Coming Clean

After months of evading questions, telling little white lies and flat out saying "I don't know", it's finally time to tell the truth.

As of yesterday, I officially am a cafe owner. Samuel and I are doing this together with help from my family, and its been a very crazy few months. The reason why I didn't want to say anything yet was because things weren't finalised and I didn't want to have to explain things if they went south... but now that the keys have been handed to us I think it's pretty much as stable as it can get!

I honestly constantly feel nervous, scared, excited all at the same time and I guess this is what it feels like to be moving into the next big step of life! I never really expected to be at this point at this age so it's pretty insane. We only started talking about it about 4 months ago, but these 4 months have really proven that anything can be done.

It hasn't been easy, and there are days I just feel like giving up and going back to a 9-5 office job. It's terrifying because there's so much money going into this, but at the same time we've been getting so much help from family and friends and even strangers who want to see us do well.

I guess I won't be announcing the location and will post more updates when we're done with renovation but at the mean time... please hope and pray for us

xxx

#eatpraylove part deux

Here's what we did on the 3rd and 4th days! Trying really hard to remember all the details but it's not easy (qn: why did I not write it down!!!! ans: I am lazy) but I will try...

---

(Part 1 here!)

Day 3

I woke up feeling awful because my eyelid and lip got bitten by a vicious mosquito :( It was super swollen!!! No idea if it were a mosquito or not, but I did apply repellent the entire trip. I'm super prone to bites though, so it happens too me on almost every trip out of the country AND from time to time in SG as well.

Breakfast was toast and omelettes with freshly pureed fruit jam - so delicious.

Hung out in our little villa til about 11 while we waited for the driver from the next villa to pick us up.

Our next villa was also in Ubud - Indigo Villa (www.airbnb.com.sg/rooms/746469)! They have 4 different rooms, and the one I shared with my sister opened right to the darling little pool.

While waiting for our rooms to get ready, we walked out to the hotel opposite  for lunch. Junjungan Hotel and Spa looks fancier compared to the villas we went to, but the rooms were much smaller.

We had our brunch there in their lovely restaurant amidst the trees. Reminded me so much of Halia at Botanic Gardens, without the hefty price tag. We had breakfast for lunch cos we were so tempted by the ice cream pancakes! Super fluffy pancakes, really yummy.

After luunch/ brunch, we popped back for a dip in the pool!

Showing my profile that was NOT harassed by an evil mosquito.

Dipped, showered, and it was dinner time! We took the car out to the city area and walked a bit, got some cream for my bites and settled at Nomad Restaurant and Bar.

Shared a 12 piece tapas with my sister, which came with a bowl of rice. was quite interesting cos we had a bite of everything! I remember liking the kangkong and fish satay.

Day 3 was one of the most relaxing days for us, just spent eating and sitting around A LOT - utter bliss.

Day 4, on the other hand...

Woke up at 7:30am to get ready because my sister and I were going White Water Rafting!!! We booked it through the villa, so I'm not sure which company it was. We paid a total of $40 per person for transport, breakfast, rafting and lunch.

We had breakfast in our villa instead because who can resist Banana Crepe Pancakes? Not me!

The 4m drop at the end - whee!

The only drawback was the millions of steps we had to climb to get back up! Seeing that the entire rafting was downstream, we climbed at least 500 steps to reach the cafe, which was what really killed me.

But hey! Lunch with a view

We got back to the hotel at about 3ish and left showered and left for massages in the city.

The massage was pretty good, if anything too strong! But at $6 for an hour, it's all good.

Finally had Bali's famous crispy duck at Bunute Cafe! It was so. good. Probably one of my favourite meals in Bali. Service wasn't very good though, and there was a cockroach running around at one point...

Will blog about the last 3 days in a separate post, lets hope my memory doesn't fail me!

xxx

Turning 21

I'm embarrassed to say my 21st birthday was a good 4.5 months ago but I'm only finally dragging my butt here to do a proper post! I actually thought I wouldn't bother since it was so late already, but a few of my friends and relatives were still asking me about it so I thought I'd just throw this together!

---

I always liked the idea of a small, intimate party and even when I was working as a floral coordinator of sorts I found myself gravitating towards the more private ones at restaurants and smaller venues. I didn't fancy the idea of having a huge group of friends from different cliques coming together and stand around awkwardly anyway, so I knew it would be just my closest friends! I kinda knew from the start that I wanted it at Carpenter and Cook because it ticked all the boxes for me - small venue, yummy food, beautiful aesthetics. I did hunt around for other possible venues but we more or less settled on it quickly :-)

I was brainstorming for some time on what theme to have for my party, and was bouncing around some ideas like all black (the only colour for meeee), vintage tea party, Alice in wonderland etc but I ultimately decided on a Great Gatsby/ 1920s glamour theme! I love all things glittery and shimmery and I guess it all came together.

This was my invitation card - super easy to do on PS!

My mum was super excited on my behalf as well, and DIYed a bunch of cute tags and bunting! We also made some simple door gifts, embellished hair pieces for the girls! My mum bought tons of ribbon, lace, strings of pearls and these sparkly beaded pieces and we spent a few nights gluing them together. She also made these cute feathered pins for the guys which kinda look like fluff in the pictures hahaha.

As for the venue, we paid a total of $880 for the booking of half the area and $600 worth of food, which trust me, was A LOT!!! But no complaining because Carpenter and Cook's food is truly delicious and all my friends loved how they could sample a little of everything, from the savoury muffins and quiche to the tarts and cakes!

I love their Passionfruit Meringue Tarts!!

I'm so glad my friends tried to come dressed to the theme!!! I wore a fringed throw from Nastygal, black jumpsuit from F21 and some of my mum's vintage pearls!

#blessed

Facetime call from my best friend who was in UK!

I did consider getting one of those fancy cakes but they were at least $200 and since I had $600 worth of food credit... also C&C's cake are delicious! This was their Lemon Meringue Cake.

It was such a great night!! Smiled til my jaw hurt hahaha. The food was amazing and super well received by my friends! I know because my guy friends instagrammed it raving about it LOL. I got bites of everything as I hopped from table to table hehe. Was so glad I decided on the venue and I wouldn't have it any other way. One thing to note though, is that they don't do weekend parties, which is why I had it on the 28th and not on my actual birthday!

Well... that's about it, I think! All in all we spent about $1000, which was the budget I gave myself. Not a small sum (by my books, at least) but I look back with fond memories, so definitely worth it!

Until next time!

xxx