We had half a can of tuna left from dinner the other day and figured we’d whip up some finger food for the bubs (and us too, since we usually love eating his food!).
These tuna croquettes are easy to make and require ingredients that are probably in your pantry already….
I haven’t had time for much craft but realized I’m slowly channeling my need to create towards food!
It was my mother-in-law’s birthday a while back and I tried my hand at making cupcakes. I’d always wanted to try my hand at making fondant decorations and this was a good opportunity. After all I figured it’s just like clay, no?
Okay, turns out it’s dries much faster than what I was used to, but the cracks also make it look more natural (or maybe I’m just creating excuses)!
I made the flower in the same way I make paper flowers – start with a small bud piece around a toothpick, then create slightly larger pieces to wrap around the bud in a clockwise or anti-clockwise manner (it doesn’t matter as long as you keep it consistent). There are probably a lot of tutorials around, but feel free to let me know if you need more directions in the comments below ;)
For the small flowers with the orange centre, I got them in a pack at the local baking store and sprinkled them randomly around the cupcakes.
It was definitely far from perfect – it being my first time baking cupcakes in over a decade, and my first time EVER working with fondant and icing! I probably should have done more research but it was a last minute decision to make it. But practice makes perfect I guess!
For those who love baking and decorating, here are some of my favorite places for inspiration:
I am Baker – Simply perfection when it comes to beautifully decorated cakes and cupcakes and lovely recipes too.
Detoxinista – My husband tries to eat healthy (and thus me too, by default) and there’re lots of yummy but healthy recipes here.
Chef in Training – Simple, easy-to-follow recipes with lots of useful tips.
I probably haven’t done these sites enough justice with my short descriptions, but click on and you’ll see!
Have a great one ;)
For everyone celebrating the lunar new year, here’s wishing you a year of abundant grace, love, wisdom and growth.
The eve of Chinese New Year is when we have reunion dinners with our families and I decided to contribute some agar agar and konnyaku jelly for dessert. (This is after my siblings pretty much vetoed a lot of food suggestions I offered to bring for the meal – as it turns out, no one ever says no to dessert!)
My mum had a koi fish jelly mould and so I decided to try my hand at making these jelly desserts in the shape of koi fish. I ended up going to get smaller moulds too just for fun!
It was a bit scary as I was making jelly for the first time ever and half kicked myself for deciding to take on a more ambitious project instead of making regular agar agar jelly in a container with no additional colours.
Thankfully it all worked out… Phew!
This was the large koi jelly:
But I really loved the smaller ones:
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Since my pregnancy, I pretty much stopped doing freelance make-up gigs due to doctor’s orders. While things are back to normal now, I’ve been focusing more on my bag business and only take up some random gigs in my free time.
This comes slightly delayed but I’m excited to share a collaboration with one of my favourite photographers, Lenne Chai, and a talented artist, Teresa Lim.
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It’s been ages since I’ve last posted. Things have been ramping up over at Aide de Camp once I sorted out the whole “being a mum” thing. (Just kidding – I’m still working things out but I’ve since learnt how to deal with much less sleep and much more juggling).
I’ve missed crafting, design and make-up a whole ton but I’ve had to prioritize family over work over fun-on-the-side and so the blog naturally gave way to the more important things in life.
Now that things are settling down, I’m back! Along the way, I’ll be posting up on some weekend projects I’ve done just to keep the creative juices flowing (and sometimes out of necessity – see a post on fabric chair slipcovers coming up).
Thank you to everyone who still visits this site and leaves words of encouragement or little thank yous for my previous DIY posts. My heart has always been with sharing on this blog but I couldn’t get to it any earlier.
Now back to the title of this post… Since having a baby, I’ve been struck with many realisations that I never thought I’d experience in this lifetime. Before we had this little one, I always thought of having a kid as the five to six year old stage where we would be doing crafting or cooking together but I never had any inkling of what baby care in the first one or two years would look like. (I thought I did from the moments I had caring for my brother who is ten years younger than I am, but clearly I didn’t remember much!)
How he sleeps with his leg up, I have no idea.
In the first place, I still can’t believe I’m a mum. Neither can my relatives, nor people who meet me for the first time (they think I’m still a student based on my small frame and baby face I suppose?). It’s been 9 months or so and it still hasn’t sunken in.
It occurred to me that I’ve always seen mums as people who are perhaps older, more mature, wiser, more nurturing and ones who have the answers to everything from cooking recipes to the best way to get something clean – oh my goodness, basically the typical, traditional stereotypes of a mum. (And to be fair, my mum and my mum-in-law always seem to have the answers to everything!)
When I had baby Z (or so my husband likes to call him), I didn’t know how to wash things properly; I didn’t know how to cook many dishes; I still felt like going out to play; I didn’t feel like the sacrificial, ever-loving, ever-knowing type of mum that I thought all women magically morph into. I struggled with the idea of bringing baby Z to childcare so I could work more, and struggled with the guilt of not being able to spend as much time with him as possible.
Baby Z playing around while I fold the laundry
I’ll admit – prior to this, I never had any in-depth conversations with other mums and so my impression of mums was stuck in the stone ages. Since his birth, I’ve had many more conversations with fellow mums around my age – from how to get our babies to sleep better at night to our ideal work arrangements and the list goes on. I subscribed to newsletters from all types of motherhood and baby sites and suddenly I entered this whole new realm and became an “insider”.
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