Strawberry Picking

To Greg's U-Pick Farm at Clarence Center we went to play migrant labors this past Saturday morning :)

Mr. & Mrs. Beasley

Peter and I are could not attend Alex & Ashley's wedding in Angola, IN last weekend, but our thoughts and wishes were with the two newlyweds and their family as they said their I Dos.

Congratulations to Alex & Ashley on your wedding!
We wish you both much happiness as you start your life together as husband and wife.
Have a great time on your honeymoon in Hawaii.

XoXoX
Sher & Pete

Happy Birthday to the Koh-Sacks'

Happy Birthday you two...

Many happy returns of the day to you Claire
and
an extended birthday to you Dan!

Baking for charity

Tomorrow is my office's charity bake sale. We are selling baked goods at the North Tonawanda Farmer's Market come rain or shine (it's supposed to be a wet rainy day tomorrow) and all proceeds go to Share Our Strength's Great American Bake Sale. I whipped up several treats for the sale - marble rice krispie treats and a double chocolate chocolate chip cupcake.

Kitchen counter all set for our baking session... Lori is my baker's assistant extraordinare.


Lori caught this of me all ready with my loyal spatula and husband busy doing work on his PC in the background.

Cupcake inspiration -


Final product(s)...

This cupcake was supposed to resemble Cookie Monster, but this time round - my cupcake batter turned out much more "fluffier" than I anticipated and it was a lot of work trying to get frosting onto the cupcake. Should have gone with my usual muffin/cake batter. Big thanks to Lori for getting frosting over those cupcakes and a real blue monster finally emerged.

It may not have been Cookie Monster from Sesame Street, but it was still a Cupcake Monster :P

Nasi Lemak night

A nasi lemak evening at home...

Mom & Chee Ming take their place at the table for dinner to start. Pete opening up a nice bottle of Niagara white.

Our menu of the evening... nasi lemak@coconut rice, prawn sambal, curry chicken, hard boiled eggs topped with sambal terasih, spanish roasted peanuts, braised peanuts and cucumber slices


And here is mom having her after dinner treat... mint chocolate ice cream. And she's eating it right straight from the tub!!

Dim Sum

We met up with the Canadian crew in Markham for dim sum and some shopping (groceries & Ikea) and to pick up my mom and bring her back to Buffalo. Here are several pics from dim sum...

All the MOMs at our table...


Sylvia & Jeff just moved in to their new home right by Bethany & Binh - next trip up, we will be visiting their new place.


The wedding anniversary couple...it's been a year for these newlyweds since they first embark on their world wedding tour last June.
Happy Anniversary Binthany!!


Work of art baos.


My yummy and very cute porcupine-looking bao.

Housewarming Party

It has been exactly one month since we received keys to our new nest and what better time to celebrate our new home with a housewarming party with family and friends. It was a beautiful and warm Saturday to be outside grilling and picnicking. Here are pictures from the party.

Created with flickrSLiDR.

Our new nest

We are all moved in to our home sweet home. Peter and I are settling in nicely and getting our routines down. It is a much bigger space than the previous townhouse and we love the new neighborhood (which is sill the same neighborhood just 3 miles from the old place :P)

Created with flickrSLiDR.

Summer 2009 Wine Trail

It was back to the Finger Lakes yesterday for our annual winery visits and this is the first of several trips for the summer. The nine of us managed to squeeze in 8 stops and brought back with us plenty of vino!

The crew (left-right): Matt, Weez, Nancy, Lori, Chele, Sher, Tinny, Paul & Pete

The camera just loves us!!

The MOMs

This looks like an ad for... something :P

MOMs & Mr. Bones at Rogue's Hollow

Created with flickrSLiDR.

Moving out...

A chapter has come to an end... goodbyes to the olde town house with plenty of memories where Michele and I; and later, Peter shared for the past 4 3/4 years. Moving has a bit hectic but we would like to thank our parents, sisters and amazing friends for helping us move to our new place.

Packing up stuff from the old place....

Moving Day!

It is moving day!! Picking up the keys in the morning, walk through of the new digs, moving things in... as much moving as we girls can do till the men end their work day for the heavy lifting. Sharon's flying in from Indy later to help with the move too :)

T-minus 2 days...

We are somewhat packed up for the big move... there are boxes EVERYWHERE! Super SUPER looking forward to the move!

@Melia's Birthday Dinner

Peter and I took Amelia out for dinner at Hyde Park over at the Walden Galleria - birthday girl loves steak, we bring her to a steakhouse :P

Happy Birthday @meLia

Many happy returns of the day
and a
happy birthday!!

lots of love,
XoXoX
Sher & Pete

Baking 101

Plenty of use of the oven tonight... after baking up some sun-dried tomato crusted tilapia and seasoned pork loin for dinner, it was time to make some muffins. I have these adorable, no-fuss and user-friendly Wilton bakeware siliocone bear muffin molds which I was very eager to try out. And since its almost the weekends... TGIF and also a birthday to celebrate at work tomorrow, all the better to whip up some sinful treats to start off the end of the week! So looking forward to the warm weekend - we are expecting temperatures in the mid 70s!

Here are my double chocolate chocolate chip muffin beauties...
just out of the oven and cooling off...

Proud "mama" baker... resisting hard not to take a bite!

Where'd all the muffins go?!!

Final product = my double chocolate chocolate chip muffins with icing and sprinkles. And they are all ready and packed for work tomorrow. I made them for Amy's birthday :D

Earth Day

Standards by Steve Tyrell

Chele and I have been waiting for quite a while now for this week to arrive. Once again, we got tickets to see Steve Tyrell this Friday at Buffalo State College's Rockwell Hall Performing Arts Center. If you are a frequent reader/follower of this blog - you would know that I enjoy listening to Standards and Steve Tyrell is one of the standard crooners whom I follow religiously.

If I have not already converted you into a fan - then please enjoy several of my favorite selections by the man of the hour himself on this blog :P

Easter 2009

This year at Easter...

Husband made me a beautiful Tiffany blue dyed Easter egg...


And here's our Easter egg-ies labor of love...

Created with flickrSLiDR.

Allergist's Verdict

To the allergist I went today...

Blood work came back all negative. This is good - I am healthy as can be according to my blood. I am on day #5, also the last day of me completing the Z-pack (antibiotics). I have already cut back on the codeine so I am no longer a groggy zombie!

So this means the chronic hives I have are idiopathic and I should keep Zyrtek close to me a all times.

My allergist did a skin allergy test on me - this is the part where I had about 40 tiny needles with 'stuff' on it injected onto four sections on both my arms. I survived but then the tingling, itching sensation began. Nurse said no scratching or rubbing of any kind for 10 minutes for the doctor to see.

Not even a few minutes... I can see tiny mosquito bite size bumps appearing and redness around certain test areas. You know what this mean... I am showing positive reactions to the 'stuff' they are testing on me.

Verdict from the skin allergy test, I am allergic to the following:
1. Cats
2. Dust mites
3. Weed (the ones sprouting dandelions not the other kind :P)
4. Trees.... TREES?? Which one?! In our northeast region, there's oak, hickory, birch, syacamore, cottonwood, walnut, ash, beech, maple, elm to name a few - so which one??

All of them!!

Most people are of the above...

I, on the other hand....

So it's continue on with Benadryl and Zyrtek plus some newly prescribed cream to sooth any itchiness from the hives and the mentioned allergic reactions.

Two year anniversary!!

Happy Anniversary to US!!