Tailored Dresses/ Irodori Deal/ Chinese cuisine (Farmart Centre)

On Sunday, I went to Chinatown with my mum in search for fabrics!! Was super psyched! I had always wanted my mum to tailor make some dresses for my work! You know all the dresses that we see online? The design is the same across many blogshops but they vary in the fabrics used. So I figured my mum should be able to sew the exact same designs with different fabrics! Ok, but I have to admit, the selection of fabrics was rather limited! My mum said that the popular and pretty pieces were most probably bought over by those bigger stores to make their clothes. Eventually, we managed to find 6 pretty pieces! hehehe!

Prices of fabrics from left to right (by yard): $11, $6, $6, $3, $12 and $12! Love the houndstooth fabric (it's elastic as well, super good quality!!) and the super colourful piece (it's so cheap!!!). Ok la, I love all pieces actually hehehe! Anyway, if you are interested to get fabrics to make your own clothes, I think there are 5 things you have to bear in mind.

1. The thickness of the fabric. Too thin a fabric wouldn't make pretty dresses and it would be harder for the seamstress to sew as well!
2. How many inches of fabrics are there in one yard. From what I had bought, there were 2 different measurements- 45 and 60 inches. My mum says that it's better to get the 60 inches type of fabric because eventually, it would be cheaper. Like for the 45 inch fabric, I had to purchase 2 yards of it but for the 60 inch fabric, I only needed 1.15yard!
3. How many yards of fabric to get is dependent on your body size and the length of your dress to be made.
4. Buy concealed zips (18-22inches) for your dresses as they would look nicer. We went to 2 different stores to get the zips and they cost the same ($1.25 for the 20 inch one).
5. It would be ideal if you have a design in your mind when you are looking for your fabric. In that way, it would be easier to gauge the amount of fabric you need! You can always ask the aunties at the store for advice on which type of fabric to use for your design. As for the amount of cloth you need, the aunties would usually try and persuade you to get more than required, so it's best that you know how much you need!

I will be checking out Arab street for fabrics with my mum very soon! My mum is super excited to make the dresses! She says she gets a sense of satisfaction when she sees that the dress fits me so well hehehe. She has already finished making one dress! 5 more to go! WHOOP! Oh yes! I spent a total of $90 on the fabric, zips and threads required! Very affordable if you ask me! $15 for a dress^^

Irodori Deal:
Min bought a deal voucher for Irodori Japanese Restaurant a few weeks back and we finally went to have the buffet 2 weeks ago. Each person had to pay $34.90 for buffet lunch which was valid on all days, even weekends! The restaurant was super crowded, much to our surprise, because we assumed if the restaurant needed to launch deals to attract customers, it must mean that their business is not very good right! hahahaha! It was packed to the brim and it took quite a while for the waitresses to bring us the food we had ordered. Selection was ok...

Stir fried beef with ginger sauce, teriyaki mushrooms(?), agedashi tofu, gyozas, teriyaki chicken, lobster salad  sushi (irodori special roll), tempura prawn roll, salmon and yellowtail sashimi, garlic rice and chawanmushi. Food was very average. I felt that the sashimi had a very distinct 'fishy' taste to it so I did not enjoy it:/ The irodori roll was not bad but abit too big to stuff the whole sushi into your mouth. 

Oh! and we had complimentary king prawn with mentai. This was the yummiest, slurps! Anyway the ordering process was quite an agony. You have to order differently with different waitresses. Like for example we ordered 2 portions of salmon sashimi with the first waitress and she served us 4 slices of sashimi BUT when we ordered the same number of portions of sashimi with the second waitress, she said,'You mean 16 slices?' Wah, huge difference! So it would be better to order by slices, which was what we did for every single dish thereafter hahaha. For us, the deal was worth it because usually for the 2 of us, we would order at least $60+ worth of food at Japanese restaurants. However, we would never come back here again because 1. Food didn't seem very fresh 2. The taste was not exceptional 3. Selection was mehhh 4. Confusing ordering process boo.

Chinese Cuisine:
I finally had my first pay in on the 12th Sept!! As a first pay treat for my family, we went to Farmart centre, which was located at Sungei Tengah Road (somewhere ulu in Chua Chu Kang), for seafood dinner. I wanted to bring them to Jumbo for seafood but my dad had heard his friends raved about Farmart so we decided to go try the seafood there. The seafood there was really fresh and we sat in an open spaced area! The environment was very kampong-ish and they even had a mini karaoke corner where anyone can just go up and sing their favourite hokkien songs. Note that this place is very suitable for people like my parents hahaha. They were loving the place.

Presentation of the food not very awesome but the taste was good!

We ordered quite a number of dishes for just the 4 of us! Their specialty salted egg yolk crab (the egg yolk was goooood but very oily in our opinion:/ can feel very gelard after having too much of it), prawns in herbal soup (This was fab! The soup was super nice and sweet and the prawns were HUGE and very fresh! 2 prawns each of all of us!), stir fry frog legs with ginger and scallion (normal!), butter fried rice (their specialty as well and I felt that this wasn't that oily as I had expected it to be! It was also fragrant and the chef was very generous with the prawns and ingredients.), sambal potato leaves, three cups chicken (三杯鸡. Three cups refer to 1. soy sauce 2. rice wine and 3. sesame oil. The chef did a wondrous job with this because it was OUT OF THE WORLD! The sauce was superb and the chicken wasn't tough! It was still tender despite being fried. Very delicious.). The total amount, including drinks, was only $124 (payable by nets and cash only), very affordable in our opinion! I think I would go back again for their 三杯鸡, prawns and the fried rice! Hehehe!