(but this is just a personal gift made on a whim, so please don’t email this retiree for requests ok? :p)

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aww, don’t be sad for losing the match… :p

Red Devil’s Food Cake

+++

a quick update on what’s been happening on planet hana… well, nothing much, really. other than that great roadtrip and being with the kids almost 24/7.

today, while driving in the car with aniq, i realised that the most conversation i have every day is with him, and he’s practically my boyfriend (in fact, i do ask him everyday if he’s my boyfriend, and he’ll say yes, and put my arm around my neck and smother me with smelly wet kisses. and that’s just how exciting my life is these days – turning my firstborn into a mummy’s boy.)

(on a side note, i met his proclaimed “best friend” in school last week, whose name is naima, a round-faced and round-eyed girl of chinese-malay descent. so, so cute.)

oh, and to add to the insanity, i *did* seek for that extension to continue being with the little ones – for one more month (of which i’m subjecting myself to being sadistically broke).

i figure, if i went back right after hari raya, i’d be a sad miserable hag during the days leading up to the festivities and on hari raya itself. and furthermore, after a month of fasting, my body would probably need to adjust where milk production is concerned.

along with my stock of breastmilk in the freezer, is my now-sluggish brain and my heavy heart… both of which need a little more time to thaw out.

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nice or not, our latest diaper cake?

KIDDING! (how in heck could we make something like that out of diapers??)

damn, i should’ve eaten more of it at the party. i think the pheromones released from that one slice of chocolate cake is still lingering in my system.

anyway, *this* is our real diaper cake, for a baby shower. the second in our series of ‘Got Milk?’ theme.

featuring Hotsling

did i tell you i think i’m a milkaholic? i crave for at least two full mugs of cold HL milk everyday even though the baby’s born and i shouldn’t have anymore cravings. so i suppose auni’s having HL-infused milk (and also honey red tea with pearl, my other pregnancy vice which looks like it’s here to stay). as it says on the HL carton, “Made with Fresh Milk”. which i can’t really figure out, coz if milk isn’t made with fresh milk, what IS it made of? stale milk?

which i stink of, most of the time. stale milk, that is. it smells like… cheese. which is what cheese is made of anyway, right?

and speaking of milk, i finally did it.

i aimed, i squeezed, i conquered. (and i laughed – at myself for looking so silly, and at the clueless baby who ended up with milk sprayed all over her face, trying to lick herself.) now let’s see if baby’s teary eye will be less watery.

ps: and it’s decided! land of many cows, here we come… altogether now, “mooo!” :)

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another red cake, but not just any red cake…

we had to come up with something to represent the chinese AND malay culture, so we went nuts for a bit, as we tend to do with our more ‘challenging’ dpcakes, ha ha. (read on in our Flickr.)

and well hey, i finally got to put something i’d always wanted to on a dpcake…

minyak telon, lol!

i’ve never tried yu yee oil, but izad said his brothers use it for stomach discomforts (still!). and the sinseh man i spoke to swears by it too, heh. i suppose it’s the chinese equivalent of minyak telon (which, i must repeat, smells oh-so-good, in a baby sorta way).

speaking of something i’d always wanted to put on a dpcake…

Babylegs legwarmers! i love ‘em so. i might just be crazy enough to collect all the colours of the rainbow. just.

thank heaven for little girls, indeed.

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so it turns out to be a good thing that our husbands are fans of this particular football club, because through my accompanying the spouse to scour various sports shops (as a dutiful wife would do), i’d made a mental note of the little jerseys and whatnots they had for the little bodies of the little footie fans.

aniq, after all, has a collection of football jerseys, despite the questionable fashion sense of wearing them when you’re not an actual football player. (yes, mommy finds them garish and poseurish, but heck, what does mommy know, right?)

and when there was a request to do a dpcake for a baby boy whose daddy’s a rabid fan (or so we gather) of this particular football club, wellll… shopping was a cinch. (and even the spouse was more than happy to help this time.) :D

so yeah, this one’s strictly for the boys – big AND small. (we hear that the baby’s daddy is highly likely to keep the teddy for himself, heh.)

and yeah, the spouse was also vair tempted to buy the kit (coz it’s the latest season’s or whatever) for aniq too, but i had to keep him in check by emphasising the figure on the price tag (as a dutiful wife would do).

aiyah, beli mahal mahal, bukannya bawak dia pergi main bola selalu! :p

trivia!: did you know…

the word “liver” in the name of the liver bird (which is the symbol of the city of liverpool, england) rhymes with “diver”, rather than with “river”?

well, now you know!

thanks hor, wikipedia!

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ha ha. in two weeks time, you’ll see rini and one stuttering fool on teevee. stuttering fool (a.k.a hana) will be stuttering in bahasa melayu, no less. she really should’ve taken speech lessons from nurulAINI, lol!

thankfully my partner speaks like a pro, or a cikgu melayu sepuluh tahun makan belacan. kalau tak, saya memalukan sungguh nama “Idaman & Citarasa”. atau lebih dikenali sebagai ‘Whims & Fancies’! :D

today, they have learned words such as “menguar-uarkan” and “wadah”. fwah. bukan itu sahaja, mereka juga menyanyi dengan seloroh kepada seorang bayi di depan kamera.

ingin tahu dengan lebih lanjut? tontonilah rancangan Aset.

dan harap tolong jangan ketawakan kami. kalau ketawa pun, jangan lah kuat-kuat ye, para penonton?

terima kasih.

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the dining table’s been heavily invaded these days… no space to eat!

check out our wedding diaper cake, heh.

*gasps for air*

ok pardner, brace yourself! thirteen sixteen more to go…

(drop us an email at sales.whimsnfancies@gmail.com if you want to add on to that. :) )

ps: one more tv programme to consider doing. should we…? erm.

pps: to you guys having that farewell k-ok session for ayu tonight – ARRGH!! have fun hor! pls sing till it rains tonight!

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we did say we were camera shy, didn’t we??

but this time, the deal was simply to ‘borrow’ Whims & Fancies’ diaper cakes as part of a scene for an upcoming programme on suria, and it took one call from *someone* with VERY persuasive powers (how could i refuse when she repeatedly went, “do lah! do lah!”) to agree to it.

not that we ‘jual mahal’, ok – we do for free leh!

and since they told us it was for an episode with a baby shower scene, i even offered the stuff i got for my very recent one. (yes, THAT one. with the same diaper cake that is still very much intact and has been sitting on my coffeetable for over two months now, lol!)

macam pernah nampak benda tu semua, ey?

the main feature of the programme was not our inedible confections, but REAL ones. prepared by the winner of a recent cooking competition on tv… ahh, you probably know who he is by now. right? ;)

chef khaled at work

we were on location in one of the villas at siloso beach resort (i can’t say this enough – $1.5k a night!), and i tried very hard to get out of the way of all those big cameras and mess of wires.

and i got to drool at the food (ok, i DID get to taste them too – at the end!)…

erm, i’m not a food person so don’t ask me what they are, lol! all i know is that one of them was chempedak (!!) creme brulee, and the mexican salsa dip thingy was REALLLY good. and that last one there, that was ‘baked’ by W&F lah. hehe.

the programme will debut on 2 june (tomorrow!), but this was for the last episode (#7) so… watch out for it! :D

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so, what does our latest diaper cake and ben & jerry’s (ice-cream, not diaper cake) have in common?

why, bono!

see, bono = Rock & Roll. which was the theme that was requested, and true to rock & roll fashion, in black & white.

email sales.whimsnfancies@gmail.com for customised baby t-shirts on your diaper cake!

and see, bono = One Campaign. you know, make poverty history and all. which was mr ben and mr jerry’s agenda for this ice-cream, courtesy of the husband who was obliging his wife’s need for a pint of frozen confection. (with the price of b&j’s ice-cream, we’d soon be in poverty too.)

and what else do they have in common? why, they both have purrty-looking swirls on them, and they’re both faux “cheesecakes”. :d

Oreo Swirl Cheesecake, by Whims & Fancies

thanks for all your orders! we’re swamped, we are. in a good way. :)

we’d actually been asked to be featured on suria and channel U (!) for some variety programmes, and we thought reaaaally long and hard about whether to do it. coz shooting’s pretty time-consuming (our hours are precious!) and we’re not tv people (they add 10kilos to you on screen you know, hurhur).

anyway, with four little kids between us at this point, we decided to pass up on the opportunity. well… in case we can’t keep up with the demand. coz this IS still just a little hobby for the partner and i. we’re not so ambitious lor – we don’t even think we’re making any money yet, can?!

ok, maaaaaaybe just enough to buy the occasional ben & jerry’s ice-cream. (wait, the husband bought it for me – but with his W&F ‘delivery boy’ tips, i’m sure ha ha.)

ps: tapi kalau majalah manja nak feature kek popok kita, orait jugak lah, kan? ;p

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“just diapers will do! i leave it to you guys!”

okay lah, ni best punye customer! ;)

Jumbo Jungle Jellycake

it’s bad enough waiting for the waterbag to burst and the “excruciating pains” (as described by those women who ended up giving birth in their cars on Channel 70′s “Human Stories”) to happen, so i’m glad to have this as a distraction.

i was thinking back to my first visit to the doc, and re-counted the months, you know, since the last cycle and all (not that hard to keep track back then coz i’d just gotten it back after a year hiatus)… and i think that first visit when he gave the EDD as May was probably more accurate than the subsequent ones. i think it’s *supposed* to be a May baby. hmm.

now excuse me while i ponder this further over a pint. (yes, i’ve forsaken ben&jerry’s for a more, err, classic taste for this pregnancy. heh.)

(sempat amik gambar ice-cream sekali. obviously, another distraction.)

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let’s start off with something cheerful – like this red, black & white number we did on thursday night. we’d been dying to crack open this ribbon for quite some time! yes, you know we have a ribbon fetish, the W&F partner and i. :)

Red Velvet Cake

it’d been a somewhat depressing day for me yesterday, though. i know i’ve said i’d stop mentioning any Chap II matters, but… i guess it’s not over, is it?

to induce or not to induce, that was the question.

it was a moment of indecision and doubt and guilt and everything overwhelming rolled into one morning at the doctor’s. i simply didn’t know what to do.

in any case, he saw all that going on in my face, and since the unborn one is still less than 3.5kg, and i am perfectly fine health-wise, he okay-ed me to wait another week. in any case, i *was* already having contractions, albeit mild and irregular ones. in any case, the cervix has dilated 1.5cm. in any case, i could always call him if i changed my mind.

but as they say, mother knows best (her, and God), and i don’t know… despite all the yappings that flew at me from those people playing the devil’s advocate, reciting incidents of sudden births by the side of the road and babies eating their own meconium and that the doc would be out of town the next two days if anything happened, my gut tells me to wait. coz clearly, *we* – she and i – weren’t ready.

call me stubborn, or crazy, or whatever. you can also call me selfish, especially with regards to the husband and the mother who are on perpetual ‘standby’ and i think, dying to get this whole labour limbo over and done with so they can move on with their lives and schedules. i can’t help feeling like it’s ALL MY FAULT.

so yeah. depressing day.

had a nap to chase it away, and then went shopping.

which helped, a bit. we ended up buying stuff for the little guy, all the way at AMK, of all places! (why we ended up there, that’s another story.)

it helped a lot when we got home and we gave the little one his loot – a pair of crocs, some ben 10 and transformers knock-off tshirts, and this, which his daddy INSISTED on getting him. against my better judgement of course! wahlao, cheesy, can?

spidey face-off

but alamak, cute jugak. especially when he started trying to climb the walls, hehe. ok, not cute – silly. but funny.

well, what can i say, it made him really happy. so i can’t dress him up in cute fairy wings and tights and fluffy hairbands (like sharleez, ARGGHH!). this, at $7.90, is much more, err, economical! (ok, NOT those crocs though, they cost a bomb.)

where are you coming from, spiderman? nobody knows who you are!

and when he’s happy, he’s a cooperative lil fella. kisses from knock-off spideyboy were amply dispensed upon request.

and that made emotional-roller-coaster mommy happy. :)

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ok, this one is not so much abang-abang, but more like monkey-gets-out-of-cage-and-meets-fellow-monkeys…

in the form of his little boy cousins, that is! :D

we were visiting izad’s cousin who had just given birth to YET another boy (her third, *gasp*), and the irony is, she was SUPPOSED to be due like a few weeks AFTER me. looks like she crossed the finishing line before me! can i say, “ARGH!”?

anyway, this was another ‘labour’ of love since aunty hana obviously had no other kinds of labour going on the night before. something for the new baby from all the other cousins as well. :)

Savanna Cream Cake

lions, giraffes, crocs… but no monkeys in the savanna – we have enough in the family! :D

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another attempt to get the baby out was thwarted yet again – coz she’s still snug as a bug inside. BAH.

i brought the little fella on another trip to the airport, this time ON THE BUS, a rickety one too, where he sat on my lap and sang ‘the wheels on the bus’. sounds like a great way to induce labour? not enough.

then he was let loose, and ran and ran and ran and… well, you get the point. he even ran in circles when there was nowhere else to run to. did i mention it was his nap time?

then we took the skytrain to T3, in which he cooed at little babies in prams, who watched him all a-gog, fascinated by this strange creature who was cooing at them.

then we ate some cake at ‘secret recipe’ because there was a tea time special and mummy badly NEEDED cake. and iced lemon tea. and heck, why not feed him with some chocolate cake too while at it, right? might as well up the sugar content so he’d run more rounds. another great way to induce labour, you think? think again.

COZ STILL NOTHING HAPPENED DOWN THERE!

ok, so maaaayyybe i cheated and had mum along with me during our little excursion. heh.

passed by a couple of girls, one of whom was also pretty heavily preggers. her friend asked when i was due, and i said, well, anytime now. she said, she thought her friend’s tummy was bad, and she’s got two more weeks to go. we laughed and i said, welllll, mine’s WORSE. and i get that kind of camaraderie from fellow pregnant women and mums wherever i go. commiserate and empathise, commiserate and emphatise.

so anyway, then we went up the viewing mall, where all that chocolate cake worked its magic and more running was involved. i think i like the viewing mall at T3 best – there’s something serene about the place, somehow. yes, despite all those kids running around.

what finally made the running cease was the sight of a group of policemen who beckoned him while we waited for our ride home. hmm, duduk diam sekejap. darn it for me, relief for my mum.

and since there was STILL nothing going on womb-wise later at home, i thought, whaddaheck, let’s do one diapercake and mess up the baby room again.

inspired by those frequent trips to the airport? plus, this particular baby’s daddy works there too. ;)

got around to figuring out that square diaper cake that the elves attempted, since it’s for a cukur rambut this saturday – which i’d probably attend at the rate my non-contracting uterus is going. BAH!

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hah! i bet everyone’s tired of waiting by now, right? :p

meanwhile, i’ve been keeping myself busy. erm, sleeping, mostly.

otherwise, W&F keeps me awake…

Lilac Garden Bloom Cake

ok, we have a yellow, pink, red and another purple bloom available, if you’d like to order from our new line of Bloom Cakes! :)

email us at sales.whimsnfancies@gmail.com, or view our Flickr sets for more eye-candy. :)

*items will vary, and orders are accepted from May onwards only.

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as you can see, we’ve have been hell-bent on completing our orders for the month, and then some…

Sweet Pea Cake – for two peas in a pod!

(and no, it’s not for diah, lol!)

Pink Lemonade Cake & Rocky Road Tower

Purr-ple Plum Pie & Multi-Layered Butter(fly) Cake

Strawberry Passionfruit Cake & Peach Hazelnut Truffle

Raspberry & Lime Sherbet

and finally cleaned up our Flickr site so we can see our entire cake collection.

and *NOW* i can go give birth in peace, lol!

(which, by the way, is *STILL* not happening yet. :p)

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well, that was the main idea, when i started thinking of the baby sprinkle (what’s that? “baby sprinkle”? read on…)

i even had a FAQ on the invite, lol!

diapers: because the baby obviously needs them.
dresses: because girls look undeniably cute in them.
dr seuss (ie books): because girls not only gotta look cute, they gotta have brains too, you know.

so, the diaper part, we got down pat, coz my Whims & Fancies partner and co-towkay, with the help of two little elves, stayed up to 2am in the morning doing this.

we’ve yet to name this kelong diaper cake (kelong because i was right there in the room when it was ‘baked’ and although banned from touching it, i couldn’t help it lor), but we’ll think of something. that’s always the part we have some (brain-racking) fun with, actually! ;)

next, the dresses part. thanks to the guests, some came in the perfect dresses that fit the colour theme (and all abided by the No Pink rule), and most came WITH dresses for the unborn one (SOME OF WHICH WERE PINK! *gasp*).

ok, spot who’s NOT following the theme. (even baby nusair was in a white & green romper ok. hee.)

but wait… the last part was, strangely enough, not fulfilled. hmm… i wonder why?? lol! ok, maybe i’ll bring my tummy to watch Horton Hears A Who.

so obviously, i wasn’t about to go for a pink do. like, duh! i guess i could’ve gone with something more adventurous like black & white, or red & black, or… well, the possibilities are endless. but purple, green & white has ALWAYS been my favourite (feminine) colour combination, so there. and so i went on a purple & green frenzy (coz i’m obsessive like that, sigh).

thankfully, my guests humoured my mak buyong whims and fancies (ahem), coz they also came with purple & green food, bless them.

and i provided my current favourite drink (other than Sunkist orange juice, which obviously doesn’t go with the theme) – Grape Snapples. MMMMM. :)

right, as for the question, “Why a Baby Sprinkle and not a Shower?”

well, simply because:

a) it was a small-scaled affair (held at our humble ‘six-star’ Hotel 498, located in the east :p),
b) it’s not my first baby (had one before, shower AND baby),
c) we don’t need anything much coz all the basic baby stuff are already part of our existing infrastructure (you know, baby tub, baby cot, minyak telon, etc).

there weren’t even any games or prizes, just a whole lotta eating, ‘discussing’ and catching up on ‘news’ (HA HA). oh, and cooing at the little ones who were present. (aniq was sent off to his oma’s, where he had a nice looooong nap!)

and by now i’m sure you want me to shut up and view more pictures, right? right.

ok ok. hmph.

…

thanks girls (especially to my default Chief-in-Command, rini)! *sprinkles baby dust to all* :D

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