Merry Christmas & Happy New Year

Well, I guess this will be my last post for 2012.  Still need to settle lots of stuff at work before I go for my leave.  I will be taking a break and hopefully to spend some quality time together with the kids before school starts.  I'm really looking forward for our year end balik kampung holidays :P.

However, before I go, would like to take this opportunity to wish everyone Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!  Thank you for visiting my blog and for your lovely comments and support throughout the year!  It has been a blessing knowing all of you.

Hope you will have a good time together with your friends and family before school starts and see you next year!

Christmas @ 1U

I've been really busy at work and also with the kids since it was school holidays.   Didn't have time to update my blog.  Well, I guess next year I will have lots of updates to do.  Sorry, for not being able to visit your blogs lately.  

I am really going to miss the school holidays.  I've been enjoying the flexibility of time especially in the morning when I don't have to rush the kids to school and also to work.  One more week of rest and there goes my busy mornings :P. 

We went to 1U two weeks ago to have a look at their Christmas decoration.  This year was all about sweets.  We saw lollipops, donuts, cupcakes and etc.

Here are some of the photo that I manage to take on that day.

Giant Lollipops

 

Lots of ideas for Christmas presents

Mini Christmas Tree

Every year, at the end of November we will be putting up our mini christmas tree.  It will be placed at the corner of our little hut :).  We did thought of buying a bigger tree but due to space constraint, we decided to be loyal to our mini christmas tree.

I bought this chrismas tree five years ago from a toys shop.  They were having some stock clearance and you wouldn't believe the price of my mini christmas tree.  It only cost me RM1 !  Super cheap, right?  I bought two trees, one at home and I put the other tree at my office.  Need to feel the christmas mood @ work too.

Here's our christmas tree after putting up all the decorations.  Lil prince have been pestering us for more christmas presents for his tree.  Last year, we bought some of his favourite foods (seaweed, biscuits and etc) and wrapped them up as christmas presents for him.  He loves it.  I guess he doesn't mind what presents he gets but it's the process of opening his presents.  It's also something we enjoyed watching when the kids open the presents and see their expression on their face ^__^.  You can see from the photo below that he has already started his collection.  Every morning, he wakes up, he will count how many presents he has under the tree!

This morning, he asked me "Mummy, can you wrapped more presents for me?" 

December is here....Christmas is coming :)

December....a month of celebration.  The month that we always look forward for especially when it comes to Christmas.  This month we will be celebrating my lil prince birthday too.  We love December and during this time, we love visiting the malls to see their Christmas decoration.

We were at Pavilion last month and was surprised that they had put up their Christmas decoration.   Lots of tall christmas trees around with nice decoration.  There was a beautiful golden carriage in the center.  What caught the attention of our kids was the mini train ride.  We were a bit reluctant to let the kids go on the train because lil princess was too young and we were afraid that she might jump of the train! (see how imaginative we can be).  Nevertheless, lil prince kept pestering us and he promised he will hold his mei mei's hand and take care of his mei mei on the train.

So, we gave in.  We bought the tickets for both of them.  It cost RM5 for each child.  This was the first time for both of them sitting on a train ride by themselves.  We kept a close watch on both of them.  Lil prince did keep his promise and hold his mei mei's hand throughout the train ride and for lil princess, she managed to sit still!  RM5 for five rounds.  A little expensive but the smiles on the kids face was worth it :P.

Next stop, we hope to see the decoration at 1U!

Book Review : Beautiful Magical, Amazing Ballet By Mary Lee

                                                        Photo taken from Amazon

I had always love ballet and I remembered I did a ballet performance once during my primary school without any ballet lessons (amazing, right?).  I never had a chance to learn ballet but I was hoping to introduce ballet to my lil princess when the time is right.  When I saw that Jenny a (I'm a Full Time Mummy) posted about a book review, I thought it would be nice to share this story with my lil ones at home.

Here are some information about the author and the book from Amazon.

About the Author – Mary Lee

I am a writer, illustrator, graphic designer and a mom. I've lived in various places across the country but currently my heart is in the Bay Area. I have two sweet children, two dogs and a mini-cactus named spike. In my free time (ha ha ha), I like to read books, jog slowly, cook badly and sleep rarely.

Product Details

• Paperback: 32 pages
• Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform (September 6, 2012)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1479271713
• ISBN-13: 978-1479271719
• Product Dimensions: 10 x 8 x 0.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4.3 ounces

Book Description (Publication Date: September 6, 2012)

·     Mia is a sweet little girl with a big imagination. Today is her first day of ballet class and she is very excited. This energetic story shows what it means to be part of a team and that some things can still be wonderful even when they are not yet perfected.

My Thoughts :

I loved the colours used in the illustration of this book.  It caught the attention of my two year old princess because she likes pink a lot.  At first I thought this book was all about ballerinas but it surprised me with some of the moral values in the story.  I took this opportunity to explain to my kids (of course only my boy will understand as my lil princess is still too young) some of the lesson that we can learned from this book.  Anyway, no harm explaining to both of them together.

Lessons We Learn......

a.  Do not be afraid when things goes wrong 

I told my lil ones that we should not be afraid when things wrong.  I explain to them that when they do something wrong, do not be afraid to admit our mistake as we learned from mistakes.

b.  Team work 

I find this is a very useful word.  We need teamwork in whatever we do.  It always takes both hands to clap.  I told my son that both of them (he and his lil sister) needs to work together as a team.  I always hope that both of them will have a strong relationship together when they grow up.  I also told my son when they are in school, he needs to work together with his classmates in whatever assignments that the teacher gave them and he also needs to cooperate with his other classmates.

c.  Do not be afraid to try  
Although Mia was nervous to do the pirouette,  nevertheless she got it on her first try.  There are times when we encounter things that we have not done before but we should not be afraid to try.  Once we have taken the first step, we are on our way to success! 

Lastly, three words to describe ballerinas....Beautiful, Magical and Amazing!   

                                                           Have a nice weekend!

p/s:  All the above are solely based on my personal thoughts and I received no monetary compensation review.  I was provided with a PDF copy of the book to facilitate my review.

Activities for kids - Mix Vege

My lil prince have been pestering me daily to do activities with him.  He saw me giving some motor skills activities (scooping) to lil princess, he too wanted to have some fun on his own.

Yesterday, we made some simple salad.  I used the Watties Mixe Vegetables and my Kewpie mayonnaise sauce.   For a start, I boiled the mix vegetables and allowed it to cool before giving it to my lil prince.

First, he  poured all the mixed vege into a big bowl.  Next, squeeze the mayonnaise in the bowl and mixed them together.  Here's our homemade vege salad.  Simple and Sedap!

What I like best about this activity was to see both my kids eating vegetables!!  Both of them sharing a bowl of mix vegetables prepared by kor-kor.  I realized that in order to get my lil ones to eat more vegetables, they need to be involve in the process of making / cooking them too.  Perhaps, for them, it's all their hard work and that's why they appreciate the food more?

 I love this photo so much.  Both of them sharing a chair together and also a bowl of mix vegetables.  So sweet ^__^

Pasta Again

Last weekend was pasta day again.  This is really my favourite dish.  I still have some left overs animals pasta and thought of cooking it for the kids and also mummy (daddy was not around).  I also added some macaroni.  I love to cook pasta as it's simple, fast and most important is the kids love it.  Less headache during meal times when the kids ate pasta.

This time I use ham, bacon, sausages for my pasta.  I simply loved the taste of the bacon in my pasta..  I also bought a pack of thickened cream (wah....so fattening :P).  For a quick and easy way, I opt for the Prego Mushroom Carbonara.  It was really a quick lunch as I only had to boil the pasta, chop some garlics and onions, fry the ham, bacon followed by the pasta sauce.
 

Ta-Da!  Here comes our simple lunch on a Sunday afternoon. Hope all of you had a great weekend!

Year End Party Preparation (Part III) : Decorations

Delayed Post....

I was away for the past one week.  Sorry for not being able to visit your blogs.  Will catch up this week!  I'm sure I have missed lots of wonderful updates from you guys!
 
Here goes my Part III of the kids party.....
This year I wanted to have something special for lil prince class teacher as this was her last year teaching in this kindy.  I would like to let her know that we really appreciate all her guidance and also her hardwork in teaching all the kids in her class.  I felt that being a kindergarden teacher, is not easy to handle so many different types of kids.

After getting permission from her, I made some simple decorations for the class.  It started out with only some DIY banners which I printed on colour papers and tied it to a ribbon.

Next I took some nice photos from google and printed them out.  I was planning to paste it on her white board that she used for teaching.

Luckily I managed to take a photo on the day of the party.  Here's my simple decoration at the school.

I really adored these balloon flowers.  I always admired the colours and each time when we see a clown at the mall, we will not hesitate to line up to get one of these twisted balloons.  I was always curious to find out how these are made and hence I have decided to make my own.

I actually learned how to make these balloons flowers from youtube!  That's the benefit of internet nowadays.  Whenever we need to learn anything new, just google.  Well, it was not really easy (I'm a slow learner) but after a few trials, I'm glad that my balloon flower does look like a flower (although the shapes are a bit out ^__^)

 I made a so called bouquet of flowers for the teachers which comprises of three flowers.

 Then, I added some single flower balloons for the class decorations.

Happy Holidays!

Year End Party Preparation (Part II) : Chocolate Marshmallows

The next item to prepare was my chocolate marshmallows.  This year, I didn't have time to make extra food due to time constraint.  Hence, I was only able to make the chocolate marshmallows. This year, during Teacher's Day celebration, I also make marshmallow pops.  I felt that this is the easiest thing to prepare ^__^ (hahaha...I'm such a lazy mummy).

However, this time I didn't use the lollipop sticks but I changed it to the cupcake liners instead.  I bought the golden colour cupcake liner from the bakery shop.

I used both white and dark chocolate this time as I wanted to try out the effects of using white chocolates.  I don't have a microwave at home, hence I just use double boiled method to melt the chocolates.  

Once the chocolate melted, dipped the marshmallows into the chocolate and let it stand on the plate.  Next, is to decorate the marshmallows :).  I put different type of sprinkles on it.   After that let it set in the fridge.

I had extra dark chocolates left overs and I thought it would be nice to try my writing skills on the marshmallows :P.  I put the melted chocolate inside my piping bag and wrote 'Thank You'.  My hands were shaking as this was the first time that  I am using my piping bag :). *sigh*....the alphabet doesn't really look nice.  Anyway, first time trying...hehehehe...need more practice.

There you go.....my chocolate marshmallows for the kids year end party.  Hope they like it.

p/s: Sorry, can't show the teacher's name cos the writing was really terrible. *so shy*....hence, only can show the nicer ones ^__^.

Part III coming up.....:P

Year End Party Preparation (Part I) : Mini Party Packs

We are getting ready for lil prince year end party at school.  I have planned to make some chocolates marshmallows and thought it would be nice to prepare some party packs for the kids too.

I bought some raisins, jelly, cocopie and the crispy was from lil prince which he got from the chocolate fair at midvalley last month.  I choose three types of cocopie (chocolate, strawberry and dark chocolate flavours).  Lil prince said the pink cocopie is for girls and the blue and brown ones are for boys :P.

We started packing yesterday as I was afraid that I won't have time to pack them if we do it last minute.  Furthermore, I prefer to pack earlier just in case, if the items are not enough, at least I still have time to add on.  

We put all the items in a small pack which I bought from the bakery shop and I printed "Happy Holidays"and asked lil prince to paste it on the pack.

There you go, our mini simple party pack just for the kids.  Wishing them Happy Holidays!   Next item lining up tonight is to make my chocolate marshmallows ^__^.