We got the best and sweetest neighbor you can possibly have! She often brings us home cooked food! Yums!

Except that with my busy work schedule, I didn’t have time to go shop around! I simply grab a few random things I saw and put them up within 10 minutes.

For our CNY décor we had these guidelines in mind:-

• Nothing too loud or excessive
• Nothing with dragons or fortune God as it deviates from our religion and values
• Nothing that shouts “Wealth” in your face as I believe life is more than pure wealth
• Things that is simple and can be reused

“Xin Xiang Shi Chen” requires little explanation but I thought many would probably not know what “Wu Fu Ling Men” means. According to the Book of History (Shi Jing in Chinese) which was supposingly edited by Confucius, “Wu Fu Ling Men” means five good fortunes arriving at your door and the five good fortunes are Longevity, Great Wealth, Good Health, Good Character or Virtue, and Natural Death. Some people may go “ERM” with the last fortune but I thought it is really a blessing to die of old age instead of the other way round.

A pretty paper cut “Fu”

When we were younger, my mum used to put up red packets to form Chinese characters. In the red packets, there will be money ranging from two to 20 dollars. Depending on your luck, each kid will get a chance to pick one red packets after greeting her with auspicious blessings. It was really fun! At my place, it is simply a random DIY design. Haha. Don’t try peeling them off!

Other simple decor.

Instead of buying random ornaments, we made paper fish which I learnt to make in my younger days.

With every party or festive around the corner, we always have fresh pink lilies at our place! Love the colour and the scent!

CNY goodies! Most of them homemade by my in-law and some of them from my trusted supermarket! Haha.

He casually mentioned that we never tried roasting a whole chicken before, and after he said that I was spurred to take up the challenge!

I found a recipe in Epicurious which uses mainly lemon, honey and tarragon but because we do not have any tarragon, I simply follow the recipe without it!

Here is the final product! He was amazed! That night he gave the best compliment to my new domesticated self! According to him, “Do you know what is the best compliment to a chef? Not only did her patrons ate it all up and claimed to love it, it is the fact that there are chill sauce and other condiments at the side, the patrons choose not to use it!” Haha! I agree! But I thought it can be a little juicier if I stopped the oven at the last 10 mins! Sorry, I’m a perfectionist!

For the potato, it is nothing fancy. I simply sliced two russet potatoes, soaked it in salt water, greased the bakeware with butter, laid the potatoes, put some butter and pepper in between potatoes, laid more potatoes and covered it up with cheese and popped it into the oven! Haha. No recipe required.

Yums! It feels like a home cooked Christmas meal already! If you want to know the recipe we followed from Epicurious, you can click for more!

Active Time: 30 min

Total Time: 1 1/2 hr

Active time: 30 min Start to finish: 1 1/2 hr

Ingredients
2 lemons
2 tablespoons unsalted butter, softened
2 tablespoons finely chopped fresh tarragon
3/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon black pepper
1 (3 1/2-lb) chicken, rinsed and patted dry
1 head garlic, left unpeeled and halved horizontally
1/4 cup mild honey
1 tablespoon olive oil

Special equipment: kitchen string; an instant-read thermometer

Preparation

Put oven rack in middle position and preheat to 425°F.

Finely grate enough zest from 1 lemon to measure 1 tablespoon, then squeeze enough juice from same lemon to measure 2 tablespoons.

Stir together butter, tarragon, zest, 1/2 teaspoon salt, and pepper.

Put chicken, breast side up, in a small roasting pan. Starting from neck cavity, work your fingers gently between skin and flesh of breast to loosen skin all the way to thighs without tearing. Put one fourth of tarragon butter under skin of each breast, then rub skin from outside to spread evenly.

Starting from large cavity, loosen skin on both sides of cavity with a paring knife (to provide access to thighs), then work your fingers gently between skin and flesh of thighs and drumsticks. Divide remaining tarragon butter among thighs and drumsticks, rubbing skin from outside to spread evenly. Season cavity and skin with salt and pepper, then halve remaining lemon and put inside cavity along with garlic. Tie drumsticks together with kitchen string.

Whisk together honey, lemon juice, oil, and remaining 1/4 teaspoon salt. Roast chicken 30 minutes, then brush pan juices and half of honey mixture over chicken and roast 10 minutes more. Brush chicken again with pan juices and remaining honey mixture and continue to roast until thermometer inserted in fleshy part of a thigh (do not touch bone) registers 170°F, about 20 minutes more.

Transfer chicken to a cutting board and let stand 10 to 15 minutes before carving. Skim fat from pan juices and serve juices with chicken.

This year, it is also different for us. We finally have a Christmas tree that we can call our own. We never had one in our parent’s home when we were younger so we were really excited to finally get our own Christmas tree and a Swedish one too! We bought a live one from Ikea! It comes with a natural pine tree smell and it is lovely! Except that the carbon footprint is making us think twice and thrice if we should get a live one next year!

Here are the boring bits why getting a live Christmas tree is bad! One, they flew / shipped them in all the way from Sweden. Two, it is in a minus one degree container, so imagine the amount of energy required to power it. Three, I heard from the staff these trees are not farmed. They are simply chopped from the woods. OMG! Four, you need to keep watering them and feed them with ice. Five, you need to replace them yearly and the cycle continues. GOSH. I’m feeling guilty. Boo. Maybe we should get a fake one next year but the fake ones does not look so luscious!

The color theme we used is red and gold!

Other than the typical decorative balls, we also used snow flakes and acorns!

You need to top off the tree with a shiny gold star!

We bought all these at a decoration shop near Paya Lebar Mrt, because my office is using decorations from this store, we thought we should go back and get some nice ones from them too!

After

This was how we kept our wine previously! It was dangerous and in a mess! We have plenty of wine and got even more after our wedding banquet! Thankfully we finally got a wine chiller! We got it at Parisilk Electronics & Computers (East Coast branch)! It is affordable and the guy who served us was really friendly! It costs over $400 and the model name is Valenti 160 which can hold approximately 40 bottles of wine. Parisilk is something like Ever Joint where they sell electrical appliances at a rate usually lower than major electrical stores.

Parisilk Electronics & Computers

86 East Coast Road
#01-21/35 Katong Village S428788
Tel: 63449937
Fax: 63459910

He bought me lilies and I love it! It smells awesome! Thank you baby!

If you are my guest and happens to need to take a shower, be my guest and use these yummy treats!

We requested for a slight change to the design, as we prefer the birds to come flying home, we got Amanda to reverse the birds. Also, we had a little accident during the installation of the decals and so you will realize the lower part of the nest is cut off. Oh well, our little birdies prefer nest on branches then below. HAHA.

Overall, it is really designed to Do It Yourself and all you need is a little patience and concentration to get it right.

Fixing the position of the decals.

Check out my flabby arms. Heh.

All done up!

Live

Love

Laugh

He wanted to saw off the “L” and “U” because it is blocking the TV. GASPS!