Birthday at Green Peppercorn

There is nothing like a birthday dinner with your old high school mates! Last year we went to Holy Basil - this year was Green Peppercorn! I think there is some sort of connection between Thai & Laos food to my birthday.. 

But as usual, I was late. While we waited for our table, we decided that we were going to share our dishes between 2 - 3 of us. Van Anh had her own dish since she is a vegetarian. From the photo below, her dish is the one on the white plate. They substitute the original sauce with a vegetarian one, so yay for restaurants that have vegetarian alternatives! 

Tanya, Judy and I ordered Vegetarian Curry Puffs for entree and as for the main, we had Seafood Gang Panang Curry, Khao Pad Sapparot with Prawns and Pad Kee Mao. The Curry Puffs were amazing! And yes, we endeavoured it all but one for the photo.

How can you go pass desserts when having dinner with friends?! Tanya and I shared a Vanilla Creme Brulee together. And yes, I know what you guys are thinking.. Why didn't we get the Pandan one?! That was because Tanya already tried it so we both wanted to try something else. Well in this case, another flavour. We originally wanted Black Sesame but they did not have it that night, so Vanilla it was!

It was a surprise when Tanya and I waited for our dessert to come out though. Behind us, we heard the Happy Birthday song and I personally thought it was for another table. Until I heard them crept up behind me, I was surprised to see a lit up candle and the text 'Happy Birthday' written on the plate (Not too sure if it was ones idea or they were all in it together..) But the surprise was really lovely and the Creme Brulee was delicious!

Presents from Van Anh, Lisa, Judy, Christine and Suzanne

After stuffing up our stomach up with dinner and desserts, it was time for the opening of the presents! How cute is the packaging on this?! Soo simple yet soo creative! What is inside? You will have to wait for my next post to find out ;)

Next up was a Pandora charm from Mimi. I had wanted a charm related to art for quite some time now and I finally got one! I had never been able to find one on the site for some reason, but I am glad my friend did! 

Lucky last was a present from Tanya. In the big pink Victoria Secret bag, sat a body mist and lotion set. Since the bag was ginormous, I did not realise there was another present inside. Tanya had also gotten me an Illamasqua Nail Vanish in the shade Speckle. I sent her a photo of this nail polish not too long ago but in another shade. Haha.. how sneaky of her!!

I am soo thankful for the presents I had received. Although, for them to take the time out to celebrate my birthday (especially those who came straight from uni) was more than enough. Thank you ladies for that wonderful night, hope you all had as much fun and catching up as I did!

Birthday at Work

Hello everyone! So, yesterday was my birthday and sadly enough, I spend more than half of my day at work. But here is an entry on what had happened during my afternoon shift! (I had a morning shift from 12:30am - 6:30am earlier that day)

During my afternoon shift at work that started at 2:30pm. I arrived half a hour earlier as I did not read my roster properly, woops!

One of the uncles found out it was my birthday and decided that he would get me a cake. He asked me to write down my name so he could get it for me. I told him "Don't worry about it, it will take a hoursss for them to make!" but he insisted and went out on a search for a birthday cake. Although it was no surprise to me that a cake was coming, I did not expect what was going to happen next.

A minute after he left, a friend came to takeover so I could have my lunch. I decided to eat out and spend some quality time alone at a cafe across the street. I ended up with a Fish, Lettuce & Mayo burger with chips as a side! It was the perfect opportunity for my friends (or some may call workmates) and customers to get ready for the surprise..

I came back and was told that Lulu (manager) wanted to see me, so I walked to the other side of the inn and waited. She had printed some wall sheet at the time and asked me to come with her. We took a little walk outside the inn and came back into the public bar (where I was working) and in the distance I saw lit up candles. In my mind I was like 'wait what? cake? it has been likes 35 minutes?! HOW?!'

The cake came a lot earlier then I had anticipated. I started to tear up as everyone started to gather up to sing me a Happy Birthday. It was a very beautiful surprise, that they wanted to surprise me although I knew the cake was coming, thank you uncle and everyone who was there!!

It just goes to show that there are so many gentle hearts out there. For a regular customer who knows so little about me, is willing to go out his way to buy me a cake on my special day. I just want to say.. Cảm ơn Chú rất nhiều, the cake was absolutely delicious! :)

The #BloggersDoItBetter Challenge!

Good morning everyone! In the following month, I will be taking part in the BloggersDoItBetter Challenge! In this challenge, I will be writing a blogpost every fortnight based the chosen topic for that fortnightly week. It will start on the 1st of April, so if you are interested in participating, you can either email your name, email address and blog url to touchofbelle@gmail.com or leave a comment on the original post which I had linked above!

- Good luck :)

Hunter Valley Trip

Hey guys, on the 24th and 25th of February (yep, almost a month later..) my friends and I went on a road trip to Hunter Valley. To be honest, from all the photos I had seen, I did not expect it to look anything like what it was on the net. But seeing is believing and I will definitely come back here to visit! Here are my vlogs from the trip, enjoy!