Heart melting moments

Recently, I am starting to realise that Lil Joy is baby no more. It is sweet when she do certain things.

Incident 1

Grandma came over to our house and Lil Joy started to dig her bag and took out her spectacles. Lil Joy then insists that grandma put on her specs and kept pointing towards a direction. It didn't take us long to realised that Lil Joy is pointing to a stack of newspapers and is indicating to grandma to use her specs for reading. ooohhh...

Incident 2

I have to leave the house every week for my lessons and last month, Lil Joy broke into a cry when I left. This week, when I was leaving, she ran into the house towards the dining table. I was anticipating some tears but Lil Joy seemed to be very serious and is pointing to something on the table. Then I realised, I have forgotten to take the present meant for my teacher. Oh.. that was an intense heart melting moment to know that my little girl is starting to help me out.

All kids seems to melts their parents' hearts when they do simple things. Treasure these moments is my motto at the moment. Hahahaha

Earrings too many?

I was out on errands on that particular day and arranged to meet hub and lil Joy at Orchard. I found myself elated when i reached Orchard Road early and is alone. I nearly did a dance when I got off the bus. So I went for a quick shopping trip and ended up with an umbrella and this set of earrings.

And yes, who ever mentioned that a girl can have too many pairs of earrings?

Crochet hook handle

I have gotten myself the full set of the Clover Amour Crochet hooks and I never look back again. They are comfortable, colorful and useful tools for people who crochet (aka me).

There are times when I have to use hook sizes that do not come in the set, like the 1.0mm hooks for my crochet bead bracelets and they are a pain in the fingers to work with. I have planned to make handles for them for a long time and ideally, I want to use polymer clay. However, the thoughts of digging my clay out and setting up my oven has made me procrastinate this plan for the longest time.

That day, an idea lighted up and it's the perfect opportunity for me to use up those felt fibres that I have gotten to try out felting (which i realised quickly that it's not my cup of craft). So a felted handle was made for my 1.0mm..

Tadah...

I will say that it works to reduce the pain caused by that extremely skinny handle but it takes a lot of time to felt this thing up. I am still using the felting needle to poke it once in a while when i feel like it to make it firmer. I suppose I am the only person who felt by instalments. In conclusion, the amount of time I used to make this felt handle is most likely enough for me to make clay handles for all my steel hooks. Well, i have to find some good use for the felt somehow so it is still a good attempt.

Lantern Festival

My favourite chinese festival which is filled with childhood memories of good fun, great cousins and friends and lots of burnings. 

Last year, we got an inflated lantern for lil Joy who is only interested in chewing on it. This is the first year that I thought she might have more purposeful lantern carrying and so mommy prepares...

I refuse to buy the sticks for the lanterns and so made some from the old magazines. 

And the most important thing for late night walk, mosquitoes patch.

A few cute traditional lanterns.

And LED candles for very young children.

When we reached the playground, the reality is.. the lantern got chucked on the floor.

Lil Joy ran off with glee..

Yes, she spent the next hour running up and down the playground with our neighbour's kid. I suppose she is still not that ready to celebrate the festival with me yet.

Waiting for Meal

One must be patience when we are waiting for our meal to be served. Lil Joy should be famished this day because her parents had left the house too late for dinner. 

A little girl should still have her manners at the table, especially when her mommy is taking pictures of her. Just joking about this part, I just thought these pictures of hers are so cute.

Daddy is checking out his handphone? Wonder what is he looking at?

Hmmm, when is my food coming?

Seriously? They need to take such a long time?

 I must make full use of my time and check out that handsome boy at the other table.

Hey Mom, the food is here!!

Warnings to all DADs: This is how you look when you are busy with your phone and do not realise how many precious moments you could have missed.

Playground at the new Sports Stadium

We went for a short trip to our newly opened Sports stadium, it is big and spacious and seemed to be sufficient to accomodate events with lots of people and there was a football match that evening and I did not even feel swamped by people.

It is a great place for evening walk with a stroller and lots of space for lil Joy to run around and there is our beautiful Kallang River too.

It was a beautiful and quiet evening for our small family and I did not take a lot of pictures except when we are at the playground.

The playground is at the 2nd level. Do refer to the map to look for it because I am quite lost in this place.

We found these slopes of greenery on our way to the playground and lil joy was intrigued by it.

And when we reach the playground and off she dashed. It amused me to the max when I see her ran off.

We found this mini 'wall climbing' and lil Joy is so determined to climb up but she seemed to be slightly too small to make it all the way to the top. Of course, she soon realised that if she cannot make it, just call for help and her mommy has to help her up. I ended up quite busy helping her up this wall so she can get to slide.

There is this turning seat which i recall that it helps young kids with their sense of balance. Apparently, lil Joy does not like it but she enjoys the one with a pole at the playground near our house. I suppose she does fear of falling.

And lastly, my favourite is the see saw which is very rare now. Lil joy even get to play with some other kids at the playground. Before that she has to play with daddy who is so much heavier than her which resulted in this 'unbalanced' scene.

I love the gleeful look when she is on the see saw.

Watercoloring by the Mommy

Recently, I am reminded of the arts and crafts activities that we have been taught in our school days but with a new light.

Honestly, it frustrated me at times when I rediscover an activity that I knew from my school days which has been classified as boring in my memory. An example is watercoloring. 8 years of primary and secondary school education with arts lessons have left me clueless about this art medium. Every year, our school book list will have watercolors paint set in it and every year, at some point in time we might be asked to bring it to school but was never taught any skill, any knowledge or any examples on how we can use that medium. The teachers' idea of art lesson is giving the command 'Draw this'.. and they relax for that lesson. Seriously, tt is such a bad bad thing to do. I grew up with the impression that watercolor is a weak, difficult and cheap art medium and it is used by boring uncle artists to make those light washed sketches.

Can you imagine how much I wanted to bash myself when i realised that those uncle artists are not boring but very talented? How shocked I am to know that watercolor need not be only in light washes but can be used for the most beautiful blending on your painting. It is such a versatile art medium with so much possibilities that I only got to know recently. This was bed by my interest in watercolor pencils and pastels and my wishes to do blending which seemed to be only achieved by the very expensive Copic Markers.

I am not an artist, my job is at the other spectrum of the creative rainbow. I only like to doodle with little crafts and arts things for joy to create happy things and happy thoughts.

After all these ramblings, I started my watercoloring with a new interest and a purpose on what I want to create. I started with cute drawings and inked them in waterproof inks.

Then I use my watercolors and I am really very very surprised by the final products and still cannot digest the thoughts that it is being done by watercolors.