Sunday, October 26, 2008

gingerbread and potted plants

i've been quite adventurous this weekend. Heh...

Last Thursday, Mel surprised me with a set of little boy and girl cookie cutters that he saw at phoon huat! I was all excited to try out making my very own gingerbread family (I love gingerbread! I remember my family once even buying a whole gingerbread house at Christmas!) So on Friday I got the necessary ingredients that were lacking from my baking supplies and set to work...

Well... let's just say the little army that I made were just a tad salty =b Haha... turns out I should have used unsalted butter, because the recipe called for salt, and I put BOTH salted butter and salt! =b tee hee... and the ginger taste was deemed a bit too strong by the hubby (who got the first bite). But in general, it was still pretty fun and floury to make them, and I think they don't taste TOO bad... but next time I'll cut the salt =b

I forgot to take pics =( Oh well...

Second thing I did was start my own lil garden project! this morning, one of my church mates called me aside and said she was going to cut a basil seedling and did I want to? Well out of curiousity, I followed her to the church nursery, where the aunty who looks after it was helping her to select some nice shoots to cut. Apparently you can just stick the branch that you cut off in a pot of soil and it should take root and grow! (Vaguely remember something called stem cutting from Pri Sch?)

So I thought ok, I'll give it a try. Before I knew it, they had whipped out a pair of scissors and snipped me my own two little shoots! Suddenly I got quite excited about the prospect of them blooming and these two little lives I had in my hand. Haha!! So after church, I made mel (poor mel) drive us to the nearby Katong nursery and a very kind-looking man there helped to put my shoots in their own little brown pot (!!!) for free! Because he was so nice, and also because I wandered around while he potted them, I decided to buy another little pot of sweet basil. So now I have TWO little pots!

Came home and excitedly watered them and placed them in the sunniest spot. =D hee!!! I really hope they get roots and grow big and strong (so I can EAT! MUAHAHAHAHA!!!!) If these first two live it out, I might think about expanding into rosemary and parsley, which I also saw at the nursery... heh.

Yup, that was my exciting weekend!

Monday, October 13, 2008

home is where the heart is

Had a good talk with my mum last week, at our weekly dinner with the family =)

Some people wonder why Mel and I spend so much time with our families on a weekly basis, but it's just important to both of us that we do, because our families are so much a part of who we are, and why we are who we are... and our parents aren't growing any younger too...

Also, since getting married and moving out, I've come to treasure my parents a whole lot more, appreciating all the behind-the-scenes sacrifices they have made in the past to bring me up, keep the house clean, and paying the bills. =)

Anyway, so I had a really nice talk with mummy last week, cos we had an hour for just the two of us, mel being in church and daddy being out with his friends, and it was just very inspiring and scary and eye-opening, to hear about the difficulties that she and my dad went through to have me, and to get a glimpse into how emotionally stressful it was for them, especially her. And the sacrifices they made to bring me up the way they did (my mum gave up her job to look after me). Of course I won't go into the details, but I'm very moved by my parents' love for me, waaaaayyyy before I was born, and the ways in which they trusted God to carry them (and me) through tough times.

When mel picked me up after his mtg, I cried in the car (this is quite a common occurrence for my poor hubby), but not out of sadness, but an overwhelming sense of gratitude for life, love and family.

I can only hope and pray that Mel and I will be as wonderful parents as our parents have been, and find the grace and strength in God to persevere through the tough times that we will have. =)

here's to our parents!