Enjoying the children

Last week my parents in law who watch my kids for me while I work went away on holiday, so I took leave and stayed home. Besides the oven blowing and the electricity tripping, and a few near misses while trying out all new recipes, I enjoyed having the boys to myself a lot. I'm not sure the feeling is mutual though, lol, they are not used to having mom watching over them all the time!
I realised although Ryan rarely calls anyone, he receives many phone calls from his friends. His conversations are now full of phrases I never use, like " that is so not me..." and he never says "yes" to me anymore, he says "obviously" instead! I can get him to help me out with the journaling and titles for my scrapbook pages, like the "In the Tomb" layout below. How sweet right?
Jared is still innocent and cute, but such an "interesting" kid. The other day his teacher called me and said Jared left stuff in school which he would need for revision. I went to school and picked up an entire stack of books, files, art folio..!! On Thursday evening, they have classes at a chinese language school about ten minutes walk away. We always walked the distance but he was grumbling and wanted to take a bus or taxi. When Ryan called him a lazy bum, he said " I'm not a lazy bum, I'm a sign of the times." I think my eyes rolled three rounds!! All classic moments I must capture in my scrapbooks! For now the blog will have to keep records for me... :)

Here are the layouts I completed this week. I'm getting to a point where I'm despairing if I will ever finish this US trip, have I started a bigger project than I can handle?? But I love the process and can't speed it up. Oh well, a happy problem!
Another love affair with the art at the MET! We are no artist nor critic but we do love impressionists.
Credits: Background paper by Gina Cabrera, blended with Ami Collofello's scalloped paper, stitch also by Ami Collofello, blue ornamental swirl by Goretta Rocha.
I can't say I greatly enjoyed the armour gallery, but the boys and daddy were thrilled!
Credits: chain and hinge from Miss Mint's Wild Weekend, note paper by Tangie designs, knight sketch by LeslyB, mesh by Kim Christensen, striped paper by Nangy Kubo, folded edge by Gunhild, background paper by A Work in Progress by Vicki.


And the templates are available in the store here thanks for looking!

And us at the Egyptian section of the MET

Credits: Black paper from Lauren Reid's BlossomShine, red paper from BiebelScraps Pyramid Collection, Alpha from Natalie Braxton's Snippy bets
This template will be available in the store soon

Shutterfly printing guides

Thanks Kaylee for pointing out the Shutterfly printing guides/templates to me! How did I miss those before? I understand the allowances required for bleeds and trim much better now. My US trip book will be much easier to make when I get there. Yeah!
So if you are thinking of printing through Shutterfly, do check these out here. Thanks again Kaylee.
Thank you Debra too, you can email me at "yindgs at yahoo dot com dot sg" THANKs!

Comments and Replies

It's been a really busy week after the long weekend, not much scrapping done yet, but I do want to reply to some of the comments and questions you have left for me. Apologies that I only get to them once in a while!

Dear Nikki asked me if I know of any inspirational websites or blogs that might help to make only one or two photos look awesome on a page. Well, Nikki, I've not been around the sites and blogs much lately, but I've always loved Ksharonk's simple stunning pages, her blog is over here, and a more recent I've been loving Liz Tanamaha of Paiseley Press' layouts and designs, she has an elegant and chic style, check her out here. There are some stunning single photo pages out there with lots of embellishments, but i'm not familiar enough to recall the sites where I saw them.

But I have been to DST few days ago and found this amazing thread where everyone shared their favorite new kits or designers. Oh my, the stuff I've been missing out! I'm very tempted to do a lot of shopping! Go see it here!

Now, I got my Shutterfly photo book back and it is the first time I had a double page layout printed in it so I want to show you how it looks:

By the way, I love it! :) As I expected, the portion near the centre fold is slightly hidden, as you can see, Jared and I were in the centre bottom picture, but only Ryan shows up well. But I am so happy that the bigger picture at the top of the beach still looks 'straight' and not distorted, and the whole double page has the centre fold effect.

I just want to highlight this, and remind that in your layout, if you use these double page templates, to be careful to place important photos or faces slightly away from the middle.

In fact, the only thing I was disppointed with the printing was that the outer edges got slightly cut off, which I did not expect. Sarah G shared her tips with me recently which I find so good, here's what she does: "I use Elements 5.0 and have been having trouble figuring out the gutter for the two-page layouts when I print my books at Shutterfly. I realize not everyone uses that service, but I just got my 2007 book in (I used a bunch of your templates), and I finally solved my problem.
I have a tool that I can use to set my own guide presets. I set them at vertical .125 inches, 11.75 inches, 12.25 inches, and 23.825 inches, horizontal .125 inches and 11.825 inches. I don't put important details from photos or words in the 1/2" gutter in the middle or on the outside edges, and it worked perfectly! Even though details were lost, nothing looked distorted like it did when I just "eyeballed" it. Thanks Sarah! I've been using your idea since you shared it with me with my latest layouts. I now realise I have to go back and re-do the journaling on my Ground Zero layout before I send to Shutterfly for printing! Just to illustrate Sarah's method, for template 53 below, avoid important details in the edges and middle as marked.
Here's the part of the guide in case you haven't seen it, and Paula B has kindly told me that in PSE 6, you have to simplify the layer before you can "group with previous layer". Thanks Paula!
Well, that's all for tonight, I'll be back in a few days with more layouts, I hope :)

A grand weekend!

It's a grand long weekend for us, we celebrate our nation's 43rd year of Independence (yes, we're young!) tomorrow, tonight the Olympics starts, and the boys have two birthday parties to go to, and we an old freinds' get together BBQ.. phew!

Weekends are so precious. Recently dh and I have been recalling how when we first got married, we were working so hard at our young careers, that weekends were all we had time for each other. One day back then we calculated how many weekends we'd have, if we lived to a certain age, and were shocked to find it was only about 2,500 weekends!! And now we only have 1,700 or so to go!! Besides worship at church and visiting my mom every sunday, at one stage we used to bring the boys out somewhere different every weekend, at another we had a schedule of speech & drama and Mosaic classes, hhmm... now we are basically doing the library and piano class routine... still, as long as it is family time, I guess it's time well-spent. How do you spend your weekends? May we all spend them thoughtfully. :)

Finally got the layouts done. Was not 100% pleased with them, but Im stopping myself from being too perfectionist, and focus on scrapping and recording memories. I still have Orlando pictures to go! And then I would have spent the entire year just scrapping last year's trip!!! Urgh! I'm glad I did the Everydaylife album (by Ali Edwards) starring our everyday life circa 2008, that covered a lot of ground quickly!

Here's all our night shots in NY, I had great fun putting the fun, whimsical touch to this!Credits:Skyline by IKDesigns, everything else from "Paint the sky with stars" kit by Lazy Kitty, loved it!


And this is us at the Natural History Museum.. i'm trying out a 'straight' style, hehe, I'm actually a linear and minimalist girl at heart, though I have recently been having lots of fun with 'skewed' photo layouts. :)
Credits: Green paper by AndreaDesigns, Brown paper by CorinaNielson, flower petal by HeatherAnne Designs.



As usual, the templates for these layouts are available in the store here Thanks for looking!

And finally, here we are at the top of the world....


Credits: Journaling tag by RetroDiva, Foil Stars by DaniMogstad, and gold pewter alphas by DirtyFeetsDesigns.

Oh, and HAVE A WONDERFUL WEEKEND EVERYONE!!!
This template will be available in the store soon

Bit of Blogging and Lots of Inspiration!

I've started 3 layouts but none are completed, so sorry, no template today! I need to focus on scrapping, so I tell myself the only templates that get out are from my own layouts. As you can see, I'm still scrapping my trip from last december!! LOL

One reason I'm slow in scrapping this week is that my dh did some scrapping! He's a teacher and had some photos of trips with his kids and I persuaded him to use one of my templates! Woo..can you tell I'm thrilled??

Been wanting to update my blog on the computing situation with my boys. If you have been reading the blog, you would know that we have huge tussles regarding computer gaming time. For a few months, dh and I resorted to removing the computer cable everyday before we left for work!! Finally 3 weeks ago, Jared asked, " If you never leave the cable in, how will you know whether we can now be trusted to keep to the rules?" So we tried, and true enough, the boys kept up with our rules, and we had not removed the cables ever since. I know for a few times, when I'm home later than usual, Jared checks on his Insaniquarium game and Ryan surfs, but they did not play the computer games, so we're quite thankful and really hope it keeps up!

And here are the inspiration. I do love seeing how the same templates can turn out so uniquely differently in each one's style.

Here are ones by Nikki, I love how she uses her photos as backgrounds. Of course, you need super photos like hers! Aren't her embellishing just beautiful?


Super cool layout by Livia, I must try black and white photos with colorful embellishments.

And have you ever seen Chicago like this? Veevs, awesome layout!

Isn't that fantastic eye candy? Thank you ladies sharing so much inspiration with us!