PotLuck Dinner with Neighbours

Never did I expect myself to end Year 2011 with a wonderful Potluck Dinner with my neighbours.
The oldest in our group is almost 60 years old and the youngest is 6 years old, which is my younger son. Though the age gap was huge, but things that made everyone happy, laughed, smiled were the same. No generation gap whatsoever!

We simply love each other's company. Like I have said in my previous post, when one of my neighbours suggested the Potluck Dinner, it made me feel like a farewell dinner for us; even though no papers had been signed yet. Interested buyers for my house are still waiting for the replies from banks and HDB, to find out if their loan would be approved.

The party started at 7pm and ended at 10pm!
Three hours of laughter, smiles and yum!
I am so happy with the way my Year 2011 ended.
Hooray!
*clap clap clap*

Just take a look at the glorious food laid out at the corridor....

I supplied ALL the Tables with table-cloths, 3 Big and 1 Small.

5 Chairs.

All Forks, Spoons and Chopsticks

Plates and Bowls.

The Packet Drinks above

and

the Rojak below.

Fishballs from J's Family

Cakes and Kuehs from J's Family

Fried Fishball Wanton from J's Family

Fried Chicken Wings from J's Family

Satay from H's Family

Longan with Pineapple and Grass Jelly Dessert from H's Family

Fruit cum Meat cum Seafood cum Vegetable Salad from E.

Fried Bee Hoon with Cabbage from E.

   

Here's wishing All my lovely Neighbours and Everyone who read my blog, a Happy, Healthy and Prosperous Year 2012!

Cheers!

Ordering Turkey from Cold Storage

As said in this post "Christmas Dinner at Modesto's Restaurant" I had lots of 'first time' this Christmas 2011. Ordering Turkey from Cold Storage was one of them.
However, it would be the first and the last!

The experience was horrible!
My friend told me that Cold Storage sold the 'cooked and sizzling hot' Turkey.
So we were taking our own sweet time to collect our turkey, thinking that we would be able to eat the moment we come home with that big bird. So we waited till our tummy was feeling the emptiness first before we set off to Cold Storage at Jelita.

Wrong!

Dead Wrong!

Yes, it was cooked...BUT CHILLED!
*faint*

So in this big Blue Cooler Bag, we had the cooked but chilled approximately 4kg Butterball Roast turkey, a separate bag of Chestnut Stuffing, a separate bag of turkey gravy, a 1 kg Honey Baked Ham and a lovely Tavernello Frizzante Bianco 75d!

As we were totally caught off-guard, we were frantically reading the instructions! By the way, we were no longer feeling the emptiness in the tummy, we were really feeling HUNGRY!!!

What made it worse?
The instructions said it needs to be oven-heated for about 1 hour or more!!!! And that's for the conventional big oven, whereby you put the whole bird in, which we do not have! The one that we have can only fit a spring chicken!
*Super Faint*

Seriously, I was thinking if we should just shelf that 'Cold Turkey' into the fridge and go to the coffeeshop nearby to settle our Christmas Dinner instead!

But the kids were all excited about it, I decided not to disappoint them; so I cut up the Honey Baked Ham first and we chomped down the ham while we waited for the turkey's temperature to take flight. *eyes rolled*

Though it was stated that using the microwave oven to reheat can shorten the waiting time, we were told to arrange the chopped up turkey parts in a special way. It was way too many instructions for the people with the growling stomachs to digest.

So we 'murdered' the turkey. It was so tough!
We had to hammer our chopper into the skin, then the flesh and the bone. We had to hammer many times before the steel hits the chopping board at the other end! Wow! *super eyes rolled*

In the end, we ignored the special arrangement of the different parts of the turkey, ignored the time that needed to be taken to cook it. We simply used our own guts and feel to set the temperature and the duration, while checking on it occasionally.
Some turkey parts went in to fill the small oven, other sections filled the microwave oven. Two ovens at work at the same time! We were really hungry alright! No time to lose.

Microwave oven warmed the turkey faster and while waiting for the other oven to do its job, we divided the pieces.Well, all parts were nice except the breast meat and the skin, too dry and too stretchy respectively.

Gravy and stuffing were not on the turkey. We put them on separate bowls and luckily we did that because only my elder son and I liked the stuffing, while my younger son liked the turkey as it is, without any gravy nor stuffing.
Yup! That was our Christmas Dinner.
Just Turkey and Ham, nothing else!

We could not finish all that was in the S$69.90 set. Half of the turkey was left. Two-third of the Ham was untouched. Oh! I forgot to talk about the wine!!!



After the kids went to bed, the adults I savoured the goodness of the white wine. It was really strong!!!

In fact, so strong that my not-a-fan-of-alcoholic-drinks-hubby turned 'lobster red' after a few sips!!!

My hubby merely drank 8% of the entire bottle, while I was left with 92% of the wine all to myself! *faint*

It was a big bottle and with the turkey not fully digested yet, I could not finish the bottle of lovely wine. *sad*
I do not like the taste of overnight unsealed wine, thus hanging on to my aching heart, I had to discard the remaining 40% of it.
*Cry*

I love to drink alcohol! Too bad, I do not have many friends who do and a husband that simply could not hold his liquor. So I hardly get a chance to let my love for wine flourish. Do not like beer though...

Ooops! Off topic already!

Back to the turkey please.

Yes, we had turkey again the next day and we were getting sick of it already. The meat seemed to have toughen up after one night. So difficult to chew!

Left with one-fourth and none of us were interested to eat turkey 3 days in a row, hence we sent the bird flying down the rubbish chute. Sorry.... *pout*

Yup!
Our first and our last time ordering Turkey from Cold Storage. Too much work and too little satisfaction.
It was not the fault of Cold Storage and definitely not the Turkey's fault.... I believe its just us, who do not know how to handle the Big Bird.

So for those of you who had ordered Turkey from Cold Storage and enjoyed your feathered creature, Merry Christmas to you indeed! *smile*

Does Evian Water Improve Skin Complexion?

This is the follow up of the test I did in this post "Evian Water is Good For Skin, True?"

From then till now, I had tried using it in 3 different ways:~

1. Using it as a Toner only
2. Drinking and using it as a Toner after every facial wash
3. Drinking alone

and eventually not drinking nor using it at all!

Experiment 1: Using it as a Toner only
I have the tenancy of getting rid of my blackheads or whiteheads whenever I see them, right after facial wash. When all the squeezing or pricking is over, my face would appear red and slightly blotchy, which would usually subside after approximately 24hours. But when I use Evian on a cotton pad and wipe my skin after the 'self-blackhead-removing-treatment', the blotchy-ness subsided in 2 hours! Amazing!

Experiment 2: Drinking and using it as a Toner after every facial wash

The result was simply amazing! I had no more acne outbreaks, only very few small pimples, which gets 'matured' very quickly and hence was easy to get rid of. And these small pimples only appear like maybe one pimple in 10days. In my case, it is considered wonderful!

I used to have acne outbreaks very frequently due to my late nights and especially when the time is near to my menstruation period. After drinking and using it as a Toner after every facial wash, even with late nights, I do not have anymore acne outbreaks. Hooray!

The best part is, whenever my pimples or acne subsides, the scar remains on my face for months; but after trying this Experiment 2, pimples scars disappeared in a few days. Pretty miraculous! I think partly also due to the size of the pimples, as I have mentioned earlier, which were much smaller and easier to get rid of.

Experiment 3: Drinking alone

No more acne outbreaks but pimples scars take a much longer time to subside.

Last Experiment: Not using nor drinking it at all

It was HORRIBLE!!!!
Everything came right back to how it used to be!
I did not want to be dependent on Evian water, but after stopping completely for almost 2 weeks, my face looks terrible now!
4 acnes came out in a single day!

The scars did not clear up nor lighten. Yes, I admit that my late nights lifestyle is a crucial factor to my skin complexion, but I did not change my lifestyle when I tried the first 3 experiments. I continued the same diet, the same sleeping time, the same more stressful life because lots of changes were going on in the family and house.
Now I am so sick of my face and I am going to attend a friends gathering in 2 days time. *scream* It looks so bad now!
Its not even two full weeks yet since the day I stopped using or drinking Evian water and the difference is so drastic!

My Verdict:

I really cannot stand the face I am looking at when I stand in front of the mirror and I do not think I want to leave it as it is. So I think I will go to the supermarket later today to get my Evian Water skin treatment back. The only sad thing is the expense I have to spend on my face.
If there are no promotion, one big bottle of Evian water cost around $2.60, multiple that with 30 days would give me a damage of $78 per month. Wow! *heart pain*

Maybe I will try to make one big bottle of Evian Water last for 2 days instead of 1 day. Then the cost would be lessen by half = $39 each month. Hhhmmm... that sounds better.

How my face looks, directly affects my self esteem. I am already unhappy with my features and with a bad complexion, it just brings my confidence level even lower and I am NOT going to let that happen. Humph!

Alright, that's it for now. For those my blog readers who had been asking me about my experience with Evian water, here you have it! All in one post! *wink*

Hope this helps!
Cheers to great complexion!


***This is NOT a paid post.

Christmas Dinner at Modesto's Restaurant

So what was Christmas like for me this year, 2011?
Lots of First Time again!
But in this post, I am only going to concentrate on my first visit to Modesto's Restaurant.

Who was there?
My hubby, my two boys, my sister, my new brother-in-law and myself!
Six of us. *smile*
We went to the branch at Suntec City on 21st December and it was a Christmas Dinner treat from my BIL.
Nice! Thank you! *Grin*

I love the service at Modesto's Restaurant. The lady who served us was really responsive and proactive. She asked, "Would you like the soup to be served in two smaller bowls because the soup is enough for two people?"
Wow! I never knew that!

Thank goodness I said yes! It was a big serving indeed!
In Modesto's Restaurant, one bowl of soup is really good enough for two to share.

***Apologies for the photos on food, we were so eager to eat, I kept forgetting to snap a shot of the food before taking a bite bites. Ooops!

My children had CREMA DI FUNGHI $11.50: a home-made cream of fresh mushroom soup, topped with cream;
And COTTO $20.50 Regular size Pizza: consists of tomato, cheese and cooked pork ham.

My elder son could not resists himself from getting more cheese from the cheese container placed on the table. He just kept adding more cheese to his pizza! His love for cheese is definitely inherited from his parents. *laugh*

The newly weds shared the $21.00 LINGUINE ALLE VONGOLE: Flat spaghetti with fresh clams, dried chilli and garlic in an extra virgin olive oil and white wine sauce.

While my hubby and I shared the $27.00 RISOTTO ALLA PESCATORA: a traditional Italian rice with an assortment of fresh seafood in fresh tomato sauce. (Prawn, squid, clam and mussel)

In order to fill up the little gaps in our tummy, the four adults order another regular size pizza. A different flavour from what the kids had. $22.50 SALMONE AFFUMICATO: Tomato, cheese, smoked salmon, capers and onions.

Then I had English Breakfast Tea to end the meal with a warm feeling in my tummy. *Thumbs Up*

On the contrary, the kids preferred to chill their stomach, so they shared a single scoop of $5.50 GELATO: Chocolate ice-cream, served with fresh blueberries and strawberries, butter cookies and whipped cream.

Whereas the young couple chose to cool their gastric with the $13.00 STRUDEL DI MELE CON GELATO ALLA VANIGLIA: a home-made apple strudel, served warm and topped with vanilla ice-cream.

I love the Modesto's Restaurant and will definitely go back again. I wanted to try their Lasagne! It looked really yummy (on other people's table...)! *laugh*

Song Sharing Sunday 153 - All I Want For Christmas Is You ~ Melanie Amaro

MERRY CHRISTMAS everyone! 

I truly think that Melanie Amaro deserves to win this year's X-Factor!
Way to go girl!

<a target="_blank" href="http://allaboutyourchild.blogspot.com/search/label/Song%20Sharing%20Sunday"><img border="0" width="125" alt="Song Sharing Sharing Badge" src="http://i184.photobucket.com/albums/x169/TammyDuplessie/SongSharingSundayBadge.jpg" height="125" /></a>

Every Song reminds me of a person, an event, a place, a smell, a taste....a secret, do you have a song to share today?

All I Want For Christmas Is You ~ Melanie Amaro

Join in the fun, leave a comment with your Song Sharing Sunday post's URL and don't forget to grab the meme's badge above using the codes provided and I'll hop over to 'listen'...

I Will Miss My Neighbours Very Much

Many events had been happening in my neighbourhood this year and because of that, my neighbours and I got even closer than before, so much so that for the very first time, we decided to have a PotLuck among the four families on the last day of this year, 31st December.

Though I am the youngest in the group of Aunties, we have no reservations towards each other and could talk about anything under the sun. This kind of closest have not been felt for almost two decades already.

Among the four families, I am the 'OLDEST bird' in terms of residency in this pigeon estate. Doesn't HDB flats look like a block with many pigeon holes? *laugh*

Staying here for 32 years, I have seen so many different families move in and out, including my childhood friends. Just when I got close to the new neighbours, they planned to leave and this vicious cycle repeated for 3 decades.

Everyone came and gone. I am the only one staying stagnant...

Finally now!

Its MY TURN!

Valuation done last Wednesday and the report came out today. Pretty fast eh? *Grin*

When we started to discuss about the PotLuck, no one knew that we had already started carrying out our plan to leave this place for good. So to me, this felt like a farewell dinner for us. *mixed feelings*

Yet as I am typing this blog post now, one of our neighbours is aware already because they are our 'priority' buyers, because they have said in the past that they wanted to move to a bigger house. If they choose to buy over our house, then they could hack down the wall between us and own a Jumbo unit; making their wish come true.

They said they will give us a reply two days later.

If they choose not to, then we will move on to our second 'priority' buyer, another neighbour of ours.

They have been asking for our place for many years now. They needed to take care of their old sick mother, yet staying with her in the small flat with 5 others posed a lot of 'space' problems. So if they could get our unit, they would be able to take care of their aged mother and at the same time have enough space for their young children to run around through their growing years.

So if both priority buyers choose to give up our unit, then we will start marketing our unit this weekend. Everything seemed to be in a rush eh?

Let me tell you, I HAVE BEEN DYING TO LEAVE THIS PLACE FOR A LOOOOOONG TIME!

So the earlier the better!

*laugh*

The only thing that makes me feel a little bitter-sourish inside is the thought of leaving my neighbours. I will miss the times of going into their house for chit chats. Sharing food. Harmless jokes and teases with each other. The laughter....And not forgetting the lovely smiles and "Hi!"s whenever we see each other....

Dear neighbours, I will miss all of you very much.... *hugs*

Song Sharing Sunday 152 - Make It Last ~ Tim McMorris

This was one of the songs used by my sister's wedding videographer for their wedding montage.
And I loved it at first hearing! *Grin*

Loved the rhythm
Loved the voice
Loved the lyrics

In short, I LOVED IT!
*laugh*
 

<a target="_blank" href="http://allaboutyourchild.blogspot.com/search/label/Song%20Sharing%20Sunday"><img border="0" width="125" alt="Song Sharing Sharing Badge" src="http://i184.photobucket.com/albums/x169/TammyDuplessie/SongSharingSundayBadge.jpg" height="125" /></a>

As AudioJungle is promoting/selling Tim McMorris' masterpiece, so you will keep hearing a lady saying "audio jungle" throughout the entire song.... its pretty eerie actually.... *zipped*

Just ignore the lady's voice and you'll be left with Tim McMorris' beautiful song, "Make It Last".

Make It Last ~ Tim McMorris

Make It Last ~ Tim McMorris

I want to stay here with you

Under sunny skies, looking in your big brown eyes

Time goes by but my heart stays true

And every smile you give, your love it shines right through

And in this moment

I’ll make it last, make it last, 
I’ll take my time, and make it last

And as the present becomes the past, 
I’ll do my best to make it last

I’ll make it last, I'll make it last, 
whatever it takes I’ll make it last

And though the future is coming fast, 
I’ll fight it off to make this last

Everybody seems to think that all good things come to an end

But I won’t fall for that, oh no, forever you will be my friend

And no one else can make me feel the way you without effort do

And you are mine, for now and always, 
and always know that I love you

So I’ll make it last, I'll make it last, 
I’ll take my time, and make it last

And as the present becomes the past, 
I’ll do my best to make it last

I’ll make it last, I'll make it last, 
whatever it takes I’ll make it last

And though the future is coming fast, 
I’ll fight it off to make this last 

Join in the fun, leave a comment with your Song Sharing Sunday post's URL and don't forget to grab the meme's badge above using the codes provided and I'll hop over to 'listen'...

Wordless Wednesday - That BIG?!

Song Sharing Sunday 151 - 12 Days of Christmas

My boys asked me today for the lyrics of the famous Christmas song ~ 12 Days of Christmas.
*laugh*
I could only tell them "On the Second Day of Christmas, my true love gave to me, two turtle doves."
*ashamed*

So here's posting this today, its time for me to memorise now...

<a target="_blank" href="http://allaboutyourchild.blogspot.com/search/label/Song%20Sharing%20Sunday"><img border="0" width="125" alt="Song Sharing Sharing Badge" src="http://i184.photobucket.com/albums/x169/TammyDuplessie/SongSharingSundayBadge.jpg" height="125" /></a>

12 Days of Christmas

Join in the fun, leave a comment with your Song Sharing Sunday post's URL and don't forget to grab the meme's badge above using the codes provided and I'll hop over to 'listen'...

Filet-O-Fish Buy One Get One Free is back again!

So you know the drill...
Print this coupon out
or
Simply flash it using your mobile devices and you can enjoy 2 McDonald's Filet-O-Fish. *wink*

Yup, Buy One Get One Free Filet-O-Fish started today, 10th December 2011, for 3 days.
10 - 12 December 2011

Song Sharing Sunday 150 - Love of My Life (The Wedding Song)

Usually for the whole month of December, I would be sharing Christmas Songs on my music meme ~ "Song Sharing Sunday".
Today, is exceptional.

In two days time, my only sibling, my sister will be getting married. 
So here's a song specially dedicated to her and her hubby.

Marriage is the beginning of a lifelong of embrace, kisses and love.
Have a blissful marriage, sis!

<a target="_blank" href="http://allaboutyourchild.blogspot.com/search/label/Song%20Sharing%20Sunday"><img border="0" width="125" alt="Song Sharing Sharing Badge" src="http://i184.photobucket.com/albums/x169/TammyDuplessie/SongSharingSundayBadge.jpg" height="125" /></a>

Love of My Life - The Wedding Song

Join in the fun, leave a comment with your Song Sharing Sunday post's URL and don't forget to grab the meme's badge above using the codes provided and I'll hop over to 'listen'...