Blessed New Year!

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

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

Family Room

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And here's the entire kit!

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mark of a Man

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) 

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

Praises makes a difference

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