Mi casa es su casa

Prettifying a home is a never ending process. That is what I have learned when we moved in to our own home last year. We would set small projects every now and then to further make our home more comfortable, cozy and of course charming. One of the first projects that Honey ever conceived when we moved in was to replace the wooden shafts in the roof terrace with new ones but since we moved in during autumn going to winter months, the weather was not conducive to start the project.

Finally after months of planning and dreaming, Honey, with the help of a very good friend, is almost done with the project after working over a couple of weekends. They even took a step further and built a proper fence that avails us more privacy and a trellis of some sort where I plan to let some rose bushes climb up to (who knows how long my next project would materialize but there you go).

We are expecting some visitors in the next weeks to come, my sister is coming in two weeks time with her hubby and baby Alex and they will spend a week with us and a very good friend from Dubai will come several days after that and finally another good friend from London will be joining us several weeks after that so our home will be packed. Yey!!! To prepare for that, we shopped for a bed over the weekend and lo and behold, we saw this swing. The moment I saw this magnificent piece of furniture, I knew exactly where it will go in our home. The roof terrace! I already imagine myself lounging in the terrace lying lazily on this comfortable swing as I take in the view of my growing rose bushes. We just have to have it! Finally honey caved in and we went back home with a big box in tow. He was able to fix the swing last Sunday afternoon and it was just perfect. I tried it out and almost fell asleep as I lay there while the soft wind was blowing on my cheeks.


Hopefully, we will still experience more good weather over the next weeks before autumn rain kicks in and we can still enjoy the swing and the roof terrace with some barbeque and drinks overlooking our nice neighborhood and we could share all of these with our family and friends. Good times ahead!!!

Moral of the Story

It has become a part of our weekends to meet up with our friends from CFC and last week it was our turn to host the dinner for them. The moment I woke up, I thought it was the perfect day to have friends over since we had a great weather. Thinking that I had all the time in the world and not wanting to miss the warm sun, Honey and I spent most of the day shopping and strolling. When we finally went back home, it was already 3pm and we realized we hadn’t eaten lunch yet. So we feasted on a salad with fried chicken strips dressed with balsamic vinegar. It was a refreshing meal for a hot day.

Immediately after lunch, I made my way into the kitchen and started preparing the ingredients for the simple meal I was planning to whip up. I still felt that it was too early so I took my own sweet time. I was quite excited to make the dessert coz I recently bought muffin moulds which were on sale so I started by baking the blueberry muffins and blueberry streusels cake. Initially, I only planned on making muffins but Honey requested for the cake so I obliged. Since I was planning a very simple dinner of chop suey and fried pork slices, after I have thrown the desserts in the oven I took my time in organizing my kitchen first clearing up all the ingredients that I have used, rearranged my plate cabinet and admired the desserts cooking in the oven and since I already seasoned the meat earlier that day, I started boiling some quail eggs, I peeled off some tiger prawns and I started to cut, dice and slice the vegetables and fried them up a bit while frying the pork slices on the side. In the middle of cutting and dicing and slicing, the doorbell rang. I stop midway of throwing another batch of vegetables in the wok to look at the time. OMG! It was already 6:45pm and our friends have started to arrive. I still needed to fry the rest of the meat slices, fry up some veggies, slice the prawns, shell the quail eggs and make the sauce. I started to panic so I paused and inhaled a deep breath. I thought to myself “don’t worry, the guests will not eat immediately, they will chat first and would want some drinks and by that time you’re done cooking.” So I welcomed our guests to our home and Honey entertained them while I try to speedily cook the rest of our meal.

In the end, everything turned out fine, I managed to cook the entire meal right after our guests have finished with their aperitif. It actually turned out perfectly coz the vegetable dish was served straight out of the stove top, it was warm, crisp and cooked just right and the meat dish was also fresh out of the frying pan. All of us enjoyed the meal, our friends particularly liked the dessert.


Moral of the story, learn to look at your watch once in while especially if your hosting dinner.

Sunny-Side Up

We had a glorious weather here in Amsterdam over the weekend, 27 degrees on Saturday and 30 degrees on Sunday, can you believe that. In the past, especially when I was still living in Dubai, I wouldn’t get psyched up about good weather but having lived here in the Netherlands for almost 2 years now, I know that they’re quite rare. So what else do we do on such a wonderful day, we started it off with a very Filipino breakfast to fuel up for the day ahead, dried fishes and fried eggs… yummy!!!

I was so excited to cook the eggs coz I got myself a new toy in the kitchen. I was able to buy this egg form moulds last week and they looked so cute so as early as Friday night, I knew Saturday breakfast would definitely have eggs.

It was one very satisfying breakfast indeed with the eggs and dried fish paired with fried rice and a cup of steaming coffee, although, my moulds didn’t work out as properly as I wanted them to. I think next time I used them I would use a different pan. When I tried to fry the eggs inside the mold, it leaked in some places and the egg didn’t exactly take the form of the mould. Hhhmmmp. Well nevertheless, the eggs were delicious. It was the glue that bound the crispy saltiness of the dried fishes to the aromatic flavor of the fried rice, simple yet satisfying indeed. Just what we needed to start off a perfect day.