Christmas D.I.Y: Giant Origami star

This year, I will be in charge of Christmas decoration of our Pre-Christmas dinner at Church. For some reason, I am super excited about it. To be frank I'm not really an artsy person nor I have that many creative cells in my brain. But luckily I got a teacher called Pinterest. There are tons of posts about different ways to d.i.y the christmas decor with literally zero money spent. 

In order to channel of some of my excitement, I am gonna blog about the details of all the D.I.Y decoration idea which I come across in Pinterest and eventually experimented.

Today its all about origami stars, I stumbled on this youtube video on the tutorial of making an origami stars when browsing Pinterest. It doesn't seems like its rocket sciences, so I asked myself, why not try it now!

I experimented with whatever materials and tools I can find in the office. Now the only challenge was getting a big piece of paper. I dismantled a BIG brown envelope to make it 2 piece of brown paper. Other than that, I just need scissors, cello-tape and staple. And after 15 mins of hardwork, wala! here my giant star!!  

Not bad huh for a beginner. 

So now, I have a star shinning over me everyday when I'm working!! :p

Taiwan Trip Photoblog: Taipei day 1

Since I am too lazy to blog the details of my recent Taiwan Trip, i'm gonna let the photos speaks by itself. 

The first day in Taipei was fairly relaxing. We went to Taipei main station to purchase in advance our Taipei- Hua Lian Train Ticket first thing in the morning. Followed by breakfast in the famous "Yong he dou jiang dian" which can be found at the corner of every main street in Taipei.  

Hearty breakfast with soy bean drinks, xiao long bao and stuffed onion pancakes

Next we head to the Confucius temple at Datong district, whereby the temple is modeled after the original Confucius Temple in Qufu, Shandong Province of China. It was quite fun to look at all the details of the architecture and design of the chinese temple while reading about the write-about of  the famous Chinese fu-zi of all time. We even got the chance to view the famous Confucius 4D show for free!  

Then, we found out accidentally that opposite the street there is a Summer open air concert going on, and we can resist the chance to have a look inside. The whole area was super huge whereby it used to be the exhibition site for flora expo. We went from one stage arena to the next, some are open to public but some imposed restricted entry. Overall we enjoyed the atmosphere but decided to leave after a while as we cant stand the 37 degrees heat!

 

Next stop was our favorite place in whole Taiwan, the Beitou hot spring. But before that, we had simple lunch with Taiwanese local cuisine - braised mince pork rice, dry squid soup and pork balls. Yum yum. I am super in-love with the hotspring in Taiwan. The first time we came to Taiwan, we went to the Beitou public bath rather than private bath due to a simple reason- its cheaper. You can find all sort of private bath hotspring package which is basically a small bath tube in a hotel room available for 2-3 hours in ALL the big hotels in Beitou. Some may goes up to hundreds, we had chosen the public bath which only cost at a few dollars, but with much better ambiance and surrounding! The public bath is consisting of at least 4 big pools of different temperature, the pools are surrounding by tall trees which not only provide great nature view, but also shield the pools from the outsiders. Although this is not our first time being here, we still love the place!

After a good soak, we went to famous dan sui shopping district , which is just a station away from Bei Tou. The street are full with flocks of tourist, good street -food, and many many lovely dogs. Taiwanese love to walk their dogs, i think Dogs in Taiwan live a happier life compare to Malaysia's.

Peter has his 10 dollar head neck massage which is ok. But the highlight was the fisherman wharf. We hop on to the boat to go to the fisherman wharf for a sunset view.It didnt occur to me how fast the sun goes down the horizon. 1 minute the whole sea is bathing in the golden sun rays, and the next minute the whole sky turned pitch black. And the next thing you will see is the colorful neon light of the Fisherman wharf's bridge shimmering brightly in the dark. The view is simply magical. Frankly, I cant think of a better way to spend the night than this. 

Then, we ends the night with good ramen, a bit expensive but i guess you pay for the view as the restaurant was located on the harbour overlooking the sea. Then while on our way back to hotel, we were munching more snacks while passing by the shopping street. 

Stay tune for the rest of my Taiwan photoblog!

Fabulous 30: I'm ranking at 1304!

I did my first 10km last Sunday. 

It was my first marathon, surprisingly, it wasn't as hard as I thought it was, but its not something I would say "a piece of cake". 

The whole idea about participating in a marathon was partly peer (and husband) pressure and partly my own interest. Am not sure whether this is a good traits but when I get interested in something, I am like a dog chasing the bone. I will read about it, get ready for it and shop for anything related to it. I was like this before with my first job; my churchie projects; my cakes baking and my recent Korean Drama craze. Spending hours doing the same thing is not an issue as my mind will be completely obsessed about it. 

And that's happened with my running as well. I made a promise to myself early this year that I would do my first marathon before 30 years old. Since then, I have been training religiously day after day, for months. Although there have been those lazy days, but I was able to finish 100km within 3 months. With that being said, I was never a good runner. My stamina is bad and I'm easily feeling short of breath. In fact throughout my training, the maximum I can run continuously without stopping is 5.5km. 

The day before the actual run itself, I was down with flu and was not in my top condition. So there was a lot of uncertainty whether I can really finish the run. Luckily I made it! and the satisfaction is great. It doesnt matter whether I finish it within the first hundred or thousand. But the fact that I managed to finished it within the qualifying time is a reward on its own. 

In fact, sometimes I think our life is like a run. Everyone is running their own race, some has a higher goal of 42km, some maybe just aiming for a 5km. We prepared our best for this race, but sometimes unexpected turns up and we are force to slow down. We may pick up the pace again if we are determined enough, but there is no guarantee that we are going to finish it. But like Jenny says :"Run Forest run!". Keep pressing on and I'm sure the finishing line is in sight.