So much going on!

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!

Last but not least,

This is now available as part of Template Pack 7 in the store. Thanks for your interest!

The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want

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.

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

Painted Papers used in my Layouts

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!!

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 :

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

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

Blurb Review! And Going Away..

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  is now available as a set in the store HERE

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!

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!

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

Happy Mothers' Day!

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. :)

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