Love crafting

Oliver certainly has my love for crafting.
The other day we made a Robot together and you can see how proud my little boy is.



Well done Oliver!

Summery yellow

I got a lovely birthday present in the post today. When Merryn and Dennis were in Singapore I showed Merryn a quilt from one of the blogs I follow and demanded  (is this the right word Merryn?) a particular design with particular colours and a particular width.

Funnily enough the exact quilt arrived today :) :) :)





I can place a custom order and taaadaaaa it's already on my dining table!
It will be a great talking point when I have friends over for coffee for sure.

I found out you can also use it to measure your children too - very handy quilt it is.





Thank you very much Merryn for such a lovely present x

Girl's night out

My dear friend Naz organised a great "girl's night" for us Bayshore girls (girls who live in the same condo). I got a text from Naz detailing our night out "hope you have your sexy party dress and heels ready!" So off we went to this Cuban bar in Clark Quay (looks familiar?).



Unfortunately some of the Bayshore ladies couldn't make it, so we ended up only 6 of us but it was a great night! We started off having some fancy drinks and some tapas. Then the live music started and the party was on! Lots of dancing and giggling for the rest of the night.





I of course had a jar of mojito!



We were sort of seated on the wrong table for chatting - right under a big speaker! So half way through the night I kind of lost my voice...





By the time it passed midnight we moved on to the next club. I must have not had enough to drink as I was too sensible and thought it was time to get home for my little angel and be ready for another early morning with three little ones.

I thoroughly enjoyed our girls night out and am looking forward to the next one!

Relaxing "me" time

One of my friends gave me a voucher for one of the spas downstairs. It is very convenient as I can just pop down and get treatments done and come home within an hour. 

This evening as soon as Matthew came home from his flights (sorry honey!) I dumped the kids and went down to get a manicure and pedicure done. Believe it or not I am going out for drinking and dancing with some girls from the condo tomorrow evening (must be the first night out since Ashley was born!) so I thought having pretty nails will be a bonus :)

It was truly relaxing and I really enjoyed the peace. Now my nails are looking all shiny, I am ready for a big girls night out!

My 3?th Birthday

Well, I myself had to think how old I was going to be on this special day... Surely we didn't need to celebrate it as it only meant I was getting even older! But my lovely boys were all excited and wanted to make the day very special so we had a little celebration.

I felt like putting on something small so we ended up having a few friends around for an afternoon tea.



Earlier in the day Matthew and the boys baked me a signature "rose" shaped chocolate cake:

I was lucky to have lots of friends around in the middle of the day:





Oliver was so excited to have so many friends at his place at once:







My wonderful girlfriends (+Shem):



As you guessed the afternoon tea sort of turned into a guys drinking session but we weren't really prepared for it so shortly after we ran out of drinks!

I was very spoiled and got some lovely gifts. My boys gave me a new Pandora bead - a kiwi!



I got some pretty flowers, spa vouchers, a cheeseboard and some yummy smelling body care products! I also got a lot of kind wishes from my friends (thanks to FB) from all over the world!! (I truly appreciate having so many international friends).

Ashley even gave me a surprise by rolling over for the first time!



Thank you everyone for making my day very special. I had a great time :)

For us Roses this will be it for this year, next one will be Ashley's first birthday (having all the kids ones within 5 weeks makes the rest of the year quite empty).  So I can now concentrate on Halloween and Christmas!

Ashleeeeeey

The boys love for Ashley is continuously growing each day:



I think she is still getting used to them...

Getting smarter

After a messy lunch today I took Luca to the bathroom to wash his hands. Conversation with my smart boy.

M: Wash your hands Luca.

L: Why? I already washed.

M. Because you ate.

L: No, I am not eight. I'm two.

(If you know Luca you know the exact tone of voice he uses to correct me!)

Some quality time

I am glad the Watson family got to know Ashley finally. We had both Oliver and Luca when we were living next to them in Brunei so they knew about our boys since Day1 of their lives. So it was kind of weird them not meeting Ashley until last week.

Ashley was very lucky to have lots of cuddles and kisses from them:

She did get some nice cuddles from Nathan too, I just didn't catch them together with my camera!

We miss you too

This was the morning of the day Boel and the kids were leaving. They really enjoyed the chill out mornings together for the last few days.



After they left I found the cutest memo on Oliver's drawing table:



So sweet!

We hope it won't be as long until our next catch up. We miss you too much xx

Big day out - 2

We had one more item on Boel's "things to do" list, the Gardens by the Bay. Even though we have been there twice already we were very happy to come along for the day out. It is such an amazing park right by the stunning hotel MBS. 

We started off with a garden tour on the tram which is always a great way of covering such a huge area with our without kids. The audio guide on the tram gives a good amount of information as we pass different types of gardens. 

There are two conservatories, the Flower Dome and the Cloud Forest. We decided the kids won't enjoy it as much if we try to cover too much so ended up doing one of them, the Cloud Forest - my favourite part of the garden by far. 

As soon as you walk in you are greeted by this amazing indoor waterfall. 

You walk around the waterfall until you get to the lift which will take you to the top of the mountain. Along the way you can see some very well maintained plants and flowers:

This was new, some train tracks - guess who didn't want to move on...

It is such a pleasant walk.  I had been suffering from sore eyes mostly from late nights and too many hours spent on iphones and computers but as soon as we started to walk around I could feel my eyes getting better. 

I just love the design of the garden, at the bottom floor it feels like you are in the forest and under clouds (maybe that's why it is called Cloud Forest !?), when you reach to the top you feel the warm sun on you.

I tried to see something I didn't see when I visited there last and this was my new find this time:

There are lots of great educational materials within the gardens. Oliver and Linnea participated in Origami Lilly making:

I totally enjoyed it once again. Maybe because I spent more time looking at the plants and flowers  instead of taking photos? - I didn't take my big camera for some reason. Boel took a lots of great pictures - you can see them on her blog. 

I just found out there are special displays in the Flower Dome starting this week (Watson family, you need to come back!), celebrating Deepavali - festival of lights. According to the website, there will be traditional Indian fabric lanterns, lamps and carved wooden elephants in the flower field display. I am sure our boys will love it! And this time I will remember to take my camera along :) 

Our big day didn't finish there, we hopped in the taxis and had lunch at Vivocity. The kids had enough by the time we finished lunch so Matthew kindly took 4 of them home so that Boel and I (plus Ashley) could enjoy some more retail therapy...

By the time we got home it was past 7pm! Lucky our friends had invited us to a BBQ by the pool - we didn't have to worry about our dinner. Lucas and Linnea enjoyed swimming and my kids had fun wandering around in the fresh air. 

After putting the kids to bed, Boel and I enjoyed some more wine and the last chit-chat :( The last few days went past way too fast. We still feel like we are neighbours - we miss having you guys close by!