I have been a very good girl. I have kept my hands together when it comes to gadgets and 'toys'.
The last expensive item I bought for myself was a Surface RT which aided me at work and is very helpful if I need work to be mobile for me.

But recently, I have been getting a little cheeky and stretching a bit of my dollars in view of being 'productive'
Thanks too with the support of Alfi because he knows my passion for photography, blogging, social media and running my baby business.
So while he does not get to fully enjoy gadgets, he just needed to hear from me the return of investment purchasing an item and then he comes onboard the excitement.

Yeah, we are just suckers like that.

Last month I made a purchase for Shttr. It is an inexpensive purchase actually and I think after this, a lot of selfie addicts will get a piece of this.
For USD$40 with a small stand and free shipping, Shttr is a very slim and lightweight camera phone shutter connected via bluetooth.

Its awesome to be able to take photos more comfortably. I need not tell my sister to hold the phone while I press the shutter.
Yeah! Now you know!

Having a group photo is also easier!


To really know what a Shuttr can do for you, here is the youtube video you can watch but be careful NOT to fall in love with it.



My Shuttr is in white. What will yours be?



Alfi was off to Hawaii for a week and of course there were a lot of stories to share when he came back.
I suspect he is not done with his stories just yet but one of the things he shared was that he saw someone using the Sony QX-10.
He was just explaining to me verbally how it looks like and what it can do and I was like,"You serioussssssss?!?!?"

Within 2 days (at least I let him recover from his jetlag) we were at the Sony store and in under an hour I came out smiling!!
I was initially so keen on the Canon Powershot S120. It was a no brainer since I am a Canon fan and my previous point-and-shoot was a Powershot S95 before it was caught drowning in my handbag filled with 1.5L of water.

Sony QX-10 was more affordable and when I bought it last night (yes, just last night) I managed to get the casing (so happy that it's blue!), 2 micro SD cards and 1 mini tripod (which I surely will convert it into a mini monopod!). The whole package was just $349.
Can you see all the heart shapes on my eyes?

The flexibility of taking the picture with the camera, or the camera attached to the phone or doing selfies and videos. These data files goes straight into your phone and to your social media in a flash!!!

This was the picture taken with studio lighting. The picture definitely looks wonderful.


Here are those taken under normal light.







Available in 2 colours, I was so undecided which one to choose!



But the salesperson said white was a winner. Lucky I picked that. Look how the colours of my gadget now matches!



To many more selfies of me and me and me with the kids!



Go check it out!

Life Changes

So much has happened over the past 4 to 6 weeks that I have been pretty quiet.
I have put on much weight now. I may just hit the 90kg mark again.
Thank god I have not yet walked like a penguin but I am definitely walking slower now.

Entering into the third trimester now has been quite challenging and some of these challenges were something I did not forsee.
One big example was having Rania being extremely clingy with me.
While I enjoy her running to the door screaming "Mummy" repeatedly everytime I come home from work, it also means that I have to pick her up and carry her, kiss her all over and ask her how was her day without sitting down.

This is also the time when the 'nesting period' sets in.
So I end up cleaning my own room, packing and repacking, trying to make some space for the little baby boy.
It is really a challenge to maintain an upcoming family of 4 and Her Closet in the same room. Just that in mind makes me miss my home in AMK and the space I can potentially have.
But the hubby is also worried that I need those extra pair of hands to help me when baby no. 2 comes.

Over the weeks, I bid goodbye to Android (especially HTC), a semi-goodbye to Windows (because it is still awesome when it comes to my work productivity) and welcome Apple into my life episodes.
Hmmmm.. yeah.. finally.
I was very resistant to step into the Apple world but it is very key for me for get connected to the people in the social network. That is where I get my daily doses of chats and sharing among the sisters. My online business works very well with an iPhone apparently.
I love the photography apps available to feed my obsession. I love the fact that I do not need to carry my iPad around anymore. Diaper bags are an ease now.

So switching to an iPhone made me a happy girl though I must admit it takes a lot of discipline to put the phone aside.
Plus, I ended up doing more microblogging than blogging.

I think my Instagram pictures looked better. More of character.
You know how a picture tells 1000 words. Maybe I can do it not with 10,000 words.





How I find it very convenient not to lug around my camera because I do it all on the iPhone.
Third trimester, back ache, sleepless nights, the iPhone keeps me company because Alfi bought me a 3m long cable wire where I can play with my IG, upload videos, watch YouTube and play Candy Crush while lying on the bed.

Pampered much?
Perks of being married. Bonus to be pregnant.

*lol*

So here is how I spend my Eid.
4 days of visiting and the body gave up on me.



I'm in the 30th week now.
7 more weeks to go till full term and looking forward to the maternity leave.

It is probably no rest time for me since the newborn will feed all the time and give me sleepless night but I am looking forward to use this time to spend time with my children.
It's amazing how my hair stands when I use the word 'children'

First it was just me and Alfi. Then we had a little girl. Now another addition coming along.
Trust me, I swear there is still a lot of space in our hearts to welcome more.

Just the other day, I shared with Alfi that if I were given a choice between luxury and children, I will choose children.
He smiled.
One of the reasons why we got married was because we agreed to have a big family and having one just makes me look forward to grow old with him.

May Allah continue to bless us with so much love and joy.
It is truly a priceless gift.

xoxo

Sponsored: Scrapbooking Memories

I have been wanting to make a nice photo frame putting the family's pictures together.
But I didn't know anything more than printing out a picture and put it in a frame.

So I got my hands on scrapbooking again. The materials are so ready on Canon Pixma that all you need to do is print, cut and put them together.
I love being on a budget. It just shows my spending skills!
*lol*

So I selected some pictures from Instagram and got them printed.
Printed out some scrapbooking background, borders and fonts and I am on my way to start my project1

Things needed:
- Canon Matte Photo Paper
- Canon Glossy Photo Paper
- Pencil
- Ruler
- Glue
- Frame
- Awesome pictures

Here you go!



So it was just cut cut cut and paste them together like this!



The last touch will be to put it in a frame and place it wherever you like!
Now this is where my thrifty cents comes in.

The frame is just $2 from Daiso!!!



A simple yet memorable project for you and your children during the June Holidays!
Watch out for my final creative project coming soon!

Impressed with what I have shared? Vote for me and stand chances to win Canon's exclusive scrapbook kit so that you can kick off a project of your own!

Canon, delighting you always!

xoxo

My Canon creativity

I was nonetheless estatic being among the 10 bloggers selected for the Canon Creativity Workshop.
I have always wanted to buy a photo printer but I am not very knowledgable about it and I will always end up very fickle of what to buy.

*lol*

Women!

I am honestly very clueless about photo printers and when I had my first few pictures printed out at the Canon workshop, I was in "ooohs" and "ahhhhhs"
So shameful!

But I was very impressed with my printouts. The picture was so clear and colours so vibrant that I fell in love with the printer all at once!



What more, I brought home a damn sexy red Canon Pixma MG3170



So here we are to share our creativity skills with Canon and I swear to you that I am one of the least creative people on earth!
But the workshop opened me to possibilities and gave me a new sense of motivation.

I sat down for a few weeks thinking what is it that I can do with all my resources. I went into the Canon Creativity Park for many days and really try to think through what I can do.

Then, just like Albert Einsten (chey!) I was gifted with a stroke of genius!

*lol*

As you know, I am living with my mom temporarily and it is filled with 7 adults and 1 little brat.
As a family with a child, our timing with the rest really differs! When I am asleep, they are up 'partying' and when I am up, they are asleep.
When I am out, the rest probably just woke up and when they leave the house, I am home tired.

So it is really understandable that they try to spend as much time as they can with Rania during the in-between timings, especially the weekends.

There are nights when I am trying to make Rania sleep and they just arrive home, knock on my door to take a peek at Rania. Then Rania gets all excited and her sleeping time gets postponed to another hour.
It is ok on weekends but on weekdays, the parents need to sleep too!
I admit, there are times when we sleep with Rania in between us, still playing and we are snoring away.

Damn teruk (terrible) la!

So here was my art project #1.

HOW TO MAKE A DOOR HANGER

Ok there is a twist to this one because I decided not to make a typical door hanger. I wanted to incorporate my scrapbooking ideas into it!
I have always loved scrapbooking but you know how these things are so expensive that I do not know whether I will get sick of it after a few months. It will not be able to justify the cost!

So I picked out a background colour from the website.



This time around I took a dark background so that I can work on bright things on it.
Then I selected pretty borders to match the background.




And then I selected the matching parts to scrapbook.



I printed one of Rania's photo from Instagram. A nice 1:1 to fit onto the door handle.

Here is how we start.



Materials required apart from the printed items:
- Glue
- Scissors
- Pencil
- Ruler

So I cut out the door label 20cm by 10cm because I did not want the label to be too long for a small instagram picture.
I drew a circle at the center and cut it out.



I started by pasting Rania's picture at the center and then work on cutting and pasting the other parts together.



I had an additional helper and could not work faster on this project but I managed to complete it at the end!



Wa laa!

So now, my family knows when Rania is asleep and detour from knocking on my room door.
Isn't that awesome!

I am convinced and proven myself that I am not that hopeless with creativity after all.
Why don't you give it a shot?

xoxo

Eat with your Family Day

Last Friday was Eat with you family Day.
Microsoft employees were given time off at 3pm to go back home early to their family.
Alas I was stuck in a meeting till 4.30 and when I reached home at 5pm, I was rushing for some urgent works via email.

I was actually more eager to get home early and make my way to Motherhood Expo fair with Alfi's godfamily's nephew's wife.
Complicated right?
But our relationship isn't.
*lol*
It helps that I get along with almost anyone and they are very warm and accommodating.

So by the time I reached expo it was 7.30pm and the exhibition was huge.
Alfi was always reminding me to find what I need first! But that is so hard because I will be hopping here and there and then get confused.

So this is what I came back with.
Tons and tons of Pampers. I told you I am making the switch and I am really loving it.



A lot of mummies actually message me via FB and my mobile to ask if Pampers was really the trusted brand.
I stand by it and told them I was not bull-shitting on my blog just because I am getting free stuffs.
We as bloggers can always not agree with their marketing if we feel it is not good enough.

Can you see I even bought diapers for my newborn!!!
I would have bought more if not for the lack of space in my room.
From a 5-room to a 12meter square room, it has become a karang guni place. One more year to go.
My mom's place will be enbloc and it is a good time excuse for me to shift out (without hurting my mom).
We started off staying in that room just the two of us. Then we became 3 and now coming 4.
It is really cramping up!

Can't you tell from the videos I have been posting up about Rania?
*lol*

I keep telling myself it is just a phase.

So anyway, it didn't turn out a quiet eat with your family day. That Friday night, after the fair, we went to get awesome food at Changi 89.7
And it is good to see Rania starting to build relationships with children her age.




Then over on Sunday, this pregnant woman was craving for satay and there we head off to Satay by the Bay. Going on a Sunday was wrong timing. Too many satay orders that the place was awfully stuffy.









Nonetheless, company was great and we ended off the day with Mac'D drive-through ice cream.

Today I am encountering Monday Blues.
Sometimes I wish weekends were longer.

xoxo

So far, like that.

I have so many things to blame on.
I need to blame on my HTC phone for making me so impaired. There was a time where I could not take photos, of which until today I am unable to upload them onto Instagram.

I have a mouthful to talk about HTC services and how they eventually did not repair my phone because they mentioned that my phone was dipped into water. They must be kidding me!
It has not once touched into water and Alfi and I have been wasting our time arguing on the phone and going down to their service centers, the phone was not repaired. They even had the cheek to charge me evaluation fee for my phone which is still under warranty.

Tell me who would not be a hantu!
That, I swear is my first and last HTC.

Cut the story short, my team pitied my phone story (more like the need to have me a phone call away) that they handed over to me a Windows 8 phone.
Good thing is that it saves me money to purchase another phone. Many question me about the phone and mock me for being on a Windows platform. I am in the role where I need to walk the talk on MS Business Productivity.
Yes, it gives huge productivity gains in accessing my emails, referring to my meeting notes on One Note and then being on the move and running a conference with Lync and it is all in the phone.

But I became less social productive.
I don't like the Facebook user interface. I didn't like how everyone reads their Watsapp messages and laughing over it and here I am waiting for the app to launch. Yeah it is laggy like that.

While the Carl Ziess camera can be awesome with still life, it lags in focusing.

So please imagine my frustration.

But life has been great! Maybe because I feel guilty that I do not spend enough time with Rania on weekdays, teaching 7 sessions squeezed into 3 or 4 evenings.
That is the life of any typical working mom isn't it?

Some view it as pitiful that I need to work so hard but tuition is truly one of my passion. It is a time where I can choose students I want to groom and give them confidence in education. Plus, it is very important (in my opinion) that I stay relevant with syllabus so that when Rania goes to school, I am not in shock of how education evolved or how kiasu schools are.

In fact, during hosting one of the schools in Microsoft, I wanted to chat up with a teacher found out that she is my blog reader. Doesn't it just make networking easier? :)

Talking about work, it has been nothing but crazy!!!!
One morning I can be in Woodlands at 9am, the next morning I can be at Punggol at 8am and I most times, I cannot even find time to come by the office. Or by the time I need to head back to the office, I am all exhausted that I will make my way home and have a pile of follow-ups after that.

That explains why I neglect my photography and Her Closet and blogging but I am missing all these.
These are what I love! So I am trying very hard to make a come back.

Which is why I always look forward to weekends. It is my time with my dearest husband and daughter and I will balance the remaining with my own family, my in-laws and my foster in-laws which are like my own.

I have tons of photos on my SD card but these are pictures taken from the phone and a very quick update

This is my little girl, all grown up and mummy is so happy to be able to bunch up some hair to tie (though she hates it!)



Dinner with my family



Disclaimer: This picture was taken only during red-light stop. No one was harmed and Rania went to the back of the car when her daddy needs to move off.



I love gluttony (occasionally)



This is Rania when Mummy is at work. She forgets that people in the house sends me 'report card' like this via watsapp



A weekend at the zoo with my in-laws (though I don't have their pictures here)









Lunch date with my cousin aka my bridesmaid. Its amazing how we rarely meet and yet we sizzle everytime we do.



Now it is time to grab hold of my SD cards and work on the umrah pics, Dubai pics, zoo pics, etc etc.
I will be blogging again in no time.

Watch this space.

p.s: My blog traffic went down my 70% but for the 30% who stayed and constantly came to visit, THANK YOU! It means a lot to me.

xoxo

More or less of a mom

Being a mom in the current technology trendy world means that you can do more things with less. I do not need to bring a stack of toys to keep her entertained. I just need my tablet in the diaper bag and distract her whenever she gets listless.

But it also means that I fail to manage technology with motherhood sometimes.



This was captured by my husband and when I saw this, it struck me that I do let technology have the best of me and miss out the best things in motherhood.
Trust me sweetie, it is only your enchanting smile and best hugs that makes me feel like an awesome mother.

You and your dad are just priceless to me.
Thank you to the both of you that I know what I get to enjoy being a mom.

Here is to 13 months being with you. I love you more and more everyday and pray that you will always be in the pink of health and enjoying your childhood.

xoxo