eHomemakers Malaysia

To most people, I am more of a serious person than a fun person. I spend more time cleaning the house, doing work, running errands than having fun. To most people, these are hardly fun activities.         These days, I hardly have weekends away from the computer doing work. I think I have genuinely forgotten how to have fun? And that is pretty contradictory to my advice in my blog post below on stressing less?         Hardly.         I am having more fun than ever in my life doing the most mundane (to most people anyway) things.         When I clean the house, I see it as exercise for the day and working off the unwanted calories. I see it as beneficial for my health and well being.         When I do work, I do it with passion and excitement. I work long hours but I love the thrill of satisfaction.         When I run errands, I do that in between meeting friends I have not met up with for a long time. Or I choose to run errands together with my husband. So I g

I am in Beijing now with husband for work. It is starting to get warmer in Beijing and I notice that people are more outgoing more smiley and more colourful in their dressing.          There is definitely more positive glow on everyone's faces as we move into better weather period. Everyone just seems to have a more positive attitude generally. It must be the better weather and the anticipation of more outdoor activities like picnics and hikes, which have brought on general positivity and beautiful colours. Anticipation of better days gives positive glow.          Which got me thinking. How does a person always bear anticipation of better days no matter how sucky life can be at times?    This is a list I have created especially for you:  1.     Start each day with a positive smile. No matter what happens. If you start each day with a positive attitude, you will anticipate a better day ahead. You will thus work on creating a better day for yourself.  2.     En

If you've been on dialysis for as long as I have, pretty soon, you'll start to get sick of the routine and start to get some sort of a death wish.       I'm not saying all dialysis patients have a death wish but I certainly did. I started drinking water, tea, coffee, juice, soups whenever I wanted too, without care of how much fluid I was ingesting.         After years of tight fluid control, suddenly, I began thinking in a "Damned if I do and damned if I don't" kind of way. In other words, I started getting sick of watching normal people chug down ice-cold drinks and the like and started feeling this way : "Why can't I do it too?!".       Of course, as a dialysis patient, the cardinal rule is : watch your fluid intake, keep it down to less than 500ml if you can! But after doing this for so long, I guess I began to rebel. I started thinking : "Must I go through life thirsty and longing to drink more?".       Bad idea! Pretty so

I'm always cross-stitching something or other. And I have a few finished unframed pieces in my collection. Today, I decided to photograph them and post them online for sale! This is my new business venture! Check it out here!   http://eowynincross-stitch.blogspot.com/ I hope you will like my work and order something! I will be posting new pieces as I complete them! Hope to see you there! Hugs, eowyn

           Hunting for local food has always been an important activity during my travels. I simply refuse to dwell on food calories when I'm away.          My eating and sleeping schedules would go haywire. But luckily, the recent trip to Bali was with just friends. So my kids were not there to witness the mommy-breaks-the-rules-so-why-can't-we activities.             The scenic Bali island offers Balinese specialties that are simple yet delectable. One thing I savoured most was their soto ayam (Indonesian chicken soup). That one medium-sized bowl of broth was so complete and satisfying that other foods served there seemed unappealing.          Though I was pretty startled at first when I noticed just how much things were thrown into the soup (fried sliced potatoes, tomatoes, shredded chicken, vegetables, eggs, tofu etc), I then realized that they had actually perfected the soup.          My friends and I could not help smiling when we saw the neat petal-shaped piec

      Making a decadent cupcake requires just a little effort, in fact, it is pretty effortless I should say.         These little cuppies are always able to delight the friends of my teenage daughters who regularly drop by after school. Instead of making a huge 9-inch blackforest gateau, I would opt for a dozen of these babies instead because I do not want leftovers piling up in the chiller!          The fastest way is to get a packet of chocolate sponge mix and just follow the directions on the packet. A 200g of sponge mix is more than enough to make a dozen of medium to large cupcakes. When you have the batter ready, fill up the cups up to two-thirds full. Bake as directed.          Normally, the temperature I set for this cake is around 180-190C. Once the cake is done, let them cool.           In the meantime, get the filling and topping ready. For the filling, pour a can of red cherries in a pot, and add 2  tablespoon sugar, a teaspoon of lemon or orange j