Matryoshka Nesting Dolls

My girls just love to watch all the series in the Disney Channel, they can just glue to the television for as long as the Disney channel is on. One of their favourite series is the Higglytown Heros. Talking about Higglytown Heros, the characters are the Russian Matryoshka dolls or Nesting dolls. I always admire the Matryoshka doll, they are unique as compare to the other dolls, authentic doll is said to be made of Siberian wood, individually designed, hand-carved and hand painted by highly talented artists, the finished product is lacquered and polished to become a true master piece that last for generations.

The one uniqueness about the Matryoshka dolls is that they come in a set of a few identical dolls in different sizes, the smaller ones can be nestled into the bigger ones and become one!! Very unique!

I have not got a set of the doll yet but I am planning to get a set of these Matryoshka dolls of my choice in the near future as decorative collections for our new home. Oh wait! Since they will last for generations to come, I think I will have to get two sets of these dolls as collectors items so that my two girls will each have a set of the doll from me in the future, :D, they love dolls!!

Harvest Festival 2011/Pesta Kaamatan 2011

The Harvest Festival for the ethnic group of Kadazan Dusun in Sabah falls on 30th & 31st May each year, it's public holidays for us in Sabah. We will be having 4 off days continuously end of this month with Monday and Tuesday being the Public Holiday after the weekend.

Usually the line up of celebrations start a month earlier. We can feel the festivity atmosphere when we stepped into Centre Point shopping mall last Saturday with kadazan songs, local handicrafts booths and the exhibitions of students water colouring featuring natives Kadazan Dusun and Mt Kinabalu at the main hall.

My girls were busy roaming around the booths checking out what's for sale. I took some pictures as if I am a tourist.

the booths at the mall

Handmade necklaces caught Crystal's eyes

Pearl, one of the most sought after jewelry items for tourists who come to Sabah

Earrings, RM10.00 for 3 pairs, cheap cheap, which ebay selling more than RM10.00 per pair

T-shirts as souvenir

Orang Utan

Here are my girls visiting the booths

last but not least, our local produce organic Sabah Tea

No Internet Connection

It takes a week for our telephone line and internet connection to be transferred from our old home to our new home. We are still waiting for the Telekom man to come transferring our telephone line. Luckily I am able to access the internet in the office. I will have to maximise the time during my lunch break checking on my mails, update my blogs other online activities as much as I can.

Nowadays, Internet connection is an integral part of our lives, a lot of business activities can not be done without it, especially those with online businesses.

Our new home is still in a big mess, with boxes and boxes of stuff every way, Clet and his worker are moving stuff from our old home at the intervals of fixing the lights, doors and fencing this week. We are lost when looking for our stuff, Crystal has been wanting to start unpacking to look for her books, she loves reading, we just have to ask her to wait till her book shelve is ready. We only have that little time at night to do our unpacking and arranging to put our new home into a presentable and comfortable state. We have too much stuff organise I must say.

Update on our new home

We have moved. Officially we have moved on last Saturday, 07/05/2011.

Clet has put up an alter by the entrance for The Lord. In a prayer, we asked for His Blessings and presence in our new home to protect and shelter us at all times, and also thank Him for giving us a new home.

Since the workers were still around repairing the house, I prepared a light lunch for them who have been helping to repair the house for the past 1 month. They continued their tasks right away after their lunch. There are still lots of bits and pieces of everything needed to be touched up and fixed but we moved in anyway. Will have to get them fix up day by day.

Our girls are happy sharing a room, I heard them discussing who takes the big bed and who take the smaller bed and who sleeps near the window and so on, there were some disagreement at first but they sorted it out among themselves remarkably. I have noticed that their beds are nice and tidy in the morning before they go to school these 2 days...unlike last time, the bedroom was like a war zone. :D Girls, keep up the good work!!

more space for them to play

Nasi Lemak Make you Fat?

A packet of my breakfast last week

Do you really think eating Nasi Lemak will make you fat?  Is it because of its high coconut oil/ santan content?  I once read some articles of coconut oil, I came to know that it has many health benefits than other oil.  Here is one of the Health Benefit of Coconut Oil you can read on.  

I really want to know if there are some other reasons why Nasi Lemak is said to make us Malaysian fat or obese.  I would support the idea of controlling the sales of those processed food, like nuggets, fried fries, fried mashed potatoes cakes, oily noodles, and sausages in the school canteen.  

Whenever my girls ask for sausages in their meals, I would stare at them with my sharpest eyes, always remind them that this is "lousy food", can only be eaten occasionally. 

I am not a big fan of Nasi Lemak, but reckon that the sale of this famous, delicious and affordable Malaysian delicatessen should not be controlled until a true nutritional facts of it has been thoroughly studied.

Princesses Room deco

We walked around Complex Karamunsing furniture section last night, we saw this princesses room setting, girls would love to have these furniture in their room. All pink in colour. with princesses images every where. Just by walking pass this shop, we noticed that there are many decorative collections and furniture for the house. We did not step inside the shop, we were actually looking for a light shop and it was closed for night.

Princesses

Lights for the house

Since last week Clet has been wanting to bring me to an electrical shop in Inanam where there are some nice ceiling lights for sale on discounts. We went there last night just half and hour before the shop closes.

We spent our half an hour there looking up at the ceiling for those lights and chandeliers. Honestly getting a nice and suitable lights for the house is not easy especially with tight budget to work with.

Personally I pretty much prefer to have a chandelier at the entrance / foyer of our house, it makes the house looks grand some how, but the price is not cheap too. I am thinking of getting something resembling of a chandelier but with much cheaper price (lower grade chandelier so to speak).

I quite like this one

and this one

This lemon light caught the eyes on my girls

this is not bad too but insects tend to land on the centre piece (the middle bowl)

My girls wanted me to take photo of this light because of the hanging stars and the moons

This is also one of our choice. Gold trimming, I need a lot of gold...:D But the price is too high for this type of ceiling light.

It must have been the shape of the butterfly fairy wings that made Pearl took photo of this light.

We did not buy any of the lights yet, still searching for the ones that really to our liking and with most reasonable price.

Cake for Mother's Day

It's the time of the year to celebrate Mother's Day. Mother's day falls on the 1st Sunday of May each year, that is 8th May in 2011, if anyone still wondering when is the exact date!!

Bakeries in town are putting up posters and giving out leaflets to promote their respective Mother's Day Cakes Specials. They are all looks super delicious and mouth watering. But I still prefer home baked cake. On this mothering sunday, I will not able to bake a cake for my mum, as we will be busy moving house, everything are in a mess, I am sure she won't mind without a cake, she is not a cake lover, a dinner treat for her is definitely a must.

Goldfish color biscuits review

My girls grabbed a packet of this Goldfish colors cheddar cheese biscuit from the biscuit section in the supermarket on Easter Sunday. They want this as their biscuit treats, at a glance on the price I was about to say NO. It is pretty expensive to me but It's Easter, we should be celebrating, and I like the packaging, it should taste good too, so I said YES, we can have it.

The packaging is very colourful and nice, any kids will be attracted to it just by looking at the packaging, the taste is secondary. I attracted to it too.

We are very eager to open up the pack to have a taste of this cheddar cheesy biscuit. The biscuits look like this. Colourful fish shape just like what have mentioned on the packaging. After a few bites, 3 of us stop eating. The taste is not to our preference, no taste of cheese and the biscuit is neither sweet nor savoury.

What am I going to do with this packet of biscuits, definitely we wouldn't be able to finish it up and don't want to throw away just like that. I am sure someone would love it. I suggest my girls to bring to their school and share with their friends. Crystal welcome the idea but Pearl said no thanks.

Crystal brought a small container of the biscuit to school. It seems that they did not like the biscuits too because she brought back the remaining. Ended up we still have got 80% of the biscuits. Me, being the "rubbish bin" of the house will have to finish it over time because I do not like the idea of wasting food. Dipping the GoldFish Colorful biscuits in the coffee would be a good idea I suppose!! Just like eating cereals in a bowl of milk. Hope my idea works!

The moral of the story is don't be deceived by the packaging of the product.

No postage service to Israel

Do you know that there is no postage service to Israel by Pos malaysia? Recently I posted a packet via Pos Malaysia registered airmail to a buyer in Israel whom bought an item from my online shop. I have checked and noticed that she has previously did some purchases from other sellers in Malaysia, I thought it should be alright to accept her payments and proceed to send the product to her.

Last week I found a Pos Malaysia's notice in my mail box requesting me to see the officer regarding a post that I sent to Israel 2 weeks ago which I thought it has arrived to the receiver.

I went to see the officer yesterday, I waited about 45 minutes in her office situated in the main post office mails sorting room, I never knew the sorting room is such a big place with many sorting clerks standing there sorting out baskets and baskets of our mails each day. I was thinking of taking photos but dropped the ideas in case of infringement of privacy whatsoever.

The officer was not late, her working hour starts from 9am, I thought all government servants start work at 8am, I was too early. She explained to me that my post has in fact arrived at KLIA and it was returned due to no service to Israel, advise me to claim it back and sent by other service provider which is much more expensive. I told her that why at the first place the pos office clerk accepted my post when I sent it through the counter? Well, human do make mistakes.

I will have to go back there to see the officer again to claim my packet of mail as I did not bring my prove of postage when I see her yesterday, it was left in the office. The postage that I paid for is claimable, I can imagine it's going to be a long process for me claim back postage and I also have to refund my buyer her money :(

Cheap Cheap Home & Living magazines

If you do not mind owning some backdated issues of magazines, go to 2nd hand shops. There you could find cheap cheap magazines priced as low as RM1.00 per copy. These magazines are still in very good conditions.

To get some ideas of home improvement for our new home, Clet bought more than 10 copies of these magazines from one of the 2nd hand shop here. I used to buy home & living magazines many years back, some of them are more than RM10.00 a copy. Though we wouldn't be able to follow any of the designs for our house at the moment but I enjoy reading them and have gather some ideas on how we want our home design to be like in the future renovation, particularly the design and layout of the kitchen!

On Easter Sunday 2011

Besides going to Church in the morning, had breakfast at one of the usual shop and did some food shopping along our way before dropping by at Wong's home for a visit. We stayed at home for the whole afternoon. Crystal and Pearl had part of their task done, that is to segregate and pack their toys ready for moving to our new home. They did that almost the whole afternoon, like any other sisters there are voices of complaints and arguments on whom not helping. I just have to tell them that those toys are belongs to two of them so both of them have to discuss on what to bring and what to give away. Besides some disagreements I noticed that they do enjoyed the whole tasks because they have found some long lost toys and started to play with them again, that's why it took them such a long hours to get the job done.

Probably they find their Barbie dolls a bit messy, it gave them the idea of bathing them. I just allowed them to, it is a part of cleaning up I suppose. After some snacks, they happily bathing their Barbie dolls and washing their hair :d

With Clet being outstation today, We had a simple dinner at home.

HAPPY EASTER 2011

WISHING ALL MY FAMILIES AND FRIENDS A HAPPY & JOYOUS EASTER 2011 !!

Cooking Macaroni, the easiest way

My two little ones are macaroni cheese lovers. They simply love the one at Kenny Roger's, unfortunately me the mummy does not how to cook something near to that. Instead, I have found the easiest, fastest and needless to say, the laziest way of preparing macaroni by using the simplest recipe. Just boil a packet of Campbell's mushroom soup to mix with the cooked macaroni and serve. All done in just 10-15 minutes depending which brand of macaroni I cook.

Too lazy to think of what's for breakfast for my girls yesterday morning, I just prepared this for them so that I could do the house chaos and continue with my part time book keeping job. I know they won't mind having this as an alternative to their favourite KG macaroni cheese.

As for me, I had a half day fast by having bananas and juices as breakfast on this Holy Saturday.

Apple and carrot juices for the little ones

I added some raw papaya to my juice

and also a packet of Super Green Food for extra nutrition, the juice look greener with the Super Green Food powder.