Happy New Year Lim Family

More pics from our little latenight 5am adventure...

The little guy below is the star of the project. He's the Xin Nian Kuai Le bear, inspired by my carebear. Look closely, he has a bow on his left ear and adorable rosy cheeks :D Fu Dao Le indeed!

A formal message to the Lims...We tried to disguise the handwriting.
Then we slid Xin Nian Kuai Le bear and the new year message through the side gate...
New year plant decorated with avant-garde felt balls.

Enter the peaceful outdoor zen garden, dotted with elegant origami cranes...made from pages of Time magazine.


Atop the front pillar...


On the inner side of the gate (the side facing the house), we hung Chun Lians, made from doilies and ribbon. Our calligrapher was eggy, . I don't really remember all of the cheng yus we put there...I think there were the normal greetings like "Long Ma Jing Shen" (dragon horse energy), "Shen Ti Jian Kang" (body healthy), "Wan Shi Lu Yi" (ten thousand events success), "Ming Nian Geng Hao" (next year even better), "Wang Zi Cheng Long" (wish son become dragon...wow the translation is fantastic). Then we had a couple of joke chun lians like "Mai Yi Song Yi" (buy one get one free), "Wu Wu Liu Liu" (aka THE band). I really tried my best to recall the hundreds of chengyus I memorised for my Os back then, unfortunately, only a few unsuitable ones kept repeating in my head again and again. Chengyus like, "Tong Liu He Wu" (flow and get dirty together), "Dui Nui Tan Qin" (play music to cow), "Zhu Peng Gou You" (pig dog friends)....doesn't everybody just love chengyus? :D...oooo and how could I forget the ultimate essay-starter, "Feng He Ri Li"(wind nice sun pretty)!!! Those were the days.

We then decorated the bins with our leftover materials (cranes, ribbon and crushed-up newspaper balls). The ribbon chain is hideous.

And our masterpiece... Extreme Makeover, Singapore style! We should have taken a 'before' picture..damn.

The one thing I learnt from this adventure is that Scotch magic tape is our best friend. And that The Prata Place isn't open 24/7 (It closes at 12+).

Yesterday, mom was in charge of making potato pies for her dinner event thing. So she rounded up the kids and some friends, and we created a little potato pie factory in the kitchen. (Think we made almost a hundred pies altogether). The potato pies didn't turn out as yummy as usual. There wasn't enough pasta and it was a bit too salty. I would have preferred it with more potato and less cheese. Oh well, they were still really well received. Everyone wanted to pack them home, so we gave them all away.