Basic Cupcake decoration course at BIY (Christmas theme)

Ever since Alicia's second birthday celebration at Julia Gabriel in 2010, I've been wanting to attend a cupcake decoration course... well erm, so that Alicia can have mummy's cupcakes for parties in future... lol... (but will mummy overcome the inertia of baking the cupcakes? :P)

I finally found a suitable timing at B-I-Y and since I'm a noob at decorating, I decided to go for the basic cupcake deco course. After all, I'm interested in icing techniques and the fondant course - which requires 3 hours of me - is just too long. In fact, I didn't even have time to stay for photo-taking and stuff for my 1.5hr course and had to rush back home to Alicia.

The course was easy and fun though I thought the extra cupcakes - which were handed out to be brought home as a snack - could have been distributed earlier for decorating purposes since I'd finished decorating my four cupcakes and was sitting around waiting.... not even sure what I was waiting for. :P

Apart from that, I would say it was a memorable experience and the instructor was nice... and till I have really a lot of time on my hands, or till I really have an occasion to bake those cupcakes and make the icing and decorate them (I only love the decorating bit!), we'll see what I can come up with. LOL.

Since the course I attended was in early Dec 2010, the theme was Christmas, which explains all the Christmas-y bits of my cupcakes:

got this little penguin only because no one else wanted the one-eyed fella

they survived the trip home in a super-packed train

Alicia enjoying the cupcakes:

Little Miss Cheeky deciding which other cupcakes to devour... look at the poor halved penguin :P

yummy

Christmas 2010 - Part II

We ended up not doing many homeschooling activities about Christmas because we spent the December hols busy catching up on family time.... which also explains why there aren't many blog entries about homeschooling in Dec. :P

My resolution is to plan more activities for Christmas in 2011! hahaha...

Anyway, she received this book about the nativity for Christmas 09 but I only read the book to her and she didn't get to play with the cardboard characters. (She did however on several occasions get her hands on them and she has lost a few pieces - I believe Joseph is still missing... haha)

Here she is... erm... telling her own version of the nativity... :)

Christmas 2010 - Part I

We had our Christmas light-up earlier than Orchard Road this year! Haha. We did up our tree on 12 November with our little helper... 

Last year we didn't set up our tree because she was so naughty and we were sure that she would wreck the tree and the decorations. This year she's sensible enough and she even helped to hang up the decorative items and we bought two snowmen, specially for her and they're hung at the bottom of the tree so that she has access to them. She turns on the tree lights whenever she pleases, even in the day sometimes and I would have to let her admire the lights first then turn them off. Kids are really so adorable aren't they? :)

This was her in 2008, barely half a year old, celebrating Christmas with us:

My little girl has grown up, hasn't she? :D

Christmas book from grandaunt!

Alicia got this very beautifully-illustrated book about The First Christmas on Christmas eve from my aunty. She has been so in love with this book since Christmas and will keep bringing the book to hubby and I to read to her. When I want to have a change of books, she'd insist on reading the same book over and over again. Toddlers.... Anyway, she's really good at sitting through a story these days and believe it or not, she managed to sit through the whole book before moving off to do something else!

Anyway, she loves to hear us make the animal sounds whenever we point out the animals to her and will imitate the sounds we make. She's gotten quite good at this and can "mehhhhh" like the sheep (this she learned from reading this book), "meow" like the cat (ok, she learnt this from both the book and watching her Sesame Street DVDs) - one wonders why there's a cat in the stable but that's besides the point, and cluck (she goes "pak pak pak") like a chicken. :) When we point to the baby, she'd put her hands to her eyes and pretend to cry like a baby (something she picked up during JG PlayNest last year and reinforced by me at home whenever I sing "The Wheels on the Bus"). She's becoming so cute and responsive to our teaching!

Christmas Eve 09

Christmas eve evening was spent at my mum's place where we mingled, ate delish food, sang Christmas carols, ate mouth-watering food... ooh, did I mention eat again? Lots of eating took place that evening and I ate my fill without feeling guilty coz I climbed 60 storeys before going over to my mum's. I knew I was gonna feast so I'd better 'walk' for my supper first so I could eat to my heart's content...

This year, alongside my mummy's absolutely yummy home-cooked food, my aunty ordered roast beef and two types of ham from Hyatt... and we also had two logcakes, of which one was an ice-cream cake. Honestly, I'm not sure why we needed to have two cakes when one would have sufficed, but oh well, I ate both anyway and they were nice and I'm certainly not complaining. :D

Here's a snapshot of what Alicia busied herself with that day during the party:

She usually hates to wear sunglasses or anything for that matter, on her head. But as you can see, she's very contentedly wearing my niece's sunglasses on her head.

I should be getting more photos of the Christmas party from my cousin some time in the future and I'll probably just upload them in this post. :)

Christmas toy

This is a backdated post... been wanting to blog about so many things but I've been really up to my neck with well, everything! :D

Remember I mentioned that Alicia got a new toy from my mum? Well, here's a video of alicia being introduced to it on Christmas day:

The Christmas ball

If you think you've seen the largest Christmas ball of your life, think again. The huge Christmas ornament at T3, Changi Airport, which opens up playing some music every half hour interval from 6am-midnight (if my memory does not fail me), releases some balls for children to play some game at the end when it closes and becomes a huge ball again, is quite a sight (at least when it opens), though it doesn't seem that big in contrast to the vast space at the airport. I thought it should play some Christmas carols when it opens, but it doesn't - or at least when it opened at the time I was there, it ain't Christmas carols I heard. Nevertheless, Alicia had quite some fun there and I captured some videos of her (and the ball - but mainly her):

The ball's opening!

Climbing up the platform (which is what is disallowed actually, but we only realised it later)

Playing with the balls after the end of the game

Our Christmas presents to Alicia!

We've no Christmas tree at home this year to put Alicia's presents under so we just unveiled them to her last night. We bought her a few items from a blogshop: a cute duck backpack (which I saw being sold at Tom & Stephanie for a higher price), two tops and a romper. :)

Alicia carrying her new bag:

Duckie's in a christmassy mood too!:

Christmas ramblings and Alicia's advance gifts!

Christmas is and always has been my favourite festive season for as far as I can remember. I just simply enjoy the christmasy mood that seems to fill the air - well, that's something that somehow only my olfactory senses can detect! I always love the days leading up to Christmas and I'd feel sad once Christmas is over coz I guess that signals to me the end of another year. Somehow the year seems to come to an end for me when Christmas does. :)

What exactly do I love about Christmas? Hmm, I can't really put my finger on it. But I guess it's the general sense of kinship and love in the air. But I'd have to admit that when I was young, I loved Christmas because of all the presents that I was showered with. Now as an adult, and more significantly, a parent, gone are the days of receiving. Giving has become and is the word of the day. It is Alicia's turn now to be on the receiving end, a concept which I think she hasn't really come to fully understand, yet. But when she does, I'm sure she'd love Christmas too, as much as I do.

Has Christmas become too commercialised? Perhaps to some extent (yes, I do notice that I can't seem to decide on the extent - something I used to penalise students for in their essays). Well, I can't deny that all the shopping centres have started their Christmas sale weeks ago and "the joy of giving" seems to be some fixed tagline - and it seems that if you're not giving something to someone (i.e. buying something off the shelves), you're missing out on something, the quintessence of Christmas. That's how Christmas seems to be portrayed. But if you do have time to attend any Christmas service at church, you may realise that Christmas is still well, very much Christmas - a time to remember that God gave us the best Christmas present ever. :)

So much for my rambling... and speaking about presents, Alicia was asked to pick her Christmas present on Sunday by my mum and aunt. So off to Kiddy Palace we went (since we were at Jurong Point). She picked a BIG plush Tigger - she spotted a Tigger sitting on the carousel on display and started exclaiming "tat! tat! tat!", and when we walked past a Tigger that was just minding his own business on the shelf, she lunged towards it and hugged it. And so, I had to carry two babies of almost the same size around Kiddy Palace after that. I offered her other plush toys like Pooh, Piglet and Stitch. But she wanted only Tigger and refused to let go of him. When I put her down on the ground to walk about on her own, she continued to hold on tightly to Tigger. And so, Tigger it was. She wasn't going to compromise on that. :D Other Christmas presents we picked up alongside Tigger were a motorised toy, a new Piyo Piyo water bottle (her pigeon magmag's spoilt and we decided that it's time she had a toddler-like (i.e. cool) water bottle to bring out) and a new Strawberry Shortcake soup spoon (which she refuses to trade with me for any other spoon now). Well, amazingly, she loves her new waterbottle so much that she hasn't thrown it about at all - she threw her Pigeon magmag around till it was spoilt!

We brought home all the Christmas toys in advance except for the motorised toy which my mum wants to wrap and put under the Christmas tree so that Alicia will receive something during the family gathering on Christmas eve.

Here're some videos of Alicia with a couple of her newfound loves.

Alicia with her new waterbottle!

Playing with Tigger!

Alicia trying to tie Tigger's "hair" :D

Gearing up for Christmas'09!

This year, as Alicia's walking and running about, and still trying to mouth everything she sees, we decided that the Christmas tree should not make its appearance this year in our home. Otherwise, she'd be pulling off the leaves, breaking ornaments - which is really dangerous! and basically tearing the whole tree apart.



So instead of putting up a tree, we decided that we'd celebrate Christmas in other ways: bring her to see the Christmas lights in town, buy her a couple of bric-a-bracs just for fun, and of course, there's the usual Christmas family get-together with my family later in the month.


We took a few photos of the Christmas lights in town while we were in the car, but the phone camera didn't do any justice to the lights so I shan't post the photos here. Alicia did enjoy looking at the lights though.



We also brought her to Vivocity where there's a big Christmas tree. Here are some photos we took with hubby's phone:

We got her a reindeer hairband which all of us can wear! Somehow it fits her little head and ours nicely! We got it at Toys R Us for only $2. Here's the pic of it and a video of Alicia playing with the hairband. Initially she put it on nicely on her own but by the time I took out my phone to take the video, it was almost off her head already... well, what's new...





And oh, that's her fiddling with her newest 'toy' in the video too: the keyboard we bought for her from Giant for $20! Now I can sit her down properly without worrying that she'd fall off my lap - which is my main worry when I play on my piano with her on my lap.

Here's the other knickknack we got for her: a Christmas bag from Daiso.



We put the Sesame Street toys in it for her and she had great fun taking them out one by one. Here's a video of her with the Christmas bag and Bert from Sesame Street (look out for her waving at and kissing Bert):

Christmas 08

For last year's Christmas, we still took out our Christmas tree and decked it up as usual since Alicia was young then and wasn't very mobile so she couldn't go disturb the tree and the ornaments.

Here are some photos of her (and us) with our Christmas tree last year (note how chubby she looked then compared to now... sigh):

We had a hard time trying to get a good family photo with the tree!

"Hmm, what's this?"

"I want that ball!"