My 14 FEB 14

It happens once in 19 years. Valentine’s Day and ‘Chap Goh Mei’ falls on the same day. ( ‘Chap Goh Mei’ itself means the 15th night of Chinese New Year in Hokkien, which also marks the end of the Chinese New Year celebration. It is known by many as the Chinese version of Valentines’ Day.)

On this special day, Hubby Jay and I celebrated our Valentine’s day with our parents who never celebrate any Valentine’s day since they started dating, and with my friend Lee Joo and her family.  We didn’t want to be stuck in the traffic jam; we didn’t want to ‘squeeze’ ourselves into the crowd; we didn't want to dine in an expensive restaurant on this well-known day. We had our very special candlelight dinner at a very special place called De Balcony Place. A new restaurant? Hmm.. Yes, it’s a new place in town! We had our inexpensive candle light dinner there.

So where’s the De Balcony Place located? Hehe… Actually we celebrated our Valentine ’s Day at my house’s balcony. I purposely named it De Balcony Place because I wanted to make it sounds like we were having our dinner at a proper restaurant. To make this celebration to be a special one, everything we had were all homemade and handmade with love. My dad cooked the main dish and some side dishes; Lee Joo prepared the soup, desserts and drinks; I in-charged of all the decorations; the rest set up the table, got the things done and some other preparation. Of course, the most important was we took turns to take care of our kids and baby.

With such a beautiful moonlight

With the deem light from the street lights

With the LED crystal light.

I reused and upcycled the signage from the backdrop that being used during my wedding reception.

For the table setting, I had the idea of combining the elements from Chinese and western (中西合拼). I had the western tableware but I added the Chinese printed soup bowl and spoon. We had long table instead of round but I had Chinese color: red and orange table runner on top of it. I punched 2 butterflies and a heart-shaped from patterned papers and placed them on top of the red pocket napkin, then followed by a mini mandarin orange (砂糖桔). Red and Yellow serviette were being used. White vase with white flowers and white cottage lantern were part of the table deco.

Lemonade

Creamy Mushroom soup served.

Followed by our main dish: Chicken Chop with black pepper sauce. 

It served with special made salad with mandarin orange in it. 

Kids had their Salmon.

Tony had double shot!

Roasted pumpkin with Bolognese sauce

Konnyaku Jelly and Chocolate cupcake (no photo taken) as dessert

A heart-shaped chocolate cake specially baked by Lee Joo for me as Valentine’s gift. How sweet she was!

Oh dear! Look at the sweet little couple. 

Both of them chased around after their food.

Baby Hang had his dinner under the moonlight.

4 lovely couples and a baby.

We had our wonderful, enjoyable, relaxed and significant Valentine’s Day! 

Happy Valentine's Day and Chap Goh Mei!