Preparing for CNY

I was hoping to escape the CNY run-around this year with my big bellied excuse, but sadly I don't think that is going to happen. One day I hope to be able to use the 2 day public holiday to take a real break somewhere far away. Something tells me it'll be a long time before I'm allowed to do that!

At least this year I've resisted all attempts by the parents to foist CNY goodies on me. Too often I get stuff which we don't touch only for me to throw them away months down the road. I've come to realise it pays to only stock what I or DD really like because only those get eaten. I wasn't going to buy anything this time round, but the Taka fair got to me. Again. Like it does every year. The perils of working near Orchard Road I guess! This year though I made an effort to be very selective with what I bought and the stash on our dining table now consists of Love Letters, Prawn Keropok, Emping, Walnut Cookies and Melon Seeds (for me) and Kueh Lapis (for DD). Not traditional but, hey, we like it! I've also taken to regularly stealing Kum from my parents' never-ending supply. Noey and I have been very happy chowing down the oranges every other day.

In a bid to introduce Noey to the concept of Chinese New Year and also to use up some of the many ang pow packets that we have somehow managed to accumulate over the years, I thought it might be fun for Noey and I to try some crafts using ang pow packets as base material. A quick search on google yielded quite a few results and I decided to try this ang pow fish. The instructions sounded simple enough though I wasn't sure it would be able to sustain Noey's interest the entire time.

As it turned out, it wasn't. After helping me with the initial folds, messing around with the ang pow packets and insisting on holding the stapler, he got bored and instead started bugging me to finish and give him a "fish lantern" to play with. The only thing he was interested in doing was drawing the eyes, and thereafter, zooming the fish around in air.

My extremely unwilling camera subject and his "lantern".

This is the end-product. I thought it turned out rather nicely actually, after all the work! As you can see, we were also reading a book on sea creatures, though that was totally coincidental.

Call me a sucker for pain, but I'm still wondering whether I should try making some other decorations with the red packets, though this time, probably on my own with minimal input from Noey. We'll see. But if you're interested, there are quite a few links at the bottom of this page that look interesting. Have fun!