2+1 kids day out

so last weekend after Dayana's swimming class, we decided to drop by Pizza Hut for lunch since the Daddy was tied up at the simulator for the day. i texted Aida to see if she was at home, she stays about 10 minutes away from us. she replied she was at home, having just had lunch so we could drop by if we wanted to (chis if she had answered my text earlier i would've just barged into her home for lunch instead bahahahahah).

so we had our pizza first before heading over to her house. we ordered the set for two persons, because the personal pizza set was not enough for the three of us =P. the kids (plus me) love the soup at Pizza Hut and we'd usually end up fighting over who gets to dip the breadsticks in the soup (norley i demand you gimme your mushroom soup recipe!). i let Dayana choose the pizza flavor, she chose beef and mushroom.

then later we headed over to Aida's house, where the kids had fun destroying Auntie Aida's living room hanging out with Nana, Aida's 4-year old kid. you know la the common equation, kids + toys = best friends. Nana had a whole bunch of toys my kids didn't have, like that toy push-stroller that Dinara enjoys pushing around the house or that toy fishing rod where Dayana would use to pretend that she was fishing. i guess they were happy doing something else other than being cooped up at home all day. they even enjoyed hanging out on the couch watching tv.

hanging out watching tv

we went to SCM for a bit, Aida wanted to show me an alternative route to get to the mall without having me go all the way to section 13. the kids as usual were excited to go somewhere. they were so kamcheng together, it's like they've known each other beforehand, haha. before heading back home, we got the kids ice cream from McD. it was an express trip, i had somewhere to go after that.

insta-friends

and somebody got into an accident at Pandora... LOL. i like! the kids as usual buat kedai tu macam rumah sendiri, haish.

teal facet!

after sending the kids back home, i rushed over to meet the husband who gave me a crash course in flying the Simulator. very cool, this one. so many buttons to press, so many displays to keep track of. heck i don't know how to split my vision of sight between the displays and looking out the window T__T. i keep saying to Significant Other that a pilot is similar to a bus driver, with the exception of driving in the air. er wait, or was it that a flight attendant is similar to a waitress, with the exception of waiting on customers in the air? i forgot oledi what i said to him hahahah *ducks from all the flying tomato cherries headed my way*

ok so i was wrong, it ain't just about turning left and right. gomenasai!

anyway, anyone interested in getting the experience should head on over. they even have the outfit, peak cap and all for you to pose in =P.

ada gaya tak? =P

comfy joey

*SOLD*

or sugar gliders, if you please =D

sugar gliders

advertising for a friend =)

i have a couple of home breed Joeys for looking for a new loving home.
1 male and 1 female (classic gray, as per photo)
out of pouch: 30 November 2013

asking price: RM350 for both
(price is negotiable, for serious buyers only)

please contact:

Mashitah
0182002132

squishy wraps to let go

it's that time where i'm letting go some of my wraps in stages (as to reduce the blow felt by me :P) with hopes to aim a stash of below 10 (er, haha). anyone interested please feel free to PM me =)

1. colorgrown waves stripped and dyed Neapolitan by 23 West *sold*

brand: Didymos

size: 4 (~3.6m)

tails: tapered

material: 100% cotton

asking: rm425

2. farideh nazare *sold*

weaver: Farideh of Banu Textile

size: 4 (~3.6m)

tails: non-tapered

material: 100% cotton

price: $570

3. scarista roses (the one on top) *sold*

weaver: Oscha Slings

size: 4 (~3.6m)

tails: tapered

material: 100% cotton

price: $450

(if this doesn't go i won't really mind haha)

4. aqua silk waves *sold*

weaver: Didymos

size: 5 (~4.2m)

tails: tapered

material: cotton/silk

price: $300

choc chip cookie day

i made cookies last weekend. it was supposed to be a mom-kids project, but as usual i ended up doing everything on my own T__T. they wanted to help out but they succeeded in getting flour and sugar all over the kitchen floor, so i shooed them away. i tried calling them when it was about time to pour in the chocolate chips but they were already long gone. HAHA.

#mommydoeseverythingintheend

i guess i should just let them play with dough and cookie cutters next time, eh? they've been so happy the past few weeks playing with play dough (and leaving a trail of play dough-disaster in its wake oh i so hateeeeeee play dough #@#$*#&*$&$@#*@$!!)

#banplaydoughforlife

anyhoo, my friend posted her cookie recipe ingredients on instagram quite sometime ago so i thought i'd try it one day (of which has finally come hahahah). there's so many cookie recipe online you just don't know which one to try. since she's tried it and it turned out ok, i guess i really can't go wrong, eh? guess again.

#myovenistryingtosabotageme

i bugged my friend on whatsapp while i was mixing the ingredients together and insisted she hold my hand throughout HAHA.

so first step, mix all the dry ingredients together.

the dry ingredients

check.

next, mix the butter with the eggs and mix them together with a blender until they're blended well.

for the record, this is my first time using a hand blender. they started looking like scrambled eggs for a very long while.

scrambled eggs, anyone?

*quickly took to the phone and whataspped my friend*

lol

gave up and simply decided to add in the dry ingredients and hope for the best. i omitted the oatmeal from the recipe. my colleague made cookies with oatmeal once, but i didn't really fancy it.

it looked better. but everything was still lumpy. i didn't think that i had to spend A LONG LONG LONG LONG LONG TIME blending the ingredients together, my arm was already starting to ache just holding the hand blender. baking is fun at my mom's place - my mom has a stand blender, and i get two kulis (read: two sisters) to help out hahahah.

whisking away

#isokitchenaidpleasepleaseplease

once i decided that blending was enough, i added vanilla essence and folded in the the chocolate chips last. by this time the cookie batter seemed to look legit; no signs of it blowing up in my face =P =P. Sophia had fun licking the batter T__T.

chocolate chips added

i lined two baking trays with paper and scooped spoonfuls of dough onto the tray. i didn't know how big of a wallop i should put onto the tray but i did remember that i put too much once and it ended up expanding into a very HUGE cookie. i was able to make 16 cookies per tray at one time. so i popped them into the oven and waited until they turned brown.

batch number XX

the thing with the oven is, you need to judge how your oven works. in my case, 180 degrees for 8 minutes just doesn't cut it. my cookies turned brown much sooner than 8 minutes - the first few batches turned out hangit around the edges. i reduced the temperature and removed the cookies from the oven a bit earlier instead.

expanding... expanding...

they came out from the oven really soft but after cooling down on the rack, they hardened up. squee~!

someone asked me what happened to all the chocolate chips

Dinara enjoyed the cookies. but then again, she's a cookie monster. i asked Dayana if she wanted a cookie, you know what she answered? "em maybe next time!" #*$%$#*!@#@$ Significant Other wanted to know why the chocolate chips were so big T__T. the maid says they were too sweet.

ta-da! choc chip cookies

to me they tasted almost similar to femes emes cookies - you get that sweet aftertaste in your mouth after swallowing. but my cookies certainly looked nothing like them no matter how i tried. i tried experimenting with the cookie size, to get it to look more like those femes emes cookies, but they kept turning out looking flat and unflattering.

oh well. at least it turned out crunchy, which i like =D.

piercing post

and you still can't see her tooth

Sophia cut her first tooth at around 8 months old, which is wayy earlier than her older two sisters, who celebrated their first birthday toothless. so far only one tooth has popped up. some people say these teeth usually come in twos, but i dunno. tried to get the little one to open up but she refused. you can only glimpse her pearly white whenever she cries in mock protest. the only other way is that you stick a finger in her mouth and hope she doesn't clamp her gums onto it. hahah.

post-ear piercing

Dayana finally got her ears pierced. she's been wanting to do so since forever but Mommy kept procrastinating because she didn't know where to get them pierced. when asking around, i even made a bm-fail statement:

'kat mana nak tebuk telinga kat area xxxxxx?'

hebat BM i. sigh.

one day my friend told me i could get her ears pierced at the jewellers at pkns so i brought Dayana there on Saturday evening when Daddy and Dinara was sleeping (i wanted to bring Dinara too but since she was sleeping... too bad next time then).

when i asked Dayana again if she still wanted to to pierce her ears, she enthusiastically said yes, so i told her 'sakit kejap je, lepas tu tak sakit dah, ok?'. dia pun ok. i told her we'd go to Old mcDonald if she was a good girl.

it cost me rm24 to get her ears pierced. i let her choose the studs, she chose the round ones with white diamonds, because i told her the silver heart ones (her initial choice) were too small you couldn't even see that it's a heart =P. she didn't even cry when the lady pierced one ear, and then the other. but she was very very very very quiet throughout. control macho kut, hehe. so far, no infections, no continuous pain and so forth.

her new studs!

but she did worry about her ears that first night, she asked about how she was gonna sleep during the night, what if she squished her ears if she slept on her side? i gave her one of those U-shaped pillows that people bring with them onto flights and told her to set her head in between so that her head wouldn't move left and right. HAHAHA.

i jokingly told her that if her ears still hurt the next day, she had to stop eating chicken and eggs for awhile until her ears healed completely. i thought she wasn't really listening to me when i said that but when we were at mcD later i asked her if she wanted a chicken burger, she said 'tapi mami tadi cakap tak boleh makan chicken?' haha =P so she does listen to me even when she looks like she's not!

maggi goreng by the hands of a non-mamak

one night Significant Other bugged me to make him maggi goreng. my maggi goreng would be the Indomie brand, but he doesn't like that one. he prefers the mamak style maggi goreng.

so after consulting with Mister Gugel i came across this recipe from this blog. i'm posting this here so that i can refer back to it later on.

maggi goreng

ingredients:
1 packet of curry-flavored Maggi Mee
1 tablespoon vegetable oil
1 garlic clove, minced
3 cili padi
1 egg, beaten
3-4 stalks sawi, chopped
3 pre-fried tofu puffs, sliced (this i didn't have when i tried this out)

seasoning sauce:
1 packet of curry sachet (included with the noodles)
1 heaping teaspoon thick soy sauce
1 teaspoon light soy sauce
1-2 tablespoon chilli paste (i had no idea what this is, so i omitted this)
3 tablespoons water, to blend

steps:
1. Boil the noodles, blance in cold water, set aside.
2. Mix together all the ingredients for the seasoning sauce into a bowl.
3. Pour oil into pan and toss in the garlic and chillis. Stir-fry for a few seconds.
4. Add in the seasoning sauce.
5. Throw in the sawi and stir-fry for a minute, adding more water if you deem necessary.
6. Add in the noodles. Thoroughly fold in the noodles until coated with the dark seasoning sauce.
7. Add in the tofu puffs (again, i didn't have this lying around my fridge at the time)
8. Make a well in the center of the pan and pour in the beaten egg. Leave it to sizzle for 1 minute or so.
9. The egg should be a little charred on the botton. Scrape and mix the egg with the noodles.
10. Serve on a plate. You can add a bullseye to the dish like i did (egg-overload, i know) or garnish it with calamansi lime (i forgot what you call it in Malay).

i didn't take any photo of my masterpiece, mainly because Significant Other polished it off before i could even try it myself -_____-

when photos do the story telling

my weekend in a nutshell:

1.sold off an office table:

sturdy table hokeh. tabik spring

a table that has greatly done its justice.
has been in the family for so many years due to its sturdiness.
and yet you have been replaced by another.
au revoir, table. you will be deeply missed.

2.mil and mak chu took the kids painting:

oooo, elmo rupanya

nana was supposed to take the kids to KizSport.
how were we to know they relocated???
so they ended up here instead, painting.

the kids' interpretation of 'art':

big Kedah fan HAHA

blue... bell?

3. celebrated tok ami's birthday:

cake from Baker's Cottage

tok ami's 6Xth birthday this year. we love you Tok Ami!
we had a nice dinner at a chinese muslim restaurant and had cake later.
the kids will never pass up an opportunity to blow candles.
they never say no to cake.
Dayana was so excited to present Tok Ami with her present. lol.
she even made Tok Ami a birthday card.

i'm confused as to whose birthday it is actually:

berebut tiup lilin, berebut potong cake

4. the little one tagged along to D1's swimming class:

creepy crawley

been meaning to bring her swimming but the thought of handling two kids (plus one) all by myself scares the crap out of me.
i need at least 4 hands for the job now.

5. the cats looking freakingly bored caged up all day:

sparky and oatsy

i've neglected my favorite animal with the existence of my three children.
my children are already kittens all on their own! O_o

6. trying to complete the collection:

one too many Sulleys

i only need Mike and Thor for my collection.
anyone interested in trading my Sulley for Mike?
=D

7. blast from the past:

gone were the days of big fat sandwich tapes

spring cleaning in progress! i've tried calling up electrical stores on whether they still sell VCR players.
apparently they don't. one person i called up even had the nerve to laugh at me T___T.
my dad still keeps his old players. one is still working.
image quality back then were really lousy. HAHA

8. drooling over a friend's blet:

everything-i-want

two words only:
I. WANT.

9. sisterly love:

these two memang kamcheng

the oldest gets on marvelously with the youngest one.
doesn't matter if she wants to clamber all over her or pull her hair, Dayana will always allow her to.
so different from Dinara, who will scream for help each time the little one gets too close. hahah.

10. Sunday dinner:

chicken khabsa

chicken kebab

big Arab food fan. nothing but yummers all the way.

random things in a nutshell

random things i came across the past week that seems useful to know.

1. reuse plastic soda bottle tops to seal food storage bags (aka junkfood lol)

i heard this on the radio a little while back but with no visual, i just didn't get it, until i saw the photo below.
i have yet to try this out. currently i use those little plastic sealers, those you can buy at Ikea, to reseal my opened plastic bags.

2. brownie in a mug - to keep empty tummies occupied

i think i tried this once. i forgot how this turned out, because i don't really see how this can compete with baking brownies from scratch. i planned to use ramekins but i couldn't find them at the time (and i still don't own any) so maybe since i was planning to make choc cookies with the kids one day, maybe i should try this. hahah.

3. onion school, for dummies 101

you hear people talking about onions all the time. shallots, the mat sallehs in the cooking shows call them. we use onions a lot in cooking. they smell nice, they give you bad breath, we love the onion - fried edition (aka bawang goreng), we can make onion rings out of them! so what's not to love?
(i only eat them if they're fried beyond recognition =P).

so for my reference (just a mention: i keep mistaking ginger for garlic sometimes) i tempek this photo here. so now whenever you plan to whip something up in the kitchen that requires onions, you know which one you should use, haha.

onion vs onion

sekian untuk kelas 101 kita pada hari ini ya. i'm off to fill in my performance review, sigh.

Dinara's first day of school

it's the new year and guess who's going to school for the first time ever???
=D

cik kiah kita yang nombor 2 tu lah. kekekeke.
she wails each time we send Dayana at school for her reading class during the December holidays. each time we tell her that she'll be going to school next year. and so the 'year' has come. HOHO.

4-5 year olds start on the 7th. Dayana starts her first day the day after, mostly due to the teachers wanting to have extra hands to handle the new students who would most definitely wail their heads off, my kid included, haha.

seems like there's been an influx of students this year, compared to the previous years. a good sign perhaps?

her progress so far?
2nd day: spent the morning sitting in her sister's class *sweat*
3rd day: i couldn't get a proper word out of Dinara but according to Dayana, she stayed in her own class
4th day: class hasn't even started and she's already wailing for her sister *double sweat*

and i thought having her sister around would help with the transition T__T. at least i don't have the problem of dragging her out of bed. the problem starts when we arrive at the school gates. LOL.

second day of school

this year there are advance classes and one of the requirements is to be able to read English and BM fluently. the Daddy wants Dayana to be in that class so every night when possible, it's Peter and Jane for her. what book would be recommended for BM reading?

"Peter is here and Jane is here"

btw, Dinara hebat tau in reading. she can read with her eyes focusing on everything else in the room except for on her book T__T.

(more photos to be updated later)

btw, transportation for the kids is difficult to find. and if you do find one, they don't come cheap! maybe i'll resign and become a van driver instead. HAHAHAHAH

also, to start the new schooling year, i got the kids a couple of bag tags. saves the ugliness of having to write their name with marker directly onto their school bags. marker ink spreads on the fabric, so not nice. been thinking of asking my friend to make one for Sophia too (future planning hahaha). norl3y, i pun nak bag tag for my medela boleh? taruk nama ai. kekekekeke (i'm serious).

bag tags courtesy of Norl3y

one night before bedtime Dinara was poring over her Elmo activity book, and one activity required her to find hidden objects in the picture. she was really good at it, being able to find the objects without much help from me.

then there was this object - a red soda can - that had a total of 10 hidden in the picture. she easily pointed out one to me and proceeded to turn the page.
i stopped her and told her that she needed to find 10 soda cans in the picture. she thought for a minute, then pointed to a soda can. "one!" she counted.
and then she pointed to another soda can, and said, "TEN!"

*gelak jatuh kerusi*
#talkaboutshortcutcounting
#ineverexpectedhertosaythat

birthstones

i keep forgetting which stone belongs to which month, and some months seem to have more than one.
so i'm posting this here for easy reference.
hmmm... seems my kids' birthstones are of greenish hues - peridot and emerald.

p/s. my birthstone is citrine =P

img source: google

tesco's heroes and friends

tesco has always been the place we go to get groceries, simply because it's the nearest 'convenient' supermarket nearest to our home. we spend a whole lot of money on food, kids food and stuff, junk food (for the adults ok *sweat*), household cleaners, etc etc.

so it's no wonder we managed to collect 8 of these figurines fully redeemed by stickers during the promo period *pengsan tengok grand total bill*

5 uniques, 3 clones. HAHA.

(ok i lie the last one i added rm4.90 for the last figurine because i would need to add another rm200 to my bill, plus they shortened the sticker issuance period at the last minute tsk so there wasn't time to collect more huhu).

meet the heroes family!

we didn't manage to get Mike, 'the green man' (bak kata Dayana), Thor (i didn't know he was in the line up), and Buzz Lightyear. the kids were so excited to rip open the box to see what they would get. tp mencik la you can't get to choose what you wanted. heck we managed to get THREE Sulleys!!! @_@

so... now that all the fun's over (phooey), if any of you have either one of the above mentioned and would like a trade for the following two clones (Ironman and Sulley), feel free to PM me! LOL LOL.

oprhaned Ironman and Sulley

(although i think Ironman might be spoken for but the person has yet to PM me about it =D)

update 24/1:

looking to trade Sulley for Mike!
also, looking for Thor at a reasonable price please, tia~

pah's starter

i just love ogling over these... even though they aren't mine.
LOL LOL
(seriously, they're not mine. helped to buy for a friend. heck i don't even own openworks yet
HAHA)

cantik kan? for a starter? =D

these people are very clever. only selected trays are actually on sale, yet customers end up buying like no tomorrow, clearance or no clearance. incredible tactic HAHAHA.

anyone wants me to get them anything at mv? *tabur racun*