Unfolding December's Folder Part II

WARNING: Long long, picture-ful post. Those viewing this on your i-phone, blackberry and other hand held device, I suggest you skip reading this post till you get home or you might risk jamming your device and cursing at my blog in public.



As mentioned in my previous post, Part II will be all about Christmas Christmas and Christmas. I'm fully aware that I'm half a year late and I sure hope I don't give anyone the Christmas blues.


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~*A very early merry christmas*~

Even though Christmas was celebrated more than a week ahead in my company last year, everyone was already rocking the Christmas mood.

The theme was Bling Bling. Hence, everyone was decked in their BLING-est outfits and accessories that day.



I did not want to put on such bling clothes and paint my face with some bling make up as it was a work weekday. Instead, I slipped into a plain dark blue dress and bling-ed myself up with accessories.



To add some bling to my daily make up routine, I used sparkly white eyeliner to rim my eyes over the black lined parts. I even skipped drama mama fake lashes just so that I would not appear over the top and stuck out like a sore thumb around the vicinity of my heartland workplace.



I snagged the butterfly tattoo up there from my colleague and the above photo was taken the following morning which explains the slight peeling. It was one of the prettiest butterfly temporary tattoo I've ever seen! I love the soft angled wings and its purplish blue blend.

It was quite an exciting day as everyone was comparing how bling they were and what they did to bling themselves up. After work, everyone trooped over to the hall for dinner and games.



When the final game ended, fluorescent lights went off and colourful disco lights danced about the room. This was when the real party began!



Many of us ladies who are already in our late 20s and early 30s rediscovered our inner ah lian of course and danced in tandem to the beat and lyrics of some 80s and 90s music when those nostalgic numbers came blaring on. Even the bartenders hit the dance floor when the booze ran dry.



The next few days, we kept calling one another "ah lian" in affectionate jest, each refuting the title of being the biggest lian. We also compared notes on how lian we were back in school. I was the loser of coz as I was totally not an ah lian though many people chose not to believe my claim.

When the party was over, this was how we looked.




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~*Flamingg Mangos -- a hole in the wall eatery*~

One Saturday evening, Kh decided to bring me to a hole in the wall eatery --Flamingg Mangos-- after discovering this place with his friends a while back.

For those of you who are wondering, Flamingg Mangos is spelt like this and it isn't a spelling mistake.

Flamingg Mangos is nestled in a quiet area some driving distance away from our house which we never knew existed simply because... well, have you ever noticed holes in the wall?

The whole restaurant was already spruced up for Christmas and I love the country feel to it.



As usual, we ordered a little too much for two as kh never ever learns his lesson. We (or rather I) ended up not being able to finish the food. I could not finish half my mains of fish and chips as the batter was quite salty. I love the spicy mussels and banana waffles though.






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~*One of those days with the kids*~

Each time I visited the kids, they would have conjured up new games and new rules from their toys.

After playing Twister with jase and charmaine the normal way, the latter could not keep up with the strenuous game and her much shorter limbs that she grew quite unhappy. Hence, we pretended that the Twister mat was a picnic mat and we had chocolates (brown), strawberries (red), water (blue), cheese (yellow), vegetable (green) and grapes (purple) for picnic. They would change the "picnic basket" to some other food of the corresponding colours whenever they got sick of the food.



Despite her illness and pain, she never fails to show her cheeky smile whenever she knows she's gonna take a picture. I love how she's such a good photographer too. She's one of the only person who takes nice candid shots of me. LoLz.






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~*Christmas shopping & dinner with sis*~

I went solo shopping to scour for gifts for colleagues. After that I met my sis for dinner.

We went to The Pasta Shop as it was the only restaurant at Wheelock Place without a queue.



Food was blah but we were hungry and finished everything. Now I know why there wasn't a queue.



You could tell I really like this casual plaid shirt a lot right? I wore it differently from here and here. This way of throwing it over a white top reminds me so much of the 90s dressing of teenaged boys in Singapore. I don't think I would wear it in other ways so this would possibly the last time you see me featuring this OOTD photo.



Outfit of the day:
♥ plaid tartan shirt
♥ inner white tube top
♥ brown shorts
♥ quirky bear necklace (gift from my sis)


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~*Just Acia with evan*~

I was out for more last minute xmas present shopping after work and met up with evan for dinner.




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~*Five different places on Christmas Eve*~

I can't remember the last time I had such a hectic xmas eve. I was at 5 different places all in a day. It started from the west of Singapore, central, north, northeast and then north again.

First, it was the office. Then after work, I decided to do a pedicure on a whim.



After that I went to do more last minute xmas shopping.

Then I headed to Huber's Butchery for some cold cut meat for the xmas potluck at karen's house the next day.

By then, I was already dead beat. I was angry with kh for a while as he was supposed to be the one getting the meat but he was too tired and spent the day sleeping at home after his shift work while I ran around the whole of Singapore like a headless chicken.

Imagine how mad I was when I got home and discovered that he hadn't roused from his sleep when we were already late for charmaine's hospital visit and xmas eve dinner with my bimbos thereafter.

In the end, I had to go to the hospital and dinner all by myself!

Some kind souls had delivered boxes of cakes to the hospital for the cancer kids to have fun decorating so that they would feel the Christmas mood amidst their suffering.

It was such a thoughtful gesture but unfortunately, KKH was too inflexible and did not allow that to happen. Cyn mommy was really mad as she did not see how making kids happy could bend any rules in the hospital.

In the end, Charmaine and Jase decorated the huge carton boxes of cakes themselves and distributed the cakes to all the kind people around them like the nurses and some of the other patients' parents.

My cake was special as Jase was adamant in waiting till I arrived before he decorated the last cake right before my eyes. That's really very sweet of him. He did not want mine to be a "ready-made" one.



My sweet sweet precious moments boy grabbed a marker and thought of what to write for me.

If you couldn't make out what he was saying, it was meant to be:
From Jase
Merry Xmase [sic]
Love you so much

He needed to work on his spatial concept as he was writing the words in whatever space he could find and not in a continuous flow. For now, I shall throw my teacher-self aside and feel touched by his efforts.

~Do you know? Whenever my students write me notes or cards and if I happen to read them on the spot, I would point out all their spelling, grammatical errors and expression. Such a kill joy right? Of course I would feel touched but I simply cannot stand the glaring mistakes.~



The best godson ever!



The bestest friend and bestest mommy ever!



There isn't any photo of Charmaine that day as she was too tired to take photos. Charmaine knew I was meeting my friends after that and suggested that I bring some cakes for all the kor kor and jie jie. How sweet of her!

We met at Flamingg Mangos (again) for xmas eve dinner since it was near to all our homes and we did not want to squeeze with the crowd in town.



I was REALLY late for dinner by the time I left KKH that I had to tell my friends to go ahead to eat first as I did not want them to be too hungry.

When I arrived, I was snubbed by everyone. Yes, I knew I was really very late but I had a long hectic day and was too tired to mind. From the photos of our smiley faces, you wouldn't have guessed that snubbing occurred before right? LoL.... It's the spirit of Christmas after all.



Kh finally emerged from hibernation and joined us after that.



Happy with our boxes of cakes!



After dinner, jq invited us to join him at his friend's place for games.

xtina had to leave as she had got church service early in the morning the next day. The remaining bimbos agreed that we could not go empty-handed and decided to buy a carton of Carlsberg beer as its tagline is Carlsberg World of Friends (好友满天下 in Mandarin).

Being with my very siao onz group of bimbos, we had all sorts of siao onz bimbotic ideas. We decided to jump up behind jq at both sides of the doorway when his friend opened the door and holler, "好友满天下!"



Kh refused to partake in any of our "silly acts" as what he deemed. Nevertheless, he participated by taking a video of us engaging in our silly act.

Shout to tiff: Where's the video?



Indeed, it is a world of friends. kh met his ex school mate there.

I haven't been playing games with English speaking people for a long time and had great fun playing taboo and pictionary. My best team mates were kh (for guessing me) and gera (for me guessing her).



There was so much laughter and one of the greatest laugh-inducing moments of the night included using jq's English name which is Jimson to guess the person Jim Henson by saying "a chicken in Jimson". Absolutely creative!

There was also one about how everyone thought that kh deemed LV cheap when he was actually trying to draw LV as something expensive and thereafter proceeding to draw something cheap. I almost thought that was my ticket to snagging an LV bag from him!



Another noteworthy moment was when gera was trying her utmost to draw "me". How the f*** does one portray "me"? She kept on emphasing on her mushroom head wig as she outlined the hair, shaded the hair and pointed to the hair of the girl in the picture for the umpteenth time.

At 12am, we hurriedly wished everyone Merry Christmas and got back to our games. That was how engrossed we were in the games.

I think we only wrapped up the night at 4+am on xmas day. That was the befitting start for countless games night to come!



Outfit of the day:
♥ No label pink knit lace top
♥ shorts worn underneath

Shout out to tiff: I right clicked and saved the photos off your FB album. If you're free, send me the silly video please. Thanx!


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~*Christmas party at Karen's place*~

First on the agenda was to be santa and drop by kkh with stockings full of gifts for my godkids.





We could not stay for long as we were already late for karen's potluck party.

When we reached karen's place, we were treated to lots and lots of food. It was a traditional xmas dinner spread in an Asian setting.



There was a whole turkey with vegetables and yellow rice, roast beef and another roast lamb. ethan and jw acted like passadors shaving slices of meat off for everyone.

Some guests bought the food while others came with their homemade specialty. Kh and I contributed to gourmet ham and blue cheese and we were thrilled to see the slices of cold cuts stripped off the platter. Our blue cheese was most popular with ethan. A friend of karen even cooked mushroom soup from scratch right at her place!

For Asian food, we had some delicious home-made kueh pie tee! Dessert was a durian logcake baked by karen as well as another cake (not photographed) brought by reg and jw.

Besides karen's pooches Louis and Emmie, koji's son little Andre was the star of the night. Decking in santa's outfit made him so endearing and everyone wanted a piece of him.



Of course, we had the traditional gift exchange by drawing names as well as personal gift exchange with our closer friends. We started unwrapping gifts like little boys and girls while ethan filmed us.



Some guests entertained themselves with PS3 games while the rest of us played games like Taboo, Pictionary, Win Lose or Draw and Charades using the Taboo and Pictionary cards. We even had a mix of Tabootionary and had a whale of a time laughing ourselves silly.



Some of the players were really good at describing, some at guessing. Others were such creative artists while the rest were actors. Clara and Ethan were really good at depicting words in drawings. Fraser, gobble, impeach, kudos, curriculum... I've to learn a thing or two from Clara when she actually resorted to drawing curry to depict the sound of curriculum when drawing classroom failed.

Trained from the previous night's Taboo, kh and I made a great team of scoring many cards for our team.



The games continued till about 5am. By then, we were wishing one another happy boxing day.

Here's a parting shot of us as well as louis and emmie.



Here's a video summary of what happened at karen's place that day. I linked this video off karen's youtube a/c. Enjoy!






Outfit of the day:
♥ ClubCouture monochrome toga dress
♥ Return to Tiffany™ heart tag choker
♥ Ferragamo bag
♥ Americaya shoes


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~*Last day of 2010*~

I wrote about the last day of 2010 in this post and I'll consolidate everything here.

2010 had been a little of a bitch and an angel. But overall, it had been a great year.

I spent the last day of 2010 teaching my secondary classes in the day. The kids were great. We had lots of fun and laughter. I very much prefer to teach primary school kids but my students have been really a joy to teach, especially the sec 2s. Boy did they write such funny things for their resolutions!

Since it was a half day, I went for my Monsoon hair treatment appointment thereafter. I won it from the Watson's lucky draw (I think I spent way too much money at my favourite pharmacy) and the last day of redemption was 31st December 2010. I had been so busy trying to balance my life the whole of December that I left it till the very last day of the year to fix my appointment.

The free package consisted of a scalp and hair treatment and a neck, shoulder and back massage which was worth $249. I had a relaxing time there, not thinking about anything else but to relax and enjoy. My scalp felt clean, my hair was soft and silky and best of all, the masseuse was from China and he could really knead all the knots loose from the aches and pains suffered from my bad posture at work and my recent lower back problem. I felt really light after the whole treatment.



After that, it was simple dinner at Waraku with tiff and gera. We laughed so loudly, I thought all the people around us might have hated us to our guts.



My silly bimbos!



Then, we agreed we should spend the last moments of 2010 cozying up at home with a good book.

Gera had Murakami, Tiff had Catch 22 while Jo had Never Hit a Jellyfish with a Spade by Guy Browning.

Guy Browning's deadpan British humour... What a way to start the new year!


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~*Christmas shopping haul*~

Wanna see part of my xmas shopping haul?

I bought these for my colleagues and penned love notes to them.



I got most of the mass gifts from Daiso. I really love shopping at Daiso!

The mini cans you see up there actually contain mini wet tissue. Giving wet wipes is unsual but I thought it was cute to give some mini cans as gifts. The magnet mice and cute teddy notepad which I used to pen my love notes are from Daiso too. The chocolates are not from Daiso of course. They're from Marks & Spencer.

If you know me personally or have been reading my blog for some time, you would have known that I always try my best to do something for the environment as and when I can. Instead of buying gift wrappers, I used an old xmas catalogue to wrap the mini cans.



With the sweet-like wrapper, chocolates and love note, everything looked a lot more presentable and christmassy.

All the mousies looked very different upon closer inspection. Some had more hair. Some had bigger nose. Some had beadier eyes than the rest. I had a hard time choosing the right mouse for the right person. Right now, they are all stuck onto the magnetic boards of my department peeps and the amusing thing is that all our mice are stuck in different positions unanimously. Spread out on fours, two arms over, two legs over, flat down, four limbs to the chest...



Got some mirrors for the lady friends I meet during the season.



As usual, I would have a massive haul of pretty delicate accessories from Green Petals since I never spend less than a hundred each time I visit the place.







I bought a few pieces of editable flash sticks from gmarket at this site. Click to see a flash version of how it works.



I bought a few sticks of cool blue and traffic yellow as the rest were out of stock.



For viv's present, I specially personalised it to input a few Jang Keun Suk related words as I knew she would definitely put it to good use at his concerts.

I would like to give a shout out to the seller.

Thumbs up for seller Bryan. He met me at my workplace to pass me the stuff as I ordered quite a few pieces from him . On top of that, he also gave me a bulk purchase discount and was really patient in explaining to me how to use the flash sticks. We chatted quite a bit and I found out that he did thorough quality checks on his products. He had to cancel my order for 2 of the flash sticks as he said their condition weren't good enough to be sold. Not many sellers do such QC; most of the time sellers try to get rid of those items which aren't in pristine condition as fast as possible, hoping that their buyers would not notice. I've bought items which weren't in very good condition before so I appreciate that he did not sell me defected goods.

I was trying to be environmentally funny with tiff when I wrapped her present up in the tiffany mailer envelope.



On xmas eve eve, I prepared a mini "hamper" with hidden cash for my parents which I arranged neatly on the kitchen table.

My mum the avid drinker immediately asked to open the mini wine instead of looking into the envelope. -_-|||




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~*Some notable gifts I've received*~

I've got the habit of not opening my gifts immediately unless specified by the giver or when it's a mass gift exchange. Every Christmas, I would arrange all my unwrapped gifts for a mass photo taking session before I ripped the wrappers apart.

I would also take photos of the gifts individually so as to remember who gave what. I still do that but I decide to share only the notable ones on my blog from now on. I value all the other gifts in my heart of course so don't be upset if I didn't share it here on the public realm. =)

Mass photo of gifts from colleagues.



I didn't snap a mass photo of gifts from family and friends as I would need a wide angled lens and a much bigger background which somehow would not feature the mess in our room and that is somehow impossible.

My very first i-pod from my 2nd sis.



Why do I consider it notable?

I'm one who hadn't owned a a single electronic music device up till now. I didn't own a walkman during the walkman era. I didn't own a discman. I didn't own a mini discman, I didn't own any mp3 player as well. I don't know of any urban dweller so far who hadn't owned any of these in their lives except myself.

Heck, I don't even own the ubiquitous appendage to everyone's limb -- the i-phone.

Even though the i-pod isn't exactly bought-off-the-shelf and still-in-plastic-packaging kinda new, it looks brand new. My sis gently used it till she found it a hassle to bring both her i-phone and i-pod out. Since she listened to the music stored in her i-phone more often, she decided to present me with her i-pod. It's the most expensive gift from her so far but more importantly, I value the thoughts more.

She threw in the new earphones which we chose together as part of the gift because the earphones that came with it was spoilt. The white sony earphones you see up there had controls that weren't compatible with the i-pod. I'd to make a trip down to exchange for another one so the earphones I have now is actually a sennheiser one.

Anyway, I'm still an i-diot when it comes to all this apple i-stuff. I haven't changed the song list in the player up till now coz I don't exactly know how to dl. We do share similar taste in certain songs but not all so I had to put up with some of the songs for now.

Another notable gift is the bag organizer from xtina.



xtina knows that I've been looking for the perfect bag organizer for the longest time ever but those I saw were either too big or too small. The base for this one fits my bag snugly and all my knick knacks fit into every compartment snugly. After fitting all my stuff in perfectly, I felt the same triumph as completing a 3000-piece puzzle.

Speaking of feeling triumphant, that's exactly how I'm feeling now knowing that I'm finally done with updating 2010 backlogged events!

I really really wish to start updating this year's event without unfolding or rewinding so much.

I'll end off my post with "snow" in Singapore. I spotted this white stuff somewhere near my place which looked a lot like half melted snow. The weather was chilly that day and it really reminded me of winter.



How I look forward to this year's xmas!



~*Congratulations ClubCouture*~

I'm really excited to share that ClubCouture has been shortlisted as a nominee in the annual Cozy Cot Holy Grail Fashion Awards for the following categories:

♥ Best Brand for Party Dresses
♥ Best Label for Dates



The other nominees in the same categories are global giants like Mango, BCBG, bebe, agnès b and the likes.

Help vote for ClubCouture and stand to win $200 worth of ClubCouture vouchers. For more details on voting, click here.

Currently ClubCouture is having a summer sale at $29 for all new items released.

Time for more online shopping!