The full vlog of all the pieces I picked up at the sale
Mayfield Lavender Field Photoshoot with River Island Sales Haul
The full vlog of all the pieces I picked up at the sale
Cooking a Traditional Yucatan Mexican Dish In London with my Mexican Guest
I had Dani over for a week as my guest recently. She is from Mexico city and was en route to Poland as part of her study programme and decided to do a detour to London.
Before she flew out, she messaged me to ask if there’s anything I wanted from Mexico. I have heard of this “must have item in every Mexican kitchen” paste called achiote. I was going to try and find a traditional Mexican dish online to make with this. After a day or two, Dani messaged back to say “My mum has asked me to buy everything from scratch so you can really cook a traditional dish”
Lo and behold, Dani arrived in London with a huge suitcase filled with so many Mexican goodies! She took out a traditional wooden taco press (tacos are always soft I learnt, never crispy. That’s more American), corn flour (I have only known cornflour for thickening) which smelled strongly still of corns and vinegared habaneros. Plus many, many sweet candies like Mazapan which I immediately fell in love with.
Here’s our adventure in the kitchen together all done in a vlog for you to enjoy. Ask me if you have any questions. I’m sure Dani will be more than happy to help me answer them.
[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kFss8u72jxo[/embedyt]
Ann Summers Sales Buy: Pieces I Love
I don’t go shopping as often as people think. Even though I’m a clothes horse! Many of my pieces in my cupboard are years old, due to the fact that I’ve always been a size 8/10 for about 20 yrs now.
I started going shopping for my own pieces when I was about 12 and developing a more womanly body. It was with my older sister who encouraged me to always buy the nicest underwear I can imagine (and afford in the future) because ‘you never know when an ambulance crew might have to cut you free of your clothes! So you want to always have nice undies!’ That’s her advice to me!
So a random walkabout at Centrecourt shopping centre in Wimbledon led me to the massive SALE signs on Ann Summers shop windows. Considering I haven’t bought some ‘petty undies’ (as opposed to ‘functional’ undies) in a looong while, I thought “Let’s take a look!”
So here are the results:
[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=idyNVIz4_sE[/embedyt]
Weekend Discovery Tour of Finland With Finnish Friends
The country Finland and it’s Suomi language has always fascinated me for almost as long as I have been married. Always dreamt of visiting and discovering her beauty.
Singapore is where it all began
My fascination started when the husband started playing floorball or innebandy (in Swedish) when we first got married in Singapore. This game was highly popular with the Scandinavian expats there especially the Swedes and Finns.
This is the summer version of ice hockey which the Swedes and Finns are petty much born into. (My husband will never let me forget he has a gold medal as part of the champion team of the Singapore Floorball League ?)
The Finns in Singapore
There were many Finns working for Nokia then and naturally many of them joined my husband’s team. Their quiet demeanour and their ‘complicated’ sounding language- Suomi, has always fascinated me. Learning new languages highly interests me and as some of you may know, I’m can comfortably speak quite a few languages.
I find that the Finns were the polar opposite (no pun intended) of my tropical warm style in interaction. You ask a Finn a question, it takes them a tad longer than most to answer. It’s almost like they are giving you and your question the time and respect it deserves.
I remember feeling quite exasperated one night trying to have a light conversation in a noisy pub with a young Finn. What could have been a simple 5 mins conversation of a few polite questions took us 15 mins! Hahaha!
The holiday that changed it all
Anyway, in 2009 we went on holiday to a Malaysian island called Tioman. Tioman has been voted one of the best islands in the world for diving and snorkelling and I’ve been lucky to go there since 1995.
We bumped into another young family with 2 boys (we only had our 2 girls then who were 8 and 3) from Finland at our resort a few days into our holiday.
If you don’t know my husband and I, we almost always make friends with people we meet on holiday! Well, this case, Olli and Mirja were not what I thought were typical Finns. They were very friendly and pretty talkative for Finns! ?
I had booked a private boat tour for our family. They accepted my offer of sharing my private round island tour so they can get “free” translation from me.
A few days later and many more moments spent together, we said goodbye. Thanks to Facebook, we have been keeping in touch and can see our family grow older over the years. Their boys have turned out to be fine young men and so have our girls become young ladies.
The opportunity presents itself
An opportunity to fly via Helsinki presented itself to me last year. I decided the extra cost to detour was worth it. It meant I finally get to visit Finland and to finally meet my new old friends again. It’s been 9 years of just seeing their beautiful country through photos and videos on Facebook and I felt like it wasn’t enough.
So here is my weekend travel vlog and some photos staying with my friends, The Kytokaris, in Laampalaa where they are. We did as much as possible in that short 2 days and yes, I did the whole traditional Finnish sauna where it’s originally from. ? You can see all that in the vlog below.
Now enjoy the tour on video..
If you can, please enjoy my “Weekend Discovery Trip to Finland” Vlog:Â
If you have enjoyed this travel blog, how about coming along with me to discover a little bit of Andalusia, Spain? I have written a blog post here.
Losing and Maintaining Healthy Weight the Belly Goddess Way Part 1
So many of my ex-students and clients have asked me to start teaching again after a couple of years of concentrating on my Life Coaching and Holistic Therapy work.
The truth was after almost 20 years teaching my Belly Goddess Dance Therapy (and performing various dance styles since I was 6) I was getting a little jaded. The deeper truth was I was losing my Mojo in London.
Living in a big, noisy city that’s very masculine made me retreat into a different world with a different mentality.
But I’m happy to say making a huge decision recently in my personal life and my husband’s professional life has meant my mojo came back on its own. And with it my own Goddess sensuality.
And I can’t wait to share my knowledge with more women again soon. So here’s an old video I recorded for MSNBC when I was an expat professional in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia 6 weeks after I gave birth to my no.4 girl.
This is one of the simplest technique I teach my class to loosen up the lowest/base chakra (important in slowly finding enlightenment) and also to firm up the signs of muffin tops.
[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mot7Pr6M6Dw[/embedyt]
How to Keep Cut Flowers Fresh for Longer In the Summer
I am a big fan of fresh, possibly big, bouquet of flowers. I can’t say if I have definite favourites though I do love tropical flowers like orchids and carnations, tulips (from my time of living 3x in the Netherlands) roses (like my middle name and not necessarily red) and also lilies. I’ll try and buy fresh flowers every 2 weeks or at least when I remember! I have been able to keep my flowers survive beyond the 7 days guaranteed on the more expensive bouquets you get from supermarkets.
Here I share with you my tips for keeping them fresher and for longer, especially when the weather is hotting up like this week has been. Hope you like my simple tips. Do tell me which ones you know and if you are already doing them.
