Does the tiger go ROAR, or purr?

It's the Year of the Tiger! :)

Last Sunday was the very first day of the Chinese New Year (da nian chu yi), and with that we bade farewell to the ox and ushered in the tiger! 

Here are some CNY-related craft items - all made by mom.

Plump mandarin oranges made from stretchable material.

The red packets always have such festive, pretty details. Such a shame to throw them away after CNY!

Paper lanterns, with empty red packets.

Chinese New Year (or is it lunar new year?) is definitely one of my favourite, if not my favourite, festival ever. It is always jam-packed with activities - the ever-important lou-yusheng (pictured below), noisy and fun gatherings with family and friends, some happy-gambling with cards and mahjong, collecting angbaos (red packets) from our elders.. 

And of course, my mom's fab baking. 

I know in a few entries back, I whined about how the kitchen smelled permanently of pineapple and pastry after my mom's baking tirade, but I kind of miss it now.

And I was wrong, the pineapple fragrance was temporary and it has dissipated. :(

I did not manage to capture on camera, every single Chinese New Year cookie my mom churned out this year. But here's some of them. A few are still sitting prettily in their boxes in my living room table. Oh so tempting! :)

I can't remember what went into this biscuit, but they were crunchy, tasty, with a dusting of caster sugar on every one of them.

A concoction of toasted cornflakes, raisins, honey, coconut-ty goodness lies in each of these pink pastry cups.

 

 

I really take my hat off to my mom, for having the patience to sit through the tedious rolling of each and every chilli shrimp roll. They were devoured in probably less than 1/100th of the time she took to make them!

Separate pastry skin. Cut into uniform squares. 
Scoop chilli shrimp. Fold corners. Tuck in bottom. 
Roll. Dab top triangle of pastry skin with water. Roll.

Then repeat 32910 times.

(It's impossible to count how many she wrapped but I don't think it's too exaggerated an estimate.)

 

My little cousin's favourite. Melt-in-your-mouth milk sugee biscuit. :)

 

I used to hate anything with almond in them (if you've tasted the foul-tasting almond jelly, you would too!). But these almond cookies totally had me convinced to give the nut another chance. Teehee.

They were packed full with almond flakes, and it was so incredibly crunchy with every bite, and there was a distinct, fragrant almond smell, nowhere like the almond jelly at all!

 

This year was just the same like other years. In the entire week following the arrival of Chinese New Year, I don't remember having much time for myself at all, much less to sculpt/blog. It was a mad rush of hustling to and fro different houses, and it wasn't till midnight that we would reluctantly leave, only to gather again a few hours later, for another round of mahjong/ban-luck/steamboat. 

My sleep debt definitely accumulated in the past week, but I'm not complaining. :) 

Colorful sugar jellies.

 If I was a kid with no worries about an expanding waistline or risk of getting diabetes, you would see a very eager little girl cramping as many of this in her mouth as humanely possible. :)

 

My wonderful family - parents, brother, boyfriend, aunts, uncles, cousins.

 

This is such a long post, and my eyelids are getting really heavy. Time to repay that sleep debt, and I promise that the next entry would be about miniatures! :)