Magical Christmas Feeling..Taking Time Out from Busy Schedule

The joy of giving and spreading the love and kindness all around. There's just too much hate going on and too much emphasis on petty little things. I am no angel and I strive to be better all the time and not be so..er, mean and too calculative on the family. Although I don't celebrate Christmas, apart from the fanfare and overhype, I think the the joy of giving and spending time with friends and family is still not lost and the latter is pretty much celebrated by all other major celebrations across religions and culture, promoting togetherness.

There was no gift exchange in my workplace on Christmas even but just as a token of appreciation, I bought a box of Crabtree & Evelyn London handcream lotions and gave them out to my colleagues. I didn't keep any for myself except the pretty box, hehe. It's just a little something from me for helping me prep the 300 (!) cards for a major project. I did get some gifts as well and I appreciate every single one of them :)

That holiday morning, at 7.30 am, I opened my 'Christmas' present..haha..which is technically the bigshot machine that you can see from my previous post. After two freaking weeks, I finally took that baby out. I needed to use it for my current project.

So far, I've no regrets buying it and fell absolutely in love with it and me thinks, it's a wonderful product, provided I can get the dies at a cheaper price, haha. Admittedly, this was the one that did not make me want to buy it over these years. But the machine is versatile enough to be able to use those dies from other manufacturers which my current mini die cut machine couldn't.

In the late afternoon, I watched a Christmas special which was the Cake Boss special episode which showed behind the scenes of Carlo's Bakery on how they worked and churn out those cakes and pastries to the snaking crowd. He got mad skills as a baker and even though he yells at times, but I think working under pressure can really take a toll when you want the best and you have many orders to fulfill, and some people don't quite share the same driven passion.

Okay I was more interested at how he was such a genius in conceptualizing the 3D cakes and basic cakes that he decorated in a whim! 5 at a time! So much so, I was also driven in finishing the embellishments of 4 layouts in the same manner, hehe. Struggled at first, but got the hang of it and I want to keep this method of working. 45 minutes flat. AH-MA-ZING.

While I would love to continue working on my projects, I need to go out with my brother who had planned where to go after being sick for the last few days. He missed going and the places we went to become the highlight of the day. I may be busy but I'm never too busy for my family and for some 'me' time.

We went to the Art Museum which offered free entry, watched the last bit of Christmas carolling, where they were visibly seen to be tired, and then made our way to Garden by the Bay. We missed the 'snowing' at the specially constructed dome so had to wait for awhile for the next one. While waiting, we watched the Lightshow (Winter Edition) where the super trees lighted up in a musical sequence following a series of Christmas songs, starting "Do You Want to Build a Snowman? from the popular Frozen movie and finished it with Mariah Carey's "All I want for Christmas is You".

So we managed to catch the snowing, which was technically just foam coming out from the foam machine, hehe. But it was definitely nice :)

We made in time to Dhoby Gaut for dinner at Pastamania, where we realised later on that we were their last customers. Yay! What an honour..haha.

Meanwhile, enjoy the pictures below from our evening out!