Danderma's Blog, page 75

A Tour in the New Grand Avenues

We were invited by M. H. Al-Shaya Company yesterday to attend the bloggers & media tour of the newly opened Grand Avenue, or what else is known as the Avenues Phase III extention. The tour was due to begin an hour before the official opening of the Grand Avenues at 10 AM where it would be open to the public.

 

Arrival and registration began at 8:30 AM where breakfast was served in Brasserie de l’etoile which included a briefing and distribution of media badges and maps. At 9 AM we were ready to go and meet the completed Grand Avenues for the first time.

 

The first thing you notice are beautiful steel structures representing trees with glowing orbs hanging from them. I took me a while trying to pry myself away from them and stop taking pictures.

 Past the glowing orbs you see right in the center the Cheesecake Factory where the beautiful fountains of the old Avenues used to be before. We had lunch in The Cheesecake Factory after its opening and I will have an entire post dedicated to it insha2 Allah.

After The Cheesecake factory starts the long Grand Avenues walkway.

To the left of the long Grand Avenues Walkway comes Garrett’s Popcorn, Texas Road House, and Pizza Express which are all open. Also available are The Red Lobster, Olive Garden, Sheraton’s Shahrayar, and Sheraton’s Tarboush restaurants which will open soon.

 After the restaurants comes the stores, first on the right comes the much awaited full fledged Victoria’s Secret / Pink store!

Yes, it has EVEYTHING! If you buy with more than 50 KD you get a Victoria’s Secrets canvas shopping bag with a small surprise gift inside too. Please note that most of the sizes are long gone by 11 AM yesterday and almost all you can find is S and XS :’(

 

Three stores have strategic locations on the left handside of the walkway with seating areas spilling to the walkway and overlooking Harvey Nichols: Shake Shack, Pinkberry, and Starbucks. Not another Starbucks you say? No, this one Starbucks contains something very special that I will post about as well

While walking in the Grand Avenues I noticed the pole like orange information structures around the place. Looking good!

Some stores and sections in the Grand Avenues that I can’t wait for to open include the Soku section, Sprinkles Cupcakes, and Muji! Yes, MUJIIIII 

Grad Avenues is vast and spectacular. With plenty of daylight streaming in from the glass ceiling and with many beautiful architectural details to see in every nook and corner. Everyone we met exlaimed that they had a feeling they are travelling and not really in Kuwait!

By 10 AM the Grand Avenues was filling up with people. Customers queing on cashers and diners queing for The Cheesecake factory. Everywhere you turn you find a smiling face, we kept stopping to say hello to happy people and even mere strangers were happy and calling out to each other.

I shopped and walked aroung the Grand Avenue until almost 4 PM and I still didn’t visit many stores. I did quite a bit of shopping though :p

 Thank you Al-Shayaa, for the invitation, for the tour, and most importantly for the Avenues, Phase I, II, and Grand! The place is truly spectacular and I cannot wait to go back.

Luscious’s Beautiful Flower and Cheesecake Pops Bouquet

About a fortnight ago my husband wasn’t feeling very well and I wanted to cheer him up so I ordered for him a bouquet of flowers and cheesecake pops in a fishbowl vase from Luscious catering.

The bouquet arrived on time and was gorgeous! The flowers fresh and dewy, the cheesecake pops extremely delicious and came in different flavors. My husband was very happy indeed!

Beautiful, no? Beautiful and delicious indeed! If you like it you can order it from Luscious catering by calling or contacting them via twitter (@LusciousKw) or instagram (@LusciousKw).

Things 2 Get 4m London: New Cadbury Chocolate Flavors

I’ve just returned home from a trip to the UK and in my bags were a multitude of new and old Cadbury’s chocolate bars. There are three new Cadbury’s Dairy Milk flavors and they are all very interesting.

The first new flavor I’ve found is the Toffee Popcorn. That’s perfect for a movie night, popcorn and chocolate in one bite! The next one is The Biscuit Crunch which reminds me a lot of a Milka biscuit chocolate bar my husband adores.

And last but not least, the Nutty Caramel!

Of course I got all three of them but I’ve yet to decide which one is my favorite. There is also a fourth one, the Oreo and Dairy Milk Bar that I found in WH Smith Heathrow but  I don’t have a decent picture of which also looks interesting and I grabbed that as well to try. I’m not sure if they’ve arrive to TSC Kuwait or not yet though.

Which flavor do you think is most tempting? For me its the nutty caramel!

Diet Center’s Eid Gift Box

Celebrating the occasion of Eid Al-Adha I received a nice Eid gift from Diet Center. Inside was 3 boxes of Arabian sweets usually devoured during Eid, all of which are diet friendly and guilt free of course. 

What’s even better? The nutritional values of the sweets on the box plus tips on how to make the most of them in a healthier way. It was a surprise for me to find out that a piece of baklava contains between 150-200 calories while a piece of Mamoul starts with 220 calories! Interesting.

Thank you Diet Care for the Eid Gift and the valuable diet tips. We did enjoy it very much indeed. Eidkom Mubarak.

For more information about Diet Center’s products and services you can contact Diet Care by calling 24918901, visiting their website (link), liking their facebook page (link), following them on Twitter (@DietCenterKW) or on instagram (@DietCenterKW).

Napket’s Jazz Night Souvenier

Around three weeks ago I was invited to attend a new weekly event held in Napket Kuwait every Wednesday night which is the Jazz night. Every Wednesday Napket in the Avenues transforms so its guests can enjoy their meal in an atmosphere of live Jazz music.

I couldn’t attend the first Jazz night. Nonetheless, Napket were kind enough to send me a souvenir of their first Jazz night all wrapped up with a card.  

Inside was a nice black and white picture in a gold frame. I believe its one of the pictures that they hung on the wall during the first Jazz night.

 I think the picture is of a vintage Kodak camera. Its beautiful. Thank you Napket Kuwait and I will pass by on a Jazz night to enjoy the live music soon.

Jazz Nights at Napket are held in their Avenues branch every Wednesday from 8:00 PM until 10:30 PM. For more information about Napket you can check their facebook page (link), follow them on Twitter (@NapKetKW).

Halloween 2012 in the London

I’ve been away from my beloved blog so long I feel like I’m about to dust cobwebs off the wordpress panel. I am putting together this post now while watching Halloween III and with the rain pounding on the window. The mood couldn’t have been any creepier I suppose so its perfect.

I haven’t been to the UK during the fall season and Halloween for a few years, around five perhaps, but this year I’ve noticed that everywhere I go, people are excited to be celebrating Halloween! Merchandise, houses, customs, chocolates, makeup, toys, props, decorations in every corner. Including a special offer on London Midland trains in the picture above and on estate agents ads below.

Halloween cupcakes and chocolates of all shapes, types, flavors, and kinds. For example the  special edition Cadbury creme eggs filled with green slime like filling.

Halloween cupcakes in Selfridges and meringues in Carluccio’s.

In Sainsbury’s I found Halloween flowers and Halloween Clementines.

Halloween props and supplies.

Many stores had decorated their shops or window displays in a Halloween theme.

Today I kept seeing people, adults and children, dressed up and on their way to celebrate Halloween. Britain has been bitten by the Halloween bug, badly. Its quite fun actually but I began to have Halloween related nightmares during the past few days. I suspect its due to the amount of skulls/witches/ghosts I kept seeing all around me. I wonder how bad it is in the USA if it was that bad in the UK? I must try and visit the USA one day on Halloween.

The Sleep Cycle Application for iPhone

I’ve been browsing the App Store on my iPhone last week when I noticed The Sleep Cycle application. It had a high rating and good reviews and given my current state of sleep deprivation I decided to give it a shot.

My problem is not waking up when I hear the alarm. My problem is that I cannot get out of bed. I’d would have more than one alarm clock ringing, some of them would require me to get out of bed so I’d shut them off but then I’d stumble back into bed and use the snooze, over and over. I tried sleeping earlier, sometimes I go to bed at 11, once I even went to bed at 9, yet I still couldn’t wake up.

Sleep Cycle app uses something called the “accelerometer” in the iPhone to determine what phase of sleep you are in and when the time comes to wake up, it will choose the moment to wake you up when you are not in a deep sleep phase. You will have to connect the iPhone to the charger and place it right beside the pillow securely for it to work but so far I’ve been using it since last week and it made a big difference to me. I finally can wake up in a range of time that is acceptable and  I don’t even use the snooze button. I’ve used it once only and woke up on my own in the middle of the snooze period so that doesn’t really count.

The picture above is my sleep cycle for last night. I seem to oscillate between phases quite rapidly through the night. After five days of using the app it gathers enough data to create sleep graphs for you. One of which is this quality of sleep graph.

The quality of sleep graph, which surprisingly doesn’t even reach 80% on my best night’s sleep. Maybe that’s why I feel so tired all the time? I sleep on time, I sleep soundly, I woke up fine, yet its less than 80%? Interesting.

Average sleep quality is 56% and average sleep time is 6:21 hours. Doesn’t sound that good but I never knew or noticed that before. I’ve always struggled with my sleep. I’ve had a period of time when I couldn’t sleep at all in the past few years then I found out if I stop drinking coffee after 12 PM I’d be able to fall asleep at a decent hour. Apparently this is not enough for I need to work a little bit harder on my sleep. Hopefully the quality of sleep will go up by next week.

The Sleep Cycle app is indeed brilliant. One of the best apps I’ve used in a long time on my iPhone. I would highly recommend it if, like me, you have trouble waking up on time and use more than one alarm clock to wake you up yet you don’t. For more information you can check their website (link) which is where I took the picture in the very first part of the post from by the way. You can also purchase it from the app store (link).

On Hiatus…

Too many loose ends to tie, too many things to take care of right now. The PC I use is breaking down while the Macbook is beckoning me over. The blog needs a little background work done as well. Therefore, I’m going into maintainance mode for the equipment, blog, and few things in life until, hopefully, next Sunday insah2 Allah.

See you around…

Once Upon a Habba: The Swarovski Crystal

The year was 2003. I had just gotten my new car then and I looked for the perfect thing to hang from its rear view mirror. Then I was in Swaroviski, I remember clearly it was the Salhiya branch, when I saw the crystal snowflake Xmas ornament. I knew right then and there that this was the perfect thing I was looking for.

I hung it on my rear view mirror, the sun rays caught in the crystal edges whenever I drove and it would light up with a million colorful lights, like something out of a cartoon dream. People used to stop me and ask me where I got it from. It was a big thing back then and it stayed on for a while, perhaps a few years even. It was simply beautiful.

I loved my crystal and now, 9 years later, I still do. Even though most of the edges broke off when I hit a speed bump and the crystal would crash into the windscreen. Even though sometimes the glitter of the light would blind my eyes, I would never take it down.

Do you remember the Swarovski crystal habba? Do you still hang yours in your car?

Book Review: My Life in France by Julia Child

Ever since I saw the movie Julie & Julia I was itching to know more about Julia Child, the American culinary legend. I got myself the book that was partially responsible for inspiring the movie, My Life in France, and a while ago I began reading.

The book, published in 2006, describes a period of Julia Child’s life when she lived in France, learned how to cook in the Le Cordon Blue, and then began her career by teaching cooking, writing her two famous cookbooks, and her cooking show. Its mesmerizing, learning how life was back then in the 1940′s onwards. How, at the ripe age of 38 when you think you would want to retire she began a full new career path.

Through the pages I could almost see Julia & Paul Child’s life playing in front of my eyes. Often I’d pause while reading and remember sadly that this couple having the time of their lives are no longer alive, their time was up. Sadness also creeps in on you as you read the last pages, mentioning how this person died or this person no longer functions well. If the book teaches you anything, its about how to live your life. Live for today, don’t be afraid on embarking on new adventures no matter what age you are, cease the moment and simply live. In the end, all that remains are the good times: the happiness, the laughter, the gathering with friends around a fine meal.

Another lesson? Eating butter won’t kill you! The Childs lived a long and prosperous life. Julia Child lived until she was 91 and her husband lived until he was 92! Now that’s a thinker.

The book is very entertaining. Its like opening a window to an amazing time long gone. There is also another biography about Julia Child that was released in 2012 that I’m going to look for next. Highly recommended.