Bits an pieces from Dec

A brief post. Lots have been going on here, mostly catching up with good friends and family. Though I told myself that we shall take it easy this Christmas, it looks like it's gonna be a busy one again. We kicked off this season by visiting the Hospice with the Start Children. My children were privileged that they got to come along. We spent time singing songs to the patients there, and making Christmas crafts with them. The encouragement certainly went both ways. Our songs cheered them up, while we were encouraged to see their strong positive spirits despite all they're going through.

We cut out Christmas decorations together with the patients at the Hospice. Working together in joy and sharing.

I also celebrate my birthday in December. I awoke to find this beautiful flower from hubby. He intended to get my favourite which is the Sunflower, but alas, there are no sunflowers this rainy season so this was the closest substitute :). More lovely than the flower was the touching message that came with it. I am blessed with a wonderful husband.

My children sent me on a treasure hunt and I found a new pair of sandals. Jo decided to recycleby wrapping up a bag I hardly used and presented it to me. haha...:) She also made a big Happy Birthday Banner which she stuck over my bed.

What else. Today I began spring cleaning (*atishooo!!!!*) While I was cleaning, the girls  went ahead and baked cream cheese brownie for an upcoming party. Looks a little lumpy but tasted good nevertheless. :) 

Finally to end this short post, we'd like to sing two songs. Actually...we were singing Somewhere Over the Rainbow, and the kids thought "Dorothy of Wizard of Oz lives on a farm, surely the song must have animal sounds." We had a good laugh mucking about with the song and decided to record it.
So here's our rendition. Hope you enjoy it. :) [p.s pardon the monkey that somehow appeared on the farm....]

Finally Merry Christmas. Forgive Jo for continuously putting animal sounds still. She couldn't get away from Dorothy and the farm. :) haha....

Till my next post, Blessed Christmas all. :)

@poundthegarlic.blogspot.com 2012

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Singing

Went to watch "We bought a Zoo". Not bad...a little slow going initially...(for some throughout), but still in my opinion, touching with a nice family message/reminder. Kids loved it, except for a small kissing part where they went "ewwwww" and covered their eyes.
Well...during a part of the show, the song "And I think it's Gonna rain Today" was featured. For a while I tried to figure out where I've heard the song. It's a song I used to love but have not heard in more than 10 years! Finally I figured out it was a song Bette Midler used to sing.

Upon getting home, I just HAD to...I downloaded the lyrics, got on my piano and recorded this impromptu. Chords may not be not right...but hey...I just had to record it. Love the song so much for some reason. Here's it, my impromptu recording and singing.


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Jo and Snail
*warning...cruel post*. After gardening yesterday...Jo drew me some diagrams and said "Mum, this is a snail. Now if you hit it and it breaks, you'll see a slug inside. If it's a mummy snail, you'll see yellow eggs inside stuck on its body. Now if you squish it somemore...you'll get yucky squishy things, the eggs will be destroyed. If you want it worse...you roll it around in mud." (That's how disgusting Jo can get....uurrrghhhh.....)

Lulu the Guinea is a Chef! and STOMP

My girls awoke this morning to find three tiny books left by Lulu! Well apparently Lulu is a chef, as seen in photo below, she's even written some recipe books herself. Wow, impressive!

Well.. I think Nel's got quite fond of Lulu, she put some butterfly stickers in Lulu's home today, and even made these little shoes for Lulu using some dough. I hope Lulu will be able to fit into them. They're very tiny only about 2.5cm in length. (Even I, mum was surprised to see the shoes! :)  )

Also I'm sure this carriage here will be a great surprise for Lulu. Although they've not read about Christmas Mouse's visit to Mini Mocha's where there's a scooter involved, they somehow had a similar idea. So Lulu the fairy tale visitor,  now has a carriage to ride on. I wonder if she'll be going to a ball anytime soon?

Finally, despite Nel's bad cough and Jo's condition, we went ahead and watched STOMP last night at the Plenary Hall. I'd bought the tickets some time back, and they are expensive. I just thought that to miss the show would be a total waste. So I wrapped my girls in warm clothes, and together we went to watch STOMP. Of course daddy had to carry Jo all the way to the hall.

I'm glad we went. We totally loved the show. In between their coughs and sneezes and all, I heard them giggling, laughing and just enjoying the show. I'm glad for that. :)

For today, Jo's fever has gone up to 39C again, and I administered another dose of paracetamol last night and ibuprofen this morn. It's a horrid virus that doesn't want to admit defeat yet, but it will soon!

Yeah, so after the show STOMP, my girls are noticing stuff around the house which can be used as instruments. :)

Uninspired

This is something I painted today. Feeling uninspired, unmotivated is  a horrid feeling. I walk around feeling listless...itching for something extraordinary to do, longing for something to captivate me and inspire me so much that I wanna sing it, write it or paint it, but nothing comes to mind.

Sure I'm greatly inspired as far as my teaching work with children is concerned, and am GREATly inspired by the continuous work we're doing in the Remote Village. But I'm really "empty" in the inspiration/creative bank. Being a creative person...it's really an unpleasant feeling. I can't quite describe it...it's like waiting for that rainbow or something "wowzers" to hit me that makes me want to jump, makes me wanna work till midnight, makes me want to create something. But here I sit, painting stuff like the painting above and the ones below..which is even worse..all painted half heartedly..with no direction, planning or goals in mind. 

Pathetic water lilies?

Perhaps the state of my mind?

And believe it or not....I even sat down and made up this meaningless song...that'll prove further to you, how unmotivated I have been.







I desperately want something to "stir" me..to bring up the creative side in me again..or I'll continue to feel agitated, "lifeless"..with nothing exciting to do, till the next trip somewhere into the jungle. Am I making sense anyway? coz you know, the uninspired me is affecting the stuff I write too. *sigh*                                                                                                                                                                   

Story Telling -The sleeping Beauty (Dormouse)

My children love stories, and because of that we're members of 2 libraries which we visit frequently. It's a lot cheaper to borrow then to buy tonnes of books, plus my nose would get terribly runny with all the dust from books.

Today at the library, Jo picked up this book entitled Sleeping Beauty, only Beauty here is a Dormouse. I placed it on my piano and decided to do an impromptu story telling, singing and telling as it came. Well..they loved it so much, they made me do it twice. It worked at getting their attention. :)

Story telling should always be attractive and captivating to the listener, ..it has to attract the child. So one should use the voice, facial expression and hand gestures freely. You could also include props, puppets, pictures or piano as I did here. You'll know what your child loves best. :)

Here's part of what I did for story telling today, video a little shaky, taken by my child.. (I do realise that I was reading a little too fast here...well, was afraid batteries would run out, and it did!)

GCC Farm

What a lovely day we had. We started for Bentong early in the morn, and after a quick breakfast of beef soup noodles, we made our way to GCC Farm. It's a fairly new farm, with lots of work to be done. For right now they've got a little school going for OA children, a few goat pens, geese and chicken.

Just a few random shots below, followed by 2 videos of goats which I enjoyed taking. :)

Part of the OA school and dormitory

Random shot of flower found in their garden

 The area surrounding the farm, lovely and serene.

 We hiked up this slope...

 Then up this hill..

 Where I spotted this grasshopper (shaky shot I know..could've been better)

And this was the view from the top

We visited the goat pen, and this goat said "Yo mama..ain't I handsome or what!"

This one called out to me and said "yo mama...me likes you. You like me smile? I got nice teeth. yeah!"

and here's the same fella with his silly grin. hahaha..

And then em females came out and said "Yo mama leave our men alone and go find your own kind." hehe...

Video 1-Sneezing Goat.


Video 2- Testing goat reaction. hehehe..I had fun doing this, don't go thinking I'm mad now, coz i'm not..but just having fun. :) Enjoy.


Finally...the evening was wonderful. Unfortunately my battery went flat at this point. Spent a lovely time at Shahrul's Liberation Farm. My girls had a lovely time swimming upstream in an area near the duck pond. Water there is very clear and lovely. Certainly a refreshing treat after all the trekking in the morning. Dinner with lovely Shahrul and Jorg was wonderful. :)
That's all for today...signing out..~Martha.

Catching Fireflies - Piano Improvisation

My piano was sent for repair over the weekend, and I missed it terribly. When it was returned, I was overjoyed, and more so before the sound's so much more beautiful now. I took out my good faithful camera with the intention of recording whatever came to mind. As I sat there.. I saw the reflection of light on my piano, captured in the camera. An idea came to mind..and this is what I did. Basically I improvised (played freely) on my piano while using a hand from time to time to play with the light reflection. I'll call the piece Catching Fireflies. Hope you enjoy  the video.

A short rendition of True Colours by my child and I

Decided to do a little home recording today. Not very good quality, I need to get a tutorial or help in setting up a better home recording system. In mean time, here's something I and my girl did today, rough recording. Hope you enjoy it. To you all out there... you're beautiful   :)

My rendition of "May the Lord Bless you" (sung in my early morn voice)

Just checked back in my previous blog. Reading it brings back lots of memories about my children's toddler and baby days. They grow too fast.
 As I read, I found this post dated January 21st, 2008 about a little recital I had with my children, just the 3 of us. Can't believe it was that long ago, and my girls were so little then.

 While spring cleaning recently I found the CD with the song I used to sing to them every night before bed...and as I played the song to my girls.. they each wanted to be cuddled all over again, sang to like babies again. It just brought back memories of the time when I used to smile more and put them lovingly to bed.                                                                                                                                

 Nowadays, I just shout "bed time! Get to bed! It's late it's LATE!"  How did I get from singing patiently to this madness before bedtime!!?  I need to reevaluate myself, reprogram myself and somehow go back to the "patient, loving, smiling mother mode,"... IF that's possible.                                             

Anyway..I couldn't resist doing this...here's my rendition of the song "May the Lord Bless you and Keep You" originally sung by Twila Paris. My rendition was recorded early this  morning in a squeaky voice...while my kids were still in bed. Jo heard it, woke up and said "Mum, I cried when I heard you singing that song, because i had a nice, warm feeling in my heart." and she then showered me with hugs. As I've said it before..children are a blessing always. :)
  Below is my rendition of the song followed by the original post of  2008.

Monday, January 21, 2008

today, me and my children held a little recital of our own. :) I switched off all the hall lights, leaving the light above the piano on. So my little Nel and Jo took turns performing, bowing each time before a piece was played.You should've seen the way Jo bows, drives me to fits of laughter. hahaha...

They played, "improvisations" based on picture books placed on the piano. haha... I was just thoroughly entertained. In between, they sang songs, quoted Bible verses, ending each performance with more bows! haha...

As the recital progressed, Jo got creative. She did her cutest bow, climbed up the piano stool, and began playing the piano with her nose, then forehead. Hearing our laughter, she was further encouraged to try playing the piano with other body parts, like her cheeks, elbow and ears. The grand finale was when she stopped to pick the booger from her nose. hahahaha...

Finally, this mama decided that the recital wouldn't be complete without a performance from me. So I took my bow, went up to the piano to perform a classical piece.

I ended the recital by playing and singing a lovely song which I've sang to my children since the day they were born. I sing it to them almost every night.... "May the Lord Bless you and Keep You" by Twila Paris. So imagine this, as I played the piano and sang.... my little Nel got up and started dancing the most beautiful, touching dance in the dimly lited hall.... she and I seemed so connected then...

I just felt like she was a baby in my arms all over again...it was beautiful... I had tears in my eyes at the end of the performance....looking at my beautiful children...and knowing that yeah, they're truly a blessing from the Lord.