake :P In the meantime, I went to take a close look at the cake (could not resist, for obvious reasons) and I was amazed at how magical it looked. It was constructed beautifully starting with a layer of almond  dacquoise followed by cream, then a slice of watermelon with cream,   almond  dacquoise and cream again. Finally, it was topped with strawberries, pistachios and dried rose petals. It was a quite a delicious cake but unfortunately, it did not meet the expectations I had. I liked certain elements, such as the lightness of the cream layers, fresh watermelon and the
Read more

Oat bars

Image
As a kid, breakfast was never my favourite meal. I think it was because I was never a morning person and I always woke up too late so left home in haste for school. To be honest, there have been many days where I skipped breakfast as a teenager or even younger.  Of course, back then I wasn’t into nutrition and just failed to understand the importance of breakfast. But hey, this gives me an excuse to blame some of my not-so-good grades on breakfast haha! :P Safe to say, I got more serious about brekkie as I got older; now I have no days where I go without breakfast! But I am still quite time poor in the morning (because I still continue to maintain my laziness in the morning), I usually prepare my breakfast the night before. If this fails, I grab my Belvita biscuits or reach for a banana! Anyway, I recently tried out oat bars to have for my brekkie. To my surprise, it turned out pretty amazing. It’s actually pretty nutritious because it combines everything you’d normall
Read more

International Congress of Behavioural Medicine | Melbourne

Image
My flight faced major delays due to severe thunderstorms in Sydney. We had to wait for over two hours, most of which were on the plane so it was incredibly exhausting. Thankfully, the weather in Melbourne was much better. It was pretty cold and windy, it felt nice to get out of the scorching heat :) Leaving behind a stormy Sydney After reuniting with the bestie, we went out for dinner to a local Malaysian restaurant close to our home. Sweet and sour prawns with rice  Nasi Lemak Pineapple fried rice and seafood stir-fry I had one whole day to myself before the conference began on Wednesday, and we wanted to make the most out of this.  Oh, hello there, new friend! We had breakfast at Myuna Farm which was a few mins from our house. I loved their veggie focacia.  Brekkie at Myuna Farm  Veggie focacia ($9) Sweet treats at Myuna Farm Next stop was archery, my bestie has been an archer for sometime now, and we have been wanting t
Read more

Daddy's birthday 2015 | Buttery fruit cake

Image
Happy birthday daddy! This perfectly describes how he continues to inspire me! And he always is!  In the past, I always used to purchase cakes because I did not trust my baking skills enough to be able to pull off a fancy cake for a special occasion. But this year, I've been a bit of an experimental baker so I thought I'd give it a go.  I asked him what he wanted for his birthday. Initially, he said plain cake again (probably because he did not want to trouble me during my final days of thesis writing). After I pressed further, he gave me buttery fruit cake as an answer.  I was happy with this because I had never baked one so it'd be fun to do one. I started my recipe hunt. Most traditional recipes use alcohol but because I don't drink, I had to look harder to find one that didn't so I could eat it too :D Eventually I found this. I've followed this recipe pretty closely with some little changes.  Normally I would not use
Read more

Post-thesis celebration

Image
So I handed in my thesis today!!! After three months of solid hard work, it's finally all done! I'm so excited because I've been waiting for this day for a very long time. I know I shouldn't get that excited because I technically haven't finished my degree yet (got a presentation next week) but it kind of feels like I'm done! The thesis does make the bulk of my marks so that's definitely an important milestone and worth celebrating :P So now let me give you a rundown of what I did today- I started off my day skimming my thesis one last time. Then I nearly killed off a forest printing about 140 pages (poor trees!) Next stop was binding. My stomach had started grumbling from all the waiting around so we hit Ralph's Cafe for a celebratory lunch. We had to wait a while because it was lunch hour. But that was okay because we know their food is worth the wait! The Ralph's burger with chips (~$14) After this came, we just went silent as we
Read more

Marvellous May

Image
This was probably my best month this year because I had my first ever conference/ mini holiday. But it didn't start off that great, I had to learn how to use a software called Stata for statistical analysis. I struggled a lot in the beginning because I had no idea how to set up the data or what code to use. (Stata has a command interface). It took me a really long time to figure out what I needed to do. I went through a long process of trial and error and seeking help when I got stuck.  The first part of the analysis didn't take as long but the rest of it took me longer than I expected. I had set myself a deadline to finish it before I leave for the conference (but failed). However, the good news is, it finally worked in the end! I felt super accomplished after getting all my outputs. I think I'm slowly learning to be persistent! I thought I would be ready to write up after this but turns out, I still have to do another quality and tool validity assessme
Read more

Father's Day 2015

Image
I asked my daddy, "what kind of cake do you want for Father's Day?" He said, "just a plain cake with nothing on it." He's just too easy and kind on me! Happy Father's Day!  I've spent so long looking for a perfect card for this Father's Day but they just don't seem to be have what I was looking for. I wanted something with a nice long message but all the ones I saw had dull cover pages. Then I came across this superdad one and I found it to be quite appropriate for us because he has been like a 'superhero' to me. I ended up getting this cute tatty bear one and thought I'd just write my own long message here and force him to read this later :P So here it goes... To my dearest best daddy in the world, Firstly, I hope you like the card and the other presents. I thought I'd get you this superdad tatty bear because you have been like a 'superhero' in my life. You may not know how to fly l
Read more

DAA conference | Melbourne

Image
Being a tourist :) Day 1: Reunited with the bestie at the airport. *Incessant chattering* Next stop was food.    First sunset photo We chose an Italian restaurant called ‘Vapiano’, based on another friend's recommendation. It was quite busy; we had to wait to get a table. We decided to order both pizza and pasta. Ordering pizza was pretty straightforward. However, the pasta line took forever. It took so long that we received our pizzas but still hadn't been able to order the pasta. We tried garlic and one zucchini and eggplant pizza. I liked the latter but the garlic one was a bit hard, it got a bit cold by the time we started eating.  The pasta was quite nice and flavoursome but nothing extraordinary and not worth an hour wait!   Vapiano Spotted a cute florist, on our way to dessert For dessert, we wanted to go Om Nom but unfortunately they had no space so ended up going to Pancake Par
Read more

Oatmeal omelette

Image
Easiest brekkie ever! I learnt this while I was on holidays :)  Ingredients * 2 eggs  * 2 tablespoon oatmeal * 3 tablespoon powder milk * 1.5 tablespoon water * Spices (black pepper, cumin)  * Any herbs you like (coriander/ parsley) * Tiny amount of butter (1/2 teaspoon) Method 1. First combine oatmeal and powder milk together 2.  Add water so the mixture binds  3.  Add in the eggs, plus all herbs and spices you wish to add 4. Combine well 5. Heat a frypan, spread the butter and cook in pan for 10-15mins
Read more

High tea - planning

Image
Last Sunday, two of my good friends and I held a fundraising high tea party. We started planning for this way back in July. During our first meeting, we had a brief discussion over what organisation we should fundraise for. We were thinking of doing Cancer Council because the proposed date we had for high tea would be around Daffodil day. But in the end, we decided to go for one close to women. We picked National Breast Cancer Foundation because all of us had a personal experience knowing someone who has suffered or died from breast cancer. Food Next thing we had to decide was the menu, we each discussed items that we could contribute. We wrote ourselves a shopping list and a brief plan of when to bake what. We had our high tea on a Sunday afternoon so we planned that we would do shopping on the Monday, start baking from Thursday. We wanted to allow ourselves plenty of time because we were going to try some experimental desserts and we knew that these would take time
Read more