The Birthday Party

We held Kiera's birthday party yesterday. Rather than do a "build-a-bear" at one of the expensive toy stores, we made our own felt bears and then had a tea party.

I had our neighbour's daughter come down and "work" with us for the party and she is such a treat. The kids loved her and she did a great job helping set everything up.

When the kids arrived, each kid had their own tea cup and saucer(purchased at Daiso for S$2.00 each) that they were allowed to decorate with Sharpies. After the cups were decorated to the satisfaction of the kids we moved onto bear making.

I spent the last weekend pre-sewing the edges of the bears getting them ready for stuffing and decorating. The kids were allowed to chose what ever clothing they wanted to use with lots of felt, scraps of fabric and ribbon I had laying around. I purchased around 5 packages of felt from Daiso (again everything is 2.00) and had enough felt to make 12 bears and plenty of extras for the clothes. Also at Daiso I was able to purchase googly eyes and some lace and the kids had a blast decorating their bears in really unique ways.

The rest of the afternoon was rounded out with a proper tea party. The kids each had their own cups, we used "ice tea" in tea pots and served homemade whole wheat scones with whipped cream with fresh organic strawberries and organic raspberries. We also made proper tea sandwiches with chicken and cucumber, chicken salad and chicken and avocado. Jeff also made some ham sandwiches. When all of the food had been devoured by a hungry batch of kids, we finished off with a birthday cake and group pictures before an impromptu dance session in the area formerly known as our dining room (the table had moved to the patio for the party).

It was a great, if not exhausting day and beat the heck out of any $1000 party we would have had at one of the "kids games places" downtown. Total cost probably was around 300 when you included the cake, the food and all of the goodie bags. I just am very glad I have another 5 months before I have to plan Declan's!

Compost Soup

Okay, not really... but a great frugal way to use those veggie scraps (and you can use meat in this too)!

When we lived back in Oregon we had a huge tree, a big expanse of grass and two constant large size compost. In Singapore I have yet to come up with a way to compost that will fit in our small space and not add to the already large fauna that visit our apartment. So, we thought about the fact that we make homemade soup stock on a weekly basis. Often we would take a whole chicken, or whole veggies and cook them down until they were pretty much mush, throw away the scrap veggies pull off the meat for use in soups and we were happy.

But then we started to think about all those carrot tops, broccoli stems, tomatoes that had gotten a bit to ripe that we just tossed. Weren't these the same vegetables we used in our stock? We often buy whole chickens, and in Singapore they are whole. We trim the necks, the other bits and throw those all away. This is all still good meat, but too difficult to try to eat. What about those bones that come from the steak we ate? Lots of good meat, and until recently no Dog to share it with. Again, off to the trash?

Not anymore. Around 2 years ago we thought we were wasting a lot of otherwise good food. We hate canned stocks *filled with chemicals I can't read let alone pronounce* and love to have stock in the freezer ready for cooking. So this is what we came up with. A large ziplock back and a crock pot. Yup, that's it. The answer to the problem...



Veggie scraps and meat (notice the onion and tomato?)


Big Ziplock bag, into freezer until full.



Pop into crockpot and cook on low all day, add additional spices and veggies or meat as you see fit. Toss veggies into compost (if you cook only veggies) otherwise use veggies and meat scraps as pet treats (what we do) or accept there are only so many ways to save money and toss them!

Results in around a liter or so of homemade fresh tasty soup stock for use in recipes or soup.

How can you afford your rock and roll lifestyle?

Our single largest line item bill (excluding tuition) on any given year is travel. This does include travel for work, but that is reimbursed. But, we do fully take advantage of the opportunities given to us by living in SE Asia and we travel. We have lived in Taiwan and Singapore and in the 9 years that we have lived in Asia, we have traveled to Singapore, Guam, China, HK, Macau, Japan, Thailand, Bali, Malaysia, the US and Mexico with the kids. Jeff and I have also traveled to a few other places including Cambodia and a few other spot around Taiwan and Malaysia.

This seems like a lot of travel. It is and no it is not cheap. So for someone who claims to be "live simply" how do I afford this rock and roll lifestyle? Well, this is it, we choose to spend our money on the experience of life. We live very frugally during the year, we are very good about at sourcing good deals on the internet (we just booked a trip this December to KKB in Malaysia where we will stay in the Hyatt for a 100 a night). We also don't buy things here in Singapore. For example. We don't own a car. We have one TV in the house, the first new TV that Jeff or I have ever owned. Our furniture was included when we rented our old place in Singapore and the landlord gave it to us when we moved. You would laugh if you saw the condition of the couch under the slip cover! With the exception of the Ikea bookshelves, tables and TV table, everything else was bought second hand.

We don't dine out much, not really anymore. We would love to, but we love to cook and entertain, we have a helper that loves to cook, it is just as easy to cook at home. We shop at NTCU for groceries, at least the bulk of them. Where others will spend hundreds per week on food, we spend 150 at NTCU for most of our food, plus a 2 time a month trip to Tanglin shopping center for wine and meat and those other foods we can't get locally. Those trips run about 250 each time. So, there you have it, our total food budget for the month (excluding dining out for lunch for Jeff) is less than 1200 Singapore dollars a month for a family of 3 adults and 2 kids.

I don't shop for clothes. My total clothing expenditure for the last 3 years has probably been around 1000 US. That includes shoes. This seems like a lot of money to me, but I have gone down around two sizes and I needed new clothes. The clothes that I have now are getting too big, but I will take them to be altered rather than buy new. I don't buy makeup, shoes or designer bags. The last makeup I bought was at Body Shop, a tube of foundation, I think it was 20 bucks. I don't buy perfume. I bought my first bottle of perfume in 10 years about 3 months ago in Duty Free. I don't buy fancy Jewelery. Give me a 20 dollar ring or some 15 dollar funky earrings and I am good to go.

Our kids don't have tons of toys, but frankly they have too many. We need to whittle these down and donate them to Charity. I do shop for books but I try to go to a used bookstore, Salvation Army or the Singapore American School Booksale when possible. My biggest weekness is scrapbook magazines and supplies, but I have a room full of stuff now, more than I could use in a life time, so I am seriously curbing my expenses there.

Our power bill is low, lower than many others because there is really no need to turn on the Air Conditioning most of the time. It is there when we need it, it is on at night, but most days we get by with fans.


We live frugally where we can so we can give our children this huge opportunity of traveling around the world with us. It is an education, a life altering experince and will make them better people. Rock and Roll lifestyle... well if the ripped up couch is indication of that, so be it!

As mentioned before I started a blog about our travels. You can check it out here.

Globetrotting with Kids