I'm a full-time mummy

I have been sharing some of my favorite angpow pieces on an angpow collectors group in Facebook and some members have been telling me to continue sharing my memorable stories and so I thought, why not write it down, that way, our kiddos can read about it when they grow up next time, eh?

For those of you who are not familiar or never heard of the words 'Angpow' (also known as 'ang pau', 'ang pao', 'angpau'), here is a quick definition:

Angpow = Red Packet (filled with cash inside) given during festivals

So for today's angpow story, it comes from this piece of lovely angpow:

Today's storytime is about ice cream! Seeing this angpow makes me happy!

Malaysians especially, who remembers the many classical types of ice cream back during our childhood days? I got the pictures below from Google search, these were some of my childhood favorites!

Ice cream lollies in the plastic tube which costs 20 cents? It's just colored syrup poured into the tubes and freeze.

Some came with asam boi inside. Yums!

Then we have the ice cream potong (cube shaped ice creams). Red beans, corns, durian flavors.

Who remembers waiting for the ice cream man? Hearing the comforting horn or bell sound as the ice cream seller sits on his motorbike scouring the neighborhood area and stopping to sell ice cream to kids and parents alike?

Who remembers the magical feeling of peeping into the metal box on the motorbike, trying to see what ice creams are sold?

Those were the good ol' memorable days!!

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I have been cutting down on doing product reviews ever since our 3rd kiddo came along in end of Sept 2013. I do still accept review pitches but only when time permits and if it is something that I can see it being useful and beneficial to our family. Also, as busy as I am with 3 kiddos, home cooking, taking care of hubby's administration site of the business and swamped up with managing my FB page and blog, I just can't say no to reviewing good books! Reading is my passion and coupled with books that are of parenting, children, family or religion or educational genre, all the more I gotta say yes!

Title: Little Paper Crate: Crafting Stories 
Publisher: MPH Group Publishing Sdn Bhd (Aug 31, 2015)
ISBN: 9789674153021
Paperback: 66 pages

Description from the product page:

"The Little Paper Crate book is a home-grown project dedicated to children with a penchant for creating. It features various chapters with activities and materials parents can easily obtain, and each project has been tried, tested and enjoyed by children of different ages. The aim of this craft book is for kids to make an imaginative mess through creativity, and we hope this book will kick-start an inspiring, artful adventure! Happy crafting!"
I'm glad I get to review this book! The first thing that caught my attention was the first project in the book! Foosball table using shoebox! I don't have some of the materials listed in the book (single hole puncher, cloth pegs) so I had to improvise from there with whatever materials I have on hand. I used my double hole puncher and colored ice cream sticks instead.

The book's layout is simple and easy to understand. Materials and tools required are neatly arranged for you to refer to. I would prefer if there are suggestions of alternatives for materials / tools in case you don't have the ones shown in the book. That would be nice hehehe... Also I'm a stickler for books with step-by-step tutorials, it would be awesome if there is close-up shots of the major steps taken to DIY the projects in this book. Picture below is the outcome of my DIY project.

I explained to our girls how to play this game but being both under 4, they can't really understand the rules of it so I ended up just telling them to hold on to the chopsticks, to adjust left and right, and 'kick' the ball front or back. At least still can teach them about directions (left, right, front, back)

One other thing that I can suggest for the improvements of this book is to add in some teaching and learning moments from the projects made. For example, by doing this project, children get to learn about the science of it or how things work and being applied to real-life scenarios and stuff.

I appreciate that the projects are separated by different categories in the book: games, fun with nature, party favorites and gifts by kiddos. The last category is interesting as it doubles up as a DIY project that the kiddos can make and give away as presents!

In summary, a fun book that you can count on to DIY something awesome with your kiddos!

The book is available at all major bookstores such as MPHOnline.

I received no monetary compensation for this review, I was provided with a copy of the book in order to facilitate my review. All opinions expressed in this post are my own. Please do your own research when purchasing products, as your opinions may differ from mine. And if you'd like to read my previous book reviews, you can do so by reading this post of mine called "My Book Reviews"

** Note: I have disabled the commenting feature on my blog engine thanks to all the spammers who happily spam my blog every day. If you wish to ask me any questions, you can find me at my Facebook page (I'm there almost everyday) or just drop me an email if you wish to maintain some anonymity.

I'm always looking for printables to print out for our kiddos to learn and practice on. A few weeks back I stumbled upon these couple of printable games which I improvised a wee bit so that I can use them to entertain our kiddos during any road trip we will have (one coming up in December in fact)

The original printable is meant to be a mini book, for you to print, fold and cut out so that it is a small handy sized book that kiddos can use but I'm all for long-term usage of any useful, fun and educational stuff, so I decided to improvise on this by laminating the printables and turning it into flipcards instead.

The materials I used were:

The steps:

This is how my printables look like once completed. All ready to be used by our kiddos during a road trip!

Resources:

** Note: I have disabled the commenting feature on my blog engine thanks to all the spammers who happily spam my blog every day. If you wish to ask me any questions, you can find me at my Facebook page (I'm there almost everyday) or just drop me an email if you wish to maintain some anonymity.