Random Things

Random things that put a smile on my face :)

I have been obsessed with plants lately! I keep a small indoor collection of air plants, orchids and a baby fiddle leaf fig. The giant air plant with wavy leaves is a xerographica and I am so in love with how it adds a touch of drama. I'm still trying to figure out its light and watering needs. I've killed the smaller xerographica by putting it too long next to a sunny window and then frantically trying to make up for it by over watering it.

My orchid finally bloomed, yay! This was such a huge achievement for me as it's been kept solely indoors and grown without a medium. I didn't even know what colour it was going to be as the nursery owner wasn't sure either.

I'd been eyeing this Uniqlo paperbag-styled skirt for months and when it finally went on sale, I snapped it up in an instant. It's midi length and a lovely shade of red, most importantly, it has pockets! Whenever I wear it, I feel like I've stepped out from the pages of the Handmaid's Tale.

Nasi Padang Minang at the Transfer Road coffeeshop. It's been a while since we last visited because it gets packed during lunch time because of its wide selection of heavily spiced dishes.

Hex by Thomas Olde Heuvelt is a creepily delicious book that is perfect for late night reading. It starts out as a standard vengeful ghost story of a woman that was accused of witchcraft and executed. Her spirit now wanders through the streets of Black Spring. As you unravel through the intricate layers of the story, your perception over who is the true monster starts to shift. Not giving away any spoilers but the mob mentality in Hex reminded me of Marina Abramović's Rhythm 0 performance.

My very own Captain America hard at work fixing a whole bunch of Ikea stuff <3

Bits and Pieces

D finds it amusing that I usually teach Bubs based on hands on activities. When he was a toddler, I introduced the alphabet by letting him trace letter shapes in coloured salt on a tray and forming them with play dough. We explored addition and subtraction by counting marbles. Science was in the form of freezing tiny toys in ice blocks and using them as bath toys to see what could melt ice the fastest. 

She asked me to think of a fun concept to teach Malay.

Challenge accepted.

I present to you ... the penjodoh bilangan tray. Penjodoh bilangan is known as classifiers in English (I'd to Google that), eg: school of fishes, slice of bread, stick of butter. I wrote some commonly used penjodoh bilangan from his textbook, such as biji, batang, etc and gathered objects for him to match them to the correct classifier.

Bubs was excited because we usually use workbooks to practise Malay. He was hard at work grouping the items together.

The only tricky bit I had was including 1 of his milk tooth as an object (sebatang gigi if you wanted to know).

"Mummy, I thought the Tooth Fairy took my tooth away!"

Just finished Everything, Everything by Nicola Yoon. It's an easy read with short chapters and spiked with cute illustrations but really thought provoking.

My bonsais are in tip top shape at my dad's friend's bonsai spa :)

My Daily Outfits: Flower Power

Hubs says that I'm the most predictable person ever and my clothes are no exception. "There, you see," he pointed at my wardrobe. "It's either in blue, lace or florals!" After my last shopping spree, I could see his point ;) This was my last week's outfits, all in flower power. 

I know, peplums are probably wayyyyy low on the fashion barometer now but what's not to love about a little skirt at your waist that hides a jelly belly? Not to mention the pretty floral print on this fitted Miss Selfridge sleeveless top that reminds me of Chinese New Year red packets and the fact that it's lined inside as well.

I wore it for Bub's birthday party with skinny dark denim and can't wait to try it with either a pencil or a flared skirt.

This Warehouse skirt made my heart skip a beat the moment I first laid eyes upon it. A pale blue background with fat, pink blooms and yellow bumblebees in an A line cutting. It's going for 50% on the website but it doesn't ship to Malaysia plus it was part of the new arrivals and I was paranoid that by the time it went on sale, there wouldn't be any sizes left so I used my additional 15% discount on the Topshop card to grab it.

I like the bright and cheery colours though I wish it came with pockets. It has a front split for ease of walking and is midi length on me.

This Zara blue striped with lace cut outs is slightly cropped on me, I usually wear it with high waist jeans or skirts but it was a hot, sunny day so I popped on a pair of shorts with it.

Fun Science: Dyed Flowers

This is one of the prettiest science experiments we've done in a while: showing how plants "drink" water from the ground using capillary action.

You'll need:
White flowers
Food dye
Jars of water

Drop food dye into different jars filled with water. The more concentrated the mixture is, the brighter the colours of the flowers will be.

Bubs carefully jotted down his experiment in his journal.

He observed how the flowers slowly started getting coloured the next day.

Day 3 before we called it quits. The white petals showed up light streaks of colour which were more concentrated at the base of the petals. Ours was a bit of a failure because we didn't use put in enough food dye but it was still fascinating for Bubs to observe the changes which didn't photograph too well.

Bubs had fun though and we're thinking of going ahead with the next variations: dyeing celery stems!

3 things

The 3 things that made my week.

If you regularly work with process flows, this genius chalkboard menu at Spade Burger will definitely get a chuckle from you. And the burgers ... mmmm *burger coma* plus the fries. Let's just say that although on the pricey side, this has resulted in many repeated visits for us.

Because flowers never fail to cheer me up and I'm now tempted to pop down to the wholesaler's to add more blooms.

Even though Hubs think that we have way too many plates from Daiso, I couldn't say no to this lil pink bunny. Bubs and I fight each other for the exclusive use of this plate :)

Mother's Day

I was surprised with a small posy of flowers for Mother's Day and put our collection of jam and pasta jars to good use. One of the labels couldn't be properly removed so I stuck a piece of discarded wrapping paper around it ;) Bubs helped to decorate his little chalkboard and hey presto, instant Mother's Day cheer.

Bubs made this at kindy. I asked if he was driving a car in the picture? Nooo, Mummy, he waggled his finger at me sternly, we're going cherry picking!

No fancy meals but a very satisfying lunch that included a very cute blushing onigiri, rojak, chendul (Hub's and Bub's staple) and nutmeg spiked ice kacang.

And the best gift of all: my lil guy that taught me what it's like to love unconditionally. Happy Mother's Day to all!

3 Things

Some of the stuff, new and old, that made my week :)

My Mum found all my old books for me kept in boxes at their place and I've been excavating them to bring them home bit by bit. These brought back so many memories for me. I think most kids of the 80s in Singapore and Malaysia will remember the Mooty series. These were my first introduction to Asian literature and I remember being in awe that I could relate so well to a book that had the lead character in Japanese slippers and cicak (lizards).

This butterfly pea flower for blossoming. I found the pods from a neighbour's plant and grew them from seed. It's cute that even though I never told Bubs the name of the flower, he exclaimed "it looks like a butterfly!" The only downside is that the flowers only last for about a day before wilting.

We have finally packed up Bub's cot because it was getting far too tiny for him. Instead of training him to sleep on his own in his room, we shifted his mattress over to our room *blushes* yes, we are still co-sleeping. We were worrying initially that he'd miss his cosy little cot that he has slept in since birth. He did shed a tear or two when we packed it up but the moment he saw his bed sandwiched between the wardrobe and our bed, he became so excited.

Bangkok: Part 2

The conference I was at was held at the same hotel we were staying at so that made commuting a whole lot easier.

We had a lavish breakfast spread at the hotel every morning. I sneaked All Bran into Bub's Koko Crunch while I tried the most amazing pairing since peanut butter and chocolate: crispy bacon drizzled with maple syrup and fluffy pancakes. Oh mannnnnn ...

The views at the conference room were stunning, just take a look at the wash area.

While I was hard at work, Hubs took Bubs to the aquarium at Siam Paragon. He took the late savers discount package (be sure to pay online 24 hours in advance) which was a pretty good deal so you could just have dinner directly after the aquarium.

Bubs freaked out when he saw this gigantic shark heading towards them. Hubs had to explain the concept of glass and aquariums to him.

 

He freaked out again when he had to step onto the glass walkway with sea creatures swimming below. Hubs coaxed Bubs onto it with an ice cream bribe.

There was a glass-bottomed boat ride which Hubs declined once he heard that there were sharks. Lily livered, both of them ;) 

We had a work dinner at the Tawandang German Brewery which was a massive beer hall filled with a mixture of locals and tourists. The German-Thai fusion food was really good. That was one of the best pork knuckles I've ever had. I may or may not have had several generous helpings of the crackling *shifty eyes*

The place has live performances throughout dinner, from Thai dances to American love songs. The performance of the night was a live musical of the romantic horror Nang Nak. All of the girls at our table had shivers down our spines and mumbled something about sleeping with the lights on that night!

Bangkok has heaps of street food on all street corners. What surprised me was that all of the vendors used charcoal to cook which is a dying art in Penang. I also love how bottled water and soft drinks were sold in glass bottles.

There were fresh flowers sold everywhere. 

We even managed a tuk tuk ride on a small side road that didn't have much traffic. I gripped tightly on to Bubs, my bag and the handrail - all in that order.

It was fun going shopping for snacks. We filled our cart with lots of Thai Lays in exotic flavours while Bubs couldn't resist taking a closer peek at roasted pork belly on display.

And a quick roundup of our loot included:

Thai Lays which comes in a variety of Asian flavours: chilli squid, spicy lobster. Tear inducing tom yum instant noodles.

And this cute, 50s style pansy print skirt for myself :)

Getting Ready for Chinese New Year

A sneak peek into our Chinese New Year preparations.

We made mini treat boxes for Bub's teachers at school. It wasn't anything fancy, just filled with teeny tiny mandarins (they are so cute; I can't stop snacking on them) and chocolate treats. My pint sized volunteer was more interested in trying to sample the wares then do any actual packing. I dissuaded him by telling him that those were "spicy biscuits" ... which didn't quite work out well when the next day, he happily distributed the treat boxes to the teachers telling them they were "oranges and spicy biscuits". Let's hope the teacher didn't think I was trying to poison them!

Bubs scribbled Happy Chinese New Year on the side of the boxes before getting bored and drew dragons on them. For those that were asking, the treat boxes are a free pdf download from this cool blog.

Cutting out fish shaped cheese crackers using this fool proof recipe.

Channeled my inner Martha Stewart by making tissue paper flowers. Bubs had fun helping me pick dried tree branches. "Jump higher, Mummy!".

Ta-daaaa! I'm especially proud of Bub's glass jar, fire cracker and fingerprint painting that he made at school.