no.234 131220 Thank you for the life group Christmas baking party

Merry Christmas

My life group girls and I met up for the last time to bake some cookies for Sunday's service. It's the Sunday before Christmas, so we thought it would be nice to put some Christmas spirit in it. We baked some cookies and decorated in red and green icing! It would've been nicer if we baked the cookies from scratch but since we didn't have enough time, we just decorated "nicely." It was pretty much a cookie factory for the last few hours. By the end of the night, I think everyone got extremely tired from all that baking and decorating. Plus, we were snacking some cookies in the process, so we were high on sugar...haha. I ended up crying from laughing so hard!

I'm thankful for my life group girls. Throughout the year, we were able to encourage each other, challenge each other and pray for each other. I would like to join it again next year and keep growing in Christ with these wonderful ladies. Thanks girls for a great year!

no.227 131213 Thank you for a fun friday night

Christmas baking!

My way of destressing is this: put on my favourite music out loud, get the recipe that I wanted to try it out and bake, and while mixing ingredients and waiting for the baked goods to come out from the oven, dance!

My playlist varies from time to time, but since 'tis the season to be jolly, I was listening to Christmas carols. I couldn't play the music out loud because my dad was taking a nap, but loud enough that I could hear it and sing along. I baked some chocolate cupcakes with white chocolate buttercream for tomorrow's life group meeting. I saw this cute 'North Pole' cupcake design so I wanted to decorate it like that, but it didn't look as nice as I expected... so I'm just gonna sprinkle it with some Christmas colours. Well, I'm really glad the cupcakes and the frosting came out nice! Many times I run in to problems when making the icing. I guess it was my lucky day. The icing came out amazing. I still need to work on my icing skills... so it doesn't look that pleasing. Oh well, it tastes good:)

Afterwards, I wrapped some Christmas gifts. I put a lot of thought and detail to it. You'll see it when I post up the picture. I don't want to post up the picture today, because I want to keep it a surprise. I already ruined the surprise last time when I uploaded a photo of the cards I made. Yeah.. that was a bad idea. I'm very excited to give these presents to my friends. I hope they appreciate all the time I put in to choose and wrap their presents!

Lastly, I sort of finished making my Christmas cards. I just need to work on a few more for my family and I will be done! At first, I had a really long list of people to write a card to. However, making cards are not that easy! Coming up with designs are difficult... although I do search online for inspirations. So far I made two designs and I'm proud to say that they are my own. So, friends, when you do receive a Christmas card, know that it's a one-of-a-kind. It's made just for you!

no.166 131013 Thank you for the thankful heart

Wrapped the cookies nicely and shared them with my friends:)

Happy Thanksgiving!

I'm pretty sure many pastors talked about thankfulness in their sermon today. The message I heard from my pastor was about giving thanks too: how everything we have and everything that we're thankful for stems out from one thing - Jesus, the ultimate gift of God for us.

I do think that, in fact, that’s the reason why I started my blog. Anyways, the message made me think about the genuineness of my heart when I express my gratefulness to God. Since I started my blog, I'm able to tangibly see what I'm thankful for. There are days when I am so excited to write my post because I have so much joy in me that I can’t wait to share it with you. On the other hand, there are days when I kind of force myself to come up with an idea on the title of my post, or what to even write about. It's not that I'm not grateful that day. It's just that I don't know what to choose to write about because something special didn't happen that day. However, my focus shouldn't be about extraordinary things that occur in my life. Most of the things I do are on a regular basis, which involves a lot of repetition. I guess what I learned today is that it doesn't matter what you're thankful for - whether they may be special things that happen a few times in your life, or mundane things that you do every day, I should have the same genuine heart for each because I wouldn't have them if it wasn’t for God.

I pray that I can be truly grateful every time I give thanks to God.

no.164 131011 Thank you for motivating me to get back to photography

Didn't have enough white chocolate chips, so I threw in some walnuts.

Hello!

The long weekend is here! Not just any long weekend, it's Thanksgiving weekend! I'm looking forward to tomorrow because I am finally driving up north to see the beautiful autumn leaves! According to the Ontario provincial park website, about 70% of the leaves have changed their clothes into fall colours, and about 20% are already falling. The last report was updated a week ago, so I hope at least the 70% of the leaves are still remaining! It's sad to see a bare tree.

After talking to a friend the other day, I took out my camera from my closet. I realized that I haven't been taking much photos in a while. Although I was the photographer in Mexico, but that was just with a digital camera. I want to get back at learning photography again. I have photographer's eye - or so I think, haha. I mean, I don't think I'm bad at it. In fact, if I put more effort, I know I will be good! I'm so excited to learn again! As you can see, I'm constantly changing the look of my blog. I'm playing with HTML codes and other stuff, so please bear with me until I get everything organized. To be honest, it will take some time to get the look I want.

I'll be bringing my camera to the park tomorrow. I'm also thinking about bringing my bike... haven't decided yet though. But I know I'll have lots of fun!

no.163 131010 Thank you for letting me have all the ingredients for my double chocolate chip cookie

I made this earlier this week... tuile turned out okay but not the cake (sadly!)

Sugar craving nonstop.

I took out the butter from the fridge and I'm patiently waiting for it to soften up. I already measured the flour, chocolate powder, and other ingredients for my double chocolate chip cookie recipe. Thankfully, I have all the ingredients at home to make this cookie to satisfy my craving.

Since last week (it might have been a couple weeks ago actually) I found myself craving ice cream on waffle cone... like really bad. Sadly, no one wanted to buy me ice cream so... I went out to treat myself for some ice cream! No, I didn't get a waffle cone, but I got some Baskin Robbins green tea ice cream on sugar cone (now I remember, I wrote a post about this a couple of weeks ago!). I remained pretty calm and patient after making my stomach happy until earlier this week. My birthday is just around the corner and apparently I get a free froyo at Menchies! Who would say "no" to free froyo? Of course I had to get some!

I'm still craving waffle cone ice cream! I know my craving won't stop until I actually get one... so please someone buy me ice cream for my birthday! I wish there was Baskin Robbins at a walkable distance from my place... actually, that is a terrible idea!

no.109 130817 Thank you for my life

Happy Birthday my little sis!

The surprise was, well not so much of a surprise because my dad kind of gave it away. When she walked in, she saw all the colourful fondants I have made and thought they were soaps that I brought back from Mexico (so random!). Still, my sister was surprised when she saw it. Now I can share everything on my blog - I made my sister a birthday cake. Not just any cake, but a fondant cake! It was difficult for sure as it was my first time working with fondant. I made everything from scratch. I baked two 9" chocolate cake, bought fresh pint of raspberries and pureed it to make some raspberry buttercream, and also made fondant from scratch. I did a quick research on homemade fondants, and found out that you can make fondant with marshmallows. The process was pretty simple, yet messy. All you gotta do is melt a bag of marshmallows, add a little bit of water and some shortening. Then, you add icing sugar. Lots and lots of icing sugar. Finally, you just knead everything together in a standing mixer until it becomes a dough. And you add food colouring - I had four colours so I mixed them to get the desiring colours.

Bake, make, decorate and eat!

My original plan was to make the movie "Up" cake with the balloon house because it would be super cute! But as I was working with the fondant, I realize it would be too challenging for me, especially since it is my first time. I googled fondant cakes for some inspiration and came across a design I really liked. It was something similar to my finished cake, but more pretty and had elaborate design. I copied the quilted pattern and replaced small flowers with beads. The ribbon on top had more complicated design but my fondant wasn't sturdy enough so I had to minimize its shape. In the end, I ended up with a simple ribbon and a birthday tag. When I was done, I wasn't completely satisfied because it was totally different from what I imagined it to be in the first place. But when I saw my sister's face when she saw the cake, I was happy. She really appreciated it and that's all it matters!

Anyways, I'm thankful for my life today. I was just so thankful that I woke up this morning and for the new day that God has granted me. I know it sounds so random but something that happened last night made me really appreciate life.