Valentine's Day

I'm all about I'm all about making gifts for my S.O. So this Valentine's Day is no different. There is just so much satisfaction at the end of making something, and it just means a lot more to the person. Material gifts are lovely, and I don't mind receiving them at all, but I personally LOVE dipping my toes into my creative puddle (which is hardly ever exists unless it comes to gift making). 

So I got a tree stencil and a couple stencil from Pinterest. Back in the day, there was no pinterest, so it was much harder to find really nice stencils without paying for them. So I joined the two and printed them out and traced them onto a thick black colour paper. After that, I slowly took my time to cut them out with my trusty blade. 

The tree was pretty delicate, but with years of practice, this was pretty easy compared to the other stuff I have completed. 

VOILA!

 So here is how it looks like with the white background.

After spraying some adhesive glue on the cut outs, I stuck them on a piece of A4 sized white mounting board. The next few steps took a lot of my time and I would say those were probably the most time consuming steps I had to go through in the whole process. I cut out 2 other frames out of different coloured mounting boards (one cream and one blue) to layer on top of the base. The measuring was pretty much what took up a lot of time. 

But the most tedious part of the whole thing, wasn't even cutting the branches. It was cutting tiny hearts from red coloured paper and sticking them onto the base. The hearts were so tiny and to stick them, I used tiny cut ups of double-sided tape. 

But it's pretty worth it when I finished. It turned out better than expected. I wasn't too sure if I should have added more hearts or less, but I am quite happy with the result.

I've always thought roses were overrated, but that changed when he got them for me. Only because he didn't realise peonies were only in season for two weeks in a year in Melbourne. LOL. Well, it doesn't really matter what flowers he buys, it's just that thought that counts, am I right ladies? They're still beautiful though. 

How was your Valentine's?

Melbourne's Night Noodle Markets 2014

Night Noodle Markets were back again and this time it was so much bigger! And honestly, I only went again this time because I thought it was a lovely activity for a date and I just wanted pictures of the lanterns. 

Last year, I went when stores were kind of closing and it was a rainy day I remember, so it was pretty muddy. Plus, when I went there weren't many stores around. But this time round, the Markets decided on a new location, Birrarung Marr, not very far off from the original one really. There were more than 50 stalls serving Asian food over three levels. This year was so much bigger, livelier and so much more crowded. The lines for food were ridiculous. I couldn't even get the chicken skewers that my friends were recommending about. More like I didn't have the patience for it. Heh. Prices were a tad expensive too, but I guess it's for the experience. 

The panda balloons were at certain places. I couldn't figure out what they were indicating but my guess was for toilets. 

I ended up lining up for Chin Chin and got almost everything from the menu (because I just didn't want to line up for anything else). 45 dollars for 3 dishes plus Chilli popcorn. The popcorn was the closest I could get to Caramel popcorn, till to this day I don't understand why Australia doesn't sell it in the cinemas. 

Food was splendid and I really enjoyed the entire time I was there. My friends got some Gelato from Messina for me. I forgot to take pictures of it and the rest of my food because I was uh, a little impatient and hungry by then. Maybe next year, I'll go earlier with more friends so we can gather more food. 

Toodles!