HIJAB : Wear It Right Campaign

LET's COVER OUR CHEST, sisters! (and our shoulders and our back too)... Do not hesitate to tell me if my hijab is short or the way I wear it is wrong. I am trying my best to be better. Thanks!

campaign by fellow blogger

New look

I dont know why I suddenly felt the urge to change Garlic & Butter background to white. I dont plan it at all. It was all started with an experiment of possible background colour for the blog. Next thing I know, I keep changing the font color, type, link colour, hits counter and re-design the header to something that didnt represent garlic and butter at all.

I dont know why. I still trying to love it.
I have more work to do now since most of the highlighted fonts for previous posts are YELLOW or OTHER LIGHT COLOURS (due to black/latte background last time), I have to edit all highlighted fonts in this blog during weekend. Why did I change it at the first place??? Hmmm.... Do u like it?

Fruit Cocktail

My junior in KAED / my teammate for paper clip video / generous LEGO lender, who is now my colleague, Shahnizam, emailed me about the watermelon scoop which I used for my Division's makan-makan last time. Since I couldnt remember exactly which branch of which hypermarket I bought the scoop last two years, I decided to lend him my scoop because his division's makan-makan is just around the corner.

To my surprise, he came to my office just now and give me these!!! oh my, oh my! Thanks, Shah! They did a good job in scooped out TWO whole watermelon (red & yellow), add in green & purple grapes and sprinkles some almond chunks and raisins! They also have nata de coco inside there. It gave the cocktail a lot of texture and taste!

I like it so much, so I decided to capture some photos of it to share it with you FIRST, before I eat them. Kudos, HR!

LEGO - it is contagious

This was what we used to do after office hour - building a kingdom. It feels good to be able to catch up with each other and release the stress at the same time before going home. I think we should buy more LEGO when we move to the new building. Thanks to Shahnizam, for lending us your LEGO.

House Build Project 2010

I am in the World Habitat Day mood for a couple of months now. I found these plans while doing some housekeeping just now. I made these around one hour by tracing a sketch by the volunteer, using Photoshop. One of the houses involved in the House Build Project 2010.

World Habitat Day 2011 - Cities & Climate Change

Well, to those who really into UN-HABITAT's World Habitat Day, you might know by now about the theme for the year 2011 - Cities & Climate Change. This is my slide design for our previous WHD meeting. I designed this during one of my bad design days (oh, yes, I do have bad design days). It was a very quick design, around 30 minutes. I dont like the skyline silhouette because it is BLACK and it took most of the space. It drew people's attention off the theme & main issue (climate change - represented by those little boxes with climate icons). I will re-design this for our next meeting.

FYI, we are going to publish our 3rd Edition of Habitat Magazine in September 2011. Anyone from all over the world who are interested to submit articles on human settlement, cities or climate change for our magazine, you can contact me for further information.

Like Mother, Like Sons

Papa was away for a photoshoot over the weekend. So, it is time to spend a quality time with the kids doing my beauty routine!

Chelsea! Chelsea!

Upon departure to a futsal tournament. Yes, we do play futsal once in a while.

Thanks to the photographer.

Nazran oh Nazran...

Two years ago, during EARTH HOUR, someone ate my brand new lipstick. The doctor asked us to bring Nazran to the Emergency Room to flush his stomach due to its toxic active ingredients.

So, people, dont let your kid play with your make up set. Or perhaps, dont turn off ALL the lights during Earth Hour.

Meet Jiji

Meet Jiji, the cameraman's assistant who wanted to be a cameraMonkey.

Happy Teacher's Day

I arrived in Kuala Lumpur from Alaska on the Teacher's Day. I had a chance to buy Teacher's Day cards in AS and I bought A LOT of chocolates from KLIA for my sons' teachers. My husband fetched me at KL Sentral and we went straight to our sons' schools.

First stop : Nabil's Preschool. I asked them to write something on the card for their teachers (Nabil and my niece, Sarah are in the same class). Then, we went to the canteen where pregnant Teacher No.1 usually sit and wait for her husband. After that, we went to the class to give the present to the Teacher No.2.

Second stop : Nazreen's Preschool. Nazreen was sleeping when we arrived. His class ended at 11am and they will sleep together from 1pm to 4pm. He refused to give the card and chocolate to his pretty teacher. And he refused to look at the camera during the photography session.

(Never wake Nazreen up when he is sleeping, people!)

Trip to Alaska

I like Alaska but it was freaking cold. Snow, snow and snow everywhere.

haha. gotcha!

It was actually a photo of cloud taken from a flight back from Alor Setar. I just had a tiring site visit for House Build Project 2011 (more here) around Alor Setar, Kedah (Kedah is one of the northen states of Malaysia). The Ruler @ Seri Paduka Baginda Yang Dipertuan Agong just had his lunch at the Holiday Villa Hotel & Suites Alor Setar when I checked-in *super-excited*.

We've visited 10 houses in total. This is my first time to AS all by myself, exploring AS during the day and night for three days, alone...

Family : Malacca, May 2011

I was an invited speaker (again) for a course at Puteri Resort Ayer Keroh, Malacca. We stayed at the same resort. Spacious room. For the first time, I did not capture photos of our room. I only have photos of our kids playing around with cloth hangers in the room. They enjoy hitting each other with that. All the time.

It was rather a challenging trip because Nazran was having a diarrhoea and Nabil was having a fever. Both of them threw up practically everywhere. And we have to change Nazran's soiled diapers at almost every stop (or was it twice at every stop?). Nazreen was behaving like usual. Falling asleep anywhere he likes.

Anyway, we have experienced three modes of transportation in Malacca (if sitting on a deck of Menara Taming Sari is considered as air transportation...LOL). They are unique. And you could get those three ONLY in Malacca.

Water - River Cruise

Adult - RM10. Children RM-5.

My teaching session ended at 9.30pm and I finished preparing my kids for the cruise at 10.30pm. The last cruise will depart at 11pm. We arrived at 10.51pm and I ran frantically to the ticket counter. You don't want your kids to be frustrated, do you? Papa's camera was out of battery. We only captured a couple of photos at the entrance while we were happily chasing a kitten.

Land - Trishaw, of course!

RM20 for 20-25 minutes ride around Malacca city (4 stops - the pakcik needs a rest too!)

Despite having a fever, Nabil really determine to ride a trishaw on sunny afternoon. We rented two heavily decorated trishaws and Alhamdulillah Nazran was fine along the journey.

Air - Menara Taming Sari

Adult - RM10. Children above 2yo - RM5.

110m revolving Gyro tower with 66 passangers capacity on its wide deck. It goes up and down and revolves at the same time. The whole experience took about 7 minutes.

One more thing... You need to buy parking tickets to park your car in Malacca city. It is RM6 for 10 tickets. 1 ticket worth RM0.60 for one hour. Failed to do so, you will be fine RM30.

Moving in : Part 06 - White living room wall

It is already white! (Pat on the back). Refer [this post].

Sorry for the not-so-good quality photo. I really need to hire someone to help me with the painting. I would love to paint the whole house myself, but I dont have the time. I have the whole kitchen to paint next. I dont want my lack-of time-ness delayed our plan to move into the house by the end of May. (I see June now... or perhaps, July....)...

More on our MOVING IN Adventures! Click here.

Happy MAMA's Day

To our mother :)

We are so glad to be born into this beautiful world... so now we are giving you five cute grandchildren in return.

We had a makan-makan @ Shah Alam - my parent, my nucleus family, my sister's family and my brother. All 12 of us. Well, we are currently live under the same roof (imagine the chaos?), but this makan-makan was meant to celebrate a very special day, so we have to take it somewhere else.

After makan-makan, my small unit headed to IKEA to get some new gadgets for our kitchen. And we played 500 Days of Summer in IKEA. It was fun.

"I like you, you are fun", said Summer.

**I really want those beds for our kids but it is costs nearly RM500 per unit... RM500 x 3 units? Plus another 3 RM200 matresses? Hmm...

This is where I should really differentiate between THE WANTS and THE NEEDS.

Meet the designer - Shamrizal

I can see my hubby is slowly becoming like me.... and I becoming more like him. Recently, he is very passionate towards FASHION. Designing cloth for the kids to be exact (OR for a start).

He had been talking about how much he adores traditional Malay bridegroom's attire (baju layang) again and again and again (he had involved with wedding photoshoot way too much) and how he really wanted the kids to wear it. At first, I thought he was joking. One fine afternoon, we went to a fabric store and he spent quite some times comtemplating on the best material and the best colour for the tiny version of baju layang. Then we did a very quick sketch and hand it over to our favourite tailor.

The next two weeks we received these :

Surprise Party and 3 years worth of handbags

My sister SMSed asking us to have lunch at my parent's on 2nd May. Before we went there, we stopped by at my in-laws' house to celebrate my MIL's birthday. She cooked lovely lunch as usual. And we arrived 1-hour late at my parent's. God knows how guilty I felt when I saw my cousin's and my aunt's cars outside our house, after answering endless calls from my mom (where are you? are you here yet? how long more? could u pls hurry up?...). They planned to throw a surprise birthday party for me!!! The food were all cold when we arrived. Some sour faces in the living room add to my existing guiltiness. They were just sit there for hours staring at the food waiting for ME. I AM SO SORRY, ALL *sad* (this is the main thing I wanted to convey in this entry. The rest are just plain stories I wish to keep for the future).

Anyway, we had a blast. My sister has scanned numbers of old photos and we laughed hysterically during the slide show. Then we were all fell asleep due to...mmm...over-eating and too much laughing. I got a full make up set from my sister/mom (?), shower stuff from my aunt/cousin (?) and a lovely Charles & Keith handbag from my brother.

(I know I have flash issue here)

Last two (or was it three?) years he gave me Guess handbag for my birthday. Love it! Love it!

Then he bought me a Salvador Bachiller purse in Madrid, Spain. A bit of stain here and there because I use it a lot. I love it very much.

Last year my sister gave me this handbag for my birthday.

Oh, I love them all (the handbags and the people). I dont have to buy any more handbag for at least three years *giggle*

This is my current handbag. From Cleef, my favourite brand - i love the texture, the heavy-duty material and the colour. An A4 size documents fit inside this bag. (Photo : In Qantas Golden Lounge @ Adelaide - nothing better to do than to capture the image of my handbag and blazer..hmmm..in the washroom).

I also have a document bag by Cleef. Love it! Love it! (Photo : In Sofitel Hotel, Perth)

This is what happened when you travel abroad with the VVIPs. You have no one to capture your photos and you end up taking photos of your bags at different locations all the time. I swear I have at least 20 other photos of my bags (on the boat, on the plane, on the airport trolley, etc) LOL.

(ok, enough about bags)

Moving In : Part 05 - Yellow living room wall

On the previous Labour Day, I was busy painting the living hall, after spending hours on door frames on the 30th April. My late grandmother loves yellow. But I found yellow is too warm for the living hall. I like yellow but I am uncomfortable being in a yellow space. Last time, there were green sofas to match the yellow wall. But now we are going into totally different concept.

There will be one feature wall in grey and the rest of it will be white. We have bought a grey flowery L-shape sofa to soften the solid-ness of the living hall. I am going to sew a couple of red cushions to accentuate our WHITE-GREY-RED living hall theme. There will be red area rug, red coffee table and a few other red stuff in our list. We will buy them next month. This month we have already spent a fortune.

Photo : I am preparing the hall for painting work. Moving into my late grandma's house meaning we got this super-great massage chair FOC. It comes with the house. Weee!

















More on our MOVING IN Adventures! Click here.

Moving In : Part 04 - Painting door frame

There is no better thing to do on my wonderful birthday rather than paint the wooden door frames with the kids running around, screaming and laughing hysterically in our new house. Papa was away doing his photography work (The unfinished painting work in the master bedroom was 5-yo Nabil's - he fell asleep half-way through).

And there is nothing better than a glass of ice lemon tea - on a chill evening - made by a wonderful husband for his hard-working/tired wife (still painting, tho) after he got back from work.

Yes, it is a recycled Nescafe bottle. I am VERY FUSSY when it comes to choosing dinner wares and you knew how much I love green living. Currently we serves our guests a drink in this "glass". It is not we dont have any proper glasses, but, hey, we are making a statement here!

We bought a book shelves too. Since that part of the house is going to be white (currently it is yellow), so the book shelves should be dark brown, to match the colour of the new doors (my dad sponsored THREE nice bedroom doors - THANKS!). I was so excited when it arrived since I have a lot of BOOKS (still in my parent's house) and this is the first book I brought to our new house. I dont know why, but I really wanted to see something - even only one book - on this shelves. Now, I am happy.

We also bought new beds for the kids. It is actually two beds with one pull-out bed. The best thing about these beds is they are stackable! It can be a double-decker (with a pull-out) at the same time. And of course, the kids opted for the double decker :o) It saves space but I am worried about their safety.

For the time being, Nabil is still afraid to sleep alone on the top, so he sleeps with Nazran on the pull-out, which is good. Right now the beds are in dark brown shades. I will post the photo when it has been transformed to WHITE. You know how much I love white furnitures (here)....

More on our MOVING IN Adventures! Click here.