What to do with soon-expired rolled oats? Homemade Granola Bars!

I recently had some rolled oats that were going to expire and had to use it real fast.

I decided that I could make some homemade muesli bars that could be taken for breakfast.

So I searched the internet for great and easy muesli recipes and found this. A really simple recipe.

You can view the youtube video here.



But I had some ingredients (butter, brown sugar and chocolate chips) that I didn't have and I modified my recipe.

2 1/2 cups (230 grams) old fashioned rolled oats

1/2 cup (80 grams) whole almonds, coarsely chopped

1/3 cup (113 grams) honey

1/4 cup canola oil

1/4 cup (50 grams) packed white sugar

1/4 teaspoon sea salt

1/2 cup (60 grams) dried cranberries, coarsely chopped

I followed the methods given and tightly pack the mixture together. 
it looks perfect~ A mega huge muesli bar waiting to be chopped.

After 2 hours of refrigeration, the mega bar was chopped and it looked pretty decent and looked store bought.

But tasting it was the best experience ever............

Because I substituted the butter for canola oil, the canola oil taste was soooo over powering! It was YUCKY! The taste comes to my mind as I am writing this =X

But the areas that I did not mix well- meaning the parts with little oil was yummy!!!
I really should have used butter instead of the convenient oil substitute =x (use a 1/4 cup butter if you are going to use the above recipe)

So the bottomline is, don't be a lazy bum and not use butter if you don't have it at home. Don't even make it if you don't have butter. Go out and buy one before you make your own homemade muesli's. Nonetheless it was a good experience. We were born to make mistakes so that we learn from it. =D

I will try it again soon and post my updates.

Thank for reading!

Review: 3M NexCare Acne Patch

Although this product has been in the market for quite a while, it's not until recently that I decided to try it out.

I'm usually the kind that has dry skin but on the rare occasion get a zit or 2. But as I grow older, I seem to be getting more and more mini zits on my face *x.x* boohoo~

I went ahead to get the 3M NexCare Acne Patch from Watson's at a one-for-one Promo a while ago.

It claims to act like a sponge to absorb oily secretion, fluid or pus. And act as a barrier so that your dirty, itchy fingers wouldn't contaminate the acne further

I had a portion of 3 pimples that I had been trying days to squeezeeeeeeeeeeee out.But of course nothing really works. It is worst that it is at the temple region, where you use your hands to touch your hair and your hair falls onto your face etc~

So I have been trying it out for 3 days and I noticed a hell lot of difference in healing of wound and bumpiness of the acne region.

*The pictures you are going to see might make you nausea/ vomit. You have been warned*

On Day 1 of trying the Acne patch, you can see that the pus from my 3 set pimples were sucked out onto the patch.  The patch was pretty bumpy on the underside and I have to admit I was so wowed by this product, I stared at the patch for a good few minutes =P

And on Day 2 and Day 3, a significant reduction in pus could be seen. And the number of acne patches I needed to use also reduced by the day due to the improvement of my skin condition as well.

I'm definitely a 3M acne patch follower! Hope you will be too!

How to prepare a baby shower

My sister just gave birth to a baby boy end May 2013.

In Singapore, we usually celebrate the baby shower when the baby is 1 month old. And during this 1 month, for the mothers they are called a confinement period, in which the mother will stay indoors to recover from the delivery and there will be lots of confinement food from the timeless braised pig's trotters with black vinegar tto the homemade chicken essence with wine. It is usually low in saly and fat and packed with goodness and great nutritional value. 

Back to the topic! I was tasked to help out with the baby shower with a $50 budget =S, specifically the gifts to the guests and the decorations. In fact, it is my first time decorating for a function!

It wasn't easy working with such a small budget. I started with the gifts as there were no big inputs I needed from my sister regarding the sweets. I went to Phoon Huat to get a pack of 100 cookie bags and the twister to tie the bags.

Next was the titbits. I went to the value dollar store that sells sweets and chocolates at considerably value-for-money prices.

value dollar store

It took a while, trying to work within my budget before I narrowed down to these:

Next for the packaging~ I needed some inputs from my sis whether she would prefer the packaging to be neater or prettier. Personally, I preferred the neater option (as it was easier to pack, of course!). Lucky thing ,she too, preferred the neater option. It just requires some folds, 2 punches from a puncher, twist with decoration wires and tadah~ job done.

prettier

neater

The titbits were individually packed ....

..and sealed with love!

Now for the decorations~ in fact it took a while to understand what my sister really wanted. The colours I can/ cannot use, the fonts that she would prefer, motifs that she would like to include.

These are some that she has commented on:

I like the owl and the colour scheme.

I like the elephant and the colour scheme

I like the bear and colour scheme.

OK I LOVE THIS FONT AND COLOUR SCHEME! And that whale.. super nice!
Can you do "Yuan Kai's Baby Shower" in this scheme? Difficult?

This is a lil similar to number 4. Can follow this colour scheme if 3 is too difficult.

The way they string this is very beautiful. But i am not a fan of the zig zag pattern colour scheme here.

 I don't like this colour scheme so don't use yellow. I also don't like the duck coz no eyes and not cute.

Cute elephant! Nice colour too:D

i don't like this.. very cheapo looking

WOW! I usually don't like green but this colour scheme and layout is simple and nice! The blue thread is beautiful too! Plus the turtle is cute! AND best of all.. the font is so beautiful! Nice combi D:D

After I looked at these photos, my jaw literally dropped. I only had 2 days left to do the deco, plus I was a normal working adult that hold a 9-6 job, plus I had after office activities that I couldn't miss and I HAD to go i.e. hubby's grandfather's bday. You get my dilemma =( =(

And most importantly, I didn't have the tools to do it! The only few miserable craft tools are a paper cutter, an edge-rounder and a scissors! I didn't have time to buy craft paper to do this project as well. But since I promised, I can't back out can I?!?!

Disclaimer: so if you see my end product, do not be too disappointed as they are NOT as pretty as those above! hahaha~

I managed to get some scrap (literally) craft paper from my colleague. And from the font that she has specified in the ideas list above, I choose something that was really close to it and printed on an A4 sheet.

Then, I snipped it out of the sheet and taped it onto plain craft paper. On colours that probably could match the colours that she has not condemned =P

And on some alphabets, I cleverly used the existing patterns to create something more unique.

Once, the alphabets are cut, I tried to match it with the patterned papers I had. Ultimately, I want to achieve a baby block look for each of the alphabets.

Done with the matching~ now with the "S" .

i'm the chosen one! =D

 Next, I matched the background.  I made it in a way that the background lines were downwards and 

Round the edges~ and ~ this is the final result! told ya ~ it doesn't look as fantastic as those seen earlier. hope you didn't have too high an expectation haha~

Next~ what are baby showers without balloons? Due to budget constraints, I bought a pack of 100 balloons and 2 masking tapes for the sticking. The balloons were separated by the colours for easy mixing and matching. Make sure you buy extras in case the balloons burst or has holes during the pumping process!

As for the baby shower banner, I went to the The Party Stuff! to search the banners and shortlisted these:

I went physically to the store to grab it and decided on the solid one. Metallic fridged seems to be more difficult to place on the solid wall.

Down to the real deco~

I spend a total of S$52 (burst the budget by a wee bit) haha~

Hope you enjoyed reading some of my ideas for this baby shower!!

Minion Paper Crafts

Despicable Me has always been one of my all-time favourite animation movie.

With the Despicable Me 2 Trailers coming out....

I decided to do something Minion-ish.

I got this from deviantart.

sian... you mean I'm going to be folded?!?!

I did it up and realised that this template was missing its hands and seems like there's something that was supposed to be on the head!

see the slit on the head?!?!

My final product turned out like that:

It's still kinda cute don't you think?

In fact, I thought it also look kinda funny without the legs.

I managed to find 2 other minion paper craft templates from cubeecraft

The final product should look like this:

Have fun in your minion projects!

 Catch it in cinemas July 3 2013!

You might also like to read:

Post: How to murder a Minion 

Thanks for reading! 

Do also leave me a comment for any other cubeecraft suggestions you might have. 

Thanks!