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!

Cleaning Up, Sorting Out

After an long stretch on the road I found myself home this weekend full of vim and vigor for a proper clean out and set myself off to cleaning out some storage areas. Because I also run 2 businesses from the home (Far Flung Craft and my law office) I have boxes of paper stacked in my bedroom. Needless to say, looking at this stack everyday is well disheartening as it is not moving as quick as I would like and frankly it is ugly.

Let me also preface this post by saying that closet space is a real premium in Singapore. Most places don't have walk in closets and those that do are well small at best. The current unit we are in has this small storage closet...that is it. The remainder of the closets were built in and not well done at that.

I have moved all of those boxes, behind a screen and moved the items that were behind the screen into our storage closet. I pulled out empty boxes upon empty boxes (I guess I thought I might need them? I released a bunch of floor rugs to the greater good and they are on the way to the Philippines to be used in home of our helpers family. I got rid of three old worn suitcases and really just dumped a bunch of stuff. I still have two small boxes that need sorting and that will happen this week.

Here is the closet in the early stages of the reorganization

And, after reorganization I have open shelf space. All of the Christmas stuff is in one tote (save the tree and the wrapping papers). All of the tools are put on the same shelf.
The car seats that we save for when we travel back to the US are neatly stacked on top of the Christmas tree and the odds and ends pet stuff is in the cat crate.

More importantly, all of the luggage is stacked neatly to the side, with room for the ironing board and people to walk in and out. I may play more in this room and may designate space for some long term food storage now that I know I have the room! What types of closets do you have?

Back from a bit of a vacation...

Come check out the pictures and stories here.

http://vagabondkids.blogspot.com/

Ready for Vacation

It has been a busy week, planning and preparing for our vacation to Indonesia. A budget vacation is one of the advantages of living in Asia and after reading the The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich I am resolved to take the kids and family more places. Do more with them, enjoy the fact that we live and work in Asia. Our current vacation is to Java Indonesia, specifically to the city of Yogyakarta and the UNESCO heritage sites of Borobudur and Prambanan.

Living so close to a multiple World Heritage sites is a gift that I hope to share with my kids and be able to expand the view of their world. I will fill you all in on the details when we get back!

Cookies and Food Choices

I tend to be a bit- well- eclectic. While thinking about what I want to eat this weekend and the lower food chain items I want to eat more of (think veggies), I started to crave Naniamo Bars.

Naniamo bars hail from just north of my old stompin' grounds. When you live 8000 miles from your home town like I do now, by just north I mean a reasonable 300 + or - miles and a ferry ride. Anyway, Naniamo bars are the rich chocolate vanilla layered confectionery treat hailing from Vancouver Island and the little town of Naniamo (bet you didn't see that coming). I am sure that in terms of calories they hover between 100 and a million per bar but hey... they sure taste good. Growing up we would occasionally find these at a coffee shop or cake house and it was always a treat. Later as a young professional working as a lawyer back in my home town, the 20 pounds I gained during those three years I am sure were directly linked to the fact that the Coffee House down the street from my office served these regularly.

I found a recipe here on Eclectic Cook and they turned out pretty good. I have to say that I can't get the nice smooth chocolate topping, I think it has to do with the quality of chocolate that I am using, but considering that they still taste good I figure who cares!

Here is the recipe for you Nanaimo Bars I also borrowed her picture for this post. Thank you~

Stir Fried Lettuce and ShaoXing Wine from the Perfect Pantry.com

Now, onto other eating topics. Part of my thoughts on living simply are to eat in connection with where we are, store food for cost saving as well as in the event of emergency, and to eat locally and lower on the food chain. Eating more local veggies and combining them with staples from my pantry seem like a great combination. But here is the problem. While I appriciate the numerous LDS food security websites and super frugal websites that use powdered eggs and really practice what they preach, the food well from a foodie standpoint seems to be blah.

So, cut to today, while trolling the interwebs... I found the "The Perfect Pantry". So much eye candy here. Glimpes into other peoples pantries and oh the receipes... they look so good. The one on the front page alone for Lentils... well call me giddy. I can't wait to make this Lentil Barley Pilaf and this receipe for Sweet Potato/Lentil and Raisin Stew or a Chinese style receipe with Shao Xing wine? Think I will be lost on this site for a while. Be back 100 pounds later.