Today’s February 15th, it always feels so normal compared to the day before it.

I had the best Valentine’s day ever this year, and most of it was spent at home!

We have a wedding to save up for, so we decided to skip going out for dinner this year – because on top of the cost of food, going out involves getting a new dress, cab fares, tip etc etc. We chilled out at home instead.

In the morning I woke up and reached out for my laptop to check my emails (as I always do) except this time there was a post-it note on my keyboard.

I spent the next hour running around the house following post-it clues to presents under the bed, in the broom closet, in the dryer, oven etc. It was really fun!!!

I gave him a box of bite-sized brownie pieces – it took me much longer to put that together than you would think.

We went out for lunch with friends, and came home to prep dinner. The best part about cooking dinner at home over Valentine’s day is we get to hang out together the whole time.

ON THE MENU:

Spicy oven fried chicken
Potato salad
Buttermilk biscuits
Italian salad
White Chocolate Pecan Pie
Homemade raspberry lemonade

We got dressed down for our dinner date (that’s a first on Valentine’s day!!!!) and lit candles all around the room, it was actually more romantic than the Old Course Hotel restaurant we went to last year.

We ate dinner and watched NCIS (his favorite TV show) on his laptop, then went back down to have dessert with our housemates and friends who had come over for dinner.

I was so stuffed at the end of the night.

Life has been so busy! In good and bad ways, since coming back from Manchester I’ve had a packed schedule of work & friends visiting.

A bunch of friends came up from Manchester to come to our engagement party, thrown by one of Andrew’s groomsmen – our bestfriend and housemate M!

Our other housemate, the very talented photog Mr. FC took photos all night and my favorite of all of them is this one:

I will upload the rest soon, but for now I have an Arabic presentation, assignment, management essay, a Management Society event AND Thanksgiving dinner prep to worry about!!

On the 28th of October 2010, on the day that marked our 19 months as a couple, Andrew asked me to dinner – because we had celebrated the past few monthsaries in pretty low-key ways! Fajitas and a movie at home, or takeout, and it’s always fun to get dressed up and go out on a real date once in a while!

We went to Esperante at the Fairmont St Andrews for an eight-course meal.

Yes, EIGHT COURSES.

We had a little bit of everything on the menu! Crab, caviar, venison, pigeon, lobster, several desserts… everything!

Andrew looked so handsome in his smart-going-out-clothes.

Our dessert was all kinds of strange – we had chocolate torte with meringue (fine), green tea and lime panna cotta (?) and jelly with real flowers in it served with lavender ice cream (??).

It took us four hours to eat eight courses, it was about 11pm when they brought out our final course – a second dessert.

It was on a little plate with a silver dome on top, and when the waitress lifted the top off, there was a ring on top of the chocolate truffle.

In true Hannah-style, I thought it might have been a very elaborate cake topper, so I turn and ask the waitress:

“Am I supposed to EAT this?”

Then Andrew took the ring (which is a classic Tiffany’s ring, I LOVE it), got down on one knee and proposed!

And now I’m the happiest girl in the world, which I say a lot, but this time I really mean it.

We went home and all our closest friends here were hiding out in the living room waiting to surprise us, I love my friends so much. They waited 3 hours because they didn’t expect dinner to take so long.

They had laptops lined up on one side of the room so my bestfriends in Manchester, Andrew’s mom and my sister could be at the surprise party as well!

It was the most perfect proposal ever from the most perfect now-fiance ever – and now I have a wedding to plan! EXCITING!!!

Goodbye New York…

HELLO SCOTLAND!!!!

I get to miss work today because there were severe train delays to Milan. Unfortunately, it also means I miss the Men’s runway show

Being in Italy and having this huge opportunity has really made me think about how far I’ve come to get to this point. Just over three years ago I HATED where I was, not just the physical location but everything about my situation. I think that was probably the lowest point of my life so far, and I’m only 22 but trust me, I’ve been through more than most 22 year old’s!

Then I figured if I wanted out, it was up to me to get out. So I sent emails to universities asking if they’d take me, despite it being way past the UCAS deadline date. And I got acceptances from both the universities I wanted. And I left.

I will never regret leaving Singapore. I left a lot of very good friends behind, but I also got to start over, and it’s very rarely in life that you get to start over completely.

I love St. Andrew’s. It’s where I feel I’ve matured, I’ve become a much better person, and I met NYBoy – who is the most positive influence in my life (and who pushed me to go to Italy for this internship despite it being much more than I could ever afford!).

I realized a few days ago that it’s been over a year since I’ve been phased off anti-depressants and all the rest, and it’s because I got to start over – but it wasn’t until this year that I noticed how much things have moved on.

I’m ready to start letting go of my past, and it feels really good.

I know I don’t usually ever write about my feelings (or my past) but I heard this song today, and it is the song I listened to when I found out I was leaving Singapore for good, and the song I listened to on my flight over to the UK.

It reminds me of the long journey I’ve been on to get here, and how happy I am to have finally arrived.

Today I tried out the Sprinkles strawberry cupcake recipe! [click for recipe]

They were so fluffy, and a very light pink shade, very cute! I had to use Crisco in place of butter, because I didn’t have any in the fridge and I’m trying to save up for Italy, so this means cutting back on spending wherever possible!

Thankfully, I had a giant tub of Crisco in my cupboard from Thanksgiving when I had a couple of orders for pumpkin pie and apple pie… You can’t sell a pie and not make the crust yourself, it’s cheating!

I doubled the cake recipe, but used regular quantities for the frosting because I always find I have way too much frosting left over from baking? Hence the tiny swirl of frosting as opposed to my usual crazy mound of sugary cream.

The cake itself only had a VERY slight strawberry taste, but the frosting tasted like strawberry yoghurt with extra sugar! VERY yummy. Invited a few friends over for chicken & seafood fajita’s and nacho’s, and to test run the cupcakes, they were a hit. We even had a little drama at the end with people fighting over who got to take them home, always a good sign!

My exams are now over.

My final Arabic exam for this year went much better than I expected, it was my first three hour exam and I didn’t know what to expect! All my other exams so far at university have been two hours at most, because two hours is enough to write two essays. Our three hour Arabic exam involved an essay and 5 translation pieces with 5 short compositions to be written in Arabic.

I have the tiniest handwriting, so even though we were told 30-40 words in Arabic would be sufficient, when I had done that much it was only about three lines… which looked a bit pathetic. So I ended up writing double for each composition, just to make it look nice… and by the time I got to my essay, my hand was aching and my handwriting was barely legible.

But at least my exams are over! Now while NYBoy studies for his final exam on irregular warfare (what is that?!), I bake cake and quietly catalog his boxes of stamps according to their values.

Italy in about a week! YAY!

I’ve been talking about it long enough… and I’ve managed to get together enough money to guarantee that I am in fact going to work in Italy this summer so here goes…

I’m going to be working in Florence.

Image © Florencephotos.com
[http://www.florencephotos.com]

More specifically, I’m going to be working for a big fashion company on Via de Tornabuoni (“the epicentre of Florentine fashion” according to the Telegraph)…

Image from mberry@Flickr
[http://www.flickr.com/photos/mberry/129295663/]

And the fashion company is…

Image © Florencephotos.com
[http://www.florencephotos.com]

I am not kidding.

When the CEO of Ferragamo came to give a talk at the university, I got to meet him as a Management Society committee member; and long story short I got a summer internship offer directly from the CEO. Niiiiceeee.

I have been trying so hard to keep myself from blurting it out prematurely, because I didn’t know if I could afford it, but between me and NYBoy getting loans from our parents; we have barely made up the money for it! I paid my rent deposit today for an apartment over summer, and I paid the language school where I will be taking individual Italian classes for a couple of hours a week.

PSYCHED!

Florence is such an expensive city, I don’t have much money left over for new office clothes, but I invested in a really cute belt, and my dad Fedexed a box of accessories over; so if I mix and match things I already have I should be able to get by 2 months of working!

We’ve booked flights from Edinburgh to Pisa, leaving on the 30th of this month! And my internship runs through until the end of July.

I wanted to go into fashion, but this is an opportunity I never even imagined would come my way.

First exam down and one to go!

Corporate Finance went much better than I had hoped. I hate morning exams, I’m usually not awake by 9.30, forget about being mentally awake enough to do an exam. So I went to bed at 10pm last night, about two hours earlier than usual, and woke up at 4.30am – to give myself a false start to the day. 5 hours later walking into my exam at the Quad at 9.30am, I was so ready.

Since summer is almost here, waking up at 4.30am wasn’t as much as a shock as I would have thought. It wasn’t dark outside, the birds were chirping, and if I hadn’t had checked my watch, I wouldn’t have known it was any earlier than 8am.

To celebrate the end of my first exam, and my confirmed internship (now pending financial details!) in Italy, tonight is the night of the Dempster Pizza mini-party! Mini-party because most people are still cramming for exams on Monday, so we only invited about 6 people.

Homemade peri-peri pizza & oatmeal raisin cookies after. Yummy.

It will take my mind off the financial turmoil that is my Italian internship.

I was craving this so much. My mom keeps promising to send me the household recipe for it, but keeps forgetting! So I googled it, and found a recipe on the Singapore Tourism Board website.

It turned out really well! I made a few minor adjustments;

- Used my hand blender to finely mince the garlic, ginger and chili for the chili dip

- Doubled the amount of ginger I put into the chicken before placing it in boiling water

- Used garlic paste rather than finely chopped garlic for the rice, I didn’t want people to be getting mouthfuls of garlic chunks in their rice

and I served it with some broccoli stir-fried with garlic, ginger, sugar, soy sauce and a little bit of apple juice… I made up the stir fry bit because I forgot the broccoli until the last minute, and it’s customary for me to force the boys in this house to eat their veg.

Invited a couple of friends over for dinner, and it was just enough for 6 people (with seconds!).

Tonight it’s home made pizza’s, maybe?