Longest Winter Ever

Yes, it is already April but we still need to feel Spring! It's been freezing weather still and we seem to only have a few hours of great weather before it suddenly turns cold and windy. Warm weather please...

This is why we ended up 'celebrating' Easter Sunday on a Saturday! Well, it was more of a picnic with the Chinese classmates of the kids as they've not experienced Easter so we thought a picnic would be great and also to let the kids have a chance to run around. Unfortunately we only had Saturday forecast to be sunny!


Counting the Easter loot...


The week before Easter, I got ambitious and thought of making these Felt Easter Bunnies for the kids to give away to all their classmates... And then of course, I encountered some timing problems and only ended up with 9 instead of 30! Oh well... The kids enjoyed playing with them and still brought it to school and share with their classmates.

Birthday Invites Out... Whew!

Last night finally managed to finish putting together the party invites after having to re-print the cards (my DH thinks I should have added some more info). I'm not really working with any theme as things seem to be changing often so I'm just going with the flow.


This is what I ended up with the invite as Samuel wanted super hero capes plus mask. Audrey wanted some fairy/princess thingy so I ended up with a tutu. And yes, this means I need to make 6 super hero capes and 6 tutus. I bought the wands for less than a dollar so that at least took something off my plate. More on the costumes later...

So printed some stickers to use as seals on the invites. The paper was from packs I bought in Sydney way way way back then during the BK days; BK meaning 'before kids'.



All done.

When the party is over, I'll post here a free downloadable kit including: invites, sticker labels and tags. Possibly sewing pattern for the cape...

Kids' On the Sewing Machine

The past couple weekends the kids have been fighting for a chance to try their hand at my sewing machine. They've finally learned to take turns. What surprised me was how well they somehow knew how to use the machine. Audrey looked like she's done it before (maybe she has while I'm at work) and Samuel... well... he's a little 'engineer' like daddy. He's seen me change the foot of the sewing machine once this morning and immediately he knew how to do it! They've learned to change to setting it to different stitch settings and using diff. foot for certain stitch style.

Kids' Messenger Bags

Just in time for our trip next week, managed to finished the messenger bags for my twins. This is based on a fantastic easy-to-follow tutorial from mmmcrafts.

When I printed out the blog post and showed to my twins what design they would like to have, Samuel immediately told me he wanted a blue guitar and Audrey said she wants a pink butterfly. So the easiest was to draw a these icons and use felt to cut them up and applique them onto the flap. Followed the great tutorial from Sew, Mama, Sew! blog on how to do machine appliqués. As this was only my second time to do appliqués on my sewing machine, you can see there is still room for improvement. The little pieces and details were sewn in first onto the main body and then used the sewing machine to appliqué the entire design onto the flap.

I've reduced the size for these bags as the size specified was a bit big. I think I reduced the width of the bag by 4 inches. The pink one uses cotton canvas and the blue is denim linen. For the latter, I had to add some batting to give it body as it ended up a bit too soft even after the lining was added.

The greatest feeling was the big smile they had when I showed them their bags and immediately wanted to put stuff in. They didn't want me to take pictures of it as they just wanted to walk around the house with their bags.

Painting Faces

Sunday turned out to be a very wet day here in Shanghai. We managed to get through the afternoon with a few activities and one of the things that the kids enjoyed were the face and body paints that I've brought out. They immediately went in search of a mirror (we only have this one small 2-way mirror that was portable...).

Here's what they did...


Samuel said he's a 'knight'...


Audrey says she's a 'clown'... And she asked me to paint her belly with a cat's face...but I think I ended up making it look like a puppy than a cat (don't tell her that).


Lots of fun and we'll definitely be doing more.

Flower Power

Last night, I had an itch to do and finish projects before the weekend. Weekend evenings are typically impossible to do anything after the kids are in bed except flop down in front of the TV and knit or crochet and let my mind go 'blank'... So, I ended up doing this fabric ranunculus that I read about on House on Hill Road. Thanks for the tutorial, Erin.

Used Audrey's jersey blouse from H&M which I bought last year but has since been hardly worn... (she thinks it is not interesting enough as it doesn't have much on it...). With bits of extra fabric from another dress I made for her and a bead, voila! It was easy to do after I 'mastered' the zigzag part. And above all, she was very very pleased with it when she saw it this morning. I'm glad, too.

It's not 'perfect' and I definitely will be doing a couple more :-)

Sewing and Knitting

Found this post on SouleMama about Heather Ross's Mendocino SunDress and I knew I just had to try it. This is also sort of the current trend in Shanghai women wearing various summer dresses or tops with smocking. And it so happens I had a big big spool of elastic thread bought 4 years ago or a project which never materialized so it's never been used.

I found that House On Hill Road has an even better, more in-depth and detailed tutorial. ThreadBanger also has a video tutorial where I got the idea for the strap.

After Audrey's dress, I'm now working on a version for me using a really nice cotton poplin fabric (which I never really appreciated until just now) bought almost 5 years ago for only U$0.75 a metre, and never got a chance to use it until now.

Lessons learned: I've to sew slowly with the elastic thread to keep the stitches straight. And to add more spacing in between lines as I made them a bit more dense...

'Pretend' Tea Party

Today was way too hot to do much so after coming home after lunch, we thought we'd have a 'pretend' tea party. Got the kids to put together some buntings which I'd cut out of an old wedding gift wrapper. They folded the top of the triangle paper and attached it to the string plus added a tape to keep the paper from falling off.

Then they helped make some cupcakes. Actually, it was also for a me trial to see what sort of cupcakes I can make for the kids birthdays in September (I know it's still a long way away but for a very busy person like me, I need a long long long leadtime to plan stuff).

The cupcakes turned out great. The recipes were from Cupcake Bakeshop by Choclit using her Plain and Simple Chocolate Cupcake with the Vanilla frosting and Yellow Cupcake from Martha Stewart's Food Magazine. I especially loved the vanilla frosting because it used a lot less sugar than other recipes. I'm still in search of the 'perfect' frosting that uses even less sugar, if that even exists. So if anyone has any idea it would be greatly appreciated.

And finally, love these cute cupcake liners which I got from Cupcake Social and Bake It Pretty. They somehow just add a nice touch to the cupakes.

Summer Sandals

One of my favourite thing about summer is wearing shorts, Tees, and sandals. Kids feet seem to constantly change so had to buy a new pair of sandals for kids. And our biggest cheap find for the summer are these Birkenstock look-alike sandals for kids which are Japanese brand for only U$7.50!

These are so cool as they have the same comfy footbed and cork cushiony soles as real Birks. The kids also love their new sandals to which they can easily put on and off because the back strap uses velcro closure rather than buckles. The strap on top is made of cotton madras and lined underneath with synthetic leather.

I've had my Milano Birks since 1993 so naturally I wanted my kids to also have the same comfortable sandals I love. Except I cannot afford to shell out US$50 for a pair of kids' version which they will outgrow after this summer.

I've learned a lesson about buying kids shoes when a couple years ago we got them some Camper shoes (see above) that were on sale during one of our trips to Hong Kong. They were still pricey but hey, they were comfortable as I've also been wearing them for years. Unfortunately they didn't even get to wear these for long before we have to give them away. A bit heart-wrenching as it was a bit like throwing away money. So now, we're all happy with my cheaper alternatives.

Cardboard Box Project continued + Upcycled Matching Cards 2

Another installment. I have to do these stuff after I get home from work as that's the only chance I usually have...

Have printed out some more patterns for the 'lawn' of the dolly house. Decided to leave that and paint the spaceship first.

I wasn't sure what type of paint to use so tested it with a layer of Crayola finger paints. Wasn't so nice as it was rather thin. I let it stand to dry a bit.

While waiting for the paint to dry, I took the matching card project out. This time I decided to use the mod podge with glossy finish to test the result. I painted this on top of the pictures that I'd already affixed the night before to the chipboard. Also, I let this coat dry for an hour.

Went searching for other blue paints and was fortunate to find a new tube of blue paint that the kids got for their birthday last year. This had a better result giving a more opaque look.

Going back to my matching cards, I prepared to cut up the pieces. Because the chipboards are really thick, I found that after cutting up the pieces, the edges seem to have this slightly raised edges which I didn't like very much so used the soft edge of the cutter to flatten this and decided to add another layer of mod podge to seal it off. Let these dry overnight.

Finishing off the spaceship, I added a coat of mod podge just to seal off the paint.



The next morning, I was quite happy with the results of the matching cards. Still undecided whether I should had patterned paper on the back side of the cards or leave them as is. I might take my bottle mod podge and do something later on... The spaceship still needs some detailing... need to add the knobs, headlights, etc.



The great thing is both my kids were excited with these new toys. My son was happy to see some colours on his spaceship after seeing it sitting there on the side for some time without paint. I also felt this gratifying feeling that I've made and finished something.

Cardboard Box Project continued + Upcycled Matching Cards

This is a continuation of what we did a couple weekends ago.

Tonight, I had this sudden need to do something about a lot of unfinished projects. So decided to tackle the dolly house.

Printed 3 sheets of wood patterns on an A3 sheet at the office. These wood pattern is what I used to cover the entire body of the house. I cut these A3 sheets with the size of the widest side first. I 'mod-podged' it all over with a brush and affixed the patterned sheets all over. In order not to get too much warping, I did the 2 widest sides first and while waiting for these to dry, did some knitting. After about 30 minutes, I tested the 2 sides and seem dry so did the same on the 2 narrow sides of the house. And did some more knitting.

I was getting into this whole 'mod-podge' thing (it's the first time I've used this), I decided to put down my knitting and do something about another unfinished project. This is something I started last weekend. This is inspired by a craft I read about on 'Designing Moms' blog. Instead of making dominoes, I thought of creating some matching cards game. So decided to cut out bits of pictures out of my kids magazines which they don't seem to read anymore.


Found some old thick chipboards at the office and decided to use these instead of wood blocks. So painted mod podge in increments the size of the pictures and also painted mod podge on the back of the pictures.

After all had been done, took up my knitting again and waited for the 2 boards to dry a bit. By this time, it was 2:30am and decided that it was time to pack up and tidy up.

Cardboard Box Projects

Ever since we got this book 'Too Many Toys', my kid has been asking me to make him a spaceship just like the one he saw in the book. He said it had to have some knobs, steering wheel, wings, and 'piang' thingy (which translates to something like those blasters or space toy guns).

And my daughter also wanted a dolly house since his brother was getting something made...

So this weekend, we finally managed to get down to collecting all the materials we would need. Got some cardboard boxes from the office, collected some bottle and milk caps to use as knobs as well as the tubes from used aluminum foil rolls.

I think the kids had a lot of fun helping to hold the boxes while me and Simon did some cutting. They also enjoyed making some mess with the debris we created... Unfortunately, we couldn't finish these in that afternoon. I need to continue adding some paint and details later.

I also need to use fasteners to attach the knobs. Strangely, we cannot find any fasteners at any stationery or school supplies shops in Shanghai! We went to several places and we were even told to go to the hardware store by one clerk at one big shop.

All in all, it was a good afternoon of crafting.

Crochet hats

Right before Christmas, found some interesting crochet patterns on Etsy. My first foray into crocheting a complete project. I usually do knitting and occasionally adding some crocheted edging. With a little help from Penny (our nanny) we managed to do a couple hats to give as Christmas gifts.

For my kids, it was lower in the priority list, but was so happy to have finally finished off their hats. I made them slightly bigger so they can wear it in the next winter. These patterns were from Tip.Top.Applesauce on Etsy. Lucinda was a big help and was quite patient with answering my endless crochet newbie questions. The earflaps was following another pattern by Warm & Fuzzy Baby.

What I loved about buying patterns off Etsy is being able to contact the designer of the pattern(s) questions I may have.

Shanghai Zoo

Today, we decided to check out the Shanghai Zoo which a friend of ours mentioned was an okay place to visit. As it was Chinese New Year, we thought that there should be less people out (traditionally, families get together during the first 3 days of the Chinese New Year holidays). But we got the shock of seeing the place almost packed with people from the provinces with the same plan as we did.

My past experiences with zoos in China has left me very disenchanted and rather depressed as all the zoos I'd gone to before, has animals kept in small cages and are not treated properly. I had this illusion that with Shanghai's rapid progress and modernization that these places would have also been upgraded.

(sigh!) I was wrong! It was rather depressing showing the kids the way the animals lived esp. as this was their first visit to a zoo... maybe they will forget this experience,or maybe not. But what we saw were filthy animal pens, a cheetah who's probably gone crazy pacing back and forth this tiny space, elephants tied up in chains inside this big building with filth everywhere and little light (and even people going inside kept remarking how the place stunk), rubbish everywhere, people spitting and throwing rubbish into the animals' pens, and more. We just cannot believe at what we had experienced that day.


The only thing that the kids enjoyed was getting inside this bouncy 'castle', which by the way, we had to pay to get inside and jump around for 30 minutes for RMB 20 each. The upside was this was not crowded like all the other places because if the extra cost to play inside.

The trip just was so depressing that I long and wish I could take the kids to the fantastic zoos I've been to before like the one in Singapore or in Sydney. Those were unforgettable experiences. Okay, the Shanghai Zoo is also an unforgettable experience as well as a regrettable one.

Animal Bags

Boon has done it again with the new range of beanie bags called Animal Bags. I love how practical they are that not only do they hold stuffed toys but these also serve as the kids seats when they are taking books off their book shelves. Another use is that the kids use this as a landing pad as they jump from the sofa to the floor.

It was not easy ordering these though and getting shipped to Shanghai. But the whole effort was worth it.