christmastree.sg by Florage Garage Singapore

You better watch out, you better not cry, better not pout, I'm telling you why. Santa Claus is coming-

WAIT!

credits to http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/

With a #christmastreefail like this, how can you not pout and cry?

But fret not, because christmasstree.sg by Floral Garage Singapore is here to help!
Christmas Tree Singapore is the one stop destination for all your Christmas supply needs. Ranging from Christmas trees of various heights, a variety of Christmas tree ornaments and decorations, and house decorations.

And best of all, they provide real actual photographs of their trees because they believe no one should fall victim to buying a lousy tree.

How sweet is that! 

Ariostea FirTECT - Premium Traditional Christmas Tree

If you're not familiar with FirTECT, it is a German designed technology made to give you hyper-realistic and super durable trees with amazing beauty. This technology ensure that the structure of the trees may withstand a load greater than the stand of an ordinary artifical Christmas Tree. Meaning to say, trees with FirTECT are able to look more dense as they can hold up to 25% more branches than the usual trees sold in the market. FirTECT also enables the leaves of the brances to go through hyper realistic digital printing to ensure that there will be a slight natural variation in the shades of green. 

For those first-timers (at setting up a Christmas tree), christmasstree.sg is also very thoughtful to provide you a detailed step-by-step instructions (HERE) to ensure that your trees won't end up looking scarce due to poor assembly. 

Other than the usual traditional, hybrid and Pine Christmas trees, you can also find quality christmas tree lights, ornaments and home decorations like baubles, streamers, wreaths and stockings at reasonable prices. 

For newbies looking for more tips to getting your perfect decorations for Christmas, you can also drop by their BLOG for useful guides in creating your unique themes for Christmas tree decorations or for finding the perfect tree for your office. 

And with Christmas getting nearer, christmastree.sg is also launching their new terrarium for those who want to add some greenery to your home for the festive season and yet, wish to keep it simple and minimalist. 

Made up of air plants and the Zamioculcas Zamiifolia, or better known as the ZZ plant, this terrarium is the best choice of houseplant for all those forgetful gardeners out there as we all know ZZ plant care starts with a lack of care, for they'll actually do better if we leave them be. 

But of course, a giving them a little spray of water when the soil has dried out will still be a necessity. 

Get your beautiful Christmas Trees and everything Christmas at Christmas Tree Singapore!

For viewing of their trees, drop by their place at 39 Jln Pemimpin #03-04, Tai Lee Ind. Bldg. Do make an appointment via email (hello@christmastree.sg) before heading down.

Till then,

Mia Foo

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Mia's Review: NaturalistCo Facial Oils [Sponsored]

NaturalistCo is an energetic local company run by a dedicated young team, and is a firm believer on the goodness of organic and natural handmade skin care. Aiming to become Singapore's best natural skin care brand with high efficacy and also to not compromise on sourcing and finest and most active ingredients around the world, NaturalistCo is striving to unleash the miracle of natural skin care. They've made their commitments to keep 'natural' as as integral part of their product philosophy and hence their formulations are free from synthetic colours, artifical fragrances, mineral oils, silicone, propylene glycol, petrolatum, animal derivatives, harsh detergents and parabens.

And I was glad to receive two of their popular carrier oils to try out! Isn't the packaging so cute?

Highlight of NaturalistCo’s product: 

- Organic and natural skin care products derived from premium botanical oil and food

- Food grade ingredients

- Handcrafted and made in small batch

- Special bottles and jars to preserve the nutrients for full benefits

- Enjoy fresh handmade skincare with extended product’s lifespan (with patented Miron Violet Glass from Netherlands)

- Shorter lifespan compared to synthetic skin care products, made from fresh ingredients with no artificial preservative.

According to my skin issues, I was recommended both the Grapeseed Oil and Sweet Almond Oils. 

Grapeseed oil is a good source of essential fatty acids and vitamin E. The polyphenols and flavonoids found in this oil contain strong antioxidant compounds. It is mildly astringent in nature and helps to tighten and tone skin. The oil contains proanthocyanidins, which are very potent antioxidants, that help in diminishing the sun's damaging effects and lessen free radical damage.

If you haven't heard of using grapeseed oil on our faces, then you're missing out! Other than helping with prevention of acne and skin aging, grapeseed oil also helps to tighten out skin and minimises the appearance of dark circles. It also does wonder for our hair, helping with hair growth and combating dandruff, but of course it's not that economical to be 'splurging' a precious 15ml bottle on that. 

Sweet almond oil is enriched with Vitamins E, A, B1, B2 and B6. It is a light oil that easily absorbed by skin and rarely clog pores. It is also rich in Omega-9 and Omega-6 Fatty Acids.  This oil comes packaged in 15ml amber glass bottles. It can effectively reduces dark circles, wrinkles and crow's feet around the eye area. It is a good moisturiser and help to balance the skin.

Other than using sweet almond oil as a moisturiser and to reduce dark circles and signs of skin aging, you also also add in some fine sugar into the oil and get your own homemade facial scrub! Sweet almond oil can also be used as part of your deep skin cleansing regime, or to relieve skin problems such as eczema, psoriasis and other skin rashes. 

And I find that whenever we use any oil on our skin, it tends to leave us with a heavy and greasy feel. However, these two oils are extremely lightweight and gets absorbed into my skin quickly, and my skin feels soft and supple the next morning. However, instead of using these oils 'straight up', I mixed two or three drops of the oil into my usual aloe vera gel to get a more refreshing feel.

For more information on other carrier oils and essential oils available on NaturalistCo, visit their website HERE

Till then,

Mia Foo

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Mia's Review: Pompompurin Cafe [Halloween Theme]

Yes, I finally visited Pompompurin Cafe, all thanks to Sa's special treat for my birthday! 

We visited on a PH, at an off-peak timing of 3pm, and there was still a queue, albeit a short one. Special request for the booth seats will require a longer wait as there really isn't much booth seats available and the cafe doesn't set a time limit as to how long their patrons can stay in the cafe. 

They've already changed into the autumn setting by now, but when we're there it was still the Halloween theme! 

The entire cafe was just filled to the brim with cuteness. 

Love Love Hot Marshmallow Latte

This has got to be the cutest coffee I've ever drank. Can someone tell me if the white female dog is Cinnamon Roll? 

Coffee wise, it's just pretty average coffee (hence you can say it's overpriced) but the cuteness (and IG-worthiness) kind of makes up for it. Anyway, be sure to NOT stir the marshmallows into the coffee, because they're jam filled kind. It's better that you eat them instead. 

Bacon Mushroom Shoyu Pasta

I actually cannot remember the actual name of this pasta (and google came up with nothing!) but there's definitely both 'bacon' and 'shoyu' inside. 

Although not eye-widening fantastic, it was definitely above mediocre for a pasta dish. The spaghetti wasn't too hard nor too soggy, and the bacon slices added a nice savoury taste to the pasta. Well, it's near impossible to go wrong with bacon, agree?
I didn't try out the salsa sauce (served in the cute pompompurin mini-mug) but ate the toasted baguette plain. They were good enough as they were. Yes, I'm totally a bread person.

BBQ Spare Pork Ribs with Rice

This dish is definitely more IG-worthy compared to the pasta, but slightly lacking in comparison at the taste factor. 

The spare pork ribs has the strong 'pork smell' which they've failed to mask over with their BBQ sauce. They're also quite mediocre in terms of the tenderness factor, as I've definitely tasted better. The rice, in order to attain the cute Pompompurin-sitting-in-a-cup look, was made slightly soggy and 'mashed up', like a lontong (malay rice cakes). 

Well, 10 out of 10 for IG-worthiness, but barely a 5 for the taste factor. 

Banana Caramel Pancakes

This scores like 11 out of 10 for IG-worthiness, no?

Although hardly comparable to those popular souffle pancakes that's oh-so-fluffy and light, this is still a decent pancake with top-rated cuteness, and quite a huge price tag as well. They're rather generous with the whipped cream and banana slices though, for we had to 'shift' the white whipped cream aside to minimise our empty calories intake. The banana whipped cream, although still too much, was pretty good though. 

Pompompurin Cafe has now started their Autumn Theme and they're located at 

Orchard Central, #04-08

For more information, visit their FB HERE

Till then,

Mia Foo

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Mia's Bakes: Wholemeal Rye Bread (Mayer Bread Machine Recipe)

I've recently purchased Bob's Mill dark rye flour and buckwheat flour off iHerb (again!) to try out more variation of wholegrain bread loaves. 

However, it was really disappointing to find that the results were less than acceptable, for my bread turned out extremely short, dense and crumbly-cakey, like they've hardly risen at all. 

My wholemeal-dark rye-buckwheat loaf was made with the flour ratio of 2:1:1 (2 parts wholemeal) and with NatureGlory's organic Bonsoy and though extremely tasty with the distinctive nutty flavour from the addition of dark rye flour, the texture was just.... mehh. 

And then I realised, I might need a change of yeast.

And so, chucking Saf-Instant, I returned to Bake King's Instant Yeast and decided to give my dark rye flour another try. 

Well, I read somewhere saying that rye flour and bread machine doesn't do well together as a rye dough might be too heavy and tough for the bread machine to knead, but... let's just give it another shot!

So for my wholemeal rye bread, you'll need:

150g wholemeal AP flour

75g low-carbs flour

25g dark rye flour 

190ml milk 

3tsp vital wheat gluten

1 tsp ceylon cinnamon powder

21g raw honey

30g unsalted butter

1/4 tsp salt

1 1/4 small mayer tsp instant yeast (about 5g)

On my Mayer BM, I first added the wholemeal flour to the milk and let it sit for 20 minutes before adding in the rest of the dry ingredients and honey and starting the mix dough function, which will mix and knead the dough for 25 minutes. 

After which, I restarted the machine on multigrain setting and added in my butter cubes. And then about 75g of raisins and a few handful of chopped almonds at feeding point (which I regretted). 

Probably due to the dark rye flour, which made the dough heavier than denser than it would have been as just a wholemeal dough, the BM was unable to knead in the raisins at feeding point and I ended up with tons of raisins left behind in the bread pan and just a few of them sticking onto the surface of the bread. 

The chopped almond did get kneaded a little more into the dough, though still pretty much at the outer rim of the loaf. 

Although still denser and heavier than a refined white loaf, this time round my wholegrain loaf turned out much softer and chewier with the new yeast as compared to my previous bake(s). 

Just a reminder to self, is to add in the raisins during initial mixing whenever I add in dark rye flour to prevent high raisin wastage. 

Do you have a go-to recipe for a yummy wholegrain loaf? Do share them with me!

To get the wholegrain and low-carb flour I've used for this recipe, hop over to iHerb right now! 

Till then,

Mia Foo

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