I saw a recipe in Women’s Weekly (NZ) and I thot it’ll be fun to make these cookies with Sophie. Well, ours didn’t turn out like the ones in the pictures, sigh, yet again. But but they tasted oh so good and the second batch was prettier than the first. That’s the thing about baking, it gets better and better!

It’s fun roping Sophie in to help.

First, we need to wash the cookie cutters! It’s so hard to find cookie cutters in these parts. Finally I found cheapo ones at the $2 shop and they are great! It’s plastic so I don’t have to worry about Sophie cutting her fingers.

Next make the dough. Soph helped to pour in the stuff but we didn’t take photos coz it’s always pretty messy and sticky to bring out the camera.

And then the fun part, cutting the cookies. Then adding the chocolate sprinkles. Of course she tried at every point to taste .

Finally we all eat the cookies and give some away to our favourite friends. I love that part about baking, giving away some. So, we’ve stopped buying store cookies and desserts for a while and are happy making our own. I even bought a little red cookie jar to store the cookies. No country kitchen is complete without a cookie jar!

It’s funny how being away makes me do things I’ve really never done before. I’ve never been much of a baker or cook. Nay. BUT BUT now I do it out of necessity coz I can’t just pick up a phone and call the caterer and buying cakes and pastries is just too inconvenient and expensive!

Over the past 3 mths, I have made honeydew sago, jello, ice lollies, siew yoke, cheesecake, cookies, muffins, even cream puffs! I’ve also been whipping up pancakes from scratch in the mornings before school. It’s SO easy! Of course I only do the easy stuff. I’m quite a random cook. I cook or bake when I feel like it.

I’m seriously thinking of getting an oven when I get back to Singapore. Hiak hiak…

Btw, Wanz, Gin n I have been using your muffin recipe. The girls are so good at making it now that they know what goes in!

Sophie’s really into making things. All she needs is paper, glue, a pair of kid’s scissors and she’s off!

I gave her an idea of making flowers, tore up the paper for her and she pasted it all by herself. She even drew the flowers on another piece of paper and stuck it on by herself. I didn’t even know she can draw flowers! Anyways, she refused to let me pull the collage apart from the drawing (I mean, it looks so funny stuck onto each other right?!?!). Oh wells…. do not hinder their creativity right? Yep yep, note to self.

Past few days she’s been making kites to play with and for her friends. I love the way she’s always thinking of giving things to her friends. Nice. She makes these kites on her own. I don’t even know where she gets the ideas from but it’s always so surprising to me when she announces what she’s making.

Yesterday she made a house for me. She tore up a triangle and joint it with a somewhat rectangle. She said, "Mummy, this is for your birthday because after my birthday is Evan’s birthday (true) and after Evan’s birthday is your birthday (TRUE!)." Aiyo so cute lah. I must have told her the sequence of our birthdays before but I didn’t expect her to remember! So sweet lah………..

I was really sleepy one morning (yes, I was awake but still sleepy) and Sophie was playing with the playdough.

She came up to me and asked,

"What shall I make?"

So I didn’t think and said,

"Why don’t you make a car?"

And then I fell asleep (like really deeply asleep) on the sofa for I donno how long and suddenly she woke me up and said,

"Mummy! A car! See, I made a car!"

Wah…….. a car! Can you see the car doors? Hahahha…. how cool is that? I was truly quite shocked to see it when I woke up. I really didn’t expect her to do it. So cute lah….. Ok maybe I’m just biased, hahaha

I know I know I just did a whole lot of shopping and the economy is bad but I’ve been stuck at home coz James is on reservist and Soph is unwell and I just cannot cannot resist these lovely things. Hee… What have I been doing???????? I did a search on one of my favourite design website Design Sponge Online with the keyword "Kids" and I’ve been going thru every single link all the way back to 2005! And Small magazine just released their latest issue.

Ooooo how I love beautiful things……

Some cool things that I’m eyeing or going to unscrupulously copy:

1. Step stool (I have the ikea ones but so boring. They’ve got Paul Frank ones.)

http://www.10grain.com/slicestep.html

2. Wall Art (Cute and Cool illustrations to die for, I think I’ll just copy)

http://www.yoonkids.com/

This is cool, can customise!

http://www.kareenazerefos.com/

For me for me!!

http://theblackapple.typepad.com/

Oooo my all time fav style, old sch, quirky

3. Doll Houses (Sophie’s REALLY into play right now and a doll house is exactly what she needs)

http://www.sparkability.net/mobilehome.html

SO NICE! I want for myself. (Hint hint James) Anyway I love all the stuff at Sparkability. Drool drool…

I really do have many windows open and I’m enjoying shopping. And also this is the first day since Sunday that Sophie is taking an afternoon nap. She is FINALLY back to waking up before 8am. Back to shopping!

Oooooooo I love this piece so much!!!!!!!

We did this yesterday while painting. I bought some nice A5 sized drawing paper on standby, for one of those inspired moments and it came in so timely! Sophie loveeeeeees painting her hands so I had no problems getting her to wait and listen to my instructions. Coz one wrong print and we would have wasted the paper. It turned out great! Plus I had spare photo frames from ikea. Perfect!

It now sits on my dressing table. Reminds me to be thankful for the little hands given to me every morning.

Inspired by the last round of cookie making at Wanz’, I decided to try my hand at making homemade dough for play.

I had some expired flour which I bought thinking I’ll make some pancakes but as usual, it just sat there. Flour and me just don’t mix well. Anyways, I really didn’t want to waste it so I looked into a craft book for the recipe and just whacked! So simple! Aiyoh. She loved it! I had fun too.

Recipe For Uncooked Salt Dough

2 parts of flour to 1 part of salt (e.g 2 cups of flour n 1 cup of salt)

1 tablespoon cooking oil

1 part of water (e.g 1 cup of water)

Powder paint/food colouring (I omitted)

Method: Mix the flour and salt. Add in the oil and water. Mix them all up and knead. If it becomes sticky, add more flour. Our mixture based on the above measures seems too sticky so I just kept adding flour until it felt right.

I decided to try something different with Sophie today. (You see, Sophie’s been coughing quite badly so we’ve been stuck indoors the whole week!)

We did WALL PAINTING. Er… almost.

I stuck a long piece of paper (the rolls from Ikea, ze best!) on our "French" window, put some newspapers, put out the paints and started painting with Sophie. She was a bit hesitant at first, kept walking around the newspapers and wanted to paint on the floor instead but when I started to show her, she got it and started. We ended up doing hand prints. She loved it! Kept asking for more and hitting the paper with her hands to make the prints. Shiok!

P/s excuse the terrible photo. The window is along a corridor in our tiny apt, not much natural light. Time to get an easel and go outdoors!

We’ve been doing a lot of craft with just construction paper, scraps, scissors and glue.

These are today’s random pieces. We did several collages since Sophie likes to play with glue.

Yesterday, we made a sheep using unused cotton wool that I bought when Sophie was born coz during the bath demo, the nurses showed us how to use 4 cotton wools to clean the baby. Who uses 4 cotton wools to wipe the baby’s eyes and face?!?! Where got time?!? Anyway we still have a lot of unused cotton wool. Pretty useful for art and craft.

Today, we did a collage of a little girl called Sophie. Simple. Just draw a girl with a dress and let the little one paste on scraps of paper for the dress. Sophie drew the flowers (she called them flowers) on the top.

The black piece was totally random. Sophie was tearing tissue with full concentration and arranging them on the floor. I felt bad stopping her so I put glue on a piece of piece and gave it to her to stick her "art work" on it.

Oh yes and we found a really cool series of books of worksheets published by the Kumon people (TIMES the bookshop sells them). It’s meant for 2 years and above. It’s learning systematic pasting, cutting, colouring – mastering their fine motor skills. It seems really stifling but it’s been GREAT during brainless hours. I just take it out and do it with Sophie. She loves it!

Sophie was awfully quiet in her room late in the afternoon. She had asked for some playdough and I gave it to her.

I went into the room and she said "Swan, mummy!". Can you see the swan??? She used pink playdough. That’s my baby’s first artistic expression! She makes me so proud! Hahaha….

(Btw, if you remember, we made this aquarium of fishes together few weeks back, except that the fish have all fallen off the sticks. Going to the gardens and seeing those swans must have inspired her. SO YES! Nature does inspire!) 

Sophie: Mummy, what’s this (Translated: Hey Mummy, what’s up with this yellow packet?)
Evan: Make jelly make jelly

Making Jellies

1. Prepare materials

- 1 Packet of Agar Agar powder (Swallow brand, yellow packet, white colour which meant no colouring)

- 1 Plastic Jug

- 1 Saucepan

- Jelly moulds

- 1 litre of water

- Fruits (Optional)

- Sugar (Optional – We used a little, about 1 1/2 tablespoonful for 1 litre of water. The packet recommends 250g!)

2. Use a small kids’ table so that everything can be done at their level. Wrap the table with a tablecloth. In our case, I used 1/4 of a plastic table cloth I got from Cold Storage. After we’re done, we just wrapped and threw it away. Ok, not very environmentally friendly I know. Note to self: Will figure better way of doing this.

3. First we got the girls take turns to pour the litre of water into the saucepan. We did it little by little so that they could manage the weight. They did pretty well although Sophie wasn’t impressed. Evan loved doing this.

4. Next, we made the agar agar according to the instructions on the packet. We boiled the water on low heat and stirred in the packet of agar agar, added sugar and left it to cool. Meanwhile, the girls "fought" over the jelly moulds which we got from Ikea. They are heart shaped silicon moulds. Our lesson was on LOVE which explained the heart shaped.

5. Then we got the girls to place the chopped up strawberries into the moulds one by one. This would help to brighten up and sweeten the jelly since we avoided using sugar and coloured agar agar. Sophie loved this one while Evan was nonchalant. Haha… it was great coz Evan helped Sophie to finish up pouring earlier on and Sophie helped Evan complete her moulds. They had great teamwork!

6. When the agar agar cooled down, we got the girls to pour the agar agar into the moulds and left it to set in the fridge. After an hour of playing and some story telling, we served them the strawberry filled agar agar.

I think the girls really enjoyed the whole process!

The next morning, we were bored. And we had some leftover cardboard after fixing up the table. What did we do?

We made a little play table with one side AND used the other side to play a game. We just drew different shapes and she was to step on the shape that I call out. Simple but so fun!