Meeningfully

Ever since I got interested in baking bread, I wanted to bake the "Hokkaido Milk Bread". Google it and you will realize it is popular with many baking bloggers. There are two methods of making the Hokkaido Milk Bread. One's call the Straight Dough Method and the other is the Tangzhong or water roux method.

We just returned from our year end vacation, yet our autumn in Hokkaido posts are not up yet! Since it was a packaged tour, I thought taking you guys on a pictorial tour will be best! We started our 7 days in Hokkaido with a visit to the Northern Horse Park. NORTHERN HORSE PARK  There's lots to do around this huge park. Other than riding in the horse carriage which we did, there's also pony show to entertain the little ones. 

When we made the decision to embark on the inevitable IVF journey in 2015 , we knew at the back of our minds that we needed to make some changes to how we lived our lives. Honestly, I don't know if I am physically prepared for the journey.  Always stressing over work, and harbouring the mummy's guilt , plus the many other things on my to do list, it does seem l impossible for my already weak physique to go through the quest. Something needs to give so that stress of any form does not consume us. 

  With so many cooking and baking mums in my network, it is only natural for me to take a keen interest in baking. Baking to me is also very therapeutic when things get a little stressful on the work front. However, I tend to like working on quick and easy recipes and here's one of my all-time favorites.

So, it's the time of the year to look back and think about where we have done well or fouled up. Honestly, 2014 is definitely better than expected after coming out of a rather dreary 2013. What better way to recount the year by going through my "15 before 15" list. A report card of sorts.

source As I scanned through my list of my " 15 before 15" (which is the list of 15 things I wanted to achieve before 2015), some of them is about spending more (quality) time with J although not explicitly expressed. I constantly struggle to find that balance and it leads to what I call a world wide phenomena of the "working mothers' guilt".

Many of you probably know that we did not have an easy time  trying to conceive our first child. J came to us via our first cycle of stimulated intrauterine insemination or SO-IUI as some people know it. This happened after we have tried a couple of ways to get pregnant to no avail, and we embarked on SO-IUI, We had very little expectations as we have heard of low success rates doing so. We were probably much better off doing IVF.