This year, 2012, Chinese New Year falls on 23 and 24 January 2012. That is quite early. On the first day of school, the kids were given a notice about Chinese New Year holidays and replacement Saturday class dates. They will be in school for just two weeks before having a long break again for Chinese New Year plus there will be another long weekend in early February because of the Prophet Muhammad’s Birthday and Thaipusam public holidays.

Since school has just begun, we planned and completed most of our Chinese New Year shopping at the end of last year, during the Christmas and New Year holidays. It felt funny to shop for Chinese New Year while listening to Silver Bells playing softly in the background.

The retailers that were savvy and quick enough tore down their Christmas decorations almost immediately after Christmas and replaced them with bright red Chinese New Year decorations the day after Christmas. It was amazing to watch the almost instant transformation.

I noticed many others taking advantage of the holidays to shop for Chinese New Year as well. We were a bit early, so some places did not have free angpau packets and other freebies yet. Too bad but never mind. No angpau packets, No freebies but most importantly, No rush!

Now, all we’ve got left to do is haircuts for the whole family, clean up the house a little, decorate the house for Chinese New Year then collect our cookies and Chinese New Year 2012 here we come.

Last year I folded bunnies but this year will usher in the Year of The Dragon. I’m afraid I don’t know how to fold origami dragons and I don’t have the time this year so its store bought decorations for us this year.  I love Chinese New Year. Makes me feel like a kid again.

I am coming out of hibernation today. It sure has been a long time. I’ve missed my blogs. Well, not really come to think of it. I haven’t had much time to think about it.

With the kids at home during the school holidays and the spouse on year end leave, I’ve had almost no free time to myself. That is the part I miss the most. Sure, I love my family lots but everyone needs a little time to themselves every now and then.

Now, its the beginning of a new year and back to school, back to work and back to routine. So, I’m going to have to wake all my blogs up. I have lots to write about but they are mostly in my head. Perhaps I will let some of them stay in there.

Well, its time to wake some of the other blogs now but before I do, a few quick New Year’s Resolutions.

1. Remember to exercise in the mornings
2. No going anywhere near the computer from afternoon onwards. PC time is only in the mornings and that includes blogs, squidoo lenses, facebook, twitter etc. (Phew! That’s a tough one)
3. Cook some new dishes for the family
4. That’s it! Lets not keep it too long or it’ll be hard to keep up

Time to go. After all, I’ve only got the morning to exercise and blog and make lenses and I must go wake up the other blogs now. That’s not a lot of time but since I can blog in 10 minutes its not so bad. Its only the squidoo lenses, they take at least half a day or more each but in terms of personal satisfaction, blogging is better but squidoo beats blogging in monetary terms so I guess the time spent is justified.

I haven’t had much time to blog since the kids are home for the holidays. However, I have tried to do some tweaking and maintenance over at Squidoo because it is the holiday season. Can’t afford to be too quiet over at Squidoo during the holiday season and miss out on all the action can I?

I’m having a good time at Squidoo. Yesterday, I received a Giant Squid 50 Level Club Member Trophy. That means I am now a Giant Squid with at least 50 quality lenses. At the same time, my Popular Kids Book Series lens received a Purple Star.

Holiday sales are starting to pick up a little bit too. Yesterday I had 2 sales directly on Squidoo as well as 5 other Squidoo related sales on my own Amazon Affiliate account. Hope to see more sales soon. It was pretty quiet last month.

No time to write more but I’ve got some udpates over at Squidoo which you can read. If you want to check me out at Squidoo, here I am over at Squidoo - My Squidoo Profile. If you want to read more about my Squidoo Journey, you can go here – My Squidoo Log.

  Join me at Squidoo

I have been really busy just as I predicted. Time for only a few quick updates before I forget how to blog.

1. Bye bye Streamyx and Hello Unifi. Naturally there are teething problems but we refuse to call the chargeable 1300 number so we’ve been running around in circles changing dongers, and moving or rather switching our pc from room to room just to get connected. Have to do all sorts of troubleshooting and testing just to find the reason for the bad connection. Is it the pc problem/the network adapter/the interference from the neighbour’s wifi, need to change channel, change donger, change pc or pull out hair? blah blah blah…*Shakes head*

2. We got ourselves several new shelves and tables and enjoying our family bonding session of putting them together. The kids love this. All the banging and screwing and counting of screws and looking and following the diagrams is a delight to both the kids. They’re having a fine time with the Allen Key, Phillips Screwdriver, etc. After that we all sit back and enjoy our hard work of putting up the shelf and the kids feel proud that they were involved in putting up their own tables or drawers etc. Putting together furniture is definitely an activity where you can and should involve kids, just be mindful of safety when handling tools and sharp nails that is all.

3. I received my Giant Squid trohpy over at Squidoo. That makes me a Giant Squid now. Too bad, I am too busy to celebrate or make any new lenses for the holiday season. I guess I will just have to update my existing ones if I can find some snippets of time.

4. I have received two back to school brochures from departmental stores and I thought the school holidays has just started! Yes, it would end very soon too and then I would have a Year 2 and Year 4 student at home. Gosh. Time flies!

Well, times up. I thought I had a lot of things to blog about but I can’t remember now. If I am not careful, I will forget how to blog in no time.

My streamyx was out for 2 days. 2 whole days and I could not get online for all of that time. So what did I do? I went to catch up with some sleep and played some silly addictive pc games thats what I did.

Anyway, with the school holidays approaching, the kids will be home and the hubby will probably take leave here and there so that means all my time will be occupied. That means there will be a slow down in blogging. Well, no one missed me online for 2 whole days accept myself, so I guess 2 months won’t make any difference either.

What a pity about my Squidoo lenses though. Its the holiday season! Which means I should be doing more lenses, not less. Oh well, it can’t be helped. Family comes first, always. Squidoo lenses are hard to write. I need uninterrupted me time to make them. Blogging is much easier. As I have mentioned before, I can write a blog post in 5 minutes so I suppose I could steal some time here and there for my blogs still.

Well, thats my 5 minutes for this post. I’ve got a few things to get out of the way today, some filing to be done etc. The man is so organized that I must drive him crazy being so disorganized so I had better go and organize a few things today to make him happy. Time to go. Oh, but before that, I have another post to write for my Parenting Times blog. Something about being a kiasu parent. Hop over there if you are kiasu.