"Your Blog Is Fabulous!" Award

Thank you so much Ling for passing this award to me. I feel really honored to receive it. Hopefully one day, my blog will be as fabulous as yours.


As part of this award, I must now list 5 addictions and then pass on to 5 more fabulous blogs.

My addictions:

1. chocolate chip cookies
2. chilli padi
3. hugging and kissing my daughter
4. ice-cream
5. surfing the net

I'm passing this award to:

All my blogging friends out there - Every one of you has fabulous blogs!

Jumbo Inflatable

~This is a backdated post~

Hubby and I brought the 2 girls out during one of the school holidays weekends. On our way to the shopping mall car park we saw a colorful jumbo inflatable placed outside Ikano. The 2 girls were thrilled by the look of it instantly and pestered us to bring them there. So instead of heading to the shopping complex first, we went to check out the play land. We paid an entrance fee for the 2 girls (can’t recall the amount but it was definitely less than RM10 per kid).

They had so much fun playing on the giant slide and they don’t seem to get bored of climbing and gliding down the inflatable over and over again. Hubby took the opportunity to snap some of their happy moments with his Samsung handphone.

Here are a few pixs of the 2 happy girls :)

Triple Awards!

Many thanks to Kristie for these lovely awards. I'm so happy to receive them all in a row ;)

Here are the rules for the recipients:

1. Put the logo on your blog or post.
2. Nominate at least 10 blogs which show great Attitude and/or Gratitude!
3. Be sure to link to your nominees within your post.
4. Let them know that they have received this award by commenting on their blog.
5. Share the love and link to this post and to the person from whom you received your award.




I would like to share the above awards with the following bloggers:

1. Mummy Moon
2. Irene
3. Doreen
4. Suesue
5. Olive
6. Leona
7. Adrine
8. Slavemom
9. Rachel
10. Mummy Gwen

Sharlene And Her Interest In Learning Mandarin

Sharlene has very little interest in learning Mandarin. I realized this sometime last year when she chooses to read only the English and Bahasa school books most of the time. Her Chinese school book is always left behind and she will only look at it when I told her to do so. I am starting to worry as this year she has more Chinese books. Needless to say, there will be more mandarin homework as well. I’m just so afraid she can’t pick up this language if she doesn’t show much interest in learning now. Sharlene’s nanny is currently coaching her in her Mandarin homework and hopefully under her guidance she’s able to improve.

Just before the school closes for holidays last year, Sharlene’s class teacher told me that whenever she speaks to her or asks her question in Mandarin, she would reply and answer her in English. I suppose she understood the question at that time otherwise she would not have answered her teacher. Looks like I really have to 'zhiang hua yue' (speak mandarin) with her more often.

The pre-school that she is attending focuses mainly in Chinese, even the Principal and teachers speak to the students in Mandarin. I even noticed that majority of Sharlene’s peers speak good Mandarin. Hubby and I intend to enroll her in a Chinese primary school, as we really want her to learn and be able to speak Mandarin. It’s always good to know an extra language, don’t you agree with me? At the moment she can only speak a smattering of Mandarin. I am trying my best to speak more Mandarin with her nowadays. Sometimes when she doesn’t understand what I’m saying she would show me her blurry stare or totally ignore my existence. But apart from that it’s quite fun to converse with her in Mandarin.

Yesterday she gave me a pleasant surprise. She was riding her tricycle in front of the house when I arrived home. I got down from my car to open the gate. At that time she was pointing her finger at something on the ground and said Mummy, ‘ni kan che li’ (look at here). I was elated that she uttered those words and I quickly walked towards her direction to see what she's trying to show me. Guess what she’s pointing at? Hah…it’s a pile of dog droppings!! Yucks, and luckily she didn’t run over it with her tricycle.

Anyway, that's surely a good start and I hope she uses more of this language everyday. :)

Scott's Vitamin C Pastilles

I bought a bottle of Scott's Vitamin C Pastilles from Guardian Pharmacy for Sharlene a few months ago. She already finished the first bottle and this is actually her 2nd bottle, which I purchased from the pharmacy last week. I’m not too sure of the retail price but I got it for RM9+. The bottle contains 50 pastilles of mixed berries (blackcurrants, strawberries, raspberries, and blackberries) flavour. Everyday after dinner I will give her 2 pastilles of this to chew. She loved this tasty and healthy snack very much and would always ask for more. However, I can’t accede to her request, as the recommended dosage is 2-3 pastilles per day only. Apart from vitamin C Sharlene is also taking Scott's Emulsion cod liver oil. She has been taking cod liver oil since she was 1 year plus. While everyone at home hates the smell of this stinking fish oil, Sharlene enjoyed taking it so much that she would slowly savor and lick the cod liver oil from her spoon. Sometimes she even spilled and stained her clothes with a few drops of fish oil. After that, she really smells 'fishy'...haha! :D

Anyway, I really hope that these 2 supplements can help Sharlene to build up her body's natural resistance against infection and also help her body maintain good health.

1st Weekend Of 2009

It was another busy weekend for me where I had spent most of my time in the kitchen. I have started baking my first batch of cookies for Chinese New Year. It’s the right timing to start now as CNY is approaching very soon, in about 3 weeks’ time only. As I am working the only time I can bake is during the weekends. I normally prefer to bake my own cookies for CNY, as they are cheaper, tastier and not too sweet. If I am following a particular recipe I always reduce the amount of sugar by 20gm – 30gm. In times like now, I am sure a lot more people will home baked their own cookies. It really saves you a great deal than buying them from shops. But the only thing is that you need to spend a lot of time doing it.

I already planned to bake 5 types of cookies this year. Hopefully, I will have enough time to bake all of them. During the weekends, I managed to do ‘kok chai’ (mini peanut puffs) and fry approximately 7kg of ‘ngaku’ (arrowhead chips) with the help of Sharlene's nanny.

I love to eat ‘kok chai’ make by Sharlene’s nanny. Every CNY I would look forward to her tasty and crusty 'kok chai'. I wanted so much to learn the way of doing it and finally I’ve got her to teach me how to do it last Saturday :)


Here's the mini peanut puffs ready for deep-frying. The pastry dough consists of plain flour, peanut oil and water only. It took me one whole hour to master the skill of pinching the sides (which resembles flower plait) to enclose the filling. Phew! really not an easy job but so glad I was able to acquire the technique and I am an expert now...haha. Besides doing this way, you can get a mould to save the hassle of pinching with hands.


And here is the filling for the puffs - combination of ground roasted peanuts, toasted sesame seeds and castor sugar.


All you need to do is to deep-fry the puffs in hot oil until the pastry turns golden in colour (like the pix above).


Dish out the puffs and drain them well on kitchen paper. Once they are completely cool store them in air-tight containers.


While we were busy making 'kok chai', hubby and sil went to Tesco for grocery shopping and they bought about 7kg of 'ngaku' (arrowhead) back. So on Sunday, we spent most of our time in the kitchen again to fry the 'ngaku'. Everyone in the house loves this snack to bits!

Rolling Good Time

After we had our lunch on Dongzhi day I made some ‘tang yuen’ (glutinous rice balls) for everyone. I followed this recipe which I saw it in The Star newspaper a few days earlier. The picture of ‘tang yuen’ looked so colourful and appetizing, so that prompted me to try out the recipe which requires orange and purple coloured sweet potatoes. Further, instead of using the usual sugar syrup, this recipe calls for coconut milk and sago. Although it’s very unhealthy to use coconut milk but the taste of the syrup with coconut milk is just so sweet and creamy. Everyone seemed to like the syrup better than the ‘tang yuen’….haha, so at the end of the day, lots of leftover rice balls with no more syrup.

Well, before I cook the ‘tang yuen’ I let Sharlene and her piao cheh have some fun rolling the dough into balls. It was pretty tough to roll the dough with sweet potatoes as it was really wet and sticky. So I just let the girls roll the one without sweet potatoes.


It was easy and look how they enjoyed rolling, pressing and shaping the pink dough into balls.


My little helper was really good at shaping the dough and Jasmine was busy counting her rice balls. Both of them were competing as to who can roll more 'tang yuen'. lol! Like most children, they don't fancy the taste of the rice balls at all.


Mummy, you see my 'tang yuen' is so round.


And here’s the bowl of colourful ‘tang yuen’ but the appearance of it was nothing close to the one in the picture.