More vegetable planting....

My father-in-law was 'invading' more and more land for planting vegetables. Haha! Actually, those were public land at the side of the road, in front of TNB sub-station etc. It was no easy job to turn those barren soil into plantable land. He had to remove all those rubbish buried by contractors when houses were built, condition the soil with fertilizer (chicken feces) and turn the soil every few days before actual planting could start.

Those small vegetable patches are now full of variety of vegetables.

Sweet Potato Leaves. This is Taiwanese species as the shape is different with the normal types with pointy edges. More tender to consume.

Okra. Our favourite

'Di Wang Miao'. I don't know the English name for this vegetables. Holes can be seen on the leaves because we do not apply pesticides on our vegetables.


Chilies. This species is extremely hot and we end up seldom using them for cooking. Using half for one dish is more spicy than 'cili padi'.

Aubergine. We plant our own because aubergine and chilies are two types of vegetables with most pesticides if we buy at market.



Our little helper helping to carry our harvest.

Things they did

On most Saturdays, Hubby needs to go to work (although self-employed) and I am stuck at home looking after my 2 girls as my parents-in-law will go back to their home town nearby for a break.

I try not to 'work' but try to accompany them as much as possible. I will also get hubby to buy simple lunch like chicken rice or fish ball vermicelli so that I can skip cooking. Sometimes when I need cook lunch for them, they will end up watching TV and I think the time is better spent on bonding time with them.



Several Saturdays ago, I did some simple crafts with them. I helped to cut out shapes from coloured paper and Tian could do her own pasting. I would deliberately leave some details undone, in this case, the ladybird's spots so that Tian could colour by herself. After the bug was done, I pasted it onto a straw and she used it as a magic wand.



I also bought a 'pool' so that they could play with water without having to go to beaches or swimming pools.

They had a great time playing but Tao (my younger girl) could not understand why she needed to come out of water after playing for about 20 minutes and she would cry for more than one hour. Every time she peeked outside and saw the pool, she would cry again. Since then, I have kept the 'pool' in storeroom until she could understand "Enough is enough".

I know it is unfair to the elder girl as she kept on asking me when she can 'swim' in the pool again. Maybe one day, when hubby is at home and can help to keep an eye on them, I will let them play once in while.

Crafting Week

Sometimes I feel guilty being a work-at-home mum but seldom accompany my girls as much as I want to except during weekends when my parents-in-law are not with us and I have take care of them on my own. Even so, I will leave them to play on their own while surfing net or doing my admin work. However, since last two weekends I decided to accompany them on Saturdays without touching my laptop except when they are both sleeping. I actually feel better because I am able to concentrate with one task at a time and my girls are happy that I can play with them, read to them and do some crafts with them. One evening last week, I told my 4 yo I wanted to make a mask for her and she chose to be Belle, the character from Beauty and the Beast. My 2 yo would want anything that her sister had so I made her a simple mask. I was getting lazy so I just simply cut out a piece of paper with two holes on it. She was satisfied. A few days later, my 4 yo pestered me to let her draw pictures with water colour. Normally, I would only let her use water colour when the younger sister was napping. After she promised she would share with her sister and would not fight with her sister, I let them play at the garage. Reason due to I HATE CLEANING UP just in case they spilt the water and colours. To my surprise, they played peacefully for more than half an hour. Last Saturday, I cut out some shapes from a paper plate and let the girls pasted the legs, head and tail to make a stegosaurus (I got the idea from one of my ex-school mate's blog). Again, they spent about one hour doing all the pasting plus some colouring. My 4 yo even helped her sister draw the eyes and colour the body of her dinosaur.

Finished work of two stegosaurus

My First Gardening Attempt

Hubby and his partner bought a lot of Podocarpus Macrophyllus, called Luo Han Song or Buddhist Pine locally and planted them randomly around their plantation. It is regarded as feng shui plant in Chinese community recently and its market value increases as it matures.

There were hundreds of leftover plants that they left under a shade due to the reason that there were no space to plant. Hubby has not organised his worker to move the plants to bigger bags for them to grow properly. What a waste!

Last week, I saw huge flower pots for sale at Giant and bought 4 of them. I asked hubby to bring home a few plants as I planned to plant some. One of my florist customer told me that I could display some plants at her shop and she could help to sell off to interested buyers. However, I did not plan to sell them yet as such small plants would not be able to fetch much value.

Yesterday, I transferred the plants from their tiny bags to pots with my MIL's help and advice. That was the first time I attempted gardening and it was not because of interest but as a form of 'investment'. Haha.

Huge pots with ample space for growth without having to transfer to bigger pots in 1 to 2 years

Sweet Potato Muffins

A friend of my hubby's family who plants vegetables gave us a box of sweet potatoes two weeks ago. The quality of the sweet potatoes is good, sweet and without too much fibre.

I have been adding to Tao's dishes or soup. My MIL cooks porridge with sweet potatoes and sweet potato soup (dessert with ginger and dried longan) regularly and we are still left wth 1/4 box of sweet potatoes.

As I baked banana muffins before, I replaced bananas with sweet potatoes and modified the recipe a bit and voila.....

They were not as fragrant as banana muffins but surprisingly, Tian loved them and could finish the whole muffin each time she had one as snack.

Craft-ing Session!

Tian always wants to seek for my attention when I am doing my work at my laptop. She will try tracing dots or colouring but will end up asking me to do it with her.

Last Saturday, I thought of making lantern with her. I prepared the materials for her and she spent quite some time (without me) trying to glue pieces of papers onto the toilet roll.

Prepare materials as below.

1 toilet roll

1 piece of blank paper cut to the size to wrap around the toilet roll

Some coloured paper cut into different shapes (Use old magazines to be more environment friendly)

Scissors

Glue

Straw (Those bigger in diameter type used for drinking tea/ beverages with starchy pearls)

Any string for tying onto the straw

Step 1.

Apply glue and wrap blank paper onto toilet roll.

Step 2.

Depending on your kids' age, you might need to cut out different shapes from coloured papers for your kid. Kids who are able to handle scissors can be encouraged to do the cutting.

Step 3.

Let your kids glue the pieces of papers onto the toilet roll.

Step 4.

Make two holes opposite each other at top of the roll. Make a small cut at the straw for tying the toilet roll.