Serene Sundays - And it's a wrap!

It's been a busy weekend for me! My sister has finally gotten married! (YAY!)

 I'm so glad everything went well and smoothly without hitches

Peace out Y'all~

Whimsical Wednesdays- I say Capt'n, now buy a flow'r off a poor girl

Hello everyone! It's certainly been a while now hasn't it?

Today, I was preparing some party favours for a doe party and the party's theme was regency time period. Think Pride and Prejudice and any Jane Austen novel/movie.

Regency = old times in England, ladies had governesses and men went to Eton. Pretty fancy in my opinion. I was really cracking my head over what kind of party favours to prepare and then I chanced upon this:

Not exactly recency period, but I'm pretty sure flowers were sold by poor children and the well off people would sometimes buy a small posy of flowers out of whim.

I thought it would be a good idea to give my guests cute little posies of flowers and roses was a very popular flower during the regency period because creating hybrid roses was considered a 'sport' back then and people would try to breed as many different kinds of roses.

The idea was just too cute and there is a shop near my home, which sells beautiful fake flowers for a good price.

They actually sold foam type fake flowers, which I chose over plastic and satin because they look much better compared to satin and plastic.

 Foam flowers also have this kind texture which is not as stiff as plastic yet not as soft as satin which makes it keep its form better yet still look soft.

They have a kind of natural look to them and from far away, I think they look pretty realistic :)

The stems were thin and soft wires which were easy to manipulate, but once bunched up, it made a pretty sturdy stem.

Before wrapping with florist tape

After wrapping with florist tape

Wrapping the stems with florist tape (which the store also sold) gave the posies a more polished finish as well as to prevent people from getting poked by the thin wires

 I realised much later on that I probably should not have tied the ribbon before wrapping the florist tape but, I guess it's preference.

After that I decorated each posy with organza cloth and ribbons to make it all girly and pretty. Initially, I was going to make them all the same, but then I couldn't decide how to decorate it. In the end, each posy has a different pattern. Haha!

Now pop them in a wicker basket for that rustic look and you're all set to go!

Personally, if I got flowers as a gift, I wouldn't know what to do with them, but I hope my guest like it.

Asia Colion

Funtastic Fridays- Sorry!

Hi everyone! I will have to apologize for such a late post today! I conveniently accidentally forgot that I had a staff meeting today.

Initially I wanted to make  peach pie for this post, but due to really bad traffic, I reached home really late and was unable to make the pie. 

At most I actually posted? Haha

Watch some adventure time instead. Adventure time is my favorite cartoon crack (anti-drug). It's so crazy that you'll be going "what the...heck just happened?!"

Yup. My not so secret hobby. Enjoy or have the feeling that you've just wasted 15 minutes of your life haha

Let me know what are the craziest cartoons you still watch in the comments below!

Asia Colion

Funtastic Fridays - Life's like a box of chocolates...

It's Friday! I have never appreciated Friday as much as I have today.

The quote "Life is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you'll get" from Forrest Gump the movie,

rings true for me today. I never knew that you can do something that you like and still feel so tired.

I would like to think that I worked hard this week and now it's time for some pampering!

Cue music, rockabilly time!

Nothing as pampering as a good self pedicure session! I personally feel that I neglect my feet a lot despite all the hard work they have to do with making me mobile.

Especially when I used to go for ballet classes... the abuse I put my feet through (shudders)

Inside our pretty little ballet slippers is probably a pair of feet uglier than average feet

The thing about doing pedicures for me is that , I have really tiny toenails (or nails in general)

Check out my cute feeties! (I'm being sarcastic, I know it looks terrible.)

Going to a nail salon to do manicures and pedicures are an absolute waste of money, especially if they only have options for painting nails. What my feet really need is to be rid of callouses and dead skin cells (and an exfoliation would be nice)

A lot of my friends ask me what I do with my free time, I usually just tell them I read books, but I'm actually watching cat videos on the internet! HAHA!!

I may be Kidding,  I do read books, but I also watch cat videos online and sometimes, I chance upon really....interesting stuff, which I end up reacting like this: YEEERRR!! SO CUTE ONE!!!

Yup, so, now you know what I do with my free time.

I'm off to enjoy the rest of my funtastic friday~

Let me know what you do during your free time in the comments section !

Asia Colion

Funtastic Fridays- Favorite things

It's Friday again! What better way to start of the day than to have your favorite breakfast food?

I don't really have a favorite breakfast food. It's a game of roulette in my brain minutes before I wake up and whatever food on the list gets chosen will be The Favored Breakfast of The Day.

Today's Favored Breakfast of The Day: Over peppered sunny side up egg and cheese sandwich

I could only capture my over peppered (I love pepper) egg because I was so hungry I ate my sandwich immediately after I assembled it. (You're not really missing out much, it didn't look that great anyway. Neither does my egg)

Other than sunny side egg and cheese sandwich, I love ICE-CREAM, but I love HOMEMADE ICE-CREAM even more!

Do I even need to tell you how much more delicious homemade ice-cream is compared to commercially made ones? OF COURSE NOT!

However, I found this ice-cream pre-mix in my local baking shop and I was really mindblown...I never knew they had such things, but I realised that this is probably how ice-cream is made commercially as an afterthought. Pretty disappointing, I know.

This pre-mix just lost it's mindblowing magic

Despite the fact that this recipe only calls for two ingredients (Full cream milk and the ice-cream mix), It requires too much fancy baking equipment. Weighing out ingredients like milk in grams....seriously? Come on!

It was a tad bit too sweet, so I added in some green tea powder to neutralize the  sweetness that's why it looks green.The flavour being too sweet would be another drawback about using ice-cream mix

Before

After  

I let it soften a bit before transfering to a freezer box for storing

Scoop, serve and enjoy!

P.s It's not as good as I thought it would be, I should expect that since it is a pre-mix. Still, this feeling of unsatisfied-ness is just so annoying!

I'm probably gonna make ice cream from scratch some time soon.

So, what is your favorite food? Let me know in the comments section!

I''ll be going off to enjoy the rest of my Friday. Ciao~

Asia Colion

Funtastic Fridays - Scrumptious Scones

TGIF! 

Thank God it's Funday!

I am happy to announce that Funtastic Fridays are back!

And this week. it's....(drumrolls)...

Now, doesn't that just look scrumptious?

Scones! (ba-dam-tss!)

Here's how these babies were born!

This recipe was adapted from http://allrecipes.com/recipe/scones/

Ingredients (Listed from left to right, top to bottom)

•  1 cup milk
• 3 cups flour
• 170 g unsalted butter, cubed (and kept as cold as possible, freeze it)
• 5 teaspoons of baking powder
• 1/2 cup of sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon of salt (I used Himalayan rock salt, but you can use regular salt)
• 1 egg, beaten lightly

BUT WAIT, THERE'S MORE!

Before you jump right in, here's some thing's you must should do(trust me on this one, I learnt the hard way):

1) Put what ever bowl you're using to mix in the fridge/ freezer and let it become nice and cold

• This will help the scones rise better by keeping your mixture (especially in warm climates)

2) Freeze your butter after you've cubed them

• Because you need to keep thing cold, so your scones rise higher

3) Preheat your oven at 200C degrees

• Grease your baking tray or line it with baking paper

4) Clear a large enough surface for kneading the flour

• Finally, some action!

5) Make sure your hands are clean and your fingernails trimmed

• Obviously, for hygiene reasons. Especially trimming nails...

Let's get on with the show!

1) Place flour, sugar, baking powder and salt into the cold mixing bowl and mix till combined

2) Throw in the cubed butter and, using your hands (you can use a pastry cutter but I like using my hands) break up the butter and mix with the flour until a bread crumb texture is achieved.

Your mix should look like this (this step is totally not long nailed friendly, hence, trim them)

3) Pour milk into the beaten egg and mix till combined

4) Make a well in the mix and pour milk and egg mixture into the well. Mix until you get a gooey mess.

• At this point you might think the gooey mess is a mistake, but DON'T PANIC! It's all part of the plan.

5) Flour your surface generously, much more generously than I did please!

Gooey mess FTW!

6) Scoop out the gooey mess onto the floured surface and knead away!

7) Feel free to add more flour as you knead and shape it into 1 and a 1/2 inch (approximate) and you're ready to cut

8) You can use a scone cutter but if you don't a straight glass will do the trick! Flour the cup thoroughly and press down into the flour to create round cuts!

• Optional: egg wash, use a basting brush to brush on beaten egg onto the top of the  unbaked scones

9) Pop them into the oven and bake for 15-20 minutes or until golden brown. Cool on a wire rack.

Why, hello there! Nice day for a spot of tea!

10) Serve with butter and jam (and clotted cream if it's available!) And now you're done!

Once more this recipe is adapted from http://allrecipes.com/recipe/scones/
I used this recipe and made changes as I saw fit.

Enjoy!

Asia Colion

The epic tale of the battle of necessary evils

Hey! 

So, it's been a while since I last posted and... I would just like to say I'm really sorry for always being so inconsistant, but I SWEAR I ONLY DID IT FOR A GOOD CAUSE!!

So, "what is this good cause?" you ask me. The title says it all! Short story time!

       Once upon a time in a far away land where the people lived in trees with wifi and cable tv, lived a young woman by the name of Asia Colion. She once valiantly vowed to update her blog as frequent as 3 days a week and kept her promise for a few months. She posted about food, fun, crafty shenanigans and a sprinkling of her daily life, but as time went by, she enrolled into a university to further improve her shallow and tiny mind.

       As time went by, the number of her postings decreased and stopped altogether and she broke her promise. You must be thinking what an awful person she is to break a promise she had made, but the reasons on why she broke her promise was not known to the world. She was engaged in a battle, a battle too horrific to recount! A battle of mind and body with the darkest enemies of humankind!

Procrastination!

       Alas! That was but  only one major enemy! She battled against Priorities, Time Management, Stress, Academic Text, Unreasonable Assignments, The Nasty Lecturer (This one was a real tough one!), Insomnia and many others which were just as devastatingly evil. The constant assault of the evils wore her thin till she could no longer find inspiration to blog.  The battle lasted for 3 years with no cease to the attacks, but at last she emerged from the battle victorious!

        Full of remorse for breaking her promise, she has returned to blogging fearing that all is lost and that nobody would ever want to read her blog ever again and this time she will be facing even more devastating evils, Evils which she has never faced before: Work Life. She begs for forgiveness and hopes that everyone will understand the inconsistencies of her posts. She also invites everyone to follow her battles in the coming near future if they can bear with the inconsistencies.

So yeah, story of my life in a nutshell. I've graduated but I'll reserve that for another post!
To be honest, I really had a lot of fun writing this and I do hope you had fun reading it!

Cheers!

Asia Colion

Funtastic Fridays - Of culture and tradition!

If you've noticed, yesterday, Google's logo changed because it was mid autumn festival! Being a Malaysian Chinese, I feel that I have probably lost huge chunks of my Chinese culture.

In fact, I always tell my mother that I'm very Westernized from my speech (mah Chinese is so broken ya can't fix it back together! Yo mama jokes) to my dressing.

Mainly for practicality, Malaysian Chinese don't wear cheongsam's and samfoo's. It's too hot here.
Also, My lecturer insists that it was the Manchurian's who wore them. But aren't they a Chinese tribe too!?!?

Not to mention, I originate from a big-ish city (Petaling Jaya) where you don't greet your neighbors because the uncles and aunties just stare at you grumpily in response when you do, talk about extinguishing a behavior! Let's just say, our community life is rather non-existent.

However, during the mid-autumn festival, we do send mooncakes to our relatives and friends. I'm so un-Chinese, I don't know why we do it but we do...I think its kind of like an Chinese thanksgiving where we give it to people to say thanks for being around! or something...feel free to correct me if I'm wrong because I most probably am. Haha!

Mooncake.

Just in case you get the feeling that I'm completely smug about the fact that I don't know much about my culture. I am not! In fact I'm super embarrassed about it and I'm working on it! I promise!

Anyway, enough chatter about me and on to the exciting(or at least I thought it was exciting)  part!

I went out with two lovely girls for dinner/supper last night at a shop in a small town called Broga and people of Broga town just congregated at this community hall and were celebrating mid-autumn festival with flair!

It was seriously amazing!I mean the whole town, everyone chatting together and having fun...its just blows my puny little big city person mind (I'm not contradicting myself, read that again if you must :P) 

Here are some not so good quality pictures that I somehow managed to catch with my phone. I'm apologize about that but they were walking on the streets together and I was just too amazed and surprised.

Dragon dance walking down the streets!

Followed by lion dancers complete with percussion!

Practically the whole town with their grandparents and kids walking with lanterns after the dragon and lions

There was this awesome feeling of community which I probably never or hardly experienced before and it just makes me feel all warm, fuzzy, and happy inside. I really hope that, one day, I too will be able to find and live in such a harmonious community.

Over and out!

Asia Colion

Wooly Wednesdays - Lacy doorknob cover

Hello everyone! I know I said I wanted to do footwear last Wednesday but I recently moved back to the jungle where I learn how to be a special educator A.K.A University and....

I saw these really cute doorknob covers which are actually to stop children from opening doors and hurting themselves (or something to that effect)

But they were so cute and I thought to myself I could use it for aesthetic reasons (I love pretty things a lot!)

Thus, I made my own! Tada!

I had to modify it so that I could still fit my key into the lock haha!

This is what it looks like opened. makes a good doily if you don't want to cover your doorknobs.

Just some feminine, lacy, ribbony, goodness! 

If you live in a cold country and hate touching cold doorknobs you could probably do this in a less lacy pattern to give you something warm and soft to touch when opening doors. Just a suggestion. :)

Asia Colion

Funtastic Fridays - Movie!

It's Friday, I'm in love.

So I decided to do something mainstream today. Purely because I have run out of hipster ideas but the hipster in me lives still! 

I'm one of those people who are never current with movies. Honestly, I'm not really bothered about it unless I'm hanging out with movie buffs ( Half of the time I feel like I am.) So I watched Mary Poppins today.

 

If you have never watched it in your entire life, you SHOULD. I know  it's old but you know old is gold. In addition to Dick Van Dyke and Julie Andrews, you're in for a good feel good time.

Spoilers if you haven't watched but it's still a pretty cool video

That's all for today. I'm totally out of ideas on what next to blog on Fridays and I'm open to suggestions! Do let me know what you'd like to read about on Fridays. :)

Asia Colion

Wooly Wednesdays - Crochet shoes?

Now that Andy's scarf is done my next project seems rather ambitious but oh so pretty! I can't help myself.
I think, like most girls I have a weakness for pretty feminine things.

Super pretty and feminine!

Really excited about this. I hope to be able to come up with an outdoor version. I mean come on! These are waaaay too pretty to be worn around the house. Any normal  crochet-er/knitter would wanna show off this handy work! Honestly, it deserves to be shown off!

Or perhaps something less ambitious like barefoot sandals although I have no use for them other than for aesthetic reasons

Aren't these just gorgeous?! I don't know who made these but they are so talented!

Choices, choices. I can't decide. Which one do you think I should attempt?

Asia Colion

Munching Mondays! - Wanton Wontons

This is what I have for lunch today!

Homemade wonton soup noodles!

Me wrapping the wontons (Mother dearest prepared everything, I just wrapped the wontons)

The funny story starts here.

Before I was requested to wrap wontons, I was chatting with a friend  when I told him:

Me: Hey I have to go wrap some WANTONS. brb
Friend: Wrap wantons? What?
           Noun: A sexually immodest or promiscuous woman
           ???

And of course when I came back I had  the laugh of my life although I'm not really sure he found it funny.

Anyway, I explained to him what i meant and that in Cantonese we pronounce is as "wan tan" like "Wan tan mee." 

Gosh! Imagine what he must have been thinking while I was wrapping wontons clueless-ly!!

Asia running around the red-light district like a maniac and wrapping clothes around immodest women while screaming at them: REPENT AND DRESS MODESTLY!!

Then dashing on to the next woman and leaving a trail of havoc in my wake! So much fun and excitement!

Haha! I wish for adventure and excitement in my life so I can only dream about it for now. I hope you had a good laugh with this post! :D

Do let me know if you've ever encountered funny moments from a misunderstanding. Spread the laughter ;)

Asia Colion

  

Funtastic Fridays - Tea time therapy

Hello everyone! It's Friday again! This week has been rather hectic for me and here's why:

Yup that's my closet and practically all my clothes left. Give me a ":)" for arranging it according to the colours of the rainbow.  

The other half belongs to my sister. Some people may think that's so little clothes other would think it's a lot of clothes. Well I think it's TOO MUCH clothes! It's been  a nightmare. So this Friday, I'm gonna have myself  some tea time therapy!

What's tea time therapy? Guys probably won't understand this but if you ever want to make a girl happy, this might (all girls are different after all) help.

Felt Asian today.

Some girls enjoy going to really cute (probably pricey) tea places. Why? Because it's cute and it make us feel happy and pampered. But if you're on a tight budget, putting in the effort to make  your own tea time set up a little prettier would be even better!

Don't feel Asian? By all means go Western!

FromFalling leaves 25th/afternoon tea party. If you like artsy stuff you'll love her!

All you need is some tea and pastries. If you have cute tablecloth, cups and teapots WHY NOT?! Just go for it!

There is something just charming about having tea time by yourself if you set it up nicely. It doesn't have to be elaborate. I don't know how others feel about it but to me, it's like having a tea party without having to go through the small talk (I'm not very good at it that's why) and major preparation and clean up. All in all, I find this fun and therapeutic (very relaxing to just sit down and drink tea for no reason). 

That's all for my funtastic Friday, gotta get back to packing those clothes! :'(

Asia Colion