Happy about ...

Happy about ...

• the just delivered canvas prints of collages I did for our family room walls!

Dh and I had been wanting to put up various black and white pictures of our family through the years on the walls, instead of our collection of multiple assorted frames due to the lack of space. But individually framing or canvas-printing them would have been too costly and tedious. So when I chanced upon Design Editor's amazing layout on Pinterest, it inspired me to create a huge collage (well, two) instead. And of course I practically entirely scraplifted from her, even the color schemes - they matched what I was planning for the space, thank you Catherine for the inspiration! We love it! By the way, you can find the templates in her Etsy Store here - she has load of other goodies worth checking out too.

Yes those are the boys from then to now. These were some of our 'iconic' photos through the years. So happy to have them in the family room where we spend much of our family time everyday! After I completed the first one above, I had so many shortlisted photos that I had to do up a second collage (below), taking the design and extending/adapting it horizontally.

Design-wise: we made most of the photos black and white as they were all of different colors from different periods, to tie them together. Except for one photo in each collage that had similar color tone as the patterned papers used. Notice in the second collage, the bottom left photo of the boys are one photo which took up 3 photo spaces. Also mixed in close-ups and further way ones, action ones and posed ones, to create interest.

So pleased how they turned out!! This is how they look on our wall, well, floor (we are somewhat overwhelmed at committing them to a particular spot on the wall at the moment ) By the way, they are sized 35" x 22"and 30" x 17.5" respectively. I printed them at Print On Canvas (a singapore based company that ships worldwide) who delivered them 4 days after I uploaded them to their website!! 

• the type, colors and print of our new cushion covers that I ordered from Society 6. Love that they give a modern trendy vibe to our sofa - true, there isn't much space left for lounging... but they are matchy matchy with the colors of the collage....

• the subway tiles we had put in for our bathroom (with black grout for easy maintenance!) and the matching black trim and white blinds - one idea on Pinterest that made it to our home!

• the boys conferring over homework (this mom is no longer of much help where Maths, Physics, Chemistry etc are concerned) - the sight makes me so happy

• Good Friday and Easter services we attended as a family (usually the boys attend youth service). Singing beautiful, meaningful, lovely hymns together, the Lord is Risen!

Find this and more Easter printables here

• my freshly organised Project Life stash! Ok, one big plus is the teeny size of stash that I have :) I try very hard to keep it that way! I have the Cobalt and Turquoise editions, and they fit right into this basket where I can easily see each different journal or filler card by standing the first in the series upright. I don't have much other supplies as I try to keep things simple and focus on the photos and telling the story, and add titles digitally most of the time before printing.

As I do not have any other room or space, once a month, when I have my photos printed, I set everything that you see here on the dining table and complete that month's spread at one go. Then they all go back into the shelves. I think my stash can last me two years !

• bi-monthly project 365 layouts for March capturing our month with the overview of each half month I often look back through my past years' 365 albums with fondness, so much that would not be remembered had I not have them captured! 
• Love the word art I used on this month's spreads below from Suddenly Artistic. One of them says: Bits and Pieces of Life - Unexpected, Real, Unforgettable    So worth noticing and capturing!

• march project life photos and journal cards safely in their pockets!

The first page are snapshots of us in our newly renovated and painted home. The pic at the top left was captured by Jared when he was fiddling with the camera apps on my iphone, it's cool! There was a lot of blank space on the enlarged photo on the right that begged for hand-written journaling :)

The next page are pictures I took on my iphone outside home. At church, at meals, jogging/walking the neighbourhood, at the library, mostly brothers together doing the stuff they do.

This is the first time I'm using an insert from my Becky Higgins' protectors, here to add in a photo about the defective lights (which have finally been fixed), devotions we found meaningful that week, and photos of a wallet J made for himself! 

The flip side of that insert is the start of the one and half page spreads of the day we spent at Legoland Malaysia. The rides were mostly too childish for my kids, and they are not really into the hair-raising ones either, but we had a great time together (finally, a family outing!). The best and most impressive part was the Lego mini-cities, with many scenes from Malaysia and Singapore (including where I work) that are familiar to us. You can't believe how intricate and life-like the lego cities are! 

More Legoland photos. I like putting a white border on all the photos since there was no filler or journaling card on the page.

And J's 95 marks-Chinese mini test paper made it to PL, it is Awesome for the effort he put in as Chinese is not his strong suit. So proud of him for sticking with it, you deserve it, well-done!

• Capturing meaningful devotions / readings the boys and I read together, into my PL album.. These two (both from Rick Warrens' Daily Hope devotions) were particularly meaningful for us. 

• 5 more Beijing layouts completed (yay!)

The first layout is of Arrow Tower which is one of the few remaining parts of the original Beijing Wall and gates into Beijing that remains - so cool to walk through that tunnel/gate that used to link the city to the outside. Wow.

These next 4 layouts are all of the seriously amazing time we spent up on the Great Wall of China. I had broken my little toe just two 10 days before the trip, but limping or pain or not, I was going to get up to there with the family. It had also just snowed a day before, and the skies were so clear, so it was perfect! (click to see larger image)

First layout are the first glimpses and first moments on the Wall

Next the view and terrain changes as we snake up the wall.

And more pics of moments up there. Including the boys sitting right in the middle of one stretch playing Uno, they had walked to and fro and to and fro while waiting for me to catch(limp) up, so they sat down to play. 

And finally, we made it up the last steep stretch of endless stairs to reach the highest point in this part of the Wall. Very hard to top that on this trip.

•  Joining the 30 Days of Lists - to journal and capture some of me according to the prompts. I chose to do only 9 of the 30 lists - no pressure for myself, wrote my lists onto PL cards and tucked them into PL with no embellishing. Just cool to have captured some of my thoughts, some trivial, some just fun and some more thought provoking. I will definitely do it again - next round is in September I believe - check out the blog here

Just for fun, here are a couple of my lists:

List # 4: On an Average Day I...

• spend too long getting ready for work
• scrapbook or read blogs or pinterest after kids sleep
• make and re-make lists
• remind J to start homework
• ask hubby to help with something
• do the dishes and mop the kitchen floor
• drink 2 cups of Cafe 21

List #20 : I do not regret:

• marrying DH
• having the boys
• going into the accounting line
• spending on travelling
• our home choices
• working part time
• not having a car
• starting scrapbooking (!!!)
• serving in youth ministry

• Kim (FiveSeventeen Creations) sharing her awesome layouts with me - Prepare to be inspired! Thanks Kim!

• sharing this template with anyone keen to make one of these double page layouts with 13 photos. It's made from the Arrow Tower layout shown earlier. Enjoy!

This template is now available as Template Pack 9 in the Store. Thanks for your interest!

• hearing from you, it's been so nice to hear from you, thank you!

Currently..

We are enjoying the first term break for the year, a one week school holidays. And what a wonderful break as we had just (almost) completed renovations to our home, and starting to settle in! Lots more to do, and will post more pics as we go along, but maybe just this one sneak peak :)

Boys chatting over dinner in our dining cum library area

Project Life for Feb

You probably know I work on Project Life once a month, though I'm gathering the stories and photos through out the month. I scribble on journal cards, and take photos all the time, always upload to my Photo365 app, and sometimes keep short captions in the app too. Then at the end of the month I decide which photos and stories I want, at one go, print them, and have the happiest time assembling them into my PL.

In February, my principal from back when I was in secondary school passed away. We were terribly in awe of her back then, but now that we have teenagers in school ourselves, we realised she made school such a secure and safe place for us to grow and find our unique paths. About six years ago I met her at BSF (Bible Study Fellowship) and was blessed to find her a fellow sister in the Lord and enjoyed great fellowship! She had touched many lives including mine, which I journaled on this 4x6 card, next to picture of fireworks that I snapped on the way home from her funeral wake. Thankful for the blessed Hope of meeting her one day!

In February we were still deep in renovations, so I included a photo of the 4 bathroom basins we were choosing, which one did we get in the end? 

We rarely celebrate Valentines' but did have some chocolates and some moments to share :) 

February is also Chinese New Year, and I love the bottom left photo of my dh's family boisterously digging in to Yu Sheng (a raw fish salad that I really enjoy). Included these two photos of R & J having their own fun  (that only they understand)  - that's everyday life.

Finally I really liked these shots I took or my three 'men' laughing and chatting as we strolled to the subway station. These are the best and most precious moments.

We started watching the Korean "Running Man' series and are hooked! They are our constant companions every evening these few weeks so deserve a place in the PL. And finally the Army movies that we greatly enjoyed recently, which set R & J laughing and thinking hard - they are due to join the Army in 3 and 5 years respectively!!

Jared did this interesting art piece for school - so it gets included in PL.

He had folded it when it came back from school so I did not feel bad fitting it folded into a standard A4 plastic pocket. Also included his write-up that introduces his concept behind the art. I was so impressed by his write up.. The Title was Community. "Spaceships are Community?" I asked. His articulation in the write-up was super. Here are some excerpts:

....my idea is of a fleet of futuristic but realistic ships leaving a ravaged Earth. This post-apocalyptic Earth would have black, charred continents, rivers of lava and seas of magma...This is meant to signify the fact that, even in times of distress, a proper community must remain together to survive. 

Me: When did you learn to write like that? This is superb English and prose!

J: This is the way I always think and talk....(puzzled at the hoo-ha I'm making)

Project 365 Layouts
My photo-a-day for Feb gets captured in these digital layouts. Did you notice in the middle of this layout there is a screenshot taken on my phone of BeckyHiggins' facebook page, where she posted a link to my Hawaii Project Life Post!!! Over the moon! So honored!!

More everyday moments like haircuts, homework, and special moments like the photo of Ryan with his godmother, my dear friend who lives in Beijing and comes back only once a while. Many of these photos will only make sense to us and be precious to us in the future, and I'm so happy they are getting captured now!

Beijing PhotoBook
It's moving slowly, but I press on to capture the amazing trip we had to Beijing in 2011.
We are the museum/art gallery/science centre kind of people, so definitely had to do the National Museum of China - brilliant history from Peking Man to Qing dynasty,

and we chanced upon this temporary exhibition of the Communist Party art in celebration of their 90th anniversay. We love history and we love art, so this was awesome.

And we never miss any city's land planning exhibits, if they have one. We were here on our first day in Beijing, and it gave us wonderful bird's eye view and orientation of this huge city, so cool!

More layout insipiration from other scrapbookers
This very lovely layout is by Riki, I just love the pictures, the tone and mood that she brought out in this layout. You can find more of her layouts on her blog here.

This is by Tamie Wilson. Love her layout with the fun, team shots! You can find more insipiration on her blog here.

And here are more layouts by Thess Holmqvist. She uses lots of photos too and her use of color and embellishments are just perfect. You can find more insipiration on her blog here.

Template to share
Finally, here's a template made from my Beijing Planning Exhibition Hall layout shown above. I'll be so happy if you are able to use it to scrap some of your memories! Thanks for dropping by!

This template is now available as Template Pack 9 in the Store. Thanks for your interest!

Scrapbooking Crisis: It's Official

I'm officially having a Scrapbooking Crisis. No, it is not that I no longer find it meaningful or satisfying, it is not that I've run out of creative juices, it's just that my boys are not willing to get into photos for me anymore. The whole of January they were refusing to get into pictures and I only have their birthday photos and the rest of the photos were shot whilst they were unawares or caught by surprise! Sigh.. I guess they are just at that teenage phase, or they feel awkward in front of the camera, or most likely they are having Scrapbook-Mom-Burnout!! Hehe!

So what's a scrapbook mom to do? Besides getting smarter and more ingenious at capturing the boys without them knowing, lol, as we started 2013, I have been also wanting to include more than just photos of what happens everyday. So my focus this year: to capture what is on our minds, our thoughts, our prayers. I'm further inspired by Ronnie (find her at Pink Ronnie) 's post on tips on taking pictures for Project Life. If you haven't, you must go check her blog out, or start with this post. This is what she says in her point #4: Don’t let your photographs always be dictated by the subject matter (ie. people, food and objects). Instead, try to focus on capturing a ‘moment’ once in a while. Totally! New focus: capture the moment, the mood, the atmosphere, the feeling, the interaction, what is on our minds, our thoughts, our prayers, all that which makes up the complete story of our everyday lives.

January 365 digital pages
Firstly I rounded up January with my usual two half-monthly layouts. These are daily photos captured 95% on my iphone. I'm departing from last year's staple background of graph papers, but still keeping it simple and very quickly done.

January marks the beginning of the school year for dh and the boys so it is a hectic change indeed, everyone gets into school mode, we start our days very early (up at 6am) and school days and homework fill most days. It is hard to escape from the same photos for 365, but that's our life and it should reflect in our pages.

The main other thing occupying our days is working on our renovations, and shopping for furniture. I think we have too much a set idea in our heads so it is really hard to find that dining table or bedroom set we have in mind. It's a fun adventure nevertheless, though dh and I joke that wherever we are now, we can only notice the flooring, the table tops, texture, grains, lines and so on.., lol. We are novice at this but do love design of any sort. It's been quite an education! We are renting now so there will also be another move really soon, hopefully early March. So more hectic days in Feb!!

January Project Life
For my PL pages, as intended, there is more focus on capturing thoughts and prayers and more journaling. On this page  I included is DH and my Word for the year (following Ali Edwards' One Little Word) as well as more journaling by DH and on the new school year.

You can read more about our journaling on our word here: My word is Less. I am more determined not to let this year's word slip out of my view so I will be dwelling more on it and how it is taking shape in my posts. Accountability really helps!

And Dh's word is Accept

This page captures their current craze: Ryan's is Dungeons & Dragons, and Jared's is Adobe CS 6 of which he uses Illustrator (he takes a half year class on this at school this year). Then some anecdotes hand-journalled on Becky Higgins' journaling cards from the Cobalt kit. And I do love these series of shots of them sharing a few moments.

This is how the double page looks like. I stuck to the orange and black/grey theme picked up from the series of photos for R & J. I like color themes. 

On this next page I added collages of photos related to furniture hunting and home improvements. I simply layered the photos haphazardly and crop off the edges. And the other half are part of the boys' birthday spread. I used up one and half of the PL pages, to include photos, Birthday prayers and journaling. 

 The Birthday prayer is a tradition we started a while back. You can see prior year's prayers here and here and here and here. This year I wrote Ryan's prayer and dh wrote Jared's prayer. 

 

And on the last page for Jan is the rest of their birthday spread. Yes, they are fourteen and sixteen (gasp!) and their birthdays are 3 days apart so we always celebrate together.

This is how the double page look. I really like it!

Beijing Album
Finally I have started on my Beijing album! We visited Beijing on a dream trip in December 2011, so I'm one year late on my travel albums, but fantastically up to date on my everyday Project life album. Good enough for me! I've reverted to my usual double page spreads, so you will find these in the store for the next few months at least :)
First layout is of the budget Red Lantern House lodging we stayed in, which are housed in re-furbished courtyard houses of Old Beijing, we loved it. Except that it is not very well insulated, and we the tropical Singaporeans completely froze in the winter cold. They gave us extra portable heaters and it was a good thing we got more used to the cold after a few days :)

The very next day we landed in Tian An Men square and were quite awed by the square, though due to over -expectations from dh's descriptions and the biting cold which caused us to be all hooded up and to have 'tunnel-vision' we missed the grandeur quite a bit, lol. Later we will visit again and appreciate it so much more! I'm getting excited over the coming Beijing pages :)

And finally this is a layout I made for my in-laws family celebration to welcome in the New Year. Happy 2013! It is our Christmas cum NY's party so  i used a christmas ornament theme.

You can download this Christmas themed template HERE. Thank you for dropping by and love to hear from you