[Marina Barrage]

Too often we just succumb to the heat and decide to stay home. Too often we are just too tired to make it further than our neighborhood park. Too often we think that the public spaces in the city are bound to be too crowded. I'm glad we didn't think that when there was an impromptu decision to meetup with S and family for a little playdate at the Marina Barrage. The weather was HOT! but it was definitely cooler out than in. The kids of course LOVED the water play area. :)
K at the lawn right at the top
C and S on our picnic mat
V & K... looking at kites
Sweaty G after running about trying to get uncle KM's kite to fly!

Us having a little picnic while the sun was still up
G cooling off at the water fountain play area
Her legs seem to be endless here! :)
K getting into the water too
G loved the sprinkler fountains!Had some time also in the morning to finish up some more monograms.
And while the girls played 'house' in the bed, i also made some little shadowboxes..
These 4"x4" shadowboxes from Ikea are perfect for 1 4R picture, 1 wild card and various embellishments.
I love the MR suede flowers and pearl pin
Love also the wild cards from OA and their latest range of PPs!

[Happy 5th 'Fairy Princess' Birthday Gracie]

It has been a whole weekend of celebration as my little baby, who is not quite a little baby anymore (even though she constantly tries to get away with being one!) turns FIVE! For almost a month before her birthday, she has been soo looking forward to turning 5. As usual, she keeps asking when will her birthday be, and what sort of cake will it be this year, what presents will she be receiving, etc etc....
What she didn't know was that we were planning a surprise fairy princess party for her. She is enamored by princesses, adores anything pink and sparkly and princessy. So were her close friends in school. We thought it will be fun if we secretly invited a small group of princess friends to celebrate her birthday with her. Of course, it was quite a task keeping the whole thing under wraps. :) 5 yr olds are not known for their discreet personalities and true enough, there were murmurs in the week preceding the party about some friends coming over to our place. Heh, of course we denied anything of the sort with a vengeance. The result, she was simply overjoyed when the little fairy princesses started showing up at our place on saturday morning for the surprise....

Here are the pics:
We celebrated at school first with all her school friends and teachers. Cake is from the ole fav coffeebean and tea leaf children cake selection. (a bit on the sweet side, next time i will choose one without so much marzipan)
I love how they pose together :)
Us in school.
Little K, who will be starting Kindie after the march hols, can't wait to be in school!


All the doting grandparents :)

The party decor. The letters that are stuck on the wall were an inspired contribution by V. He found this website (will link it up soon) which made up all the letters of the alphabets in mazes! The girls loved it and it was going to be our backup party activity in case everybody got bored (never even had the time for it!)
Lovely tissue pom poms like the ones at Martha Stewart, except much smaller. I bought a kit for 14 of these from Daiso.Kid friendly food..... thanks to my mil who went out of the way to get the yummy muffins from choc & spice, they were great! :)
Pretty princess plates
Goodie bags (will post a tutorial on those scrunchies soon!)
Little fairy princesses having some food before the games began!
The highlight of the party was of course the "paint the house" activity that we had been excited about too! The kids of course really enjoyed all the painting, it was so cute how everybody had a very firm idea of what they wanted to paint, and in which colours.
All hard at work painting the house.... It's a fantastic present to buy for any 5 yr old in our opinion (we actually bought it from here 2 xmas-es ago but never gifted it to anybody, it has been in the storeroom all this while!). The cake on saturday was a dozen cupcakes from Crystal Jade bakery....
Another view of the party, the kids loved eating all the icing off the cupcakes.
Trying to line everybody up for a picture
So cute! :) Look at all the princesses!
Priceless smiles :)

G loved the party and has been talking about the enchanted fairies granting her wish of having all her friends over! hee....

[Sundays are Fun days]

Sorry for the cheesy blog title, I'm running out of titles!

It has been tooo hot a weekend for anything really outdoor-sey. But a whole weekend cooped up at home seemed to be too dreadful to contemplate (from our point of view!) as well. We compromised by going out for a very short while on Sunday, to the nearby Dairy Farm Wallace Cenre. Sometime ago, we took part in an open tender to create the new Wallace Centre. Unfortunately, the tender was closed due to bad management, and that was that. After sometime, the Centre opened with the "inhouse designed" solution to what was a really interesting space (old cowshed barn). We intended to check it out but have not had the opportunity to do so until now. To say the interior space was disappointing could not adequately sum up our sentiments. Unimaginative curative direction results in an almost empty space that does not even make one interested to read about what the centre was trying to promote (essentially green living / wallace's legacy). Am I too harsh? Owell, it could just be sour grapes..... For the record, here's the scheme that we did.

Dairy Farm Interpretative Centre

V also talked about it Here and Here.

Below, pics of the girls and various things accomplished over the weekend:

K loves playing with the princesses too and she can be playing them for quite a long while all by herself.
We love reading! K has been parroting G in almost everything and we are happy that she loves books as much as G does!
G and her many enid blyton's.

Showing off her new fairy bracelet (more of that later). We told the girls we were going to take a walk in the forest (actually the bukit timah reserve). They were very excited as they think they are going to an ENCHANTED forest!!!

Playing with the fallen flowers and leaves
They love looking at grubs and crawlies!
Cheeky sneaky expression!
Finally reaching the centre (it is only about a 10min walk from the carpark, but for the girls, who had to stop every other step to check something out, it took twice that time!)

G loves the cow, but K was a little bit scared.

Resting....

Also had sometime over the weekend to finish up some projects...

Ever since buying my purse from HERE, i've been interested in sourcing and making my own little snap purse. I couldn't find any good shapes (most were very ornate) at the local shops, but finally managed to find one online! It's a great shop too, delivery was super fast, it arrived in less than 5 days! Plus, I found some great tutorials HERE, for anybody who would like to make them.... :)
The snaps I ordered were a little too big for my liking, although after making the purses up, it seems a really good size as a makeup bag or just as a clutch.
Love my newly purchased oilcloth too!

Other projects I've been doing are these fairy bracelets / hair scrunchies for a certain little girl's 5-yr old party favors this coming weekend.

Really easy to make, these took about 1 afternoon fro about a dozen or so.
Have also been inspired by the great Martha here on making these.... I've been trying to buy cheaper (as in, cheaper than spotlight!) tissue papers, but haven't had any luck so far - anybody? Here are some made with glassine i had on hand and the tiny one is from daiso.

Have a great week!!!

[somebody's turning 5!!!]

Gosh, it seems like there has been a non-stop series of events ever since xmas!! From Xmas, to New Year, to moving house + office, to Chinese New Year..... it has been a really hectic past few months! So, onwards and upwards, we have a little princess's birthday party to plan next....
I think she would appreciate a super girly girly pink party, but one of her very best friend's a boy!! How would you go about planning this (all suggestions will be welcomed!). G is very into the whole princess thing, but she is also incredibly boisterous and totally wild. Very UN-princessy... Heh, my friend said she's a bit like a rowdy princess.
My parents brought the girls out over the weekend for some CNY visiting, and to give us a little break before we start work on Monday. Together with catching up on work, I also had some time to indulge in some creating..... (it's been toooo long)

Made these baby wooden sayings, which are by the way up in the very very super cool PUPSIK studio. Do help spread the word :)
Also, i made this LO for K, using a lot of new MR goodies and the new OA stickers. :) I am in love with using the paper doilies, i just folded them in half for this LO and layered stuff onto it.
O, i also bought lots of tulle, which I love using scraps of them as the base for any cluster of embellishments. I feel that they soften the LO and create that blushy look which is sooo pretty.
Wanted it to be a super pink LO as K looks soo boyish in these pictures. lol....



I even had the time to finish up some iphone cases that have been sitting in the "to do" basket for quite a long time.... :)
Finally, there's a little post that I just had to share. So true! (esp the part abt yelling and remembering how small they are) :) I have to print it out or embroider it somewhere......

HAVE A GOOD WEEK!!!