Countdown to Christmas - 18 Days

Started writing some of these home designed cards...

Designed while Baby O is sleeping, using a lot of the free scrapbooking kits available for downloading at this cool site, Shabby Princess. Hope they arrive before Christmas!!

As we write, we were cherishing all those moments spent together. Thank God for good friends (some turned great!) He sent us wherever we went! The company and support given will be etched in our memories!

Tick Tock Tick Tock

Dali's Persistence of Time

I don’t understand why time waits for no man. Why can’t it ‘give me five minutes’ or ‘hang on a minute’?? I will be able to do just that little bit more with that - reply just one more mail, post just one more entry on my blog, sleep one more wink....

Anyway, the past month has been a blast! Done lots, but still loads to do!

Firstly, we managed to discover so much of Penang that dear hubby and I are thinking of starting a blog! (The problem is we will need more than five more minutes to maintain it!)

Then, I had a deadline to meet. Yes, SAHMs have project deadlines too! This time it is for a free photobook offer from Shutterfly. I have already missed a few free photobook offers and not about to lose another one. This was for a 8 x 8 inch hard cover 20-page photobook. The mean thing is these good offers are usually only up for about a week or so for you to grab. So it was a week of burning the midnight oil rushing to screen through the gazzillions of Baby O photos to pick that top 100 pictures for the photobook. Initially, I was going for Baby O’s first year memories. But there’s just too much to do in a week so I went for Baby O’s favourites instead - favourite people, favourite songs, favourite mum-mum and so on... I can’t wait for it to arrive in the post! I also have a few other photobook projects in mind but insufficient tick tock tick tock at the moment.

At the same time, there are tonnes of emails to reply and yummy new recipes to try out, compost and vegetable patch to tend to, a toddler to nurture, a few blog posts to read, clothes to wash and fold... when will the list end???

p.s. Shutterfly offers 50 free 4 x 6 prints upon signing up with them. Postage not included.

Bummis SWIMMI Reusable Swim Nappies

I have been looking high and low for swim nappies for my water Baby O ever since we depleted our sole pack of disposable swim nappies lugged back all the way from the UK. I am quite shocked, and disappointed to find it so difficult to:
1. source for disposable swim nappies here in Malaysia
2. reusable swim nappies here cost as much as a membership to a sports club (obviously exaggerating but let's just say I can feed many mouths with that hideous amount of money they charge for a nappy!)

During our recent swim sessions, we have resorted to:
1. keep the day-to-day disposable nappy on and finish the session with Baby O's bum seemingly ballooned up to the size of a pomelo
2. take a risk, a very huge risk...

So I was over the moon when:
1. a friend has kindly offered to look out for more affordable swim nappies in the UK and send it over to us
2. I found out through Mummy's Reviews that Tiny Pants sells Bummis SWIMMI swim nappies at an affordable RM58! (Not sure if it includes postage though.) On top of that, I get a chance at winning a pair for my little bum as they are giving away two free swim nappies! OOoohh.. sure hope to win this one!

Potty Training 101

It’s been exactly three whole months since I pledged on Earth Day to potty train Baby O. In the last three months, I have been on and off going about looking for the first item you need to potty train - a potty. Little did I know that it takes a bit more effort than anticipated. The potties that I have spotted are either waaaay too expensive or not suitable for Baby O’s age. The branded ones cost an arm and a leg - BabyBjorn (RM179), Fisher Price (RM169/ RM199). I am certainly not going to spend RM199 for a ‘throne’! Next in line will be the Mothercare potty at RM70. The local brands like Sweet Cherry around the range of RM20 seems great but they are too small/ low for Baby O’s age. I was excited when I spotted Jusco’s 'seat' potty. It is affordable but seems to be a tad too shallow? That means the bum and the base are only a few centimetres away from each other. Hmm...

While trying to get some reviews online and hopefully direction to where to get a decent potty, I found out that Mummy's Reviews™ is currently doing a giveaway. And it comes as Bouncy Baby One Size Cloth Diaper! This cloth diaper is proudly made locally in Malaysia by Tiny Tapir - a company that promotes eco-friendly lifestyle changes! You've got that right! Made locally, cloth diapers = GREEN! I have never used cloth diapers before but using all those disposable diapers really made me feel guilty about contributing to the landfills. So I am hoping that I win this giveaway to try out cloth diapers while reducing the number of disposable nappies used as I trying to get Baby O potty trained! Fingers-crossed!

This Mama ♥ Shabby Princess!

I believe that this world is full of nice people! One of them has to be Shabby Princess! She has tonnes of free (Yes! FREE!!) digital scrapbooking kits for you to download. If you like all the shabbiness in her designs like I do, start clearing some space in that hard drive of yours and start downloading!!

Please note that all Shabby Princess kits are for PERSONAL, NON-COMMERCIAL use only.