Spring cleaning and other what nots for CNY

It's the time for spring cleaning - I've yet to packed up the mess in the house, but I've managed to nag the hubby to finally take down the Christmas tree. Yesterday was baking day - first I baked a cake for Phoebe's first birthday (wasn't fair that she doesn't get her 1st birthday celebrations when Rascal did!) then proceeded to make sugi cookies with my sister (her kids helped too).

It was fun, while I cannot do a lot of things easily, like squatting or bending down, but the measuring of ingredients, frying of the almonds and doing up the cookie balls (the sifting of flour was covered by my sister-in-law and brother and the mixing of the cookie dough was delicately handled by my sister) was still relatively ok for me. At least I get to taste the good old flavours of yesterday - flavours of CNY when I was a kid! We accidentally halved the raising agent as we forgot we were doubling the recipe, but all in all, still a crunchy cookie with yummy almond bits!

Then yesterday I decided to "overhaul" the water feature - I had bought a new pump but never put it to use and my "fortune pot" is just wasting away in the algae. So I got the hubby to help, pumped out the smelly water and pour in new water. All in all, the water feature looked a lot cleaner, neater (since I fixed up the new pump and placed the pot properly but my fishes couldn't take the trauma and all, as in ALL, of them just expired. *sigh* This means I have to do another water change and get new fishes ... I was quite sad since these fishes had been with me for more than 2 years (although I was never as attached to them as to my goldfishes). Either my pails were dirty somehow, or the shifting of my "Fisherman Jiang" were not very good to the fishes :P

So now, we are left with packing the stuff in the house (junk junk junk everywhere) and to hang up some of the pictures we have gotten (and picked up from the dustbin - probably dumped by my neighbout but it was a picture I had been eyeing from Ikea for sometime!), cleaning up the bedrooms to get ready for the maid and the baby ... I better settle all these before the 7% GST apply!