Family Room

We moved into our apartment 11 years ago when Ryan was one and a half, and Jared just 6 months old. Needless to say we were too busy with the babies to have much energy to deal with home improvements and decorating. In fact, we did not even paint the place, just did some built in storage cupboards and in we went! As our family grew, we find ourselves outgrowing the space, especially where books, toys, and study area are concerned. And did I mention boys are not very neat creatures (lego is a huge culprit)!

With very tiny bedrooms, everything spilled into our living room. Of late we had been thinking about moving but a larger place would be out of the question with the current sky high property prices. Alternatively we looked at apartments that had an additional small room for use as a study/playroom. Finally dh sat me down and asked "how do we want to live?","how do we want our home life to be like"?","what are our objectives for our home?"

The answer surprised me! We came to the conclusion that even though our living room is constantly messy and cramped, we like that everyone congregates here, because the toys and board games are kept here, all our books and bookcases are here, the TV, computers and internet connection are here, so is the dining table, study table, and even the piano! This is where family life happens for us! It wasn't planned, it just evolved that way.

There are some deliberate decisions, like not subscribing to wireless, and keeping the only internet connection in the living room, so that the boys can only surf the net where we can see them. And some enforced impact, for eg, when one or both of the boys are doing homework or studying for exams, nobody else can watch TV and usually some classical music goes on and all of us sit down to read/have bible study, etc. Love that!

We decided this kind of family time is what we want to keep at all cost (especially as they enter teenage years and the impending leaving the nest that follows!). The Family Room is here to stay! We will simply make improvements to make the Family Room more able to accomodate our needs.

So we have decided to renovate! Last two weeks we had been pouring over home magazines, design books (titled along the lines of Living in Small Spaces, Compact Living, etc, lol) meeting contractors, interior designers to get quotes,... it's very exciting and I'll try to document the process in layouts and post them too. We are likely to end up with floor to ceiling book shelves, two work tops to accomodate the two computers and two laptops, cupboards for toys, displays for toys (completed exorforce, lego star wars sets, etc), a more streamlined dining area that doubles up as study table, and finally, a new coat of paint :)

Well with all that happening, you can imagine not much scrapping was done, but I have this layout done in May, following Ali Edward's A Week in The Life of project - documenting one week in our lives in 2010! I was happy to do this since I took a break from last year's 365 project - you should really consider this if you find 365 for a whole year too daunting!

                                     (click on image to see larger image)
You may recognise that this layout is from a template set I made for the Everyday Life Kit that is being given away by The Daily Digi as part of their subscription gift for subscribing to The Digi Game!
Here's my contribution:

And here's the entire kit!

I love The Daily Digi for featuring both well-known and new or relatively unknown designers, and they gave me a huge opportunity last year which was a great honor. Love the monthly Digi Files too, always a great bargain and a chance to try out many designers that we would not otherwise have a chance to!

Now to some great stuff! I've always admired Tawn's creativity, eye for color and balance, and fantastic photography, and this time she's topped herself. She said she did close to 60 layouts in two weeks, I am officially GREEN WITH ENVY, I mean, look at these layouts!!!

How do you do it, Tawn?? Love them all. For more creative goodness, check out her blog - Homemakin' Girl

You know, I really want to catch up on my scrapping (I am one of those who scrap ALL of my photos). And Tawn has inspired me. I am seriously going to start USING my own templates for my layouts, instead of creating every one of them from scratch. Unless I hate the process, I will stick with this plan for a while, it should help me catch up! That would mean a lot less new templates will be created, but I'll make sure one or two is shared at least every month with you here, and we'll see how the plan goes.

Finally, one last created from scratch layout/template to share, here's us snow-mobiling in Sapporo, Hokkaido!!

This template is now available as a set in the store HERE