Minou Shoes

I went to China Sq Central to give Angelneo some support today, to check out how her push cart thingie is getting along. Frankly that area isn't the best location for lunch time shopping. But creating awareness is definitely a necessity for new products. Wish you all the best Angel! :)

Oh.. thanks for the bag hanger too! :-)

On my way back to office, I walked pass this shop at Far East Sq called Minou Shoes. It's not a new shop, it has been there, and everytime I walked pass it I'm awe with the shoes they have to offer. But never once did I really stop to try out their shoes.

Somehow today is different. I looked, I tried and I bought!.. Not one but TWO pairs! This pair I bought it off their shelf (they made to order yours shoes by the way). Isn't it just so pretty!


I ordered another pair that has similar cutting to this:



It's not blue in colour. It's light blue & green.

Their adult shoes are at S$69 each. Reasonable in pricing I think, considering that they are handmade so looked quite comfortable.

If money is not an issue, I'll prob buy like half the shop! :p

Ok.. If you are still clueless as to what and where.. this is their blog
http://minoushoes.blogspot.com/

Recent pictures of Valerie to share

Valerie with daddy (such a daddy's girl she is).. so yang-or

At ECP food centre, rest after some cycling

Valerie & KoKo.. our 'friendly' 11YO shih-tzu

Valerie's way of saying "Merry X'mas!" *LOL*
Just a note that she is not a fan of the hat. It's after much persuasion that she allow me to put the hat on for her to take some pictures :p

Hb's 1st contribution!

I'm so happy I'm no longer blogging alone! Can't wait to see Valerie's 1st posting! :)

Much deserved break!

Well well well, its the time of the year to take stock of the past 12 months and look forward to the next 12 months.

It's been a pretty decent year... we moved to East Coast area... that 's MINE favourite area to stay in Singapore... Glad that the family decided to come along too! har har har!

Moved to a new job... I must say, I enjoy what I am doing here compared to the previous shop. PLUS, my contributions are recognised, so that's always nice :)

Valerie started childcare... my gawd! Her linguistic skills have improved so much... Yeo Mama has chronicled Valerie's ability to say "no" to us... that's Terrible Two I guess...

Yeo Mama has discovered a new hidden talent! Digital Scrapbooking!!!! Our good fren Lionel is soooo please with her creation... that he thought that Yeo Mama can do this for a living!!! Yeo Mama did 3 of our fren's wedding pix and put them into photo frames, complete with decorations for added 3-D effect.... I must say, it is damn good too!

X'mas party... the kids love it huh? for us adults... just another excuse to get together with frens for Poker... I have 5 good hands the whole afternoon... bet big each time... and yet in each ocassion, lost to someone else who simply just edged me with a better hand!!! argh... story of my afternoon.

And finally Liverpool FC .... my beloved.... yet a pain to watch at times... looks like another Premiership Champion-less season....

Ok folks, till next time!! Hasta La Vista!

2 YO = I don't want ______!!

"I don't want _____" is Valerie's favourite sentence now. "I don't want poo poo", "I don't want bong bong", "I don't want go toilet"... Almost every question is being answered with a "I don't want...". Now she is also the queen of crossing her arms to show her displeasure if you insist that she do something she didn't want to.

Sometimes it really runs your patience dry but we all try not to over-react to her "I don't want" coz we believe it's her way of gaining attention and testing boundaries. If we think it's something important, we'll just try to stay firm and 'win' the battle..

But most of the time.. she wins... LOL!

Christmas greeting!

It's X'mas eve! Although I don't celebrate X'mas per se, but the joy of friends gathering and 'pigging' out is just too tempting to be ignored :p

This year I did something different by designing my own x'mas card for colleages & some friends. It came quite late actually, coz I just sent out today. Hopefully next year I can afford to get one done much earlier :)

This is how they look:


For colleages


For friends

Frustration

I just have to let it out. Today we went to Best Denki and bought this 40" Samsung LCD TV (LA40M81BX) for S$2,999. According to the salesperson, this is a higher end model (which we subsequently verified to Samsung's catalog). The freebies?

1a) 19" LCD TV + Home Theatre System or
1b) 26" LCD TV (LA26R71BAX)

AND

2) Higher definition (not the HD type) DVD player (DVD-1080P7).

Don't you think the deal is good? Besides, his dad already wanted to buy a 26" LCD TV for his room so that's a planned spending of S$999. So another $2K and you get a FORTY INCH LCD TV AND DVD PLAYER. How to beat that?!?! We even called Parisilk and they are selling the exact same model for S$3,140. Still have the free TV but there wouldn't be any free player coz that's a joint promotion Best has with Samsung.

We orginally wanted to place the 40" in the living room and get rid of the big projection TV (and have paid S$30 for disposal fee). Gena nag to death my his dad! I think he said at least 5 times "Why we spend $3K?", "Why buy such a "big" TV?", "We earn alot now so spend money like water.". "We dunno how to 'appreciate the cuteness' of money" etc. Even say things like "No need such a big TV (mind u our current projection TV is FORTY-TWO INCHES!!)", "Can watch can already (then why need a 26" in his room for TELETEXT)!!!"

This is all BULLSHIT! Hear already blood really boil!!!

So now we are going to put the 40" TV into our room which suits me fine. Just that our cable points are all at the 'wrong' place.. so kinda headache.

Daily rush

It's always a rush.. in office, at home.. everywhere.. everyday. Everyday in office it's such a rush to complete all the tasks on hand, after that rush to go home, rush to finish off dinner, rush to put Valerie to bed, rush to do admin work, rush to sleep, rush to bathe, rush to drink coffee...

It's so tiring.. :(

Can anyone be kind enough to cut me some slack?!?!

1st LO using PSP

My first LO using the new PSP. To be frank, although I love the photo editing capabilities. I'm not a fan using it for digi scrapping. It actually took me more than 5 tries to try to resize this for web viewing as compared just 1 try using PE. Gotta learn! Gotta endure!

Enjoy!

Introducing Mr & Mrs Lionel Ho

Oops.. Yes, this picture is more than a week late! :p Congrats 'ol pal'.

Paint Shop Pro X2

After much delibration and consideration, I finally decided on the PSP. Why? Coz at an affordable price tag of S$115, I get hell alot more photo editing capabilities than PE6 and ALOT ALOT cheaper than Photoshop CS3 (S$448). So do I really have a choice? :p

I've just installed it, nothing done yet (eventhough I have tried the trial version). I went through some video tutorials yesterday and I'm beginning to like this SW! Hopefully I can get over the learning curve fast so that I can do more scrapbook pages soon!

Friends from Sweden

It was a bz weekend for us! Tomas, Anna & lil' William came to visit us over the weekend. It was nice catching up with them, who have flew probably 20 hrs from icy Sweden to 'wet' Singapore! Not really the Sunny Singapore they were looking forward to! *LOL*

Initially, Valerie was quite shy to see our guests. Not surprising since Tomas is a BIG guy. :p And having golden hair & fair skin is not a common sight in Singapore, thus Valerie was quite reserved at the beginning. But it's always easy for kids, as TOYS are their common language (btw, William doesnt speak English).

It's not long when both of them are like good friends, chasing around, running around and even sharing biscuits! It's hilarious seeing them trying to finish the sugar biscuits while trying their best to be 'equitable'!!! hahahaha. I definitely wished I have film down that episode!

Joshua & Valerie

Guess what... Joshua is actually 10-11months yonger than Valerie.. but he is taller! Love this picture coz it's always so hard to have the kids looking into the camera at the same time..

Busy Busy Busy!

Ya I know.. busy then shouldn't blog. But I just want to take a breather and remind myself today is a busy day (*lol*)

And also to remind myself that shabbyprincess.com is going to have a SALE tomorrow!!! Oooo.. my hands are getting itchy! More digital scrapbooking stuff to be bought!!!

I survived Monday!

Ok.. It's not about Monday Blues, but I am indeed unwell today. I've lost my voice (not sure why as I wasn't the Yum Seng sisters), feeling weak and tired throughout the day. I was tempted to leave early but work prompted me to hang on.. silly I know but if I leave early today, it only translate to later night tomorrow, which is not an attractive prospect. So since I'm not feverish (at least I think I'm not), I would rather hang on until 6pm to get more work done.

Fav words

Ah yo.. recently Valerie's fav words are "NO!", "DON'T WANT!"..

Conversations go like this:

mom/dad/grandma: Girl girl, go bong bong (bathe)?
Valerie: Don't want (mild)
mom/dad/grandma: Bong bong please..
Valerie: Don't want (firmer)
mom/dad/grandam: It's getting late, go bong bong now ok?
Valerie: DON'T WANT BONG BONG!

Sigh.. so the new bait now is...

mom: You go bong bong already we play "Letterland" ok?
Valerie: Letterland Letterland (singing..)

Faint!

Busy weekend!

It was a BZ BZ weekend! Attended 2 weddings back to back! It was tiring but did alot of catching up with friends which I so enjoy.

Congratulations to Mr & Mrs Lionel Ho and Mr & Mrs Jeffery Poh!

I'll post some pictures later tonight (if time permits...)

Year end concert

Ok.. her concert was on 12th Nov but since I haven't started blogging yet, I thought it'll be good to back-date some important events :p

When we decided to let her participate in the concert, we have zero expectations of what she can achieve on stage. We tried to get her to show us her 'moves' without much success. At times we find her looking into the mirror doing some dance steps and we'll wonder if that's what she has been practising in school.

On the 12th, DH & I were so excited. We could finally see her performance after the l-o-n-g wait. We got our video cam & digi cam all ready for this big day. She was one of the last to went up on stage (the intro portion) and was in the first performance. They, being the youngest of the lot, did simple routines to 3 short songs.

They were simple moves but I feel so proud nonetheless. At that moment, I thought to myself, my Valerie has grown so much.. she is a big girl now.

Scratches

Took pictures of the scratches this morning. H/E, not many are still visible overnight as children skin heals very fast. I show the director of these scratches and he agreed that those are scratch marks.

He just called back, saying that they have checked the fingernails of all children belonging to her class and found that their nails are trimmed and could not possibly have caused those marks. When I heard I wasn't very happy and I replied that I have trimmed Valerie's fingernails lately too. And there has been no incidents of her scratching herself (other than from mozzie bites).

So he says the teachers will continue to monitor to see if they can find the reasons behind those scratches.

:-(

'Cat' fights in school?

Managed to go home earlier today. When I was home, I saw that Valerie has quite a few small marks scattered over both forearm. I tried asking her what are those marks, as usual, she either doesn't comprehend, unable to recall or refuse to acknowledge. Taojin said those are mozzie bites, but these marks are distinctively different from her usual mozzie bites.

I didn't think much about those marks until my MIL told me that she suspect they were scratch marks during dinner. She requested that I check with the teachers tomorrow to find out the cause of those marks.

Since Valerie started school in July, there has been no incidents of fighting nor biting (at least not that I know of). To be frank, I'm feel heartache to know that my Valerie has suffered physical attacks from other children. But I know this is inevitable as children are children.

In any case, I'll check with the in-charge tomorrow to see if they know what happened.

Sigh...

Black out

We experienced our 1st block out in the new house yesterday... 6 months after we shifted in. Not sure what trigger the trip coz it was like 3am in the morning and everyone was in slumberland. My DD was the 1st to realise the lack of electricity coz her beloved fan was not working! After 10 mins or so she was so frustrated from the heat she was throwing tantrums. Thankfully gong-gong managed to get the power back and the cool breeze from the fan slowly calms Valerie down and allow her to go back to zzzzzzz.

So today.. I'm a zombie.. due to lack of sleep & nagging headache.

Working late

Sigh.. I was hoping that I could at least leave by 730pm today and spend some time with Valerie. From the looks of it.. it'll be another 9pm day :-(

Closing, budget, audit, GST... I don't even know how to start..

Nagging cough

I don't know why but Valerie just can't seemed to shake off this nagging cough of hers. Last Monday I just spent S$107 on medical bills due to her persistant coughing. Dr Low said she has a slight asthmatic attack and neb her in his clinic. She was supposed to be on neb that week but as the machine was with my SIL, we only gave her the new puffs Dr Low prescribed. She seemed to have recover well despite the fact we didn't neb her, but yesterday night, the cough seemed to be coming back again. :-(

Guilty!

Ok.. I haven't been reading forum posting nor my fren's blog lately. Work is just killing me and my new found hobby is what's keeping me up late at night :p I'll try to be more 'hardworking' from today onwards ok?

Twinklets, Tigger, Batman, Krazy, Ming - Thank you ladies for sharing your blog with me. It's always so heartwarming to see how our children haven grown. :)

Photoshop Elements 6

To spend or not to spend. I've merely tried PE6 for less than 10 days before I did the system restore on my laptop (let's just forget about that unnecesary step). I tried re-installing the trial but it does work anymore.

I've now installed PE4 onto my laptop but it seemed that there is some compatibility issue, probably due to the fact I'm now using Windows Vista.

So, is this a good reason to spend S$100 on the new PE6? Hmmmm...

Jam pack!

I'm not sure why but the trains are completely jammed pack today! I wasn't early, nor late. I waited for the 3rd train before I could SQUEEZE myself in! As usual, the centre of the cart is spacious and no one wants to move an inch!

ARGH!

Name of blog

I guess some might wonder why "Fairyland" (I believe my DH will! lol). There is just this 'girlie' thing in me.. pretty things, the colour pink, hello kitty.. and this wish that I'm a princess waiting for my handsome prince and we'll live happily ever after :p

I guess I did met my prince and we are living happily since (or most part of it). And our icing to the cake? Our dear little Princess Valerie. What will our life be like without her? :-)

My very own blog header!

I did it! I made my own blog header! Credits go to:

Paper: Occassions Kit by Shabby Princess
Crown: Contedefee kit by Petit Moineaux
Rub on: Vintage Dreams kit by Little Dreamer Designs
Arcylic flower & string of beads by Rhonna Farrer

Ooooooooo.. I'm so addicted to digital scrapbooking!

I've finally done it!

Yes! I've finally decided to have a blog!! Not that I didn't try to before, but I'm just dumbfounded by the 'technicality' of managing one! One trip to the scripts and I'm gone! (lol) Another year later.. I'm back again.. hopefully for good.