I'm a full-time mummy

With the rising in population, accommodation has become a major problem that makes house hunting a key issue in today’s world. When searching for an apartment, there are several things to consider: place of work, amenities, location and security among other factors. For a family friendly apartment, this calls for more. The location of the house has to favor your kids since it means a lot to them as they gradually mature. Anyone looking for a house for rent in KL especially young parents with has to keep the following in mind:

Learning institutions
Before moving in to a new house, do a thorough survey of the area to make sure there’re ample learning institutions such as schools and tuition centers. Usually such area will see quite a number of families with kids that will definitely make up a family-friendly neighborhood.

Security
The security of the area is crucial especially for the little ones. Several areas of the house have to be under locks to avert the trivial matter of “missing child” that pretty much can be related to child abduction. Yikes!

Windows
This should be the case in a storied building. For floor-to-ceiling window, make sure the window is locked always or ensure the opening is small enough to not being able to fit a person. For toddlers, the opening should be high enough to be out of reach. Not forgetting windows with broken handles should be repaired as soon as possible before the family moves in so as to be sure of safety.

Balconies
The porch should also be child friendly and tough enough to sustain any kind of pressure exerted on the fencing. It should also be raised to prevent any child from going over it.

The rest of the house should also have few turning points to prevent the child from knocking over hard objects, which might lead to serious injuries. Another factor to consider is the compound outside. Is the house fenced well enough to prevent stray animals and idlers from accessing your property and hurting your kids? Does the pool have proper fencing to rub away the idea of small children drowning in it?

Apartments with drive way should also include road signs within the perimeter of parking cars to avoid knocking down children playing in the hallway. The houses should always have adequate space where children can play as you watch over them from the kitchen.

Neighbors
It shouldn’t come as a surprise for parents to have
A lot of parents want their children developing a healthy relationship with other parents’ children of the same age like playing football in the hood. This way, even parents themselves get to bond making it a big happy family. A set playground for kids is an added advantage.

Sanitation
Always cross check the interior part of the apartment before giving out the cheque. A place filled with molds or other contaminants should be dealt with by either renovating the place or calling a specialist in such cases to help you out. Your family health should be your top priority

Size
The house should have a decent size that is huge enough to contain all the necessities that your family will need especially for your children upbringing. Extra spaces will always come in handy to keep things organized.

These are the ultimate qualities to look for in a new house to move in with your children before making a final decision of buying it. Ultimately, you can always rely on property portal as the like of PropertyGuru to look for a house for rent in KL that will give you a good idea on whether the house is a right fit for your family!

However, if you have already settled down in a rented home and would like to keep your home safe to your children, you might find this guide handy and helpful.

Our family is a big fan of all things LEGO. Check out the robot made by our 7-year-old boy 2 years ago!!!

Our kiddos are constantly creating new things with LEGO, so I created an album on my Facebook fan page to share the pictures of Lego creations made by them, do feel free to hop over and check them out in my FB album. Also a while back, I reviewed some LEGO books and even wrote a post to share my personal tips on buying LEGO for your child.

Now, recently I heard that LEGO will be having an upcoming "Build Your LEGO Christmas Event" but unfortunately, as much as I would like to attend this cool event with our family and kiddos, I had to restraint myself from any public functions... images of birthing in public is not a comforting thought at this phase of pregnancy LOL and hence, I told hubby to go ahead with our kiddos (so that mummy can rest before baby #4 pops out anytime hahaha)

Now you wonder what is going on? FYI, with few weeks left to approach the season of joy and giving, LEGO® Malaysia will be hosting an exclusive "Build Your LEGO® Christmas" event at the LG Oval Concourse area at 1 Utama Shopping Centre from 9th to 20th November 2016, 10 am-10 pm.

If you want to find out more about the event, here is the info:

Date:  9-20 November 2016

Time: 10 a.m. to 10 p.m.

 Venue: 1 Utama Shopping Centre, Lower Ground Oval Concourse area

FB Link on the event: http://bit.ly/BuildYourLEGOXmas

Some of the exciting series of activities to look out for during the event includes:

• A mini cinema screening popular LEGO® TV series

• Dioramas of various LEGO® CITY and LEGO® Friends scenes, organised by three LEGO-certified user groups in Malaysia – LOM LUG LEGO® User Group of Malaysia, Synergy, and Asia Bricks

• A LEGO® Friends amusement park ferris wheel ride

• A free-playing area for children to build and display their LEGO® creations

• Meet-and-greet sessions with LEGO® CITY mascots, as well as a LEGO® Santa

• LEGO® CITY photo booths with props and costumes for fans to take memorable pictures

• Workshops for children to learn how to build their very own Santa sleigh

• On 19 November 2016, there will also be a special meet & greet session with LEGO® product designer and master builder, John Ho, the creative mind behind LEGO® series such as LEGO® Bionicle and LEGO® Star Wars Buildable Figures.

In addition to that, during the ‘Build Your LEGO® Christmas’ event, shoppers will be able to take home a free Photo Printout with any purchase of LEGO® Play Sets/ Play Materials (exclusive to all ONECARD Kids & ONECARD members), and 1 free pack of LEGO® Christmas Cards with purchase of LEGO® Play Sets/ Play Materials worth RM100 and above.

Additionally, customers who purchase LEGO® Play Sets / Play Materials worth RM200 and above are entitled to one free pack of LEGO® Geoffrey & Friends Set (exclusive to Toys R Us Star Card members whose birthday falls in the month of November or December) and 1 box of LEGO® Santa’s Visit Set with any purchase of LEGO® Play Sets / Play Materials worth RM300 and above.

ANY CONTESTS?

In case you are wondering, yes yes yes, LEGO® is asking children to save Christmas this year by designing and building Santa a new, modern, cool sleigh.

Hence, from 1st November until 4th December 2016, children can lend a helping hand to Santa by joining the Build Your LEGO® Christmas contest on www.LEGO.com/XMAS. There are suggested sleigh building instruction sheets available on the website which the participants can use to build and upload a photo of their very own LEGO® Santa’s sleigh with a matching description.

There are attractive prizes that you can win such as a total of 5 consolation prizes of LEGO® products worth RM200 each, as well as a Grand Prize of LEGO® products for a year worth RM2,000, which you can choose from your preferred theme. The Grand Prize winner will also have their winning sleigh featured in a final stop motion digital video aired in mid-December. How cool is that huh?

ANY OTHER OFFERS?

Yes, yes, yes of course there are!! Customers who shop at LEGO® certified stores and LEGOLAND will also be entitled to 1 pack of free LEGO® Christmas Cards with purchase of LEGO® Play Sets / Play Materials worth RM100 and above from 1 November (while stocks last), and 1 box of free LEGO® Santa’s Visit Sets with purchase of LEGO® Play Sets / Play Materials worth RM300 and above (starting 21 November, while stocks last).

Additionally, customers who purchase LEGO® products worth RM500 and above at LEGO® Certified Stores and online at http://brickmagic.asia also stand a chance of winning awesome prizes such as a LEGO® Star Wars Super Destroyer, LEGO® Star Wars Ewok Village, LEGO® Star Wars B-Wing Starfighter and many more!

Customers who shop at outlets such as Toys-R-Us, Hamleys, Box of Bricks, AEON, Parkson and Isetan will be able to enjoy one free pack of LEGO® Christmas cards with LEGO® Play sets / Play materials worth RM100 and above from 1 November, while stocks last. Exclusive deals are offered at Toys-R-Us, Hamleys and Box of Bricks where customers will be entitled to a LEGO® Reindeer set with purchase of LEGO® Play Sets / Play Materials worth RM200 and above from 21 November, while stocks last.

I received no monetary compensation for this review. I was provided with the press release kit in order to facilitate my review. All opinions expressed in this post are my own. Please do your own research when purchasing products, as your opinions may differ from mine.
 

** Note: I have disabled the commenting feature on my blog engine thanks to all the spammers who happily spam my blog every day. If you wish to ask me any questions, you can find me at my Facebook page (I'm there almost everyday) or just drop me an email if you wish to maintain some anonymity.
 

I have been cutting down on doing product reviews since 2014 and what more with baby #4 on the way this end of year, all the more I need to be particularly picky and selective with the products that I'm reviewing. Not that I'm trying to be hard sell, no, definitely not! But with 3 kiddos + 1 on the way, being a housewife at home with kiddos all the time and helping out with hubby's business, I just feel it is not fair to make companies and PR reps wait for my reviews while I slowly review and look for time to spare to draft out my feedback you know? But of course, like I said, I have to be selective, so products that we can definitely fit into our family dynamics (especially books on parenting or homeschooling stuff, family products, something along those genre) will be accepted!

When I was contacted to review products from Merries and Kao, I immediately remembered the pleasant experience I had 3 years back when I reviewed Merries diapers for our 2nd kiddo! So needless to say, of course I say yes!  

KAO, Japan’s Home Care Expert, has recently launched "Welcome to My Modern Parenthood" (WTMMP) to help new and anxious parents with minimal to zero know-how in transitioning into effortless, enjoyable parenthood through insights and education.

We received the following products for our review, they are basically the 3 ideal home care solutions:

• Japan’s No.1* Baby Diaper, MERRIES;
  

• Japan’s No.1* Home Care Range, MAGICLEAN; 
  

• Malaysia’s No.1* Laundry Concentrated Powder, ATTACK
  

After all these years, I am still impressed with Merries diapers. Just love their pants diapers and this time, I get to review the tape version as well (previous review 3 years ago was on their pants diaper version) Below snapshots on the tape and pants version - front and back view so that you can have a look at how they differ.

Personally, I feel both tape and pants version has their own pros and cons. I love the convenience of using the pants version and generally prefer to bring the pants version for our family outing. It is easy to take out, just tear the sides, roll up the diaper and stick the blue tape at the back to hold it together. For the tape version, if your child is still young and need to lie down to change their tape diaper, I guess this would be a better option but, yours truly here is a seasoned parent for 3 kiddos (4th on the way) and have over the years mastered the skills of changing kiddos' diapers while they are standing LOL so for us, tape or pants, no problemo!! So at the end of the day, it really depends on your skills as I see both tape and pants version are of equal quality and comfortable material (not to mention high absorbency!)

We received several Magiclean products for review and I have initially wanted my hubby to try out as well as he cleans the house more than I do hahahaha but in the end, I decided that being pregnant at 5th months now, it would be particularly handy if these products are able to help me out as I really do not want to just depend on other people to clean up my house unless my pregnancy really requires me to rest a lot, otherwise, I think I'm good and I also wanted to use the opportunity to get our kiddos to do the house chores as well heheheh...

Okay back to the Magiclean products... the one that I'm particularly very satisfied and thrilled to use is the Magiclean Wiper Handy Duster Extendable! It looks like a normal peachy colored woolly duster but then you realised you can actually adjust the handle to extend from 46cm to 95cm and then bend it to few angles which gives you the additional reach and convenience to clean high and hard to reach places... whoaaaa... I love it!

I'm also impressed with its high absorption fibres that effectively pick up, trap and hold even the finest dust! Cleaning is so so easy now!

The next item worth mentioning in the Magiclean range of products is the Magiclean Wiper Mop. It can handle wet and dry mopping where you apply on either wet or dry sheets onto the mop. I love the ultra-slim head which allows me to reach deep and narrow spaces and its 360° dust catching pattern improves overall dust trapping ability, you can easily flip left, right, front, back and I think because of this feature, our 4.5 year old girl enjoys mopping our rooms very much! She started out mopping our bedroom (despite my hubby mopping the room just the night before!) and you can already see how dirty it is after the mopping (our house is near the highway so the dust is horrendous at times)

Our girl was so enjoying her mopping that she happily volunteered to mop our staircase as well. This time, I changed the sheet to dry ones to try out. Ahhh.... so easy, even a little child can do it!

I'm also particularly impressed with the Magiclean Kitchen Cleaner Refreshing Lime Trigger. Very impressed with the instant stain-dissolving foam that easily removes the greasy stains in just 1 wipe. I demonstrated it to my mother-in-law and she went 'Whoaaaa... I always have to put some other cleaner liquid and scrub the cooking area real hard and this one is so easy?! Look at how shiny it is also!' Parents, get this mother-in-law approved product!

Some items worth mentioning in the ATTACK range of products are the Attack Ultra Power and Attack Detergent plus Softener liquid detergent. We've always been the powder detergent users (front-loading washing machine) and I feel that the liquid detergent is not bad as well. Smells good and cleans our clothes wonderfully. The softener also made our clothes smooth and soft.

To sum up our experience, I'm grateful for the opportunity to try out the wonderful range of products from Kao & Merries and believe that they will truly transform your parenting life and makes it way more convenient for you to do your house chores, even our young kiddos can do it easily!

Do check out Kao's website to find out more!

Btw, Kao is holding a "Parenthood Home Makeover " contest. You can stand to win a home makeover & KAO products worth up to RM30,000! To join the contest, you need to purchase RM38 worth of Magiclean or Attack products and a minimum of 1 pack of Merries diapers. Do note that the contest runs from 2 May to 31 July 2016. So hurry up!

Also, do note that there is an event happening from 13th July to 17th July at the Ground Floor Centre Court (Old Wing) in 1 Utama Shopping Centre. Do join the event for more great deals and promotions!

I received no monetary compensation for this review, I was provided with the products in order to facilitate my review. All opinions expressed in this post are my own. Please do your own research when purchasing products, as your opinions may differ from mine.

** Note: I have disabled the commenting feature on my blog engine thanks to all the spammers who happily spam my blog every day. If you wish to ask me any questions, you can find me at my Facebook page (I'm there almost everyday) or just drop me an email if you wish to maintain some anonymity.