new large clasp pouches

Donna Carmela @ Greenwood - a total letdown

Brought family out for italian dinner today @ Donna Carmela, Greenwood. Was there few months back with tyre and loved the food! The most memorable dish was the signature pizza that had generous topping of rocket salad, parma ham and mozerella cheese. Yumz!

Its pretty pricey and had been thinking of going back to 'relive' the good food. So, the best way to enjoy good food would be to have it with love ones so decided to bring family there to enjoy good food. But this time, it was way below expectations - what a let down.

The service was lukewarm (they only focus on the ang mohs), the food was lukewarm when it reached our table.


The minestrone soup resembled more like a stew rather than a soup as it was probably 4/5 filled with vege and stuffs and little liquid. The pasta tasted a bit uncooked and not hot enough. The Vongole was so oily, even oilier than the alio olio pasta. The signature pizza was the worst - i had been drooling over it for ages and was thorougly dissappointed. The pizza was BURNT/CHARREd. Very very obviously overcook and burnt and yet they served it to ask. And when i told the waiter about it, he just took it back and replaced with a new one, without any explaination! Was pretty pissed with the whole experience.

Had been recommending this place to frens in the past, but after today, i only have negative reviews for it. tsk tsk. What a total waste of money and calories. :((

Seperately, dropped by Ms G's fair and snapped pictures of my stuffs @ her fair :D . Spot my signature metal clasp purses on the first shelf.

And those big clasp pouches, its down to only 4 pieces from more than 20 pieces before the fair. WO HO HO! Thanks to those who have bought my stuffs!! Thank you thank you for your support!!!! :D

iphone pouches

when i first crafted these, i didnt think that it will be popular. Just wanted to do something different using metal clasp frames. Turns out, the iphone clasp pouches are a Hit! :)) Well, i guess cuz its different. So far, i have seen zipper iphone pouches, draw string ones, sock ones, plastic, leather etc etc but no metal clasp frame ones.

Anyway, Ms G's having her fair at Liang Court this week again and she said some customers were looking for the iphone clasp pouches. I have crafted some during my Shanghai trip but tot i better do up a bit more, just in case those fly right off the shelves!

I forgot to take pictures of those 'made in china' pouches but i have for these latest 6 pouches. Here they are.

My first love is for russian dolls. I like anything in russian doll prints - fabrics, pouches, cups, houseware etc. And my second fave has to be these kokeshii dolls from japan.

And between the animal prints, i heart the hedgehog ones. KK got this, amongst many others, from her japan trip last year and i snipped off a small bit of her pretty stash. So, i only have enough to make one iphone pouch with this hedgehog print, and maybe another small pouch. As for cheery bright red hippo print, it was discovered by Lak. I wouldnt have choosen it myself. She chose this print and tasked me to craft a big clasp pouch for her 2 yrs ago and she has been using it since then.

And in this last picture, these two prints are hot favourites and i have been using it repeatedly for quite a few pouches already. One's so sweet looking, another's very cute!

I should really take effort to photograph my crafts before selling them. I try i try....

To JB To JB

The Vong's invited me to join them on a day trip to JB via the railway, the good ole fashion way. That got me excited cuz (1) it will soon be defunct come Jul-11 and (2) i havent taken it before.

The highly anticipated trip turned out to be rather... lukewarm at best. A one-way ticket to JB from the train station at cantonment costs S$12, while the return ticket costs merely RM3, but you have to get it in JB. Overall, we all agreed that it's better and more comfortable to take the train to JB instead of bus cuz its less crowded at customs and there's air con most ways.

The trip turned out to be more of a foodie trip rather than a shoe spree trip. We started off with my fave bak kut teh near the Vong's place, then nonya kueh once we reached JB and then, out of boredom, we ate assam laksa & rojak.

We initially planned to return after dinner, but after less than 2 hours of shopping, we were ready to go back to singapore. Train ticket back was really cheap at RM3, but i think its cheap for a reason - there's no air con !!! freaking hot and the cabins only had 4 small miserable windows to aerate it!! The journey back was more interesting as we paid more attention to the sights. We passed by some parts of Singapore which we would never have seen.

Tyre & Damon joined us after we returned to Singapore for dinner and we wandered around the tanjong pagar area by foot in search for some pretty eateries which were spotted before.

And then we ended up having chinese food - nothing very fanciful nor interesting but the restuarant was packed!!!

And that ends our day trip. Not bad , not bad after all! :D

Shanghai again

Back to Shanghai again. This time, with Tyre - its his first time! Younger bro joined us towards the end of the trip too.

When i booked the tickets, i tot that timing's just right @ towards the end of winter. Shd be cooling. Cooling it wasnt. It was freaking cold - some days between 4-7degress in gloomy weather. Lucikly i was quite adequately armed with warm clothings but tyre was feeling pretty cold most times.

Explored a few more places this time, thanks to Tyre. For without him, i would just go back to the same old places. But with him ard, everyone felt compelled to bring him to places of interests and i got to tag along! :D

We went to Tian Zi Fang located near our place @ Da Pu Qiao Station. Its an area made up of alleys of small quaint shops and eateries. Pretty interesting to wander around and get lost in the maze of shops. Too bad the weather was too freaking cold, else it would have been pretty good for al fresco dining.

There's a wet market located right outside Tian Zi Fang and we decided to do some grocery shopping plus let tyre have a taste of 'local life'. Tyre got pretty turned off after less than five minutes and opt to wait outside for us to finish up. We also had our first shanghai home cooked food - prepared by cousin lili (see pictures in last row below)

Snapping pictures of a very unwilling tyre carrying foodies bought from the wet market. Love the right most picture ... looks cool yet comical with the bags of groceries! hehehe

Tyre's aunty is teaching in Shanghai and we managed to meet her for dinner. She brought us for yummy xin-jiang food - mainly made up of mutton.. yumz! i love mutton.

One of the sightseeing places we went to was Qi Bao - its located within Shanghai and accessible by mrt. It was so packed!!!

None of the food sighted along the food alleys look enticing enough but this cotton candy stall really caught my attention and i had to try it - multicolored flower shaped cotton candy. Only RMB6 (S$1.20). So pretty.

We also visited Suzhou. Nothing very interesting, except for those small chinese teapot shops where dad got quite a few for his collection.

That's all from the recent trip.

Next stop - Korea & HK! Yay!!! So looking forward to it!