Sunday 20 June 2010

Happy Father's Day 2010

We made two Father's Day cakes this year.  1 for Clet and 1 for my father.  Both are covered with fondant  icing and with butter cake as base.

Crystal & Pearl saw me baking cakes this morning, they insisted to help out on the decoration of the cakes.  They quickly went into the kitchen as soon as they noticed me busy preparing stuff to decorate the cakes.  They helped to cut out all the alphabets, hearts and flowers sugar paste using the mouldings and also helped to decorate part of the cakes too.

They enjoyed working with the sugar paste very much, to them it is just like playing with the play dooh. 




HAPPY FATHER'S DAY TO ALL CARING AND LOVING FATHERS!!

Meet up with cousin George Frith

Clet with George

We met up with cousin George Frith on Thursday night at one of Clet's relative home.  George is Clet's first cousin who lives in England for the last 50 over years, he is a professional badminton coach.  On a business trip here in Malaysia, George flew to Sabah to meet up with his cousins in Kota Kinabalu, it's great and meaningful gathering. 


  A family photo with George

Saturday 19 June 2010

Mt Kinabalu view from Kota Kinabalu

One fine day on our way back from work,  the sun was still brightly shining; the view of the majestic Mt Kinabalu was clearly visible from Kota Kinabalu.  It is usually heavily covered by cloud most of the time.  We love the scene so much that I took out my camera and captured the beauty of Mt Kinabalu from our car.   I just love the view of it, giving me a kind of strong and stable feeling.    

Sunday 13 June 2010

Trip to Kundasang/Mt. Kinabalu Trip

To update on my previous post on our trip to Kundasang this weekend.

Clet packed our car boot full with food, clothing, and our necessities for the trip.   The place that we stayed do not have any restaurant that we could order our food, so we planned to have our own BBQ dinner and also cook our own breakfast during our stay at Golden Kundasang Highland, which is 6000ft above sea level.  


We left our house at around 9.30am and dropped by Tamparuli to have our brunch at the famous Tamparuli noodle shop.
The view of Mt Kinabalu is in front of us on our way to Tamparuli town.

Crossing the old Tamparuli bridge with the long hanging bridge on our left

The famous Tamparuli Mein/Noodles

On our way to our destination, we had a brief visit to the Mt Kinabalu National Park while waiting for others to arrive.  We proceeded to The Golden Kundasang Highland Resort before noon.  It is a small resort located half way to Mesilau Resort.

The entrance at the Resort, a big wheel.

The reception is this ugly wooden house.  The reception lady is also one of the person taking care of the vegetable farm within the resort area.

Started to get ready for the BBQ in the afternoon.  There were plenty of flies at the BBQ pits areas.  We have to take extra efforts to guard our food. 
The Mt Kinabalu view from our room before sunset
The view of the chalets with vegetable farm just right in front

While exploring the resort area, Crystal & Pearl hurt themselves, see these wounds on their legs.
Crystal caught her leg in between the metal bar while playing the see-saw.  One of the metal bar has gone disappeared but no maintenance was done on it.

Pearl fell off and hurt herself while trying to run on the uneven path near the BBQ pits area.  Both of them have to use their Aunty Kim's Chinese ointment.  Kim also used the same ointment to treat a bee stink  on her hand.  She always carry this ointment everyway she goes.

 We took a group photo before we leave the resort.  We stopped by Bundu Tuhan's vegetable stalls to buy some fresh vegetable and also Nabalu to use the toilet there, we never knew that there  are some souvenir stalls just nearby.  It is a good place to shop for Sabah's souvenirs, can ask for very good discounts.
At the souvenir stalls

plenty of key chains to choose from

T-shirts, and there are postcards, and other souvenirs can be found there too. 

Wednesday 9 June 2010

A Mt Kinabalu Trip as reward

During these school holiday seasons, almost all of the resorts, chalets and hotels are fully booked over the weekends, big or small alike. 

Crystal was very disappointed that we couldn't book a place at Kinabalu Pine Resort or Mount Kinabalu Heritage Resort & Spa this weekend.  After our last Christmas outing at Mount Kinabalu Heritage Resort & Spa which she enjoyed so much that she wanted another mountain trip.

She has put in her effort to strike good marks in her recent examination.  She brought back an average marks of 92%, a 5% more than the benchmark we have set for her to achieve in order to go for a Mt Kinabalu trip as reward. With such a good result, how could we disappoint her?

As a loving daddy, Clet dislikes the idea of letting Crystal down.  He searched through the internet again and finally got ourselves a place at Golden Kundasang Highland this weekend.  He took up to 5 chalets at one time gathering our brothers and sisters and their families to join in the trip.

Crystal has a smile at her face again when her daddy announced the good news to her last night and showed her how Golden Kundasang Highland's chalets look like, our girls are excited to see a double-decker bed in the room.  We haven't got a double-decker bed at home so to them it is fun to climb up and down the bed, i guess!


Tuesday 8 June 2010

Fondant cake decoration class

I attended the fondant cake decoration class conducted by Guru Jasmin on Saturday morning, 5th June, at Alam Mesra.

As I am not familiar with Alam Mesra area, Clet drove me to find the exact location where the class will be held on Friday evening just to make sure I can drive right there the next day morning.  Glad that we did, I definitely got lost if we hadn't..

I got ready the tools needed for the class the night before.    

Here are the tools, a turning table, ruler, brushes (big & small), pizza cut, small blade, fondant smoother, and

roller pin (prefer the smooth plastic one), apron. small towels, and a cake container.  I baked a cake to bring along too, but it's a bit too short, should have baked a taller cake.  We can either use a tummy cake or real cake.  I prefer a real cake so that we could have a taste of it after that.

Half way through decorating the cake

the ribbon is on

putting a final touches with colour dusting

a picture with the other students and Guru Jasmin

You will noticed that my fondant cake is the shortest among all but I am really pleased with the result.  I have learned a lot from the class, thanks to Guru Jasmin for having the class here in KK

Crystal & Pearl were very excited to see my fondant cake, they were waiting by the door already when I reached home. We waited till the next day to cut the cake, leave a day for us to admire the beauty of  a fondant cake.

I bought a copy of Guru Jasmin's Sugar Craft book and have her autograph on it too.

Wednesday 2 June 2010

Mangoes in abundance

I have been eating mangoes for the past weeks.  The mango tree at our backyard producing lots of mangoes this season.  We could harvest up to 20 mangoes in a day. 

Even with bags and bags of mangoes given away to our family members, we just couldn't empty our fridge with mangoes.  I have been serving mangoes as dessert every night just to cope with the supply for the past two weeks.  I can whack up to 4 or 5 mangoes at one time, it's very sweet and yummy..

 

making into mango juice
I also juice the mangoes making them into jelly too.

Guess what happen?  I felt sick.  Started having sore throat & flu because of consuming too many mangoes.  It is no fun feeling ill.  I have to refrain myself from having mangoes.  I did not touch any mangoes for the past few days.

The moral of the story is "anything you take has to be in moderation, can not just whack as you like even though there are in abundance".  Lesson learned.