Wednesday, April 13, 2016

Little Bunny Learns to Play... Piano!


C has been watching the elder brother practicing his piano at home, in piano class, and occasionally she likes to disturb him just to annoy him; like tapping his keys, turning off the power supply... Cheeky girl, she is.

She had never shown interest in learning piano, despite I have asked her few times, she always just shook her head and walks away.

Until last week.

C suddenly asked me.. "Mommy, why only koko (the brother) gets to go piano class, why I don't get to learn piano?"

"You like piano too?"

"YES! I want to play by myself!"

So we took her for a trial class at the same music center, I can tell that she was excited. Kept rushing us to leave the home ("Quick, mommy! I am going to be late for my class!"), greeted the teacher upon arrival (she is usually very shy) and I noticed she was holding the hands at all time - sign of nervous or excited.

To my pleasant surprise, my cheeky girl who has short attention span sometimes, listened attentively to all the instructions and performed everything as the music teacher told her. Tapping her fingers (do-re-mi-fa-so), counting the notes (semi-breve, minim, crochet)... She did all as requested and even memorized bass claf and treble claf. 

Well done, girl!

Now that we have signed her up for one term, let's hope her passion will not cease... *fingers crossed*






Second class, still on full attention mode, learnt her first song.




E started his first music lesson at the same age too - 4.5yo, and he is now preparing for his level 2 exam. He truly loves music and often plays the songs he heard on radio. Learning piano is not about getting the certificate, but there are much larger benefits than that.. You may read my earlier post here:


May the music always flows in your heart, my sweetest C.


Xoxo,
PH



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.

Friday, April 8, 2016

{Made by PH} Little Lemony Dress


C has been asking me for new dresses and persistently remind me every alternate days to make sure I do not forget.

"I want 2 dresses.. No, 3!"

"I want them in purple, yellow and blue... And pink too!"

"Please, Mommy, please... Where is my new dress?"

"Mommy, you said you will make the dress for me? What took you so long?"

Alright, alright.. I surrendered finally. So here it is, the new lemony dress for my little bubbly (and I know I still "owe" her a couples of dresses...) 

A happy dress for a happy girl. 



She absolutely loves it (and me too). Been dancing in it the entire morning, and the dress blends so well with the garden.. My lemon tree may be still little, but I have full ripe lemons dancing in my garden. Lol.


She loves tending to my plants... and I love watching her.

It's a really simple cutting and easy to wear on as no buttons involved. This is a pattern suitable for newbie in sewing.


I purchased this pattern, Glass Onion Top, months ago from Shwin Designs but had not find time to make it until today. The pattern is available in size 2T-8T (one of the easiest patterns ever, literally!) and I managed to complete the entire dress in 2 hour, from cutting to sewing (excluding ironing if you must know ;-). 

Now that the dress is completed and gardening chores all done, I can sit back and relax... Chilling with a cup of latte while watching the kiddos play in the garden. That's my kind of perfect weekend.

Happy weekend peeps!


Cheers,
PH

DIY Home Recycle Station


The little ones have been learning about importance of recycling at preschool, and we too had been recycling our items as much as possible to reduce wastage. I bring a cloth bag for grocery shopping and occasionally bring our old papers / clothes / plastic bottles for recycling - as and when I'm not too lazy.

I thought we were doing sufficient at our personal level, until I watched a recent documentary program about this village in Japan that actually recycled over 92% of its waste... that is one amazing effort! They even setup stores for people to exchange their unwanted items, such as clothes, cutlery, household items etc (basically one person's junk can be another person's treasure, isn't it?) to further reduce unnecessary wastage. The philosophy is simple - one day our Earth will be too full of junk, where are we going to evacuate all the rubbish we leave behind? To the third world countries? To the outer space? We will run out of clean living space, not in the next 10 years but definitely sooner than we know... 

The documentary got me thinking.. I'm sure the average Malaysian households produce way more wastage than that (I doubt if we even achieved 10% of recycle rate on overall). If we don't start doing something about it, it will only get worse.

So I had the idea of setting up our very own recycling station at home, using this abandoned cloth hanger that had been sitting idle in our backyard.
This is it, our cheap & no-frill DIY recycling station.


I placed a plastic sheet over it so it can blocks of rainwater while function as a green house for my hanging plants (mint, money plants etc). They are so growing well and hanging them in the front row actually beautify the place too.

Here's what we have at the recycling station.

The light plastic baskets (RM5.30 from daiso) allow visibility and do not collect stagnant water nor result to smell. Once the baskets are full, we just move them to our car boot and drop the items off at the collection centre. Easy peasy. 

For the food scrap, I collect them in a separate bin (at the bottom) to make compost for my garden. I'm newbie to composting but I can always learn to improve, so there's no excuse of "I don't know how". At least now our food scraps (especially all the fruits or veggie fiber after juicing, those are super nutrients for the soil!) don't go to waste anymore..

I have been training E and C to sort out the rubbish according to their place, including the envelopes from our daily mails. This has really reduce the actually amount of real rubbish in our thrash bin, and the duo are feeling proud of themselves. :-) 

That's all about our little recycling station, please do begin one at your home of space allow, for the betterment of ourselves and our next generation. 

Besides, if you have any suggestion to make this works even better, I would really love to hear from you! ;-)


Cheers,
PH




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.