Christmas 2014: The One On Christmas Eve

WARNING: IMAGE HEAVY
Loooooooong picture-ful post. Go get your drinks and popcorn while waiting for the images to load. You could even savour your main dish in front of your computer. Those viewing this on your smartphones and other hand held devices, 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. I know my turtle friend did that once minus the cursing in public. =P


Christmas eve was spent with my department at one of our colleague's place. It has since become a tradition for our department to "crash" any colleague's new home with the reason of visiting new-born babies, wanting to gain home decor ideas and plain kaypoh-ness.

Lyn's house is so cozy and we had so much fun eating, playing charades, frisking with kids, exchanging gifts in a radical manner, taking lots of photos and gasp, even watching Frozen!




First up, here's introducing the 2 organizers for the party-- Hello Kitties Jo and Lyn. =^•^= =^•^=




We had Asian-Chinese fare like all the delightful traditional sweet and savoury kueh and porridge from Lyn's mum (Esther's Pot), and Western-British fare like delectable steak, chicken, shepherd, seafood pies and avocado mango salad from my bestie Cyn and Patrick's food kiosk (Little Britain). Our boss also brought every Singaporean's favourite-- otah.




We love to explore the closets of our colleagues and be completely enthralled by the huge space. Lyn has a walk-in wardrobe and so here are all the funny folks going crazy over the space! Dear hubby, may I have a huge closet too?




What were the kids engrossed in?




The kids were engrossed in Lyn's beautiful piano tunes coming from that pristine white "mantelpiece" or "table" look-alike. For my Facebook friends, you could view the videos here and here.




Enough of candid shots. Everyone wanted to pose with smiley Baby J and otahs.




Everyone also wanted to pose with everyone (and the glass room).




Boss hates to take photos so it is rare and cute to see him smiling like this.




Lol... forced by 2 ladies to smile for the camera.




When all had arrived, we took a wefie. It was almost a FULL department shot. It had been a long time since we had a photo of a full department attendance.




Time for charades!
















The "glassroom" is the favourite place of the house for all the mummies and kids who were unable to participate in the games. Look at all my colleagues-friends, they are all so beautiful with such adorable kids!




Our dear hot mama of 3. I wasn't looking at the camera coz it was taken during charades and we were supposed to be guessing the word.




And yes, a wefie w/o a selfie stick makes forearms big.

We ended the party officially with the gift exchange. I got inspiration of a new way to do gift exchange from here. It was the first time trying out this Christmas story game and I was so heartened that some colleagues told me they loved it! It might get messy with small kids around so if you're interested to try it out, do modify accordingly to suit your guests. I slowed down and shortened the story accordingly for the mix circle of adults and small kids.




Time to open the gifts!




Hehehe... this was the gift I prepared. I actually bought vouchers but didn't want it to look to obviously like vouchers so I wrapped it with a pack of my favourite snack Peppero. Should have seen the recipient's face when she unwrapped the present. Hohoho... And guessed what, for my gift I received the same vouchers from another colleague.




And then Lyn the wefie queen, suggested a departmental wefie with our gifts. I love this picture! Lyn looks funny here and in some wefies coz it is a challenge to balance the selfie stick, aim to get everyone in the frame, appear with big face due to being the one standing in front, sport weird facial expression counting 1, 2, 3 just so that that moment of memory is captured perfectly... I joined in so that she wouldn't be left out. Lol!




Just after some colleagues left, we remembered that there was wine and had a toast. Cheers to a great department!




They look just like sisters!




Baby Em is usually fine with strangers according to her mummy and also from all the photos I usually see of her on Facebook. She was cranky that day probably due to the large crowd and it was only after mummy and I acted stupid "flying" Em here and there, and throwing her up in the air that she finally snapped out of her cool grouchy phase and laughed.




"Quick quick, help me take a picture before she stops smiling!" This resulted in many shots of Baby Em and me.




Guess what was on TV? It was FROZEN! Lyn and Bryan were acting out how people should act if they got "Frozen" the movie for charades.




I wasn't kidding when I said we were watching Frozen. I love the movie but I wished the hype would slowly die down. Let it go! Let it go!




Little C is such a darling. She would just melt into anyone's lap and embrace.




When I photobombed, Little C cheekily lifted her foot to the screen and smiled.




Everyone wanted a piece of Little C coz she's just so friendly and I would think that the thought bubble on Little C should aptly state:
"Aunties ah, can you all just let me watch my Frozen???"




We asked Little C if she could look at the screen for a moment and she posed a sweet little smile. Such a darling!




Awww... so sweet. I love what a natural poser she is! Can I kidnap you home?




When we asked Little C if Colin is a "kor kor" or an "uncle", she said "ah pek". But but but, look at how sweet she was to him. She would grow up to be a heartbreaker!




This wasn't supposed to be a group shot. It was a photobomb by all of us. By now, Little C must be thinking, "Sigh... uncles and aunties, just let me watch my Frozen in peace." Even her mummy brought her little sis in to photobomb.




In my circle of friends, my official ear to ear 白痴 Chipmunks smile is called "the 白痴 smile". In our deparment, it is called "The Bryan Smile". Bryan does it best!

We all love to imitate "The Bryan Smile" as you can see.




It is always great to work with Lyn whether for work or for play! What a great department Christmas party it was coz of our lovely host with a lovely home and the lovely OEDian spirit and warmth, all of which liven up the Christmas spirit on Christmas eve.




All photos in this post were taken by two different iPhone 6 with brightening (coz of backlight in the house) and some filtering.

Happy Easter!

Happy Easter to all of you!

For those of you with long weekend from Friday to Sunday, enjoy your long weekend! I know that in some European countries, the long weekend stretches from Friday to Monday so to these folks, enjoy your even longer weekend!




Long weekends are a bane and a boon. Of course, it is common knowledge why long weekends are a boon. As for it being a bane, it simply means a shorter work week and hence some of us might be experiencing a lot more hectic weekdays.

I do know that many in my department were feeling the stress over the week that has just passed too. There was simply too much to do, coupled with the fact that we had 2 out-of-office events in the week which meant even lesser time to work on our tasks. As for me, I had/still having roles in separate 2 "events" too and I was almost drowning in work.




Some hearts to cheer all of us up perhaps?




So some of you who were following me on Instagram saw my cupcakes photos a few days ago. For our department cohesion, my colleague decided to propose the idea of cupcake-making to our Dept Head. Our Dept Head is one who really loves sporty activities (especially taking walks as seen here and here) for cohesion. However since one of our branch babes would be transferring dept, we thought that cupcake-making would be a befitting farewell activity this time round.





We went to Little House of Dreams for the cupcake-making session and had so much fun! We made the cupcakes in teams of 4 and each of us got to bring home 2 cupcakes each.




The fondant moulding was the most fun part. However, we had only 4 colours of fondant provided -- pink, blue, orange and green. What? No red or yellow? Those are my basic colours to work with usually, other than pink and blue. When we saw the orange fondant, all we could think of was carrot and so I made one! The carrot seemed pretty out of place since we weren't even making carrot cakes and hence, I moulded a rabbit next for an Easter theme. The rest of my leftover blues were used for my sign off. I should have combined all the blue for an even bigger Easter bunny coz the bunny simply looked puny next to the gigantic carrot.




I found the orange and green a bit jarring and hence decided not to include these 2 colours on my 2nd cupcake. I wanted a pastel theme and mixed pink and blue to get the purple fondant. After my colleagues saw how pretty the purple was, they also attempted to make some purple.




I do love the pink, blue and purple colour scheme a lot. Pardon the raw edges. I'm no pro.




See, orange does look like carrot!




The chocolate spread is Nutella and the cupcake itself is plain vanilla flavour. I'm surprised they tasted good coz I usually do not like plain vanilla cupcakes. Also, I do not like the artificial sweetness of fondant but everything tasted beautifully when eaten together.




The photos are all taken using iPhone 4s at night in a dimly lit part of the house and hence the grainy quality. Silly me should have used my Canon S95 instead. The rest of the photos with humans and my colleagues' cupcakes are in the department's DSLR. I hope all of you enjoyed looking and reading about my maiden attempt at baking and making cupcakes.


BTW, did you all realise that every day this week is the same backwards?