8 Random Things About Me

Slavemom and Adrine have given me this tag. Thanks, friends. :) Let's hope we can get to know each other better here.

Well, here are the 8 random things about me:

1. I'm the eldest in the family. I have a younger brother and a younger sister.

2. I'm short-sighted since the age of 20. My degree of short-sightedness is consider quite low but I still need to wear glasses. I wear disposable contact lenses to work and put on my glasses once I reach home and during the weekends.

3. I had meningitis when I was around 3 months old. Not too sure whether it was caused by bacteria or viruses. But it was a serious one and I thank god that I survived the ordeal. It was truly a terrible nightmare for my young parents then.

4. I'm a very emotional person and I’ll get hurt very easily.

5. I love spicy food and I have to replenish my supply of chilli padi in the fridge every week.

6. I can't drive a manual car.

7. I'm very fussy about cleanliness and tidiness particularly in my house.

8. I traveled to New Zealand together with hubby for our honeymoon in year 2000. Both of us went for NZ’s most famous bungee jumping at Skippers Canyon Bridge, Queenstown. Crazy or not??

Now, I wish to tag the following blogger friends of mine:
Oliveoylz, Ling and Leona

Looking forward to know you all better :)

Fantastic Four

Olive passed me this lovely tag. Thanks.

Four places I go over and over:
- my home, sis-in-law's house, office, market

Four people who email me regularly:
- hubby, colleagues, friends, sister

Four of my favorite places to eat:
- Tai Thong (dim sum), Panettone, chinese restaurants nearby my house and my house (home-cooked food)

Four places you’d rather be:
- New Zealand, Japan, Europe and Australia

Four TV shows I could watch over and over:
- No, I have never watched any TV shows over and over again

Four people I think will respond:
- Leona, Irene, Suesue and Doreen

Learning To Button Up

Sharlene is learning to button up her clothes recently. The only time she can practise doing this is when she’s putting on her pyjamas at night.

A few nights ago after I'd brushed her teeth, she put on this pyjamas herself and tried to button up. She managed to button up the first button quite fast and went on to the second one. She had some difficulty at this point but refused to give up when I offered to help her. From a standing position she proceeded to sit down on the floor trying very hard to put the tiny button through the tiny buttonhole. Each time when she’s almost able to do it she missed it again. :(


Still trying her best to button up here. While she was struggling there I took out a vest from her closet and told her to put this on instead. This hand-me-down vest from her cousin has bigger buttons, which is easier for her to grip. Moreover, she’d successfully buttoned up this vest before.


Finally, she managed to button up her vest and was happy with her achievement. She even shouted, Yes, I did it!

Blueberry Muffin

I had baked some blueberry muffins for Sharlene’s class party on the last day of school. As I mentioned earlier, I pondered for days...what to buy? what to buy for her?...before I decided on this. It struck my mind that I still have a packet of muffin mix and thought this would be the easiest thing to do. Furthermore, I have all the other ingredients at home. :) I started baking once I got home on the night before the class party and that was about 6.30pm. Put aside my handbag and rushed to the kitchen to gather the required stuff.

At the same time, Sharlene came over, greeted me with her sweetest smile and happily said, mummy, let’s go out for a walk. Oh, how I wished to bring her out. She was rather disappointed when I told her that we couldn’t go out on that day but soon after I told her that we are going to bake muffins for her to bring to school, she forgot about the going out issue and couldn't be more happy to follow me around the kitchen. Kids just love to have fun!!

Well, here are the ingredients needed for the muffins:


1 packet of blueberry muffin mix, 3 large eggs, melted butter (I only used half of the butter) and some full cream milk.

First of all, I melt the butter and let it cool. To hasten the process, I put the pot of melted butter over a basin of cold water. Next, throw in the muffin mix, eggs and milk into a mixing bowl. Mix them well. Later add in the cool melted butter and combine them into a smooth mixture. That’s about all, so simple and fast!

The almost ready mixture. Sharlene helped to stir the mixture before I transfer them into individual muffin cups for baking.

Even though it's simple, the beginning part wasn’t quite easy with my girl’s constant requests to help. Here I’m rushing to complete the baking before everyone comes home and there she messed around with all the ingredients by cutting the butter, cracking the eggs, pouring the milk..etc, etc. The whole procedure got delayed because of this.

My little helper in action. She had pushed a pouffe into the kitchen and stood on it.

I took my dinner while waiting for the muffins to be ready. The muffins elevated so high for the first time. I was so worried that it would sink once it’s cool down.

The muffins were ready after 25 minutes later. And this is how it looks like. Please excuse me for the humble looking muffins, as I’m certainly not a pro in baking. Just loves to try out new recipes and bake some simple stuff for my family during my leisure time. The muffins did taste good nonetheless. :)

Lastly, I packed them individually and thereafter neatly stuffed them into a paper bag for her to bring to school the next day.

Breakfast @ Coffee Bean

My weekday breakfast in the office consists of 2 slices of wholemeal bread (pack from home) spread with butter and kaya, occasionally with peanut butter plus a cup of hot coffee. Boring, boring, boring .... hence this morning, something different for a change.

I went to Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf for breakfast together with my colleague and her daughter. It was my first time having breakfast at this outlet nearby my office. When I looked at the wide selection of breakfast menu at the counter, I really couldn’t make up my choice, as every set looks just so appetizing to me. Stood there for quite a while until the waitress asked me for my order again...haha, so embarrassing. Finally, I chose to have ‘Brek’ O Day – 2 sausages served with Panini bread, scrambled eggs, butter and jam and some fresh salad (RM13.80). My colleague and her daughter ordered Egg Club Sandwich (RM14.80) and Eggs Ben (RM13.80) respectively. All sets come with a free refill of coffee or tea. I love the free refill but didn’t go for it this time. :( Already late for office, so cannot afford to sit there and leisurely sip my cup of coffee. I wished I could enjoy my breakfast at a more relaxing mode. How nice if today is a weekend.

Today’s sumptuous and satisfying breakfast costs me RM14.50 after tax but it was worth it. Definitely will try out other range of their breakfast sets very soon. Next time, I will get hubby to go with me instead so that I don’t have to fork out my own money...haha!!

Sharlene Can Spell

Sharlene learns how to spell by looking at books and flashcards. Now she is able to spell quite a number of words by memory, most of it are 3 and 4-letter words like dog, cat, toy, egg, shop, fish, goat, kite, etc.

EGG is the first word she learnt to spell. And egg is also her favorite food..haha!


I used to teach her by showing her a picture with word, and then I point to the word and spell it out for her. After doing this with her for a few times, I will start to test her by asking "Sharlene, how to spell the word ....." without showing her the picture or words. I’m just so happy each time she knows how to spell a word correctly. :D I will correct her if she didn’t get it right at first.

Last night, she was meddling with her set of flashcards in my bedroom. After I came out from the bathroom, I sat beside her and randomly picked up a card (with a picture of xylophone) and I asked her how to spell the word xylophone. To my surprise, she spelt out the 9-letter word accurately! Sometime ago, I’ve taught her to spell this word. But frankly, I didn’t expect her to get it right as yesterday was the first time I tested her on this. Maybe, she’d learnt this in school. But anyhow, I was really glad she knows and praised her for getting the spelling right. Hopefully her interest in learning will never come to an end.

Last Day Of School

In a blink of an eye, Sharlene has completed her first year of pre-school. Today is the last day of school before the school closes for 7 long weeks. No lessons for today as they are having class party and parents are allowed to bring their kids home an hour earlier. Last night, I took out a dress for her to wear this morning and also prepared a small bag for her to bring to school. I put in her usual cutlery set and told her nanny to fill up a bottle of water for her before I left for office this morning.

It is a norm for every kid in the class to bring along an item, such as food, drinks or snacks for the class party. For this, parents have to crack their brains and think of something to buy for their little ones. Although this can be a simple task for some parents, I still have to ponder for days before I could decide. I'm quite bad in this. After thinking for a few days, I’ve finally decided to bake something. I did it last night after I got home from work. It was pretty quick and easy as I have all the ingredients at home and some 'assistance' from my girl. I shall post about it very soon...so stay tuned, ok. :)

What about you? Do you cook/bake or just buy food items for your kids' class party? Hopefully, I can get some ideas from experienced mommies out there :) Then, I do not have to crack my brain so hard the next time.

A New Habit

Lately, Sharlene has developed a new habit of wearing socks to bed every night. This habit was formed when she had runny nose and cough sometime beginning of last month. Her cough got worse during the night. During that time I applied Vicks on her chest, back and soles of her feet and put on a pair of socks before she went to sleep. This method helps her to sleep better in the night. Although now she has fully recovered from her cough, she still insists on wearing her socks to bed every night. I suppose the socks are keeping her feet warm and comfortable at night, especially when she’s sleeping in an air-cond room. Perhaps, I should try it out tonight...and who knows, I might like it too, haha.

Who's Hiding In The Box?

Sharlene is 100% diaper free since the beginning of this year. I use a box to store up her unused diapers.

She likes to remove the contents of the box and I presume you know the next thing she’s going to do...

While I was busy cleaning my room last Sunday, she entertained herself with this...and got me involved too.

Mummy, can you come and find Sharlene??


I knew she’s hiding inside the box but pretended I don’t know.

I acted as if I couldn’t find her.

After awhile, she tried to steal a look at me.

Where is mummy? Why I cannot see her?

Before she gets bored with the game, I quickly walked towards the box, pretended I’ve found her.

When I was about to open up the box, she happily declared that...

Mummy, I'm here.

Ahhhh… so nice to come out from the box and show my face….hee hee!

My Little Food Monster

Sharlene likes food a lot and I think she really wish to have her favorite food EVERYDAY. She would ask me this question, “Mummy, do you have something for me?” the moment I step into the house every evening. Her 'something' means food, of course.

What happened was one evening I brought home one of her favorite foods (I couldn’t recalled what was the food I got for her as it was quite long ago) and I called out to her... “Sharlene, mummy has got something for you here.” I bet you know what was her reaction then. So from that day onwards she has been asking me this question (whether I bought back anything for her to eat or not) everyday.

When it comes to food Sharlene can eat faster and in more quantity than her cousin sister who is 3 years older than her most of the time. She will eat mostly what’s available at home. That’s why I try to stock up on healthy foods and prevent buying unhealthy ones. In addition to her main meals, she takes 3 full bottles of milk everyday and snacks in between her meals. After lunch or dinner, she would ask for some other things to eat. Her eating habit really worries me sometimes.

At the moment, I’m quite pleased with her daily food intake that mainly consists of carbohydrates (rice, bread, noodles), protein (meat, eggs and nuts), calcium (milk, yoghurt, cheese), fruits and vegetables. She also has her share of not-so-healthy food once in a while.

Hopefully, my little food monster understands the importance of healthy eating when she's older and also the reasons why I limit her intake of fast food and other low nutrient snacks.

Superior Scribbler Award

Many thanks to Mummy Gwen for presenting this adorable award to me.

So the rules are :
Every Superior Scribbler will name 5 other Super Scribblers.
If you are named you must link to the author & the name of the blog that gave you the award.
Then you must display the adorable award and link to This Post, which explains The Award.
Finally you must visit this post and tell your name to Mr. Linky List.
Then they will have a record of all the people who are Super Scribblers!

Now I would like to pass it on to:
1. ContentedMom
2. Ming & Ling
3. Irene
4. Jo-N
5. Leona

Her Favorite Toys

These are Sharlene’s favorite toys and she calls them rabbit, kitty, small bear bear and panda. Those were the few that followed her to my mum’s house last month. I took this photo when she was sleeping on my sis's bed. Her toys were sitting on top of her head. She has a lot more soft toys but she only picks her favorite ones to sleep with her every night. She will not hug them to sleep but LOVE to place them neatly by her side, sometimes talk to them and kiss them before she dozed off. *rolled eyes*. After that, my job is to quietly remove them from her bed and put them back on the shelf. We have to wipe and wash her toys quite often too.

She’s treating them like her ‘friends’, very protective over them and gets really angry if anyone throws them on the floor or sits on them. At one time, she even tried to feed them with food and drinks, put them into her school bag but I took them out and told her that she can’t bring her toys to school. Since then, I’ve not seen her doing it anymore. She understands that her ‘friends’ have to stay home whenever she goes out with us. However, if we are going back to my mum’s place for a couple of days, I allow some of her toys to be packed and brought there. Otherwise, she will definitely miss them dearly!!

What about your kids? Do they have their favorite toys too?

Simple Food For Lunch

We always have a problem of what to cook for lunch during weekends. It is rather difficult to come up with something that everyone loves to eat, especially the kids. Most of the time we ended up with noodles - a dish that is simple to prepare and easy to cook!

At times, we will just cook a BIG pot of porridge when we are bored with noodles or simply when we can’t think of what sort of noodles to dish up. Sharlene’s nanny is also our cook. She handles all the cooking for us and if she’s not on leave during the weekends, she does that for us too. That's the reason why I'm so lazy to cook now...heheh :)

Normally we let her know what we would like for the day, purchase the ingredients required and she will do the cooking for us. Here are the noodles we ‘ordered’ from her a few Saturdays ago...


Fried Tomyam Meehoon – with lots of beansprouts, prawns, squids, fishcakes, fried beancurd and shredded ‘daun limau purut’. She cooks this dish very well and everyone doesn't seem to get tired of eating even though we have it quite often for lunch.


Another variety of noodles for the kids. She has to fry this non-spicy meehoon along with the tomyam meehoon just for the kids.


On that day I also baked a tray of chocolate chips muffins for teatime. My nephew loved this and chomped down 3 at one go. Actually, my main purpose of baking this was to finish off the remnants of chocolate chips, which I used to bake cookies for CNY this year. So long ago right...but when I checked the expiry date; it’s still within the expiration. So no worries :) I put in abundance of chocolate chips but there were still some leftovers. Looks like I need to bake another round of....errm, perhaps chocolate chips cookies this time to clear my stock.

Have you noticed the uneven color tone of the muffins? Some are darker and some are lighter in color. It could be the heating element of my oven that is positioned at one side of the oven. So, the muffins that were placed near the heating element obviously get darker and those placed further were lighter. Arggggh, can’t wait to buy a better oven BUT the current one is still in working condition…so got to put off this idea for the time being.