I hear this winter never seems to end up north, but how far north must one go to see snow year-round? Well, one can be certain that if they get up to the polar region, they are sure to find Mukluk, his little sister, Mookie, and their polar friends enjoying the snow, be it winter, spring or fall.
Mukluk is the northern most set in the Wee Are the World collection. However I’ve made sure to balanced out the cold, icy blues in the patterns with some warm magenta pinks and poppy reds, and a little glowing green tossed in, all reminiscent of the Northern Lights, Mookie and Muk-luky ;) are lucky enough to enjoy.
Until next stop, sending Eskimo kisses from the polar north.
A hectic week with some family's matter at home. Hubby is like a mad man rushing in and out the house over the weekend. Not a very great weekend anyway, but I am not going to narrate on that.
On Monday evening, Baby Jay has stomach upset (or maybe I can say, bloatedness because we suspected he ate too much!) as he kept vomitting after taking food, water or milk. Poor Baby Jay! He vomitted more than 8 times that night! Scare the hell out of us. A hell of night here. Around 1am, we brought him to Kuching Specialist Hospital for check up. Doctor could not find anything wrong, but gave us some prescription to stop his vomitting and dehydrating salt. Thank god after a night of rest he was fine on Tuesday. Even little girl missed out on her school that day, because her mummy could not wake up on time. Lol!
Then on Wednesday, hubby gone to KL for his company meeting, so leaving me with the 2 kids. Then I have a bout of gastric attack in the evening, which strained my energy by night time. Must be the nasi lemak I had for breakfast and curry chicken for lunch that day.
Little girl's 5th birthday on Thursday, and since I was unable to bring her to her favourite fast food outlet, my parents had the honour to bring her to KFC for earlier celebration on Wednesday night.
Not very easy handling 2 kids without hubby's help but I survive. Lol. Hubby will be back tonight so after I close shop tonight, together with my 2 kids, we will go to airport to pick him. Another long day.......And it is going to be a long weekend too. Happy weekend, everyone!
It is cherry blossom season, and though these lovely and delicate flowers can be seen throughout the world, there is no place more recognizable for these beautiful flowering trees than in Japan.
The sakura, or cherry blossom, is the icon for Japanese art and culture, and today it has become the icon for resilience in the country. One of Japan’s oldest trees, a weeping cherry tree has stood for a thousand years, blossoming every year despite blizzards, earthquakes and, now, a nuclear disaster. Even through this recent catastrophe, it once again showers its beautiful blossoms down on the people giving them hope that they too will recover. Ironically it is a weeping cherry tree; iconically it is a symbol of resilience.
When I designed this Sushi collection, the disasters of Japan has not yet occurred. It would be thoughtless of me to share the musings of Sushi and her story today; so just enjoy the art as it is given, and keep the people of Japan in your heart and in your prayers.
Meet Tajie, the wee prince of India, whose name is borrowed from one of the most recognizable and beautiful structures in the world, the Taj Mahal. Tajie, with the help of his colorful menagerie (Ellie, Dot, and Bovie) will guide us through the jungles of India; the ancient city of Bombay, now Mumbai, home of Bollywood; and the eighth wonder of the world, and crowning touch, The Taj Mahal. Prepare to be treated like royalty, and don’t forget your tiara.
I know I missed a week of posting, you'll have to forgive me. I've had a really hard time staying conscious for any extended period. Most of the time when I do get myself up I'm so out of it I end up staring at the wall and forgetting where I am, I'll try to post more about that later it's not really relevant to this post.
I've been listening to Queen Adreena today while rain has been coming down and thunder has been rolling past. It seems like the perfect music for spring storms. It sort of fits the mood I've been in lately.
Their cover of Jolene by Dolly Parton is amazing. It's dark and brooding and beautiful.
It’s tulip time and everywhere I look, I see them. There is no better place to enjoy tulips than the original land of tulips, and that is Holland. So let’s get to that beautiful countryside where wee will find the queen of tulips herself, Dutchy. And though it’s hard to notice in her wooden clogs, she is in fact tiptoeing through the tulips with me.
Good Friday and Happy Easter, everyone!! Today is a school and public holiday. It means the kids are around the house as both are not be going to nanny's house today.
So the kids are stuck with me in the shop for the rest of the morning, then afternoon, I will bring them back for a rest. It means "fun time" for them in the shop and a headache for me. Sigh!
It’s time for a safari so let’s head to Africa and meet our guide, Bongo. He and his chipper monkey, Tumbili will take us into the depths of the jungle and the heat of the desert. We will encounter hippos, lions, and the wild crocodile of the Nile; though these wee animals are hardly dangerous. So, hop on board and join this colorful and exciting adventure before we are out of Africa and onto yet another land of enchantment.
Wonder when hubby's car would be ready? Toyota said it would be in workshop for about 3 weeks! Die-loh.
Story begins last week.....when hubby's car been hit by a Kancil from behind at 3rd Mile. The Kancil was a mess and turned to side, and fortunately for the lady driver, she was fine with few bruises from the broken glasses. Hubby sent his car to Toyota last Friday and need to be there for few weeks.
And "soi" (bad luck) or not, my car broke down on me on Saturday afternoon. Geez, what luck we had there? Temporarily I using my dad's car while it is in the workshop. Turned out it was radiator faulty and need to overhaul the whole thing and cooling fan. Sigh!!
I have a drama unfold on the road with smoke coming out from the front and bursting of water from the car, and having tow truck towing my car in the rain. Conclusion? I have to admit, election day is never a good day for me.
Wee are happy to introduce our friends from around the world. Frenchy is the resident Parisian who, along with her adoring Gigi, enjoy the lovely and beautiful Paris this time of year. With serenading birds, blooming flowers and unforgettable sites to see; you will want to join Frenchy in the springtime. Pack your bags and begin this adventure, but don’t stay long or you might miss the next exciting stop on our trip around the world.
Tomorrow is the day!! After 2 weeks of campaigning and causing unnecessary jams in some parts of the city, it is up to the voters to vote for their representatives.
It also bring back bad memory of my last national-wide polling where I were a victim of snatch theft incident. The scars on my left foot and knee will be forever there. I still have the phobia when ever I close my house gate at night, but I am smarter to leave my handbag in the car now so after making sure gate is securely locked, then I will fetch my handbag. It has been 3 years since that incident.
Back to the present!!! Tomorrow is the state election day. I think it will be a great fight like the previous election. I am sure my hubby will stick to the tv tomorrow night to check on the result. He never vote as Kapit was uncontested in the past, but this year, he would not able to cast his very first vote due to work commitment. Hopefully he would be able to change his vote to Kuching so he get a chance to vote in the next election.
I would cast my vote after I send both kids for their respective vaccinations. Their vaccinations are actually way overdue, but better late than never. Sorry, what a lousy mum I am, but due to busy months, I forgot about their schedule. Baby Jay due about 2 weeks for his Pneumococcus while Little Gal is supposed to have her Rubella booster at 4 1/2 year old. Lol.
So after sending both off to nanny tomorrow, I will be a faithful Sarawakian and cast my vote. For a better Sarawak, everyone!
I made these to fill up an advent calendar I made for my boyfriend for Christmas. There are four designs; a Scott Pilgrim SP logo, a heart to represent the hearts that appear when Scott and Ramona kiss, Sex Bob-Omb's logo, and a star like the one on Ramona's bag.
Step 1: First start by making some designs out of Sculpey. You'll want to make these look how you want your finished product to look.
Step 2: Bake your Sculpey pieces.
Step 3: Let the pieces cool then mix the Amazing Molding Putty together. Amazing Mold Putty is food safe so it's perfect for making candies in.
Step 4: Take the putty and place it over your Sculpey pieces. This will form your molds.
Step 5: Once you have your molds melt your Wilton Melting Candy and fill your molds. I used spoons and tooth picks to fill certain areas with different colors.
Step 6: You're done! You can wrap your candies if you want. I used gold candy wrappers so it would keep with the video game themes that run throughout Scott Pilgrim.
Try hard but cannot help it, once in a blue moon, I have to indulge in supper. Lol. Usually I blame it on hubby for he is the one that initiate the supper. So, I think I am gaining some weight here.
Like last night, I bought a whole spring chicken for RM13.00. Nothing to shout about, as the meat too dry for me and they did not give me any gravy or sauce to go with the fried chicken. End up, we dipped our chicken in Maggi Chilli Sauce. You would not believe it, but the four of us finished up the whole chicken! *wink*
As I handed my hubby last piece of drumstick, my little boy was shouting and had his hand out for it. Baby Jay grew excited seeing a drumstick and we can hardly get the drumstick off his hand. Once I handed the drumstick to him, it was like a trophy to him, as he happily showing off his drumstick around and nibbled it. Maybe that because he did not get a chance to eat a drumstick when he turned one year old last year> The Chinese believes in giving a one year old a piece of drumstick to commemorate his or her birthday. So it was redemption time for Baby Jay.
I've been making my own origami star paper patterns the past couple of days so I thought it would be fun to share them with all of you. I used this template to make them. There will be links underneath each picture to a full size printable version. You can always find all my printables here.
I saw this story over the weekend and thought it was one of the sweetest things so I wanted to post about it. A fan made a red leather vest for Lady Gaga for her birthday and Gaga loved it.
A good friend came back yesterday from KL. It has been almost 2 years since we met. Gosh! Once in blue moon, we only update or chat in Facebook or sms-ing.
So she gave a very surprised SMS yesterday evening that she was back and asked for a "yam-cha". We met in Sidewalk for a drink after 10pm. With other 2 friends that I also haven't met for long time, we chatted for more than an hour before rain started to pour.
Maybe I am way passed the age. Started to feel exhausted by 11pm. Usually at home by that time I would have settled down for the day and lied down on bed. Lol!
It was a great catch up although it was only 1.5 hours. Wished we have more times together.
On April 29th my boyfriend and I went to see Kevin Smith's newest movie, Red State. I'll try to keep this review spoiler free since it isn't going to be release in normal theaters until October. I'm sure you can find spoilers easily on Google but until more people have had a chance to go see the movie I don't want to include any here. What we went to was a prescreening with a Q&A after.
I should probably give a little background on the movie first. Red State isn't a typical Kevin Smith movie. It's by no means a comedy it's a horror movie. It's main antagonists are loosely based on the Westboro Baptist Church. The theme of religion is very prevalent but church and state are both represented. The movie is very relevant to today but also sort of feels like a throw back to old school horror movies. It's a really interesting dynamic.
"In the 70's, they made exploitation flicks about devil worship. We flip it on RED STATE - so it's an exploitation flick about angel worship."- Kevin Smith
I have to be honest, I'm normally not into horror movies so I can't compare it to many others. A lot of the time I find them to be too boring and predictable so I don't bother watching them. Red State threw in enough twists and turns to keep me interested. I think the thing that bothers me about most horror movies is that the characters a lot of time are so black and white and don't have much depth. Without depth I end up not caring about any of the characters, and by extension, the story at all. With Red State I didn't feel like it was trying to force me into rooting for specific "good" characters, I found that to be refreshing. Of course there were obvious "bad guys" but in a few moments it made you relate to them. It's more interesting when characters are ambiguous.
Overall I really enjoyed the movie (and my boyfriend did too!). I'd recommend going to see it when it comes out October 19th.
P.S. Happy birthday to Ms. Jennifer Schwalbach because she is awesome :)
Do you bring your kids out with them in their pyjamas? I thought I would never do that to my two kids but I did it once. When I was small, I would never wear pyjamas and go out. Have been taught to dress properly for outing.
So I would never do that, but I was wrong. Blame my laziness for that. There was once when hubby was hungry and craving for McD's at night, so after taking bath and lying in the bed with 2 kids in their sleeping attires, have no choice but to accompany him to the airport. Why airport? Because it has a 24-hours McD's outlet there. And about 10 minutes drive from our house too.
Before we left the house, my girl asked whether she can put on a new clothing instead of her pyjamas. I thought of staying in the car with 2 kids while hubby “tapau” so I told her not to.
That was first reminder from my girl. Then when we reached the airport and my girl seeing the McD's outlet, she also want to go out and have supper there. Since I am not in my pyjamas, so I agreed to her persistent requests. But she caught me off for a while second time. “Mummy, mummy, but me and Baby are in our pyjamas. How?”. And guess what I said?? “Never mind, little gal. Have a quick supper then go home and change into a new one”. And she replied me “Ok, mummy. But next time I do not want to wear pyjamas when I go out again.” Lol!
Everyone in the family is sick. Down with cough and sniff. I have been sick for a week now. Thank god everyone is getting better now.
It is hot since last month. Unbearable hot. If can, I would prefer to stay indoor than driving around under the hot sun. I have been taking a lot of herbal and cooling drink last week. Maybe because of those, I have develop a bad cough. It was worse at night; it keeps waking me up many times till I could not sleep well. During the day, I was miserable and dizzy due to the cough syrup. So I resorted not to take cough syrup during day, only at night. But the cough is getting worse until yesterday.
Thanks to mum for introducing me this Chinese pill. RM18.00 for 40 pills. To be taken 3 times a day, 2 pills each time till condition improves.
It works in reducing my mucus. Less sudden cases of continuous and worsen cough now. It is traditionally use for bronchitis treatment and relief of cough. Since Western medicine does not work well for me after taking them, I have to resort to Chinese medicine now. *wink*
Tomorrow is the 9 year anniversary of Layne Staley's (Alice In Chains) death and the 17 year anniversary of Kurt Cobain's (Nirvana) death. This post might be a little cheesy, forgive me for a moment while I ramble. Alice in Chains and Nirvana populate the good memories of my childhood and the not so good memories of my teenagedom and adulthood. I was too young to really appreciate either of them at their peaks but I always remember their songs being on the radio. I’ve noticed that for some reason I seemed to have been a little more plugged into grunge and alternative music when I was younger than most people my age were. I think part of it was because I thought the "big kids" were cool but also because I simply liked the sound. I don't know anyone else has such clear memories connected with those kinds of songs from that era while they were still in elementary school. I'm sure there are people out there (please tell me your stories in the comments if you have them) especially ones with parents who were into that type of music. My parents were more into bands like The Beatles, Fleetwood Mac, and The Doors, all of which I love by the way. When given the choice of which radio station to listen to I would ultimately choose one that would play songs like Smells Like Teen Spirit and Rooster. I was drawn to them before I knew they would become a bigger part of my life later on.
Let me get this straight first, by no means do I think that every Nirvana or Alice In Chains song is about drugs. I do however feel that there is are themes of drug addiction, depression, and how they affect relationships in their music. With that said, there's something about music made by addicts that gets to me, particularly heroin addicts it seems. The lyrics and feelings they evoke really pull at my heart in a way most other music can’t. The threads of addiction and frustration that run through their songs eerily mirror my struggle with chronic illness and pain. I find the parallels to be oddly comforting. Sometimes being chronically ill can get really lonely. I can’t always relate to the people in my life because of it. I suppose being an addict is a chronic illness. If you think about it that way it's no wonder the music becomes so easily relatable. It makes me feel a lot less alone.
Not long after I had to leave public school for health reasons I began feeling extremely isolated and abandoned. After awhile I stopped logging on to social networking sites, instant messenger clients, making phone calls, and socializing all together. My lines of communication where still open if anyone wanted or needed to contact me but I no longer had the energy to reach out. No one contacted me or noticed even though I was gone for months. During that time I listened to Hole and Nirvana almost exclusively. In my mind they became sort of like companion bands that bounced and played off of each other. Delving into their music gave me something else to focus on and made it easier to hang on another day. When no one else was around the music still was.
Similarly, last June/ July I was in an immense amount of pain. I knew I was sick but I didn’t realize how sick. One of my only comforts was Alice In Chains. The music seemed to go right along with how frustrated and helpless I felt. My dad had just lost his job so we didn’t have health insurance anymore. I didn’t want worry my parents or make it so they had to spend money on doctors. I hid myself away in my room and waited for the pain to pass. It didn’t. It turned out that I had a severe kidney infection, which led to me having a 104-degree fever. I had to go to the hospital. One of the first things I did when I got out was listen to some Alice In Chains because I had missed it so much. I kept listening to them while I recovered and still listen to them when I'm having a particularly painful day.
All of this is why April 5th hits me hard. Layne and Kurt’s music make up part of the soundtrack of my life. They have been constant musical forces for as long as I can remember. They were there when I was an 8 years old taking a joy ride with my mom around my Grandma’s neighborhood and they were there when I needed something to comfort me through all the pain. I'm going to end this post with some of my favorite videos and songs from each of them.
Nirvana being silly while playing Smells Like Teen Spirit on Top of the Pops because the acts are expected to lip sync.
A version of Hole's Asking For It that features Kurt Cobain. You can actually hear his voice on the album version too if you listen really hard. I wish they had done more stuff together.
Nirvana playing Where Did You Sleep Last Night? on MTV's Unplugged
We have bought our house for 4 years now. Every month we have to serve the interest. If I am to accummulate the amount of bank interests, it would be enough to pay a portion of our house extension work.
Even without staying in the house, we already pay for it. We are thinking of refinancing as alternative for lower interest and more flexible loan package. Some more we have a management corporation managing the housing area, so every month we are to pay for the RM100 service charges. So unfair!! Wonder when it would be ready and we can move into it. Hmmmmm....
Finish setting up my Facebook Fan Page. I'll post a link when it's done :)This is mostly done. I'm still learning how make it nicer. Here's the link for anyone interested in becoming a fan :)
Take any old electronics I have to be recycled.I helped my boyfriend take a bunch of his stuff and I'm in the process of boxing up more to take. Yay recycling!
Try cooking with soba noodles.We got some and they were yummy!
Replace soda with water, tea, and juices.I've done this and switched to ice coffees for my caffeine fix. I still have Coke when I go out to restaurants though.
Take care of my nails and give them a break from polish. My nails are still a little short but they feel much stronger and better now. I'm excited to be able to paint them again!
And now onto April!
This month I would like to...
Practice Poi spinning. I found some great tutorials on YouTube.
and 
. I was drawn to them before I knew they would become a bigger part of my life later on. 