Enchanted

Enchanted

Tonight is actually our date night, but dh had to go to a work function, so I rented movies and watched Enchanted with my boys! They were really sceptical at first at watching a "fairytale" movie, and actually so was I, but I'm happy to report we had an surprisingly enchanting, bonding time! Just yesterday Ryan told me they will live together when they are grown, "we will be bachelors!" he said gleefully, :) , I did not tell him that in three years he'll think very differently(!) (I was worried there for a minute: but what about grandchildren??) Tonight we were all happily transported to happily ever after land, halfway through Jared actually worried about Giselle, "who will she choose?" - well, boys are human and sweet at heart too, after all! :)

The situation with computer games is under control, this week we are working on the "earn" your computer time with "homework well done" basis, and so far so good! I sneak onto the computer every night after they're in bed, and caught up with lots of scrapping, been using some designer templates, it was so easy!

Credits: Frames from Scrapieupe.typepad.com, paper by Corina Nielson

Credits: Swirl by Vanilla Hush, frames by Scrapkitty, background paper by Krista Designs, alpha by DaringSpiritGraphicsCredits: Background paper by Fanny of Scrappinfolics.blogspot.com, labels by LigiaOrsati, stamp by FeiFei, heart by Minna Rajala, alpha by Pri Rocha.

This is now available as a set in the store here

Easter To Me

Easter to me
Happy Easter! On Easter I want to give thanks to our great God for reaching out to us when we are unable to reach Him. This morning at Easter Service in church I was so reminded of how utterly undeserving we are, or I am, of Jesus' work on the cross and His gift of salvation. I am so thankful for that first day more than twenty years ago when I first heard the gospel and believed, and for everyday that He walks with me, despite who I am. Praise be to our Lord!

Brag book for my mom
Made my first brag book for my mom on her birthday. It was a breeze and oh so beautiful because I used Ikea Goddess's quick pages that she offered for a challenge on Weeds & Wildflower a while ago, thanks Angie!! My boys are my mom's only grandchildren so you can imagine how much she loves to "brag" about them. I used some of their younger photos - they were just so cute, and also to see how much they have changed and grew.

Been Offline

Been Offline!!

Due to mini crisis at home related to enforcing computer gaming rules for my boys, we had to take a hard stand last week and removed the cables to the computer indefinitely!! It worked and there was no protest and in fact a peaceful week (it was a one week school holiday) spent playing board games and creating with Lego and Knex, outdoors, at the beach, and at the museum!

Unfortunately for me I share the computer with the boys (the dh has one for himself..because he has work on it, well that's his reason anyway :p ) I was OFFLINE too!

It was quite uncomfortable, but I too did more reading, and finally, I scrapped, the traditionally paper way! Well, I have been wanting to re-scrap the boys' baby photos which were not digital photos, and did not want to bother with scanning them. Guess what, I enjoyed myself so much! The scrapping was tedious and I kept it simple, but going through Ryan's baby photos just felt so... well, precious and warm and fuzzy, and I am now able to journal a lot about those days, well, from my current reflections of 11 years ago! Look at some of these pages!

I asked Ryan what he did to my sweet baby in those photos, and he said " I upgraded him." I can't disagree with that!

Okay, I did log on a few times after they went to bed, downloaded freebies and over the weekend, completed a page:

Credits: Papers by Kschmidt's flight of fancy, wordarts and ribbon by Gina Caberra, title alpha by faith42love , charm by Lori Barnhurst, swirls by Janosch designs, butterfly by Weeds&Wildflower

And here's the template:
This is now available as a set in the store here

Of Music and Children

Of Music and children
Dh and I just just had our date night, and we went to watch the movie, August Rush. What a delightful movie! The soundtrack was unusual and awesome, and the sweet movie really tugged at our hearts. Long ago when I watch movies like this I'd think how wonderful if I had music genius like that, nowadays I think how wonderful if my sons had music genius like that! From the couple of years they have spent having piano lessons I know they are far from that (!) but we let them carry on, (no music exams please though) since they have never requested to stop lessons, and keep on punching those keys. It is good enough for me and dh as long as they are able to enjoy making some music when they want to, that they can appreciate and be blessed by the great genre of music that God has blessed humankind with. As the children grow, I keep trying to watch for something they totally standout in, like sports or music, for a glimpse at what they might lean towards, pursue, become great in. At this point it is not clear yet, though we can tell that Ryan is academically inclined and Jared is creatively inclined. We can't rush children nor second guess God, can we? I just now thought and feel thankful for my boys, the wonder of watching them unfold, the knowledge that God has them in His hands and the blessing of being their mom. Well! That was a lot of rambling, but I'm glad I captured some of that!


I have finally completed my next layout, it was tough! because it had all planes in our photos from the National Air and Space museum at Dulles Airport.
The journaling goes: The boys, especially daddy, was totally floored by the planes and space shuttle we came face to face with at the Udvar-Hazy Centre of the National Air & Space Museumat Dulles Airport. Daddy must have taken 20 photos of the Blackbird alone! He told the rest of us many stories, and it was totally awesome to see the Enola Gay and know it dropped that A bomb in Hiroshima that saved our families from the WWII. WoW


Credits: twine by Natalie Bird, Background Paper by April Staker, crumpled brown paper by Krizomel, stars by Sausan designs, tags and alpha by Miss Mint, compass by Island Girl.







And here's the template, hope it works for you! Thank you so much for your great feedback and especially links to your lovely layouts! Jackie had feedback asking me to collapse the layers for each photo, I've done that for the white frame layer and its shadow, and linked that and the photo layer, hope that helps! Also, Jackie, in photoshop you can still move the the photos that hang over the page into the page for your smaller 8x11 pages. Just use your move tool. I just have this thing about photos going over, haha, it kind of makes the scrap page look like it is a photo of a physical scrap page! Do feel free to move them around to suit your page. This is now available as a set in the store here

Inspiration

Two Page Layouts

Thank you for your lovely comments and wishes for my dh! There's some questions about how to go about printing the two page layouts as the photos go down the middle of it. Good question! I was wondering about it myself too! :P

I was thinking after the layout is done, I'll resize the photoshop canvas to 12X12, save one half of it as jpeg, then the other, and try to make sure I've got it sliced neatly at the right place. I haven't tried it yet, and I intend to print it into a shutterfly book eventually, and I know that between the pages, the way shutterfly does it, the pictures at the middle of the double page will be slightly "hidden". That's why I chose a scenery shot to go down the middle, instead of a shot of person, so I won't mind the distortion so much!

Will appreciate if anyone else has a better idea of how this can be done? Cos I do think I'm gonna do a lot more the double pages, they are so useful for trip photos, and do look so good like a centre spread!

Oh, and I do want to show you a few amazing layouts I've had the opportunity to get permission to share here, you can tell which inspired my double page forays!

Here's two increble pages by Kari, yummy cookies and a yummy time the children must have had!

Here's a page by Jazzmint, of her incredibly cute daughter,

And this cutie page is by Kotrine:

Thank you ladies for sharing your layouts with us!

Have a blessed day!

Been Busy

Been Busy

DH fractured his hand on the eve of Chinese New Year! It was quite a shock as he had to go for surgery that very night and had to miss the family's reunion dinner. Thankfully he could come home the next day and we still managed to celebrate most of the holidays as planned. It was a refreshing change though as I had to help him with some daily stuff, and it is a change from being the usually dependent me! :) Here's a layout to remember this time!
Credits: Frames, and all papers from ksharonk's various lovely kits!
Our home was quite spiffed up for the holidays so it was a good time to take some pictures, and I wanted to capture the little touches that grace our home during this time. It is great to have some of the traditional foods, decorations, and things up, the one time in the year our family get more connected with our culture. As our country become more modern and cosmopolitan, I feel a need to give my boys greater sense of our culture and traditions. Here's one for the record

Credits: Background paper, and note paper by Ksharonk, and frames by Kim Hill
And am finally scrapping the 2nd day of our US trip spent in Annapolis. My first try at a double page layout, I liked that all the photos could fit in! Unfortunately I don't know how to make this image appear larger than this! Credits: Paper from Weeds&Wildflowers' A Better Me, twine by Natalie Design, buttons and stitching by Donna Rafferty, alpha by Kristal Hartley, and flower clip by Carol Abram.

This is now available as a set in the store here

Happy Chinese New Year

Happy Chinese New Year!

In two days we celebrate the Chinese New Year, which is on 7 Feb this year! We're very busy spring-cleaning, decorating, cooking, and getting ready for all the visiting and visitors and all the merry-making! We have the tradition of getting new clothes (from top to toe) for everyone, mostly in shades of red, and also the giving of Hong Baos (red packets or gifts of cash) to children and the not yet married. So you can imagine how excited the children are, they get a windfall, but we still manage to get most of it into their college funds!

In cosmopolitan Singapore we live very modern lives so this is a great time to get closer to our roots and enjoy lots of family time with our extended families.

So, a short post today, just completed this layout, almost similar to the last one, and still of Great Falls Park!! Haha, just couldn't pass up on the lovely photos! And that gave me a thought, I should have worked them as double page layouts! Well, next up! ;)

Credits: Background paper by TraciKing, Brown paper by Scarletheelsmedia, strip of journaling by Christina Renee, joined paper strips (re-colored) by SarahJones, flower by Serendipity Street , cross stitches by Annie Manning , letters by MissScraps (recolored) .

This is now available as a set in the store here

We made it

We made it!

Well, Ryan made it through his camp and so did we- without going down to visit him at camp, though we were terribly tempted to when he did not call for three days!! We found that he actually tried to call, but at nearly midnight and we had gone to bed!! It is unbelievable that the camp made them stay up that late!!

When dh went to pick him up for home, he walked right past Ryan because he had become so dark and 'burnt'. Dh asked how was camp, and Ryan answered"on a scale of ten, two", and when asked why, said "the instructors sprouted vulgarities".... dear me! It is adventure camp, and meant to toughen them up, but still, no need for vulgarities! Still, he had fun, and we are sooooo proud that he survived it - all cool, and such. :)

I've been reading this awesome book and want to HIGHLY recommend it to you all:

Art Journals & Creative Healing by Sharon Soneff. Sharon and many other artists have made fastastically beautiful journals that are wonders of journaling and healing. I was totally blessed and inspired and at times in tears reading it. You must get your hands on a copy if you can! If I may quote Sharon from the book: " ... journals. Sometimes incredibly artful and detailed, other times modestly simple and scrawled, these journals have brought me revelation, calm, solace, and circumspection. A work-in-progress journal is the perfect complement to my work-in-progress life, bringing me continuous, work-in-progress restorative health." Wow. May you be blessed too.

I keep my personal thoughts and feelings in a private journal, but I feel comfortable and happy sharing our family photo journals on the blog. Here's # 2 of our first day in Washington. (Boy have I got a long way to go with scrapping this trip!)

Credits: paper by Jessica Bolton, white journaling spot by sclingerman, hearts by Christina Renee, frame by Lori Barnhurst, ribbon by Sun & Jan, brown journaling spot by Toni Berman

Just in case you were wondering, I had always been making the layouts first, based on what photos I selected and their sizes, then I simply punched out the photos and saved them as templates. I find it a lot easier and more creative this way :)

Carena left me a great suggestion to include a jpeg preview in the zip file, which I did, and I remembered to include a terms of use too. Thanks Carena! However, I'm not sure about the suggestion to set up an email subscriber box on the blog yet, just feels a bit intrusive sending my blog posts into your emails! I'm just happy if you like to come over and visit a while.

Oh, and here's the link to the template, thanks to so many of you who left me love all the time! This is now available as a set in the store here

Ryan's Birthday Prayer

Ryan's Birthday Prayer
I just completed it! I really liked how it turned out too! A layout for Ryan's 11th birthday. He's growing up so quickly we are feeling in awe and almost in shock. Tomorrow in fact he leaves for adventure camp, kayaking, abseiling, and all that including camping outdoors in tents. I'm rather nervous as it is his first time away from home by himself. But he is totally cool and excited. We gave him one of our old phones and I said you have to call home once a day and if you don't I'm coming right down to pay you a visit, and then he totally freaked out. hehe! I'm sure he'd call! :)

The journaling reads:
On your 11th birthday we are amazed and in awe at how far God has brought you! We thank Him for your sweet obedient nature, your intelligence, the discipline and hardwork you put into your schoolwork. We also thank God for the other side of your personality that we see blossoming, the funny you, your wacky sense of humour, the newly opinion-ated you, full of comments and pre-teen takes on everything! We think we need prayer too, ‘cos we are not prepared for how quickly you are growing up! We ask the Lord to bless you with great friendships, and a great year in school. We pray that you will get many opportunities to try out all kinds of things,and grow your independence and confidence!
Most of all we pray that you will grow in your faith and knowledge of your God and Saviour, that you will walk with Him as you enter this next new phase in your life, begin your adventure with your hand in His. Amen
Credits: Paper, messy stitch, denim crown from Lori Barnhurst's Kid Couture, star by sclingerman, tabs by Christina ReneeThis is now available as a set in the store here
Let me know what you think, i love hearing from you all!

Birthday Prayer

Birthday Prayer

We're too busily living our busy lives!! Last week the boys celebrated their 9th and 11th birthday respectively. Their birthdays are 4 days apart but we always celebrate together. We had a little party with our closest friends and the boys' grandparents. When I asked them what party games they wanted to play, Jared asked for Scrabble, and Ryan said Taboo and Pictionary. That's when I know they are definitely grown up, or at least not my little boys anymore!! Here are some photos:
And I want to record the birthday prayer dh and I pray for each of them, here's the one for Jared: Journaling reads:
on your 9th birthday, we thank God for giving you to our family, for your talents and creativity, for your sense of humour, your exhuberance, how you run into everything, never walk; how strongly you feel about things, never without opinions; how you are always interesting, never dull! We pray that the Lord will give us wisdom as your parents, and patience too! We pray that you will develop self-control and discipline, that will allow you to achieve your dreams, although these seem so unnecessaryto you now. We ask God to bless you with a good year in school, for good friends and teachers and an enjoyable time. Most of all we pray that you will grow in faith and personal relationship with your God, who made you and know you and has wonderful plans in store for you. Amen

Credits: Background paper by SandeKrieger from Memory Maker, Happy button from Scrapgirls, stitched heart by Sliva

Made it into a template - they are polaroid style this time because I wanted to give each of the photos a description, hope they come in useful for you!

This is now available as a set in the store here