Bellabox, Bellablog 'n' braces

Once again, my post man gets a BIG smile as he hands me my perfect pink Bellabox xx :-)

As soon as I stop smiling at and admiring the pink box I will open and review the cute little samples inside :-)

I've also been following the Bellablog, they posted recently about designer make-up.  All things Burberry make me smile :-) So, of course, the Burberry beauty range has gone straight up there onto my wish list.

Thinking of wish lists...Mr Man 'n' I started Christmas shopping last weekend.  I, kind of, sneaked off to peek at the Apple store :-)  Ooh la la, I have so totally fallen in love with this wireless keyboard for my iPad - "I need it"...

Lastly, I leave you with the reason I no longer do big toothy smiles...braces, the dental kind :-D  I've been wearing mine - top and bottom with elastic bands (yes!) for the last 8 months now...only 11 more months to go!  I so have to keep telling myself it will be worth it and yes, the 4mm off centre of my teeth really was drastic - "IT WILL BE WORTH IT".

My eldest son was watching over me while I put 'a little' make-up on...

Ed - "Mum, why do you put make-up on?"

Me - "I think it makes me look pretty"

Ed - "Oh, Mum I think you will be pretty when your braces come off"

 merci mon fils

 kisses 'n' smiles from me xx :-)

SPCA, Wicked 'n' Christmas ideas

This week I'm smiling because I started my training for reception work at the SPCA animal shelter.  I felt very much like the new girl on her first day at school but everyone is very friendly, helpful and, of course, we are all animal lovers so I'm going to be in good company.

http://www.spca.org.sg/

There is just one major problem which I'm going to come up against - this is to not allow myself to bring home random animals who might be available for adoption...Mr Man has put me under strict orders to keep our home to just one dog - but we'll see ;-)

Wicked the musical...who's seen it?  What do you think? Could my kids see it?  More importantly, will it make me smile? :-) 

The show opens here on the 6th December and I'm thinking I might 'need' tickets. Bit pricey, but if it's as good as the reviews say then it will be an excellent show.  I do love a good Broadway musical :-)

If I understand correctly, it's kind of what happened in the land of Oz 'n' wizards before Dorothy arrived. It makes me think to a friend's wall post on Facebook recently...this very much made me giggle and smile ;-)

Holidays are coming, Holidays are coming...oh yes, the decorations are going up all around the city (all around the island actually).  The official light up day is 19th November.  Twinkling festive lights really do make me smile :-)

I love the whole coordinated Christmas tree and decoration thing, and asked my Mr Man for his opinion on my choice of 'orange, gold 'n' blue' for this year...a shrug of his shoulders - he never fails to make me smile :-) anyways, I'm taking that as an approval...

So, writing lists and I'll soon be on my way to Spotlight to buy blue 'n' orange ribbon 'n' tons more blue 'n' orange sparkling Christmas goodies.

kisses 'n' smiles from me xx :-)







geocaching 'n' nail art

Geocaching...OK, so this really will not be every ones "cup of char", but my 3 men enjoy it and when they are happy 'n' entertained...I'm smiling :-)

I'll not go into the 'ins 'n' outs' of what Geocaching is (check out the wikipedia link here and the official geocaching site here). My men discovered this during our summer hols in the UK, kind of treasure hunting for big kids! We had fun (in the British rain) following trails through North Yorkshire fields full of sheep, great exercise up 'n' down the hills and my boys were kept smiling by the promise of pirate loot or booty at the end :-)

The trackable made me smile :-)

My men were lucky enough to locate a trackable geo tag in Lancashire...these are extra goodies with unique id numbers which are tracked on the official Geocaching website. Of course, we brought Signal and his friend the lion back to Singapore and have recently checked him into the Trackable Hotel located in the National Museum of Singapore - sure he'll keep me smiling as we follow him on the website to see where he travels to next.

Even as I'm writing this post, Mr Man and my boys are out on their bikes and visiting the site of another great Singapore Cache. They'll be searching to answer clues to the cache coordinates and I'm sure they'll have fun at Marina Barrage and the new Gardens by the Bay.  I highly recommend Geocacaching to get the men in your family smiling as they do some treasure hunting :-)

Now to something different and much more 'girly'!  'Nail Art' is very much making me smile ;-)

I really did not think I would get into this, my nails are always cut pretty short I'm often caught chewing and biting them...very ladylike in deed! Krikey, not so long ago I got a Gelish manicure done (not even going to tell how much I paid for that!)  Gelish were obviously not thinking of me when they said it would last for 3 weeks...within 3 days I had flicked, chipped and pealed at this thick Gelish substance. Of course, this stuff does not come off with regular nail varnish remover...I had to sit in the salon with foil wrapped nails for 30 minutes, $30 for the trouble.  This certainly did not make me smile!  I will not be recommending Gelish to anyone who cannot avoid fidgeting with their nails.

There are so many fab nail art designs :-) I'm thinking a design with candy cane stripes or snowflakes for the festive season. Sure, they'll not last much past Boxing Day but neither will the imported Christmas tree :-)

If anyone has found iTunes Singapore to do anything other than boring podcasts and university related books , you are better at locating these than me!  I'm now going to log into iTunes UK, hopefully get a preview of the new Rihanna album and I might well buy the odd music video and download a bit of Pitbull too ;-)

I leave you with the beautiful Rihaaaaaaaaanna singing one of my faves (the song never came out as a single so the link is a bit of a 'tacky You Tube - lyrics on screen special' but the music is there) Fire Bomb enjoy :-)

Kisses 'n' smiles from me xx ;-)

fairytales, bliss 'n' bintan...

I'm new to the blogging world and enjoying it so much.  Each day I'm smiling thinking of ideas for future posts and, of course, smiling along while reading other great blogs.  I decided though to do a search on google to find out "why we blog?"  Of course, Google came up with the perfect link for me to read and the simple answer to the question is WHY NOT ! yes, such a great answer made me smile ;-)

Also, as I am new here, I decided to get myself a book...

The cover alone made me smile ;-)  It really is full of excellent information 'n inspirational ideas.  I highly recommend to all arty and creative bloggers new in this world.

Thinking more about creative talents now...I had some news from a good friend regarding her wallpaper business, Châto & co. 

Their wallpaper collection had lots of positive feedback and was of an excellent quality (heck I would say that - it was made up in the North of England) but sadly their fairytale is no more :-(  I am positive that my friend and her partners will not give in and their next venture will be up and running very soon. I wish them lots of luck wherever their creative talents take them. 

From fairytales to dream destinations...

Singapore is placed extremely well for travelling around Asia.  When I lived here previously we couldn't take up too many opportunities because of me being either pregnant or with babies and everyone knows that travelling, even the shortest distance, with babies requires endless bags full of endless baby paraphanelia!  Now though, we are back and are going to take full advantage of our placement in Asia. 

Starting with Indonesia...  Bintan is our neighbour really, just 55 minutes by ferry, the resorts there are fab.  With white sandy beach, palm trees and fabulous hotels really makes a weekend there feel like you are in "le paradis de la relaxation" ;-)  Even my busy, busy husband got a chance to relax just long enough to put his Blackberry away before a swim in the surf.  I highly recommend a wk/d on Bintan to recharge batteries and switch off all electronic devices! ;-)

ok, so these aren't actual Bintan waves!
There are some pretty good waves there for beginners ;-)

To finish, we had such fun, lots of sun 'n' great surf we'll be going again very soon....so now I'm off to Marina Square, Rip Curl store in search of perfect surfer babe gear :-) hey, any excuse for a new outfit ;-)

kisses 'n' smiles from me xx ;-)

Starbucks, Monet 'n' Yoga Dogs

A few pics which are making me smile right now... I hope they make your day a smiley one too ;-)

Christmas has arrived at Starbucks Singapore.  The Cranberry White Chocolate Mocha sounds far too yummy to ignore, for sure I shall have to sample this Starbucks Christmas Delight - maybe a cranberry muffin too ;-)  Oh heck, Holiday Season kilo increase starts early!


The past weekend I went along to the National Museum of Singapore with my three men.  I'd been wanting to visit for sometime and, of course, needed a good excuse to 'drag' my three men along...their interest in Geocaching was the perfect excuse (more about Geocaching and Singapore caches another time) ;-)

The visiting exhibition right now is 'Dreams & Reality' French 19th and 20th century art on loan from the Musee d'Orsay, Paris.  It was pretty amazing to see all of these "famous" paintings here in Singapore.  I had to wonder which moving company they used - not a single scratch or tear in any of the art work! 

Finally, and I'm sure the only time you'll see 'Monet' and 'Van Gogh' joined by such a fab image...

I am still smiling at the Yoga Dogs ;-) can't wait for Father Christmas to bring me this calendar...

kisses 'n' smiles from me xx ;-)

smiling with numbers...

ni hao ma?  Ok so yes, I am still on the 'very' basics of this wonderful Chinese language but it makes me smile so that is a good thing yes?  Hai ke yi ;-)  pretty good!

Moving onto numbers now... :-)  yi, er, san, si, wu, liu, qi, liu, ba, jiu, shi...learning the numbers and reading telephone numbers in Chinese was a pretty difficult task - erm, my braces made it extremely difficult :-)#) kind of like a Chinese Tongue Twister - my giggling certainly made my teacher laugh and smile of course :-)

So, keeping with the numbers theme this time...

I went along to the cinema to see 'One Day''.  A friend passed me the book early last year and I loved it.  It made me smile and laugh but I didn't remember it making me cry!  Gosh the film had me sobbing :,(  it's ok though, I'm definitely one of those girly-girls who love to cry at movies.  Hey, I even cried at the end of 'Real Steal' - much to the utter embarassment of my boys!

So, One Day...published in 2009, over 400,000 copies sold and translated into 31 languages.  I was certainly unsure about going to see the film - as I'm always the first to say "but the book was better!"  The film though was pretty good although than Anne Hathaway's 'poor' Yorkshire accent had me a little annoyed.  I should have done the voice over - heck I should have played Emma Morley ;-)  My Mr Man did not like :-(  but if your hubby or boyfriend owes you a trip to the movies to see 'your choice', or if you just want a really soppy 'switch off the day' movie, then I recommend 3 out of 5 ;-)

Bellabox still making me smile :-) Yes, reward points - I've got 200 just for ordering this box of goodies, 15 points for every month I receive my goodie box and 5 points for every review I post on the goodies within my Bbox!  So, with 100 points equalling S$10 in their online store, I will soooo be ordering some full size goodies ;-)

More about numbers but now less smiley :-( Following on from the recent trip to Changi Prison with my boys, I did a little research and found some interesting facts, figures and general crime information that should relate to the low crime rate of Singapore.  Singapore has the highest per capita rate of executions in the world - next being Saudi Arabia.  In the last 13 years more than 400 people have been hanged.  In the last 40 years just 6 appeals for clemency were successful.  The death penalty was made mandatory in Singapore in 1975 for murder and drug traffickers.  It is shocking though that since the beginning of 2011 five bodies have been dragged from the Bedok Reservoir - but are they murders or suicides?

OK, moving on swiftly and back to some more smiles :-) 

Doga or Yoga for dogs...

An article in my local paper last week telling of these yoga classes for dogs.  The classes are intended to help dogs find their inner peace and take the canines through a series of exercises and positions designed to improve their heart and digestion.  Yes, it really did make me smile :-)  Anyone tried this with their canine friends?  I think it would be a lot of fun :-D

Lastly, I'm wishing all a Happy Deepavali :-) This very special Indian festival which translates as 'row of lights' and is the 'festival of lights' is celebrated today, and here in Singapore our neighbours are dining on yummy food, lighting candels and lighting up their homes.  Diwali ki Shubhkamnayein (दिवाली की शुभकामनाएं):

;-) our neighbours made this very pretty artwork in the lobby ;-)

kisses 'n' smiles from me xx ;-)

sun, sand 'n' prison...

We are on October break from school right now.  So, keeping my boys entertained is my top priority - when they are happy I'm smiling ;-)  We've got some pretty fun and interesting projects and days out planned - remote control car racing, bikes on the East Coast Park, picnic at the beach, Changi Prison Museum, National History Museum, ArtScience Museum, swimming, skate park to name a few...I'll do a little review of some of these and other 'keeping the kids entertained' activities at the end of this week.

Yesterday - swimming, work (Kumon Learning Centre), lunch by the beach and Changi Prison.  We are lucky enough to live just 10 minutes by bike to the start of the East Coast Park.  Here there are lots of cafes, restaurants and of course the beach and sea.  Considering the traffic on the sea to and from the busy port - the beach is kept pretty clean and the sea is nice to paddle in.  Will for sure be heading there again this week, going to buy buckets & spades and do some fun sand castle building :-)

Also, yesterday, we took a drive further East in search of the Changi Prison Museum.  I do not have a 'fab' sense of direction but we did finish 'kind of' in the area we wanted :-)  Unfortunately, the Museum was closed - if we had not got 'a little' lost we would have got there in time to visit!  (we will return to see the little P.O.W chapel). 

My boys being real boys did think that to see the 'real prison' would be a good afternoon activity!  So, we took a drive around the 'actual' Changi Prison Complex.  Probably a bit shocking for them really and did enough to scare them some - to say the high fences, barbed wire, security cameras, police and various protection officers with their big guns were impressionnantes would be an understatement.  I do not imagine what we looked like driving around there...slightly more entertaining than tourists of the beaten track no doubt! :-0

Singapore protection officers

Our first October school break in the Singapore sun ;-)  For, I think, the last 7 years my parents-in-law have spent this holidays with us in France.  My boys have always enjoyed the bags and bags of Halloween goodies (outfits, decorations, sweeties) brought over from the UK.  This October we are recreating the Halloween fun but, happily, not experiencing the autumn weather - although I do 'kind of' miss those crispy orange leaves...

So, here in Singapore we headed to Plaza Singapura and found lots of Halloween goodies and fab material (from Spotlight) to make outfits for the boys (and me).  Erm, yes my sewing machine will be seeing the light of day...watch this space for my creations :-)

Lastly, a friend shared this pic with me via Facebook...

could really be the picture of every Mum (and some Dads) during October break :-D

kisses 'n' smiles from me xx ;-)

pretty in pink...

Today everything is looking pretty 'n' pink ;-)

October is BCA month.  Worldwide companies and individuals are going pink in support of the cause.  Landmarks worldwide have been lit in pretty pink lights to raise awareness and offer support, here in Singapore the Flyer - pretty in pink too...

So to offer my tiny contribution to this massive event I'm being passionate for all things pink in my blog today...


Pink (and green)...the Dragon Fruit.  Yes,  it looks very pretty and exciting on the outside but inside it's a little disappointing.  With my boys, yesterday, we enjoyed looking at this lovely tropical fruit which is grown in Vietnam.
 

My boys tried to guess what colour it would be inside - pink or green & white.  So, cutting into it they were surprised to see white with little black seeds.  The texture of the fruit's skin is rubbery making it super easy to peel.  The texture inside is pretty dry and would not be to every one's liking (all those little pips are a bit difficult and get stuck in all the nooks and crannies of your mouth and teeth :-D).  My youngest son - who adores all fruit - said the Dragon Fruit is sweet and yummy.  But my eldest, who is certainly a savoury food lover, did not like and after just the tiniest of pieces refused to eat anymore...I could not blame him - not to my liking either/neither.

Pink 'n' oh so girly y ;-)  My much anticipated Bellabox did not disappoint ;-) 

Ah yes, this cute pink box was opened to reveal a second box within - how very exciting!  I am loving my goodies which were so perfectly wrapped inside.  What was in there?  O.P.I skin quencher - mango hand and body lotion, smells absolutely yummy, yummy and my hands are now smelling positively good enough to eat!  Esprit D'Oscar by Oscar de la Renta - this sample size is applied by way of a tiny roll on - lovely, lovely and my fragrance made my 'Mr Man' smile last night ;-)  I'm adding a full size bottle of the fragrance to my Christmas wish list. 

Before I left 'old Blighty' 13 years ago, I regularly used and loved Aveda shampoo so after reading that they would be participating in the BellaBox I was so hoping to find some of their products in the first box.  Rosemary mint shampoo and conditioner these 2 cuties smell divine (my youngest son wants them for his own!)    Not sure the shampoo will suit my 'oh so natural' hair colour so perhaps my boys will get their hands on them afterall? 

Lastly in my beautiful BellaBox was the Twistband.  I have to admit that I had no idea what these little ribbon-y things were!  Thankfully, I spotted these on the BellaBlog and they are now sure to become a permanent fixture on my wrist just ready for pulling my hair back for those extra hot and humid Singapore days. 

Opening my BellaBox and this talk of exciting packaging reminds me of something a friend told me... she had opened her Christmas present from me a few years ago, I had bought her lots of Sephora goodies and got them gift wrapped in store.  The Christmas wrapping staff had put the gifts in scrunchy scented tissue paper, popped them in a big (slightly over sized) box, added tiny silver stars, then tied the whole box up with a red feather boa.  My friend told me that, although she loved the products inside the box, she could not resist wrapping it all up and opening the box again and again.

So yes, packaging and appearance is important.  But thinking now about the Dragon Fruit - the moral of the story has to be - appearances can be deceiving!

There's so many more cute-y, pink-y and pretty produits which are making me smile...probably some more pink photos tomorrow...

Until then...

Kisses 'n' smiles from me xx ;-)