New post on escapecapades.com, featuring my recent trip to Melbourne:
In my more recent travel posts (starting from this post about Melbourne), I shall be including short reviews of restaurants and hotels I’ve been to, to make my travel journals more useful to readers and followers.
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| Fun graffitis everywhere |
From now on, I shall be posting all my travel blogs on escapecapades.com. See you there!
This year, for my daughter’s birthday, I decided to exert a little extra effort for her party. We never really hosted a real children’s birthday party before because hubby and I are both lazy when it comes to organizing events. But I was thinking that our daughter is now at an age when she will really appreciate having a birthday party with her friends.
I have shared some useful links at the bottom of this post to make my site more useful to parents planning to hold a birthday party for their kids.
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| Strawberry and everything pink theme |
In my search for everything pink for the upcoming Birthday Celebration of my daughter, I’ve come across “pink lemonade” on Pinterest. Since I love lemons and my daughter loves pink, I decided to test out this recipe that I found on Youtube. It was quite easy to make, and I love the fact that it uses raspberries for color, not an artificial food coloring.
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| Having a gouté for one with my Pink Lemonade + Bonne Maman treats |
You can make your lemonade as pink as you want. I prefer to have mine with just a hint of pink. But upon serving it for snack to my daughter, she complained that it’s orange, not pink. She just likes to complain all the time. I wonder whom she got that from? 😀
Happy Easter! 🙂
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| Rainbow-colored roses and delicious cake, hand-picked by my daughter for Valentine’s Day |
I have been feeling all lazy this weekend. I didn’t feel like going out, so everybody went out this morning, except for me. But what a surprise it is when hubby and daughter came back bringing colorful flowers and lovely cake for dessert… both of which just about summarizes how my love life has never been more colorful and more delicious than ever before.
Happy Hearts Day, everyone!
Folks, please allow me to interrupt my series of posts on my New Zealand trip with this Breaking News:
Last night, just before going to bed, I checked on my Instagram and saw a comment from Steve Madden’s IG asking my permission if they could use this picture of mine for marketing purposes:
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| Leg Work for Steve Madden shoes… just hope they don’t photoshop it and put somebody else’s upper body parts on top. 😀 |
I am just sooo flattered! And so excited. I never thought my legs could ever get so famous like this. I guess you could say I’m sort of a model now, and for one of my favorite brands of shoes at that! Nakakalokah! 🙂
Have a good weekend, everyone!
According to Instagram, here are my best nine photos from the previous year…
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first row: best loved pair of shoes from Steve Madden, Airbus A350 simulator experience, visiting Frodo’s hobbit hole at Hobbiton Lord of the Rings Movie Set in New Zealand (will post about this soon!)
second row: an evil bunny ice floe on Jokulsarlon glacial lagoon in Iceland, a picture representing my first time to try aerial yoga, a throwback pic of my beloved and long-missed autumn at the Japanese Garden in Toulouse
third row: trying out new wide angle lens on night time view from our balcony, throwback pic at Piazza di Spagna, the fittest i have been this year after 2 mos of xtendbarre + yoga + wall climb
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…nine best, meaning the “nine most liked” photos of the year. I admit that, like most people, I tend to get carried away and get overwhelmed with the social media “likes” from time to time. But I try to remind myself that I’m doing Facebook mostly to keep in touch with friends, especially those who live far away. Making people jealous is just second priority (insert wicked evil laugh here). And the “likes”, I really usually do not care about. A 1000 likes do not equate to being a 1000 times less lonely. Most of the time, it’s quite the contrary, actually. Especially since, you will only get a lot of likes if you give a lot of likes also. It’s not really because your picture deserves it or that these “likers” really like you. I’d always prefer good old-fashioned personal meet-ups any time or a personal private message if bodily presence is constrained by distance. Non-virtual relationships are seemingly becoming more and more of a rarity these days.
I like Instagram because i treat it like a pin board of all the good things happening in my life, whose essence, I would like to somehow freeze and capture in frames that I can look back on gloomy days to cheer me up. But the truth is, my most loved memories from last year cannot be captured in just a few photos. There were so many of them. For this, I am truly grateful and feeling “blessed” as the overused hashtag goes…
Happy new year, everyone! More photos and more adventures await!
The last few Christmases have been really wonderful, especially with the coming of my precious daughter. For quite some time, the thrill and excitement of the holidays have really waned for me over the years. But through my daughter’s eyes, I am experiencing Christmas again as I have experienced it during the wonder years.
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| My dining table centerpiece pour Le Réveillon (Christmas Eve) — candles and candle holder from Crate and Barrel, some christmas décors from La France, courtesy of my mother-in-law |
It’s also a great bonus for all the moon lovers out there that the full moon appears on Christmas this year, not since 1977, coincidentally my birth year.
May we all have a wonderful holiday season with family and loved ones.
Our family would always visit Europe during the summer. For this year, the opportunity of traveling on the New Air France’s La Première (First Class) flight presented itself right around the time we were planning our trip. This first class cabin was only introduced late last year! We were so happy and looking forward to the experience, especially since it will be the same time as our Fourth Wedding Anniversary. And indeed, it was, just as imagined.
Continue reading “The AirFrance La Première Experience”For my daughter’s birthday this year, I decided to make a lemon cake. I’m very partial to lemon. I just love its clean, sweet smell and tangy acid taste. In French, they would call any sweet stuff with a citrusy flavor, acidulé. I really like this term. It makes the flavor sound even nicer and tempting to taste.
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| My very simple, but very delicious Lemon Pound Cake |
I found this very simple, fuss-free recipe on the internet that I just watched a few hours before the party itself. How very convenient it is nowadays to learn anything at the tip of your fingers and at the convenience of your own home. The internet is really good for this.
Continue reading “Festive Lemon Pound Cake”My family and I decided to go on a trip to The Maldives for the long weekend holiday. Here are some of the highlights of our trip:
The gorgeous view of the islands from up above:
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| The Maldives look like a beautiful abstract painting from above — couldn’t wait to land on one of those lovely blue dots at the first sight of them! 🙂 |
springfugue.com 