Project Life August

Just a quick post to share my August PL pages. Took a break from my 20th Anniversary album and so enjoyed updating my PL - always so fun.

August is the month when my father in law was hospitalised for kidney failure and we are so thankful that he has been able to start dialysis treatments, and that his body is responding well and he has come home after two and a half weeks. Though he is still weak and has poor appetite, we are hopeful his health will improve and rejoice together in our hope in Christ.

The story is about J's obsession with crew (height) socks, nothing higher, nothing lower is acceptable. So much so he uses rubber bands to hold up his favorite old socks without complaints. :)

One of my best friends who now lives in Malaysia also came for a lovely, lovely visit.

And it is also my birthday in August. There are indeed too many candles now lol, so we did not bother with a cake :)  Dh surprised me with many hidden gifts, card throughout my day including a handwritten love letter! And the Nora Ephron book about growing older that is hilarious.

I tucked the love letter into the pocket behind the filler card :)

And we also brought back all our stuff from 'paid personal storage'  and sort through them to 'downsize' some more. Something Old covered what I found so far and kept or had to throw out. Including a shot of me (now) wearing one of my old pair of spectacles (from twenty years ago!)

We've cooking more so this get's recorded in Today's menu. Then there is our Tea Time ritual every evening. And stories of the note dh left on our door when he was locked out, and of Ryan and his Paranoia, everyday stories that are precious to me!

Included tea bags and all from the various chinese, japanese, herbal and other teas we consume these days. Love that I can keep these in PL!

Linking up over at The Mom Creative for Jessica's Project Life Tuesdays. I follow her on Bloglovin and enjoy many of her posts and finds, do check her blog out!

Did you noticed that I had a lot of fun designing my own filler cards? After breaking out my old Bamboo wacom tablet last month making the doodle frames and figuring out how to write digitally, I can now put whatever words or sentiments I like on them, so cool :) That's my 'handwriting' there!

So here's my first try at filler cards, in jpeg formats, wrapped up in a file for you to download Here.

Also want to share lots of super layouts by Kim (aka Five Seventeen Creations). Kim's family just moved to Florida and she has all these super Disney World photos of her beautiful family. And Kim is so good at using my templates and creatively transforming them like this:

Now I bet you are inspired! Thanks Kim for sharing with us your lovely family and beautiful layouts!

Twenty Years

Thank you everyone for your prayers and concern, an update to my previous post, my father in law has been discharged from hospital after two and a half weeks. Thankfully his condition has improved, though he is still rather weak, and he has been able to have dialysis treatments three times a week, and we hope will regain his strength over time. It's so wonderful that my husband has six siblings and everyone is close by and rallies around to help. It is such a blessing to have!

Twenty Years

About two weeks ago, we brought all the stuff we had stored at a personal storage place while we were moving and renovating, back home. We don't have enough space in our new home to keep them all, and while sorting through all the boxes to try to cut down the stuff some more, we re-discovered all our keepsake boxes, with old scrapbooks, photos, journals, and more!

I had been planning to do a photo book for our coming Twentieth Anniversary (In December), so this was great!

I re-discovered (some forgotten) scrapbooks we kept of our first dates, letters, movie tickets, the scrapbook was named 'Couplehood' :)

another named 'Parenthood', full of articles we read, stuff we wrote, letters, cards, when we first became parents,

old 'pocket-style' photo display, I remember now those pockets were purchased from Ikea, pre-cursor to Project Life (!)

tonnes of old photos,

and so many keepsake books - baby books, my family, my first home, etc! (on the right) (on the left are my photobooks and Project Life albums) :)

Dh and I spent quite a lot of time reminiscing and wondering where the time went, how we have spent the last twenty years, thinking what did we each bring to each other in our marriage, what defines us and our family now, what meant the most, the good, the difficult times, how God is faithful, all the blessings, all our adventures, oh how do we begin to describe twenty years?

I was so inspred by Pink Ronnie's R&R Memoir Book - which she describes as her record of their journey together as a couple. One day I will pull all our letters, scrapbooks, photos, cards, and so on into a complete Memoir book, but for now I want to have a photobook of us through the years.

So I got started, and couldn't stop, and I have completed 23 pages!! It has been so rewarding (and tiring too), selecting photos for each year, scanning those pre-digital photos, reliving every year and so much memories! 

The first part of our Twentieth Anniversary photobook

Here is the first page - our absolute favourite page so far!

Yep that's yours truly, I must have been a happy kid!

Then the dating years, the wedding and the honeymoon

And thereafter a page for every of the twenty years so far - ready for time travel?

What a journey! Isn't this really something?

So much to savour, so much to relive, enjoy, cringe, that is humbling, give thanks, praise God, treasure, reminisce, look back, look forward to... The process was rewarding as much as it was tough - which photos define us that year? What do I want to highight? There was so much possibilities. In the end I chose the simpler option of photos that show us as a couple, growing as a family, photos that highlight our relationship with each other, highlights of things we did or trips we took together. More personal stuff, triumphs and challenges were left out - this is after all, a photobook to celebrate making it to our twentieth year, to be shared with family and friends, no need to be too profound I think!

I have more pages planned, with themes like our homes, family and friends, what defines us as a couple, etc. And DH suggested a page on those hair and fashion trends (or disasters, what was I doing with helmet hair???) through the years, lol!

It was also interesting to note that in the pre-digital camera years, we only had photos of events, or trips, very few of anything else, what a pity! Even in the digital but pre-camera phone era, there was still a huge lack of any everyday photos. Mainly we had photos of the babies in those years, which are precious, but so much else is missed! Wish I thought about project life/week in the life/day in the life then! Way to go for the younger families who have everything going memory-keeping-wise now!

For the album, I broke out my dusty old bamboo tablet and doodled some frames, as I did not want this to look like my travel albums. Also, frames were needed as I knew I'd be choosing disparate, different looking photos from a particular year to put on the same page, so the frames will help unify them. Must say I'm quite pleased with how they turned out. Hand-drawn and a little whimsical, not too fussy and quite versatile.

Have put up the layout templates (like the one below) into two packs in the store. Hope they provide inspiration and a starting ground for a fun album for you too!

And here's a 12x12 template based on that first page for you to try. Clip your photos to the photo layers in the template. Have fun!

Download Here

P.S. No PL nor Beijing layouts this month, had only been working on the anniversary book :P  Will catch up in October, hopefully!

Lately...

Lately:

We have been spending time in the hospital rallying around my father in law, who has kidney failure and needs dialysis. He is in his eighties and is so tough and such a fighter. He has been working since he was eleven when he lost his father during world war 2, and helped to support his mom and siblings, and then raised his own family of seven children through challenging times. He is a hero in the eyes of our family! We are hopeful that dialysis will help him regain his strength and health, and praying for smooth transition into dialysis. Please pray with us!

Just Now:

The boys were enjoying a game of after dinner chess. I was sitting there offering passenger-seat advice, and after a few glares, guffaws and rolled eyes, have retreated to my computer to do what I'm decidedly better at, scrapbooking and blogging.

In July:

We went back to school for Term 3 of the school year (there are 4 terms each year). To amuse ourselves and break the monotony of school, the boys started taking out their old games and we had a renaissance of sorts. Let the Games Begin!

We also watched a lot of movies.

Continued our Tank-craze, which is leading us to think (just think) about maybe (just maybe) going to England for a holiday! And look what they said ...

Visited a Modelling shop - tanks galore!

And went to a Cosplay Fair - costumes galore!

The boys' interests sure are wide and varied!

DH took some awesome shots around his school. Jared continues doodling. DH and Jared modelling and painting their tanks. My parents in law started attending church with us!

Lifted this idea from another Project lifer (can't remember which site though!) and used the PL stickers provided with the Turquoise kit to make this Life Everyday card.

Linking up with Project Life Tuesdays at The Mom Creative. There's lots of inspiration over there!

Project 365 Pages for July

More everyday life - all of this is ordinary to everyone but me! So are yours, record your everyday!

Beijing Layouts

Continuing my Beijing trip layouts. I've completed 31 layouts, probably just over halfway through my photos for the trip, it's taking too long, but I do enjoy the process :)

Here is a last layout of the moments we spent just as we exited the forbidden city, enjoying the golden moment and dusk.

That evening we took an overnight train and went to the city of PingYao, an exceptionally well-preserved traditional Han Chinese city, founded in the 14th century. It has it's entire 6 km city wall completely intact, and is still lived in and functional today! We climbed up and walked half the perimeter of the wall, totally amazing. 

The city used to be a wealthy city of merchants and banks, and walking its streets, we could really imagine it's past glory. We visited the magistrates' home, the courts, merchants' shop space, banks, guest houses, templates and so on, there was even a catholic church! The court was fun because from young we have heard stories of how the 'wronged' can go to the courthouse, beat on this huge drum, to 'call' for justice, and get a hearing. The drum was still there!

The city walls was of course a defensive fortification, with canons, guard houses, and so on, which the men enjoyed exploring. Me, I just love being in close proximity with history. We found that the bricks had markings on them showing the year they were made and where they were made - cool!

Because it was a centre of commerce and banking, the city had quite a few 'houses' of martial arts. Where they train and had armed guards for hire, to protect anyone bringing money or goods across the country. The boys were so excited and if we lived back in the days, I'm sure that would be their chosen career. I found a gallery of paintings of this particular house's famed or legendary 'fighters'. It was a list of who's who, who had killed who!

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

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