Currently, and How I used the new Project Life App

background  from In Summery by Allison Pennington

Currently

recovering from the hectic craziness of September where our entire family was consecutively down with conjunctivitis (!); Jared had a dengue scare; I successfully made a 10k run (!); and we were all clocking long hours at work and for school, phew!

keeping up with the current craze in my office - carrying over from our 10k run, to stay active, and been going to gym classes 3 times a week, my old bones are beginning to feel young again :)

happily letting dh plan for our year end trip, I am the fussy and meticulous one, so I usually do it. We surprised ourselves that I can actually let go, and that he is actually as meticulous or more, once he gets into it! And this time we are booking all our accommodations through AirBnB - cheaper rates than hotels, more character, and we like meeting locals!

wasting too much time shopping online for jackets for the whole family suitable for the weather at the year end trip location, I usually try to score pre-owned stuff as we only use these warm weather clothing once a year or less, depending on where we go, but the Uniqlo ultra light down is on sale now, so we just might get it instead!

noticing and appreciating that my boys are totally not the 'chasing after the latest and greatest' type. I asked to 'safekeep' their phones during exam days recently so they won't be so distracted, and noticed that especially Jared's phone is so old that is is rusted at various corners! And they never once asked to have a new phone :)

loving the plethora of healthy food and salad bars sprouting all around - they have such interesting choices - been having salad for lunch everyday if I can help it - and inspired to concoct salad dinners on weekends

walking with a dear friend as she battles her 2nd year with cancer, and being so encouraged by her faith, courage, and our God's Lordship in her life. I'm learning the difference between trusting in the gift and trusting in the Giver. As F.B. Meyer (reading from Streams in the Desert) puts it, the gift may be good for a while, but the Giver is the Eternal Love.

thankful for a long weekend and appreciating the loveliness of peaceful and uneventful everyday life

How I used the new Project Life App

Have you tried it? the new Project Life App?

I thought about it for three days, then jumped in, haha! Mainly I was not sure if it would be useful for me, since I am very comfortable with doing my PL on photoshop, with digital supplies, then printing them and inserting them into my physical album.

This is what I did: Last month, I went with a group of friends to the Bali marathon, well to be specific we only did the 10k run, and between us we took hundreds of photos which we Whats-Apped to each other. With the App on my phone, I was able to sort through and select photos and cards while I am on the bus home from work, and completed this 'page' in 30 minutes, including adjusting the brightness and contrast on the photos, etc, which were all very easy to do on the app :)

After exporting the above page, I then went in and swapped some of the photo spots for other photos (see arrows below) to customize the page for each of my friends! Super Easy!

After I got home, I downloaded the exported pages from phone to computer, added bits and pieces of word art, recolored the 'Here we go' filler card, and each of the pages are done! I am sending it for printing at Persnickety and will slot it into a 12x12 protector. Also printing a page each for my friends!

By the way, I had never ever done any run in my forty something years of life, and doing this 10k was such a great experience! I decided I would walk the whole 10k, and trained about 4 times in the month before, listened to dh's advice about starting slow, warming up, keeping a comfortable pace and did it! The actual day, waking up at 3am, assembling at 5am with so many runners, the comaraderie and spirit in the air was palpable, then setting off and feeling being part of this great crowd (albeit a rather slow member of it), pressing on, encouraging each other on, being cheered by the locals and onlookers, just a very wonderful time! I might do it again!

I did another PL page on my way home another day, just pulling in photos and typing some journaling, see below - less than twenty minutes! I'm getting very productive on the bus!

All I had to do was add some word art and bits in photoshop and it's done! Because 99% of photos for my PL are taken on my phone, this works for me especially on the go. I still proceeded to 'cut up' this page into 4x6 photo sizes for printing, then inserted them into my PL as usual, so as to fit in with my other photos and protectors.

And this is the other PL page for September, done the 'traditional way' :) 

Jared had high fever for a few days and the doctors suspected he had dengue fever, giving us a scare; all of us were infected by a bad case of conjunctivitis one after the other, we were all stuck at home, none of us could really help the other, and it was the school holidays week !! And I really like the effect of writing on photos - though I need more practice with this - that looked like my arm was tattooed, haha!

And finally, just one 365 photo a day page to round up the month, and today is only the 6th of October, I love recording our daily lives in these simple easy ways!

I will be back with more double page layouts in a week or two!

Try something new

If you have not seen this video, check it out!

So cool, isn't it? Yes, try something new, even if it is going back to the real thing, the original back to basic could be the new thing now!

This month we are trying some new things. Instead of eating out at Japanese restaurants (it is very possible to eat out everyday in Singapore. Food choices are abundant and fairly cheap and very good), we tried making our own sushi. Makes for a great family time! Besides being yummy. 

Another new: for the first time in my life, I have signed up for a 10k! I've decided to walk all the way. Instead of training in the gym, DH and I have been doing walks at the beach. We walked and people watched and had great conversations. Who would have guessed how fun this can be. As you can see above, I've worked it up to 6k in an hour or so. Am hoping to do the 10k in an hour and half, thereabouts. But dh only wants me not to get injured, haha!

The Digi Files - a first podcast!

Yin Designs is being featured in The Digi Files this month! I'm super-honored to have been part of the files for the fourth time, I answered the interview questions as currently as I could, so do check it out at The Daily Digi. For my feature, I recorded a podcast with Steph, something totally new! It took me a while to pluck up the courage to listen to it, lol! I remembered being very excited and rambling on and on and giggling quite a bit. But so glad I did it! Not to mention I'm a few notches up the cool factor in my boys' books :)   

Steph and The Daily Digi has really expanded me over the years, given me opportunities, ideas, helped me with quality control, even started me on a newsletter. Thank you! And if you have not already signed up, this month's files includes kits from:

Studio Blagovesta
Chelle's Creations
Miss Mint
Karah Fredricks
Tangie Baxter
Bella Gypsy

For my part of the contribution, you will get these four 12x12, and two 12x24 templates:

All for only $7.50. I am a member and find that most my layouts each month come from that month's Digi files! Click Here to sign up

And for the podcast, you can play it by clicking the play button right here, or by going to this link : http://traffic.libsyn.com/dailydigidigest/ddd_yin_designs.mp3 

Or you can also download in iTunes here: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/daily-digi-digest/id717402302?mt=2

Birthday thoughts: Trying new things certainly spices up life, but as I crossed another forty-something (wink) birthday in August, I find myself wondering, amidst much celebrating over meals with family and friends and cakes and all, if I'm too focused on enjoying my own frivolous life, and neglecting good that I could have been doing? 

On Sunday, our pastor said this in his sermon :So whether we eat or drink or do whatever, ask:

Can I do this for the Glory of God? Am I satisfied in Him today? Have I made my God too small?

And brought me back  to my favorite verse that I have always leaned on;  

And so I re-committed myself to this. Not new, but so important that this is my daily prayer and service. I want to go deeper into these words, to be less affected by my surroundings, and impulses and worries, to be more steadfast and faithful, even whilst I am doing all this living, trying new things, eating and drinking that He has graciously given me to enjoy. 

August Project Life Pages

This insert page is all from my birthday, we had an extended date visiting an area with quaint bookstores, shops and cafes, for the first time :). We also visited the Singapore Night Festival, again for the first time since it ran, and were surprised there were so many people who turned up at the street concerts, movie screenings, at the light shows, and more.I squeezed 4 photos and 2 photos into each 4x4 pocket, And the bottom left photo was printed by the Peranakan Museum immediately after we uploaded an instagram pic! I used hashtags for the first time :)

This next page was filled only with one photo, and another screenshot taken off the boys' facebook post, the rest were all stories, funny conversations, even a note from a teacher, I totally love snippets like that. They may not be important moments or sentiments per se, but evoke laughter and 'oh yeah!'s and trigger memories and shared moments when I show them to my family and that's what my PL is for!!

Our family and friends got together on many occasions this month too. It's nice all the photos happen to have have red and black tones in them.

At the back of the insert page are photos of my colleagues and I at our company dress up dinner. The golden hues were beautiful, we were dressing up as greeks :)

Project 365 Photos

As usual, I popped all 31 photos a day for August into two of my Half Monthly templates and sumarised the month in review

I have been using graph or note papers as backgrounds and this simplifies it a lot for me, I also limit myself to a handful of elements, culling them based on the color scheme for that page. In this way I keep it really simple and completes the month in reviews in a couple of hours.

Hawaii Pages (find the double page templates in the store)
A lot more pages have been completed! This month I was working around the idea of photos layered over shaped paper cuttings, then over 'wood' papers. More pics at the beach:

Visiting the For Derussy US Army Museum - filled with stories of patriotism and machines and tanks and copters the boys were so interested in.

Being beach bums on another afternoon spent at yet another beach on our beach hop :)

Hiking at Manua Falls - so much glorious flora and greenery even the muddy ground did not bother us.

And these are pages of which templates are in this months Digi Files:
Visiting the Justice Department building - we had seen it on Hawaii Five-O so much we were excited to visit, but enjoyed even more the rich history of the exhibits and learnt so much.

Doing what we love - visiting art at the Honolulu Museum of Art - always a treat!

These 12x12 pages are of special stories I wanted to scrap recently, I will be printing them to slot into my Project Life album. Here's Jared on his beloved guitar - love watching him play!

And we took the family with us to this fun concert at the Esplanade - it's wonderful we can now enjoy concerts together!

A layout of  Jared dressed up as one of the anime character he so resembles, he looks so cool don't you think?

And for a while we were all into mastermind again, Who do you think is the mastermind?

The template for this layout of us in transit in Korea was shared during my feature on Real Life Scrapped - in case you'd like it but missed it, here it is. We were on transit enroute to Hawaii. Had to bring winter gear just for that 13 hours of transit. But we got to wander the streets of Seoul, first time for us. We will be back one day!

Download here

And I put the rest of the brush script words I did into this second set for you to play with, enjoy!

Download these here

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Things younger me would like about current me

Just for fun, I'm sharing this list I journaled in September 2013

Things younger me would like about current me 

-journaled in September 2013 (italics in brackets written for blog readers)

*Straight hair and simplified dress code

(no more permed hair and mix and match dressing)

*I'm married to this wonderful man I've known all along!

(we met when we were 15 but the younger me might be surprised he is the man of our dreams all along)

*I'm still slim at more or less the same size

(definitely less baby fats than in the pic above which was carried around in dh's wallet for years)

*I'm a mom as I've always wished for 

(so much more challenging than I could ever have imagined, but every bit as fulfilling of course)

*My best friends from then are still my best friends now!

(One of my greatest blessings in life)

*I'm still walking with The Lord and most of my family members are believers now - praise be to God for His blessing 

(we had always hoped on the verse: 'As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord- Joshua 24:15')

*I have found the best hobby, the joy of scrapbooking and memory keeping, and even have a blog store

(the younger me would be so proud :))

*I have continued to travel with kids and all through the years!

(the younger me had bitten the travel bug in the backpacking, shoe-string, 'doing and going where the locals do and go' way - we've kept it up pretty much in the same spirit!)

Journaling with Lists, Journaling about myself

I wrote this list above in response to one of the 30 Days of Lists challenge I joined in September last year (30 Days of Lists is a semi-annual journaling challenge, by Kam of Campfire Chic and Amy of Lemon and Raspberry) They are about to start the next one in September, just a heads up!

It's so rare that I journal about myself and lists are easy to do so I really enjoyed joining the challenge. In fact the few times I did pages about myself were all from challenges, like these layouts from 2006/2007.

I am so glad I had some of these pages, it's so important to capture some of ourselves into our scrapbooks. How have your journalled about yourself recently? Do you include them into your Project Life or family scrapbooks? Anyone joining the 30 Days of Lists next month?

Project Life Pages

Only two pages for month of July - I never worry about how much I have or not have, as long as the stories I want to tell are captured, then it is perfect. 

More photos of us at CosFest, and funny things that the boys said, I like capturing these things :)

DH has taken to healthy eating - making salads and sandwiches for his workday breakfasts and lunches! We have also been working on golden wreaths as headdresses for my colleagues and I who are planning to dress up as greek goddesses at our company costume party :) And we had a case of bed bugs in our sofa!! That was scary and needed professional help. Hope it's gone for good.

Project 365 - June and July

Due to working on the Bali photobook last month I did not get a chance to complete my June pages, and did both June and July pages in one go. Which was great 'power scrapping' (as Katie the scrapbooklady coins it) as I looked for background papers, alphas, embellishments for all four pages at one go. I usually search for embellishments from the latest kits I have downloaded (mainly those from the monthly Digi Files) and by color scheme, and try not to overdo it :)

First half of June was start of holidays and the highlight was the making of tank cakes!

A week of the second half of July was spend in Bali, and then it is back to school.

In July we attended CostFest, a local cosplay event, stayed up all nights following the World Cup, had a surprise birthday party for dh's eldest sister, and enjoyed a 'Day of Wootopia' event at Youth Ministry at church - so fun!

School is in full swing now but we managed to squeeze in 'Dawn of the Planet of the Apes' which left us speechless at the end (so unlike other movies where the men usually have lots of comments at the end), a date night, and a spate of healthy eating which I hope will last!

Hawaii Photobook

Four more double pages of our trip completed! This round I played with layering paints between the photos and the wood backgrounds. Templates of these are in the store.

Here we were at Haleiwa on the North Shore. We did not have our own transport, so took The Bus on a round the island route, boarding and alighting at various stops, taking the entire day!

Also spend a morning at the Aloha Stadium Swap Meet - lots of fun - it's so huge! To this day we are not sure if we went one round or not, the stores tend to repeat themselves after a while, but we found a few wonderful shops, the highlight of which was the one selling handmade life-size swords - the LOTR swords to be specific, took our breath away. It was the first time Ryan would not leave, he was almost in tears to hear that we can't buy them and bring them back into Singapore!

This particular morning was the Honolulu Marathon and we were just ambling about admist the marathons who had already completed their run, amazed at all the older runners we saw - so fit and just amazing. The most meaningful part of the morning was spent at the Father Damien's museum - honoring him and the mission he founded to serve the Lepers' colony at Molokai.

And in the afternoon we visited the Bishop Museum, founded by the husband of Princess Bernice Bishop, to house all the family's heritage, treasures, and to preserve their history and memories. 

Brush Script

Last month quite a few readers asked about the Brush Script Titles on my Bali layouts, like the 'Eat.Love.Eat' below. They were handwritten by me!

Basically I wrote on white paper then scanned them in. I wrote a lot, then chose the best  :)

It was easy! The secret is this Japanese brush tip pen which I found it in a local bookshop. It had the perfect effect of brush painted words with the control of a pen! The name on it as akashi-ya, I googled but can't quite find the same thing online. There are many sets on Jet Pens, but I'm not sure if they are the same.

I used them on my Project Life photos as well, see below.

Here's a look at it close up - cool, isn't it?

As promised, here are the words for sharing with you - they are saved as individual layers in a single photoshop file, just drag them into any of your layouts in photoshop. I've saved them in black for you, if you want to change the color, how I do it is to add a 'solid color' adjustment layer, and then use 'clipping mask' to clip to it. There are many ways to do it, hope you have fun playing. I'll try to scan the rest I have written and share them too if you like :)

Download it here.