Happiness is... showing my love in little ways

While I might not be able to achieve great things in my life, I can do lots of small things with great love. At least, that is what I've always believed in.

So since young, I like showing love in little ways, like making handmade cards and cross stitch bookmarks for my mum and grandma, making friendship bands for my secondary friends, going door to door to give out goodies and personalised notes for my hall mates during exam time, and making lots of stuff like a poem book, personalised calendar and nagomi art for the hubby.

After becoming a mum, I like to make birthday cards, children's day gifts, exam packs and write personalised notes for my kids. Yup, my presents for them are never lavish or costly, but they's always done with love and that's how I like it to be.

Other than handmade stuff, showing love also means spending quality time with the kids, understanding their needs, listening to their never ending stories and going on adventures with them. In this post of "Happiness is...", it's about showing my love in little ways.

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No matter how big the kids grow, they are always my babies and thus I always like to give them a token of love for Children's Day. This time, I used a Swedish Dala Horse shaped mirror from IKEA to make a card for each of them. I added sequins, beads and wrote a personalised message for everyone. Sweden was the place where I stepped into motherhood and gave birth to the firstborn so it will always have a special place in my heart.

There are times when I suddenly feel like crocheting and this month was one of them. I made small amigurumis for the kids and in particular made two snakes for Angel (it's her favourite animal) to wish her all the best for her 'O' Levels. Yup, I hope they will be her good luck charms.

Showing love also means taking the kids out for some fun and as the girls get bigger and busier with life, I am mostly left with the boys and just like how I've always been, I still like to take them out for fun adventures and don't like to be cooped at home. This time, we went to play Floor is Lava and we also went on VR rides at the arcade.

The one who spends the most time with me is still the 5-year-old who only goes for three hours of preschool. I love that we get to walk to school every day hand in hand, I love seeing him dress up for special occasions, I love how we go on mother-and-son adventures and do things that fill up our love tanks.

On days that the Korkor is home because of HBL, we also make it a point to spend time together, like how we went for McDonald's breakfast after sending the little brother to school. We also made raspberry and blueberry sorbet for the first time and it was yummy!

On Children's Day, the kids and I decided to go to Teo Heng for a karaoke session and we love how we can dabao our dinner in and have a good time singing our hearts out. I hope they will one day look back and remember these kind of days as the happy, carefree ones filled with nothing but joy and love.

The boys and I still go for Heguru lessons every week and I love how we always get to hang out after that, be it going for dinner or having fun at the playground with our friends. This is the one enrichment class we've stuck to for a long time because the kids truly enjoy the classes and have benefitted from these right brain training lessons, made a handful of close friends and got to know some pretty awesome teachers too.

I hopped into my room one day and saw this scene of the brothers hugging each other to sleep and sharing a earphone. Yeap, the big brother was using YouTube to play music on my laptop and somehow they ended up sharing and dozed off together. Too, too sweet.

It isn't always that the big sister has time to join us for outings so this kind of meal was deeply cherished, and me bringing to her favourite fast food chain was a way of showing her my love too. Yup, I even bring them out for supper after midnight but that's only because we are not strict on bedtimes and love eating nuggets, hot fries and ice cream at the weirdest timings.

As for Ariel, I brought her out on a rare one-on-one date and we caught Cirque Alice at The Sands Theatre. We were both mesmerised by the impressive circus acts and I was glad to have her company and that we got to spend time together.

Compared to family time, time with friends is much more rare but every time we get together, we always have so much to talk about and it's like nothing has changed. I love my 姐妹s from secondary school so much and will always be thankful for their presence in my life.

October also marks Halloween which is one of our favourite festivals of all time. This year, we didn't just have an intimate celebration at home, we even dressed up and went out for Halloween parties too, woohoo!

The first was a Halloween themed escape room at Waterway Point. The place was set up to look like a hospital and had live actors dressed as scary nurse and coroner in a morgue. It was terrifying! Not surprisingly, I ended up screaming the most because these thrills really get to me. 想玩但是又害怕，hahaha. Anyway, I was so glad my three older kids were there with me and Asher was the bravest of the lot, not backing away when the live actors asked him to do tasks.

We managed to 'escape' in the end and it was definitely experience that would be stuck in my mind for a long time to come. Still, it makes me excited go for more fun escape rooms with my kids soon!

Next, I also brought the boys to Kiztopia in Marina Square for the Halloween night. We were expecting it to be chill and cool and kids-friendly but it turned out that they set up a haunted 'house' filled with jump scares from their staff which terrified the young kids, including Ansel who started to scream "I wanna get out!". So we stuck to the friendlier activities while Korkor went around completing all the scarier stations. Kudos to the staff for dressing up and there was even a guy with a giant pumpkin on his head.

We also joined in our estate celebration and it was so madly awesome that it totally blew our minds. So many households took the time and effort to dress up their gates, doors, corridors and ceilings and there were many treats tables set up too. Some even went the extra mile to dress up like how there was a scary nun giving out goodies and at our place, our neighbour dressed up in the 'Scream' outfit while the hubby hid in the stairway to scare visitors with his skull mask and light sabre. Haha. So fun!

Of course, we also had our very own pirate party in the comfort of our home. Once again, we played so many games and made so many cherished memories from that night, which is the motivation that keeps me going year after year. Read here to find out more about what happened at the party.

It's been a while since we did a family photoshoot so I was very thankful to have had the chance to do a Christmas shoot with Bloom Photography. It was for a good cause somemore as proceeds were donated to charity.

We had this amazing looking backdrop made out of cardboard and we took so many beautiful pictures here. I love that we managed to dig out these matching outfits from our wardrobes so we didn't have to spend and I think they turned out awesome.

My favourite was this Christmas collage we did which was done bu filming us separately. The poses were spontaneous and we thought of them on the spot but when everything pieced together, it was just perfect.

Every year, we also try to celebrate Mid-Autumn Festival together and this year was no exception. We made our way to Gardens by the Bay and took a stroll to check out the cute exhibits.

Then we lit our candles and took our lanterns for a walk. I am still pretty amazed by how well our DIY lanterns have held up over the years and are still going strong.

I brought along mooncakes and sparklers and the kids had a good time playing on the grass patch. When we tried to write our names in the air with our sparklers, I suddenly had an idea, let's play Win Lose or Draw!

So we started drawing in the air with our sparklers to let the others guess, be it an animal, object or phrase. Some turned out to be pretty funny as we had no clue what the person was drawing while others were pretty obvious. Even the teenagers joined in too and that was rare so we cherished all the family bonding moments and fun times we had that night.

We ended off with a race across the grass patch where all six of us dashed side by side. Yup, my kids like to compete that way and love it when Papa and Mama join in the fun.

That marks the end of October and I can't wait to share with you more about our year end holidays before we move on to our family happenings in 2026.

Thanks for being here all along and let's all remember to show our love not just in big ways but in every little way we can, every single day. 🩷