{Birthday Special} So My Little C Turned 3, Happy 3

We celebrated the 3yo birthday for my little C back in November, I finally got the time to process some of the photos for sharing.

It was supposed to be a picnic party, but due to the gloomy weather we had to switch to celebrating in our home instead. Most of the toys and games I've prepared for playing at the park gone wasted, but nonetheless we still had an enjoyable times with the little kids and friends. Thanks to all the super sporty mommies and daddies!

I am not a perfectionist mom, so I have no problem with a less-than-perfect party without matching theme decoration. We just some balloons, lots of wonderful food, a beautiful birthday cake and a bunch of happy kiddos. That is all I would ask for. :)

To begin with.. the Little Pirate birthday cake, a joint creation of mommy and her elder brother. You may read more about the cake and the making here.

I made some blue sea jellies too. There were many other great food brought by the mommies like homemade nuggets, Hokkaido milk buns etc, but I forgot to snap picture. Yicks!

As you can imagine we were busy making sure that everyone and every kids were under control, not easy to contain 8 minors in a small living hall.

Little C couldn't wait to blow the candle even before we finished singing her birthday song, and look how hard the brother had to try to save the candle... LOL. 

Btw, have you noticed the matching sibling attires? Check them out here (happy pirate top for E) and here (this one for the pirate princess).

To respect the privacy of other kids and mommies, I am not sharing the group / individual photos here. So, please pardon me.

Pressie time. She was oh-so-happy!

Thanks for the handmade felt puzzles, Shirl. And look at the special pirate ship bag, Shirl is one creative mom!

The craft set with ice cream sticks, Ashley really understands my duo and how they love crafting.. The very first ice cream sticks picture frame created by the siblings with little help from mommy (to find them the pegs)

Now, now.. Here's the dream gift for my little C -- a magical kitchen set complete with stove, oven and all the cooking utensil! The duo had been busy "cooking" for me ever since.. A big thank you to mommy Stephanie, Elizabeth and Kelly!

Folded up as a stove only. It's like a transformer.

Tired of eating pretended food several days later, we decided to start designing our own custom menu.. This was the first of our creative menu. C has the most interesting idea - what on Earth is a Potato Volcano? I have absolutely no idea, my job was just to write it down. :)

For next day celebration with her classmates at the preschool, we made these ombré Cuppies in different shade of pastel pink and purple, simple design with reduced sweetness for the little ones. The little ones had fun helping me to drop the sprinkles.

The cuppies are ready for delivery!

I reused the fondant figurine for the birthday cake to bring to school with a freshly baked cake and cuppies. Aren't they looking lovely? :)

Happy birthday my little Sunshine, Pirate Princess, Little Bunny, Sweetie Pie. Mommy will never stops loving you, and may God continue to bless you abundantly.

  

Copyrights © Pui Hua and Fun With Little Ones, 2012 - present. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of any materials within this website without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Pui Hua and Fun With Little Ones with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Little Pirate Princess Party... Cake decorating!

My little girl turns 3 years old this week and I've organized a small picnic party with some closed friends, just few of us, our little ones and some finger foods. It's a day for the kiddos to have a fun, nothing fancy but hopefully it will be a memorable day.

I sketched out my master plan, it pretty much sum up my plan, from cake design to pirate dress to party game. I have rediscovered my interest in drawing again since I have been drawing and painting with my kiddos often nowadays.

The birthday clothes were done some times ago. I spared few hours each Sunday in the month of November so no last minute rush this time. See, I am making it as a tradition that I will tailor make new clothes and design a cake for my duo every birthday, that translates to plenty of work for poor me. 

You can check out my little girl's pirate dress here 

Or the little brother's pirate top here 

And today, finally, I got the cake and cuppies done too.

Little Pirate Princess Cake & Cuppies

Fully designed and hand crafted. Combined both fondant and buttercream techniques this time, feeling rather happy with my little improvement. Hmm, just realized this is my 5th attempt at cake decorating in 3 years. No wonder I am progressing so slowly.

Hello, princess.

My little C really loved her cake & cuppies. Kept asking me, "you made this for me, mommy? You made this for me?". 

Yes baby, I made this for you. Mommy will continue to make your birthday cake every year till it comes the time I have to stop. 

The making of the figurine, I used a spaghetti to hold the body in place, so the whole figurine is actually edible. 

Noticed the change in the eyes? I found I have made them a bit too big and looking kind of creepy, so had them replaced with smaller pair of eyes. Good thing of decorating with fondant is that it's rather forgiving.

The naked cake, and the simple decorated cake before all the toppings. These are actually simple piping using star tips, after last round of practice I'm pretty confident with piping now. 

As you can see, there are quite a lot of tools and preparation involved (the pictures below only showing a quarter of them), so do be generous with your cake decorator.. It's really quite some hard work there. *wiping my sweat*

Cuppies decoration in progress.

I know the cake and cuppies are simple in compare to what you can get from the professionals, but these are guaranteed fresh, healthier (reduced sugar, quality ingredient) and most importantly, full of mommy's love. In fact my little ones get to participate in the making and they were playing with the left over fondant as if those were playdoh.

By the way, did you noticed the little boat behind the figurine? It's a tiny boat full of roses and lilies for the pretty princess. :)

So, what's next? Games for the park are packed, picnic gears ready, party bags for the little friends ready, all that is left is some jelly and oh, pray for a great sunny day tomorrow! ❤️

Copyrights © Pui Hua and Fun With Little Ones, 2012 - present. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of any materials/photos within this website without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Pui Hua and Fun With Little Ones with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Painting Fun.... Of Colors & Brushes

Little ones and I have been painting again lately. I have stopped it for the past few months as my little girl can be quite a messy queen and leave behind a huge scene for me. Not that she is any less messier now but at least she will take instructions better and know how to clean up after herself and tidy up the 'crime scene', so I decided to start the weekend painting / crafting routine.

I shopped for some new paint brush to teach my little handsome the different brushing techniques which I could still vaguely recall. I attended drawing classes ages ago, when I was still a primary schooler myself. 

We setup the table and tools, and they could not wait to get started. To avoid fighting, each have their own set of water colors and palette. I used the disposable kitchen tower we bough from the RM5 shop to dap the brush, very absorbent and no washing required afterward! 

For little C, I let her paint on pre-printed A4 papers while for E who's already 5.5 years old, I let him draw on the drawing paper and choose his own colors. I then guided him how to make use of the different brushes like how my art teacher used to guide me..

• Round point - used for strokes, lines and coloring large objects

• Liner brush - for fine lines,detailing and outlining

• Flat - for creating texture effect like wood, water, grass, clouds.

Unfortunately my little boy had much shorter patience than me, after spending a min listening he showed me that bored face and couldn't wait to start painting right away. LOL, I love to annoy him sometimes, privilege of a mom. *evil laugh*

The result? To my surprise they are bad at all. I love their use of colors, bold and eye catchy.

Painting by my little E. I love those multi-colored trees and the multi-level super market (it's not a tower as he claimed its too small to be one). I helped him on some of the objects in order to explain the different brushing technique, but the choice of colors was solely his. Can you tell which cloud was mine or his creation? 

Painting by little C. This is the 3rd of her painting and she has finally learnt to control the paint brush better without smudging too hard till the paper is torn. That is one big improvement if you ask me.I don't care so much if she colors within the line, or use the "logical" color of the object. Just want to let her express her creativeness and enjoy the fun of painting. After all this is her artwork, not mine. I think she deserves a star for this piece. :)

It's a fruitful 60 minutes spent and I honestly look forward for the next weekend..

Happy Sunday!

Copyrights © Pui Hua and Fun With Little Ones, 2012 - present. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of any materials/photos within this website without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Pui Hua and Fun With Little Ones with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

{Halloween Special} Adventure Time!

Our neighbour organized a Halloween Party this year and invited all kids to join. Although it is not in our culture to celebrate Halloween, the kids could not wait to join the Treat or Trick so I thought, well, I sure would love them to have some fun with the other kids.

After looking around for Halloween costumes in the malls, I was rather disappointed. Either there are mostly vampire outfits for the adult, or pretty costumes for girls, but not much cool choices for boys and I'm not fancy to dress him like a ghost. So I decided to make one for him, it has to be something as this has been a busy month for me. and as we were watching his favourite cartoon, I got the idea...

What time is it? It's Adventure Time!

My little E adores Finn the human who is brave, smart and a loyal friend to Jake the dog. So when I asked if he would like to dress up as Finn for the Halloween party, he immediately replied me "YES!!!", clear and loud.

So, Finn it is!

My little Finn is ready to slay some monsters.

After no avail of purchasing a plain blue shirt for him (and I thought that should be easy!), I made one using Big Guy's Polo shirt that he has not been wearing for years. 30 minutes cheat job, even the pants was re-purposed from daddy's old Nike pants which I happened to have a tutorial on this some times ago, check it out here!

The polo T as it's last seen..

Complete with the backpack, he put it on as soon as I shown him the completed bagpack and refused to put it down until shower time. He's definitely loving this bagpack. :)

Big Guy made him a wooden sword complete with a red gem, just like Finn's sword! 

Look at the sparkling gem stone.. The second sword is for the cousin who is little E's best buddy too.

Lucky Little E that daddy spent so much time on making his dream comes true. I have no doubt that he is the happiest kid on the block that night.

I had no idea hat Finn is apparently a big thing among the kids, almost every kids and teenagers we bumped into were amazed.. 

"Look, it's Finn the human!!" 

"you're so cute!"

"can we take a picture with Finn?"

Little E was so popular beyond expectation.. He was shy at first but gratefully accepted the compliments and even posed with anyone that came forth. 😄

My little C was not forgotten, she got to be the Princess Bubblegum. In her tutu costume she wore during her preschool concert.she was not keen to dress up so I  shed off the thought to make her a pink hat. No picture taken of her as it was all too dark.

Instead of pumpkin-o-lantern, we made a cardboard house lantern  instead. Painted by E and assisted by me. 

Simple pumpkin smileys for our front door decoration, another handmade project by the duo. It's really nothing compared to the elaborated decoration of our neighbors. :P

As we were invited to the party at our neighbour's haunted house,  I made some "scary" jelly to bring along. Lego men trapped in the pool. Scary? ;)

The prep. The white blocks were using fresh milk and the brown lego men were added with cocoa powder. Only 2 drops of yellow and red coloring was used for the entire batch.

So, are you interested to custom made the Finn Hat too? Here's how.

Finn's Hat

Crafting Time: 45 minutes

Skilled Level: Beginner

What you need:

• 1/2 yard of white fleece or felt (for outer layer
• 1/2 yard of cotton in contrasting color (for inner layer)
• 1 matching button or a pair of snap buttons
• thread in matching color
• a pair of scissors 
• a sewing machine 
• a pattern, get it here, Brandy from the Doodah Kids generously shares the pattern & steps.

Finn's Backpack

And if you feel like making the green backpack too, there's a kewl tutorial available too (although I actually made mine free-hand)

Crafting Time: 30 minutes

Skilled Level: Beginner

What you need:

• 1/2 yard of bright green fleece 
• 1/2 yard of dark green fleece
• thread in matching color
• a pair of scissors 
• a sewing machine
• No pattern avail, please refer to instruction by Alex from Instructables. He has a pattern for Finn's Hat too!

Happy Halloween, hope you had a fun time with your little ones too..

Copyrights © Pui Hua and Fun With Little Ones, 2012 - present. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of any materials/photos within this website without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Pui Hua and Fun With Little Ones with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.