Abby Recommends: Tickety Tock

These are the books Missy is currently hooked at. She has been able to name 1-14 eloquently in sequence with no problem and currently attempting to go up to 20 by randomly picking the number she knows (or created) to end with a –teen and eventually with ‘twenty’. Most of the time, she did that for fun when she goes up and down the stairs. I have a couple of books teaching young children about time to which I have yet started reading it to her as I give her the freedom to pick the books she wanted to be read. Until recently, she has been picking this ‘clock book’ (the way she puts it) or sometimes fondly call it as ‘Ticketee Thock mouse’ and requested me to read it to her for few nights consecutively. Of course, I am more than happy to oblige to her request.

She preferred Tickety Tock over Usborne ‘Telling the time’ most of the nights (at the moment). Although I am an Usborne big fan myself, I personally find Tickety Tock is more attractive when it comes to teaching time to the little fella. The minute and hour hands are much sturdier, and they do produce a short creaking sound which added some sound effect when the little hand attempted to move the hands during the learning process. She can tell the time hourly (i.e ‘eight o’cock’) with guidance and especially confident when she sees familiar numbers especially 1,2,3, and 8 but still mixing up 6 and 9 nowadays.

On top of the analogue clock, there’s a rotating cardboard wheel on the bottom for the analogue time. Missy loves moving the hands on the analogue one and rotating the digital one after another. Besides, the adorable graphics which featured a pair of cute mice can directly be related to a toddler/kid’s routine from waking up, having breakfast, go to school, playtime at the playground (Missy’s favourite part), lunch, story time before nap, being picked up from school at 3 pm and more. This is certainly a good point where I slowly pre-empted Missy about the idea of having lunch, story time and napping together with other kids next year as I am thinking of enrolling her for a full day class next year. At this point, Missy loved saying “Mommy come back fast-fast and say hi Abby”. So far, she has been giving me positive response and fingers crossed till the day comes.

2016 in a review

Twenty-sixteen had been a great one for all of us in the family. Albeit there was no spectacular nor outstanding achievements as far as I could remember, but I intend to jot what we have come along thus far. Over the second half of the year, my girl has developed a reading habit, attended RE Sunday Classes as an underaged and had her first on-stage performance in October and another one last night during Thanksgiving Night Service, and is semi-successfully potty trained (Dec 2016), having her monthly progress fully updated throughout the year (17th-28th months) these were probably the main highlight of 2016.

After Thanksgiving Night dinner at church 

For the family, we have survived two road trips back to my hometown (Sept & Dec 2016). Back then, I would be the first to go against long hours of road trip. I used to be very apprehensive and intimidated just by the idea of being a passenger for a 5-6 hours of journey. But, the experience we gained had proved me wrong.

On a personal front, I have failed to complete my dissertation on time and had been requesting for an extension, did not complete my racing car and is dubious of myself if I can complete them before CNY 2017 (because we acquired the set during our previous CNY 2016) and let alone my long-overdue wedding photobooks which I intend to complete. Somehow, the bible verse that goes ‘You can make many plans, but the Lord’s purpose will prevail (Proverbs 19:21)’ is certainly right. In contrary to the ‘failures’ or delays above, I have graduated for one more time in last Sept 2016. Holidays throughout 2014 and 2015 spent for attending courses as early as Missy was barely 3 months old has officially ended. I am utterly grateful for the support and constant prayers from my beloved husband and family members. Not to mention, the in-laws who sacrificed their sleep to look after Missy overnight when she was younger.

Not having my racing car completed may be a convenient excuse to giving way to the boss to display his numerous addition of ‘cars’ (the way Missy puts them) and many other Lego buildings including a ferris wheel, carousel and a Disneyland! Talking about display, we certainly need a new platform for our mini township. Besides, I managed to develop part of our Hong Kong trip in 2013 into 4R pieces via Pixajoy (Dec 2016). I am very pleased with the end result and foreseeing myself coming back for their services soon. Such a convenience at our fingertips. On top of that, I have embarked into sewing. Loving this new hobby of mine and I am hopeful if I can come up with more projects soon rather than just altering/repairing :P

Looking forward to a better year in twenty-seventeen and Abby will be registering for Kindy in March 2017 (almost one year ahead) as she will be entering a new chapter in her life in 2 years down the road. I am wishful that I can allow her to enjoy her toddlerhood with more fun activities before writing and spelling come into the picture. Time to get a bandana with ‘Getting Organised’ mantra printed on it. Hehe. How time flies! Today is the first blank page of a brand new 365 pages book. Let's write a good one.  

LEGO fever is back!

This week had been a stressful and challenging one. Finally, I am glad that weekdays had come to a dawn and I finally wave Hi to weekend days where I can spend a little bit more time to work on this, my new project :)

Both the boss and I (Missy too with her LEGO Duplo sets!) are LEGO fans. During our recent trip back to KK for CNY, the boss had itchy hands when we came across with a third party set, Decool Famous Car which was sold with just a fraction of an original LEGO Technic set. Out of curiosity, we grabbed the biggest set available on the shelf.  But, in order to keep himself as a true blue original LEGO fan, he presented the set to me instead and challenged me to assemble them while in the meantime, he is diligently working on his LEGO technic Crawler Crane, a new addition to his LEGO Technic family. Being a newbie to Technic series, my progress was started more than a week ago but was lackadaisically surpassed by the boss in less than an hour span :P

I am currently sparing a few minutes of time on a day (if possible) and usually manage to complete a maximum of a couple of steps before heading to meet up Missy and for dinner at Ah Tai’s. I am reminding myself not to compare myself with the boss’ progress instead giving myself a year time span and we’ll see how far I can go. Shall time permits, I will keep my progress documented from time to time :)

Abby's first porridge

This is my maiden attempt in preparing porridge for my girl. My SIL handed me a packet of baby grains during my last visit to her place after my course sometime in March 2015. I first introduced her to puree when she was in her 7th month. And, she had her first taste on porridge at 9th month old (May 2015). After much research and read ups, I finally feel motivated and decided to start her on plain porridge before introducing meats or other vege in her diet. This is how I cooked her porridge (after asking around/ doing researches from the Internet on how to cook porridge in a small portion):

Baby grains containing organic calrose white rice, organic pearl black rice, organic Thailand brown rice, organic long grain rice and sweet millets.

The recommended consistency is 1:5 (rice : water) ratio. Thus, I measured a half of a 2/3 cup with 5 halves of water of the same cup.

Rinse the grains and soak them with filtered drinking water, best for an hour before cooking. But I skipped this stage after 10 minutes or so due to time constraint.

Since I didn’t soak the grains long enough, I used boiling water to soften as well as to accelerate cooking process.

 Once cooked, I pureed them with my Ladyship essence extractor, which to me was a gem. It is not only sturdy but safe to blend even when the porridge is still piping hot. 

Verdict: I didn’t expect my girl to take the plain porridge so well. I am a happy mommy! I will make it a point to restock after this :)

Snowing in a Bottle

Take a guess on what is the content inside the bottle which looks very much like a snow globe. This is actually virgin coconut oil in the midst of its freezing process. This bottle of natural goodness had been sitting idle on my shelves for more than half a decade. Coconut oil was claimed to benefit the skin, especially in defying age in a natural way and works wonder with its moisturizing effect. However, I have never put it into use due to its unique smell, to which I find a little disturbing.

Just in case you didn’t know,coconut oil has a freezing point as low as 24 Celsius degree (via here). That elucidates why it started to form snow flakes within the first couple of hours in an air-conditioned room of 25 Celsius degree. Each time when I wake up in the morning, the content in the bottle has turned into a white solid and turns back into its  initial liquid state when it gets warmer.

Happy Purchases

We were out for few nights consecutively earlier this month to do some last minute back-to-uni shopping for my sister. We were all aiding her with her stuff's hunting, yet; once in a while, I managed to steal some time into some outlets and grab several necessary-but-not-so-urgent stuff as well as unnecessary stuff for myself. Below are part of the few stuff of mine that made me grinning from ear to ear :P.

One of them was a jewelry case from Daiso. Apparently, this looks nothing much but a typical plastic case that one may find anywhere; unfortunately, all that I have come across thus far were either too small, too few numbers of compartments or with single cover (the kind single-lid-covers-all), to which I would usually get to store my craft's stuff. This purchase is what I wanted exactly to store my accessories; with individual cover and spacious enough for my fingers to dig in :).

And, something totally out from my list; Delicia nail enamel/varnish from Daiso. I am no nail expert, but I fell in love with its very-easy-to-apply brush. I am not sure how specialist would define a good nail enamel is like, but to someone with very limited of nail painting experience, the friendly brush would be the first criteria. Painting can be done in a jiffy and I *heart* the cute looking bottle and I also very pleased with its finished outcome too; smooth, even and sufficient with single coat. The best part was it's almost odourless :) I think I can put on hold for the thought of getting the 5 in 1 Nail Coat by Lelan Vital at the moment. *stingy* :P

Loreal Smooth-Intense leave-in serum. I was first introduced to this product by Kuo, and I remembered that forthe first time using it, I fell in love immediately with it and had been pestering her to bring that over to the class forthe first few days before I managed my very own first bottle that weekend. One bottle of 100ml can last me for more than one whole year despite me washing my hair on a daily basis :). When we went into Guardian, I decided to buy and keep another bottle, for I have about 2cm left in the bottle which I presumed could last me maybe for about 20 pumps more or less. The price was RM38.XX according to the label attached to the rack. I just thought to myself ‘not too bad, after more than one year they have only increased their price for no more than 6%,this time with a sleeker design some more’ thereafter headed to the counter for payment, to my utter surprise, the price in the cashier counter showed RM27.XX, I thought my eyes were playing a trick on me. Not wanting to be detained upon leaving the counter and asked for the balance at the exit point, I reconfirm with the cashier and was told that discount labels displayed wasn’t updated and the price scanned was correct amount after discount. How to not feel ecstatic about such a bargain? =)

Not done with the serum drama, the prawn head-ness syndrome in me has never subsided to one lesson after another. Sigh. I have been procrastinating from mentioning about this happy purchase of mine as I have ‘lost’ my newly bought serum until today, after some frantic search up and low (I realized its missing only last week), I finally found it lying underneath my trashes inside a Daiso plastic bag I hung by my desk, the moment when I was about to throw that plastic which was full to the brim :P

On another day at different Guardian outlet nearby my home, while strolling around aimlessly waiting for the rest to settle the payment at the cashier counter, my sister called out for me to go over to the front counter and ask if I am interested with these classy little tin cases. Yes, she knows very well that I am a sucker for all sort of tin cases, especially if they come along with products we purchase. Talk about frugality ;P. I quicken my steps towards the counter. Once again, I couldn’t believe my eyes that less than 10 tins of limited-edition Kotex Luxe were sold with only RM1.88 per unit, can you believe that? I couldnt believe it myself too. Apparently, because many of them were dented and scratched and new batch of packaging will be released soon. They were too winsome to resist. I had hard time selecting 3 tins (2 for myself) that were still in 99% perfect condition. So, okay-lah, I am going to give myself the consent to use only one tin and the rest will be kept until … *shudder*. :)

Sparklicious Sparkling Affair

Since young, I was exposed to the fact that gold doesn’t tarnish and it has been prized for its beauty, resistance towards chemical attack and high workability. But, I have definitely overlooked the fact that they can be dulled over the time by the oil excreted by our skin, cosmetics, body lotions and so forth. Since necklaces were prohibited during our school days, I started to put on mine right after I graduated from my high school and have never taken off since then. My necklace still sparkles until today and I was adamant that my necklace has not dulled after so many years and I do not need any cleanser or any alike detergent.

Only until recently, when my mom brought her necklace for its hook fixing, my sister took the opportunity to clean wash her necklace. Upon touching home, when I compared mine with hers; my oh my, I have no way to defy the fact that my still-sparkling-necklace has dulled by so so much. I had been kinda planning for a trip to the goldsmith since that. But before I managed a trip to the goldsmith, my sister gifted me a bottle of jewellery cleaner from Powermax (a Cosway product) as a birthday gift and I gave that a try that very evening.

Believe it or not, my jaws went dropping and this bottle of magic liquid were truly magical! It keeps its promises as claimed on its reverse side of the bottle. The added advantages on my point of view were its quick action, causing no skin allergy to my sensitive fingers and applicable for costume jewelry too (It worked equally significant from the reviews I read/saw. I have yet tried it on my own collection. Based on my previous and my only experience with previous jewellery cleaner many years back, I have no way to clean my tarnished costume jewelleries as it was only applicable for pure gold and authentic silver). This also explains why I have never been bothered with this earlier despite numerous visits to Cosway outlets :). But, this is indeed a wonderful experience worth sharing and you can save by 50% by owning a bottle of jewellery cleaner than visiting a goldsmith for one cleansing session ;)

Technology withdrawal

I have been suffering from cracked skin mainly on my index finger on the right for more than 2 weeks now. It all began with some minor shedding of skin and my finger tips turned coarser, before they turn dry and itchy thereafter. Started from last week, they tend to get sore and bleed as a result for excessive cracking. In fact, this is not entirely unusual for me, as it occurs on seasonal basis (although we don’t have winter season that contributes to dry skin).

I have tried several hand creams or ointment and currently I prefer to stick on Bio oil, to ease the dryness and most importantly, I like the non-greasy feeling it offers. At the moment, I am punching the keyboard with 9 fingers, I am grateful; at least I don’t have to resort with technology withdrawal :).