What did you do this week?

Well, all four of us went to watch the movie Star Trek which was so cool and fun, and Ryan looked like he is going to be a new generation Trekkie, we have visited a few secondary school Open Houses with Ryan who is due to start applications soon (a whole new world!), I attended a so sweet so special Mothers' Day celebration organised by Jared's class at school, Jared has been crazy about playing with dough, I received my latest soft cover photobook from Shutterfly(!), the boys had been bunking in our master bedroom because the air conditioning in their room has broken down, Jared just did his national physical tests - running today, and we have all these captured in pictures, ready to go into our 365 album for the year!! Yippee!!As you can see here, I wanted to see how my 365 pages look together and got a rush seeing them all together! I can just see and imagine how wonderful the year's album is going to be, and I'm all excited again, and very motivated! Hope these next few layouts motivate you too! Keep going, find the easiest way you can to scrap them, don't worry about the aesthetics of the layout too much, focus on the capturing of an entire year of your family and your life, and that album we're all going to have at the end of the year!I also loved Janet's post about 365 at The Daily Digi here - her photos are so inspiring! And I also found fantastic 365 layouts by Christine using my templates - which she has kindly allowed me to share here - thanks Christine!
Now have I motivated you enough to press on with your 365? :> Check out more of Christine's awesome layouts on her blog . I just found out also from The Daily Digi that she is one of the ladies behind DigiDare - love the site and their layouts - especially the ones that dares you to journal - i need to get more of those done!

And here are two more 365 layouts of mine, you can download both the templates for these at the bottom of this post.
Credits:All papers from Jackie Eckles' Write it down. Word art by Lynn Grieveson
Credits: Papers from white almond kiss by Amy Hutchinson, word art downloaded from ScrapGirls

Finally two more Japan layouts which templates can be found in the STORE thanks for looking!
Both are from the morning we spent at the Hakone Open Air Museum - a sculpture museum set on the hill of Hakone, a totally unexpected awesome place - I can't describe how much I loved it, (there was even a little hot spring where they let you soak your feet seated two by two on the grass with a towel, unfortunately we did not have time) - I decided to let the beauty of the pictures speak for themselves and set the photos in linear un-skewed manner in these two layouts. Finding the perfect elements took a bit more time but I think I nailed it finally. :>Credits: Paper by Zazou, Swirl from Creating Beauty by W&W, flower overlay by Corina Nielson, alpha by Traci King

Credits: Paper by Choubinette, Ribbon and 'a beautiful day' word art by Fanette, overlay by Lien, beautiful definition by Michelle Coleman

Here are the templates i used for my 365s.

Download them here. But don't just download them, use them!! :) And thanks for every comment - they are greatly appreciated!

Going slow

Oh, I've been going slowly recently, scrapbooking-wise. Just had to spend a lot more time with the boys lately to catch up on their work and prepare for their mid year exams. Ryan is very hardworking so I just need to work with him on approaching his revision in the smart way. Jared has had issues with motivation and I've had to sit beside him for hours daily for nearly three weeks now doing catch up - it's been tough for him (and me!) I'm happy to report he has put in a lot of effort and starting to feel good about his work again. As for me, my maths and science has improved significantly, it's all coming back to me! I may be as smart as a fifth grader soon! lol!

I couldn't believe it, but after years of online shopping, my credit card was frauded :( No idea how it happened, but for now I'm sticking to sites that accept Paypal only so I don't have to key in my card number anywhere. Has this happened to anyone of you?

Did managed to sneak in some shopping over NSD :) and got a few layouts out finally. For the next two layouts, I've intentionally tried to work with a white or near white background, for a change, and to bring out the colors in the photos. I find that this works really well if the multiple photos have many different colors in them, or the photos are dark colored or were taken in dark conditions. Try it! And I like putting in a border of some sort to 'ground' the layout.

Here's us wandering the streets of Harajuku - a teenage haunt and fashionable shopper's playground in Tokyo. We DID NOT fit in. Haha! But had fun anyway!
Credits: Background paper by Denise Docherty (adjusted brightness and contrast), alpha by Lili from ScrapArtist, painted buttons by BrentBoone, painted flowers by Carola Steedman and Miss Mint.
And in the evening of the same day, we made it to Shibuya, another super busy shopping area, we were suitably impressed at its famous super busy junction, the shopping was great of course!
Credits: papers by Ziggles, swirls by Sarah Robinson, dots by Kristen
As usual I've put these templates in the store

On the next few days of our trip, we went out of tokyo on day trips. Here is the first one spent at Hakone on its quaint 'zig zag' train.
Credits: background paper by Vinnie Pearce, sun motive by A work in progress by Vicki
This template is now available as a set in the store HERE