Life & Parenting

Must-Haves for Holiday

We love holidaying in the UK especially as there are so many places worth visiting like Bath, lovely beaches in Cornwall and Devon and the Lake District. Also you are able to pack your must-have items that you unable to take on an overseas holiday!

My must-have for holiday is my bolster pillow (if you don’t know what that is, it is a long, thick pillow)! I know it sounds strange but I have had one since very young and can never get a good nights sleep without one. I suppose it’s a bit like a child with their bedtime bear as I am hugging the bolster pillow to sleep. I bought three different bolster pillows over from Singapore as I can’t find them in the UK. Whenever we go away in the UK I will take it along. It is very lightweight and easy to squeeze in between luggage or it can be used for sleeping in the car! There are also many other things which I would consider must-haves, like my favourite Chinese snacks and carton drinks.

Grand Designs with British Gas

Mr C and I always love to watch Grand Designs presented by Kevin McCloud on Channel 4. We like to dream about how we are going to transform and equip our house with lots of gadgets!

Grand Designs has been exhibiting for years now and we never had a chance to go. We were so pleased that British Gas kindly gave us and one of my blog readers tickets to go to see the exhibition. As we had never been before, we didn’t quite know what to expect for the exhibition.

We arrived there quite late and it was really busy with massive amounts of people inside the exhibition halls. There were split into different categories like garden, innovation, kitchen, building etc. The first thing that caught my eyes were kitchen! We had a look at all the different brands of kitchen appliances and worktops. I always dream of having a well equipped kitchen with the latest gadgets. Well, for now, I can only dream as it is outside our budget to redo a kitchen!

Then Mr C had a chat with the British Gas rep about their Hive system. Hive essentially allows you to control your heating and hot water from your laptop, mobile or smartphone. It requires a one-off installation fee of £199 (or currently £149 for British Gas customers) but I was pleasantly surprised to find out you don’t have to be a British Gas customer to use the Hive system. They are currently developing a zonal system so that you can control upstairs and downstairs separately, which is expected to launch in 2015.

Happy Birthday to Opel

Opel is my family dog who has been with us for nine years. He might be loud (seriously, he loves to bark) but he is a very huggable mutt. When I first met him, he was very mischievous and he is just the same even now. He used to love to chew cables, shoes and furniture much like any other puppy though he has calmed down a bit. He loves to steal food, especially food that is within easy reach. Even food placed out of sight is not safe at times as he will find a way! On a number of occasions we have found evidence where he has eaten raw eggs, fish, biscuits etc.

I have been to BritMums live 2014

It’s been 12 months in the planning, but I’ve finally been to attend the Britmums live event this weekend! I bought the Britmums early bird ticket to make sure that I attended as I had always heard that the blogging conference was a superb event! So the day arrived and on Friday, I travelled alone to London Euston and managed to meet up with a couple of bloggers there. Arriving at the Brewery where the conference was held just before the event and there were already a huge group of people milling around there.

While queuing to get into the event, a lady from BBC interviewed me and I think I did my best selling my blog to her! At least I hope! After arriving inside, it was madness! There were so many people and very overwhelming. I was glad to meet up with some bloggers and started chatting. Later, we walked around to get to know to brands.

My Kitchen Story

This post is an entry for the “My Kitchen Story” Linky Challenge, sponsored by Fairy Platinum.

My kitchen is a small and cosy place where I spend most of my mornings busily preparing and cooking for my blog post and my family.

We moved into this brand new house at the time seven years ago now. Recently, I had painted the kitchen walls yellow to make it feel warmer and brighter. Now with a fresh coat of paint it looks so much better!

Lichfield Bower 2014 – Beacon Park

Lichfield Bower is back again! It is the oldest traditional festival in Lichfield held every spring bank holiday. It is about 800 years old. This year it was held on 26 May 2014. Here’s a link back to what we saw last year.

This year at Beacon Park, they had more and even better shows! We saw Big Pete’s Monster Truck show where they raced around the field and trashed those cars! It was breath taking each time they launched these massive trucks into the air, crushing the cars beneath them.

1st Annual CMV Action Awareness Month

Congenital Cytomegalavirus (CMV) is the most common birth disorder in the UK, causing a devastating range of physical, sensory and cognitive disabilities. Around 900 children will be born in the UK every year with permanent disabilities as a result of the virus.

CMV is a virus which affects most people during their lifetime (50 – 80% of the population in the UK carry it), yet few people have ever heard of it. Symptoms can be mistaken for a cold and healthy adults will often not realise they’ve contracted it. The virus was discovered in the 50s by the same team of doctors who discovered polio, measles, mumps and chicken pox – yet CMV continues to spread without warnings, vaccination or treatment.

Shortlist: Brilliance in Blogging Awards (BiBs) Video 2014

Firstly, I would like to thank you my readers who voted for me through to Britmums Brilliance in Blogging Awards (BiBs) Video 2014. I have not asked for any voting since the initial nominations but now I am absolutely thrilled to say that we have been shortlisted for the BiBs Video! I would be therefore be hugely grateful if you could click here to vote for us under Section 9 – ET Speaks From Home! If you don’t have time, it is fine! But thank you for voting for me to go through to the shortlisting.

Also I would love to thank my two beautiful children who generally behave, are upfront with the camera and help out with all the toy reviews. Without them, it would not be as successful. We’ve gone from 0 subscribers to 627 on my YouTube channel within one year which is a great achievement for us! I still remember when I first published my video, I cringed each time I watched it. Now I have improved but there is still plenty more room for improvement! So in the near future, I hope I can bring a better quality and more detailed vlogged!

Last week, I went to attend tots100 blog camp #BCUK and Sally mentioned about iMovie. This is my favourite video editing app on the iPad. We have made a few reviews using the trailer mode. So last Sunday, while Mr C busy was busy working in his home office, we made a video using iMovie. This is purely for fun. I got both children to dress up in their superhero outfits and took the clips via my iPad. Next I edited it and uploaded straight to my YouTube channel. This is a free app and very simple to use! So I hope you enjoy this clip we made. Please do bear in mind that there are a few mistakes. I should have really edited the words but I left it as it is. Some of the text does not make sense. Bye for now and thank you all so much!

And Happy 2nd Blog Anniversary to us!

I am going to BritMums 2014

When I started blogging, one of the first blogs I followed was BritMums. They regularly set challenges like bring Barney on an adventure or cooking an egg dish. I try to join in as much as possible as it helps to give me something to do with my children or being creative.

Last year, I finally took up the courage to buy the BritMums 2014 ticket after hearing a lot of great reviews. It was quite an expensive ticket to buy but I am not looking for any sponsorship. I hope to be able to learn from the event and to make the investment worthwhile.

Bio Persil Small and Mighty Review

It seems my children’s clothing are a magnet for paint, ink, food or mud. Mr K is the main culprit. Yesterday, he and his friend were play fighting and rolling around the field and came back home very muddy indeed. Luckily, we had the Persil solution to put to the test.

Swapping to Persil’s liquid solution, we instantly noticed the fresh laundry smell after the wash. Our noses have become accustomed to our usual Fairy laundry powder and so maybe it’s a good time to swap our usual laundry product as I miss those strong laundry smells!

Singapore Day 2014, London

We have been waiting for this day for a very long time and finally this year, we managed to attend it! The Singapore Day celebrations tours different countries each year and we missed the last one in the UK a few years back.

We all travelled down by train early on Saturday morning and arrived at Victoria Park way with plenty of time to spare. When we got there, the queue was already massive. Luckily, we had our children with us and we are allowed to use the priority line. We had to pass through a few security checks before we could go in and then had to wait again! If you have a look at Singapore Day Facebook page’s photo, you will spot us rushing off the moment they opened its doors!

This is our first time attending this event and we thought we had to pay for all the food and drink. To our surprise and delight, it was all FREE! Yes, free food, drink, goody bag, freebies, live music and many more!

The first thing we went for was the food stalls. There were already massive queues over the Hawker centre stalls and so the volunteers asked everyone to head toward the Kopitiam stalls. To be honest, next time, I should just head off to the foods I like the most and not queue at the shortest queues. I was very disappointed that I didn’t get the chance to try out my favourite foods like: Laska, Indian Rojak, Stingray, Chilli Crab and many more. We did tried out some delicious foods like BBQ Chicken Wings, Chwee Kueh, Chicken Rice, Satay and Soup Kambing.

Hillarys Ideal Home Show and their New 2014 Collection

Last Thursday, the lovely people from Hillarys had invited me to attend their event at the Ideal Home Show and after show party.

Blog Your Heart Out

Recently, both Tami from Mummy of Two and Pippa from Red Rose Mummy had tagged me into Blog Your Heart Out Meme. These are my answers to the questions!

Question 1. Who/What encouraged you to start blogging?

My husband’s friend’s sister-in-law, Anna Guest, who encouraged me and often passed me her contacts to help me along.

My Childhood Toys

Recently, I read five decades of childhood obsession written by Oxford Open Learning which deeply interested me. I can totally relate to it! I still remember my first bike (BMX), playing with marbles and so much more.

To join in this project, I made my list of 10 craze items from my playground days. Born in the late 70s, these are what I played with.

1. Playground

In Singapore, land is scarce, so there are so many high rise building. The majority of people live in flats and have common playgrounds to share between 6 or so blocks of flats. This is an example of how they looked like! The one in our block of flats was much smaller than this one though.

2. Barbie

She is my favourite! I used to have two Barbie dolls but not Ken. My parents refused to buy me Ken as they didn’t want to encourage boys at that age. I was always told to avoid boys until I finished my university.

My Desert Island Discs Playlist, assuming there are batteries!

Some of you may know that I love Korean TV drama and their K-pop music genre. So please forgive me if I bore you with my huge selection of K-pop. In case you’re wondering, K-pop means Korean Pop music!