Category: Festivals

Every year come November for the past 4 years, when it’s time to assemble our X’mas tree and decorate it, I will be reminded of the day that hubby bought the X’mas tree in December 2006. He was unloading the X’mas tree from the car boot into the house and his new MPV was parked outside our house. When he went outside moments later to check on the car, it was gone. Gone in a flash in broad daylight!  The car was locked but it was professionally stolen in just minutes right in front of our house!

3 days ago, hubby brought the X’mas tree back from his office store and the girls had fun decorating it, while singing X’mas songs that they learned from Barney.

The girls having fun decorating the tree with ornaments.  But someone has been plucking the baubles from the X’mas tree and breaking the strings. A gingerbread man was also yanked into 3 pieces!

And the star for the peak of the X’mas tree is missing. We had bought two stars over the years but all were broken by someone. The girls have been badgering daddy to go to Mid Valley Megamall to shop for a new star for the X’mas tree.

This is Alycia in her new dress that I bought for her from a talented mummy who sews pretty dresses for girls.

All I want for X’mas is my 2 front teeth… how apt this song is for Alycia now.  And how I am longing for her 2 front teeth to grown so that she will look pretty again.

Alycia’s pretty Cherry Cluster dress from Niv Niv Handmade . The dress came with a matching headband and Pei Yi was kind enough to sew 2 more pairs of pretty hair clips for my 2 other girls.  The handwork and quality of the dress and hair clips were very well done.  The dress even came with a nice plastic label attached at the bottom of the dress… but my careless helper ironed on the plastic label and ruined the label!!  Boy was I enraged!

Do check out Niv Niv Handmade if you are looking for pretty custom-made dresses and hair accessories for your little girl.

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2 weeks ago, we bought our first jar of CNY cookie to ‘pong chan’ (help to patronize) the very nice girl who sells veggie at the pasar malam. It was a jar of almond cookies. Several days later, hubs bought several jars of cookies from his supplier (pumpkin seeds, mixed nuts and double chocolate). Boy, they tasted SO good and I’ve been gobbling them every morning for breakfast. I can’t eat them when my 2 older gals are around coz they would get distracted by the cookies and ditch their lunch or dinner. See, being a mother, you have so much to sacrifice. I even have to eat junk food that I love inside the kitchen or when they are not around, just so my 3 gals can’t see mummy eat junk food and get distracted LOL!!. Of course I will reward them with cookies when they have finished their proper meals.

Anyway, back to the CNY cookies. I bought some more cookies to ‘pong chan’ the lady who sells ‘chai’ (vegetarian) at the roadside yesterday morning.  So pitiful right, gotta toil and sweat under the hot sun or get wet in the rain to sell ‘chai’ and cookies.  It’s this box of almond flakes-pumpkin seeds-black sesame seeds crisps with syrup.  They taste really, really good and half a box is gone!  I’m planning to buy more cookies from her.

My hubs also ‘pong chan’ the sundry shop owner who kept advertising this bottle of deep fried crispy crabsticks. They taste good too but too salty, so I have hidden it so that my gals can’t steal them LOL!!

What’s left of the double choco cookies and almond cookies.  Another bottle of pumpkin seeds cookies was walloped a week ago. 

I am planning to buy some more cookies next week, this time from the woman who sells newspapers by the roadside.  Pity this lady who was cheated on by her ex-husband.  Every year, I would buy cookies from her to ‘pong chan’ her, though the cookies are expensive.

Have you bought your favorite CNY cookies yet?  Or you’ve already walloped them all?

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My mum bought some colored rice flour dough from the market yesterday morning. Last night, my 3 gals had their first experience rolling tong yuen. It was similar to playing with play dough and they had SO much fun. But the aftermath was REALLY messy – clumps of rice flour everywhere on the table, floor, their clothes, their body and hair. But what the heck, soon after rolling the balls, they all had their shower.  It’s their first ever experience and they only get to do it once a year.

My 3 brats trying their hands on rolling tong yuen balls. The red color from the red rice flour dough is from beet root juice and and green one from pandan juice.

Baby looked really serious and absorbed playing with the rice flour.  On a few occasions, she even climbed up the table to grab more dough.

My mum trying to stuff some homemade pandan kaya and homemade peanut butter into the balls but it was a failure. She has never done it before and the ball turned out really huge and a tad distorted.

The balls were all misshapened and came in all sizes.

Finally, she dropped the idea of stuffing the balls with kaya and peanut butter. Instead, she inserted a peanut into each tong yuen. This morning she rolled the tong yuen into a plate of toasted sesame seeds before boiling them.

This is our bowl of sesame seed coated, peanut butter, kaya and whole peanut filled tong yuen in soy bean milk with ginger.

Happy ‘kor toong’ everyone!  Happy birthday to you too big bro Ray!  See you and Marene on X’mas Eve and have a safe drive back from Singapore.

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This year’s Chinese New Year is one of the most boring ones for me.  Normally we would all be back in Ipoh to celebrate CNY but since I can’t travel, we have to stay put in KL. Back in Ipoh, there would be a lot of visiting done and meeting up with my old classmates.  I thought I could catch up on my sleep but nope, I have lesser of it in fact.  On CNY’s eve, I did not manage to sleep until about 3-4am as there were sounds of blasting fire crackers throughout the night and I am a very light sleeper.  This morning, Alycia woke me up at 5am as she had wet her pants – overloaded diaper.  I then washed her up and changed her.  Alycia who is 4 years old is still wearing diapers to sleep at night.  Yup, I admit I have been procrastinating to toilet train her at night as I am just plain lazy and tired.  One of my New Year’s resolution is to train Alycia to go diaperless at night this year. 

Since I could not get back to sleep, I went downstairs to do some work on my computer.  I also wanted to spot check my new maid and see why she’s so slow in her work.  I went back to sleep at 6:45am and woke up at 8:30am.  It’s been almost a year since I last woke up this late! 

Lunch was simple.  The girls’ former sitter had given us some ‘loh hon cai’ (vegetarian dish) yesterday and we had not eaten it yet as we ate out the whole of yesterday.  Today, I just reheated the vegetarian dish and also cooked macaroni & cheese with chopped french beans for the girls.  Tonight, I will be steaming half a chicken, cook ‘lap mei’ rice (rice with Chinese pork sausages and liver sausages), reheat some pork ribs that the girls’ sitter cooked earlier this week and cook brocolli with ‘tau kan’ (vegetarian dish) and Pacific clams.   I have also boiled a pot of nice soup (old cucumber with duck’s kidney, pork ribs, soya bean and red dates – supposed to ‘har for’ or eliminate heatiness from the body).

We may bring the girls to MegaKidz @ Mid Valley tomorrow.  These days, I just don’t feel like going out too much as I get tired very easily.  This year’s CNY is indeed very quiet and ‘unhappening’ for us. 

How was your CNY?  I bet everyone is having a swell time with your family and friends.

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