Red packets for Chinese New Year

Gong Xi Fa Cai, or Gong Hey Fat Choi! We had a jolly good time visiting our relatives in Hong Kong, and welcoming in the year of the Tiger --- rooooaaar! My son had fun receiving lots of red packets (aka lai see or ang bao) from them too. For those of you who aren't Chinese, red packets are a little bit like Christmas presents, except you get money inside little red envelopes, and you can open them on the day you get them (well, best to do it at home!).

Red packets from managed sources

You can reuse this red packet....

...but not the ones with the sticky glue!

You can get your red packets (without the money) FOC from many places, including malls, banks and department shops. I was impressed with the HSBC red packets, and most of the others can be reused as they don't have the sticky glue on them! Why didn't I thnk about reusing last years? I've saved up my red packets for reuse next year - have you?

My old coat from H&M

This is the extremely old and out of fashion coat I'm refashioning. It's at my chop shop and in progress. Yes, it's big, and YES, I could be a convict on the run! According to my hubby that's what they wear, or rather that's what they show in the HK movies. Well, at least I don't look like the Michelin man!

Frugal Board game - Snakes and Ladders

My son learnt how to play snakes and ladders at school, and he has asked me whether we have the game.... erm, no..... Haven't had the time to buy it either... but today, we could play Snakes and Ladders by using an old calendar, scissors and colour pencils. We had fun deciding where the ladders and snakes would be. Start would be at day 30, and the winner would have to get to day 1. We didn't have a dice so we cut days 1 to 6 and took turns to take them out of the bag. The only downside is that my son got confused with which way to go as the numbers are not in order, but he soon got the hang of it and had lots of fun - we played it soooooo many times.

If you get tired of the game, you can redesign it with another month of the calendar! To make it more exciting for the whole family, the large floor tiles can be designed as the board game with washable crayons. Each member of the family would be the moveable piece :-) There won't be a giant dice, but fun all the more !

DIY Christmas Tree Part 2

Remember my Christmas tree project?

It's completed! OK, the bottom is a little wonky, but I like it! :-)

My son's nursery gave him some tiny toys which I thought would make cute Christmas bobbles.

I cut small circles of fabric and added some sparkle to them.

I used tacks too....

...and added a ribbon on the top (instead of a star)

DIY Christmas Tree Part 1

Work in progress.....

With my hubby around, I managed to find the time to start on the Christmas tree. It's not the real thing and it's only 2D, but it's frugal, and there are fewer airmiles on this one compared to the ones being sold at Ikea.

With only less than 3 wks left so I had better get my act together! You need 3 sturdy old clothes hangers, tape, fabric from your stash, or any old fabric you have left from your sewing, scissors and your needle and thread (or sewing machine).

My 2 boys (big and small) helping me stick the 3 hangers together to make the frame of my tree. My hubby used masking tape, but in the end we found that the duct tape would do a much better job as mine ended up a bit wobbly.

My clothes hangers stuck together. Here's where I went wrong. I should have traced my tree onto a newspaper (like my previous project), but I wasn't thinking and traced directly onto my fabric. I ended up with a slightly out of shape tree. I chose white fabric for a white tree (It doesn't snow in Singapore :-p)

Remember to cut through 2 layers of fabric with the right sides facing each other. I then machine sewed one side of the tree, turned it inside out and slip it over the hangers. Now I'm in the process of hand sewing it shut. Will be decorating it soon!

This tutorial was featured in The Examiner. 

Bottle Caps

Turning bottle caps into....

....Christmas ornaments, or maybe gift tags, or maybe keychains?

A great idea from Jubliantwares! OK, let's go to the coffeeshop or hawker center and hover over the uncles for their beer bottle caps :-)