FREE & FUN 12-Hour Itinerary At Sentosa This June Holidays!

Don’t fret if you have not planned any overseas trip this June holidays – Us too! But we are having fun nonetheless, thanks to many activities and programmes happening island-wide, especially on Sentosa! And you’ll be glad to know that most of them are FREE! I know how expensive it can be to bring an entire family out for fun, so free is always good, right??! And just so you can get the most out of your trip to Sentosa, here is a full-day programme that you can embark on starting this Thursday, 8 June and pay not a single cent for any of them! (Only island admission charges apply). If you wanna say thanks, please share this post with your friends and have lots of fun this June! =D

10am – 12pm: Bouncing Good Time!

Palawan Beach promises tons and tons of fun for your little ones this June school holidays, with a new Mega Inflatables Playground set up just for the kids to have a bouncing good time! Take a plunge down the Triple Slide or dip into a pool of overflowing foam – I promise you that the kids would go crazy bouncing away. There’s even Kidz Maze, balancing beam, traversing wall and a mega ball pool! Good luck getting your kids off them when it’s time to leave. Grab some lunch before you head to the next place on the itinerary!

1pm– 3pm: Ahoy! All Aboard The Pirate Ship!

Continue the water fun by checking out Sentosa’s iconic Palawan Pirate Ship play area, which has gushing fountains, slides and a pirate-head which sends huge bucket of water down. My kids absolutely loved this pirate ship and can spend hours in the waters until they become all charcoal black. =P

1pm–

3pm – 4pm: Doubly Bubbly Fun!

Delight in a bubble performance made up of lights, colours and bubble art. Be wowed as the bubbleologist brings you into the wonderful world of bubbles! Happens at 3pm & 5pm, so if you miss the 3pm show, stay around for the 5pm one! I am always mesmerized by the rainbow colours of bubbles, especially the gigantic ones – This is definitely a show I won’t want to miss. The kids would have so much fun!

4pm – 6pm: Visit Fort Siloso & Skywalk!

Begin your exploration of Fort Siloso, Singapore’s only preserved coastal fort through the Fort Siloso Skywalk, a treetop trail set 11 storeys above ground. From 8 June 2017 onwards, you can also visit the newly revamped Surrender Chambers and relive some of the momentous events in Singapore’s History and be guided by light and sound effects through the six interactive zones. If you have not been to the old Surrender Chambers at Fort Siloso, you don’t know what you are missing out! I’ve visited many times as a kid and even after I have my own kids, and every time, I walked away with a deeper appreciation of the history of Singapore and what we had gone through together as a nation! Now, with the recent revamp, I expect it to be a whole lot more interesting! After this stop, either grab a quick dinner, or pack some food for enjoyment at the next stop – Movies under the stars!

7.30pm – 9.30pm: Movies  By The Beach!

Chill and relax with a movie by the beach when night falls. Catch family-friendly blockbusters at Palawan Green! Here’s what you can expect to catch during these dates:

8 – 11 June (Mega Animal Lovers)
15 – 18 June (Mega Cuteness)
22 – 25 June (Mega Action)

9.15pm – 10pm: Merlion Magic Lights

The final stop before you come to an end of an amazing day on Sentosa is to catch the artistic installations and be dazzled by the awesome display of lights and sounds as the island transforms into a world of wondrous fun! Don't miss out on the chance to catch the thematic light shows, set against Sentosa’s majestic and dazzling icon, the 37-m tall Sentosa Merlion! This is only happening between 2 – 9 July though, so make sure you go catch it! After the light show, hang around and enjoy the cool evening breeze before calling it a day!

More details on http://www.sentosa.com.sg/megafun.
Mega Fun programmes start this Thursday. For full list of dates/timings, please refer to the website.

You see! 12 hours on Sentosa island, and you don’t even have to pay a single cent for any attraction! I’ll be trying out this itinerary this Wednesday, so stay tuned for real-time updates on my social media platforms – Instagram: @klessislee & Facebook: The J Babies. :)

 

Ikea Project: Bring The Outdoors In! (DIY Tutorials Included)

Sponsored Review

The weather in Singapore lately has been really bad – On some days, it’s crazily hot and humid, and on other days, it pours like nobody’s business. All that meant that we had been forced to stay indoors quite a lot recently and I got a little grumpy that we could not go out and have fun especially during the weekends.

Then one fine day, an ingenious idea came to me – Since we could not go outdoors, why don’t we bring the outdoors in??!

I did just that. I decided on a spur of a moment that we were going to have an indoor tea camping party. I know that doesn’t make a lot of sense, but I was trying to make the best out of what we had. Turned out to be pretty fun because I roped in the girls to help and it became a fruitful afternoon of DIY project fun.

Here’s a look at our campsite! We’ve even got a giant leaf as our shelter. =P

We fixed a lamp inside our tent since we don’t have the sun shining directly above our heads. And we had Mr Cloud and Mr Sun with us too. We brought the outdoors into our bedroom!

Now, how can we forget the wild flowers if we are going outdoors? By the way, I made these flower garlands at a workshop recently using plastic flowers from Ikea – More on that later!

We played many rounds of UNO card game, but somehow it was more fun that day because we played them ‘outdoors’. =P I love the new serve wares from Ikea that come in colorful and vibrant prints of birds and fruits. They make the whole setup look so cheery and happy.

Our campsite was a simple setup put together with stuffs from Ikea that I could find in the house, but it brought us many hours of fun and laughter. Look at the girls’ gleeful smiles while we were pretending to have some tea and snacks inside their tent.

All it takes is a little creativity and some help from Ikea to turn an otherwise boring afternoon into a fun one. I give myself a big pat on my back. If you are desperately in need of an indoor activity with your bored kids too, here’s how I put the look together. You are welcome.

THE TENT

I’m not sure if you could tell by now, but the structure of my tent is actually this:

YES!! It’s the MALA Easel from Ikea!

And here’s how I transformed the easel into a tent structure:

1. Get 2 of these screw-in hooks and some sturdy thick strings.

2. Disconnect the horizontal board (the one with the red surface) and let it hang by the side (As can be seen in the right photo below).

3. Screw in the hooks on the two legs of the easel on the same side.

    

4. Tie a string from one hook to the other and open up the easel to your desired height and width. Congratulations, you’ve got a tent structure! (I’m not kidding)

5. Next, find a piece of cloth that’s big enough to drape over the entire structure. The cloth I used was bought from Ikea and it measured approximately 2m by 1m. Secure the top two ends of the cloth with some binder clips to make an entrance of some sort. Slip in some cushions to make sitting inside the tent a comfortable one (since we are sitting on tiles, and not grass!). To complete the look, I hung a lamp from the top of the tent structure by fastening it with a string (The lamp is the SMILA BLOMMA Wall lamp from Ikea) and placed a giant leaf bed canopy over the tent (LOVA Bed canopy from Ikea) to add on to the feel of being outdoors.

Is that simple or is that simple??!

THE WILD FLOWER GARLANDS

As I mentioned at the start of this post, I learnt how to make these pretty flower garlands at a workshop organized by Ikea for a group of bloggers several weeks ago. I love how easy it is to make them, and how lovely the final products are!

Frankly, I was pleasantly surprised when I was told that these artificial flowers were all from Ikea! Maybe it’s just me, but I often speed through the plants and flowers section in the Ikea showroom, so I’ve never really stopped to see what they have to offer. Some of these artificial flowers looked so real, it’s unbelievable!

I chose the flowers I liked and started to make garlands with them. To make the garlands more interesting, we interspersed the artificial flowers with paper cupcake holders found at Ikea (yes, so ingenious right?) and simple yarn pom poms. Fold the cupcake holders three times, flatten them and staple to secure (just like the purple one in the photo above). Pom poms are super easy to make – Just twine the yarn over your three fingers something like 30 rounds, remove and tie it tight in the middle before cutting through both ends and fluff it. To make the garlands, just make a circle with a piece of wire and secure it with washi tape. Then glue the flowers, cupcake holders and pom poms onto the wire closely to each other so that there are no empty holes.

See how lovely my Jayne looks with the garlands I made that day!

Now, these garlands are decorations for our DIY tent in the bedroom. :)

How do you like my Ikea-inspired DIY ideas? Here’s what you need from Ikea to complete the projects:

 

Disclosure: This is Part 1 of a series of posts done in collaboration with Ikea Singapore. The J Babies was provided with a stored value Ikea card to make purchases for purpose of the post, however  some of the Ikea products mentioned in this post were existing items in our household. As usual, all photographs and opinions expressed in the post are solely ours.

#FunForFreeSG: Make A Final Dash To The Museums!

The June school holidays are coming to an end very soon, and if you have not brought your kids to the museums yet (What were you thinking??!), it’s time to make a final dash now!

As a mum living and raising my kids in Singapore, I always feel blessed that there are many places we can bring our kids to, free-of-charge or at very low cost. Museums are perfect, in my opinion. They are not just entertaining, they are often educational and inspiring as well. Recently, I brought my kids to two such exhibitions, one after another because they were in close proximity and we enjoyed a fun day out together.

IMAGINARIUM
Singapore Art Museum
Ends 19 July 2015

The Imaginarium Exhibition is not located within the SAM main building but in a smaller building diagonally across the road from it. We spotted this very colorful bench right outside it and thought it looked pretty and artistic enough to warrant a shot.

It might not be a huge exhibition but there were interesting sections for the kids to explore.

The most interesting bit for me was the photo booth of course. For just S$2, you can take your photos in the booth and go home with two sets of photos, in colour and in B&W. This has been on my to-do list for the longest time – Finally did it!

This particular section of the exhibition allows kids to have some hands-on crafting time. Like most people, we opted to make pom poms because they seemed like the easiest and nicest. =P The pom poms are still hanging from the girls’ bags now – They are mighty proud of their own artwork.

After you are done with the exhibition, you can take a break at 7KickStart café at Singapore Art Museum. The food’s quite decent and the interiors are nice.

After refueling, we took a walk to the National Museum of Singapore to check out another kid-friendly exhibition.

MASAK MASAK
National Museum of Singapore
Ends 30 Aug 2015

As the name of the exhibition suggests, the Masak Masak exhibition is all about play but with a little twist. My kids were introduced to little games we played as kids ourselves – I felt extra nostalgic while the kids would find everything very interesting and fresh.

What met us as we entered into the museum was this colorful art installation hanging from the ceiling, made up of origami shapes of different sizes. Love it!

These made me laugh out loud when I saw them! Those erasers we played as kids, in giant form! As you can see, we imparted the ‘rubber game’ to the kids and they both tried hard to get their eraser above the other.

Right outside were cute inflatable bouncy castles in the design of retro playgrounds that people of my era are so familiar with. =P

Great day of family bonding at virtually zero cost apart from the food we had. Always my idea of a great family outing. :)

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