Elder Uma's "What to Wear" Dilemma

Oh no! What to wear?? That is the Question!!! Here is a gallery of all the Chinese New Year outfits you can get in WoW.  Seeing as Uma had a truckload of coins to spend after getting the title, what else was she to do but to go and get every single one???

Elder Uma celebrates Chinese New Year

One of my most favourite World of Warcraft seasonal festivities is the Lunar Festival, which celebrates Chinese New Year with fireworks, cookies and beautiful costumes.

I’ve always loved the special dresses you can get with the Elder coins, they are the most pretty in the game imho. In my old RP days, I had one of these outfits on each of my Feathermoon characters in a different colour (which was colour-coordinated with their other outfits!). At one point, I was logging them out in their RP gear so they looked nice at the starter screen. Aaaahhh, what you do when you are bored!

I’ve figured I would get one title for each of my ‘main’ toons, rather than trying to get all seasonal titles on one toon for the special mount. My druid Uma just Had to be the Elder, right? This is one of the few dresses that actually suits the tauren females! Also, I figured “Elder Uma” was a funny play on vowels which sounded right, much like how “Sigora the Explorer” suits my hunter. But I couldn’t get the Elder title on Uma last year as she was only level 60 and you need level 77 to get to the Elder in Utgarde Pinnacle. I thought she had to be 80, so was aiming for that, but realised she didn’t need to level all the way, so didn’t. No point in levelling yet another toon if I don’t actually feel like it.

Uma is an interesting character, pretty quiet,  supposedly stately and composed, so her personality seems well suited to the Elder title. But get her around Amberthorn and her impulses to /udderflash can be quite embarrassing! Now she is an “Elder”, perhaps she will conduct herself with more decorum, even while in the company of handsome tauren males!!!

Feast for a Day – Valentine's (part two)

After much planning and a full day of preparation yesterday, this is what we actually ended up having for our special day-long celebration today for both Valentine’s and Chinese New Year.

breakfast
Love Heart Fried Eggs with Smoked Salmon, generous dollops of hollandaise sauce and a sprinkling of fresh chives
Homemade Tomato, Capsicum, Chilli and Garlic Pull-apart Bread
Peppermint & Lemon Balm Tea with honey
Chocolate Coffee with cream & sugar

mid-morning snack
Mint & Ginger Fruit Punch
Poorman’s Caviar with Corn Chips
Lemon Myrtle & Pistacio Biscotti dipped in cinnamon honey

lunch
Smoked Salmon & Carrot Sushi
more Mint & Ginger Fruit Punch

afternoon desert
Love Heart Icecream Cake with strawberries, chocolate sauce, and crumbled pink merringue

dinner
Lemon Myrtle & White Fish Cakes with Sweet Chill Sauce and Basil Fried Rice

How to make

Icecream Cake
6 scoops of strawberry shortcake icecream mixed with 6 cut up caramel chocolates, a handful of crushed cashews, 3 crumbled chocolate biscuits, press into a cling-wrap lined heart-shaped small cake tin and freeze overnight

Mint & Ginger Fruit Punch
1 can of fizzy soft drink (we used Lemon Squash), a tablespoon of fresh ginger juice (grate and mix with a little tonic water then strain), add cut up 2 nectarines, 1 orange, a handful of strawberries and love-heart shaped ice cubes, a handful of fresh mint leaves, top up with Mango Juice as required

Out with the Old

Tomorrow, being Valentine’s Day, is an extra special day this year. Not only does it fall on a weekend, which only happens once or twice every 6 years or so, it also falls on the start of festivities for the Chinese New Year!

So today, in preparation for the special day tomorrow, we are baking as much as we can in advance, then we will be cleaning the house together! /awww isn’t that romantic? Yes, I could have cleaned the house yesterday when David was at work, but that would not have swept away any bad luck from this year that came into our house today (that’s my excuse and I’m sticking to it!).

It’s a Chinese tradition to clean the house the day before the New Year starts, to sweep away any bad luck from the previous year. This helps the new year start with a fresh clean beginning, allowing any good luck to flow into the house during the festivities. In the very least, the floors should be swept and mopped, perhaps cleaning a window and the loungeroom ceiling fan may also take my fancy. Lucky charms, like this coin I hang facing my front door, help bring happiness and wealth into the home, as do round golden coloured fruits like oranges, favoured for their resemblence to gold coins.

Tomorrow, we will be celebrating all day, with romantic themed foods, some with an Asian flavour like fried rice and fish cakes for our evening meal. Reminding ourselves of the importance of our romantic relationship is sure to attract much good luck into our home for the new year ahead!