My Daughter's Sunflowers

A few months ago, when it was almost spring, I promised my daughter that we could do some gardening together. Like most kids, my kids love doing messy things. This includes gardening because they can dig the yucky, muddy soil and playe with it and of course plant some nice plants for themselves.


While my son chose to plant some peas which  he recently planted a few weeks ago, my daughter had planted a few dwarf sunflowers at the back of my small vegetable patch.

I told her that once she planted them, she had to take good care of them. Being the good little girl that she is, she's been watring them every day and has been eagerly waiting for the plant to pop out of the ground. A few weeks after planting the seeds, there was still no sign but after a few months, we saw sprouts coming from the planted spots and she jumped with joy.

With spring turning into summer, I could see the sunflowers plants growing very healthily with very big green leaves but for some odd reason there was no sign of the bright yellow flowers until recently.

So today, I'm so proud to show off my daughter's sunflowers. Isn't it nice? Of course, she couldn't have done it without my help. Ahaks!

Just an old video of Husayn in the garden

Ikea Dublin's First Birthday Celebrations

  I didn't make this cake

I got a message from Ikea the day before yesterday about this. So, I decided to bring the kids over there. As expected, the car park was full and I had to make a few rounds to eventually get a space. After managing to get out of the car, our journey began.

Miniature cake of ikea

There were so many activities going on that day. There was a live band and bouncing castles at the entrance, face painting and testing the birthday cake at the ground floor and then straight to the restaurant and show rooms where one could get modelled balloons for the kids. Another live band in the restaurant and also a treasure hunt for free ice cream topped it all off.

Can you spot Hisham?

As we arrived right on lunch time, my God! The queues were so long and the place was flooding with people. You can just imagine how it was as I was alone with the kids and at the same time, trying to get something to eat at the counter. This where I wished my other half was there to help...

Hisham was so teruja with Ms Clown

After almost 4 hours of struggling to have a go at all the events for the kids, I finally managed to drag all of us to the exit. I didn't go there to buy anything so, we went straight to present the treasure hunt form at the counter and got ice cream and candy floss for all our hard work. We gave the free popcorn a miss as I told my kids we had too much junk for one day.

Everything was free except for the lunch...but it's still very good value

Tired but enjoying all the free stuff

It was a challenging day for me but I survived. I was just happy to see that my kids enjoyed the day. Oh, and this song is dedicated to all the readers of my blog out there...

Just in case you're wondering, all the festivities didnd't actually end yesterday. Like an orang kaya-kaya's wedding, the celebrations will go on for another few days over the weekend up to this bank holiday Monday.

Red Velvet Cake

Personally, apart from the rainbow cake, this red velvet is a hit at the moment. I've always been tempted to make this cake but I can't imagine how it tastes like. The ones I've seen, looked so fluffy, velvety, scrumptious, yummy and so beautiful too. Like some sort of small version of a wedding cake.

So, it was quite a coincidence when browsing the internet recently, I came across this...

Isn't it great? It looks simple enough as well. Yeah, right. Tipu jek... But, I still love it and it's not too bad. I don't have the required 9" round pans so I used 1 big 9" round pan instead. My verdict: Use as directed because if you use a big one, you'd need to cut it and as an amateur like me, I nearly broke the cake into pieces. Also, it would take longer to bake and the texture didn't turn out as soft as in the video (as far as I can see).

My version of RED VELVET cake

I just realised that I don't have enough Philadelphia cheese for the frosting. I  only  had one pack at the time. Because of that, I didn't have enough frosting so, I just put a thin layer for that sandwich effect.

That's why it looked so buruks inside

Hisham & The Slide

OK since I can walk now, I wanted to do something new. Yes, I'll have a go on a slide. Well, actually climbing the slide.

Wicklow Mountains: Twice in a month

While browsing around my hard disk with the intention of sorting out all the more recent pictures, I came across a few photos that I've never shared here. Last month, as  I've mention before, was quite a busy month for us. There were a few visitors from home: friends and families who stopped over at our place here in Ireland for their holidays.

Honestly, even though we've lived here for more than a decade, the truth is, we've never really had a chance to fully explore this beautiful country. Well, to be honest not even  the whole of Dublin. I do recall that while in college, there was a college trip to the South of Dublin (hehehe...I'm not even sure of the exact directions to the place, my bad).

To a bit more exact, the trip brought us around the Wicklow Moutains area which errr...is in Wicklow. So, after a short discussion with the husband, we decided to bring our visitors there. In the end, it turned out that ten years after visiting the place, we then set some sort of (personal) record in visiting the same place twice in the space of a month.

It just sounds funny doesn't it? The scenery were so breathtaking and amazing that you really can't get enough of it. God's creations are just so marvelous, that's why I suppose, we decided to go there again and again. How could we have forgotten about this place in the first place?

Hot water spring? Errr... not really.

The wind was blowing so strongly, we had to hold on to Hisham just in case he flew away.

Trying to catch up with me up here? No chance.

 Who likes Braveheart? This is where they filmed most of the movie.

 Oh... and I still didn't manage to sort out all my pictures. Well, maybe some other time.

My Cucumber's Progress

A friend of mine called recently asking whether I was going to open my Warung Nasi Lemak (that's Coconut Rice food stall to the non-Malaysian amongst you) the following morning?

What?

Well it's not really a real warung where I sell my Nasi Lemak it's more of a Hey, you don't want to cook Nasi Lemak and invite us over ka? type of question. Hehehe...So, being my usual self and being so lazy as I have yet to do my proper grocery shopping for the week I said, Hmmm...let me see first.

But, as I'm such a softy when it comes to requests from friends like this, at the end of the day, I called her back and agreed to cook Nasi Lemak and invited her over. I added a warning for her to not come too early though. Not for breakfast, maybe for brunch because I need my extra beauty sleep on the weekends. Ahaks!

Unfortunately, as I was preparing the meal the following morning, I realised that I didn't have any cucumber for the salad that goes with the rice. Thankfully, my husband (the genius that he is) reminded me that I could just use the cucumber from our garden. Oh, yeah...

OK, let's have a look at the progress of my cucumber.

Tiny baby cucumber

Can you spot the cucumber?

Deliciously green and BIG

So GEMUK.... ready to cut

Unfortunately, I forgot to take pictures of my Nasi Lemak because...errr...all of us were actually too busy eating it! Well, maybe next time, OK?

Walking is my favourite thing now!

Ever since my baby Hisham started to walk, he just can't stop doing it especially when his brother and sister is around him. No matter how many times he falls down he will try to stand back up again and walk like he's such a pro. He loves walking in the garden pretending that he's a big boy joining his bigger siblings for a kick-about.



As always, I just let him do whatever he wants and usually I'd just watch him from afar. This one time, while I was in the kitchen having my usual hot chocolate, Hisham was in the garden with his brother and sister. All of a sudden, ooppss! He jatuh tersungkor and banged his forehead and nose, not on the grass but on the hard surface in the garden.

In the end, this week alone he had fallen in the garden twice. One was this one and the other one was, while he was playing with his sister on the swing and accidentally fell right under it!



My poor little baby. But don't blame me. Hehehe he's just too eager to walk and just refuses to crawl anymore so, look what happened now. But practice does makes perfect and see now how he can walk so steadily. Well...almost.

School Holiday Project 2

I finished my house chores for the day and as the kids had been extra well behaved, I decided to do some art work again. Working with paint is a big hassle for me what with all the mess it creates but a loud agreeable Yeay! for the kids. By just telling them that will be doing some art work just makes them so excited.

So, this is our second project for the second week of the school holidays: Make Treasure Boxes.

OK, you will need a couple of empty tea bag boxes (the ones where the top part/lid opens) or something similar, some paint and any art and craft-type stuff lying around the house like buttons, ice cream sticks, pipe cleaners etc...etc... Not to forget some gloopy glue to stick everything together. That's what my kids call it anyway. Oh, they love that too.

While waiting for the painted boxes to dry we had a break and watched some movies. Look how focused they are while watching cartoons (including the lil one....)

As soon as the paint dried, we continue working...

Unfortunately, we had to wait until the next morning for all the glued stuff to properly stick together.

Muka lepas mandi xsikat rambut

Ameera's

Husayn's... muka tension jek..

Tadaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

 Treasure boxes- Handy for collecting rubbish and bugs in the garden. Errk...

Deer in the City

Having a nice big park in the heart of Dublin city is an advantage for all of us. It's like a 5-minute drive away from where we live. We can go cycling, have picnics, BBQs or just have a stroll in the park while enjoying the weather. Ok, not so much the weather but the rest are definite advantages.

A word of caution though: While you're around the area, beware of deers. If you're lucky enough, a pack of deers will run across/around/near you while you're driving the car or while you're cycling your bike. Until recently, I still didn't have an idea where it is exactly they lived in the park. But, one day while we passed through Phoenix Park, my husband told me that he wanted to bring us to a special place.

OK, don't ask me exactly where this special place is but you can just go to his blog and find out how to get to the place where the deers lepak. Once there, from the nearby parking space I could see 100, maybe be more deers running around the area or just grazing on grass. Excitedly, my kids and I walked closer to them. As we got closer, they ran away but they were still like less than 10 meters away and you could actually see them staring at you and say

WTF errrr... i.e. Why The Face (not the other one)... like you've never seen us before??? 

Hahahah... I kid you not. They weren't too happy having their lunch interrupted by a couple of jakuns!

Well hope you'd all enjoy the few pictures of the day. Cool, isn't it? They're actually there all this time. We just didn't know it. Seriously, it was like going to a safari or some Deer Park.