Christy @ Kidsrsimple, Author at Kids 'R' Simple

ErgoSilver Laptop Stand Review – Is it really Ergonomic?

I started to do some serious typing, and realized that typing directly on the laptop is not as ergonomic as the laptop stand is made out to be. My arms are tilted upwards and I find my elbows hanging in the air while I type. Instead of having the ergonomic position of putting my arms parallel to the desk and type, I am hanging in mid-air to type. So for this, it was creating some shoulder pain after typing for some time.

There are many Ergonomic products out in the market. While I do not purposely choose Ergonomic school bags or buy Ergonomic writing desk, I do take care of my sitting posture, the eye level angle on the top of the screen, the distance of keyboard and how my arms are in parallel to the desk. After all, I am sitting down at my desk 8 hours a day, 5 days a week! Also, I had completed a Workplace Ergonomic Online Training at my workplace, so I am trying to remember to stretch and take my eyes off the screen every half an hour or so. Easier said than done though, but I am trying!

So with this chance of reviewing the ErgoSilver Laptop Stand at home, I am happy to accept the invitation to do a review. The frequent laptop user is really the hubby who reads Chinese stories online late into the night, follow by me who blogs in the wee hours of the night or morning and then my children who watch Tayo, The Little Bus, Pororo or China’s Voice on my laptop. It is important for them to place their eyes at a correct eye level so as not to strain their necks with their heads tilting forward. With every inch that your head is tilted forward, it adds a 4.5kg to the weight that your neck is holding up! The neck, head and shoulders are constantly pulling up your head. This muscle strain will produce lactic acid and will cause burning pain and cramping. So over time, shoulder ache will be experienced and a series of problems will come along.

The hubby and kids were the first to use the ErgoSilver Laptop Stand. They love it because it is portable. For the first few days, I had seen the laptop stand everywhere in the house. On the bed, on the dining table, on the coffee table and even in the toilet! We love the sleek design where you can hide the cables at the bottom or behind the stand. The weight of it is heavy enough to not topple over.

Then it was my turn to use the laptop stand for blogging. Initially, I loved that it raises the height of the laptop to my eye level. However, I wondered if placing on the work desk will be too high for the kids. Nevertheless, I always see them putting on a low table or the bed, so that level is comfortable for them while they lean back to watch their shows.

Maneuvering the mouse was not so ergonomic too. I have to constantly bring my right arm down to the desk level to move the mouse around as opposed to the ergonomic position of placing the mouse at the same level as the keyboard with arms at 90 degrees to the position of the mouse. After some time, I gave up and decided that perhaps an external keyboard will be best suited for this laptop stand to achieve its purpose.

Having an external keyboard will be perfect for the best ergonomic position and the laptop stand’s design is good for putting a keyboard directly below the stand to save space too! It really is good in raising the laptop to the eye level.

Hence, if you are considering to purchase the ErgoSilver laptop stand, do check that you have an external keyboard to use with it.

As I am a lazy person and much prefer to carry my laptop around the house to work anywhere without lugging an external keyboard, I am happy to let the hubby and kids continue to use the ErgoSilver Laptop Stand instead.

When I gave my feedback to the ErgoSilver folks, they recommended the Laptop Riser for those who want to type on their laptop directly. This riser allows you to type on your original keyboard while raising the top of the screen to your eye level. As the screen is slanted backward, the riser does not need to be as high as the laptop stand itself. It is also extremely portable and lightweight so you can carry your laptop around.

For more information on ErgoSilver, you may visit their website here.

Disclaimer: I received the ErgoSilver Laptop Stand for the purpose of this honest review. As you can see that my review is not 100% positive, nevertheless the folks at ErgoSilver are open to my honest review even if it contains negative feedback! All opinions are purely my own and different people have different opinions. I am glad that the sponsor has a positive attitude towards receiving feedback from customers, regardless good or bad or like this one, publicized in a blog post 😃

Charity Work For Families – Boys’ Brigade Share-A-Gift Project

Every Christmas is a period of giving and sharing. It has been my wish to do volunteering work for the longest time. There are plenty of volunteering work out there to choose to do. But taking time on weekends on my own will deprive my family time with the kids. Till the day my kids are older when I will have more free time to do my own stuff, I will need to find one charity work that includes the family and suitable for the kids for now.

Some volunteer work need long term commitment which I cannot commit. Some needs older kids to do. Some, like orphanage, are sensitive to visit as a family (we learnt that through inquiries). It was not easy to find one that 2 adults, 2 kids and 1 toddler can volunteer together. And that is when I learnt about the Boys’ Brigade Share-A-Gift project.

Share-A-Gift is an easy thing to do and it can involve the whole family including my 4yo toddler. In short, it is on food hamper delivery to needy families.

First we had to sign up at http://www.bbshare.sg/ for a time slot that works for us. On that day, we appeared at BB’s Headquarters, and had the BB Boys load 10 big food hampers into our car. We also received 5 acknowledgement slips with 5 addresses to deliver the food hampers to. The 5 addresses are within blocks away from each other or within the same block. Then we were on our way as delivery boys and girls!

Initially we thought it was as simple as going up to the beneficiary units, and passed the hampers to them with a friendly smile of Hello, Merry Christmas and Bye. And if we were lucky, chat with the families as well. But it turned out to be a little tougher than just that.

With happy smiles and enthusiasm, each of us carried a heavy hamper and went up to the first unit. But there was no one at home after knocking on the door. So, we moved on to the second unit, hoping we had better luck, then, it was again no answer. We moved on to the third unit, refusing to believe that we would hit an empty unit for the third time. Again no answer! Even the toddler started to call out “Hello! Hello!” and knocking on the door loudly. By this time, the kids were getting disappointed and were tired of lugging the heavy hampers around. Can you believe our bad luck? None of the 5 beneficiaries was at home!

While we thought this was it, I decided to call the recipients and finally one uncle, who was at the coffeeshop downstairs, came home after picking up my call. This was our first successful delivery after an hour or so!

As we were doing this project with 4 family friends, one of them did not have any luck too. And they went back to the BB Headquarters to report and were given new beneficiary addresses. This saved us a trip back and we drove to the next address to deliver the remaining 4 sets of food hampers. This time, we were smarter. We called up the recipients before we delivered the hampers to them. In this round, we managed to deliver another 3 sets of food hampers! The kids were delighted and one of our family friends helped to send back all our remaining hampers back to BB Headquarters together with the acknowledgement slips.

All in all, we spent 2 hours of a Sunday afternoon, breaking our Sunday family routine, to do a simple but meaningful work for those in need! Seeing their smiles upon receiving the hampers gave us a feeling of contentment and happiness. I hope this small start of volunteering will enable the kids to appreciate simple things in life and learn to share and give 🙂

After that, the 4 families went for a playdate together at Marine Cove playground and had great fun at the East Coast Beach.

Perhaps, if you wish to do volunteering work with your kids or friends, you should really check this out. It is certainly a good start to teach the kids to share and give. It need not be all monetary gifts, it can be a gift of time and I find this even more meaningful!

Do check out http://www.bbshare.sg/ and register a slot from now till 31 December (Except for 24, 25 and 26 Dec).

More information:

For 29 years, since 1988, The Boys’ Brigade has been seeking to bring cheer to the less fortunate by collecting food items and fulfilling Christmas wishes of the beneficiaries through The Boys’ Brigade Share-a-Gift (BBSG) project.

Beneficiaries include elderly, kids and needy families.Each food hamper consists of 25 items, put together by the BBSG, from donations gathered from the public.

Each hamper is estimated to last the beneficiaries for four months or more. Common items are Rice, Biscuits, Cooking Oil, Instant Noodles, Canned food, seasonings, etc.

There are 3 things you can choose to do for this Share-A-Gift Project:

1) Donations of food items:From 25 November till 19 December 2016, gifts donated will be collected through the Gift Boxes (for General Wishes) and Wish Trees (for Specific Wishes) at various FairPrice outlets island-wide from 11am to 9pm daily. The public would be able to deposit their general food and household items in the Gift Boxes, and fulfill specific wishes of the beneficiaries that are placed on tags on the Wish Trees.

Donors can also contribute by purchasing general food and household hampers valued at $20, $30, and $50 via NTUC FairPrice’s online portal (www.fairprice.com.sg) or donate cash at any AXS station.

2) Adopt a Wish (Specific Wishes Project)Adopt a wish or wishes from any of the Boys’ Brigade Share-A-Gift Wish Trees in Singapore.Pick up a wish tag and get the item on the wish tag. Place the gift at the location where you pick up the wish tag. The Wish Trees are located at various NTUC outlets. More information can be found on the “donation location” here.

3) Deliver Food Hampers like what we do!

Let this season be the start of a regular volunteering work with your kids and families 🙂

Disclaimer: This is NOT a sponsored post. We got to be part of this meaningful project when I learnt through media and PR who are promoting volunteering and sharing during this holiday period. It could not have come at a better time when I was coincidentally looking up for doing volunteering work with my kids 🙂

Spurbox Advent Calendar Activity Box {+Giveaway}

What is the Spurbox Advent Calendar about?

It is a craft box with 12 different activities to complete within 24 days before Christmas. And you know kids are kids. The moment my kids laid hands on the Spurbox, they did 2 activities in one go in an hour! So, you may time the craft sessions with your kids according to your own schedule.

You may have read about our home-made Advent Calendar in the previous post. In a few of the advent activities, I included the kids’ favourite activity, i.e. Art and Craft. I love doing art and craft with them. When the elder kids were having exams, we shelved off all craft activities and life was kind of boring with revision, revision and revision. And now, with the school holidays, is the best time to do craft work together. Especially when the 2 elder kids are still interested enough to not label it as ‘boring’ and the youngest is old enough to do many crafts with minimal supervision.

We received the Spurbox Advent Calendar which comes in time for making our crafts as part of the Advent Calendar activities. Save me the effort to think of craft ideas!

What is the Spurbox Advent Calendar about?

I realize that each pack of activity contains the craft supplies needed but not in entirety. Some common things like scissors, markers, glue are not included but most families with kids should have them ready in the house. I would actually prefer that Spurbox includes ALL the supplies needed just like some other subscription boxes have. However, this is a small thing, we have plenty of common craft supplies and we can live with that.

There is a piece of puzzle that comes with each activity pack. Upon completion of the 12 activities, we are supposed to piece the 12 pieces of puzzles on an A4 sheet with 12 boxes to reveal the picture. We are certainly looking forward to what picture it will be!

snowman-in-a-cup — Activity – Snowman In A Cup

Perhaps you may like to get one Spurbox Advent Calendar for your child or as a gift.

Each Spurbox is priced at SGD36.90 and if you order 2 or more, the price will be SGD28.

Do check out other activity boxes and more information over here.

Craft and Baking Classes

Apart from Spurbox Advent Calendar Activities, Spurbox holds craft and baking classes too! The holiday classes are held from 3 Dec to 23 Dec and they have regular weekend classes. We tried out 1 craft class and 1 baking class over 2 different days.

Magic Pocky Wand Baking Class

Suitable for 2 and above (young children to be accompanied by parent(s))

Duration: 1.5 hours

We had really lots of fun baking together and the best part is the recipe is sooooo simple and yet tastes sooooo good that I am going to do it at home during our Christmas Party!

20161126_155321 — Making a small craft while waiting for Pocky Wands to be baked

Recipe

100g Condense Milk

4 TBSP Water

256g of Plain Flour

40g Butter

Instructions:

Preheat oven to 150C
Mix condensed milk with water and set aside
Then mix in the flour until it’s well mixed
Add the butter and keep mixing till mixtures resembles cornmeal
Mould into a stick and bake for 15 minutes, then spread melted white chocolate and sprinkle on top! Note that the white chocolate can harden pretty quick and do add the sprinkles as soon as possible

You can get the sprinkles from Phoon Huat, so I was told, and I am going to buy them to sprinkle on cookies and even ice-cream!

Santa Mug Pottery

Suitable for 2 and above (young children to be accompanied by parent(s))

Duration: 3 hours

This was the first time we did pottery and it was not difficult for Master 4, but not without my supervision. Each of us was given an apron and a piece of clay. The friendly staff guided us step by step with rather simple instructions. Nothing too difficult to handle for kids.

20161127_135348 — Helping Master 4 to cut the pottery

More information on Spurbox Holiday Camps and Term Classes:

Spurbox Junior Gourmet classes cater to children age 2 and above. They are currently having chocolate logcakes and gingerbread house classes for the Christmas season. They have also rolled out CNY classes such as custard cookies and tangerine cakes. Each Junior Gourmet class is 90mins and children can also enjoy an interactive and engaging storytelling session, as well as a craft session. All materials are provided and accompanying parent(s) do not need to purchase a ticket. Ticket is usually priced at SGD40 per kid and SGD70 for 2 kids. More information on Spurbox Holiday Camps and term classes, do check out here.

If you really like their classes, they do have a Super Saver Pass promotion where children can attend any 5 classes at only $150, working out to be $30 per class, which I think is fairly reasonable if one or two parents are able to do it with the child FOC.

Giveaway Time!

Spurbox is very generous to sponsor 4 Spurbox Advent Calendar Activity Box to 4 lucky winners! I thought this is really kind of them!

Steps to participate:

1) Leave a comment on the facebook post telling me what bonding activities do you do with your kids during the day time (if you are a SAHM) or after working hours (if you are a PTWM or FTWM).

2) Tag 5 friends along with your comment.

3) Sign up to follow my blog via email, please refer to sidebar of blog page. Do remember to tell me in the facebook comments that you have done this step so that I can look out for it.

This is a Flash Giveaway so that winners are in time to craft with their children before Christmas!

Giveaway ends on 12 December 2359 and will be announced on facebook and this post on 13 December.

UPDATE!!

Winners of the giveaway are: Grace Ng, Debra Li, Theresa Tay and Carol Lim! Congrats! I have your email addresses through subscriber list and the organizer shall contact you soon! Happy Crafting!

Further, the organizer is happy to give a 15% discount for individual CNY Craft and Baking classes! Just quote “CHRISTY“!

Happy Crafting and Happy Holidays! Ho! Ho! Ho! 🙂

Disclaimer: We were sponsored the Spurbox Advent Calendar Activity Boxes, Santa Mug Pottery and Pocky Wand Classes for the purpose of this review. All opinions are 100% mine. For working mums like me, the Activity Box is a great help for crafting with the kids without cracking my brains on craft ideas and craft supplies. So, I do hope you will find it fun too!

Our Hand-made Advent Calendar with Activities!

I would need to plan according to the dates from 1 Dec to 24 Dec. Advent Calendar begins on 1 Dec for 24 days if you do not already know. An Advent Calendar is a special calendar used to count or celebrate the days in anticipation of Christmas. You may read more about the Advent Calendar over here.

Even though we are not Christians, we love Christmas anyway. Somehow with the cool weather, with Christmas decorations dressing the malls plus the school holiday season put together, the Christmas mood does make me happier than other months. I have seen many pretty Pinterest photos on Christmas ranging from party ideas to activities. One of them is the Advent Calendar. This year, I decided to do a hand-made Advent Calendar with activities.

My first inspiration was really from A Million Little Echoes, a very talented mum blogger who did an Advent Calendar last Christmas, unveiling one activity each for her kids to do. As I am a full-time working mum, I do not have the luxury to bring the kids out every single day to surprise them, and many of the advent activities have to be in the evening when I come home from work. So, I decided to plan evening home activities and impromptu ideas to make each day an interesting one for the kids!

I started by checking my calendar for special events, and drafted a list of activities that I could input into each day of the 24 days. Some ideas are pretty crazy like.. “Accompanying Ye Ye (Grandpa, my father-in-law) to take a bus home to find Ah Ma (Grandma, my MIL)!” This will be a pleasant surprise and I think it is a great idea to let the kids take an out-of-norm impromptu bus ride to accompany my FIL on his journey home. Did I mention I have the best in-laws in the world? Without my FIL’s help each day to come my house to take care of the kids, I cannot work in peace. I know my kids are in good hands. My MIL is a kind grandma whom my kids are blessed to have. So, giving her a surprise by turning up at her childcare workplace will certainly please her greatly! The kids will certainly be thrilled and for me, I have planned it to be a Friday activity so that I can stay up late with the kids since the next day is a weekend 😃

Some other ideas for activities include movie nights, staycation surprise, a walk along Orchard Road to view Christmas Lightings, Reading Wizard of Oz to my kids, Art and Craft nights, Baking, etc, etc. You can think of your own activities to do with your kids too! It need not be bringing them out if you are busy at work on weekdays. The activities that I plan are mostly taking place at night after work hours.

There are plenty of Advent Calendars out there on Pinterest to find your inspiration. What I did was really a simple one and I got all my supplies from Daiso!

A pack of transparent gift bags
A roll of brown string
A pack of colour paper stickers
A pack of wooden clips
A pack of adhesive fancy ribbons
Small gift cards – I found cute Christmas templates and print them out

I roped in all the kids to help on this very first activity on the Advent Calendar on 1 Dec: To make an Advent Calendar! LOL!

It was easy to task the kids now that the elder 2 are good with their hands and have lots of creative juices. First, they helped me to paste the ribbons on the wooden clips to make the clips look Christmasy and lovely. Even the youngest can do this!

Then I cut a few templates of stickers meant for writing the dates on them and Missy 11 could follow my templates to duplicate to 24 of them.

Next comes the interesting part of writing the dates on the stickers. For Pinterest worthy, my initial thought was to write the dates big and legible with a nice lettering. But I decided to get the kids to write for me and they came out with their favorite drawings, with one creative snowman representing the number 8, a reindeer with a red nose using the red colour paper sticker, a tiger, butterfly and lots more! As a result, even though these bags with the cute drawings are not as glam and Pinterest showcase worthy, I really much prefer these designs as they truly make the otherwise boring advent calendar so much fun and unique!

After the bags were prepared, I spent an hour writing the activities for each day on 3 pieces of Christmas cards and slot them into each bag. One card for each of the 3 kiddos. As the youngest needs help in reading, I drew a picture on some of the cards so that he understands.

The last part of it is to string each bag and hang on the wall!

Each morning, the kids will look forward to opening up that day’s bag and read the messages inside. One thing to note is not to write the date on the message cards so that I can change my activity plans around as and when necessary.

Do you have an Advent Calendar in your home? Perhaps you can try this activity with your kids and have fun everyday till Christmas!

Mommy’s Guilt for Travelling Without Kids

When it comes to travelling without the kids, I am not that cool. I have my guilty moments. It was hard when I first traveled for my business trip solo to the US and Canada, braving through the tears of the little ones every night counting down to the trip, so much such that I did some preparatory work before and during the trip to make me and my kids feel better. You can read about what I did over here.

Recently a conversation with my mum brings out the guilt in me which I was trying so hard to suppress. She told me that times have changed. Couples nowadays (she is referring to me and my hubby) will choose to travel on holidays without the kids while such couple trips were almost unheard of during my parents’ times. If parents in those days were to travel for holidays, they would bring their kids along. Not that my parents did that since we were not well-to-do to travel. But you get the idea.

We were lucky to have supportive parents even though they may not agree on our couple trips. In fact, we have been to several such trips in the past:

After my first born, Kel and I traveled to Taiwan for a couple holiday.

After my second born, Kel and I traveled on a cruise and a couple more short trips to nearby Batam resorts.

After my third born, we stop travelling without kids because we think that it will be hard on our parents to care for 3 young children. Hence, we decide to wait till the youngest is older and easier to care for before we resume our couple holidays.

In between, we travel separately for business, incentive and girls’ trip, but there will always be one of us at home with the kids. And knowing that one spouse is at home with them, the other one can travel with a peace of mind without worrying if the grandparents are coping well with minding the little ones.

When it comes to travelling without the kids, I am definitely no cool mama. I have my guilty moments, and plenty of that. It was hard when I first traveled for my business trip solo to the US and Canada, braving through the tears of the little ones every night counting down to the trip. I had to do some preparatory work before and during the trip to make me and my kids feel better. You can read about what I did over here.

For the first couple trip, it was not easy for me to leave my eldest with the grandparents, and I had to bring along one of her two favourite bolsters and hug it every night in the hotel. We called home using the calling card every night (those were the days without facetime and internet calls). It was a little harder on the second and subsequent trips when we had to leave 2 children at home with one more little one to miss. It is even harder to leave 3 kids now to do the same.

So after a hiatus of about 6 years, Kel and I have finally decided that our kids are older now and easier to leave with the grandparents, and about the right time to have a short getaway to recharge, reconnect, enjoy a holiday which is really planned for ourselves. Well, we only booked our trip after we had our parents’ support to take care of the kids.

Choosing the getaway dates

There was much consideration this time round. I had to choose a period when the elder kids had finished their examinations as I wanted to be there to help with their revision during their papers. I had to ensure the dates are during school days because if they are in school during daytime, they will not miss us too much and caregivers need not handle 3 kids for long hours. The dates should not touch weekends because I want to spend time with them on weekends, ferrying them to their art and piano classes. This means that I have to take weekdays off from work.

Every aspect was taken care of, including ensuring school pocket money was topped up in their wallets, breakfast preparation, lots of pep talk to the littlest one, etc, etc.

Reactions from the kids

And so we left for the getaway and back to see the following reactions from the kids during this period:

Missy 11 was wishing us an enjoyable trip and looking forward to many gifts for her and her brothers. But on the morning of departure, which she told me later on, that she silently wept after I saw her to school.

Master 9 asked me why we did not bring them along for this trip. I felt a lump in my throat at this question but I tried my best to explain that Papa and Mummy wanted to have some couple time to ourselves. Subsequent days of calling home, I felt worse when he showed no interest to talk to me through facetime.

Master 4 seemed to understand when I told him for 3 nights, he would have 2 grandmas to take turns to keep him company during bedtime. But when we were overseas, every evening, he would asked his grandpa why Papa and Mummy had not returned after 7pm.

All these tore at my heart.

If it is so hard, why do we still do it?

Benefits of couple retreat

Some will say that we are selfish, but I believe on the benefits of reconnecting with my other half for a short time.
1. We believe that we can do things we love as a couple without waiting for the kids are older to pursue our interests.
2. It is important for us to rekindle the fire in us without minding the little ones. When the parents are happy, kids will be happy too.
3. It is also a good chance for the children to bond with the grandparents every night.

The benefits as written are not a long list, but really, the main reason is to reconnect as a couple free of little ones’ screams, naps, restricted itinerary.

Now that we are back from our 4D3N Bangkok trip, I realized that I really missed them very much. Every interesting thing I saw on the street, I would think of bringing them to the same place to see what I saw. Every shopping trip was really to buy gifts for them to make them happy and compensate for not bringing them with us. I realized that I had to be extra careful and take really good care of ourselves so that we return safely to the kids. And on the last day of the trip, I was looking forward to seeing them back home.

While we were away, the elder kids wrote diary entries to me. I had told them to do so if they missed us. What they wrote touched me very much and it was really sweet to read their thoughts. And Master 9 was really sweet in his penned down words even though he did not talk much to us when we called home.

If you ask me if I would travel on the next couple trip without the kids, I may really hesitate. Perhaps, it would be good to wait till the kids are in their teens before I can travel without guilt.

Do you feel guilty like me when you travel without the kids?