I was so elated when I spotted this handicraft kit at Daiso. They have a range of beaded animal kits on sale at the handicraft section and each kit only costs $2.

I picked this one – bunny with a carrot in its hands. Kawaii right?
And it is not difficult to string all the beads together to make the bunny. The difficulty comes with interpreting the diagrams which are annotated in Japanese. Anyway, the diagrams are self-explanatory and you don’t really need to know Japanese to understand what it means.

I am posing this challenge to Mr Croak to make me a beaded animal for Valentines’ Day. I’d like to see how his big hands fumble and how crooked his handicraft looks. This one surely beats receiving any expensive gift from Tiffany or Louis Vuitton, don’t you think? Not that I care for such material gifts anyway.

I am awaiting the big surprise!

Last Christmas, I have renewed my interest in baking, thanks to a dear friend who has given me a book on “Baking”.
My first baking attempt was the Cashew Nuts Brownie!
And Croaky was endearing to escort me to Phoon Huat to purchase all the ingredients and gungho enough to be my first sampler.

The ingredients – all sprawled and neatly arranged before the whole mess began…
All purpose flour, dark chocolate chunks, cashew nuts, cream, icing sugar and my baking equipment.

As I melted the chocolate and butter over my electric stove. This method is double boiling and is essential if you do not want to burn your chocolate over direct heat.

Then it is the sugar and the eggs. I love this metal mixing bowl from Ikea – its spacious and very sleek looking.

Then I whipped the sugar-egg mixture with an electric beater until frothy.

The chocolatey batter as I scrapped them nicely off with my rubber scrapper.

And there, the batter in my 9 inch squarish aluminium baking tray – specially bought for the occasion.

My recipe book, cropped up on my table-top, as I go through each step with close precision.

The chocolate icing on my ready-baked brownie.

The finished product! After 3 hours of hard work and sweat in my kitchen.

Verdict: Croaky loves it, and so does my colleagues.
My next endeavour – Banana Nut Muffins

If she has been a full-time housewife, she would be very happy experimenting in her kitchen, attending cookery classes and be a great jack-of-all-trades (but master-of-none) chef. She may have time to set aside a religious regime of doing daily aerobics and going for tri-weekly swim. There will be time for her to enjoy the birds, the trees and the morning sun.

She can doodle on her art canvas, shop for handicraft supplies and attend French lessions. She can have all the time in the world to watch repeats of her favourite SCV dramas in the afternoon and catch up with her huge library of books. Then, she will start practising taichi and immerse herself with meditation or take up mahjong or start some small business (work from home no doubt).

Then she shall waste her time thinking of whether to splurge on La Mer cream or fret when her SK II facial treatment essence is running low. She shall lose count of the number of hand-bags she owns and catalogue each one with a photograph and a small description – all filed in a neat folder for her own reference during her afternoon tea-time, with her terrier on her lap.

Maybe she will hire a personal assistant to run her errands, because keeping track of the soy sauces and sashimi in her kitchen becomes too mundane a chore.

She shall start browsing car forums in between her weekly manicures to make a decision on her next little mobile in which she shall purchase to ferry her to her daily shopping destinations. A chauffeur to take care of her car as well, as she is too prone to scratching her bumper in the most unexpected corners of Paragon, Takashimaya and Bugis Junction.

A little garden with a greenhouse is a must. Because she needs space to cultivate species of rare orchid, lavender and tulips flown in from everywhere. And who needs to tend to the soil when she has a gardener who is a trained botanist with years of experience performing miracles to make flowers bloom.

Where is this little woman with such bimbotic dreams and desires to live off her man? Hasn’t it been a curse her fore-sisters who have fought so hard for equality and independence that it has made such a dream stay as such. That’s why they say dream on.

Thankfully, life rarely promises such good-for-nothing behaviour. If she wanted a garden, why not tend to it herself? To employ a garderner for your favourite garden is like asking a glutton to engage a food taster. What else does life hold for her now with nothing to do?

So you see, there are dreams and there are dreams. Some good, others purely nightmares. Thank goodness we can dream. Otherwise, we know not what a bimbo we may soon become. Oh and I forgot. She had a writer engaged to pen you the above dream. zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.