Honey4Boyz

It's Chinese New Year. Year 2015 is the Year of Goat or Sheep or Ram, whatever. One of the things we enjoy, not sure it's a tradition or not, is making crafts for decoration. Paper cuts is a popular Chinese handicraft. It's good for training the motor skills as well. Learning some simple designs from Youtube  and the techniques of cutting can be tricky. We've some visitors this CNY, so we put up more decorations in the house than usual. The red crafts sure made our house looked cheerful and festive.  Another tradition we enjoy is meeting up with our family members and friends. Especially those who come back from afar. We do not reside overseas so we do not feel the anticipation of travelling far for family gatherings. Most of the gatherings revolved around eating, and eating and eating. The kids enjoyed throwing the Pop-pop at each other, and the more daring ones played the firecrackers. Think the boys have outgrown the mild sparklers. Visit from my Myanm...

We've gathered some friends and relatives together for some fun and fellowship on Christmas eve. Weather has been extremely kind - cooling and cloudy the whole day set the mood for Christmas. I don't normally blog about parties, but again and again we've noticed how kids enjoyed unhurried time to play and the importance of allowing lots of free and unstructured play. Indeed BBQ  preparation was the perfect time for everyone to warm up and have fun. We've not planned any activities for the kids but just let them be involved in what we're doing. They've plenty of time to mix with others, handle problems on their own, explore at their own pace, develop their own interests and indulge in a sort of pretend play  that would help them to understand how to create their own happiness. Indeed it's the joy of just being a kid.     We've many volunteers, and some on waiting list to start the fire. We wanted to have fun with BBQ and at the same time, minimi...

Happy Mid-Autumn Festival! An innovative handmade jellyfish lantern from recycled materials (except light bulb) taught by a very hands-on and creative art teacher, Linda. Children trying their hands to make the jellyfish lanterns. This was a mummy & son first attempt to make a lantern at home - before we decided to go for the class.... Our residential mooncake festival party which was an annual event, complete with fireworks. Children also have fun playing with candle, and we scrapped the residual candle wax that's on the floor into a glass bottle to melt it - and there, we've our own bottle candle! This year, we added the pandan flavour in it.

Bak Chang or Rice Dumpling Festival is celebrated annually on the 5th day of the 5th month of the Chinese lunar calendar. This year, it fell on the 23rd of June. We decided to take up the challenge of making our own bak chang. It's timely because my mother-in-law was visiting us at the same time. She has been making bak chang for her extended family since young.  We went to the wet market and found all the ingredients easily. We bought 2 kg of glutinous rice and have to estimate the portions for the fillings, ie dried Chinese mushrooms, dried chestnuts, salted egg yolks and the black eyed beans.  We also got the bamboo leaves and bundle of strings (many people prefer to use raffia string but we like the traditional reed string). It's common to include pork belly in the filling but we decided to make no-meat bak chang this round. We spent the night before getting ready the ingredients and stuff. Grandma told the boys they had to start learning fr...