Style

I dont mean trendy.
I mean stylish.

Some people are just so effortless put together.
Sure when we see a runway show or flip through magazines, we just kid ourselves and say, 'if i had a cupple-a millions and a busload of stylists and make-up artists and photoshoppers... i could kinda look this great' (ok i dont really say or think that, but for the sake of this blog, lets pretend we both do)
Anyway my point here.
some people are just so damn effortlessly stylish.

i wish i could walk out the door everyday looking this put together.

All photos by Sartorialist If you don't know about him. You are waaayyy lamer than even I.

Lovely Saturday.... IKEA rules!

What a lovely day spent
:)

Didn't have to go anywhere, no appointments, birthdays, baptisms, weddings, meetups, get togethers.... nada.
Just what was needed. A day for ... whatever.

Got up with a burst of energy. Cleaned up a little of the mess. Tried to organize our shelves. Believe me. It takes some real talent to arrange stuff on shelving. Tis not as easy as it looks in magazines. I've still not managed to succeed in this, but hey...

Dragged our butts to IKEA. They have some new stuff there... had a quick walk around and grabbed a few things. A lovely simple table lamp. Needed to dress up the corner where our fish tank used to be. Lamps just add so much warmth to a room. With energy saving bulbs, they no longer overheat and well, ... they are good for the environment and saves on the bills. :) win-win-win... also got a cheap wok (tried it already, works good so far. a small wall clock, some photo frames, a small rug for the kitchen, some glass bottles for storing water in the fridge. Had our lunch at the cafe in IKEA. good food for unbelievable prices. VALUE!! i had the salmon, man had the meatballs. .... AND the pizza... AND the shrimp cocktail.

Later in the evening, made some choc cake. Amended from a recipe from recipezaar, suitable for diabetics. In mine i added a little melted butter, about a tablespoon and a little more flour and a tad more sugar, replaced the tartar with baking powder. Had a tough time beating the egg whites stiff by hand. phew! So glad when i peeked at the oven and the cake was rising. For a late dinner, tried the new wok, made some fried rice and had that with leftover chicken fillets with sweet sour sauce /tomato-ey.

photo source:recipezaar http://www.recipezaar.com/25340
mine looked similar. cept' i used 2 small baking containers so the center was a little more raised. like a big cupcake.

oohhhh dearrrr

Its bulan puasa and what a shame i am so far away from all the delish goodies.
Just feasting my eyes on thesee.... sigh

Thanks to 'masak-masak' blog

Lord help me!

I'm surfing.....

10 most influential design bloggers

More design stuff. Not really thinking about voting for the best design blogs but just browzing to see who i have been missing out on. And perhaps refreshing my blogroll. Not that any are not worth looking at but like to keep my list as slim as can be. Tastes change ... ok maybe seasons change... and life progresses on... I have a lot of weddingy links that are great but i don't refer to anymore, so i might remove em and let you soon to be weddeds find your own way in the digital world.

Serious Shoe

The truth is... I buy cheap shoes. But I sure love to oogle good quality shoes. Like this one for instance. To die for. I've never quite seen anything like it.
Thanks BeachBungalow8

Here's to you,
Kurt Geige's Eden shoe

Pound Cake

Ran out of snacks at home, checked what I had in my fridge and cabinets and decided to look for simple cake recipes on recipezaar.com

Found a few pound cake recipes and made my own rendition.

Al's Basic Cake Recipe

1 mug sugar
A little more than half cup softened/ almost melted butter
3 eggs
1 tsp vanilla essence or in my case a little tubey thing of vanilla powder
(mix all the above by hand in a plastic Tupperware)
(then alternate, flour and milk)
2 mugs flour + 1 tsp baking powder
Half mug milk
Add 3 pinches of salt

Preheat oven to 350F/ 180C
Bake for about 1 hour, depending on your cake tin. I used 2 small containers (which our takeaway came in - so i only needed about 45 mins)

When baked drizzle some lemon juice mixed with honey on top (juice of less than half a lemon + 1 tsp honey). Serve slightly warm with whipped cream in the side... or whatever you have handy, blueberry jam, fruit preserves, vanilla ice cream...
Serves about 10 large servings or 14 smaller servings

Featured Link

To tell you the truth,... one of the main reasons for having this blog is so i have a place to store cool links/blogs that i find.. ( i surf a LOT) like a virtual notepad. I log in very often, just to run through the links, most of which are updated very often..... today i'll feature a few gems from on of them. Cribcandy Its late and i'm sorry i sound so flat. Yes, i can literally hear myself.

Fried Rice

Fried rice is probably the one thing asian that i cook most over here. Well one reason why is cause, SO can't get used to plain white rice. So i have to add some flavour to rice if i want to eat rice. Sure I can eat it alone but who wants to cook twice.. thats just plain crazy.
oh, anyway. Well sure i don't make nasi goreng like we do in KL or at the mamak stall. But then again, bear in mind i've probably cooked nasi goreng like twice in my life till i got here, so i would know where to begin anyway. I'm just wondering randomly, what is the one simple thing that you cook most and what goes into that.
I never follow recipes, and whatever i cook changes everytime i make it depending on whats in my storage. Here was what was in my fried rice this week. (it was accompanied by half a roast chicken - bought)
Oil - almost half cup, 1 medium onion, 4 cloves garlic, 3 tbsp oyster sauce, 3 tbsp soy sauce, 1 small packet of fried rice seasoning meant for 1 bowl of rice - probably equivalent to 1 stock cube, pepper, 3 slices ham chopped, half cup tomato passata/ puree, 2 handfulls frozen mushroom, frozen green peas, 4 bowls cooked rice, 3 eggs. Kinda in that order. As you can see, i just throw whatever needs to be used up before it gets spoilt really. Tasted good to me. Served with a goo tomato ketchup! :) - you could probably feed 5 hungry people with this.

Recycle Glass Jars!

Tip from Apartment therapy site.
Well it sounds simple but i think its cool to actually use these pasta sauce jars. Although i don't really use premade pasta sauce, so i have to start looking for food products in jars. I think they would look cool for storing odds and ends... esp since i have tonnes of space on my shelves/ book case.
10 simple ways to reuse pasta sauce jars

why i think this idea is cool.
1. Plastic is bad, glass is good!
2. Like the idea of making infused olive oil stuff, salad dressing.. etc
3. Love the idea of using it as a shaker thingy

What other uses can you think of?