Blooming Marvelous

We had a great day out at Bloom yesterday. I was looking forward to attending this garden festival after hearing great reviews about it, for some reason we missed the previous years and I think probably I was too busy working.

The festival was very lively and packed with people when we arrived, there was something for everyone and no wonder they called it Ireland’s largest gardening, food and family event.

I’ll put up as many photos here and let them do the talking so that you can have a feel of the festival.

The first marquee was brimming over with wonderful plants and flowers. Believe me, these are REAL vegetables on display.

Garden enthusiasts would go crazy here and aren't these flowers beautiful ? They were on sale for 50 euros a pop.

Just outside, we took in the beautiful surroundings of the 25 show gardens.

The one below was my favourite, very calm and serene and something I would like for my own garden.

It even came with a 3 piece orchestra. I don't mind having one in my garden too

More garden ideas

The artisan food market had a huge variety of foods on display, we had a fun time munching on free cookies, brownies, yoghurt, bread and Aidan especially loved the homemade orange juice.

The food market was great for foodies alike

All kinds of bread to choose from, we bought custard and almond bread.

There were plenty of stalls offering crafts, toys and other beautiful household items too.

Wooden jigsaws

Puppets

We bought a bubble gun for Aidan, I think the daddy was more interested than him

Or maybe the mummy ?

Oh, we fell in love with these gigantic pillows which were all over the field in the concert area courtesy of the company selling it.

All sorts of colours - green, orange, blue...

Aidan was more interested in the boy smiling across us. Look at the sea of people behind, we were lucky to get hold of the pillows!

They were also selling these cool hammocks for 49 euros, I was hoping to let Aidan have a go but none of the kids wanted to get off!

Next we went to discover the children’s play area hosted by Imaginosity.

So true!

There were competitions for the bigger kids with prizes for the winners,

little toddlers like Aidan went for the sand pit

We went back to the concert area and parked ourselves in front of the jazz band.

In search of the best spot

Aidan kept himself busy with the blondes

These 2 were busy chasing each other

All set to support England in the World Cup

Next, we spent the last hour walking around enjoying the ambience and that’s when we found an eagle and a donkey!

Aidan was intrigued by the eagle but terrified of the donkey.

My first face to face encounter with an eagle, what a beautiful bird. The guy insisted we take a picture with the eagle , our lucky day

The cute shaggy donkey

And to top his little zoo experience, he played with some hay!

Phew, this must be my longest post to date. So that’s how we spent our weekend, a fun day out with the family.

We had a blooming marvelous time at Bloom, and hopefully we'll be back next year!

Open House 2009

The little one is taking his morning nap now giving me about 20 minutes to do up this post.

As promised here are some photos from the open house. After browsing through my camera, it turned out that I didn’t have that many photos after all *LOL*

To be honest, I was pretty nervous at the thought of  inviting friends over as the house was nowhere near ready. All we had was a kitchen that was 70% complete and a bedroom which only had a bed and a wardrobe. I only knew mum had placed her old furniture when I arrived in KL.

So that was why I handed out those invitations 3-4 days before, talk about last minute!

It was great to meet-up with all of  you after all these years especially Raz whom I haven’t met since those London days in 1998 or was it 1999??

And to Miss Cream who drove from KL- Ipoh for a friend’s wedding,  back to KL and arrived just in time for our do. I’m amazed that your kids are so well behaved after that really long road trip!

First to arrive was Mother of 3!

Princess Kiki has grown a lot since I last saw her

i've known her since our CBN days

Ithink I have like 10 shots of this particular photo. Didn’t know where to look, there were far too many cameras!

See what I mean ? ( Behind - Is that Imtiyaz having a go at the drum ?)

Another cam-whoring session in the house - oh so many babies!

Am envious of these 2 who have a full mop of hair whilst Aidan has none!

Momster and Dydd, I hope you didn’t go home hungry

To the rest : Coffee-junkie, Krezijexx, Nadio, Mummy-O, Tun – Thank you all for coming, I know some of you had many other obligations with the raya season going full force at the time.

And not too forget the lovely gifts and duit raya for Aidan, it was very much appreciated!

Hope to see all of you again next year!

ps: For some stange reason the quality of the photos are not great when I upload them here. Hmmm…

Aidan’s Aqiqah

Phew, it’s been quite a week.

My jetlag was terrible this time round – waking up at 3am and in bed by 6pm. It took me a couple of days just to get over it. It didn’t help that Aidan was down with a terrible bout of flu ( his first! ) that I had to give him a dose of antibiotics. It did the job though and he’s now back to his chirpy self.

He was in this state for the first 2 days we arrived back in Dublin

All the smiling on the plane took a toll on his health

My laundry and cooking is also now back on track.  5 loads of laundry and imagine all the drying, folding and ironing that came with it too. The kitchen is also up and running, I couldn’t take another day of takeaway!

Anyway, I had meant to put up photos of our trip but never came round to doing so as things have been a little chaotic around the house.

In brief, the trip home was short, memorable and very meaningful as it was our first time living in our new home. It was also our first raya as a family plus I have not been back for Eid since 1999.

Mom was generous enough to give us her old furniture so we felt comfortable living in the new house. We had 5 days to make the house look more decent for Aidan’s aqiqah so you can imagine the mad rush to buy lights and fans.

Amidst all that fiasco, mom and I were on another mission to buy gifts for the Marhaban ladies and guests.

We were expecting a group of 15 ladies but suddenly at the very last minute they confirmed a bus load of 35 will be attending the do. So there was another panic of  ‘What should we get for them?’. Mom finally decided to buy them kain so we bought 35 x 4 meters worth of kain baju kurung!

At the same time, I was organizing little gifts for guests which included chocolates and cookies. Smallhouse Cookies and Coochicoo did a brilliant job on the orders that I would gladly take them again for another occasion, they were efficient thankfully. And it also turned out that the lady who runs Smallhouse Cookies was a friend of my SIL, the name Enolil was too familiar to her What a small world!

3 days before the aqiqah we went to back to Tapah to pay a visit to Nenek’s kebun. Hubby, all dressed in army gear went in search for batang pisang ( to place the bunga telur ) as shown in the photo below.

Hard at work- ada macam macho sikit

A day before the big day, we were busy moving furniture around, arranging and rearranging carpets every single corner of the house.

We had less than 12 hours – tired and drained but the show must go on.

Putting-up fairy lights

One knackered Usu, 2 nephews, 1 Hitler

The big day came and Aidan was all dressed in princely garb. Unfortunately the baju melayu that mom bought for Aidan was a little too big so out came the emergency romper and satin shoes that I had bought for him from Ireland.

My biggest regret was not taking a photo of him individually, infact to be honest we had taken very LITTLE photos being the host.

I know my uncle took some great shots – there was one photo of the 3 of us that I must, must get hold of.

An hour into the ceremony, he demanded to be carried.

Aidan being Aidan, he decided to show his true self an hour into the ceremony by wailing his heart out.

So daddy came to the rescue and carried him around. It was already well  into his nap time so I don’t blame the boy for being cranky.

He managed to stay quiet in Daddy's lap

Whilst all this was happening, Aidan’s cousins were happily playing badminton behind our house.

This was obviously more exciting for them! Mana laa datang raket ni ? Sorang tu siap lengkap berbaju melayu!

Despite little hiccups here and there, overall we were happy with the ceremony. Eventhough we had taken very little photos, the happy memories will stay with us forever. Thanks to everyone who gave us a helping hand especially to Big Bro and SIL who went on a special quest to look for paperbags that fitted our taste and budget, it was very much appreciated!

And finally a photo of one of the gifts for the guests – I will try and take a photo of the rest when I get the chance.

The personalized chocolate

The last minute paperbag

And by the way, the show didn’t end there, we had an open house that very afternoon. I hope to put up the photos in my next entry!

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