Weekend Shopping + Food Trip

This time around, I didn’t buy much for myself.  I shopped mostly for Christmas gifts.  My goal is to finish 80% of the Christmas shopping by next week, so that by end of this month I can start wrapping the gifts and then ready our home for the holidays!

I usually start with the gifts for my friends, office bosses and office colleagues.  I shopped for some of them at 101 Grams of {Eye} Candy and the rest I was able to find theirs at 168 Mall in Divisoria yesterday.

For the ladies, I got them these chunky arm trinkets in pretty pastel colors.

They were all so “photogenic” that as soon as I got home, I snapped pictures of them using a better camera (our Panasonic Lumix LX5) and with natural light.  You can find more alluring pictures of the bracelets here.

For the gents, I don’t want to give them something that’s generic and boring (like handkerchief, keychain, etc.).  So when I saw these boxes of mini 3D lego in different characters at the ground level of 168 Mall (stall no. 1N-02), I knew that I’ve found the perfect gift.  It’s a fun and quirky stuff that I’m sure both the young and young-at-heart would love to have!    The Minion character is obviously the best seller.

Lunch was at the famous Sincerity Chicken Restaurant which now has a branch at Lucky Chinatown.  My shopping buddy, Mae Anne, and I finished off this platter of Sincerity Chicken! Sarap!

It’s been ages since I last had their equally famous Oyster Cake.  But this one wasn’t as good as the one I tasted at the original Sincerity Chicken Restaurant in Binondo.

On Saturday night, AJ and I had dinner at Rockwell where we tried this newly-opened Ramen restaurant:  the Ikkoryu Fukuoka Ramen.  I will do a separate post on this, but let me just tell you this: their steamed Gyoza dumplings are probably the best we’ve tasted.

We stopped by Fully Booked afterwards, and finally bought the best selling debut novel by Jonas Jonasson, The Hundred-Year Old Man Who Climbed Out of the Window and Disappeared. If you have friends who love receiving books as gifts, this is a good title to consider.

Then this morning, I was at Uniwide Coastal Mall (they’re not closing, yey!) again with my cousin, Mae Anne, and her cousin Lara with hubby Jade and daughter Keira in tow.  I’m so glad they invited me to this shopping trip because AJ and I were not able to go back there after we checked it out last July, when the news that Uniwide is closing first broke out.   I heaved a big sigh of relief when we got there this morning and found the store open.

I observed that there were lesser Christmas decors on sale now (as compared to what we saw last July) but at the same time, there were a few items that were not on display before, like these brand-new Christmas stockings in baby blue color.  Yes, P79.00 lang sha.

If only we have a Christmas tree at home, I’d hoard these Christmas tree ornaments, priced between P29.00 to P49.00 each:

I have to be realistic about our small space at home, though, so I cannot have a Christmas tree.

Here’s what I bought instead:

It’s a decorative piece shaped like a Christmas tree, made of ceramic with classy and glossy gold finish.  I got this for only P299.00 (discounted from P399.00 pa yan).  Definitely my fab find this weekend.

Sayang, there are no letters L-E-A available for these ceramic tiles to complete my name. Seriously, they’re pretty, not only as home decors but as party accessories as well.

Dinner tonight was again outside (no more time to cook, puro layas ang inatupag ko hehe!).  AJ took me to this breakfast cafe at the Fort called Early Bird Breakfast Club.  Oh my, this place is LOVE!

My dinner:  Tenderloin Tapa.

AJ’s dinner:  Breakfast Sausage Tart.

Both dishes tasted outstanding, but first-timers might get turned off by the rather expensive price tag for ‘breakfast’ meals.  But I remembered how much we enjoyed our breakfast-for-dinner meal at Maple, so I knew that we will equally enjoy this one.  And yes, we did.  So much so that we plan of going back there again next week!

I hope you all had a blast this weekend!