the eagles have landed

the mister's parents arrived last night and will be staying with us for a fortnight. as we live in a tiny one bedroom flat, one bathroom divided by four people is going to be fun. but i'm so grateful for wonderful in-laws. couldn't have asked for a better set and while naysayers tell me we've only been married for 6 months (to the day, today!) we did go out for five years before taking the plunge. so i've had plenty of time to get to know them, and they me. and they graciously invited me on holiday with them and we've shared a four bedder room on more than one occasion. there's a limit to how much we can blame our parents for (sorry, freud!) but i attribute much of the mister's better qualities to his parents and their upbringing. i have nothing but respect for them, and admire how they've been married for more than thirty years and remain more loved up than ever. they're exemplary in how they treat each other, and if the mister treats me even half as well as his father treats his mother, i'm one lucky lady. so thank you papa T for teaching my husband how to head a household with grace and love.

things will be quiet on the blog front for the next couple of days but do have an annual round up ready after christmas if you'd like to see.

and that's a retrospective read after inflating our bed for the next two weeks. asian values, no :)

bye bye baby

so happy the pup is going to a home where they've more love and resources for him than we ever will. one of the happiest things about breeding is that you only let them go when you know they are going to a better home. and as hobbyists, there's control over the buyers. we are so very picky and i drafted my first ever contract in 2000, including a first right of refusal clause so as to be able to have the pup back should their new owners not want them anymore. such was the extent of my control-freak-ness. thankfully, for the buyers of the subsequent litters, i'd mellowed and learnt to let go better. so no more onerous contracts :) and some times, the new owners keep in touch and while some of the babies from the earlier litters have gone on to exotic places like verona and prague, we know they're parents in their new homes and have a little album of our babies' babies. which is always a gratifying thing :)

cheeky weekend

one of the nicer things about being based in london is how scandinavia is a short hop away. the mister surprised with a spontaneous 48 hour trip to copenhagen and having last been in summer 2006, i jumped at the chance to visit in winter. also, summer 2006 was a special time just before starting freshman year. a month before i met the mister, and a year before we started going out. in a funny way, almost spent third year of law school on exchange in copenhagen but forfeited it to hold out for a LLM place at NYU, then ended up on exchange in stockholm in final year. funny how things work out :)

however, R and L, our friends who did go on exchange to copenhagen, and M, my danish flatmate from stockholm were kind to share their respective copenhagen lists. having learnt the importance of data triangulation (haha) during a research paper last year, where these three precious sources overlapped was where we wanted to be. and thanks to their generosity, it felt like we max-ed out the city in the short time we'd there. in addition to the restaurants the mister booked months ago (he's the type who has restaurant reservations locked in before booking the flights...) we really enjoyed the canal tour from nyhavn. it even took us to the little mermaid! funny story there - it's possibly the most disappointing statue on earth. remember being underwhelmed when we saw it in 2006 and refused to make a special trip all the way this time, much to the mister's chargrin. but i got the last laugh when our little boat pulled up alongside it and we got to take in the sight of the little mermaid, and the disappointed faces of the hordes of tourists who were on the bank. felt particularly sorry for the japanese troupe with their telephoto lens. no amount of zooming in could make the little mermaid any more impressive... had lots of coffee, fresh danish pastries and the most delicious hot dog by the round tower. 

we'd dinner at era*ora by the canals and were impressed by the food and service. el*vis, the sicillian waiter (yet another one!) was a complete charmer and had the driest wit. he first arrived in copenhagen 10 years ago as a languages student and speaks italian, danish, english, portugese and spanish. wertttt... he had us in fits of laughter through the night and told us at the end that we were only allowed to have salad the next day. and that's when it hit us that we went straight from a 3h degustation lunch to a 3h degustation dinner. oops. so that was saturday! 

and on sunday we explored some neighbourhoods before going to on the canal tour, a christmas market, another christmas market, christmas shopping (helloo georg jensen!) and uhh the tivoli christmas market. we also didn't stick to our salad promise, eating and drinking our way through the markets. double ooops.

this little piggy

one of the things i miss about being home for christmas is the amazing line-up of christmas parties. my neighbours throw the most awesome 'dos and mama never fails to rub it in that i'm missing out on the hog roast goodness. doesn't that look beyond amazing? sigh :( and it's not just my neighbours who are amazing hosts. blessed to have family and friends who open their hearts and homes at christmas and the end of year merry-making is pretty much phenomenal. spent last christmas in berlin and will be in london this year. while i recognise that being with your spouse who has run out of leave is part and parcel of being, well, married, part of me can't help but feel a twinge of nostalgia at christmases past where it's a happily predictable season filled with childhood staples like M's amazeballs turkey, and B's fancy dress parties. one of my proudest achievements is hand-making a set of playing card costumes for my folks to go as a royal flush to a casino party at the start of 2011. 

also, it doesn't help that we're missing a slew of weddings this weekend :( all three couples are mighty dear to us. we were at F&N's engagement party in the villa hours after he popped the question and were in sydney together over just before being called to the bar, R&D are sweeties we've known since university. R was looking after me during freshman camp and my first memory of D is of him in a tight sparkly green dress and fishnets (!!!) and i pupil-ed on the team he was on when we started work. and L&E! E's one of my oldest friends and we spent a large part of our teens together. not usually a fan of weddings but these three are weddings i really wish we were present at :(

and about two years ago, i posted this toast to 2011 (courtesy of zee, and a grey goose ad). if you're sharp, you'd notice i omitted part of it. this year, however, having moved away and gotten married, it's more than apt for the christmas season spent with my second family :)

:)

too big to fit under the tree

so our tree is finally decorated! we put it off for awhile but did eventually get round to buying baubles and shiny stuff to dress it up some. we also dedicated saturday morning to posing for our first ever christmas card. used to joke that one reason to get married was for the monogrammed letterheads i could invest in, little did i realise i could always have a personal set of printed letterheads. so i bought a calligraphy return address stamp soon after we moved into our flat and have been milking it for what it's worth by going on a card writing spree, only to stamp our names and address at the back. for christmas card purposes, the mister had to be coaxed into a scratchy christmas jumper. there may or may not have been felt antlers and some head-butting involved but an hour later, it was a wrap (haha). being able to send our very first christmas card is cause for celebration and i'm hoping we get many more together. hardly the sentimental type but i'd love to start collecting our annual christmas cards and chart the transitions each year brings with it.

late night shopping

it's no secret that liber*ty is one of the mister's favourite haunts and yay for extended opening hours. we went by late one night and slowly made our way down amidst the christmas glitz.

cute waiters

never fail to make my day :) 

we had the pleasure of being looked after by a hottie called V at an italian in notting hill. he passed no judgment when we ordered more for two than the next table did for four. when we initially passed up wine, thinking we'd nurse of bubbly, he rolled his eyes knowingly, only to smirk when five minutes later we asked him to recommend an oaked white. which he did and it was really really good! it was from his home town in sicilly, naturally, and he was so confident he practically guaranteed we'd love it. well, surprise suprise, we did. got chatting over the course of lunch and it turns out his flatmate is a chef at a hip & haps new restaurant and they experiment with food at home ^^. their latest being olive oil ice cream and as we left, he slipped us his flatmate's name and restaurant, and his name too. sweet! can't wait to check out the other place.  

twi-who?

such a beauty!

faddy

i often lament to the mister that londontown is so faddy, the food scene especially so. and right after that i succumb to fad pressure and book us into the latest craze. managed to score a last minute reservation for the restaurant below and in this case, it exceeded my already high expectations :) phew! maybe the fact that i was there with my siblings i.e. favourite people on earth, played a part. but it was a wonderful afternoon and we even caught the sun set from 40 storeys above london. overate as usual, conveniently forgetting that we'd an early dinner booking as i was feeling cheap and decided we had to make use of the 30% discount if we ordered before 7pm. also, K was having a christmas party that the mister and i wanted to sneak off to after dinner with the folks. 

my brother took this photo of alcohol island

 

my libation of choice - a julep

eponymous dish

 

and as we left, A, my brother's girlfriend, took this photo of the bar at dusk.

a bit slow on the uptake, seeing how it's been open for ages and ages and my resistance at being sucked into the trend eventually wore out. hope to be back, but not so soon. might very well become my new go to place when we've friends in town!

a weekend with these two

is always a very good thing. 

 

even when they lapse into little sibling mode and completely leave me out... 

also realised, to my horror, that i run their lives because they let me :/  really need to learn to let go and let them grow into their own person. years of being their surrogate mother, buying school books, attending parent-teacher meetings has taken its toll and ohmymama i'm at my bossiest best around them.

snow is good for all of 10minutes

and then it turns into slush. 

suffered the ignominy of spotted wellies while walking to the GP practice as my trusty leather boots gave up the ghost at the first snowflake. maybe not so trusty after all! so off i went through the frozen moor with wool work trousers unceremoniously stuffed into my gum boots. of course, still managed to trip and fall flat on my face on the footpath. that'll teach me to googlemap my way while walking because clearly, multitasking on an icy road is asking for trouble. 

first snow

a couple of days ago, there was a flurry while i was in class and when i walked home, this is what i saw :) sent the photo to the family whatsapp and my MIL said it looked like a kampong, albeit a tidy one. she meant it in the kindest possible way and was surprised when i told her the building. a former rectory, was about 200 years old. funny, isn't it.  a building that's been around since before raffles founded singers. put things into perspective!

and this was just the beginning of the snowstorm. the flakes got thicker and fell fast and furiously. so much so that when i'd to trudge across the moor to get to the gp practice, it was frozen over.

early christmas dinner

after our walk last weekend, J had us round for what sounded like a simple roast dinner. little did i know that in the brief hour or so between T dropping us all home and our landing on J's doorstep, he'd whip up a feast of such proportions. in addition to the 2kg chicken (wrapped in bacon and roasted to perfection...) J also single-handedly produced

leeks with cheddar, parmesan and brie

roasted honeyed parsnips 

pigs in blankets

grilled sausage stuffing 

brocolli and carrots and get this...

POTATOES ROASTED IN GOOSE FAT. 

all this for, um, four people. 

throw in T's amazing starter of smoked mackrel with soft cheese and horseradish on a toasted rustic rye, my cheeseboard and tiramisu to end on a sweet note and we'd enough to feed a hungry army. washed everything down with grown-up reds and port to finish. i could get used to this :)

in true come*dine with me fashion, after-dinner entertainment included pool while J's hipster papa jammed away on their guitar collection. with the roaring fire and even more port that washed away what remnants of beginner's luck possessed for pool.

 

but that's the BFG winning pool for us nevertheless. 

go team!

 

auchtermuchty

after our walk around dunstanburgh, we couldn't miss piper's pitch next to the parking lot. the signboard piqued our curiosity. after all, it's not every day you see the word auchtermuchty! turns out, it's a town in fife, scotland. unsurprisingly, "the auchtermuchty" is haggis and bacon. each already wonderful on their own, and of synergistic yumminess when combined. truth be told, i'm not the biggest fan of haggis but resistance was futile once i'd pinched a corner off the boys' and then had to get a whole serving for myself. it was that delish! auchtermuchty convert ftw ;)

dunstanburgh castle

scared as i was to jinx things in the morning, i can safely say that T couldn't have picked a better day to go walking. the photos are all unedited and without a filter, a rarity for this trigger-insta-happy amateur. oh! and they were all taken on the soon-to-be-obsolete iPhone4. we had a relatively early start and once T had rounded up the troops (he was also designated driver) we were on the A1 in no time. i'd heard much about dunstanburgh and was quick to incept the thought to T when our weekend walk was still mere pub banter. but T, the only real adult amongst us, was good as his word. there's really not much else to say about the walk except that the weather was perfect, the views spectacular and i learnt that gorse is very prickly.

'hood find

had an errand to run on saturday morning and while it proved fruitless, we did chance upon this sweet little cafe. much as i don't enjoy last-minute errands (who does?) it was made better by a leisurely breakfast with the mister. we got our hustle on the moment we stepped in, spying a lone empty table upstairs. without discussion, i made a beeline for it while the mister went to hunt for breakfast. didn't even have to tell him what i wanted :) well-trained, he is.

blown away (haha)

one of my oldest, dearest friends gifted us this gorgeous tealight holder (?) for our wedding. long story short, lest you think she's 6 months late, is that this is v2 of her amazing creation. couldn't believe that she designed it all by herself on a computer. tried to get my mind round it and this is how she humbly puts it.

"it's computer aided design.. i put in a bunch of code and draw a bunch of lines in 3d that tells it to 'make sphere', 'cut clouds', 'make twisty lines that look like a J' haha"

but i know better because this girl is sheer genius and her brilliance sends me into fits of inadequacy. so a big THANK YOU sweet C for what is going to be our table centrepiece for a long long time. and i like how if anything goes awry, i can always snap the lower limb of K and it becomes "joy". teehee!

nekkid tree

first order of business after finding a home was finding a christmas tree to fill it. well, not exactly but the mister and i had been talking about a tree for the longest time after our tray garden, green/brown  as it might be, was just not cutting it. fortuitously, when we went to our first christmas market of the year, what should we spy but a christmas tree shoppe! and one that promised eco-friendly trees no less. admittedly we were still cutting down a 6 year old tree (gulp!) for purely self-indulgent purposes but hey, it was a local tree requiring the tiniest carbon footprint to get it to our doorstep. so we took the hit, and bought of very first tree. getting it to stand nicely in its stand (bought separately!) was no easy feat and the mister looks like he engaged in a fistfight with wolverine, and lost. judging by the cuts and bruises all over his hands and forearms, i wouldn't be surprised if he got some concerned questions in the office. after spending too many days in our wastebin filled with water (amazing what can double up as a pail should the need arise!) it's been ceremoniously relocated to a stand that holds 3L of water. now we just need to decorate!

incidentally, do note how our photo wall remains a photo floor for now. we have such terrible wall commitment phobia that our beautifully framed photos (of our families, of us, of the wedding etc) have yet to make it to the walls. have a sinking feeling that when the time comes for us to move out (gulp! i'm already having pre-withdrawal symptoms for our first ever home together!) the frames will not have budged and we would have hoovered around them for x years.

thanksgiving dinner

so this post a bit late coming but K had us round for thanksgiving dinner and boy those boys can cook! between him, his sisters and housemates they'd dinner covered! those were some mighty fine birds but C wins for painstakingly bringing a dozen molten chocolate lava cakes and home made tau huay all the way from bristol. now that, my friends, is dedication. and a golden girl worth giving thanks for :) her tau huay was more like the old airport road pudding that i miss with a vengeance and the chocolate lava cakes were truly death by chocolate but in the best possible way. grateful for family, and the wonderful by-product that is family friends. we've spent a good part of our lives together and there's this amazing shared understanding that they get me. and my parents, bless them. and when one of us starts a story about our latest parental shenanigans, there's no need for context because we know exactly what they're getting at. aww :)

and on a separate note, the mister taught me an important lesson at dinner. his EQ is through the roof and he picked up on something i completely missed. so much for women being more socially aware! thankful to be married to someone who inspires me to be a better version of myself.

thankful list over here, if you'd like to see.

self-improvement

while we're talking about weekends, last weekend the mister and i decided to bite the bullet and level up our domesticity. with K's belated thanksgiving dinner that night, we'd the perfect excuse to get started. in the span of two hours, between us we managed to not destroy 1. mixed berry sorbet 2. red peppers and tomato soup 3. vegetable gratin  4. PUMPKIN SEED BREAD (!!!) didn't manage to get a photo of the soup but i'm sure you know what soup looks like... nevertheless this culinary coup was a mega accomplishment and we were feeling very smug about it. until the next morning. when we tried to rehead the rolls and some multiseed bread for good measure when... well, learnt we'd quick reflexes and our spontaneous smoke detector drill i.e. cover the detector as quickly as we can with whatever we can grap (in this case it was a damp rag) actually works.

pride before fall, my friends.

weekends apart

we're relatively new to this whole marriage gig but one thing i've learnt is that the mister needs his man-time, and if that means disappearing to dublin with my first (albeit unrequited) love circa 2000 then so be it. it is funny how life works out and how them two are in a bromance so deep that i feel like the third party! on the agenda is, well, lots of freshly pulled guinness and this just in - masquerading as prospective undergraduates at a college open house. too cute! they may or may not be checking out freshies while they're at it but i'll let it slide. 

and when the mister's away... it's been a leisurely weekend and i've caught up on all the things i keep meaning to do but haven't. met with S last night for a chinatown fix after which we (ok, i) mustered up the courage to peek in the scary cupboard under the stairs to check the reading on the gas and electricity meter. S also helped with a ton of techie stuff like anti-virus and installing pop-up blockers so i can now watch all the free tv i want without having nekkid women start chatting me up in the middle of HIMYM. for this, i'm eternally grateful.

tomorrow, my wonderful classmates have rallied round (oh my, really not doing myself any favours!) and T's driving us far away to walk to a castle. how awesome does that sound?! better yet, we will end at the local for a couple of rounds before going over to J's for a roast. psyched! when J called me to rustle up dessert for six, i jumped at the chance to assemble a tiramisu. cheeky confession: i've been swigging bailey's like a sailor and needed to use it up before i started resembling smee from peter pan. remember the roly poly in blue stripes? yeh. him.

looking forward to getting some fresh air and fingers crossed the good weather holds. took the photo above this morning and december is looking mighty fineeee.

also, my not-so-baby sister is coming to london next weekend and we will be eating to surfeited collapse, to quote the lovely lavishley who just shared about the dying dinner party. no, not a palliative care gathering but how hosting dinners are a dying art. she's adamant that you don't need a fancy house to entertain in style and she's absolutely right! have been the lucky beneficiary of much hospitality - from thanksgiving at K's last week to the upcoming roast at J's tomorrow that i'm convinced it's high time we pay it forward in london. we'll see ;)

gift that keeps giving

one of the more thoughtful, novel wedding presents we received came in the form of an olive tree. when W first told me that she and Z were gifting us an olive tree, i was quick to clarify that our tiny flat could only just about fit a tray garden, never mind a proper potted plant! but, W, naturally, was one step ahead. they'd adopted a lovely old tree in an olive grove in italy in our name. we received a certificate in the mail a couple of weeks later, and just as W predicted, once you sorta forgot you'd a tree, the goods made their way over. we now have the freshest, most fragrant oil three-ways, and exciting recipes n*udo included in the delivery. doing all i can to stop myself from drinking the oil neat so we just might have to start cooking with it soon.