Last Thursday, I received a mailer about some activities held at Downtown East during this one week break in September and I thought that C would enjoy making lantern and moon cakes. Hence I quickly emailed the person-in-charge and asked for details regarding registration.

Then last evening, I received a call which informed me that C's registration had gone through. :)

So this morning, she got up bright and early and we headed down to the venue.

At 10 am, she was all ready to begin her activity.

The materials she needed to make the lantern.

Then I left her to hide somewhere to finish up my marking. When I returned some time past noon, she had already completed her lantern and even had lunch.

C with her lantern here.

These were just some others created by her friends.

It was break time for them too and I managed to capture a shot of some of the children involved in the camp. These girls were older than Precious but they took her in and they were happily chatting and playing away.

Then around 2 in the afternoon, they returned for their moon cake making session.

The children were taught to make the snow skin from scratch and they had a whale of a time mixing and stirring.

Then a little colour was added to the snow skin to give it that peachy glow and the children got down to making their moonies.

C was pretty serious as she did her moon cakes. She was able to follow instructions though the dough was initially a little difficult to handle. After the first moon cake, she got the hang of it and was able to complete all five moon cakes.

She was extremely pleased with herself. :)

To end it off, there was ice cream for dessert and...

time for reflection. C and her mates penned down their thoughts of the event and they were glad that they had made new friends.

A certificate to remember the occasion. :)

Precious was beat when she got back. On the bus ride home, she fell asleep momentarily and had to be awaken as we arrived at our stop. No wonder as she had been running around in the indoor playground. But she smiled when she recollected how meaningful the session was and the new things she had learnt.

We had to return to Paragon to make an exchange for a glove that I had bought for Daddy.

We arrived very early and decided that we should have breakfast and walk around a little. That led us to Takashimaya Shopping Centre where there was a road show for moon cakes. The various hotels and restaurants were selling their moon cakes.

We were literally the first customers! Yes, we were that early. Ha ha.

Our loot this year. We decided to try moonies from Four Seasons this year as we had always bought Home's Favourites and thought that it would be a good change. We also bought moonies from Mandarin Orchard Hotel. Great choice as Grand Mummy and Daddy loved the wu ren moon cake. :)

We left almost as quickly as we came because C wanted to play with Baby Asher.

My Precious told her Grand Mummy that she wanted to have seafood for dinner and after lunch, we headed to NTUC for our purchase. Baby Asher was curious and wanted to catch the crabs with his bare hands. 

Yummy seafood! :)

It's August 15th according to the Lunar calender and it is a time for celebration.

So, we had more mooncakes! A very sweet and generous Mummy offered C these moonies. Cheryl was thrilled when she saw them and she couldn't stop smiling. And they taste good too!

I finally got my moon tarts and these Ritz Carlton moonies were for Aunt Margaret.

We love Sundays, yes for obvious reasons, and one of them being C gets to spend time with Aunt Di, Uncle Ben, Aunt Margaret, Aunt Juliana, Grand Daddy and Mummy!

And we almost always have something planned for Sundays; some times its just shopping, while others, we will be cooking up a storm. This Sunday, we thought it would be great to prepare a simple fare of prawn noodles.

Last Friday, when we were out, we bought a little something for C too:

These are so cute and C was smiling broadly when she saw them in her bowl of noodles.

Our dessert: home-grown mangoes!

We love these mangoes from Grand Daddy's and Mummy's home back in Teluk Intan! They are always sweet and juicy and honestly, after tasting them, I will never get any from anywhere else, which is why, we never have mangoes at all during normal days.

After dinner, Aunt Di and Grand Mummy brought C down to the park for a little lantern time. :)

We were indeed privileged to be able to taste such a variety of moon cakes this year!

Usually, I am not into sweet stuff but I guess my weakness is moon cakes: the traditionally bakes ones... .

Peony Jade:

Love their crispy yam moon cakes! Daddy and I love their traditional baked ones too!

We also tried the traditional moon cakes from Raffles Hotel, though they are more famous for their snow-skin champagne truffle ones.
Verdict: Still prefer Peony Jade

Crispy yam moon cakes from Shi Zhen
Verdict : Value-for-money! The filling was literally spilling over when we bit into the moon cakes. Excellent stuff!

Fok Shan Moon Cakes from Ipoh Malaysia. Aunt Di and Aunt Margaret bought these when they were there 2 weeks back.
Verdict : Very good! The lotus paste was smooth and the durian-scented traditionally baked moon cake was something special. And the best part, they cost half the price after conversion! Hee.. but the journey there is a little far.

Shangri-la! Our favourite!
Verdict : Smooth and very tasty and not too sweet! :) Downside, rather pricey.

Still waiting to get my hands on these:

1) Harbour City's Moon Tarts! Orders will arrive this weekend; just in time for the Mid Autumn Festival.

2) Home's Favourites' Durian Moon Cakes (It's the black one!!)

3) Any thing pink for C! She just wants a pink moon cake. Aunt Margaret has offered to get it for Cheryl. :)

Aunt Di and I decided to finally make a trip to Takashimaya Shopping Centre today to get our stash of mooncakes! Yes, Daddy loves them to bits and C, who has since developed a sweet tooth, is fast becoming a fan as well.

We were extremely excited and C requested to go in quickly.

She saw little piglets and couldn't resist touching them.

We walked around the place and tasted so many types of mooncakes from various hotels and bakeries. C pestered me to get her a lantern and Aunt Di told her that she had already gotten her the lanterns.

We not only had our tummies filled with the delicious mooncakes, we were also treated to some pretty sights of how the Masters made some of these mouth-watering works of art. C loved the mooncakes and she was asking for more durian ones.

We love these crispy yam mooncakes.

One of the most expensive mooncakes I got this year! They are from Shangri-la and I love them because the lotus paste is very smooth and more importantly, not too sweet.

I got these; yam crispy moon cakes for our pals, Aunt Angie and family because we know they love yam! :)