The Frogs and The Prince

Would you think that title above was about classic fairy tale? The tale about the frog which under the spell and transform into a handsome prince. If you wouldn't, I would.

Actually two events happened on the same day in April 29th.

The 1st event -  Save the frogs day! 

Amphibian populations have been rapidly disappearing worldwide and nearly one-third of the world's amphibian species are on the verge of extinction. They facing overwhelming of environmental problems including pollutions, habitat loss, climate change and over harvesting for the pet and food trades. Definitely This is a serious problem! If we do not act quickly, the amphibian species will continue to dissapear and resulting imbalance to our planet's ecosystem and to human. 

 "Why We must Save the Frogs?"

Frogs are an integral part of the food channel

Tadpoles keep waterways clean by feeding on algae.

Adult frogs eat large quantities of insects like mosquitoes (malaria)  that can transmit fatal illness to humans.

Frogs also serve as an important food source to snake, birds, fish and even monkeys. The disappearance of frog populations disturbs an intricate food web, and results in negative impacts that cascade through the ecosystem.  

 this picture was taken at night

Frogs are bioindicator

Most frogs require suitable habitat in both the terrestrial and aquatic environments, and have permeable skin that can easily absorb toxic chemicals. These characteristic make frogs especially susceptible to environmental disturbances, and thus frogs are considered accurate indicators of environmental stress.

Frogs are cool

Frogs provide a source of enjoyment and cultural fascination to human.

So please save our planet!!

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The 2nd Event was Prince William get married with Kate Middleton. Personally I am not really fan into the Royal things. But I think it is kind of a special because Kate is a commoner, married to a prince and both of them have good education. They graduated from one of University in Scotland.

Most channels showing live the wedding today since 6 o'clock in the morning.  I love to see people wedding so I watched it around afternoon time. She look stunning in that wedding dress and the couple never stop smiling! They are the sweetest couple ever. Below are some of my favourite pictures of them.

I really love the dress and

It is reminiscent of Grace Kelly's dress, I love to see Grace kelly wedding dress! Grace kelly was a beautiful American Actress married to Prince Monaco  in 1956.

Another dress comparison and the similar thing between them was they came from normal family background and both become princess!

Kissing in balcony of Buckingham Palace

Congratulations!! 

 and

Have a good weekend ahead to my family and friends!

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Miss Purplish Blue

Waiting for this flower to bloom had given me a little suprise. I won't miss a chance to see on the right side of flower bed everytime I drive out of the driveway of my house.Or I will be standing next to it when walking with the dog.
I've never seen this plant before. No idea what kind or it's name. They popping with buds and soft green leaves and they've been there few weeks since Red Azalea growing tremendously in our flower bed.

Day after day I had curious thought about it.

How it looked  like?
Was it pretty?
Smell?
Can't wait.

Finally its blooming and I love the combination of the colors, purple, yellow and some white.The petals are so soft and it scent so pleasantly. Actually the flower was violet color but it came out like bluish in the picture.

This flower really delicate and it can't hold strong no more than 3 days. The petals were so sensitive and tore out when it got wet after raining or strong wind.

 After raining few days ago,

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Easter Treats

Easter Day just past which was on last Sunday April 24th, most schools and public sectors closed on Friday April 22nd.

It was about Christian celebrations things. Most adult American went to church on that day while kids excited about Easter-Egg Hunt.The egg hunt is a part of Easter tradition. The children will carry a cute basket or container to hunt for the hidden eggs all around the house or yard.The eggs are sometimes real egg or fake egg filled with candies. Neighborhoods and organizations hold Easter egg hunts, and the child who finds the most eggs wins a prize.

How about us? We just excited about the sweets stuff.

Majority stores like Target, Walmart and Walgreen started selling Easter confectionery such as chocolates, sweets and marshmallow in early week  of April for Easter day. Bunny and egg are symbol of Easter. So all those candies were in the form of Rabbit, chicks and egg. That's kind of cute!

Some of our cool Easter treats we grabbed the other day :

Chocolate covered fluffy marshmallow. I love this. They were in the half of egg shaped in the styrofoam egg crate.

Cool!!!

Creme egg - Cadbury
It is chocolate in the shape of an egg . It is thick milk chocolate shell and filled with white and yellow fondant filling which just look like real egg.

Solid chocolate - Rabbits

Russell Stover chocolate filled with  peanut butter and caramel inside.

Palmers - Solid Chocolate Rabbit, oh the prize is cheap only $0.99, Big size, taste was not bad! But they ran out very quickly before Easter day.

Gummies Candy -Soft chewy candy with different flavours. Taste really good!

Mini pack of variety chocolate from Hershey, Wonka and Russell Stover.

Love them all!

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Busy week and prizes

Things have been pretty hectic last week. Filing taxes  and preparing calls from companies were part of the matters.

Monday, April 18th was the deadline for filling taxes for both Federal and NC State. It's been 2 years I filed the tax but still I had hard time to fill out the calculation section. There is a public service who manage and prepare tax for people and they will charge certain fees. Definitely I can manage it myself. so I made it in the last minute. 

Thank god, I had done with it and sent it on Saturday, the day of Tornado happened.

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On Thursday April 21st we received some kind of surprises thing. Definitely I love a good thing unexpectedly. Coincidentally two packages arrived in different time on the same day! One from UPS and another one from US Parcel (USPS). I guess this is our lucky day. 

First arrival - Xbox 360 play station

2nd arrival - Telescope

Actually the packages were the winning prizes from the contest that he entered couple weeks ago. Congratulations Sweet Pea!

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Tornado in April 16

Tornado storm hit us on Saturday's night, April 16 and that was the worst weather ever happened in my place (NC). In the other word is Twister or cyclone. Actually this violent weather began Thursday in Okhlahoma, cutting across to the  Deep South on Friday and hitting North Carolina and Virginia on Saturday night.

Hearing the blast sound of the strong wind around the house, seeing flash on the sky and seeing the trees moving back and forth really frightened me. That extreme weather cumulated the rain, storm, lightning and wind.  We were in the dark when the electrical power was cut off for few hours on that night and we have to lit few candles in the house. We took precaution by updating the weather forecast with internet phone so that we could run to the safe spot in the house if the Tornado reach our house.

The tornado gone around 11.30 pm and the power back on. We felt so relieved.

On the next day  tv reported at least 21 death, 130 serious injuries and the storm demolished a lot of the houses and buildings in many places throughout NC including Jacksonville which located half an hour drive from our house.

OMG! this was really serious disaster happened in my area. I couldn't believe it when looking all those pictures. Some pictures I attached that I got from internet. You can see more pictures in this site

I was really thankful that violent tornado didn't rip our house but I have thoughts and prayer for those who lost their homes, belongings or were injured in the storm.

And many thanks to my family in Malaysia for your prayer and concern of my safety here.

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Worthy of gift card

It took me many weeks to decide what I should get from Amazon. Winning  Amazon gift cards from PCH online plus promotional gift given by Amazon wasn't a big deal. This is the 3rd gift card prize I won from PCH.

Last time I used the 2nd gift card to buy a rubber nylabone for Babe and this time it's my turn to get something for myself. I have been looking for clothing like dress, skirt, skort,t-shirt, sweater and shoes. Buying clothing online is really undesirable to me even they look nice and fair price. Definitely I love going to the store, feel the softness of fabric and try them on.

No idea.

How about something to munch on? Cereal bars? Chocolate? A gift basket contains nuts and dried fruit? That's cool. A lot of choices to pick and it driving me nuts when I looked all those good food. The amount of Amazon gift card was $30 and shipping cost certainly under my consideration.

Basically I seek hubby's recommendation everytime I want to order online. He happily suggested me to buy this item. So I ordered two items and waiting patiently about a week.
 
On Thursday last week, my package of Amazon safely arrived at home. Thank god. The package was a big rectangular box and it was heavy. 

Obviously I hardly impatient to open the box with a thought "Did they send the right stuff???Yup..That was it, I was so excited!!I think everybody excited too.

The items were 20 packs of Korean noodles and 4 packs of canister of Sun Maid dried apricot.

Actually total cost of both items including shipping were $48.17, but I just paid only $3.40. How did it work like that?
Noodles : $19.96 + Apricots  : $17.26 + Shipping : $10.95  = $48.17

So the deals were from combination of super saver discount(free shipping if ordered more than $25) + my promotional gift code + gift cards. Yeayy! it  saving a lot.

Those items were in a good condition. This Korean Noodle is very spicy and has a great flavour. It is a simple meal but really made me full.

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Red in April

We signify spring with the phrases,

 "April shower bring May flower"

"Spring is springing"

"Spring has sprung"

"Spring surprise"

The nature is expressing spring more than thousand words. Warm, breezy and sunny bring happiness and welcoming to all living things. Birds flying, chirping cheerly around the trees, bees buzzing over the flowers, squirrel jumping over the branches, rabbit hopping freely in the yards, colourful of plants popping up wildly; showing the winter passed, new born of plants and new day for animal.

The most thing that catches my attention is red color around the yard. Red  which is used as a symbol of love, passion, anger and sacrifice really vibrant the environment. Obviously I would like to call the plants as Miss and introduce them here.

Miss Azalea, 

The name sounded so feminine. Blooming in spring with gorgeous red color and pleasantly scented. Azalea is a kind of flowering shrub and the flowers are so numerous that create a solid color in flower bed.

Below is from top view picture

Miss Pansy, 
It is wild flower popped up in  a sunny area. Pansy are available in a wide assortment of colors such as yellow, brown, blue, red, maroon and orange. 

Miss Holly Bush, it has bright red berries are somewhat toxic to humans but it is extremely important food for numerous species of bird.

Miss Red Maple. 
As the spring coming the red maple tree blooming with pink-red seed pods that look like flower on the tree. Some people called it winged seeds or helicopter seeds. 

The seeds pods actually twirling and hovering like helicopter when they are falling off of the tree to the ground. Those seeds will drop to be replaced with beautifully maple leaves.  

Miss young pear, the blossoming of white flowers which is last only two or three weeks is replacing by red small pear which is size and shape like  cherries. 

The pears will continue grow throughout the spring into early summer.

I also saw a few little red bird, but I couldn't get any picture of them since they flying away so fast unless If I had a good speed camera.

Have a good weekend!!

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Style and Shrimp

Switching blog design frequently, it's totally absurd of me. Personally I have been trying to stick on one template and hopefully it would be last long for months. But it's hard to get persistence of idea or I might be the person who obsessed with different style, design and color. The bottom line is my XL photos size must fit in the column. Anyway that's not the highlight of the issue.


A couple days ago I bought a pack of medium shrimp. Generally seafood is rarely food in our daily menu. We planned to reduce the seafood intake due to healthy matter. Speaking of shrimps, we have different kind of cooking manner. I love when shrimp is cooked with its skin on while he loves it in the other way.

Most stores sell headless shrimp, tail with the shell intact. I cook the whole shrimp directly from the package most time,no waste anything and my  favourite shrimp recipe is to saute them in chili paste. I think it taste good with its skin/shell on but he isn't tempted by that way even it is spicy.

Boneless, skinless and fatless meat (chicken,fish) are part of his meal style so I notice that he likes shrimp as meat does, skinless shrimp. That means I get an extra job to peel off the shell before cooking. Cooking time also concern him. He would say that I murdered it when I cooked meat or seafood longer than he wished. Sometimes he prepares food and I could say he cooks meat better than me. Is that mean men make a better chefs than women?Not at all. In spite of that I am still learning to cook western food. *Noted: No skin, No over cook.

When I think about the shrimp recipe, the Forrest Gump movie had flashed on my memory. If you've seen that movie, you will notice this scene part where  Forrest's best friend named Bubba was talking about shrimp. 
I love this part:

"Shrimp is the fruit of the sea. You can barbecue it, boil it, broil it, bake it, saute it. Shrimp-kabobs, shrimp creole, shrimp gumbo. Pan fried, deep fried, stir-fried. There's pineapple shrimp, lemon shrimp, coconut shrimp, pepper shrimp, shrimp soup, shrimp stew, shrimp salad, shrimp and potatoes, shrimp burger, shrimp sandwich. That- that's about it."

I would love to try all those kind of shrimp recipes that Bubba mentioned. Except the fried one. My tongue has been educated by spicy, oily, soupy,milky since I was a kid. Definitely I would have little odd taste when I try to shift from spicy to mild taste of shrimp. Last weekend, I decided to make two recipes from those list as the beginning of western cooking trend for shrimp.

First recipe was "Shrimp Egg Salad", I found a recipe on the internet from this site and I made some change of ingredient from that actual recipe.

Shrimp Egg Salad recipe :

1 cup of fresh raw shrimp - microwave it almost 2 minutes

2 Hard boiled eggs           - chopped

2 Tbs of Mayonaisse

Salt and Pepper

1 tsp lemon juice

Some fresh onion

**Mix well all ingredients in a bowl and serve on crackers or bread. That's it! 

The shrimp was covered by white mayonnaise. He loved it so I guess I did it good!! 
Shrimp and mayonnaise? Creamy and very mild taste, my tongue should adapt it. I thought I started to like it.

The second recipe was Shrimp Burger or here they called "Shrimp Patty Sandwich". You can refer actual recipe from this site. I made for 4 servings and the ingredient I made it simple:

I cup of  pancake mix

1 egg

1 cup of fresh shrimp

Paprika, Salt, Pepper

Potato flakes (instead of cornmeal)

I used 100% whole wheat Arnold Sandwich Thin bread.

You can see in  the picture below:

We preferred to eat them when it was still warm. Both of us love it and I would make it again some other time.

 Have a good week!!

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