simply yin

Layout Inspiration

2012-01-27T07:34:00.000-08:00

I love seeing layouts made from the templates, it's amazing how they are transformed into unique layouts in each one's own style. I have been 'collecting' a lot of these layouts that have been shared with me, love to share some major inspirations!

Thank you to all the ladies for sharing, sorry I held onto to some of them for so long! :P

(Reply to comment on my last post, hsmom asked which app my dh uses on his android phoe to capture his 365 phosos: The android app my dh uses is 365 photos - it does not present the view as well as my iphone app, but it's functional in terms of capturing the photo, tracking them by days on calendar, and being able to export for my scrapping use, so good enough!)

First up, a lovely scene of gift-giving by Anja Breuer

Here is an amazing scene from the Netherlands, Grid Doerenkamp shares the story behind it:

In our village we started a new tradition last year: a crib-walk. Lots of families put a christmas crib outside their house or in the window. Some dedicated women put them all together on a list and made a nice route to walk past each of them. Last year we did three days with each a two-hour-walk over the whole route! This year there will be even more cribs to be seen, ca. 130 families participate - us included, of course! It's fun to see how different the cribs all are. Some are big, some tiny, some have only three figures and a cabin, some show a whole landscape with mountains and houses and even a train, some are made with dolls and some with Playmobil. It's really nice to see and I have photographed them all. Some of them are seen on my layout. The village in the background is our village where we live.

And the following are just so cute layouts by Kim, who also did the fabulous LOVE layout which I posted in last year's post here. Love the photos of her kids and how her layout focuses on them!

Karen Mathre does an amazing amount of layouts all the time of her family and so much that they do together:

and this sweetie-pie layout and the yummy one next are both by Marlyn Ramirez from the Philippines!

And here are some amazing layouts by Michelle Rice of her a Round the World trip via Russia, Mongolia and China!

Here's a cute 'scary' layout by Aimee Hernandez

Next is this lovely happy layout by Kathryn :)

And be charmed by this vacation layout by 'Be Charmed Photography'!

And then there are the always awesome layouts with awesome photos from Tawn @Homemakin' Girl

Thank you to all you wonderful ladies for sharing these layouts with us!

Project 365 + Project Life!

2012-01-24T00:34:00.000-08:00

First I would like to wish all who celebrate the Lunar New Year a Blessed Lunar New Year!! We are in the midst of hectic and wonderful celebrating with family and friends and having a great time meeting especially our extended family, including my cousins, their children and grandchildren!

Yes! After a few months enjoying Ali Edwards' Project Life pages and camping at Becky Higgins blog for the last few weeks, deliberating how I will go about it, I have jumped in onto Project Life, and am loving it!

When I finally made the decision in the first week of Jan, I went straight into Amazon, bought the Turquoise edition, the orange Clementine binder, and photo pockets B & F because everything else was out of stock, and I WANT to get started! Then I had to pay an incredible (Shhh!) amount of shipping for it to be shipped to Singapore. Last week just before my stuff arrived, I realised that Project Life is available in Singapore (silly me!) and ran down to Scraplicious to purchase photo pockets A and the 12X12 pockets, and I was all set!

And here's my Cover page - scraplifting from Jennifer Woodbury's page featured on Becky's blog.

I was very happy to include our family's favorite verse Micah 6:8, using the word art I made for our living room! Also used the curvy outlined label from 'I like you' by Lauren Grier (recolored) used twice below - printed, cut out and adhered onto the Project Life cards.

I love that we can include physical memorabilia in PL, which I miss in making digital albums, scanning them is not quite the same.

And remember these pages from my Project 365 in 2009? We love that album for capturing everyday life!

Now I only want one album for the year, and it must all be do-able, tell our stories of our 2012 without too much time and cost .... putting all of these desires together, after much deliberation, this is my plan for my 2012 Project Life album:

capture daily 365 photos in fortnightly 12x12digital layouts to be printed out and slot into Project Life Binder
print 3x4 or 4x6 of the everyday life photos that I want to give special mention + journal on the PL journal cards, and slot into the photo pockets
include memorabilia using the photo pockets
add 12x12 digital layouts for special events or memories as I feel like it

Here's my first fortnight's Photo 365 layout - I love how it turned out :) I think I will be able to keep this up !

Credits: Background paper from Digital Design Essentials, camera stamp by Listgirl, date word art by Lauren Reid, corners by Lauren Grier, and alpha by Lili + Yin Template 290 B.

Have made eight of such 12x12 templates, they contain 15 or 16 photos each, to make up a month, I will be keeping the embellishment minimal so they don't take too much time, and focus on the photos and journalling- the set is available in the store in case you are interested in joining me in the fortnightly layouts - we will complete the year in 24 layouts, how's that?

Pin It
Thanks to Steph's article on Project 365 on The Daily Digi, I found and downloaded an App that is really helping me keep up with P365, using my iphone to take and keep track of the daily photos. This is the one I use: PROJECT 365 but they all work quite similarly. Here's my month's photos so far in calendar view:

It's working so well I've persuaded dh and the boys to download the android equivalent so they too can take photos from their point of view, and be incorporated in our family's 365 layouts!

I also hope to use our Project Life album to capture and be our family journal for reflections, family devotions, prayers and anything else that speaks to us as a family. On the first of January, we spent a bit of time talking about our One Little Word (we did it last year too but I failed to capture it on a layout). I printed out four copies of the word list from Ali's blog and each of us had a highlighter pen to circle the word(s) that speak to us. Now I'm able to incorporate them into our PL album!! I love that with PL, we can be a lot more up to date with capturing the everyday and the now, and can flip through them as the year progresses. I hope this will be meaningful for the whole family.

And finally, I am in the midst of finishing up our 2011 album, there are probably about 10 more layouts to go, and these are two of them, just quick and simple layouts, templates are being shared below.

Download these two templates here - have fun creating! Do share how you plan to capture 2012 memories, and if you have layouts to share, email them to me at yindgs at yahoo dot com dot sg, I will choose some to post on my blog. Thank you so much!

2011-12-24T06:17:00.000-08:00

Blessed Christmas! “Therefore, since we have been made right in God’s sight by faith, we have peace with God because of what Jesus Christ our Lord has done for us.” (Romans 5:1 NLT)
May you know and experience the Reason for the season - we are the reason for His Coming! We are blessed indeed!

I remembered this video that Tracey shared last year, it is so wonderful to have a joyful moment of worship and praises amid bouts of shopping and present frenzy :)

We are just back from Beijing, we had a great, great time. I managed to limp all over Beijing, even up the magnificent Great Wall. Here are some pics from our trip

Blessed Christmas everyone!

What do our scrapbooks tell about us?

2011-12-05T02:57:00.001-08:00

Firstly thank you all for your support and comments during my stint on The Digi Files 35, and the sale in my store, really appreciate you so much!

Yes, I'm afraid I fractured my little right toe over a week ago, and have been on medical leave from work, trying to rest it and let it heal. I greatly appreciate the rest, but the injury came at a bad timing, as we are due to leave for Beijing on 7 Dec. We can't cancel (booked the cheapest no cancellation airtickets) so to Beijing I shall go, hobbling, limping, or otherwise! Unfortunately we had planned skiing as well, I will have to sit that out :(

But the enforced rest gave me time to plan the trip and to enjoy lots of scrapbooking! I did some layouts from our daily lives for our 201 1 Album using the templates from my Template 262 Album Set

Above: The boys are on holidays now and on the computer everyday (gasp) We limit them and schedule in games time everyday - great family times - we play to win! (wink)

Credits: Paper from Keen by A Pennington, Spinner by Amanda Carlson, alpha by Designs by lili

Below: Jared has graduated from Primary School! By the way his final PSLE results were great, praise be to God! It ensured his place in the difficult to get in six-year integrated program school. However he was not able to appeal to R's school, where he had hoped to join his brother. We encouraged him to trust that the Lord knows best, He makes no mistakes! and J has accepted this with enthusiasm.We are just so thankful :) This layout is made to remember his graduation and tell him how proud we are of him!!

Credits: A+ by The Tattered Pear, Hat by Chelle's Creation, Paper by Jennifer Barrette

Above: Ryan continues to do extremely well in school, surpassing our expectations time and again! 4.7 GPA!! How did he do it? Made a layout to celebrate his results and how proud we are of him too!

Credits: Paper from Bloom by A Pennington, paint by EM Designs, word art by Lauren Reid

Above: Found these photos in my iphone of those days spent revising for Jared's exams. Lovely pics of father and son hunched over Math problems, just love the sight of them :)

Credits: Pencil, shaving and scribble by Rachel B Designs, abc word art by Holly Designs, paper by Simple Girl Scraps

Below: During the hols, we allow them more gaming time, and sometimes dh join them as well. I will not be able to understand but it is amazing how much bonding they can have over these games!

Credits: Paper by Jennifer Barrette, console by Kate Hadefield

What do our scrapbooks tell about us?
You know, as the year come to a close, I reflect on my scrapbook pages, and wonder:
1) Did I capture all of our lives this year and who we are in my scrapbooks? and
2) What do my scrapbook pages tell of us and our lives?

To Question 1: I must say I scrapbook a disproportionate # of pages of our travels, just because so many photos are taken and they are such memorable family time and journeys. Of our daily lives I have captured quite a bit, including a Week in the Life this year, but what is missing is what each of us do outside the family, at work, at school, eg of dh and his tennis, of the boys with their friends, as I rarely have photos of these. Mental note to include some of these pages! 2nd note to self: our faith is such an important part of us and I must add/include pages that reflect how God is involved in our lives.
How about you, do you feel there are any aspect missing from your pages?

To Question 2: If I am a stranger looking at our pages this year I would probably find this family is one that loves their travels, one that has a close family bond, and one that spends a lot of time studying, lol! Yes unfortunately we live in a society that gives opportunities based on a somewhat narrow definition of meritocracy and academic results have become so important. Dh and I try hard not to join the pressure-cooker system, we will push the boys and are strict to the extent that we know is within their abilities, but we try hard to expand their world view, other interests, apart from studies. We believe our children are God's gifts to us as much as we are His stewarts to raise them to know Him, love Him, live their lives in His Will and for His Glory. So we want as much to train them in Godly counsel and discipline, as to enjoy the beauty and joys God has created for us .... hhmmm, much prayer required to stay on track! The boys might not agree though ... couple of years ago, J went up during Sunday School worship to ask for corporate prayer - his prayer request? " My parents are too strict." !!! LOL. We press on...

Do not, however, think we are those overpowering parents producing over-achieving kids aka Tiger Mom ( Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother by Amy Chua - she has controversial views) - case in point: I have failed in getting both our boys to learn to play the piano or any musical instrument for that matter. R made it to grade 1 and J did not even touch grade 1, before we heaved a collective sigh of relief and agree they just don't have them musical cells and let it go. :D To this day dh regrets though and can't help thinking that I (being the one who can play) could have pushed them a little harder and they will now be able to enjoy making music (something dh did not have a chance to learn)... I guess we will never know...?

More Layouts
Well, I digress... we certainly have too many travel pictures, and here are some more! Used my old templates to do these next ten layouts, and went with white background to simplify further, completing all ten in about 3 nights!
These layouts are all from the time we spent at the World Expo in Shanghai last year, it was an amazing experience for our museum loving family, it was literally a World Museum for us! For 3 days we pounded the huge compound, trying to get into as many pavillions, sample as many types of foods, shop at as many markets, watch as many performances, experience as much as we can!!

Click on image to enlarge
See below left how Jared was so tired out he fell asleep at one rest stop (Template 22)

Various Pavillions showcasing China's technological advances (Template 93)

And only at the World Expo we get to visit North Korea and Iran!! (Template 231)

We spent time in the exhibits of the African, Pacific Islands and Middle East countries, those we might never have a chance to visit (Template 159) see top left pic J again fell sleep waiting for me to do some shopping :D

Had a chance to visit some European and South America countries (Template 85)

Morroco and Turkey were full of culture and mystery (Template 49)

The Italy and Sweden pavillions were so classy and chic! (Template 91)

Then we had a chance to visit the China Pavillion, we begged to be let in on the last day of our trip, having not been able to acquire entry passes (due to over-popularity) and the guards let us in! (Adapted from Template 106 - this new one is available for download further down as Template 285)

The best exhibits were this animated ancient painting that stretched an entire hall and every person in the painting 'came alive'! And we got to see the superbly preserved Horse and chariots from Xi Ann! (Template 25)

Magnificent China Pavillion! (Template 75)

All credits for the previous ten layouts: Paint from Painted On by E.M. Designs (this must be the most used resource in my stash!!), crayon scribbles by Brittish Designs, Purple painted background by Corina Nielson (color changed), Globe and pink dots by Kaye Winiecki, postcard stamp and ancient map from Wanderlust by Pink Reptile Designs, pink paint by Something Blue Designs, Paper with writing, flares, wire word art, arrow all from Around the World collab by Sahlin Studio and Brittish Designs

On the same trip last year in June to Shanghai, we also made a sidetrip to visit SuZhou, famed in ancient days for its beautiful gardens and waterways. The city was built on crisscrossing canals, which were used for transportation instead of roads. It is a modern city now, but pockets of of its classical beauty remains:

Credits: Paper by Chelles' Creations, foliage brush by Tracy Ann

Credits: Paper from Scrap Addicts, paper flower by Sahlin Studios, and leaves by Rachel Young

In the evening we took a break at this traditional tea house and had a game of chinese chess.

Credits: Paper from Lucky Papers by Simple Girl Scraps, leaves by Anna Aspnes, tea leave heart shape by Sahlin Studios and Chess piece scanned in by me

An unforgetable boat trip down the historically rich canal

Credits: Paper by Simple Girl Scraps, leave art by K Pertiet

Finally, dh had to take these photos of all the bikes we noticed, how they had been lovingly added personal touches, how practical and depended upon they are for all forms of transportation :)

Credits: Paper from Delilah by Allison Pennington

And while we leave for Beijing, I will leave you with these two 12X12 templates to play with

- Download Here and

Here to Play!

It will be great to hear your comments, I will post from Beijing if I get the chance!

I'm on the November Digi Files!!

2011-11-10T02:45:00.000-08:00

I'm so, so, so VERY honored to be invited back to be part of The Daily Digi's Digi Files for November! Today Yin Designs is being featured, so do hop over to The Daily Digi to take a look :) Thank you to Steph and Katie for this great opportunity! Can you believe Anna Aspnes, Dianne Rigdon, Ajay Abney, Pink Reptile designs, Deca Designs, and Studio Charlize are also contributors! Each months' Digi File is only $5, an incredibly good deal! You can sign up for their subscription plan by clicking on the banner below:

And here is my contribution to the Digi Files #35!

I greatly enjoyed creating these pages, especially the single pages, all photos taken by dh using his Vista Quest , must be the tiniest digital camera around, I think, that takes these quirky little pictures, that makes these interesting layouts :)

Credits: Background paper, paint smudge, sea shells, word art, ringspill from Tropical Paradise by WM(squared), word arts by Suddenly Artistic , word art and flower sticker from Vacation by Wild Blueberry Ink

I Survived my Child's first overseas trip without Me!
Jared has come back safely from his 4 days school trip to Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam! His school took 200 12 year-olds there for learning (museums and the Cu Chi Tunnels), sharing (they visited a Vietnamese school) and sight-seeing. We wonder how the teachers survived it and are so thankful to them for giving our kids such a great opportunity! (Ryan laments that he still had not had such a chance at a school overseas trip) The trip costs each child S$590 (about US$480), our government Edusave fund paid S$300 and we paid the rest. It was a great deal as they stayed in a 5 star hotel and flew SIA!
Before he left for the trip I nagged him so much, he kept telling me "Mom i know what you're going to say for the next 15 minutes!"and proceeded to do just that, lol. I tried to be a level-headed, modern, open mom, but it was hard to stay cool and calm especially when all the kids did not call home as instructed on the first night, 4 hours after touch down at Vietnam! They were apparently delayed and were too tired when they got to their hotel past midnight. The next few days were almost the same in terms of communicability and it sure was hard for me! Thankfully some of the moms (who had daughters that messaged a few times a day) fed us boys' moms some information so we could 'get' by, bless the girls, haha!
Especially during each evening when the three of us left at home find ourselves having these rather quiet and serious conversations, we so missed the sometimes crazy, nonsensical inputs from Jared! I was going on so much about missing Jared that dh and Ryan joked about drugging me till Jared got home, lol!
In due course after a 2 hour flight delay Jared arrived home none the worst, thoroughly enjoyed the trip, a little wiser, and a little more independent. And me, a little better at letting go and letting my little boy grow up :) He will be thirteen in 2 months time and I know there is a lot more of letting go I will have to do - as Tracey said to my last post, this age is so exciting, this age also keeps us on our knees!

Here are some photos he took on the trip:
This is a board game J and his team mates made, for 'teaching' English to the Vietnamese children they met. I must ask him, I'm not sure how it's played :)

And here's a scene from Ho Chi Minh City. Bikes everywhere!

He had no photos where he was in the picture! There were lots of photos where his friends were holding their cameras to their faces taking photos of him though, lol. Aren't they cute! It's fun looking through the lens of my son!

Mousescrappers.com
Some time ago I came to know about this lovely scrapbooking community where the focus is on anything Disney related! You can find Disney tips, resort & travel info, Disney layouts and scrapbooking supplies! Recently I had a chance to get to know a group of ladies at Mousescrappers.com who are volunteering to make photobooks for families of children who have had Make a Wish trips to Disney World. The books are of photos from their wish trips! It is just so meaningful I had to join them. However, it is the lives of the children and the families, their courage, joy and grace that touches and blesses us many folds more. If you would like to contribute or help, please let me know by emailing me at yindgs at yahoo dot com dot sg, and I'll link you up if they need more help. Isn't it a privilege that our hobby can be part of something so meaningful!

And here are more Shanghai trip layouts, it was really nice scrapping the photos and reminiscing and checking my travel journal for details to journal, I do have so much to catch up though!
Here we were at the Science & Technology Museum. It's almost compulsory for us to visit the Science museum in every city we visit :P . What was different in the Shanghai museum was these various robots doing Gungfu moves, dancing chinese dance!

Credits: Background Paper by EGiovanni, stickers from Danielle Engebretsen, Allison Pennington, and 'Science' page by Abish Allen created from PDD Hypothesis

This next layout is from the time we spent at the Historical Museum of Shanghai - really charming museum that brought to life how the traditional chinese and new western ways coexisted in old Shanghai.

Credits: Background paper and coins by Girl Boheme, Flowers by Heather T, and Alpha by Jady Day Studio

And then we spent a meaningful time at the old home and museum of Mr Sun Yat Sen, learning a lot about his life, ideology, brilliance, and his love for China and the people.

Credits: Background paper from Sahlin Studio's watercolorpapers, black ink by Emily Merritt, Borders by Shawna Clingerman, alpha by Retrodiva designs

And here is the first of many layouts to come, featuring the World Expo at Shanghai 2010! We spent 3 full days at the World Expo, exploring many countries' pavillions, exhibits, finding out about places we might never be able to visit, tasting their food, buying their souvenirs, it was so much fun and interesting and just the sort of stuff my family digs :)

Credits: Background paper from Chelle's Creations, earth and word art by Kaye Winiecki, flags by Miss Cato

More photos from the World Expo - night scene - arguably even more beautiful! We got there as early as we can and leave as late as we can, and start again the next day!

Credits: Background paper by Pretty in Green, glitter by Emily Giovanni

Made this template for you to download, scroll further down for the link

And here we are with my cousin's family in Shanghai, we had a great, great time catching up, enjoying their hospitality and company!

Credits: Background paper by Allison Pennington, border from yesteryear by The Tattered Pear, alpha by Gina Miller

You can download both of these templates here! Have fun and thank you for your comments!

Seasons of Life

2011-10-20T08:22:00.000-07:00

We are studying Ecclesiates in church and it does feel like a season of life is passing for me! Jared's big PSLE exams are finally over. Certainly studying was a big part of it, but more than that, Jared has grown and matured so much in so many other ways :) In my opinion, the Lord allowed a rejection from his dream secondary school, and through it Jared learnt the powerful lessons of humility, teachability, responsibility, working for a goal, and the personal satisfaction of working hard on something and knowing you did well. I know, big words and phrases, huge stuff!

He is also learning to Gpray and trust God about the choices - he hopes to try applying for the dream school again when the results are out while also asking Him for guidance about the other two schools where he has been offered a place. Can you imagine, my little boy, facing such huge decisions so well?

Last week, J and I had a cute candid conversation about this, that went something like this:
Me: You know, if you find that you tend to excel at big national exams, you should go to school A.
J: No, I prefer relaxed.
Me: Then you had better go to school B, which is a six year program that allows you to skip one national exam! No need to try for the 'dream school'!
J: But I prefer interesting.
Haha! He sure has his own priorities clearly sorted out! We continue to pray and await God's choice!

Right after the exams, J's school informed that they are organizing a school trip to Vietnam and Jared is selected. Wow, another step forward, travelling overseas without mommy! He is terribly excited about the without mommy part, only I am cringing inside, lol. I have to let go, it is that season of life :)

Similarly for dh, remember I completed a page myself for a daybook in my life in Aug? I also got dh to do a page and this is the result:

I so loved to read some of his answers, especially "I am creating... a stable home for the family" Love him!

And also some of his deep concerns for Jared showed "I am thankful... for Jared's getting into 2 great schools, what a terrible feeling for him if he had to face rejection at such a tender age", "I am hoping... that Jared will go through these exams with his spirit intact"

And this is funny and so accurate: "Around the house... toys, toys and more toys. a busy house, full of creative activities: stop motion movie making, computer game writing, scrapbooking and tonnes of books."

If you haven't, capture your day and your sentiments in a Daybook page and include it in your scrapbook albums!

It was so nice to be able to do a post after a long month! I played around in blogger and found that a new series of dynamic views are now available and it looks real cool! Here's a preview, click HERE to try the new view. You can even toggle to different views on the black menu bar there!

I'm now making great efforts to catch up on my trip photos! I'm probably only a third way through my Shanghai trip album that was in June last year! Here are some I did so far:
This layout is from a morning we spent in QiBao, touted in the guide book as an original town preserved, but we found it to be terribly turned into a tourist trap! Still, being where the chinese tourists go was interesting, just look at the top two pictures in the second column from the right. Those were pig snorts and baby ducks! I ran from the scene, dh managed to take the pictures, lol!

This Miniature 'museum' was also in Qibao, you won't believe how tiny these furnitures, vases, sculptures were! About an inch tall but oh so delicately carved from semi-precious stones, just amazing.

Next we went to a fun shopping space at Tai Kang Lu built into old alleyway homes, it's now has hip and cool shops existing in these old buildings with families still living in the upper stories.

And this was how we spent an authentic sunday morning the Shanghainese way, in the City park. These above layout templates are in the store.

And I bought my first strand of real cultured pearl necklace in this Shanhai market. At least, I hope they are real! The store owner shaved the pearl with a knife, to show me that underneath it is authentic pearl with real sheen and shine. Looks real to me! I loved that I could customise the length and select the individual pearls that I want for my necklace!

Hope you like this template, download it here. Have fun with it, and thanks for your comments!

Technology, iPhone and Scrapbooking

2011-09-17T08:37:00.000-07:00

You might have seen in my Week in the Life pages that I got myself an iPhone last month. It has created a bit of a stir in my family! If you'd been following this blog, you will know that we as parents try very hard to guard our boys against the invasion of (or addiction to) technology/computers/phones/internet/games. My boys have claimed and protested that they are the only two children in Singapore that do not have phones, X-box, nintendo, Wii, and the like. (Well I found another parent who has the same convictions so now we both tell our children they are the only four in Singapore!)(We finally gave Ryan a phone when he turned 13 and has to travel across the island to/from school by public transport)(Jared is eagerly waiting for his turn - he turns 13 in 4 months time) :P

So it was hard to justify my iPhone! I am not into any games, nor am I on facebook or twitter. But I enjoy being able to access online stuff and check emails and blogs and forums especially when I'm commuting or waiting, and love that I can organise my entire life on it, lol! I'd be honest, I was rather caught up with trying out apps, wallpapers, finding the perfect cover.. Dh was not really disapproving but mildly amused. But he teased me no end about it and called me his 'teenage wife' a few times, and he got me this card: Okay, I get it! (lol)

But the Lord Himself sent me a timely reminder, when at BSF (Bible Study Fellowship) we received an article entitled: How R U Connecting? by Susie Rowan. She quoted Psalm 68:6 "God sets the lonely in families..." in that families are meant to dispel loneliness, but nowadays we find connectivity isolating family members, reducing face to face conversations and interactions and making it harder for us to connect with our children and each other....

Modern connectivity diluting Real connectivity! Sad but so real in our lives! Susie suggested many ways to counter this: Be the Parent (exercise control), Don't rush in (to buy that first phone or game), Unplug (set aside time as a family), ... but what hit me most is that we must Model proper use of technology in our own life. Ohhh, it's hard.. but I must try. So no iphone during meals or family time, and keep internet or scrapping for when the kids are in bed and all the chores are done! I want to make sure my phone/internet/computer is a blessing not a distraction to what is most important to me! I can do this!

Speaking of blessing of the iphone, what I have loved most about having it is what Katie the Scrapbook Lady mentioned, that the Best Camera is the one that is always with us! I have taken many more on the spur of the moment photos, so many more snapshots of here and there, whenever I thought, this is a moment(!)

Armed with these precious, but not the most perfect pics, I played with them and realised that if I cropped them close, they look great and intimate and tell a lovely story.... (even though for many of these layouts i only had one photo!)
Never a dull moment ..

Dh having an impromptu heart to heart talk with Jared...

Dh and I sharing a cuppa...

Jared and his antics and Miffy..

To mark the super cute iphone cover dh got for my birthday after teasing me no end about searching for one..

Ryan spoke his mind in church... a lol moment!

time with my family on my birthday...

How the boys are constantly connected to earphones these days...

Us after sampling mooncakes for about 2 hours (yikes!) at a local mooncake fair

And guess what? In view of Jared's big exam coming up, we proposed to the boys to totally lay off computer games until the exams are over, and though they grumbled a bit, to our surprise, they agreed! They have been completely off gaming, on their own accord, for three weeks now, and will be for three more weeks (!) - We must be doing something right! Haha! Here's the layout to remember this momentus event:

And this one shows how when computer games went away, the legos came out to play :)

(Credits: Background paper by SugarPlum. Birthday Wishes layout: heart by Danielle Engebretson, others all by Sahlin Studios. Boys will be Boys layout: Round stamp by Jackie Eckles, wordart by Suddenly Artistic and Vera Lim. Sharing a Cuppa layout: love stamp by Honeydesigns, Coffee mugs by Fei Fei, Do not disturb sign by K Winiecki. Heart to heart with Dad layout: puzzle piece by Tattered Pear, quote marks by Digital Design Essentials, Moustage cut out and speech cut out by Allison Pennington. No Computer Games layout: all embellishments and papers by Peppermint Creative - TechnoGeek kit. Never a Dull Moment layout: paper by Akiko, elements by JKneipp and Kaye Winiecki. Greatest Hits layout: Earphones by J Kneipp, treble cleft by Brittish designs, record by Dani Mogstad. Celebrate Family layout: Hat by Nicole Young, flower by Tracy Ann Designs. Mooncake Layout: heart by Honeydesigns, cake stand by Nancie Rowe Janitz. Lego layout: Smile tag by Mmareda, arrows by Flergs, play by H Roselli, road from Sussie M's Boyzone elements.)

I really enjoyed and loved creating every one of these pages, as I publish this post, I have 6 more layouts worth of iPhone taken pics waiting to be scrapped! Everyday moments at their best, I say!

And one last iPhone related comment: I went a searching for apps that will help me in scrapping, and this is the best one I found. Moe's Notes. .

Unfortunately it's aethestically rather manly and functional looking (would have loved some colors or funky touches in terms of looks) but it gives the ability to record moments with photos, journaling, audio, video, logs it with time and location stamp on a calendar view! I can easiliy browse its calendar for any log when I am ready to scrap, just email the entire note (neatly packed in a zip file) to myself to save on my harddisk and for my scrapbook page. Have also been capturing the boys' crazy conversations, and jared's oral practices too, will be precious since his voice is likely to break anytime now! And especially great for capturing those Everyday Life stories :)

Just a quick update on Jared's big exam (PSLE) and his applications to various secondary schools. He has received acceptances from two of the schools, but was rejected by his 'dream' school. Thankfully he was not crushed but instead is now very motivated to try to do extremely well in the exams for a second chance at applying to that school. At first we were worried and even Ryan wondered if the Lord was too harsh in handing him such a great disappointment, but now I can clearly see why - Jared is learning through this setback precious lessons about diligence, humility, and maturity that are far more important in the long run. He is quite literally transforming, it has been so heartening for this mommy! So I want to give thanks to God and also say, we are so proud of you, Jared!

On the scrapbooking front, I have been catching up on pages for our 2011 family album, here are some layouts from our visit to the Red Dot Museum and Fireworks during National Day celebrations.

The Red Dot Design Museum is one of two on the planet! The other one is in Germany. It celebrates the designs that wins the yearly Red Dot Design awards for innovative product design, and the museum is so much fun!

They even have a section to showcase how Tupperware was designed and made, including how the various colored plastics were "concorted"!

I scanned a copy of the Red Dot Museum layout map to include in my layout :)

(Credits: Fireworks Layout: Background paper - blended papers from Flerg and Designs by Gabi, fireworks by Sahlin Studios. Red Dot Museum Layout: blue squares by cinnamon designs, red dot by Corina designs, paper by Sahlin Studios. Tupperware layout: gears by Dani Mogstad, paper by Tattered Pear. Creativity layout: Background paper by Dunia, painted circle by JLarsen, element by Studio MGL in learning to fly kit)

Finally, do want to leave you with a sample template from my 'cropped iPhone' layouts, you can find the rest in the store.

Download here. Have fun cropping and greatly appreciate your comments!

Week in our LiFe - So Blessed

2011-08-12T19:37:00.000-07:00

Our Week in the Life pages are completed!! I have immensely enjoyed this week of capturing our life on a daily basis, so reminiscent of my Project 365 days in 2009, enjoyed it very much. As I look at our life splashed across the pages, simply am so thankful at how blessed we are!

It was a very ordinary week, and weekdays we were all in school or at work, so I've organised my pages not by days but by themes - weekday morning routine, weekend meal highlights, daily studying routine, etc. It worked beautifully :)

I kept it simple and used Sue Cumming's, and Suddenly Artistic's beautiful wordarts. Came together quickly!

I'm still lacking a spot of journaling, am still thinking how I might do up an additional page or two to capture all the journaling/thoughts of the week in one place.Will also include my Daybook entry to complete it :)

Also been hanging around Ali Edwards' and been so inspired by hers and other scrapbookers' pages and ideas. Just been so basking in the glow of this wonderful community capturing our lives together! I'm so blessed and thankful I am a part of it all! Project Life is tugging at me too :)

And to top it all off, my Rawa album arrived! (see pages in earlier post) Just so wonderful to hold it as a book in my hands :P

Finally, I've made a new page using a similar style as my week in the life for our Chinese New Year Reunion Dinner - easy!

Saved this template for you here. The rest of the page templates will be in the store soon. Thanks for dropping by and sharing my joy :)

Download here. Have fun!

Some Lovely Pages

2011-08-04T09:53:00.000-07:00

I am excited to share with everyone some lovely pages that several talented scrappers have shared with me. Thank you ladies, you are wonderful, and you make me very happy and rewarded as a template designer!

Here's an amazing page by Julie Gentry:

These lovely pages and spreads are by Katell:

Now see these beautiful pages by Kim, from an album for her daughter' baby book! I loved how she used the LOVE template, she said "I really wanted to include a piece of the past in my daughter’s book, so these are all kinds of family pictures from different times." What a fantastic idea, and look at those cutest baby pics!

And check out these dazzling pages by Paige, see her gallery here (Thanks Paige for showing them to me, unfortunately my scrapmatters id would not let me leave comments on your gallery for some reason, your pages are beautiful!!)

And more stunning layouts from Tawn!

Now does not all these great inspiration make you very happy? Happy scrapping and making memories!!

Capturing Daily Life

2011-08-03T08:43:00.000-07:00

Did you join in the Week in our Life project? Thanks to Jenny's reminder (thanks Jenny!) I did not miss the annual seven-day documentary project inspired by Ali Edwards this year, for the week July 25th-July 31st. Snapped lots of photos and have an idea how I might pull it together, hopefully by my next post!

It's so wonderful to document daily moments and daily life for a change, and though this week was a very ordinary work/school week, we did have some highlights: I got myself my first iphone (!), Jared got my old ipod nano (!), Ryan in turn got a new sony walkman phone, but my laptop crashed and had to be sent to be fixed. :( No worries though I had everything backed up onto an external harddisk - a very good habit I must say!

And though strictly not within the one week period, today Ryan came home and told us his bus to school was involved in an accident this morning. The front of the bus was quite damaged but his seat belt held him safe. What a shock, and how thankful we are he is unscathed! Thank you Lord!

I had wanted to try this for a long time, so as part of my Week In Our Life pages, I will include a snapshot of what's going on with me by taking part and creating a page following the The Simple Woman's Daybook. The Daybook suggests a list of prompts that are lovely for journaling. I got the link from Nini from the lovely Suddenly Artistic blog (check our her fantastic wordarts).

FOR TODAY

Outside my window... it's a fine day with an amazing dusty red sunset

I am thinking... how we must live by faith and not by sight, how we must set the right example for Jared while we are waiting for results of his school applications and facing possible rejections

I am thankful... Ryan is safe and protected in the bus accident!

I am wearing... a grey dress for work and t-shirt and jean shorts now

I am creating... my Daybook scrapbook page!

I am going... to keep going to my fitness class workouts at least twice a week, I do enjoy them!

I am wondering... what Jared will be like as a angsty teenager, lol

I am reading... Beijing Walks (in planning for our next trip, hopefully end of this year)

I am hoping... dh will have God's clear answer where he is seeking Him

I am looking forward to... end of Jared's PSLE exams!

Around the house... we are happily playing with our new gadgets!

One of my favorite things... enjoying korean romantic comedies before bedtime with dh
And now into a layout!

A lovely way to record a list of the simple things and thoughts of our daily life isn't it? Now I'm pondering... if I can get my family to make such a daybook each themselves too, to add to our Week in the Life pages :)

RAWA ALBUM

I'm also excited to show you pages from my just completed shutterfly album! I had a coupon for a free 20 page 8X8 that I could not pass up, so I rushed out these photos of our very recent RAWA trip - in a black and white background, clean 'jagged edge' photo style that I was inspired to try. It came together quickly. I used only quotes as embellishments and put all my journalling on the first page! The templates are in the store.

This is the Cover:

The first page

Tada! I can't wait to see it in the mail!

Finally, here's a layout of the light saber birthday presents the boys received earlier this year - they had great battles with them - look at the pictures we got!

Download the template here to try it out :) Thanks for all the wonderful comments you leave!

PSLE Survival Guide

2011-06-25T11:07:00.000-07:00

When we first saw this book in the library, we laughed out loud. We were laughing at how the PSLE had made a mockery of Singaporean families that we actually need a Survival Guide! We were also laughing at ourselves because at that moment, we were wondering how we were going to survive this PSLE year, lol!

I should explain, for the foreign readers of this blog, PSLE refers to Primary School Leaving Examinations - a huge rite of passage for 12 year olds in Singapore, as they graduate from Primary to Secondary schools. The PSLE is a nation-wide standardised testing that has become a big deal, determining entry to the 'best' or 'popular' schools, and stressing out all parents and children alike. No matter how we disagree with and dislike it, we are all caught up in it, and with Jared sitting for the PSLE this year, it has practically overtaken our everyday lives!

For my fellow Singaporeans who are interested in the book, it has some good pointers, but mostly it was great to read about how another family 'struggled' as we did and hear how they survived! What was best is that it is easy to read with humourous short chapters, which even Jared was keen to read, and which made a lot of sense to him, we could connect, and that was quite amazing!

I liked some gems in the book, like the idea of going through this year as a family, taking it like a family project, not unlike when we did our renovations last year, the family suffered together, did everything together, went the extra mile to help each other, we will surely bond and grow stronger together! And how the most important thing in revision is not in getting all the answers right, but for the children to learn how to 'learn by themselves' - personal growth and maturity! I am looking at the next 3 months with new perspective!

We actually see Jared doing just that, growing and maturing, slowly but surely! He wants badly to go to Ryan's school, and is putting in effort and heart, going against his usual playful, completely distracted nature. He is growing up! I felt compelled to make a layout to capture it :)

Don't you think he has really grown? These were photos we took for him in his applications to some of the secondary schools. He has to write personal statements, go for tests and interviews, crazy, isn't it? He is taking it all in his stride, really growing up :)

In the midst of all the applications and preparation for PSLE, we took a much needed break (6 days!!) to our favourite Rawa island paradise! The best family time ever!!

Of course I have completed some more layouts.. from Shanghai...here we were at the 'transparent' viewing deck of the Oriental Pearl...

..visiting a Shikumen (old Shanghainese brick home) museum

At the Shanghai Museum..so much treasures!

And the Urban Planning Centre

Also, starting up on my 2011 photos, did up a layout from January of our place under renovations, oh it seems so long ago, haha

While our home was being renovated in January, both Ryan and Jared had their birthdays (3 days apart), so we had simple birthday celebrations at home in the half renovated living/ family room

Download this template here - make a great layout and link me back, that would make my day :), and thank you for your comments too!
Oh, I plan to take down some of the earlier free templates down soon, to put into the store, time for housekeeping! So do download them if you like to.

Shutterfly Album Cover Templates

2011-05-25T08:53:00.000-07:00

Just a short post mainly to share the Templates for the Album Covers for my 2010 Shutterfly Album as some has requested (scroll down). I just feel so good looking at all my albums, gives me every motivation to keep scrapping our days and memories! Recently I'm also very happy that I've started adding more pages that are loads of / completely journalling! Like this one I did after our General Elections a few weeks ago. This year's elections has been described as a 'watershed' election, with may Singaporeans going through a 'rite of passage' of sorts, as many of us plunuged into the politics of our country like we have never before. Because Singapore has been under one party rule since Independence, and in the past elections were mainly walkover affairs by the ruling party. This year, with much stronger opposition and their honest & well-articulated call for needed change, the voice of the people have been heard loud and clear. We've seen a lot of change in the past two weeks especially in the appointments of cabinet ministers and looks like a lot more change will come. Quite something for us, and definitely much to commit to the Lord in prayer, to many of us who have been praying, He has indeed been guiding the happenings in this period! Well, I captured my thoughts and reflections in a page, to go into my album, it's a new experience to have no photos, (more embellishments though) but so good to have these captured. Have you done any or many pages with no photos for your scrapbooks?

I have only completed two other layouts for our Shanghai trip, but I like them a lot!
This layout was probably on the second day after our arrival in Shanghai, where we went to visit a flea market of sorts. Full of old and antique trinkets, including Mao pins, Mao's little red book, and lots of other chinese knickknacks - very colorful and loads of fun!

The next layout is of us milling around the Oriental Pearl Tower, a landmark of Shanghai, which has now been overtaken by many super sky-high scrappers around it, at the spanking new and impressive business and hotel area of JuJiaJui. What a bustling and huge place!

Ok, I've saved the templates I used for my 2010 album, for printing with Shutterfly, according to their dimensions for a 12X12 album. If you want to use it for 8X8 album, you'll need to adjust the size accordingly. Please review the dimensions on Shutterfly's Guides Here.

You can download them here - have fun with your albums! There was a question in comments as to how many pages are my albums, well mine are usually 70 to 100 pages. I did one that was more than 100 pages, which shutterfly does not support (not sure if they do now?) so I had that album printed by Blurb. You know, I'm so addicted to my albums now, can't wait to add to my collection! I even took advantage of shutterfly's recent 50% promotion to convert one of my previous 8x8s (2008 Album) to 12x12 - yay! As you can see from the picture, it is a good idea to 'label' your albums on the spines, so that when you get to having a lot of them, they can be easily identified. :)

Election Fever!

2011-05-05T08:27:00.000-07:00

It's Elections season in Singapore! We only get to do this once in about 5 years, so it is pretty big deal. This time there is much stronger opposition parties contesting all but one of the constituencies, which is a first for us. Everyone is discussing politics, the parties, the issues, our choices, etc. I'm not discussing politics here, this is a scrapbooking blog!:) But we decided it's time the boys get their education and first taste in our country's politics, government policies, and all that. Here's a page (click to enlarge)I made to record this momentous few weeks of election fever, in our country and in our home!

Journaling reads:

"When this year’s Elections came around, we knew it was the right time to get the family involved. R is 14 and very into political systems, how countries are governed, and reads a lot of related books. J is not interested at all yet, but we decided it is a chance to give them an introduction into politics and create awareness. Our Constituency is being contested, and together with our good friends we decided to attend both the PAP and the opposition parties rallies, held one night after the other. It was actually our first time at a rally too (gasp!) so it is education for us as well!

Of course all of us have lots of opinions at a time such as this, especially with much stronger opposition this round, but we were not trying to influence the boys in any particular direction!

At the WP rally we experienced the strength of mob mentality, they were much better at rallying the feelings of people. it was quite emotionaly charged, and fascinating to be in the presence of that strong crowd! R analysed in his opinion that the speeches start first, to insult,(lol) then to present arguments.

J stated (not unwisely) that he did not want to attend any rally, since they are all just propaganda! The PAP rally paled greatly in numbers that turned out,

only two speakers sounded as passionate as the opposition speakers, and they presented a lot of points, but as the boys noted, got boring and lost us. We did

point out that it is a lot easier to make complaints than to justify policies. But

when asked, both of them think that WP will surely win the votes, judging by the

size and sentiments of the crowds. We shall vote this coming Sat and watch the results together!(see if they are right :) )

Back home, interest has mounted, and we poured over the papers, news reports,you tube videos of more speeches, even J is engaged now. Hopefully this has stoked their interest and pave the way for them to be aware and informed adults who will choose and support their leaders wisely. Most importantly we are impressing on them that God is in charge and moves history and leaders and men’s plans to accomplish His purposes. So we must above all, pray for our nation."

Amen! Been studying Isaiah in BSF and it is so appropriate to read about how through the rise and fall of all the nations, God oversees and intervenes for His own good purposes. We try to teach the boys how important it is to pray for our nation, our leaders, and whom should become our leaders. I am really loving this period of great discussions, analysing speeches, party manifestoes, government policies, etc with the boys. Ryan posted on facebook a suggestion dh had which impressed him, and we are observing the comments and likes and all. Unlike myself when I was young, it is so good to see them starting young, becoming aware and involved!

On the scrapbooking front I've completed our 2010 album, this is the last page I added, about the little things, I think I like my 'annual' albums even more than my travel albums, for they capture our lives, both the election type pages and the little things!

The book arrived from Shutterfly - lovely condition and quality as usual! Here are the front and back covers. If you would like to have the templates of these covers according to Shutterfly 12x12 album dimensions, let me know!

And I've finally started scrapping our Shanghai trip from last June! Here is the first page, arriving at our hotel (previously an old mansion) after a super high speed ride on the MagLev train!

That first night we went to the famous BUND, the promenade full of colonial buildings and towers on the skyline (click to enlarge)

Oh, recently I've been hooked on Pinterest. It's a new website that allows us to 'pin' images we like from online to various persobal 'boards' for sharing and keeping! There are tonnes of amazing staff the folks there are pinning, and it's such fun browsing, Kate (whom I follow on Pinterest) had a post on it here at The Daily Digi. If you want to see the my pins, you can check them out here: http://pinterest.com/yin100/pins/. To join, you can request an invite on their page. Have fun!

Want to share more amazing scrapbook pages by my friends:
Lovely travel photos and pages from Christie Stearns (find her blog here) !

Stylish pages by Tawn (find her blog here) with her amazing photography and adorable children!

Darling and colorful pages by Jenny (find her blog here) !

Thank you ladies for letting me share your pages! Love your work, everytime!

And as usual, like to share this template with you :)

You can download here .Thanks for your always lovely comments!

Work in Progress

2011-04-10T05:13:00.000-07:00

Last month our family (and everyone in our church) were saddened by the sudden passing of a church elder who had married us, and been a mentor we looked up to. We all miss him but we know we will met him again! But even as he went to Glory, we were blessed many times over with the testimonies that came forth. At his funeral, so many came up to share how he touched their lives, even from people who knew him in his teens, twenties, those who did business with him, and of course many in our church. I am so touched and inspired by how he lived his life consistently for the Lord and for His people through so many decades and touched so many lives, even though he was a businessman, father, grandfather, and had so many other roles. What a testimony and example to follow, what a way to live! And the blessing of his life continues to multiply through ours!
At the youth group the following week, the youths were encouraged to think about how they might want to be remembered, how they think those who knew them would describe them, after the great example set by our elder. We were talking about it at home, (and I wondered whether the younger youths like R would be too immature to have a meaningful discussion). I asked my family, half seriously, how they would describe me? It was quite heartening to hear their spontaneous responses, J said, kind, loving, caring, hardworking, creative, organised, strict(!), R said talented, clever, imaginative, protective, generous, and dh said loving, beautiful, sincere, she has done her best, she has no regreats (!!) Haha, hhmmm!

I also shared with them about Ruth Graham, late wife of Billy Graham, the evangelist.

If you googled her name, you'd find descriptions like: she is strong, steady, dauntless, the glue that held their lives together, that her life is ruled by the Bible more than any other person they know, that through the books she wrote, lives she touched, husband she loved, godly children she raised,.. she left a godly heritage here on earth that pointed vividly to the God she loves. Yet, she proposed this phrase that she saw on a road construction site to be her epitaph : "End of Construction. Thank you for your patience". What humilty and what an example. Indeed while we are here, we are a work of grace in progress, as the Lord moulds and changes us, we hope we too are touching lives and making a difference for the better.
Anyways, I was so excited and impressed to find a week later, that R had written down on a card (from youth group): "I want to be remembered as a loyal and devoted friend, son and brother, as well as someone who fulfilled God's purpose in his life". Wow! They are young, but no less able to start making commitments to the Lord for themselves.
May we too not lose focus on that which is truly important.

Speaking of work in progress, I've completed my long work in progress of our 2010 album! Looking through the year through the album is to recall all the blessings we have received, see how the Lord brought all things together for our good, even the challenges and the tough times, changes, highs and lows, God is indeed good! I included a page of my written reflections for the year that God had given us, it was meaningful and so good to have it written out and kept as part of the album!

These are some the last pages that went into the album:
Here's us at the beach again, our favourite pasttime when we have a day to kill - we always have a good time! I loved the Royanna alpha and the Lynn G paper from her Summer Flash kit (this is T245 in the store)

And here's our Christmas celebration with our close friend, it's wonderful that our best friends' children are best friends with each other too! The alpha is from Stephanie2! (T244)

Here are the same bunch of friends spending a day at the beach (T

We joined a bank-organised Night Walk around our central business district Bay area which was a first for us as a family! (T 93)

Me and dh on a night out

The boys and their dad at one of their games (too complicated for me to join in, haha!) - it was Battlestar Galactica! (T75)

My cousin who lives in NZ came for a visit!

DH's birthday where we went to a concert in the Old Parliament House - what a setting, we sat in the pews where the parliament members sat!

My mom in law's birthday! She and my father in law has 7 children and 12 grandchildren so every celebration is a huge affair.

A final layout on the stuff we gave away before our renovations - this time its the dollhouse furniture I had collected before I had the boys, it's time for them to go!

Even the school projects had a layout of their own!(T113)

And for my mom's birthday we got to take a free ride in the Singapore Flyer (a giant ferris wheel like the London Eye) courtesy of my brother, this photo was taken by dh and deserves a full spread, so I created this layout for it. I booked a restaurant in the vicinity of the Flyer, but when we got there after our ride, we found it to be empty of diners, and was not sure if we should dine there (??) but finally took a chance and it turned out to be a wonderful meal with an entire restaurant to ourselves! Plus, the Chinese new year Parade rehearsals passed right in front of us - front row views from the restaurant! A most memorable night!

Download Template 247 here
Last month a lady asked if I could post the template to this summer layout:

Download Template 246 here!Well, as always, so glad you dropped by to share my joys and thoughts, thanks for your comments and have fun scrapbooking!

Catching up on 2010

2011-03-08T06:32:00.000-08:00

I am trying very hard to complete my 2010 family album, and had a good time recaping what layouts I have and what else I still want to complete 2010. I have layouts covering: my beloved grandma (who went to the Lord last year at 103), the boys' birthdays, our birthday prayers for them, singing and worshipping at home, boys learning from daddy to tie their ties, Jared's song for Miffy, Date Night, laughing out loud, Chinese New Year, New Year's Day, National Day Parade, Concerts, Favorite restaurant, BFFs, Moving On to new job, games we played, Shanghai trip, Ryan's 1st day at Secondary (High) school, Jared receiving his Science Olympiad award ... 2010 was a full year! I'm glad to find that I have layouts of moments, thoughts/ reflections, together with the events type layouts.

I also love the layouts covering everyday life a lot, and have a lot of photos! I was so inspired by Katie The Scrapbook Lady's Roundup Album and bought Cathy Zielske’s The Monthly album set to speed things up!

One 'everyday' night last month the following conversation happened, and I came home and captured it on blogger:

The topic of my friend's daughter who's Jared's age setting her mind on becoming a medical doctor came up today during our car conversation:

Me: Well, Jared, do you know what you might want to become?

J: A scientist, an inventor, or an artist.

Me: Those are very diverse careers!

J: Yes, I love science, and I love to create new things and draw.

Me: The idea of you as a designer might combine your inventor and artist aspirations, more interesting than being a scientist?

J: But a scientist, more specifically, a physicist, will allow me to prove my theory about Uranus!

Ryan: That theory of yours has been disproved by R.C. (his friend) already!

Me: What theory is that?

J: The theory that Uranus was hit by a planetiod in the early years of its SOLID planet life, and was turned on its side, subliminated and sent to the outer planets by it.

Me: (pause) ok (as if I understood any of that) But what would that do to help mankind?

J: It would help the history of science, which is the history of mankind!

Me: It seems to be that physics is the least practical, or most abstract of the sciences, I can at least relate the study of chemistry and biology to real life problem solving like in medicine, food science, and so on!

J: The study of biology is the study of chemistry is the study of physics is the study of the Universe!

Me: As God made it?

J: Without physics nothing exists! Without physics our bodies won't work!

Ryan: Hhmm, I did write a fun story about a world without friction some time ago...

Me: Well, from my understanding of your personality, you're someone who needs to create and have results constantly to satisfy your insatiable curiosity. A designing career will give you greater satisfaction as you will get to 'complete' projects one after another. If you are a scientist, you could be trying to prove a theory for a lifetime!

J: But my theories are provable (!) and I also want to be a designer at the same time.

Me: Sure, my dear! Well, Ryan, any ideas what you might want to be?

R: W......ell, I'm not sure yet, but probably in science, right now I'm more into Chemistry than Physics. The current topic we're studying in Integrated Humanities is very interesting too.

Me: Yes, keep your mind open, you might discover your interests and passion forming in an unexpected area as you grow up, it will be fun discovering what that might be!

R: (smiles pensively)

Captured on 7 Feb 2011 (with some help from Jared on the technical bits): Another priceless conversation with my very different and very interesting and very precocious and very growing up boys. I won't trade this for the world! Got to capture this in my 2011 album!

Here are more layouts I just completed for 2010:
Same template sets: memories of the stuff we had to part with before our renovations..

Same template: The way it was before renovations!

And the next 6 layouts were from our short trip to Bintan beach resort in September last year...(template 31)

Loved the luxury of the jacuzi in our room! (new template 242)

This was adapted from (template 54)

We bought a disposable underwater camera and got these fun shots. (template 129)

I loved the sue cummings brushes I used on this layout (template 151)

Got this template for you to download at the bottom of this post (243)

And this is a preview of our trip to Vietnam in Dec 2010. Fantastic trip, full of history, experiences of a by-gone era,meeting the resilient and friendly people, lots to scrap about! (T.241)

You would have noticed that we travel quite a lot. Over the years, it was the one thing we consciously plan and save for, because each year and each trip just make us want to do it more. Early on when the boys were young we started travelling with them, to nearer and less expensive places. At first they may not remember much, but the time spent as a family were wonderful. Especially because we both work, and especially now that they are in school and with friends most of the time, we find that trips are the best extended family time we get to spend together. Nowadays we plan the trips with the goal of introducing them (and us) to the world's rich history and geography and culture in mind. I know we are blessed we can even do this, and are very thankful.

I found on Katie's blog (Yes, I am terribly inspired by her!) a link to this post :Travelling with your kids- why you should do it :http://mylittlenomads.com/travel-with-kids/ and I have put my own reflections in my Hokkaido album:

"We are at the end of our Sapporo stay, after eight days of unforgetable snow and winter wonderland and I’m laying awake in our tiny room in Novotel Hotel. Somehow can’t sleep for the past hour, but have been full of thankfulness instead of worry (like at home) and just decided to journal these thoughts!
Travelling with the whole family like this may be extravagrant but it is full of unforgetable shared memomies, and also a priceless time of getting close and personal at prolonged period of time with our tween and teen.In these 10 days of wandering around together, not covering that much ground, but spending lots of time just hanging, solving problems (mainly that of being too cold!), fighting over decisions (four heads is not better than one!), watching BBC News together (Ryan said it would be nice to get this at home), laughing our heads off, telling and sharing jokes, being able to demonstrate our love and unfailing support for them (eg, rubbing cold feet, tiredness,..), making snow angels, snow fights, snow men together, modelling behaviour, daddy asserting his authority and his love and kindness(even indulgences) at the same time, trying new experiences together, talking with them about being honest in life and what to expect, encouraging their exploration while pulling back (in view of safety), all priceless lessons, experiences, because they are shared and stay with us all for a long time (as long as we live!)
In addition, modelling mommy as a female, a girl, to them, being physically weaker, but intellectually just as competitive (haha!), how they understand gender differences and hopefully how to treat girls/a lady. How daddy and mommy get along, .. even teaching Ryan how to handle being taller now (how to get into a cab without knocking his head), how to use chopsticks. Encouraging their confidence as we practise them every opportunity (eg Ryan’s great sense of navigation)
Teaching them our idea / love of travelling on a shoe string - what we think is worth paying for and what is not, and what is worth experiencing over and above the touristy. Having no internet for 10 days!(me included) learning not to blame whoever for making a ‘wrong decision’ since it’s the first time we are here! Making the most of everything, even a detour to the clinic for Jared! Also, Gim and me united, trying new experiences and fods, no blaming or grumbling, thanking each other for every great day, every sacrifice, every help, knowing and allowing for each other’s preferences and quirks., all these were so lovely and we hope teaches them something lasting!
Thank you God for all of these and more. For keeping us safe and giving us this chance. This chance to be a family in this life on earth."

Now you know why I take so much pain to scrap our travel photos, they are a treasure trove of memories for our family, and lots to talk about with the boys! :)

Click here to view this photo book.

I was so priviledged that Christie Stearns (find her blog here) and her aunt Carla put together Carla's Egypt and Jordan travel album using my templates, You will agree that the pictures and album was awesome and beautiful!

And finally, download template 243 here!

Transformed Family Room and a completed album

2011-02-04T08:36:00.000-08:00

Blessed Lunar New Year! We are celebrating Chinese New Year in Singapore (and around the world!) and have some time amidst the festivities and awfully lots of good food to blog :)

Well it took a lot longer than we were told to expect, but after 3 weeks of living on very little liveable space while surrounded by wood, paint, and tonnes of dust, our renovations are done! And we are so happy with our 'new' family room!

First I must show you this amazing thing Jared did while we were planning the renovations. We had many ideas and could not make up our minds (yikes!) it was hard for our contractor to keep drawing and re-drawing the plans! One night Jared heard our conversations and said "I can help." Then he took the contractors' 2D plans, brought up Google Sketch Up on his computer and in about an hour did up the living room in 3D plans! We were SO impressed and SO PROUD of the little guy. We played around in the program and finalised what we want by the next day!

When our living room came into being, Jared exclaimed "My 3D design has come to life!" Dh and I are secretly thinking maybe one day he will become an outstanding architect or designer and will trace the beginning of his career to this moment! :)

Well, I have not been able to scrap the transformation of our Family Room yet, so here are some before, during and after pics. It might have been horribly dusty and inconvenient in the in between days, but the whole family was so excited we took it in our stride. I had to come home and sweep, vacuum and mop a 'space' every day, and the boys had to sleep in various odd places while their room was being worked on, one night in a little space between the kitchen and the dining table, but it was like an adventure, what troopers! It has been such a ride, all worth it!

Here's our old bookcases which were overflowing and that first pushed us to the idea of renovating. Originally I only wanted to build in new floor to ceiling bookcases, but one thing led to another, and we did a whole lot more, lol!

Here's how our family room looked like before, it's really nice too, actually, cluttered and cosy and eclectic, but our family room and where we spent the past 11.5 years!

In the distance was the old study table shared by all and where only the desktop could stay on a permanent basis (Ryan and i had to take out, set up, and keep our laptops everyday), and our old dining table.

All the books and stuff in the living room has to be packed up into boxes, we had to throw and give away a lot! And still had 27 boxes in limbo for 3 weks!

Having a fun home movie in the bedroom!

Almost everything had been torn down and we still need to live our daily lives...

Working in the 'home office'

Sleeping arrangements (all in mom and dad's room like the old (baby) days!)

Here's how it was during the building stage

And... tada! Finally, enjoying the new family room!!!! Here's the dining cum bookcase area!

The new mom and dad's study area

The boys' study area with space for their lego and exoforce, and the Hulk... gracing the sofa area, which I tried to infuse with the robin egg blue color scheme I wanted... don't think it's working, the lego and hulk are overtaking the color scheme ... lol

And star wars lego take pride of display space... not quite my plan.. but it's the family room, the family argues, so I have to agree...

And all of boys' toys and board games find space in the huge white cupboards

My laptop has its permanent place now! Don't ask why the boys are squeezed in front of their dad's PC after we create so much more space for everyone ...lol

Oh! My Micah 6:8 word art turned out beautifully! We love it. Every family needs an anchor verse where everyone can see it. We should have had it long ago. It was blown up to 80cm X 70 cm on canvas printing. The little red figurines and decorations for Chinese New Year.

And here's our new Travel Magnetic Scrapbook! We always collect magnets as souvenirs, and this time decided to put up our photos from the various trips over the years as well. We bought 3 magnetic boards from Ikea and fixed them together. It's wonderful to have these trvel memories up where we see it everyday. Try it!

And here's our new floor to ceiling bookcases. Lots more space for more books, yipee!!

Thank you God for this wonderful new living space!

The boys had been sleeping on the floor of their room for the longest time..

Now they get a 'double'' bed, the lower part pulls out at night for sleeping. And more display area for bionicles :)

Wow, blogging about the transformation and lining up all the before and after photos together, has made me feel that before the renovations, though our space was slightly messy and uncoordinated, it was lived-in, and full of 'us'. Now we have a chic and more spacious space and soon it too will become lived-in and infused with 'us'. And that's the plan! It's not the design or the neatness, but the living in the space that makes it our home

We experienced another interesting development after the new room took shape and new furniture arrived. It was mostly white as planned (we think it brightens and makes our room feel bigger) and very easy to spot any dust or dirt! We also had the marble floor re-polished and became suddenly very conscious of not scratching the floor, not dirtying the white walls, chairs, and so on... after a week, dh declared that we have become slaves of the new home, lol! We were constantly cleaning, and making the boys nervous with constant reminders not to this and that... not the way to enjoy the family room at all! We have since intentionally calmed down and stopped the slaving. Gladly however, the boys seemed to have developed better habits in terms of keeping the place clean and neat, a very welcomed effect!! :)

Amazingly in the midst of all that was happening, I scrapped whenever I could, re-using my own templates, and have completed my entire Hokkaido trip album! Some templates had to be tweaked and developed into new layout templates, and I enjoyed making every one of them.

This was using template 112 , where we enjoyed awesome lamb bbq and 'sledding' at the Historical Village of Hokkaido Museum grounds.

More pics of this amazing open air museum where historical buildings from the past were relocated from all parts of Hokkaido.

Then we made our way to theOkurayama Ski Jump where we were just in time to catch jumpers practising, awesome!

At the same site, there is now a Winter Sports Museum where we 'tried' every winter sport!

And had a chance to take the ski lift ourselves..

Here we were visiting the grounds of an old temple beautifully covered in snow..

It was our last afternoon in Sappporo and our last chance to play in the snow. (template 123)

And Jared had his own last encounters with the snow...

Then we flew back to Tokyo and visited Akihabara.. (template 25)

And also to Sega Joypolis.. (template 30)

Wandered on toy street and chanced upon the Tokyo Lego Office! (template 146)

Made a interesting visit to the Edo Tokyo Museum (template 33)

And a final layout to round up the trip

An entire page of reflections I made in my journal on one of the nights on the trip went into the last page of my album. I think this might be my first no-photo page!

And here's the album! I had huge discounts at shutterfly and got this for under $80, it's on it's way to us now!

Click here to view this photo book.

The ski lift layout has been turned into template 236 to share:

Download here!

Blessed New Year!

2011-01-02T08:15:00.000-08:00

How have you rang in the New Year?
We had a great party with our extended family on my husband's side, his brothers and sisters and their families, a huge clan! Great good fun and family time!
Our own little family tried to have a new year's reflection over lunch, we shared our thanksgivings for last year, what we have learnt and what we want for our new year - the boys were a bit reluctant at first but soon got into the spirit. It was so good.
Then I brought out the list of words from Ali Edward's blog from her One Little Word for each year idea, and we enjoyed looking for our word! Dh chose Passion, I chose Intentional, Ryan chose Confidence and Jared chose Forward.
I'll just share mine - I'm thinking that I want to be spending time in 2011 more intentionally, not just enjoying life and letting it pass by. It is rather easy for life to pass by when we are enjoying it, not sure if you understand what I mean? Usually we forget to stop and smell the roses, to create more meaning to our days, to make time for blessing others. So, here's to a more internationally lived year, prayerfully and humbly, for me!

We're having a most hectic time, tomorrow the actual renovation starts and it will be done in 8 days! The fun part was planning and designing what we want, the hard part is all the packing and throwing out of 'stuff' ( hard to part with!), the scary part now is if we will like how it all turns out!! Haha, no turning back!

I am making a wall art for our new Family room - dh agreed that we should have Micah 6: 8 (my favorite verse) and I did up a few versions like here - and the family voted - the one on the right won! Which do you like? For the one on the right I used Emily Meritt's Painted On on a paper by Creashens from her Newport kit. I will be sending it to be blown up and made into a canvas print. Really loved the idea and if it turns out well, I might make some more.

I loved making the word art and thought I would share these with you. I used the fonts dear joe4, Futura lt, and Charlemagne Std. Hope you like them! Download these two word arts here

Now to scrapbooking- I've only had like 4 nights the past month to scrapbook, and using my own templates I had been able to complete 5 layouts that I'm very happy with!
More photos from our day in Otaru - one of the highlights was finding an icrecream shop that had incredible flavors : Squid, Kimchee, Crab, Sea Urchin .. and so on!! Sad to say, we did not have the guts to try them out, and chose safe flavors . Only dh was the bravest, and tried Salt flavor - he reports that it was yummy. :)

Having our first snow ball fight!

Making our first snow angels in a beautiful public park

More snow fights! I think these were the best times in the whole trip for the boys!

Spending quality time indoors (it's cold outside!)

Now this one below of the boys trying their hand at cookie making is a new layout template

Love to share this with you - download here!

Family Room

2010-11-18T06:29:00.000-08:00

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!!

And the template for you to download HERE . Thanks for your always wonderful comments!

Mark of a Man

2010-11-03T07:09:00.000-07:00

Last week was DH's birthday and I made him a photobook! I titled it "The Mark of a Man'' to commemorate and celebrate how I feel about where he is in his life right now, in my opinion he embodies what a man should be, I may be biased, but that's surely how I feel! :) I concentrated mainly on describing what he means to our family as a father and a husband, and also in his profession as a teacher. Of course there was a lot more I could have included, but this was manageable and so meaningful to us. Oh did I mention he absolutely loved it!!

I thought of the title first, then tried but was not eloquent enough to put into words what I meant. So I googled and found this fantastic quote from Elisabeth Elliot's book The Mark of a Man (she is one of my favorite authors, I have read many of her books, including Let Me Be a Woman, but did not know of this one!):

The Mark of a Man:
The world cries for men who are strong: strong in conviction, strong to lead, to stand, to suffer... glad to shoulder the burden of manliness. Characteristics of manhood that were exemplified in the life of Christ. Responsibility, sacrifice, courage, obedience, initiative, forgiveness and endurance...
by Elisabeth Elliot

Wow.. what do you think of that?
To me that is absolutely beautifully and meaningfully put. And indeed the world cries out for men like that! I know there are some differing views, as indicated in the reviews of the book on amazon, mainly regarding the strict views of manhood that Elisabeth Elliot lays out in her book. But I'm totally sold.

I find myself asking if we are raising our boys to be men as so defined. We fuss over their studies, over the right influence they are getting through media, books, friends, over their health, diet, and so on. Again I'm reminded on the main objective of our parenting role, to guide them to know God and love Him for themselves, and to be like Christ. And hopefully responsible, strong, courageous, .. men.

Obviously we need to ground them in God's word, and show them by example how to walk with Him. And thankfully (as I said in my book for dh), they have their father as an example. Are there other things I can do to train up men, as a mom? For a start, i'm ordering the book to read with them! And do you think my 'training' Ryan to carry heavy loads for mommy will help in some way ...? (smile)

Much food for thought indeed. And much prayer required too, of course, as we parent sons. Do share with me if you have similar thoughts!

I'm excited to show you all the book! I chose to do it in a 8x8 format, photos on the right pages, and journalling on the left pages, with a couple of full page photos to complete it. Below are the inside pages.

The pictures above are of Ryan when he was one! He was once a chubby baby! And noticed dh has not aged at all in the last 12 years??

That's baby Ryan on the left and baby Jared on the right, oh how I miss them as babies!

And can you tell which is the photo from our honeymoon?

This time, due to the limited time in which I had to pull it together in time for dh's birthday, I did not have time to send the book to the US for printing, but instead printed it locally at FotoHub, it was beaufitul, printed on thick photo print paper, and opened flat, cost about US$54 for 30 pages, (much more than it would on shutterfly if I had a discount) but I got it in three days(!)

And you can find all the right side of the albums as a 10 page template set available in the store

Now I've pulled out two more 8.5x11 layouts that I love from the past, which I'm now progressively getting ready for printing into a book(can't wait!), have put them into templates for you below :)

Download both templates 228 & 229 here!

Actually I've really been productive, 3 more layouts from Hokkaido trip have been completed. All snow, snow, and more snow days spent last december in Otaru and Niseko, it was as we planned, 10 days of non-stop snow and winter wonderland for us tropical folks, we totally soaked (or was it froze) it in!

(click on image to see larget view)

Download Here !

Praises makes a difference

2010-10-19T08:40:00.000-07:00

It's final exams period here, Jared has just completed his, but Ryan has two more weeks to go. Thankfully it's not the other way round, because it would be impossible to motivate J to press on if his brother was all done and relaxing, like J is now!

As usual it was a struggle with J through the past two weeks of intensive revision. He tends to be inconsistent in his daily work, so there were a lot of tears (him) and incessant nagging (me) while we help him catch up. But interestingly (and thankfully) he is more matured this year, and now has the desire to do well (he wants to enter his brother's secondary school). Except that the spirit is willing but the flesh is still weak (!) So I had to be his study buddy and sat with him all day and revised with him. Needless to say, he did not enjoy my company very much, lol!

I'm not sure if I'm the norm or not, but I'm guilty of scolding more than praising my children on most any given day. There's so much I can find to nag them about, lol! The situation got far worse the past few exam revision weeks, naturally.

So it was time to apply the 'home training lesson' I took home from Bible Study Fellowship entitled "Amazing results will happen when children hear positive words and encouragement from you". It suggests that we need to practise praising at every chance and even listed a compilation of phrases like:

"I'm so impressed! I really like that! You amaze me! I thank God for you everyday! I'm glad you thought of that!"

I came up with some praises of my own:

"See, you did it! Great task completion! Good attention to detail! You're so creative! Nobody can do that in our family except you! I'm glad you took the initiative! That's very thoughtful of you! I love your attention to detail! Great job tidying up! I could tell you put in a lot of effort! That's impressive, you know, ..."

It was easy to come up with praises once I got going. The boys responded so differently to praise compared to nagging..haha..Hate to admit that I needed a simple reminder to practise what I always knew was so important. And so I'm now happily practising finding every opportunity to praise my kids (and hubby too!). It's definitely rubbing off, on them and me. Pray I keep it up!

11 X 8.5 Layouts
In the comments to my last post, a question was posed asking it I would ever consider doing 8.5 X 11 templates for those who prefer that format? Well, as you know I only want to make templates from layouts I make for myself, but guess what? When I started out digiscrapping, I made layouts in the 8.5 X11 format so as to be able to print them out on my home printer. And I've been wanting to go back to update and complete the layouts from our trip to New Zealand in 2005 for a photobook. Your comment encouraged me to start working on them and I'll post the templates too!

Here's the first two layouts I dug out, they were both on a flat blue (photoshop color-filled) background (did not have access to much scrapbooking supplies then), which I decided now to discard, in favour of my current favorite white background. I was already using the linear style then! And ever since, double pages! Haha!

I can't get over how tiny the boys were, just 5 years ago! Jared just sat beside me and told me some of what he remembers from that day, he was six then. We huffed and puffed, coaxed and cajoled the boys up the hill, and I remember how proud and exhilarated we all felt when we got to the topafter 5+ hours. And that amazing, breathtaking view!

You can download both templates here

And I've happily completed more Hokkaido trip layouts. We arrived in Niseko train station enroute to the Niseko Ski resorts. It was a one carriage train that fetched us away from the city into the country, stark and completed snowed out, so utterly beautiful.

Credits: foliage by Elisas bits, paper by Cinnamondesigns, and alpha by Krista Hartley and word art by Paislee press.

Now this Onsen experience is quite another story, after much deliberation, we decided we just could not bring ourselves to join in the public onsen (bath) so we spurlged on one night in a room with it's own onsen pool! It was an experience alright, the water was lovely with a faint mineral scent and color, but I couldn't take the heat and felt faint after 20 minutes (lol). We thought the boys would not go near it, but they loved it!

Credits: petals by Ajay Abney designs, word art and backgroun paper from rejuvenate by sahlinstudio, paint splatter from Cafe J.

And the next two layouts are just us trudging around in the abundant snow the next morning, making our first little snow man (we had not imagined it was so hard to make him big and round!)

Credits: word art by Ali Edwards, snow flake and 'snowball'by Dani Mogstad, blue paper by A Victoria

This template can be downloaded here

Have fun!

Moving on & Simplicity

2010-09-28T05:56:00.000-07:00

Wow it's been longer than I thought since I last posted! Don't worry, we are very well. I've just been caught up with regular life, in particular work. Some updates: I've moved onto a new job just about a week ago. Have prayed about this move for nearly 6 months and seen God's clear Hand guiding me in this matter, and left with mixed feelings (terribly sad but also eager to move onto something new after nearly ten years doing the same thing). Worked long hours in the last few weeks to ensure proper handover, and now at the new place, taking more time to familiarise myself and settle in, and for those reasons could not keep up with my usual daily scrapping!

Here's a layout I made of 'moving on', took photos of the farewell cards and gifts as well as stuff that I took back from my old office, all the memories and momentoes!

Just want to share also, what I've learnt through this whole period, that no matter where I work, whether at familiar old responsibilities or at exciting new opportunities, it is God who gives me security and hope, stability and peace from within. God is so good.

I did a lot of clearing out the the last two weeks, my stuff accumulated over 9+ years at my old office (imagine!), and also took the chance of a few days break to clear out at home my closet, shoe cabinet, bookshelves, and drawers and shelves. How much we accumulate! Although some of the stuff have sentimental value, there is so much that just goes unused. Managed to give pack bags of clothes and stuff to a Home nearby that runs a thrift shop and felt so much better after! The sentimental stuff I took photos and promised myself to scrap the stories behind them, and that helped me discard more stuff. See, another great reason everyone should scrapbook! :)

Where scrapping is concerned, I'm catching up on my 2010 layouts, what I'd like to call 'Stories from our 2010'. Still some more to go, here are the ones I have completed, all 12X12, in simple (simplicity applies in scrapping for me too) linear style, love how quickly I can put them together!

Here's us playing Bang! The Card Game. We are competitive, and always have lots of fun with games. Great story of our everyday life! I've made the Template 219 for this layout for you, the download link is at the bottom of this post.

Here's a layout of the wonderful times I spent with Dh at the free concerts at our Esplanade - performing arts centre.

And get togethers with old friends and meeting the newest family members and seeing how all the children have grown!

And I found these series of photos of Jared playing with bubbles from last year, that begs to be scrapped. He is still terribly fond of playing with them, no matter that he is nearly twelve!!

The chinese rock concert by the May Day group that dh brought me to - I did not attend any such concerts until I was in my thirties - I'm a late bloomer!

And here's us at our favorite weekend eating place - the japanese Manpuku - we are there 70% of all saturdays for the good spread of cheap good food - we are very much creatures of habit :)

And this from the day spent at the beach on our National Day - more layouts to follow!

Have put together 10 of these linear layouts into this template album set, available in the STORE Thanks for looking!

My feature at Shutterfly was such an honor and so much fun, it's over now, but if you had missed picking up the mini kit and the template 213, here they are:

You can go to Shutterfly Celebrations Blog to download, or you can go here for the papers, here for the elements. I do not design kits anymore, these were put together from old stuff I made long ago. Hope you like them!

These photos were all taken by Jared when he got to attend the full dress rehearsal of our National Day Parade. All primary 5 students in Singapore gets to attend as part of National Education program - he totally enjoyed it, and his photos were awesome! When Jared got home and said he enjoyed the National Parade tremondously, we asked why, and he said, "endless, countless tanks of all shapes, guns, and sizes rolled past us!!" The next day, my girlfriend whose daughter also attended the same Parade told me she did not find it great, why? "There was nothing but tanks!" LOL! the boys and girls experienced it so differently!! I guess the gender-blurring we so often hear about has not happened to these two :)

This template 213 can be downloaded at Shutterfly Celebration Blog or Here. Have fun!

And finally, download Template 219 here. Love to hear from you!

So much going on!

2010-08-18T09:40:00.000-07:00

The past week has been quite exciting for us. Singapore celebrated our 45th National Day (we became an independent nation 45 years ago on 9th August), and there was grand celebration, the fireworks of which was especially spectacular, you can see it on youtube here. We celebrated the day with our dear friends the Wong and Ho families with a picnic at the beach, and lots of photos to scrap, the most memorable of which is this - the boy waving at our national flag is Jared :) the one staring at the camera is Ryan :)

From last saturday, Singapore is having the priviledge of hosting the first-ever Inaugural Youth Olympic Games! The opening ceremony was performed on a floating platform, we missed it on TV but most of it can be seen here. Young atheletes aged 14 to 18 from 204 countries are here in Singapore! Isn't that something? We are having a field time watchging all the games on TV and are hoping to catch some live.

On the designing front, I am very proud and honored to announce that Yin Designs is being featured on Shutterfly Celebrations Blog!!! Do check it out! I have made so many photobooks with shutterfly and loved them all, this is quite perfect ! :)

Have finally completed a few more layouts from last year's trip to Hokkaido, here are 5 layouts all from 2 amazing hours we spent at the Onuma quasi-national park - breathtakinglly beautiful - especially for us tropical folks for whom this is about the day 3 of our lives where we've seen snow.... i can't even describe it, but perhaps these layouts and photos will. :)

And you can find the download for this 12x12 template at the bottom of this post!

But first I have to show you the amazing layouts Christie Stearns has been making! Visit her at Handpicked Freebies by Digital Daisy. She finds all these fabulous freebies for us, many of which you'd find in my layouts - thanks Christie!

Last but not least,

Download the template here - have fun :) love to hear from you!

The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want

2010-07-28T09:13:00.000-07:00

Wow it's been some time since I last posted! I had been rather stressed out for a few months, without going into much details, I was just overwhelmed with coping with various responsibilities and demands and was worrying so much I was losing sleep and hair, lol!

But this period turned out also to be one of spiritual blessing. I had to turn to God to seek Him on direction, decisions, and for sustaining me. And over the last few months, I found that I 'heard' Him speak to me personally and specifically, through sermons, sharings, readings, quiet time, so many times. It is just so wonderful to know that my Lord knows me intimately, is looking over me, Deut 32:11,
like an eagle that stirs up its nest
and hovers over its young,
that spreads its wings to catch them
and carries them on its pinions.

Just to share some of the encouragement I received

Ezekiel 34: 25-31 – God’s Promise
'I will make a covenant of peace with them and rid the land of wild beasts so that they may live in the desert and sleep in the forests in safety........ Then they will know that I, the LORD their God, am with them and that they, the house of Israel, are my people, declares the Sovereign LORD....'

I know He will make a way for me!

1 Thess 5:16-18

Be joyful always. Pray continuously, give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus. Yes I see, Lord!

Romans 12:12

Be Joyful in hope, patient in afflication, faithful in prayer. Yes Lord!

Deut 11:13-14 (MSG)

From now on if you listen obediently to the commandments that I am commanding you today, love God, your God, and serve him with everything you have within you, he'll take charge of sending the rain at the right time...

If you are also going through a rough time, may you be blessed to know that He will take charge of sending the rain at the right time, our part is only to trust and obey!

And scrapping was my way of giving myself a break - the half or an hour every few days I could spend scrapping was always a wonderful time and I go to bed smiling those nights, :)
Here are more layouts from our first few nights in Hakodate, Hokkaido

And we did get a fantastic chance to visit the newest resort hotel in Singapore, up to it's Sky Park (53 stories up there) where we swam in the infinity pool overlooking the city (including where I work!) Here's the layout I made.

And I would like to share the template with you here
Have fun and thank you for your love and comments!

Painted Papers used in my Layouts

2010-07-04T08:17:00.000-07:00

Emily asked in comments where and which designers do I get my papers with beautiful painted and watercolor effects from, that is a great question, because I love them, and are always on a lookout for more. So far my favorites areby:
Gina Miller
Electic Designs by Gabi
Rachel Young
Emily Powers
Vera Lim
Creashens
Let me know if you know of others, too!

We are back from Shanghai!!

2010-07-03T09:14:00.000-07:00

We're back! Shanghai was amazing! It was the boys and my first time in China, and Shanghai was just mind blowing in so many ways. First, the immense scale of everything, from the airport, to the highways, the train station, the endless skyscrappers and city-scape, the people everywhere, always busy traffic, shopping of every kind that stays open till past 10pm everyday, the city lights at night, what a buzz! Being in China is a unique experience for us, there's a certain home-coming feeling, where everyone speaks our 'mother-tongue' - chinese/mandarin, which we can speak and understand fairly well (the boys to a lesser extent), everyone we met were very happy to find that we are Singaporean chinese (even though we are usually speaking in english to each other) and we felt a closeness and very welcome!
Shanghai is very modern and a far bigger city than Singapore, and we found its old world charm delightful - the grand european architecture/buildings, mixed with the chinese style buildings and quaint shikumen homes and alleys, all a wonderful and fascinating mix.We loved wandering the streets and felt quite at home, the only main difference being the noise level was a lot higher as there were always so many people around and so much traffic! Although we travelled on our own, we had a fair share of tourist trap attractions and authentic local experiences, and enjoyed them all!
We also visited the nieghbouring Suzhou and Hangzhou famed for their beautiful gardens and lake, and of course had a fascinating time at the World Expo. For the 3 days we visited the Expo - an average of 400,000 people did too, making the average waiting time at popular countries' pavillions 3-4 hours long (Japan and Germany's pavillions was 5 hours wait on one of the days!!), so we decided to skip the countries that we've ever visited, or will likely have a chance to visit, and went to those pavillions of countries that we may never get to visit in real life. That brought us to fascinating North Korea, Iran, Morocco, Turkey, Iceland, some of the South Pacific islands, some of the Africa nations, middle east nations and so on - totally awesome experience!! Well I'd be scrapping all of these photos soon, but for now, a summary layout of highlights from our trip :

(click on image for larger view)

Credits: Brown background by CinnamonDesigns, painted paper by Creashens, dragon by Brittdesigns
The photos with greenery are taken in Suzhou and Hangzhou, the top right photo with the red structure is the China pavillion in the Expo, there is the photo of us in front of the iconic Oriental Pearl tower, and in front of the famous Bund (night scene), so thankful for this wonderful trip where we got to visit my cousin and his family too.
It was hard to have to go back to work and school respectively right after the holiday, it's only been a week since we're back, but seems a lot longer now! I had completed two more layouts from Hokkaido trip, will continue to work on these before I start with the rest of Shanghai photos.

This one is when we visited the morning market in Hakodate - you'd never see fresher seafood! There was this tub where squids were swimming around, and if you ordered, they cut them up (raw) (still alive I think- yikes!) and serve it up to you then and there. We passed.

Credits: fish by Dianne Rigdon, alpha by Kristin Aagard

And this layout is just of the many photos we took just strolling the snow-covered streets - totally fascinating to us, awesome really, never seen that much snow, that first day was so joyful, like the first time in Disneyland!

Credits: Background papers by Wild Dandelions, string an mittens by Cinnamondesigns,winter word by Dani Mogstad

You will find the template for this at the end of this post - for download :)

But first, I have many wonderful layouts of talented scrapbookers to show you! Ready to be inspired?
This very festive layout is by Marlyn Ramirez of the Philippines

Julie created this amazing beach layout from one of my recent templates - just perfect :)

And here's just a few of the pages created by Jenny B, all sweet, fun, colorful, yet stylish and beautiful layouts of her cute family and family life! Totally love your pages, all of them, Jenny! To see more of her layouts, especially super Week in the Life layouts, see her flikr page here !

Last but not least, two ladies have made photobooks and shared them with me, Kim K's album "These are the Days" is just wonderful and full (86 pages!) of beautiful photos and loving layouts - go see her album here!
Cassandra Nelson too awed me with the fabulous pages from her photobook, you must check out her pages here! Love your style, Cassandra!
Thanks to all you lovely ladies for sharing your art and talent with us! I'm just awed and honored to be blessed to see my templates turning up in all these pages!

Finally, you can download template 209 here.
Love to hear your comments if you download. Thanks!

Blurb Review! And Going Away..

2010-06-06T08:43:00.000-07:00

My Blurb book is here! We are so happy to receive it!! Ryan called me at work to tell me it arrived, he knew I've been looking out for it, so sweet of him! To hold it in full 114 pages and in 12x12 size to see the entire trip in one album is just fantastic!!

As promised, I will review it for you. (Dh is quite amused at how excited I am to do this :) ! ) I've roped him in for his opinions too, to give you as objective views as possible, and since I've only ever printed with Shutterfly, any comparison with be against our books printed with Shutterfly.

Overall, we are pleased with the quality of the book. The pictures and colors are crisp and sharp, paper is thick and not filmsy at all, (I chose the premium matte paper at Blurb) and dh especially is very pleased with the clarity of all details and thinks there is no difference in quality in terms of the printing against Shutterfly!

Here is a close up of an enlarged photo (that took up the whole of the left page) for you to see (a bit of light reflecting) it was perfect in my dh's view

I however felt that the colors of the layouts printed in Blurb appeared somewhat deeper/darker then they did with Shutterfly. Shutterfly colors seem brighter? But this is based on my impression only, since I did not print the same page so can't compare objectively. Here you see a page from my US album (shutterfly) above, and a page from my Japan album (Blurb) below, can't really tell the difference actually..

There are a few areas where Blurb did not fare as well as Shutterfly:
- The spine on the cover cannot be customed with our own background paper using BookSmart (I believe it can be done if you use PDF to Book option, which I did not try). I chose to use white for the spine, thinking it matches the white frames on my photos on the cover

- The corners on the inside front and back covers (as shown below, right is Blurb, left is shutterfly) was not well done, and stuck out somewhat

- The pages appear to be 'wavy' as if the paper did not dry properly after printing? This is not obvious and could be due to the thickness of my book?

- Shutterfly's cover is laminated, but Blurb's is not. There is high risk of my Blurb cover getting dirtied! Do also read Sarah G's review (further down) about Blurb's cover.

There are also other differences, though not necessarily good or bad
- My Blurb book does not open up as flat as my Shutterfly book (I am comparing my 114 page blurb book versus my 101 page shutterfly book). As such, my usual 3/8 inch adjustment for the middle of the double page layout did not work as well as they did with Shutterfly. Of course if I print with Blurb in future I can make a greater adjustment, maybe 5/8 inch, so this is a matter of adjusting.

- For the same reason, it seems the Blurb book will not have as high a chance of a page falling out. (1 page in my shutterfly soft cover fell out) Only time will tell though :)
- I keep thinking shutterfly pages had more sheen than Blurb's, but dh thinks I'm imagining things! Lol!

To summarise, in view of the price (Blurb is about 30% savings compared to Shutterfly I believe) I would say Blurb is really value for money, good enough, and other than the cover, has indiscernable differences where the printing quality is concerned. I would however, print with Shutterfly if my book is less than 101 pages in future, mainly because I already got the adjustment for the middle of the double page figured out, and I do much prefer the laminated cover. Just got to take advantage of those discounts! :)

Sarah G had this helpful review of her Blurb book in comments to my last post, I would like you to read her views too: (thanks Sarah!)

I have used Shutterfly exclusively, but last year I had a 115-page annual album (due to my Project 365) and I tried Blurb b/c of the 101-page limit in Shutterfly.

I am not happy with it, after having it on my shelf for a few months. The cover is not a laminate like Shutterfly, it's a heavy piece of cardboard that is printed on. As a result, the cover image will be darker than you'd expect. (My title page and cover are the same, so I could compare.) It looks like the cover absorbs too much ink.

You do a completely custom front and back, but they don't let you upload your image for the spine. I went into Photoshop and grabbed the predominant color in my cover with the color picker, found the hex# and entered that for my spine in Blurb.

It was considerably cheaper than Shutterfly, and my only option in a 12X12 100+ page book.

I am displeased enough with the overall quality that I won't use them again---I will either trim books down to <100 pages, or break projects into pieces.

I hope that you receive a better product! I am, overall, grateful to have the book printed---I should make that clear! It is a great blessing to have all my layouts in a book. But I've been spoiled by Shutterfly. :)

Hope our reviews was helpful!

I have completed 3 layouts of my Hokkaido trip!! Tada!!

Two new templates are in the store and template 204 can be downloaded here. Enjoy!

And in one day's time we leave for Shanghai, China! I know, we are really blessed, my cousin lives in Shanghai, and invited us for a visit in time to catch the World Expo. The kids are very excited, we have been browsing webpages like this and this to read about it, and of course, Shanghai itself is truly magnificent!! It is our (the boys and I) first trip to China and we will come back with lots of photos and more fodder for layouts!

Another Book Completed!

2010-05-29T08:17:00.000-07:00

Yes! I have completed my Japan 2008 vacation photobook and uploaded it to Blurb.com. Am trying Blurb for the first time, as the book came up to 114 pages, exceeding the Shutterfly limit. Blurb costs less, but has less consistent reviews, but I decided to give it a shot. The software was very easy to use, but unfortunately, does not allow a complete self-customised wrap around cover. Anyway when the book arrives I will review it for you. Can't wait! Here's a preview - worth the hard work ? (took a year!) I think so!!!
You know, I ended up not really liking the pages where I joined up two single pages - the left and right sides did not coordinate :( And I could have done better on the cover, but still, I'm SO happy with the album of that Amazing trip!!

Note: I realised that my Blurb album preview will not show up unless I set my book to "public" setting which would mean others could buy a copy of my book (!) Not what I want, so I've set up a preview using photobucket instead.

Now I can start on my Hokkaido 2009 vacation photos! After taking quite a long break, I'm quite motivated to start on the double page spreads again :)

Dh had had the fantastic opportunity to work in Singapore's world class performing arts venue, The Esplanade, for a 3 month stint, and we have been enjoying some great concerts, performances, getting an "education" on the latest on the arts scene, and yesterday the children went along for the fun, free program including installation art and all, that is now going on as part of our annual Arts Festival. Here are some shots from last night, we hope it will rub off on them, and that they can enjoy and appreciate arts more as they grow up, well, it's a start :P

Had worked on several more daily layouts, am thinking maybe I'll make a mini 8X8 album out of them...this first one is just one of those times I journal more than I place photos - I must do more of these, they capture my thoughts for my family - so important!

And the next is of my oldest and best friends - we have been childhood friends and firm friends to this day - no journaling, too much to be said, and yet nothing needs to be said.. KWIM?

And one from last year's photos of the boys - my brother, my best friend!

And now for some wonderful layouts by my talented friends and readers, thanks ladies for sharing them with us! Firstly from my lovely CT Christie Stearns, who is currently recovering very well from a surgery, you can send your regards to her here

Now for some layouts by the talented Tawn, I always love her simplicity and yet how she makes the photos stand out so beautifully!

Finally, these are by Karen Mathre, her family has so much fun activities and outings which she captures in colorful, fun layouts like these:

Thanks again, ladies, I really appreciate your taking time to show me and link me to your creations.

Here's the final layout I made to complete my Japan album, it was the last night of our trip, and we went to the famed electric 'town' that sells all the mens' toys, starting with electronics stuff, to manga figurines to action hero toys of ALL kinds!

you can download the template here! Have fun, and thanks for every comment! :)

Happy Mothers' Day!

2010-05-09T07:04:00.000-07:00

Happy Mothers' Day !
To every mom out there, a Blessed day to you to celebrate that which has changed us forever, make us worriers for life, yet brings us the greatest joy and fulfillment!

Been a while since the last post. I had been busy with work, and also these few weeks with the boys preparing for their mid year exams. You must read a lot about us studying for exams. Education is a big thing in Singapore, as in most Asian countries, for various reasons, whether right or wrong, good or bad, we are very affected by it. The boys spend a lot of time on homework, projects, and exams, we try our best to support them through it, and expand their life in as many other ways as we can. If you are interested to find out more, the best place is at my friend Monica's blog, Of Kids and Education, she shares with wit and honesty, finds the beauty, fun, and christian perspective in bringing up kids in Singapore. We love her and her blog. And you should read her post today on Mother's Day!

Scrapping-wise, I had been playing catch up on ''everyday" layouts and moments & thoughts I want to capture. Am re-visiting the clean and linear style I used for 365, another style I enjoy and also because I can do 3 layouts in one night!! Will probably start on the travel layouts again soon. (I have the entire Hokkaido trip to scrap!) And here's 8 layouts I did this week!

This is my favourite. I had wanted to scrap this for the longest time, and finally remembered to, after prompting from this post by Katie the Scrapbook Lady. Her blog is another of my favourites. Jared began his 'love affair' with Miffy when he had the first when he was four, maybe, and when he was about six, he wrote this 'song'- Ode to Miffy - scribbled on a note pad. It is sung to ''Old Macdonalds had a farm'' and it goes:
I love Miffy, yes I do,
Do you, do you too?
Oh Miffy is the cutest toy,
In the wholewide world!
Finally I scanned this and preserved it for my scrapbook for all time!

And these are photos I took of my family reading at the library, our weekly haunt:

Next some of our very old soft toys (mostly mine and dh's) with which we had to part with recently (sob)

Had to scrap these photos of how cool Jared is:

And of the movie outings we have been having, took a big risk and took these photos (many of them, actually!) in the dark cinema, to catch them in those 3D specs!

A Chinese New Year layout - and our almost a tradition Loh Hei (Yu Sheng) - a homemade 'raw fish' salad where everyone joins in to 'mix' it, lifting it high up with chopsticks while declaring 'blessings'!

Just a fun moment captured of the boys laughing out loud - they do it a lot, but I do love this lot of shots

And here's me and dh on our weekly date nights - a big part of our lives that I must not leave out of our scrapbooks!

Have turned these 10 layouts into an album template set for you in the store with papers and brads included, so you can make a quick album if you like.

And finally a layout just of nothing in particular, of silly shots I forced my boys to take with me while we were waiting for and in the lift one day, but just tugs at my heart to say these are the people and the moments that make it all worthwhile for me. :)

And you can download this template here. Enjoy capturing what makes it all worthwhile for you! And thanks for every one of your wonderful comments, they always make my day :)

More Dailiness Moments

2010-04-16T08:07:00.000-07:00

Thanks everyone for your support and wonderful comments in the last post, I feel so blessed! And best of all, convinced that I'm actually helping gals like myself scrapbook your memories and capture more of them quickly and beautifully. I'm honored! And makes it all so worthwhile! :) Thanks too for visiting the store and the sale, sale ends in two days, a big THANK YOU once again!

I've been taking a break from travel layouts and wanting to catch up on capturing moments from our dailiness (see last post). Since deciding not to do the 365 project this year, I've taken significantly less photos (gasp!) and dh and I are thinking we're missing something here. (sob!) I have been jotting down stories & moments that I want to scrap, but some are 'pictureless' :( But whatever, I am determined to add them to my scrapbooks!

Like, just yesterday, I had one of these moments, when I was at our shared computer, and Ryan wanted to play games on it, while waiting for me, I let him (or he let me) snuggle and sit on my lap (he was heavy) for long enough while I got him to watch Katrina's video (see last post) with me !!!!!! PRICELESS. I think he understood and felt some of the sentiments she was talking about, that these are how I feel as I watch him grow up. At the point in the video where she talks about her sons leaving home for college, I gasped as I remembered Ryan will have a year of boarding in Year 5 (he's in year 1 now) - to which he calmly replied, "Mom don't worry, I'll be back in year 6." I hugged him tight and wanted to say that being back in year 6 doesn't help the fact that you're going to be away for the whole of year 5(!) but simply thought, how steady and independent he has become. :) No photos for this moment, but need to capture!!

Happily, I did these two layouts this week - in the simple linear style which is so much easier and faster (did not make templates of them since they are so simple, but if you like to have them, let me know)
It's Ryan learning how to tie his school tie from his dad, and then Jared also wanting to get into the action (doing the men thing) I just loved watching them....

Have you been capturing your daily moments? Link us to some of your layouts!

And now thanks to Rheanne I realised that Templates 146 & 147 (which were contributions to The Digi Files 8 of Oct 2009) were not packaged for the store. I must have forgotten. Well, I've decided to put it up as freebies, if you haven't got the Digi Files 8, enjoy!

Download Here.

Blessed Easter! And Loving Dailiness

2010-04-04T04:44:00.000-07:00

Thank you for the cross, the mighty cross
That God himself should die for such as us
And everyday we're changed
Into Your image more and more
Yes, by the cross we've truly been transformed

And we're so amazed and we give you praise
That you would save us at such a cost
And we're so amazed and we give you praise
For the power of the cross
For the power of the cross
Copyright: 1990 Integrity's Praise! Music

Blessed Easter to everyone! Trust you had a wonderful time with your family too. We celebrated in church together the gift of God that was given through Christ. The lyrics above is one of the songs my family sang together on Good Friday in our own little worship time together at home. It was just too wonderful to worship as a family, hearing Ryan's tenorish voice with Jared's childish one blend with dh's base voice and my piano notes singing to the Lord. The boys were for once both quiet and attentive as dh shared of the Lord's amazing Love, and then he led us all in prayer. A truly wonderful morning! We must do this more often.

Of all the everyday things we do as a family sometimes a moment like this will stand out and mark a special place in our memory and I want to have many such ones with my family, especially as the boys are growing up in light speed ! (in their speak)

In my last post, Jenny shared a beautiful video of author Katrina Kenison, reading a chapter from her book, The Gift of an Ordinary Day: A Mother's Memoir. It's so beautiful I wanted to share it here with you but do not know how to fit it in the post. So I'm gonna send you to the video here instead. If you have not seen it or read the book please go over, you won't regret it!

My mission now : To make sure the special and meaningful happen but also to capture and savour the daily ones that seem mundane but will pass us only too quickly!

Amazingly, when I went over to order a copy of the book, I found that Katrina had written an earlier book, Mitten Strings for God - Reflections for Mothers in a Hurry, also about discovering the sacred in the ordinary, written when her children when younger. And that I have read and loved it! When I fished out my copy I was very excited to find that I had scribbled a few precious daily moments (in 2002) in the margins of the first chapter - Dailiness. And I immediately made this layout :) That's the boys aged two and four ...

Now to an announcement - I have completed Template 200! So I think it's time to have a sale! :)

Hop over to the Store Here - and thanks for visiting.

Getting to template 200 means I'm closing in on completing my 2008 Japan Album - only one or two more layouts to go!! Here are the latest creations from the days and nights we spent in our favorite city of Kyoto. It is the loveliest, quaintest, city with a wonderful old city air, we really loved wondering around. We also skipped the largest, most famous temples and sights for smaller, less crowded ones where it sometimes felt we were the only ones there. Totally loved it. Hopefully one day we get to go back :)

(click on images to enlarge)

Here is one more layout from Himeiji - it is so lovely and picture perfect I had to make one more layout!

And one more layout is needed for these cute pics of what we and Jared were constantly doing on the trip - perhaps only we know what I am talking about, lol, but that's why it's precious to us!

And a final two pager to capture all the quirky single photos of the magnificent experience of Japan.

And now I want to show you the beautiful layouts that talented Christie Stearns has made from some of the same templates - isn't she fantastic? And isn't it amazing how a template can turn out wonderfully different in another's creative hands? Thank you Christie! You can say hi to Christie here, and also visit her Handpicked Freebies blog!

Wow Christie, wish I could have a taste of that homemade pie :) ! Thanks so much for sharing.

The templates below are for downloading! Will love it if you leave a comment! Thank you ;P

                                          Download template 198 here
                                          Download template 199 here
                                          Download template 200 here

Life around here

2010-03-14T08:48:00.000-07:00

Been a while since my last post: Life around here has been hectic!
Jared has visited the dentist 3 times in the last two weeks, had a root canal done, and 3 other teeth pulled out, both he, I and the dentist are traumatised (the last visit lasted two and a half hours and a lot of tears), and one more is due this coming Wednesday to finally fill in that root canal treated tooth. The good news is, he is now super diligent in his tooth brushing, flossing and using mouth wash, lol. I have some photos and this is definitely going to be a layout for this year. :)
We had a bit of a scare after Ryan had a podiatrist visit and it was suggested he be checked for Marfans syndrome - thankfully further checks with a paediatrician proved that it is negative, I had a week of learning to trust God no matter what the outcome is - that was really hard but faith building.

Life around here also revolves around my newly minted teen and pre-teen - like Tracy said a few weeks back, yes, I need to trade notes and all the help I can get, on how to navigate this new phase of life for me, haha! Ryan is so sure of himself (unlike me when I was a teen) and coping with first months of high school really well, he hates it when I want to know about this and that - to him it is intruding, and I am learning new creative ways of getting involved in his life without probing! Recently he did a school project - "My autobiography project" - did up a journal with all my digi-scrapbooking supplies - I just loved it! He appreciated my help, thinks I'm kind (and easily 'manipulated' haha) and do have soft spot for me about what he feels is my innocence and tells me "mom, you're so easy to follow!" lol! We realise the way to parent then now is by influence - walking the talk, setting an example, especially in our spiritual life, how we walk with God, seek His Will, and all that.... Proverbs 22:6 "Train up a child in the way he should go, Even when he is old he will not depart from it." What a responsibility, and what a calling!
I have kept up the tradition of making a birthday layout with a prayer for this young man:

Credits: Background paper by Valarie Ostrom, patterned papers from Lori Barnhurst's Kid Couture , word art by Jen Wilson, Dani Mogstad, Shabby princess, Tracy Howard
And here's our birthday prayer for Jared, the creative, imaginative, free-spirited one in the family. Recently we had a 'meltdown' situation with him over getting homework done, and we asked him,"why don't you just focus and complete your work which can be easily done in half an hour, instead of reading, playing, and doing everything else leaving work to the last when you're tired and melting down?" And his answer? "The thought that ..sob..life is so much more than homework...sob..sob..." !!!

Credits: Background paper by Kate Hadfield (painted pretties), patterned papers by 'bbd from dsa freebie'and from whispereddreams by emarta, word art by Jen Wilson, Dani Mogstad, Bethany wordarts, and Shabby Princess
The templates of these can be downloaded - scroll down for the links!

And I have been trying out new styles! Was inspired to use all white backgrounds for my next 4 Japan trip layouts - what do you think? It was not planned, I had a difficult time finding the background paper color for the Shrine layout and the Kobe layout, and accidently found that white works! I really love the modern feel of white against the traditional scenes of Japan - who knows, this might be a new direction for me :)

Credits: Doodled border from Nancie Rowe Janitz's One Swet Love Borders

Credits: Paint by Creashens, Brown paper by Joyce Paul, alpha by Christina Renee, borders by Michelle Filo from the So Charming kit from LDD

Credits: Ribbon by Mira Designs, lflowers by Cori Gammon, button by Emiko Designs, Yellow paper by Megan Turnidge from Good Day Sunshine

Credits: Stitches by Shabby Princess, fan from Take me to the Orient by Simply Sweet Designs , black paper by Michelle Coleman

Finally, you can get these to create with. Have fun and leave a message if you download- thanks and
Download Here!

Questions on printing photobook

2010-02-25T03:18:00.000-08:00

Just a quick post to answer some of the questions from my last post:

macchiato queen asked:

1. For shutterfly printing, does that mean that for single page layout, I should add a white border to the page for Shutterfly to crop away when printing (so that I don't lose the sides)? 2. And for double page, I add a white border to the 3 sides on the "outside" and take 3/8 inch of the other page for the border at the fold?

No I don't add any white borders to the page (whether single page layout or double page layout). I don't think the printing process would be cutting so precisely, so that would pose the risk of having a silver of white border left on the layout. I want my pages to extend all the way to the edge.

If there are items on my layout that are near the edge and I don't want to risk them being cut off, this is what I do. Before I save the jpegs, I select all the layers on my layout except the background paper layer, (ie, all the photos, mats, elements, words, text layers) and edit/transform them a little smaller on the layout, such that they would be still visible after the cutting. The background layer is left intact extending all the way to the edge, so that my page will not have any white border no matter where it is cut.

Here's an example. This page is as it is originally on my photoshop file, it had elements quite near the edge which I did not want to be affected.

Before I load the page onto shutterfly, I had reduced the size of every layer except the background layer, such that the elements are now at least 0.25 inches from the edge.
And here is how the page looked printed!

Wendy has written a wonderful article on The Daily Digi on how to do it, she does a much better job than me! She also has lots of products in her store to resize for printing, which has received great reviews. I wish I know how to do actions like hers, that would save me a tonne of time! So do go check her out.

Shamnalee asked: where do you print your photo books? how do the two page templates work?
Well I printed at Shutterfly.com. For more information on using the two page templates, see this post and this post too. Hope these help!

Thanks Mima and Jenny for sharing where you print, may I ask if your experience is for printing loose pages or binded photo books? Thanks!

Blessed Chinese New Year !

2010-02-20T03:55:00.000-08:00

It's going to be a long post, but first I want to share a Chinese New Year Wish with all of you, even if you don't celebrate it! Traditionally, when we meet anyone during the CNY celebrations (which lasts 15 days) we greet them with wishes that come in 4-characters-phrases/idioms. I loved how these set of 4 traditional wishes became meaningful when someone shared with us how there are Promises in the Bible that promises similar or better! (I'll roughly translate for those who don't understand chinese)
Here's wishing you:
心想事成 (whatever your heart thinks will come true)
Psalms 37:4 Delight yourself in the LORD and he will give you the desires of your heart.
万事如意 (everything will be according to your wishes)
Romans 8:28 in all things God works for the good of those who love him....
岁岁平安 (every year will be peaceful)
Philippians 4:7 The peace of God will guard your hears and minds in Christ Jesus
事业有成 (whatever you do will find success)
Jeremiah 29:11 For I know my plans for you, plans to prosper you...plans to give you future and a hope.
A blessed New Year to you all, truly, in Him and by His grace, every of our days will be blessed!

Here is my latest layout. My dear friend Yen snapped these pictures of me and dh while we were singing and running through chords for worship songs for a gathering later that night. These are the moments that are so precious and that matters. I'm really missing 365 but glad I have more time for layouts like this.. Do you have layouts of everyday moments that captures your heart?

And my 365 photobook has arrived!!!
The very best part is seeing how the family, especially dh reading and enjoying every photo of everyday of last year! He said "this is wonderful, this is beautiful" quite a few times, wow. Even Miffy (this particular one we call Biffy (he is more beafy) enjoyed finding himself in the book!
Now we had been talking about printing double pages in the last post, and had received quite a few feedback, thanks to everyone who responded, let me summarise some of it here:

Lynette shared how much she loved books printed at this new site she found - you can find her review on her blog in this post here.

Jacinda has printed some of my 2-page templates successfully through www.myreflections.com.au, what I'm excited to hear is that the pages come out looking EXACTLY like they do on your computer screen - nothing cut off in the printing process - I gotta check this out.

Michelle printed with Heritage Makers and liked them so much she signed up as a consultant! She loves that the books are hand stitched and the matte version is beautiful.

I have also read that Viovio is great, and have wanted to try Blurb for the longest time, but every time Shutterfly throws one of their coupons at me, I just go with them! Less learning curve!

Oh and thanks to reader sdwrdt for pointing out that the heart shaped template in the post below shows as template 92 on the preview but is actually template 93 in the actual file. You're amazing, thanks!

Jody asked for my templates that have photos that cross the centre page, do these print nicely or does some of the photo get cut off? So I took some pics to show you. Personally I am alright that some photos like the beach shot at the top of the layout below spreads across the page, and a little of it down the middle gets hidden (mine was a 70 page book!) I find that worth sacrificing for the effect of a double page spread! Don't put a facial shot down the middle of the double page spread though!

It gets a little more tricky if you have words down the middle, so I won't recommend it unless you're die-hard like me!
I want to show you in detail how I circumvented the problem I might have had with words down the middle like in this layout below.
The words lined up quite nicely after printing, but I had to do some adjustments for shutterfly because of the way they trim off edges of each page I upload, and then bind the middle (thus hiding from view a bit more of the middle) You can see their printing guide here for more details, and also refer to this post of mine for more examples. I believe most printers do this too.
Now here is how the layout looked on photoshop in 24x12 format, before I 'cut' them to save as left and right jpegs for uploading to shutterfly
And below are the left and right 12x12 jpegs that I uploaded to shutterfly to produce the printed result shown above. Can you see that for the left jpeg, I shifted the layout slightly to the left when I 'cut' it, and for the right jpeg, I shifted it slightly to the right? So there is about 3/8ths overlap on both sides, such that after shutterfly does their trimming (approximately at the red line), the final result printed will match up in the middle.
click on the image to enlarge

ANNOUNCEMENT!
Yes I have an announcement to make! You know, I don't really think of myself as a template designer, more of a layout designer who turns them into templates, and feel so privileged that I get to have this small and personal blog and blogstore. So I had never thought of having a creative team, but when it comes to this someone whose layouts I really admire, and have snagged many to show off on my blog, and who has become a friend through many emails and help she gave me, I asked, and she agreed, and I'd like to introduce you to my new CT, the talented Christie Stearns! She is also known as Digital Daisy on forums, and she is the one behind the fabulous Handpicked Freebies blog site. Do say hi to her, you can find her personal blog here, and her many beautiful layouts here, and of course I've snagged more to show you here! Don't you just love her great photos, sense of colors, her choice of elements and papers, and clean and elegant style? I especially love the Wedding Day layout. Thank you Christie! Thanks for being on my team!!
Well I myself haven't done any new double pages, but did finally find all my files from 2008's freebies to pack into Template Pack 3 - these are in the store here. My favorite layouts of this lot are the 2nd layout on the left of us on Empire State Building (!) and the left, bottom row layout of the boys hanging out together - love that we captured those precious moments! You can click on image to enlarge the view. But may I brag - the SNOW in Central Park layout (top right) was published in CK last Jan! :P
Click on image to enlarge
And here's the template from my layout for you. Download it here. Hope it comes in useful for a nice layout :)

Stories of our days, months and years

2010-02-11T05:30:00.000-08:00

So much has happened in January, thanks to those who have shared with me your stories about your grandma as you have listened to mine. My family has drawn closer and also closer to God in wonderful ways in the last few weeks, it amazes us and we're very thankful. Though I only saw my grandma once every few months in the past few years, now that she is gone, everything just feels different. I guess it can't be the same anymore, especially during special holidays and days... so hard. As Jody said, she will remain in our hearts forever. And we will see her one DAY!

I have been able to get back to scrapping, as always so nice and theraputic to create and muse and journal about our lives. Oh, have I told you I have decided not to continue with 365 for 2010!! Don't get me wrong, 365 is fantastic and I'm so GLAD I have an entire year of daily life recorded in an album. (My shutterfly album is going to arrive anytime now!!!) But I do feel that I missed out on certain stories of last year that I wanted to journal about more, or record more photos of that particular day / moment / story, which I did not have enough time to do while scrapping 365. So I've stopped a photo a day, but will switch back to telling stories of each week or month as they come along. I'm feeling a little withdrawal pangs especially when I look at others' 2010 365 layouts such as Jacinda's FANTASTIC ones!

Well, here's my 365 days of 2009 album, in which I threw in all the other pages I made for 2009, since this will be the one album I will print for last year! It's a bit mixed bag as a result, but wonderful nevertheless!

Click here to view this photo book.

By the way, all the 365 page templates are still available for download on the blog - see right side bar for the link :)

In lieu of 365, I'll have to make sure all the stories of 2010 gets told! Here are the first two: 1) Ryan's 13th birthday in a more masculine/less childish colored layout for my new official TEEN!
Credits: Background paper, blue paper, and ribbons by Peppermint Creative , row of flags by Miss Vivi , balloon stickers by Miss Kim deisgns , "totally love you" tags by Ksharonk.And 2) this layout shows us on 1 Jan in 2009 and 2010, in exactly the same place in almost identical photos - we are such creatures of Habit!! hahaha. These templates are in the store here. Thanks for looking!
Credits: Background kraft paper, us, fresh, new, 2010 word pieces, bird sticker by Something Blue Studio, 09 tag by Dani Mogstad, pink arrow by Kate Hadfield, January by Misty Cato, patterned paper by Paislee Press, yellow paper by Megan Turnidge.
Now I had this idea of a "love" template about two months ago, and just managed to complete it in time for Valentines' Day to share with you. Originally I wanted to use it for a layout of me and dh through the 28 years we've known each other (!) But now I've decided it will be a layout showing all the relationships that surround my family and blesses us with love. Immediate family, extended family, cousins, friends, godparents, teachers, our family in Christ, and so on... it will take a while gathering all the pictures! This is all I got so far with the layout today :)Download these LOVE templates here. I think this could be use for a baby's first year layout, or even a layout of something you love. For template 180 you could insert 1Corinthians 13 as I did here, or a poem or quote you love, or just use the space for journalling. I might put in my favorite quote by Helen Keller (see right side bar)
Oh, and my all time favorite heart shaped layout template 92 is still available here if you like it. Happy Valentines' Day!
Tell me what layout you think you'll make with the LOVE templates, or better yet, link us up to your layout when you're done! Love to see what you do with it! May you all have a wonderful Valentine's Day spent with your loved ones. In Singapore we are also celebrating the Chinese New Year, (though on a quieter note for my family this year), so happy CNY to everyone who celebrates it, have a grand time!

Oh, I have one more question. Has anyone printed double pages like my templates or any other double pages album with other printers other than shutterfly? If so, can you share with us your experience and link us to some pics if you have? I'm been asked about this but have so far only printed with Shutterfly as I really like their quality and am used to their application. Will love to hear from you if you have experience with other printers! Thank you!

Thank you

2010-02-01T01:39:00.000-08:00

Thank you everyone for your kind words and prayers. We are indeed blessed with the rich memories of her wonderful life, and blessed to have the Hope of meeting her again.

Remembering Grandma

2010-01-30T04:57:00.000-08:00

This is my beloved grandma, with Ryan at his first birthday, with me at my first birthday, and with Jared at his first month celebration. She passed away last Tuesday at the age of 103. We miss her terribly. Knowing she is with the Lord is our great comfort. As Jared prayed, thank you God for sending ''ah zhor'' (great grandma) to Heaven.
Grandma led an amazing life, coming to Singapore from China at age of 17, she had an education which was very rare for girls in China then, got married, had a big family, survived the war, ran a business, was always active, had no illness and had never been in hospital, and even in her mid nineties, travelled to China every year! A fall two years ago weakened her, yet to the last day she was well, eating well and quietly went in her sleep. Thank you God for that.
She was in her sixties when I was born, and my memories of her are of her simply being there for us, always encouraging, always quiet and gentle, always with a smile.
I plan to get more photos of her earlier days and make more layouts about her, but making this first one today was very good....
Here is the simple template to share with you.
This week this verse has been my encouragement, like to share it and bless you too:
Psalm 84:11
For the LORD God is a sun and shield;
The LORD gives grace and glory;
No good thing does He withhold from those who walk uprightly.
Amen!

Looking back and Looking forward

2010-01-11T06:46:00.000-08:00

Blessed New Year!! I just realised I had been missing from here for almost a month! Had been too busy with life! We were back safely from our trip to Hokkaido on 26th, followed by two christmas/new year parties at our place (due to us not being home during christmas), and then the mad rush to get kids ready for the new school year (which starts for us on 4th Jan), especially Ryan who moved onto high school this year!
We got him new uniforms, school bag, haircut, watch, track shoes, mobile phone (yes we finally gave it to him in view of his commute so he can be contactable), everything (!) to 'transform' him from primary school student to high school student (wink). But the real transformation was happening within, we watched as he took everything in stride - orientation, using public transport (his 'commute' is an hour and 15 mins each way!), new subjects, electives, new friends, and so on. He's definitely coping better with this than we are! I kept thinking back to his first day at primary school, crying and hanging onto me, look at him now!
On his first day at school, I messaged him this verse :

Isaiah 41:10

So do not fear, for I am with you;
do not be dismayed, for I am your God.
I will strengthen you and help you;
I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.

And he messaged right back: Yes, everything is fine.
Indeed! With the Lord God upholding us, everything is fine, for our good, and for His Glory!

And on top of all that, we had a birthday party for Jared last saturday (put together in less than 5 days) - his first inviting friends from school (last year he finally wised up and asked why after 10 birthdays he still does not have a party with friends, we usually just cut a cake as a family or just one or two friends to celebrate, hehe) - we were quite stressed out planning food and games, I was worried too many kids will turn up and Dh was worried too few kids will turn up - of course everything turned out perfect. He invited only boys (lol) and they all brought a Nerf Blaster (toy guns) and had a blast. Here's the birthday boy making his wish. He's 11.

Now of course I have to show you some photos from Hokkaido! For the first time in our lives (other than that one day in New York), we experienced a complete winter wonderland for 8 whole days. Snow falling is perhaps the most magical and beautiful experience for us who live in the tropics, we loved it!! Until we were there this time we had no idea the immense effort required to shovel snow, remove it from the roads and streets, and how hard it was to pull our luggage over snow covered sidewalks!!! There was constantly workers and trucks on the main roads moving snow, day and night... wow we had no idea. We gave up most of our planned itinery (also taking it easy after dh's health scare) in favour of just playing in the snow, having snow ball fights, making snow man, snow angel and so on...here's a first layout

Credits: Background paper by Ginna Miller, snowflakes and word labels by Miss Mint
At the same time, I'm yet to complete all the layouts for our Japan trip from the year before!! I must speed up and complete it soon - here's photos from our visit to the Himeiji Castle - an incredible historical and beautiful day.
Credits: Alpha by Krystal Hartley, twine by Marcie Reckinger, Background paper by Mira Designs, and torn paper by Designs by Krista
And now i'm very excited to say I've completed my 365 album for 2009!!! It has been such a satisfying, rich and wonderful memory-making, daily life-capturing, scrapbook-creating experience! Looking back through the layouts when I was choosing photos to put on the cover helped me see how much God has blessed us and brought us through last year, truly, great is His faithfulness.
Now I can't wait to see it in print!! Here are the last two layouts for the year:

Credits: Christmas ornament by Nathy Designs, Christmas word doodle by HeatherAnne Designs, Foil Flakes by Rachel Young

Credits: Button flower and heart by Rachel Young, button by Julia Makontinsky

Then I decided to pick 12 photos from the year's 365 photos to put on the cover, this is what I finally got. It took me a while and several iterations, and I'm still not sure this is what I will go with, because it does not seem to go with the inside of the album, in which I adopted a much cleaner and linear layout scheme...
Credits: Background paper, numbers, arrow, flower and doodled frame by Lynsay Riches
And so, I found a template downloaded from Weeds & Wildflowers earlier last year, and came up with this. Lovely isn't it? What do you think?
In any case, I decided to pack my various iterations of the 12 photo covers into a pack for the store. Maybe you can use it for year in review layouts!

Finally, here are the last two 365 layouts templates
You can download both templates to play with here!
And as I look back and forward, I also want to thank everyone of you who visits me here, left me comments, sent me emails, bought my templates, supported me and became my friends - THANK YOU for blessing me!

A last post before Christmas

2009-12-14T04:39:00.000-08:00

We are going away tomorrow night and will only be back after Christmas, I might not get to blog, so here's wishing everyone a truly blessed Christmas, celebrating the birth of our Saviour Jesus with your close and loved ones. Blessed Christmas!!
Jared likes to complain that his life is boring and nothing exciting ever happens. We always laugh and tell him that peaceful and routine days are sometimes the best days. Of course that is not in his character at all, unlike Ryan! But a week or so ago, I truly appreciated the truth of my own words.
The night before our 16th anniversary, Dh felt chest pains and we rushed to the emergency room. You can probably imagine all the thoughts and endless prayers that ran through me that night! I'm so thankful to report that it seems to be nothing serious and he was discharged the next day, although he has to go for more tests in the next few weeks. It was almost surreal as we managed to still make it to dinner and a screening of short films at The Substation, a contemporary arts centre where we had our first date, on our anniversary, as planned. How much life can (potentially) change in an instance! (added on15 Dec ): I want to add here words of wisdom I received from Barbara (in comments) that through it all, I am thankful that I know Him who controls all things for my good and His glory. Thanks Barbara, Lynette and everyone for your encouragement.

The preciousness and awareness of the days since that one has been heightened for me quite a bit, and I appreciate that. When I sat down to complete these next two 365 layouts, (yes including one of my dh on the emergency ward bed when he was declared ok) I was more emotinoal than usual, but also so, so thankful. Emergency, routine, peaceful, mundane or exciting, these are blessed days, and these are the moments I want to remember forever. :)
May these December days be blessed ones for you and your family too.
click on image to see bigger image
click on image to see bigger image

Well I did complete some more Japan layouts the last two weeks, despite all the busyness of December. These next two are of the zen-like, beautiful 'floating temple' of Mijiyama. Even the boys became quieter when we got there! Dh and I were so caught up with capturing the light and colors of this place it was a photographers' (and a scrapbooker's) dream ....

This layout captures some of the moving exhibits in the Hiroshima Memorial Museum. You can click on the pic to see a larger image. Check out the watch that stopped and captured the exact moment the bomb dropped..
You can download this template Here to scrap a layout that has a lot of perhaps close up shots of objects? Like Christmas ornaments perhaps?

And since I won't be posting till after Christmas, here's two more templates for all your wonderful Christmas photos, download here! Tell me what you think of this slightly different 'new style' I'm leaning towards lately! Wonderful holidays everyone!

It's the end of term school holidays

2009-11-28T05:01:00.000-08:00

Yes, it's our end of school year 6 weeks-school holidays! The boys are having their well deserved and long awaited break. I've managed to slot in some swimming and chinese lessons(chinese is our mother tongue but they are much stronger in English, hence the lessons), but other than that they are spending their days just the way they like. (A few days when I got home from work in the afternoon, they were still in their pjs!!) Between getting ready for Christmas, our year end holiday (it's Hokkaido in two weeks time!), 'springcleaning' the home and completing my projects at work before our break, I'm just thankful I have some time every weekend to relax and scrap! (that's all it takes to keep me happy and my family knows that. I'm easy to please, I 'd say! :) )
We don't celebrate Thanksgiving here, but do want to wish everyone who does a wonderful time giving thanks as a family! I do love the meaning of this holiday. Blessed Thanksgiving!
Before I forget, in my last post Christine asked me about the bible study I just completed on The Life of Moses. It is a study I attend conducted by Bible Study Fellowship. It is a weekly study conducted by volunteers that is focused on giving us a chance to learn about God's Word in depth. It is a 7 year program and I've been so blessed (i've comleted 4). I just checked the website, it is now conducted weekly in 36 countries around the world, and began in a California living room a half-century ago! I have been a christian for a long time, but this opportunity to study the bible in such depth has really enriched my understanding, my faith, and my walk with the Lord. Thank you for allowing me to share this!
And here are my 365 layouts for the 4 weeks to 7 Nov. It's a much more relaxed family! :)

blue paper from TDD's snap & scrap kit, camera from same kit by Dani Mogstad
And here's us during the week of dh's birthday, grandma's birthday, and Ryan's graduation night.

word tapes by Nicole Young, brown paper by Creashens, and stamp by the Digi Chick
On to my Japan layouts, next stop on our trip was Hiroshima, the site of the Atomic Bomb dropped during World War II. We had read and prepared the boys for it, so it was a solemn moment when the slow city tram pulled up and we saw the Atomic Dome building. There it stood, so stark, powerful, yet beautiful, and so sad. We have no particular political views about the war, we know that what is important is that all the world have learnt that (as inscribed on a scene in the memorial) "There is no good war and there is no bad peace". We count ourselves very blessed to have been able to visit Pearl Harbor and the USS Arizona Memorial many years ago, and to be able to bring the boys here to Hiroshima, to be at this city where history changed course, to learn this precious lesson too, and never forget at what price victims of war had to pay for us to learn it.
Credits: Background paper by Robin Carlton, flower by Tara Dunstan, 'gear' by Dani mogstad
Here is the portion of the Hiroshima memorial dedicated to children who died to the atomic bomb, especially this 12 year old Sadako who started the folding of cranes as a symbol of peace. I hope the impression on my children will remain and that they will never forget.
Credits: paper crane by Veritas Scraps, ribbon by Kristen of K Studio, work art by Jessica Spragues, stitches by Gunhild storeid, purple paper by Amy Sumrall, ribbon by Brittish designs, background paper by Jessica Bolton

And I have been saving these, meaning to show you some layouts of my friends that are totally awesome! These first 4 are by Hilde, you can see more of her layouts here

And this 365 layout is by Erika, love her photos and that ribbon and paper on brown paper,
This is by Crissie, what a lively and happy layout!
And these are by Karen Mathre, Karen replaces the white frames in my templates with various papers to great effect!
And some more awesome ones by Tania, you can check out her blog here
There's more! I've discovered totally awesome and fantastic 365 layouts by Jacinda, you MUST check out her 365 blog HERE !! I've booked marked it for future reference, thanks Jacinda for the fantastic inspiration!

And I really must share Amy's album with you, Amy left a link in my comments some time ago, and I was just totally blown over, thanks Amy for sharing it with me, haven't had a chance to tell you how you made my day! You can see her album here

Finally, finally, of course, here's the templates you can play with this fortnight, have as much fun as I did!
Leave a message if you download here!

Days are flying past

2009-11-14T06:10:00.000-08:00

Every time I have some layouts ready and am about to blog, I always try to write down in my post some thoughts from the recent week, whether an anecdote, any story, something cute or funny, anything I want to remember.
But these two weeks the feeling has just been one of wondering, 'where has the time gone?' Can't believe it is November! It's probably the end of the school term, packing up this year's school things to make way for next years', Ryan attending his 'Graduation Night'(!!), finishing another year in my BSF (bible study fellowship)(we studied the Life of Moses this year and what a blessing), and so on that's brought this on. Even with my 365 project capturing every day (almost) it is still amazing where the days went!
There are many things we had been planning to do but that had been postponed more (years, lol) than I like to admit, like re-painting our home (the last time was 8 years ago, eek!, and we only painted half the walls then!), finding a way (overhaul is a better word) to store and organise all our (and the boys') books and stuff, even looking for a bigger home to fit us (and now the property prices have flown beyong our reach!), all these get postponed for daily life, trips (yay!), and I don't know what else.
But in the end, this is our life, as I have documented in my 365 and trip layouts, and I guess even if some of the bigger things get postponed, it doesn't matter. At this stage, parenting the boys, work, being a wife to my beloved, will have to take up most of my time, add to that serving God in sunday school, learning in BSF, time with family and friends, and all the daily nonsense and routine (and scrapbooking!) - is living abundantly as He has shown us how, and we are blessed! :) (even if the apartment is rather messy!)

So much for rambling, here are the layouts I completed, all of them are from our time in Takayama, in the Japan alps, a most tranquil, historical and quaint town. This is from the Hida Folk Village which houses historical authentic old farmhouses brought there from surrounding villages!
Credits: Background by Dani Mogstad, patterned paper, leaves, and heart shaped wood, by MlleHeloise, alpha by Traci King
And this was the totally awesome heritage home of a merchant family, we are no architecture buff, but the way the house was built really drew our breaths! The house was freezing because they did not install any modern heating, and the best part was being invited to sit down (kneeling fashion) for a hot cup of shitake mushroom tea from the boiling pot on the hearth!!
Credits: Papers by Bohemian art, leaves by Viva Artistry, dragonfly by Stephinette
And one last layout of all the various sights and scenes, food and smells from around the town, these made up the full unforgetable experience! (we went back to the same little eatery manned by one lady our entire trip!!)
Credits: Background paper by Catscrap, dotted paper by Karen Lewis, word art by Jen Wilson, strings by Weeds & Wildflowers.
This one is for you to play with! Here is the download link. Thanks for your comments!