dinners

since there isnt much to blog about lately, other than the weather suddenly jumping above zero and melting the thick layer of snow to ice again.... i took pics of my dinners.

first i made roast chicken one day... pre-cooked and spiced but boiled i think? so i baked it to get the skin crispy. the amount of oil that comes out.. eew..........

that oil is from the second round of baking because the first round there was oil all over the paper too and i changed it. tasted good in the end with mashed potato!
recently the mail services have been unkind to my packages as well. first i get a package that was ripped open and empty. so i asked the seller for a replacement and bought another bottle of polish from her. when it arrived....
yeah it was a big MESS in that packet. the whole top of the bottle broke off. i really wonder what they do to such packages because its a bubblewrap package, and those bottles arent really brittle.
a grocery store was selling dinners for 30nkr i think, and there was cod tongue. alex said it was good and got us some.... but i really didnt like the texture X_X its so fatty icky.
thats it!

wiggley toes

the weather is getting colder, averaging -6 to -11. i just want to hole myself at home and not go out at all, but apparently we need two people to go out to buy a pizza or groceries. so i got quite sulky and when i saw cute napkins in a store, i bought it XD. luckily not expensive. but hey, its purple cupcakes.
xinyi received her other little birthday gift from me, which i bought at the Nidaros. It was a comment she made in our last year of uni, about wanting to find her 'frog prince' XD.
then because i still wanted to socialize but NOT go out, i invited joco over for dinner. i happily used my A1 curry paste! but either my tastebuds arent so good anymore or the cold has affected my sense of taste, but the curry didnt seem as rich as that in my memories. either that or my memory pimped up the taste of the curry. the texture of the chicken and potato came out great though, so no comlaints there. speaking of chicken, i bought a pre-marinated and cooked one today for $6.50. i thought it was really cheap.
for dessert, we dug out the yummy ice cream bites we've been saving for a long time. just perfect amount for three people! two of them had caramel fillings, and the third one had chocolate X)
joco scares me a little because he eats two servings of curry, a glass of jelly before that, a chocolate muffin i baked earlier, and the frozen ice cream bits. XD but its quite fun to feed someone who can eat that much.

while the guys checked out battlefield 3 and talked about it, i did my toes. glittered each toe a different color for the fun of it. and because its really hard to remove glitter i didnt want to do it on my hands. if you look in the upper middle of the picture, you can see my lacey headless swan body that will eventually become alex's grandmother's birthday gift.
lastly i did my fingernails the next day. gotta keep using new colors whee hee hee. the color was so soft almost natural looking at one coat, i call it a 'french purple' XD. but i wanted it opaque so i used 3 or 4 coats. nice drying time at least.
recently started playing a game called Rift too. Alvin if you have time, you should join in. free to play up to level 20 then if you buy the game you get 1 month free subscription. not bad at all, we might be buying it. Ark has also started playing it as well. maybe we can all make new chars hmm? but so far i have a Bladedancer (rogue class) and other than assasin, i'm not that interested in the others. have to check.

byee!

chocolate muffins!

while i am a fan of all fake cupcakes and prints, i am not a fan of cupcake the food itself XD. i LOVE to play with icing, i just dislike eating it because its simply too sweet. cream i might eat, although to make a cupcake look pretty it would require too much cream for my taste.

so i made chocolate muffins, with a mix alex helped me buy for 29nkr i think. (i refused to go out today, its -7 to -9 degrees out there and really raw air). the packet said it would make 8 to 10 large muffins or 10-12 smaller ones, so i thought it would be cheaper to make my own rather than buy a finished chocolate muffin for 12nkr.

so i happily filled my muffins trays with liners..

chopped up some extra sexiness...and mixed in 150ml of water and 100ml of butter, according to the packet. then added the extra chocolate.
to my disappointment, the batter only filled 6 large muffin liners :(
it took about 45 minutes to bake slowly, and i got a nice chocolatey result!
while i was happy with the taste of the muffin, i was not happy with the quantity. at the end of the day i estimated my cost of each muffin to be about 8.5nkr. so it is cheaper to make my own. i think i shall try baking from scratch another day, and see what the cost comes up to. XD

my cute niece

if you ate these as a kid, your childhood was awesome.
i remember back in primary school they were called 'yuan yuan bing gan' (circular biscuits) and sold for $0.20 for a small packet XD. these ones now are sold in cinemas with a light sour cream and onion flavouring. still very good, but slightly bigger.

got a package from alvin recently too (fast!) with my A1 curry paste and sharkfin+scallop soup. the latter sounds really tasty and i wanted to eat it today but lacked the required egg to make the soup. might cook curry today though, yay! also in the package was some charms i ordered off taobao.

i've been wanting to make my own charm bracelet for awhile now but even on eBay, nice looking charms are horrendously expensive in my opinion. at least, when you add them all together it starts getting pricey.

i made one with 'tiffany' and 'thomas sabo' charms. the giant globe ( i didnt know it would be THAT big.) represents my life and relationship. i am SO amused american continent is distorted, and south america is not even there XD the shopping bag.. teeheheh. maybe an eBay logo would have been better, no? cupcake... purple handbag is self-explanatory.. and giftbox because i love presents, christmas, and receiving things in the mail :P

alex's comments 'i see how you have no place for me and the cat.'
"the globe represents you! see? so big and round... just like you'll be in future X)'

then phoebe received an angbao in the mail today, and Anna took a nice picture of her smiling wide with it. one nice pic=one mm! hahaha. Anna explained that the angbao took a plane ride and got delivered there. Phoebe... so cute... wondered how the airplane came into the house XD

to take a nice video, she got 2m&ms. now i owe her that XD but i think this is worth much more than 2m&m, probably a whole factory? XD

sweet

quick post before i get ready to go out, we're getting pizza and watching MI4 today, yay!

first i got a pic from grace that she received her new panda case. almost makes me want to get one myself cuz it looks so cute. now i notice her naked nails and feel like painting them. XD
then my supercute ang baos arrived in the mail today... the same day the ang baos i sent to singapore reached -_-
but they're really cute right?? i am SO prepared for next year's cny now hehehe
finally got my cute cupcake cups, which shall be mutilated to turn into something useful soon.
and omg, what a shock! i did my nails!
yeah just kidding. but i've been meaning to do this theme for a couple of months now and i'm quite happy with the ring finger its SO CUTE.

lastly i found cheapish cupcake cups that are cute, which will suit my purposes again. actually cheaper than buying on eBay! SCORE
off to go get ready now, tata!

sick of cupcakes yet?

today i finally opened my pack of Fuwa Fuwa whipped cream clay. i swear its like taking the $2 air dry clay from daiso, mixing it with water, and stuffing it into nice packaging and X8 the price. of course, it might have gone unused for too long. but i liked the packaging, just screw on one of the two tips they provide and you're good to go.
because it was hard to squeeze out, i tested on doing borders and stuff first.. basically not filling a full cupcake. the color really goes well wth the 'pearl' beads i had leftovers of from 2 years++ ago XD the flower in the cupcake is actually a wholesale lot of earrings i bought cheaply off ebay, painted with nailpolish and stick em into cupcakes.
in the pic below, upper middle... it was my first attempt doing a whole cupcake. since i couldnt get an all round view, it didnt go perferfectly :( i'll think of some way to touch it up later. the other cupcake is meant to be that way, to be decorated with another color later.
and one full cupcake... kept relatively simple. i think i hate putting on the individual blingy bits because they kept falling from my dry and frictionless fingers to the floor.
tried to use a small packet of white whipped cream i have, but it was FAIL because i cut the hole in the bag wrongly and the cream doesnt take the form of the piping tip. :P one fully made cupcake got thrown away because of that.

received my cheap creaming kit in the mail today, so now i can use my other better quality clay creams. and will go to clas olsen to get something i want HEHEHE. its also for the purpose of crafting and joy.

going to watch MI4 tomorrow, and have dinner with beate the day after. i havent really been on many one-to-one outings, except with mary XD

yet another day

yesterday night we went out for dinner with flavio (from alex's WoW guild, from portugal. now living here) and simen. beate was invited too but she was having the nightshift at work and had to rest/prepare.

we went for a nice pizza at a place called Tres, a portuguese place with very nice pizza for 80 or 90nkr. very nice crust indeed. i found out its so fun to eat pizza with flavio because he likes the stuff i dont, so i can happily dump olives and whatever i dont like on a pizza on his plate HEHE
then i have an app called 'geek booth', that amuses me lots....

and they came over for a hot drink and chat, before heading out to a movie. i used that time to mess with simen's nails XDtoday, we went out for coffee. that usually means bringing out my norwegian book to go learn more new words. this time i made use of my xmas gift from mary, a pocket dictionary.
problem is that the dictionary function doesnt give that much details on a word, just a direct translation. and some words have more than one meaning. thats when i tug on my living dictionary next to me. but i try not to do that as much because he's reading articles for his masters XD

might set up an online website for my cupcake goodies once they start getting finished. waiting for my stupid supplies.......

foamy cupcakes

today i started with a new can of expanding foam and a whole army of cupcake liners. this time mainly with the smaller ones because they're adorably cute, and not only can they be made into ornaments, but i think they will work as keychains as well.

isnt this such an adorable little thing XD?
the foam fills all the spaces so well that i dont have to worry about the liners denting and such. the paper liners required more support or else it would fan out flattish, and buying mini cupcake trays for that size is abit pointless and highly expensive. so i made my own temporary ones XD
and voila, my little army of cupakes after two rounds of messing around with expanding foam. i'm glad i wore gloves this time around, because alot of 'whoops, shit' happened while trying to arrange them neatly for space. they are VERY sticky during the drying process, but after half an hour they're good to be moved.
time to go make round 3, and hopefully preserve this can of expanding foam a little better.

finally!

finally managed to make the racks for my nail polishes :P threw away a few bottles of really cheap polishes (or ugly ones) so i could fit everything on the shelf. statement to alex: if it doesnt fit the shelf, some will have to go.

all thanks to going to ikea to buy a new tv table which we saw last week on sale for under 300nkr. sadly this week it was no longer on sale but still pretty cheap at 450nkr, considering its meant to hold our 50'' tv and still have enough space on each sides and a lower compartment underneath to hold the xbox and other stuff.

so thats hubby making the table while i used the styrofoam boards that ikea uses to protect the wood to make my racks :D
the toughest part was cutting it evenly. its partly lopsided in some places but stable enough to hold all my stuff XD i didnt show the rest of my table because its a huge mess right now. waiting for some supplies to arrive before i can actually finish making my special table organizer. goodness knows i need it.

while waiting for the bus to ikea, i saw this hilarious looking ad. alex says it was for a theatre show XD

last but not least, and again, my nails. i have a HUGE stamping plate i'm loving. only problem is... its not quite suitable for long nails XD. ah well, i'll get round it.
:P finally started using the polishes that have not been used yet, despite being so nice.

crafting in progress

i have discovered a whole new world of fun with expanding foam!!! its just like whipped cream, except it expands within 30mins and hardens after a couple of hours. it smells less than silicone, and is just so much fun to spray out XD

with it, i'm making an army of fake cupcakes.. some will be ornaments, some will be memoholders... some will be magnets. i really dont know what else they can be. not candle holders. please give me ideas if you have them!

so i lined a baking tray with cupcake liners,and filled 3/4 of the liners with foam.. but i should have just filled half actually.
and after two hours, thats what they look like! i guess if i sprayed it abit more carefully i'd get more even-shaped cupcakes. i love the wrapper colors because it looks almost like the tiffany blue XD i'm definitely gonna try making a tiffany themed cupcake!
but no fear, the monstrosities get cut off, so i can make a different type of cupcake that will be just pure 'cream' on top. the better looking ones will get painted to hopefully look like real cuppycakes, and a tiny bit of cream on top.
i'm waiting for my smaller trays to arrive from eBay before i fill the smaller cups, just to be safe. when all the bases are ready then i'll open the clay creams i'm saving up :D

cny day 2

seems like i'm developing the habit of posting in reverse order. but thats my home cooked laksa to make up for the disappointment of not having a 130nkr tiny bowl of one! XD the paste was sent by alvin some time ago, and i've been waiting till we had the right noodles and prawns to make it.

to make up for the lack of other ingredients, i dumped in pork meat. ( my joke to alvin was 'no tau pok so pork lor. pok.. pork. same la.' ) it altered the taste of the soup slightly, i think.. so i shall avoid that next time and see what other sea food i can dump in. if i'm lucky perhaps we can use blue mussels? it smelt heavenly nonetheless and the taste was rich.managed to find the right kind of noodles, which was abit hard because i realised i've never seen it in its dried state. alex bought a finer version which i simply refused to use (its glass noodles) hence delaying the laksa making. i shall try use those to make vietnamese springrolls one day. seems really easy with just frying noodles and meat and stuffing them in wrapping to fry.
these noodles boiled up quite fast :)

i think alex liked the laksa, although it was quite a heavy serving. it was spicey enough for him not to try the sambal chilli that came with the set. funny, because he usually orders much spicier foods than i can take XD

he woke up really early this morning and asked if we should go out for breakfast... and i was still half asleep. then said 'what if breakfast is already out on the table?'
he's got my favourites X) chocolate things and iste! the wrapped thing was a ham baguette. the chocolate crossaint i am saving up for later... the cupcake, to this day, i still think is more decorative than edible because the icing is like diabetes in a bite XD. and i tend to make alex eat the icing usually on cakes and stuff HEHEHE

then some pics of CNY in singapore.... phoebe looking really cute in her qipao. and simon the usual.
then i told grace and geoff that they have to bai nian to me to get ang bao... and this is what i got XD
grace's reasoning is that it takes alot of effort to deco a pic. XD
the app she used seemed cool, so i downloaded it myself to try XD the tang yuan in the pic is to remind myself to make it one of these days ! yum!
lastly, i actually have totally new clothes (and sweaters) saved up to use for cny XD the shirt was bought in malaysia when i went with my cousins and aunts and uncles! saved the best for the last.
think we're heading out to the gym soon, then i'll look into buying some special crochet threads to make bjørg something nice for her birthday in feb. she did give me bday money last year :) '

jenelyn is back in vevang, and idar is in molde (nearby). they're slowly reducing the drugs so he's slowly getting more consciousness back. he's confused though.. really hope he'll get better fast. she's been asking mary about me though XD will send her a little handmade gift soon to try cheer her up abit!