October 28, 2008

my new agenda

About a year ago I made a planner from $1.99 2-year planner at Zellers. But now I have a brand new one that I got from Celine on my birthday~ I was so urged to use this planner and now here it is!



This is one of my favorite illustrator, Shinzi Katoh. His illustrations are so simple and adorable~ He has so many products with his drawings on it!
If you have time, check out his online shop, I always loved his cups!



I even went out to Office Depot to buy colorful pens to make my writing pretty~ =)

October 27, 2008

one mitten

I stayed in St. Catharines this weekend so I worked on the mitten I was knittig with Celine. Here's ONE of the mitten! This REALLY takes long to do!!! Now I have to start the second one!

October 20, 2008

socks

Today I was grocery shopping at St. Catharines's Fairview mall, which is complete opposite of the Fairview mall we all know. Adrene had awesome 5 for $10 socks deal~

I needed more socks and they were so adorable! I love stripes!

my weekend

Friday, Charles and I went to Pho88 to celebrate his birthday~ How romantic is that? It's a tradition for Chinese people to have noodle on their birthday for long living and better fortune. He felt having pho but most of the pho I know either have too much MSG to make you fall asleep, higher chances to get stomach ache or reuse the spouts and reserve.
Pho88 is supposedly decent but sadly I got stomach ache there too... But they do serve lot more food than any other places.

I had to wake up early on Saturday to meet up with Celine at the yarn store near her house. Celine got this adorable knitting mittens book in Japanese that we're both going to knit mittens together.
This is my first time doing circle knitting. The difference is instead of using 2 needles to knit square, you use 4 or 5 needles to create seamless circle knit. Like when you make socks or hat. It's challenging but lot of fun!


So we worked on it until 6:30pm I had to leave to meet up with Charles and his friend at Keg for dinner. Because of one stupid car, jammed the whole DVP traffic I was 1 1/2 hour late for dinner. We all went there for prime rib but they were all out.... North York's Keg always run out prime rib after 7:30!
After all that we relaxed at Charles's place and his favorite chocolate mousse bomb~

Happy Birthday Charles~

October 14, 2008

thanksgiving night


Crazy long weekend I had this thanksgiving weekend~ Friday right after work, I drove by IKEA to get lingonberry sauce for the turkey. It's the same kind as meatball plate you order at IKEA restaurant~ I like that more than cranberry sauce~ So anyways Matt, Paul and I drove to Loblaws and bought rest of the ingredients we need for the turkey and stuffing.

On Saturday I went to Apple Factory with my parents in the morning(which I posted below) Then Paul and I got to Matt's at 2pm to cut up anything we need to for Sunday. I drove to M&M's meat shop to buy pumpkin pie for dessert which we really didn't need.... ;) Then I got home and stayed at home all night playing Wii Fit with my dad~ Well it was more like I was playing the game and he was sitting on the couch moving his legs with me.

Sleeping early made the Sunday go well, I was able to wake up naturally at 8am~ Our goal was to have the stuffing ready by 11:30am so we can stuff the stuffing in the turkey and start baking at 12pm. This year we got 25lb turkey to serve almost 30 guests~

I didn't put the picture of it but the stuffing we followed last year turned all purple as we were simmering. We realized later the raisins we used were organic last year but this time we bought regular raisins that had food coloring in them. So the color spread the whole stuffing and turned really ugly purple.... We considered putting yellow food coloring to brown them ;) But luckily, the stuffing in the turkey browned the stuffing so it actually looked good~!

Paul was transferring the turkey in a bowl from table to the sink, then the juice from the neck started dripping and it made a mess~ 0_-




The dinner went very well~ We had LOTS of good food served made by each guests. Not everyone was seated in this photo but these 2 dinning tables fits 30 people~
30 people was A LOT!! When you name them it's all the people we all hang out regularly so you wouldn't think there's not many but when you actually count them, that's when you be surprised.
The hall way was filled with people, we kicked people out the kitchen and hang out in the basement.

Sadly I didn't get the chance to eat the salmon, by the time I was going to grab it, it was gone =(
The gravy tasted good but it wasn't thick enough.... Can oil mix cornstarch? Everytime it sets, the oil and water mixed cornstarch splits. So it's not mixing together....
I expected rice, pasta, potatoes, to have no meat but it turned out almost every meal has meat in them. I got so full pretty fast because of that.... 0_O

Are there that many meat lovers???


We definitely had too much dessert too. We had 2 apple pies, flan, fruit tart, mini cupcakes, and pumpkin pie. I enjoyed the cupcakes~ =) I shoulda had more!

October 13, 2008

apple factory

Early in the morning on Saturday, I went to Apple Factory with my parents. They just wanted to drive around there and buy a pie there.
In our family, our thanksgiving was go apple picking and drop by to Apple Factory and buy a pie when we were small~ Apple was one of my favorite fruits but I always liked cherry pie than apple pie ;)
So it's been good 10 years last time I went to Apple Factory~ I honestly don't remember how the outside store looked like but I still remember the giant apple sculpture~


Inside still looks the same. Fruits and vegetable looks amazing that my mom grabbed a cart and started grocery shopping. Other, we got cherry pie and Mad Batter Bakery's soft ginger bread cookies, cheese bread, black cherry soda and since we didn't go apple picking we bought $20 worth of pre-picked apples.

October 7, 2008

dressmaker's workshop

A little site I worked on for fun~ It shows the progress shots of the wedding dresses I've been working on with Celine on her wedding~ Now go click on the picture!!