Bear parts being sold in Singapore

I can't believe it!!! How can this happen here? Bear gall bladders were being sold at last weekend's Singapore Food Expo, which was organised by the Singapore Food & Manufacturers' Association. Surely SFMA should have spotted something wrong, no? Kudos to the member of the public who reported it to ACRES. Acres officers were at the scene in 30 minutes, went undercover and found out from the vendor, Jilin Senke Trading, that bear gall bladders were being sold at the expo for S$700 each. Apparently the vendor had sold all except one gall bladder, and was planning to order more! This means there is a demand for it here!! That is a real shame.

Photo: ACRES via Straits Times

Party costume again - DIY apron for kids

I wonder how many party costumes I have to come up with while my son is at school. His school is having a UN party again, you may recall the panda I made him last year (he was CHina). He's been learning about the different countries and has been coming back home with "Sawadeecap" and "Konnichiwa". This year he wants to represent Italy, probably because he loves pizza and pasta.
I took 2 old T shirts (one white and one green) and cut out the shape for a kiddy-sized cooking apron (ie. Italian chef).

Hubby's old T-shirt

Son helping to trace out the map of Italy from my apron

Cut out the pattern for the apron!
Getting the bits together!

Red bits of scrap material sewn on the apron

Tadah!

another project?

I saw this on Outsapop.... I think it could be another refashion project!

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 !