Because this year’s party was super special marking an important milestone in Tee’s life and that she celebrates no longer being an only child, there were a few lessons that I wanted Tee to learn. The first being that she is so, so, soooooooo, sooooooooooooooooo darn lucky to even have a birthday party, let alone one at this scale. The second lesson was that she should never expect any presents from anyone, even if it was her birthday. I told her that if people took the time off to come for her birthday party to celebrate with her, that alone is a present in itself, which she accepted. Thirdly, I told her that she needed to thank the people who came for coming and it would indeed be more special if she worked hard to make something for her friends instead of just buying them a gift from Toys ‘R’ Us.

I mean, who even has time to make anything these days and how often has Tee actually received a ‘made’ gift? She has received several home-made gifts from Nana comprising cardigans, clothes and a patchwork quilt and from her boyfriend, lots of home-made cards. I pointed out to her that only the people who truly thought she was special would bother taking the time to slog and make a home-made gift with the lesson being that made gifts brought more meaning than purchased gifts and then took the opportunity too to teach her that actions spoke louder than words. No point saying I love you everyday but be unavailable. Show it! She got it. She’s a smart kid.

So for her birthday party, she was very excited to MAKE gifts for her special friends. Not everyone had every gift as she made the decision who to get what but generally, here’s what most of them got.

For the girls, hand and machine sewn five stones. Mommy and Daddy did the sewing, Tee had to fill the rice in.

We made 10 sets of five stones for 10 girls. That’s 50 little rice sacks small enough for tiny hands to play.

Each set of 5 stones were filled into a small green pouch (so they won’t lose them!) which was hand embroidered to show the little girl’s initial. Can you see the alphabet ‘T’ below? Of course, the birthday girl insisted that she wanted a set of her own too.

The boys got hand-painted bottle caps. Mommy bought the bottle caps and Tee painfully painted the bottle caps. Some boys received 5 bottle caps, some 10, depending on whether or not they had boy siblings. I can’t remember how many bottle caps we had in total, certainly more than 50. Tee also had to stack them up into the little boxes that we had for them to store their bottle caps.

We initialed and colour coded the bottle caps so that boys could play and know which ones were their soldiers and which ones were that of their opponents.

Then we hand-made bookmarks for every kid to inculcate the habit of reading. We made it with felt, thread, beading and that hard plastic papery thingies that you find in men’s shirt collars?

Of course, they had to be initialed as well with said 20 kid’s names. The girls got more girlie designs with flowers and the boys got frogs. You could see that after 15 hand sewn bookmarks, the designs got less and less complicated, hahaha……and the workmanship started deteriorating. Sorry!

The 3rd hand made gift was a painting and poor Tee, she had to hand paint a LOT of these 4 leaf clovers for the friend’s of her choice. After hand-painting, she had to colour them (Mommy helped with some colouring, especially when she started getting blisters on her fingers!) in and write words on them. It took her 3 weeks, I think, to complete everything. But I am so proud of her. She also did it because she wanted to so that made me really proud.

Here’s a typical sample of what the boys received, all handmade. A bookmark, a painting by Tee and hand-painted bottle caps in little boxes. Of course, many of the kids probably won’t even appreciate the gifts nor take care of them, but we made them. And we felt a seed of joy within when we made them. What they want to do with them is up to them, or up to their own Moms to teach them.

On top of the hand-made gifts, each kid received a silver party pack filled with goodies – sweets, chocolate, little toys etc. This wasn’t necessary after all our hard work above but what the heck!

Tee was also involved in the flag making that were strung all along the poolside of the party venue. Daddy sewed the flags, Nana cut them to size and Tee with the help of Uncle Ben and Aunty Trina, strung them.

She had lots of fun doing it!

She had also searched the net (yes, my daughter knows how to google!) for green images and chose them herself which Mommy printed and laminated. Then she arranged them on the floor to be strung. We had several of these banners all over the party venue too.

All in all, it was a great experience, a whole 6 weeks of party planning and fun projects whilst Mommy was in confinement.

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Who is Mamapumpkin?
Mamapumpkin spent 7 years in London committing crimes to gain her Bartlett degree in Architecture. She then spent 7 years as a Stay At Home Mom raising her children as documented in this blog of over 15 years thereafter returning to the Corporate World stronger than ever as the Country Director of a British Multinational. She sets out to prove to all, that you can have anything and everything that you want; if you have that fire of desire burning within and the drive to work hard. Even better with much love.

Mamapumpkin has not only grown corporate businesses successfully in the past but has grown not one but TWO network marketing businesses in the notorious MLM (Multi-Level Marketing) industry, achieving success in under 2 years. She believes in the MLM business model but realises the DRASTIC PITFALLS and great stigma attached to it, understanding EXACTLY WHY the majority would shy away (or RUN for their lives) from ANY MLM business. But open your eyes and take time to understand it intellectually, remove your hang-ups, confirm your research, and you may just want to seize an opportunity. She did. And no, she never went about chasing people for sales. She had a sophisticated system work for her through technology and a smartphone.

She now impacts lives authentically with proven strategies amassed through the last decade of her own transformation offering online coaching programmes and always supports the underprivileged. She believes that we can all have a life of our own desires to enable real contribution into the world. But first, one needs to understand what this all means.

A beautiful life without limits.

If you wish to learn some tools to propel your life forward guaranteed, be brave enough to make contact as her life's purpose is to build people. She operates through a discovery call after which she will commit to helping you. Or not.

Most lose out on an opportunity because they are afraid they would be sold to, conned or whatever fear resides in their brain without even trying. And that's on them.

Mamapumpkin is a living testimony that women really can have a lot. Being financially and time free has enabled her to travel the world anytime, anywhere, doing anything, and she spends most of her days with her children, having fun, and supporting others wherever she can. Also having fun.