When Did He Became All Grown Up ???

I'm sure this is a question that all parents would probably ask when your child (whom you still think of as a 3 year old!) tells you that he/she is ready to get married !  Yes?  Well I did....  and yesterday my first born son got engaged !  Hopefully, it'll be another year before he finally gets married and makes me a mum-in-law.  Wonder what my future daughter-in-law will think of me ???  Hahahaha

Anyway, got himself engaged he did.  That boy I gave birth to 24 years ago.  Still young right, but then he's a matured young man and so far has proven to be a responsible man too.  Funny la, to me he will always be a boy ! :D

So, I can't upload the happy couple's pic yet, because I don't have any.  And have not received any from the protographer yet.  Yup, my dear son got a phographer friend of his to be their official protographer for the day.  But I have pictures of the hantaran that I did (of course) except for the 'sirih junjung' which I got our pasar florist to do it (which in the end I did some adjustment to suit my taste and my theme).  I think they turned out pretty well.. I'm quite creative, if I may say so myself! Below are the gits we gave, and those we received in return....

5 sets of gifts from us, Aiman Zarif,
(theme color, silver/grey with purplish-red orkids)

Porcelain 'crystal encrusted' container with silver 'cucuk sanggul' as decor,

for the engagement ring

Close-up of ring container (that's not the engagement ring)

Potpourri Containers

Telekung in a box

Kain lace untuk baju sepasang

Sirih Junjung

(hubs said, its not high enough!)

Balasan from the girl, Sara Aina Mardiah,

(theme color pink/purple with roses and hydrangeas)



Sirih Junjung

(which will be converted to a flower bouquet for me! hehehe)

Samping Songket

Kain untuk baju sepasang

Kek Lapis (Delish!)

Chocalates (Yummy!)

Bunga Rampai

Fruit baskets

(with lots of strawberries, eaten so its not in this pic anymore!)

Cuti Nurul Quran....

Hari cuti... and I'm home, I mean really at home. Both hubby and son are working, bcos they both work in KL.  My two daughters are also out, one shopping with her friends and the other with her bf plus she has taken my car.  So, like it or not, I'm staying put in the house. I've baked two cakes this morning. One was a disaster, why? because I made the mistake of putting in icing sugar instead of flour... can you believe it? Me? Making that kind of mistake and to think that I had actually reminded myself that the container is icing sugar and not flour ! so I've labelled that container.... sugar is expensive you know !

After thinking quite a bit, I finally decided to just go and sign up for ICCA (Wilton's) Basic Cake Decorating class in PJ.  I realise I really want to learn the basic method of cake decorating. Glad I made this decision because I've learn quite a bit in this class. For RM500.00, the fees is quite steep.  So far, I've decorated a cake and cupcakes. Tomorrow is our last session, instead of butter cake, I've decided to bake marble cake for me to ice and bring it to class for more decorating.  Can't wait to learn how make the roses! :D

Let's see what I've learned so far in this class, not difficult for me, since I have been doing this on my own. But I'm happy to be doing this using the Wilton method... :D

This is Adlina, our Instructor showing us how to ice a cake using butter cream. Next is the ready iced cake.

 

This is the final product of my decorated cake.... not bad huh! I'm happy with it ! hehehe

 

Next we learned to make some flowers, and later decorate cupcakes...

we have templates that came with our training kit. 

so we actually pipe the flowers on the template.

below are cupcakes decorated by yours truly...........

below are gum phase flowers left to dry from another classes.  I want to go for this class but its RM750.00 !  Huhuhu... next year lah !



Selamat Menyambut Ramadhan Al Mubarak !

Sheikh Yahya Ibrahim

The company that I am working with had the opportunity to sponsor the stay of Shaikh Yahya while he was in Malaysia recently.  Sheikh Yahya is a muslim scholar, of Egyption descent, born in Canada, married and now living in Australia.  More on the Sheikh, visit http://www.alkauthar.org/content.asp?pgc=yibrahim&From=Our%20Instructors

I was first introduced to the teaching of Sheikh Yahya when I attended a 2-day class with the Al-Kauthar Institute, Out of Sight - Angels, Jinns and Ain.  Their approach is different from what I'm used to, the ways of our local Ustaz and Ustazahs... It was a wonderful change.  His lectures were lively, using up-to-date examples (I mean, he uses our current 'language' or lingo, which is makes he's talk much more interesting and not so 'dronny' if you know what I mean...  More on the Out of Sight class, visit http://www.alkauthar.org/content.asp?pgc=less_outofsight&From=Our%20Courses

We had the great opportunity to hear to man give us a talk on Management, the Rasulullah saw Way. One hour is not enough... it feels like half-hour only but he's a very busy man so one hour it was. Even my dear hubby attended and he too enjoyed the talk.  Am trying to find out how to attached audio file here... How?

From this talk too, based on the Sheik's recommendations, I got myself these books to content with... now to find the time to start reading them! I sure do have a number of books to go thru this coming Ramadhan.

 Okay, so the Sheik did not recommend this third book below, but while I was looking for the 2 books above, I found this book at MPH !  hehehe....  The 2 books above, I got them from the Dakwah Corner bookstore in PJ.  MPH priced those 2 quite expensive, really and stock were only available at MPH Mid Valley !

PS: Got myself a lovely abaya from Makkah too plus a jubah for hubs for the Dakwah Corner (and its a bookstore mind you....  but I'm in a very happy mood of course!)

Selamat Menyambut Ramadhan al Mubarak!

Egg Sandwiches anyone ?

Sometimes strange things happens in most unlikely ways...  And somehow, this past two weeks, I've been making sandwiches for some of my office meetings.  It started with one of the guys forgetting to inform me early of his meeting and that he needs refreshments arranged. So I decided to buy a couple of banana loaf cakes and make myself some open faced sandwiches using baguettes with eggs and tuna.

Then, a collegue found out about it and asked me to do some for our unit meeting. Today I made another batch for another unit's meeting....

I love getting myself pocket money this way....  :D

First batch.... chilly tuna and egg sandwiches, but since I sliced the baguettes slanting, the sandwiches were rather big.

For the 2nd and today's batch, I decided to cut the baguettes rounder and just do egg with pickled flavoured mayo only. Skip the tuna, which turned out just the way I want them. The picture below are those I made today. Forgot to take pictures for yesterday's sandwiches, which I made a side dish of vegetarian sandwiches, for a totally vegetarian colleague.



Above was the full serving. Below is pic of the sandwiches with red cherry tomatoes and sliced olives for deco (the tomatoes were sweet and the olives taste heavenly, at least to me! :D)

Next, with japanese cucumber and olives, followed by orange cherry tomatores (fat fat cherry tomatoes) and of course olives..

 

Other than the sandwiches, I also made some chocolate cake slices for a couple of meetings.... Delicious chocolate slices with chocolate ganache toppings.

These are to die for !

 

..... and I happily call them, Rezeki !

Welcome Home My Sistah

My sister, Kak Cik is the third among the four of us sisters. Yes, all girls. Now there's only 2 of us left after our two elder sisters had passed on. I'm the youngest. Kak Cik have a daughter, Juanita and a son Hafiz. Nita is married and now residing in New York. Nita have a pair of twins, now 1 years old (just a week ago actually). A boy and a girl, Zain and Anasofia. See the pics, that's Zain looking cool in his sunglasses.... Anasofia really looks like her mummy.

 

 

My sister went to New York to help look after the twins early in the year when Nita had to go through what thought to be a minor operation for torn muscles, but turned out to be much more. Other than the torn muscles, it seems the docs found several benign fibrous/polyp growth kinda thingies, which they also threw away during the operations. So in the end the operation became quite serious. And Nita actually needed about a year (instead of the initial 2 months) to fully recover. To make things worst, the babies nanny had to leave cause her mom had a stroke ! And getting a nanny in the US is not like us getting a maid here in Msia okay.  Their pay rate is US$850.00 a week that does not include Saturday and Sunday.  Apa macam? mau pigi kereja sana ka?

Anyway, my sister came back after being there for about 6 months.  She's kinda worried about her hubby and son who are fending for themselves here in Msia la !  So I baked her a lovely Red Velvet cake to welcome here home.

Since I was baking, my son who was going out on a picnic with some friends, decides to grab the opportunity to give me a really sorry puppy look, to get back to back him some cupcakes.  He got them, here's a pic of cuppies. He got 2 boxes of them.... Okay la tu kan?  Free pulak tuh ! :D