December is my favourite month, because there are celebrations throughout the whole of December, starting from my birthday, children's school holiday, my mum's birthday, winter solstice, Christmas and closely follow by New Year's Eve and a brand new year.
Desserts & cakes at Promenade Hotel
When we talk about celebrations and gathering, there must have food, adding a few pounds or kg on our belly is unavoidable in December month alone. It's the last day of the year, we have worked hard and stressed out for the whole year, let's relax and enjoy more good food with our families and friends on the new year 's eve and welcome a superb year of 2017 for all of us.
It is the nicest time of the year to be out and about to feel the Christmas mood in the shopping complexes and hotels. I attended a wedding dinner at Oriental Hotel Kota Kinabalu last Saturday, the hotel has displayed a huge Christmas tree at the foyer, and Christmas cookies and cakes at the cafe. Let's enjoy the video clip.
My better half requested a Santa's bag few hours before we were to load and carry all the Christmas presents to the family Christmas celebration on 26th December. A bit of a struggle here and there, and the machine stuck many times during the sewing process. Rushing after the time is stressful.
It was my better half's idea to have the Santa's bag so he has to help to design and cut out the green Christmas tree patterns. Luckily we have the essential colours of red, green and white clothes available.
The sewing process is not tough but I prefer to have more time for me to do a better job
The finished Santa's bag filled with Christmas presents
We invited the Children's Liturgy carolling group to our home on 18th December. Our girls are part of them. It was heavy downpour prior to their arrival, it's a blessing from above.
goodies bags are ready for the children
besides Christmas carols, there are role play on Mother Mary, Joseph, the Angels
My girls used to played the role of Mother Mary and the Angel in the previous years. They have now grown up, letting the younger ones take up the roles, the costumes no longer fit them :D
Christmas is just a couple of days away. We have put up our Christmas Trees just before the carolers came to visit our home on 18th December (Carolling at home). We are having 3 Christmas Trees this year, all the trees and ornaments are from previous years.
Carollers visit our home. Crystal acted as Mother Mary this year. The three bright stars hanging on the garage were bought from our Philippines trip.
Our girls just couldn't wait to open their presents from aunties, uncles and cousins though it has passed midnight after our Christmas Day's family gathering.
Simply excited in opening all the Christmas presents.
In fact there are many more photos that I have taken using my new Samsung handphone, I am still not used to uploading the photos using it. More comfortable using my old Canon digital camera. I need more time to play around with my new android phone before I could use it to the max.
Christmas is here in less than a week time. Time flies so fast and so many things to handle that I find myself haven't got time to get things done for Christmas this year. I am still deciding on what presents to get for the kids, Clet is busy with our front gate renovation, so he hasn't got the time to spare on the Christmas presents this year, luckily I have got crystal to help me on getting some girl's accessories done as gifts, yes, she handmade them, I helped her on the beginning and finishing touches (will post it in my next post).
Christmas is not complete without some kind of feast in the celebration. Some may think having turkey is a must in the Christmas menu. If you have no plan to roast your own turkey (which is a lot of work and know hows). Here are 2 places you could order a cooked/ roasted turkey in Kota Kinabalu, Sabah.
Borneo Turkey is where you could order a cheaper organic turkey, the cheapest is RM120.00 for a 3kg roasted organic turkey with free side salads. My colleague has ordered it last year, she is thinking of ordering it again this year.
We have been busy for the last 2 weeks or so. Our girls started their carolling after we had a short trip to Tawau. They were having fun going house to house sending the good news on the second coming of Jesus Christ. This is the first time they joined the Kids of the Kingdom's carolling group. This is the youngest carollers from our church, kid age as young as 3 years to 9 years, parents are advised to accompany them during the 4 days of carolling. Inevitably we as parents join in as part of the carollers as well. The kids are so very excited when receiving goodies, food & drinks at the church members' houses that we visited.
Crystal continues to join the elder group of the Children Liturgy's carolers this week. It's our turn to welcome them to our home on Wednesday. I bought some chocolate biscuits and packet drinks as goodies for them to bring back.
As carollers, our girls brought back bags and bags of goodies. Now our home are filled with goodies, pray and hope that with God's Blessing, our coming new years will be sweeter than previous years. It's truly an experience for Crystal and Pearl this Christmas for joining the carolling.
November will soon be over, it's time to prepare for Christmas, the first thing to begin with the preparation is to put up the Christmas Trees, yes we have 2 Christmas Trees, 1 big and 1 small revolving Christmas Tree with lights.
Our girls are ever so excited to put the ornaments on the Christmas tree.
After attended our niece's abacus arithmetic competition at Suria Sabah this afternoon, we went into Metrojaya to have a look and feel the Christmas' atmosphere. They have put up a lot of very beautifully decorated Christmas trees at very departments and every aisles.
This red colour theme Christmas tree is our favourite.
Ornaments have been put up for sales, many type of colours to choose from for you to decorate according to your Christmas colour theme this year. Since we have many of our Christmas decorations which we have been keeping for many years, we did not buy any as we have already have enough.
Silver colour ornaments
The red ones
Admiring some of the beautiful ornaments
The purple ones
Ladies, the sales are on at Metrojaya in KK, some items are up to 80% discounts. I desperately needed to change my handbag, after searching through the bundle of handbags, I managed to get myself a very reasonable price handbag, it is not Coach, definitely not LV for the moment..it is only a GF (Gio Fiore), at 70% discount. Can you guess how much it is???
Yes, my dad finally received a green light from the doctor yesterday allowing him home this morning. I was delighted to receive this good news from my brother upon arriving home yesterday evening. Everyone show a sign of relieve, popping in and out of the hospital is over for us after a week, seems like a long week.
This morning, brother Alfred, happily getting ready to fetch my dad from the hospital. I am sure there are some waiting to get the discharge paper work done in the hospital, payment and collection of medicine from the pharmacy, my father will only be home around noon time.
Now it's time to get ourselves ready for Christmas!
It's time to put up the Christmas Tree. Crystal has been asking her daddy to take the Christmas tree and its ornaments out from the store room many days ago. Finally her daddy got to do it for her last night.
She and Pearl was busy hanging some of the ornaments. Now she is tall enough to reach out to place the star on top of the tree.
The Christmas decorations are the shopping malls becoming lesser and simpler, even at 1 Borneo, a place used to be having the nicest decoration shopping mall has toned down a lot not as nice as previous last year.
Christmas is over, a brand new year is ahead of us. Before we got busy with the starting of school term and work, Clet with the assistant of, taking off the Christmas decorations today. It is a major task just to take all those decorations off, they need to be carefully wrapped and place into their respective boxes before putting into the big container for proper storage, so that we could still use them in the coming Christmases. Those Christmas decorations are becoming more and more expensive each year. I leave this task for Clet.
After this he is ready to put up the Chinese New Year decorations. :D
Mum's 65th birthday is on 21st December, the next day is always a "tung" celebration marking the start of winter in the Chinese lunar calendar, some said this day is "bigger" than Chinese New Year.
As the Christmas is just round the corner, I decided to celebrate the ocassions earlier merging mum's birthday and Christmas together on 19th December at my house, the pot luck style.
I baked two cakes, one butter orange cake requested by mum and a small fruit cake, Christmas is not so complete without a fruit cake, so I finally decided to bake a tiny fruit cake yesterday, it was decorated by Crystal and Pearl.
I prepared my speciality for the dinner, that's the spaghetti bolognese, cream of mushroom chicken puff and fried some ready packed chicken rolls. We moved around the furniture a bit to make more space for the evening too, that's kept us busy for the whole day. It was a very memorable and meaningful gathering.
My parents and five of us siblings
I should have taken a photo of the cake :C
A cute little Christmas cake, it's a bit sweet, gonna reduce on the sugar for my next baking.
Pizza from Pizza Hut brought in by Sis
Home made potato and ham salad by SIL, Shirly, Clet like it, I will need to get the recipe from her.
spaghetti bolognese by me
Older generation like my parents always prefer to have rice. Alfred took over the wok cooking this fried rice under the supervision of his wife, Catherine who is due to gave birth to a son end of this month. He is picking up cooking very well.
A big plate of fried meehoon by Alfred too, prove of great improvement in his cooking.
Egg and ham sandwiches ordered from the shop
fried chicken roll
Cream of mushroom chicken puff and tuna puff, my favourite baking.
Pause from eating to take a photo. Clet is busy fixing the video cam at the background.
sisters sharing a small table, Pearl and Anneliese were playing more than eating, they left their food almost untouched.
While I was busy baking cookies this afternoon, I asked Pearl to help me to take some of our Christmas decorations that Clet has put up inside the house. Most of the decorations are old ones. I can feel that this year's celebration is very quiet, the mechandise and decorations put up by the shopping complexes are much lesser than previous years, recession has really set in...:(
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