Love is more than 3 words

Today is my White Knight, my Only One, my Gold Medal husband's birthday. Happy Birthday to you, 老公. Thanks for making me your wife, thanks for giving me the two wonderful princesses, thanks for the home, the love, the care, the support, and everything.

He is not Angry Bird's fan.

Because his daughters like Angry Bird, he had to happily accept the Angry Bird cake as his birthday cake.

April and May sang Happy Birthday songs to their beloved Papa, Papa had just arrived home shortly from KL.

 He purposely teased the girls and yawned while listening to them singing the Happy Birthday song.

I have started this post with Thank You, should I end this post with I Love You?

I always think that love is more than these 3 little words. I just want to say this, "Please marry me again in your next life." and I wish you good health always and forever.

"Love is more than three words mumbled before bedtime. Love is sustained by action, a pattern of devotion in the things we do for each other every day." - Nicholas Sparks

Love bread

Love bread is the google translate answer that I got for 爱心面包.  After seeing Barb and Alice Law's version of  love bread. Here is my version.

I used Gardenia wholemeal bread. Remove eadge and apply margarine on the bottom piece of bread. Sprinkle a bit of sugar at each corner.

 Sprinkle  some colourful balls on the heart and star shapes.

 I told my daughters, heart shape is 爱 and star shape is 星(心). So, this is 爱心面包.

 April gobbled down 2 sets, 4 pieces of breads as her snack before bedtime.

May kept asking me questions like, "Mummy, are you making this bread for me? " , "Is this for me, mummy?"

They must be surprised to see their mother's creativity.

This is the good thing that we get to learn and share through blogging. I love this idea very much.

They are young songwritters

Aunties, uncles, brothers and sisters, please spare some time to listen to this very infamous Chinese nursery rhymes ”三轮车“ (Tricycle). The first two versions were the original lyrics, then it followed by the lyric which was scripted by April and May.

I was amazed when they sang the song to me. When I asked them  how they could get so many version of   ”三轮车“, they just told me they got the inspiration from the book that they read in school.

I love it very much and take it as a surprise that my children give me.

Output is finally more than input

2 weeks after Hari Raya, my company let all the employees had a feast on Malay Raya food in the club house.

Before the celebration was started, my mind had wandered to the club house. While doing my programming work, I could already smell the Chicken Rendang, Lemang, Nasi Himpit and Laksa.

Nonetheless, I still needed to withstand the temptation. I tried very best to focus on my job on hand. That day, it took specially long to reach the lunch time.

I took a bowl of laksa, chicken rendang, lemang and fruit. I again took some rendang and nasi himpit at the second round.

Yours truly and colleagues.

Back at home, exactly 9 hours after this Raya celebration lunch, the sign of food poisoning emerged. I had unbearable stomach cramps, which made me run to the toilet. It took me approximately 20 minutes in the first visit at the throne, and then it followed by 2nd, 3rd, 4th visits.... I had lost count how many visit. After purging, I showered my bum with water,  as my bum was very painful and I didn't dare to wipe it anymore.

Then, I still could watch 2 chapters of Laughing Sir with my husband safely. I thought that I had detoxified all the toxins before I went to bed.  In the mid of the night, the abdominal pain  made me feel like having the labour contraction. I didn't look at the clock, I only remembered that I jumped up twice to sit on the throne.

TVB drama (Edited poster)

Every time I had a feast on food, I would worry that my input is more than output. Only this time, I had no worry. The output was definitely more than the input. I didn't shit for the next couple of days due to the excessive purging on that day. After 3 days only my purging system was back to the normal.

A not blue Monday

Today is the Monday that

1. I am not yawning away. I usually yawned the moment I woke up from my bed and the hour I reached office. My kids and I skipped the beauty nap on Sunday afternoon. I forced them to go to bed at 9.30pm, and I followed them to sleep early too that night.

2. I ate a piece of Hershey's chocolate after lunch. A colleague came back from Langkawi trip. He is kind to buy us some chocolate. I have actually banned myself from taking chocolate for quite some time, because chocolates cause weight gained and acne.

3. I go to gym after work. I only go to gym in the morning which I don't work. I seldom go to gym right after work. This weekend, I have something on that I can't go to gym, so I have to go today to make the output equivalent to the input.

4. A long silence best friend who was married to a very loaded man in Singapore. After she has 4 kids, we have almost lost touched with each other. Today, she reconnect with me through FB. She told me that she will pay a visit to my house in December. I am looking forwards to the date.

5. My husband called me in the morning. He asked me "Did you sleep well last night?".

Not all Mondays are blue. 19.9.2011 isn' t blue.

Music is in the air at my house

April had officially dropped her UCMAS Arithmetic lesson and started her piano lesson in last Jun. She is currently engaged in tuition (3 days a week), Art lesson, Table Tennis training ( 3 days a week and Piano lesson. She even requested me to sign her up to the Ballet course a few months ago. I rejected her request this time, as I couldn't find any free time slot for her anymore.

It was quite a painful decision for me to drop her from the UCMas lesson, that she has learned the Division Equation, which will eventually allow her to proceed to the Intermediate level.

April is currently in Theory Music 2 and Piano Level 1 lesson now. I kept stressing to her music teacher that I do not want her to bring back any theory homework, and I do not want her to sit for the piano exam. I just want her to learn piano for fun. Am I weird?

On the other hand, May has finished her Music for Little Mozarts book 1, and now she is using book 2. They both are taking part in the mini piano concert soon.

In order to let them practise the piano, I bought this Yamaha piano from their music teacher. This piano was previously belong to the teacher herself, and it was strictly teacher-used piano.

 April and May love the piano very much.

I told them that they can play the piano any time they like, and they do not need to ask for my permission like they want to use computer or watch TV.

I want them having interest in playing piano. I want them to be able to release their study tension through playing piano. I want them to appreciate music and songs as much as I do. I want to enjoy the music in the air at my house.

I love this piano as much as my children do, as this is the first musical intrument in my house.

Happy Mid Autumn Festival 2011

Due to rainy season and busy schedule, my daughters didn't get to play lanterns until last Friday.

May's Kindergarten hold the Mid Autumn Celebration on last Friday. Before performance started, we took part in the lantern parade.

So glad that Big and Little Chi, Yvonne and hubby were also joining the parade.

Class by class performance began after the parade. May participated in two dances.

April was the loyal audience of the night, paying full attention to her sister's performance.

Weekend evening, we went to Lake Garden to join the crowd and feel the Mid Autumn Festival atmosphere. Again, the girls got to play lanterns and candles.

We were doing picnic under the moonlight. I brought mooncakes, drinks, steamed ground nuts, 'Bak Kua' and jelly.

April was getting braver when holding the candle. She wasn't like this brave a year ago.

Many stalls there in the park, selling lanterns, candles, drinks, food, and fire crackers.

I bumped into Hayley and other department colleagues, having picnic there too.

It was a very happening weekend, it had even more excitement than CNY. Not only Chinese, other races also joined in the fun and carried lanterns.

It will be perfect, if everyone is well aware of the cleanliness of the environment, as I could see rubbish after the crowd left.

April and May enjoyed the festival to its fullest. I had to bath them at 22:30 to wash away their sweat and dirt.

They ran here and there, watching people playing fire works and sky lanterns.

Tonight, we will have celebration at my PIL house.

What about you?

Hair accessories for my daughters

Many times, when I stopped and looked for hair accessories, the seller would say thing like 'This hair clip is to tie hair up and then like this...., but your hair is short ah.........' , then I would proudly declare, 'No problem, I am not buying for myself, I buy for my daughters.'

So, I bought and bought and bought many hair accessories, and now I should have collected enough to open a big stall and sell them at the nearby pasar market. lol!

I bought this last week at RM5 only.

It is to tie around the donut bun.

This is to tie a pony tail when I am too lazy to decorate their hair.

This is the leopard print butterfly knot.

All these were purchased in the month of August, and all together cost me RM25. They ain't  very cheap.

Banana pancakes

I had made pancakes many times, but most of the time I only mixed the plain flour, baking powder, eggs, milk, sugar and margarine to make the batter. This time, I used the ready packed pancake flour which  was only needed to add water.

Since I had some bananas on my dining table, I wanted to make banana pancakes for my girls as their supper.

This pancake flour that I bought came in 2 small packets. I used only 1 packet which could make 12 pieces of pancakes, if I followed the measurement stated in the instruction correctly. I blended 1 banana and the pancake flour with 250 ml of water, and the batter was ready.

Heat up the pan, and melt the Snow brand margarine in the pan, pour in the batter and pan fry the pancake one by one.

I had eventually made exactly 12 pieces of pancakes. My two girls stood next to the stove watching me frying the pancakes. They couldn't wait to lay their hands on the banana pancakes, when its aroma  started to fill the air in the whole house.

Out of 12 pieces, April took 4 pieces, May took 2 pieces, my husband took 5.5 pieces and I took only 0.5 piece. I wanted to sleep in a bit late on the next morning, as I had dragged myself up early and jogged like a crazy horse on the treadmill for the past two mornings.

Yellow food

Enough said all my failure attempts in cooking, I better share some of my succeed stories, before you label me as bad cook.

1. Mangoes jelly

This was the 3rd time I made Konnyaku jelly. So, it was an easy job for me. I put in fresh mangoes in the mould, as I bought the mangoes flavour jelly powder.

Success rate: 99.9%
Success reason: My princesses finished all the pieces in less than 24 hours.

2. Sweet pumpkin and sago dessert

Slice pumpkin, blend it with a cup of water, boil it in a pot of water with some pandan leaves, add in evaporated milk, sugar (depend on your liking), a pinch of salt. Stir every thing and let it boil. Put in sago and let it boil for another 20 minutes. Off the fire and serve. I love it to be chilled, so I kept it in the fridge and took it right after my work out. 

Success rate: 70%
I put in too many sago, and it became quite thick. I gave some to my gym partner, she thanked me profusely after tasting it.

3. Pumpkin and tomatoes spaghetti source
This was my daughters and my lunch on the Sunday before the holiday ended. I made use of the remaining pumpkin, as I would stop cooking until weekend is here again.

I blended pumpkin, 4 tomatoes (seeds removed), 1 big onion, 5 cloves of garlic with half cup of water.

I add in a pinch of salt, 2 big table spoons of tomatoes source and 3 big table spoons of  traditional spaghetti source. Boil everything in the wok. The pasta that I used here was the ribbon type one.

Success rate: 85%

Although it didn't taste like Bolognese or AGLIO OLIO,  it tasted like sweet sour source.  Furthermore, my princesses finished their lunch fast and no fuss, I was much happy seeing them down with spoon and spoon of pumpkin and tomatoes puree.

Roll, roll, roll my Sushi

Thanks folks for all your very kind words and support in my cooking attempts, though the ice-cream moon cakes got "ripped off skins" showing the "flesh inside" like what [SK] has sincerely said. lol!

Here my second plan executed on the Sunday evening before Hari Raya.

1. Get ready all the ingredients,

• giant sheet seaweed
• Japanese rice - boil 2 cups of rice and 2 cups of water,add in salt and sugar.
• sushi mat
• eggs - fried omelet.
• lime - squeeze the juice on the cooked rice, to replace rice vinegar. 
• carrot - cut into sticks and steam for 10 minutes.
• a pinch of salt - put into the rice.
• a tablespoon of sugar - put into the rice.

This giant sheet seaweed is RM8. It contains of 12 sheets of seaweed, each sheet is packed separately.

2. Lay the seaweed on the sushi mat, which had wrapped with cling paper to prevent it from getting dirty. Spread the rice evenly on the seaweed.

3. Put a slice of omelet and carrot stick on the rice. Since it was my first attempt, I only put in very simple ingredients.

4. Roll, roll, roll my sushi.

The picture above is only showing the nicer ones. Those very ugly ones, I had swallowed into my stomach before my two princesses returned from their art class. Damn it, I actually ate almost 1 cup of rice which I would normally consume that much of amount in 3 days. Thus, I dragged myself up an hour earlier to the gym on the next morning.

My princesses commented that it tasted ok, but it was ugly.  T____T.

April took 4 pieces and May took 2 pieces.

Success rate: 35%
Failure reason: Rice was not enough moisture.
Second time, I put in more water when cooking rice. 1 cup of rice with 2 cup of water.
I didn't put in any ingredient, as my princesses only like to eat the sushi rice.

This time the rice was actually more sticky, it was easier to roll.
Success rate: 40%.

Do you think I will try for the 3rd time? I seriously need more skills before I try again. Anyone, please give me some insight. I will be very thankful.

After taking one piece of plain sushi, they opted to munch on the very crispy seaweed.

They commented that the seaweed was very yummy and totally forgot about the plain sushi. Again, I needed to swallow all the sushi and woke up an hour earlier on next morning to exercise.