Tetris

I have now completed my mosaic ball (you can see my progress on my old posts. Unfortunately I haven't got a nice stand for it so cannot display it yet. But it is looking very shiny and I am proud of myself creating a piece of art : )



I started another project. It is a mosaic splash-back and I am hoping to brighten up my kitchen with it.
When I was deciding on the pattern I felt like I was playing "tetris"





I thought not cutting the tiles and just using normal glue instead of concrete like I did with my ball would make it quite an easy project... I was wrong. Half way through glueing the tiles I found my tiles were not straight : ( so I had to take it home and fix it. Lucky I have a very supporting husband as he helped me fixing the problem. It took an awfully long time though.

Our teacher Paula is leaving Brunei in December so I have to make sure I complete this project very soon.

Little surprise in the garden

Here in Brunei we get all sorts of exotic animals. There are lots of monkeys like this and monitor lizards like this.
The other day we found a very ordinary animal in our garden...

He was hiding here - in front of our guest room window.



He was hungry!!



The nest was made so beautifully. There is an another egg in the nest so hopefully he will have a little sibling soon. This little creature made us feel warm and smiley : )

Big digger, little boy

Broom Broom....

Halloween fun continued

Some of us from Geckos got together at Jerudong Park to continue to celebrate Halloween.
Kids were dressed in HW costumes (but it was too hot to keep them on...). Oliver wasn't too bothered about his dangly spider legs anymore but it took a while for him to get into the party mode.



Oliver, Diego and Emma



Everyone had fun on the slide. It was so popular we had to control the traffic.



Oliver only wanted to have a go if I went with him... I wanted to dress in HW colors, hence I was wearing my only orange outfit - the orange dress. If I knew I was going on this big slide I would have worn something more appropriate. We went down fast!





Even though there were so many things to play on in the playground Oliver enjoyed running around on the grass the most.





We had a lovely picnic on the grass with some breeze. It felt like we weren't even in the tropics. Until when we walked over to the merry-go-round and the rain hit us! We all quickly left the park and said good bye. Once we got on the road it turned out to be quite a storm. We left just in time!

Halloween party

We celebrated Halloween at Geckos today. I have been involved in preparing for this event. Some of us mummies got together and made lots of decorations and craft materials. Our aim was to transform the Geckos room to very Halloween-like and we did a great job! But the best input was kids coming in dress-up clothes.

Friday always seems to be busy as more of the local families can attend (their day off). Today we had another record of 33 families!! I hope everyone had a great time : )

Oliver was dressed in his spider outfit.



Party room





This ghost house was Yoshimi and my creation! We weren't sure if the little kids would like it but it was a hit!

Craft area for the kids to colour in and make their own pumpkins, bats and ghosts.



And here are some of Oliver's friends dressed in fab costumes.









While we were having this great party we had a bake sale to fundraise for Geckos (It was JIS sports day today).



These gorgeous HW cookies were sold out in no time!



The party is not over yet! Kids are dressing up and going to Jerudong Park for a picnic tomorrow evening. I hope we don't get rained on... We seem to have had lots of rain in the later afternoon recently... Hard to plan things in the tropics.

School uniform

As you know Wednesday is one of his Geckos days (toddler group at JIS) but today was an extra special one.

Some of us mothers got together and designed a Geckos polo shirt during the school break. Our ones were to be the PR models so that we can sell them as a fundraiser for Geckos. They come in 4 different colours - yellow, blue, red and pink. I got Oliver a yellow and a blue one.

Here is Oliver looking very smart in his uniform. (I tried to take good shots of him looking at the camera but he was too excited having the car keys and playing with the gate...)



Each polo is personalised with the child's name embroided at the front.





the back.

When we got to Geckos we found Oliver's little friend Diego had a matching colour polo on.



We had a great response from the parents and lots of them have placed orders! Success!!

Merry-go-round

A couple of days back we were invited to join Linnea's birthday celebration at Jerudong Park. It was a perfect evening with some breeze, slightly lower temperature and most importantly no rain!

The drive down there is quite easy for us as we can get on the highway straight off our street. So the total journey there was maybe 20min. Of course Oliver fell asleep quite deeply and didn't even wake up moving him into the push chair.

So while bigger kids are running around playing....



When he woke up he looked very confused but it didn't take him long to run around in the playground. I really love the equipment there, they have things for all age groups and so many of them! Normally you get the whole equipment to yourself. No waiting for your turn.

When it got darker, the lights went on the rides. This used to be a great park with great rides but now they have only the ones easy to maintain, a bit of a shame but enough to entertain Oliver anyway. Older kids went on pirate ships, swing chairs and big and small bumper cars.



Oliver just loved watching them...

There are only two things Oliver can get on right now - super slow caterpillar which he didn't mind but not so excited about and a gorgeous merry-go-round, which Oliver loved!!!

Isn't this beautiful!?



I don't normally do "going round and round" rides as they make me feel dizzy and sick but I really wanted to try it with Oliver.
So here is Oliver with mummy...



It was quite a long "round and round" so by the time we came out I was feeling a bit off but not Oliver, he wanted to have another go! So this time he went with his daddy (but we asked for a half length ride, I love it! you can customize how you want your ride to be and have the whole merry-go-round to yourself!





A magical moment...

Progress

After an intensive cleaning, (well I had to clean it so much just because I wan't tidy enough and my ball had concrete/glue all over it...) I finally got to the next stage - grouting. Basically you are filling the gaps between the tiles with coloured concrete, I chose white.

This is how my ball looked before grouting.



It was a very therapeutic session as I was just moving my hands around the ball for quite a while, trying to make it nice and smooth...



Once the grouting started to set, it got a bit trickier and I had to be more gentle. Maybe difficult to see from the picture but the white tiles I used are much thicker than the blue ones and having to make grouting set smoothly across these bumps was quite a mission. Plus I was not sure what finish I was looking for as this was my first project.

3 hours later... I have completed the grouting process! (Thank you so much Paula for being so patient with me and letting me stay so long in your studio)



Next step will be cleaning and polishing the ball. Soon it is coming home with me, yay!

And...

To finish up my day, Matthew took me to Escapade for some sushi dinner (Unfortunately he had to do a Shanghai flight - the whole day flying...). I had such a lovely day. Thank you everyone for making my day so SPECIAL !!

Birthday afternoon tea

When we got back from the lovely lunch, I went around to Nicole's to share my special birthday cake with the little ones.





They were so cute singing the birthday song and even helping me blow out the candle!

Birthday lunch

I had birthday lunch with my lovely girlfriends at Radisson Hotel in Bandar (it is the old Sheraton Hotel). Deal's cafe where we had lunch has been recently renovated and it was a perfect venue for the occasion.

We had some photos taken outside the hotel.



Boel, Misuzu, and Nicole - the simpang girls!

While waiting for the others to arrive, I couldn't resist from opening a birthday present from Boel and Nicole.
Look at me getting so excited!! Yeah! new Pandora bead!!! (Thank you for the lovely photos Boel!)





It was time to get a group photo and delicious lunch.





We all got so excited about the dessert. I ordered a strawberry supreme - it was just divine...



After licking all our desserts plates, Surprise!! a BIG birthday cake appeared!

\

Unfortunately we were all too full to even lick the cream on the cake - so we packed it and took it home - to have some more birthday celebrations!

Birthday morning

It is my birthday!
Oliver got up very early just to celebrate my birthday (it wasn't even 6 o'clock yet...) I guess he couldn't wait any longer to give me the present! (He is very thoughtful, he got me this for mother's day back in May)





I am a lucky mummy : ) I was wondering why he had lots of ink on his fingers the other day, now I know.

Elmo

While I was in the kitchen Oliver's new friend Elmo had eaten something!

Let me tell you why we gave Oliver an Elmo. No we don't make him watch Sesame Street on DVD, Oliver was introduced to Elmo at his swimming lessons. At the start and the end of each lesson Elmo comes out and greets each kid. All the kids love Elmo!
When Matthew went to Perth the other day he got Oliver a personal one.

Matthew caught what happened to Elmo on his camera and later showed me.



Oliver was feeding Elmo his grapes! Open your mouth big like mine Elmo...
Bless him!

Lick

The best shot of Diego from his birthday party.