Now There're Three

Christina and Stephanie always dressed alike.  When Stephanie came to visit, Christina would dig up clothes that were similar with what Steph wore.  Here Stephanie is wearing a set of Christina's clothes.  Nikka, Steph's younger sister wanted to dress just like them, too.  Luckily for her, Christina had another denim dress and purple shirt which she outgrew.

I love the purple butterfli I bought in the Philippines during my visit earlier this year. I wish I bought more! I just got about 8 different colors.

TFL.

Amazed

These are baby pictures of DD when she was a couple of months old.  DS and I looked for a baby hammock - something that we used to put little children in and swing them to sleep.  We had those when we were kids back home in the Philippines.  They were made of woven rattan.  We couldn't find any within the Chicago area, so DS came up with this idea to tie each side of a baby carrier with a sturdy rope and hung each on the walls across the room.  So there was this baby carrier suspended in the middle of the dining room in our apartment building.

DD loved it!  She would be comfortably asleep a few minutes after we put her in it.

When DD's awake, she talks to her Disney mobile friends and tries to reach out to grab them.  After sometime wriggling and gurgling in her make-shift hammock, not being able to reach the mobile above her, she starts to get impatient.  That's the end of being in the hammock for her! Time to be in Mama's arms!

These are flowers I cut from a patterned DCWV paper.  I applied glitter glue and that made them look fancy.  The leaves were stamped and cut out.  I crocheted the tiny pink flowers which I adhered in the center of the green cutouts.  I then sewed pink pearls in the center of the crocheted flowers.

TFL.

Forever My Baby

This picture was taken a few days after we took Christina home. I just loved holding and kissing her; watching her sleep and make little baby noises. When she's awake, I loved how she stared back at me,  She seemed to be memorizing my face. 

I heard somewhere a long time ago that babies are God's messengers... that they were sent to us with a message that God loves us; rhat when they look at us, they are trying to tell us what the message is; that they cry because they get frustrated they can't voice it out and that we do not understand them; that it is unfortunate by the time they can talk, they have forgotten what the message is.

But all was not lost.  I felt the love Christina gave back when she looked into my eyes. I thank God for her and for the love.

Supplies used: Butterfly - cutout from K&Co; fonts: Palace Script MT; Pristina; all other items from: Scrapbookflair - Ava & Lilly's Mom: Expecting kit; torn notebook [Craftfairy1]; scraplifted from KellyGoree [thanks for the inspiration!]

Deep In Thought

I caught Christina staring into space with hands on her chin; something adults would do if they were looking out the window as they lean on the window sill. It looks like she was so deep in thought. I stared at her for a little while before I decided to take this picture. For a moment, just like her, I was also deep in thought.  I wondered what on earth babies think about. How they know when to smile, when to cry, and how they get startled. They are such a bunch of little wonders that make us wonder!

Supplies used:  graph paper & yellow border [Cays Creations It's Easter Kit]; Love wordart [Digital Scrapbook Memories In the Mood]; all other items from Digital Scrapbook Memories Collection 2 cd; fonts: Chiller and Birch Standard

Alexandra's Garden

Cay's Alexandra's Garden Kit is fun to play with! I did a lot of layering in this layout! It's good that I found the perfect background picture for it.  The picture was taken from the Chicago Botanic Garden last Spring, and DD's picture was taken at the food court in Starved Rock, IL.  It was perfect that she was seated on a bench and I replaced it with one of the bench elements that came with the kit! 

Below is a preview of Alexandra's Garden.  Just look at it! I haven't even used all of the elements for my layouts.  There are just so many beautiful flowers it took me a long time to choose which ones to use!

Thank you Cay, for a wonderful design! and TFL.

Secrets

I'm back from whatever it was I was busy with these days. I found out that I do enjoy digital scrapbooking so much and that I missed creating! I missed my computer!

Here's anotherLO I made using Cay's Beachin' Fun Kit. Just to prove that the kit isn't solely for beach layouts. I've re-sized and re-colored a few items to match the most of the colors I used. The border is from one of the templates I made using shapes from Photoshop. I also used paper tearing and I hope it really does look like torn paper. I have yet to master this technique!

Also, I can't take credit for the design...I scraplifted this from Yukari.

 Thanks for looking.

If All of the Raindrops...

Alright, I'm guilty... guilty of using the diamond elements (from Cay's Designs Ice Diamond kit) again. They just reminded me of rain.

I wanted to make an LO where DD is enjoying a shower of diamonds so I started searching for the perfect picture and I found this!


She wasn't holding an umbrella in this picture but I managed to scrounge around for a picture of an umbrella. I think the umbrella gave the complete story that it's raining diamonds and flowers.


Then I remembered a happy little tune she learned in pre-school, which she taught me. I changed the words a little bit and made that my journaling.


The song is by Aimee Leigh


If all of the raindrops were lemon drops and gumdrops
Oh, what a rain that would be
I'd stand outside with my mouth open wide
Singing " Ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah"
If all of the raindrops were lemon drops and gumdrops
Oh, what a rain that would be

If all of the sunbeams were jellybeans and ice creams
Oh, what a sun that would be
I'd stand outside with my mouth open wide
Singing "Ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah"
If all of the sunbeams were jellybeans and ice creams
Oh what a sun that would be

If all of the snowflakes were chocolate bars and milkshakes
Oh what a snow that would be
I'd stand outside with my mouth open wide
Singing "Ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah"
If all of the snowflakes were chocolate bars and milkshakes
Oh what a snow that would be

If all the mosquitoes were nacho cheese Doritos
Oh what a bug that would be
I'd stand outside with my mouth open wide
Singing "ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah"
If all the mosquitoes were nacho cheese Doritos
Oh, what a bug that would be

If all the tornadoes were French fried potatoes
Oh what a wind that would be
I'd stand outside with my mouth open wide
Singing "ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah"
If all the tornadoes were French fried potatoes
Oh what a wind that would be
Ah, ah, ah, what a world this would be.

And you can listen to the tune here... I tell you, it's a very catchy song...

http://www.boyscouttrail.com/content/song/showsong.asp?docid=626



TFL.

Best Friends, Like Diamonds, Are Forever

Best friends since the 7th grade, they hug and squeal every time they see each other, like it's been a thousand years since they last did...when in fact it was just a few hours ago!

Distance did not make their hearts forget. Every opportunity they got (holidays, school breaks, etc.), they have to meet, go to the movies, have a party, sleep over at someone's house and catch up with what ever BFFs talk about. Truth be told, whenever they meet here at home, I don't hear any conversations, just bursts of laughter...like laughter is their own language, and they have mastered it so.

Each is a unique diamond, giving another meaning to they saying "diamond is a girl's best friend". Theirs is a friendship unbreakable and sparkling. Theirs is a bond more precious than anything on this earth.... and may it remain that way.

The kit I used is called Ice Diamond and it's from Cay's Designs. It is so sparklingly delicious! It makes even the simplest layout look elegant and complicated! Of course, I love bling so, from out of the many elements that came with this kit [I think there were more than 70 of them!] I opted to use the diamonds over and over again!

TFL!

Another Spring LO

Another Spring LO. I have to take advantage making and posting them while it's still Spring. In another 4 weeks it will be Summer. Don't the days go by too fast for you? It seems to me that the do.

There's really nothing new about the digital elements I used here. I just love colorful flowers and I tend to use them over and over again. That's just the beauty of digital supplies - you never run out of them!

This was taken in the backyard of our first home. It was our first Spring. DH and I looked around the yard figuring out what kind of plants and critters lived around us. A pear tree, a yellow apple tree, a red apple tree, a green apple tree, a 2 big maple trees, lots.... I mean 7 cypress trees, 3 really big pine trees, a crab apple tree with pretty flowers, plenty of orange spotted lilies, lilies of the valley [very sweet smelling], green plants with white star-shaped flowers - also fragrant, though the leaves smelled like onions when you break them off; lots of rose bushes... and other shrubs we can't identify. According to one of the friendly neighbors, the previous owner planted everything everywhere!


Supplies used: MyMind'sEye background paper; SF Ava & Lilly's Mommy: Spring is in the Air kit; Fonts: Arial & Alba Matter

TFL!

A House for Babycakes

I started to make an album about Christina's playhouse that DH and DS built from scratch.  This page started out as a traditional LO. When I took a picture of it I thought I have to add more embellishments which I didn't have. So while it was there on the monitor staring at me, I opened up my digital kit supplies and started putting this page together.

The fonts I used for the title are from a font template.  I traced and cut each alphabet on a pink cardstock and pasted them on a brown one, which again, I cut around leaving a little of the brown show up to give it some shadow.

I believe the other embelishments I used, like the wild flowers, Scrapbook Flair's Ava & Lilly's Mommy: Spring is in the Air kit.  The house, I "built" myself.  Doesn't she look so proud standing in front of her house?

TFL.

You Are So Loved

I'm still playing with the digital kits Marj gave me. There are 3 CDs with hundreds of supplies to choose from! I can't wait to use them all! I've been making lots of pages with no pictures yet. I usually pick out my picture/s then the supplies. But this time, it's the other way around. I find I scrap faster this way. What slows me down is choosing supplies for my picture and I just can't make up my mind which ones. It seems that, like traditional scrapbooking, I should bring out a few supplies to use and stick to them!

This is DD...again...! It seems like she has been my favorite subject lately. Being a teen and having her own digicam, she produces so many pictures of herself and her friends. It is sometimes so difficult to choose which ones to put on layouts.

For this LO I used supplies from Digital Scrapbooking Memories' In the Mood CD: Funky & Fun kits; Calm alpha from Collection 2; Font: Minstral.

Girl icon template from CS3, modified by CraftFairy; Yes, I've been playing around making my own templates. I'm trying to give my digital layouts a kind of a traditional look. I need more embellishments to do this. I know I've got great ones from digi supplies I've purchased and gotten as freebies somewhere in my vast collection. So vast I can't find what I need right away! Oh, yes, I admit, just like traditional supplies I also hoard digital supplies..shame, shame... but I don't have any other hoarding habits anymore. You should have been present when my family started complaining that our house started to look like a department store! They confined me to one room and one room only, but I am now slowly creeping out into the loft. Complaints start pouring in about my kalat when they expect guests and I couldn't clean my mess as fast as I spread them out!

TFL!

Supermom Layouts

The digi supplies used here are from Cay's SuperMom Kit. I first made an LO for my sister, Lee, for Mother's Day. She is one of the supermoms I know. Just reading her blog and viewing her pictures make me stare in awe! All the activities her kids do, places they have to go, her stories about being with her husband on business trips...! Then she comes up with beautiful traditional layouts that take more time to make than digital layouts! Where does she find the time to do all that? Has she found a way to "keep time in a bottle"? I need some of that time!

With her LO I erased parts of the blue paper that came with the kit to give it a torn/tattered look. To say the least, I was satisfied with what I did. The design of the paper made it easy. I folded a corner using another piece of paper in the kit. Sadly, I forgot how to do a fold that looks real - you know, one with the shadows and dimensions. I have to bring out my photoshop tutorial book sometime to review techniques I haven't done in a long time.

A few days after, I decided to make an LO of Super Mommy. She is really a supermom. She took care of 8 kids of her own, took care of my siblings' kids also, and I'm sure the grandchildren are being looked after as well.

This picture was taken when she and Dad spent a few years with us in the U.S. Looking at this picture tears me up. It was taken a few days before they left for the Philippines and I have not hugged her since. It also reminds me of what she said.

She was on the sofa crocheting baby blankies [it's her therapy because she had a stroke sometime ago and lost full use of her right arm]. I told her how my kids are growing old and pretty soon we'll be empty nesters; and I blurted out wondering if any of the two kids will take me in and take care of me when I am really, really old. She stopped crocheting, looked me in the eye and said, "if only I would still be alive when you grow old, I will take care of you." I will be hearing echoes of those words for the rest of my life! I love you, Mommy! I miss you!!!



And who says that this kit is just for super mumsies?! Here's a playful one I made for my Babycakes. This is DD when she was 6 years old. I still call her Babycakes. In fact, when I call her on the phone [or when she calls me], as soon as I hear her voice, I have to sing Babycakes [to the tune of Baby Face]. She patiently waits until I'm done. Patiently, I say because I am soooo out of tune!

I discovered some blings in Cay's kit. Yeah... discovered. The kit is huge I can't get to see everything in detail right away! I re-sized and re-colored the bling to fit my purpose. And have you noticed the ribbon I used? that's the very same heart ribbon that came with the kit, except that I replaced the hearts with blings [I hope Cay doesn't mind. I just love to play around with digital supplies!].

Now, I have to post Cay's blinkie so you can find your way to her blog. It goes right here!
where is it? It doesn't seem to work. I will have to try again this PM. Hubby needs help killing the weeds! TFL!

Renew

If I loved Cay's first It's Easter kit, I love the second one even more! Everything in this kit is just awesome!

My first LO using this kit is about renewal.


Journaling: There's this side of Easter that some people forget about. It's not just about bunnies and chicks and chocolates and such. It is the forgiveness of sins and renewal of life!

The pictures were taken during Jessica's Easter confirmation. She chose St. Christina as her patron saint and my daughter Christina as her sponsor. Frances Cardinal George, 8th Archbishop of Chicago officiated the Sacrament.

So Grown Up

They are so grown up now.  Especially DD, what with her attire; so very professional-looking. 

These pictures were taken during Jessica's confirmation on March 29, 2009.  Cardinal Francis George officiated the confirmation.  Jessica chose Christina to be her sponsor.

Credits: bg pp - from DCWV luxury pack; circle lace template -CraftFairy1; Fonts: Pristina, Tunga, Ravie; all other embellishments - Scrapbook Flair's Nayan-Dream of Spring Collection; layout scraplifted from Sarah de Guzman

TFL.

Take It from the Eggs-Perts

It's going to be Easter again. This year, there won't be any egg-hunting with kids. All the kids have grown up and are no longer really interested in coloring eggs and hunting for them. This year, I will just reminisce on Easters long gone.

As I was scanning negatives, I found these pictures in the computer. These were taken in 2005 when my sister, Lee, her kids, Diego and Sarah came to visit. It was fun to paint eggs once again!

This layout was put together using It's Easter Kit 1 by Cay Risholm. The yellow borders at the bottom and the journaling tag were made using two of the papers in the kit and two templates I made. The background paper is one of my favorites from this kit. I love the gridlines and the swirls. Fonts used: Chick, Quigley Wiggly, Bradley Hand ITC, and Vivaldi script.

Purple Is Your Pink

Christina's favorite color is purple, not pink! never pink!

Ever since she was a able to reach out for a toy, she always grabbed something purple. When we went to the mall, she'd zoom in to something purple. When out shopping for clothes, she'd pick out something purple.

Her clothes in these pictures look blue but they are really purple!


Cay Risholm's Pretty In Pink is really packed with fun! I enjoyed making the second LO so much, I want more! The stamped flowers with the green swirls made it so colorful! I cut a portion of the swirls and positioned them at different angles to give the LO more splash of green. I used one of the papers for my scalloped border. As for the fonts used for the title, I used the same alpha fonts that came with the kit, only I recolored them purple (from the purple bow) and pink (from the pink flower). I threaded the pink dotted ring through the brown ribbon. Perhaps I should have threaded 2 more..hmmm.... bright ideas just keep popping up! TFL!!!

Texting

Wherever they are... in the car, at home, during a party, you'll see them holding and fiddling with their phones. What is it with kids these days? They'd rather be texting than talking! Even my DD wants me to text her instead of phoning her. Thank goodness I have one of those phones with a keypad! I would have gone crazy if I didn't.

This is my first layout as one of the DT's for Cays Creation. This LO is made using Pretty in Pink kit. It was the easiest LO I've ever made.

St. Patty's

I was cleaning my Kalat Room, putting things I don't need in boxes, when I found these pictures in one of those photo boxes. These were posted in a magnetic album. I was able to rescue them in time before the fading process began. After scanning the pictures I cut and pasted them on scrapbook layouts.


These pictures were taken years ago in an apartment in Chicago. Christina was 5 months old. It was her first St. Patrick's Day celebration. We're not Irish, but hey, who says we can't celebrate the feast of St. Patrick? We went to the mall, walked around, and had lunch there. That's how we celebrated the day...uneventful!


I made Christina's outfit: her headband and her pretty green & white dress. I gave away most of Christina's clothes that didn't fit her anymore, but this is one I kept. One of her brown teddy bears is now the proud owner of this dress!





This is the first time I used the sewing machine to make stitches. It didn't go very well because the sheet was not flat. Next time I will glue the sheets together before stitching them; or the easiest thing to do perhaps is to just stitch one piece at a time and then glue them in place.

I used one of Becky Fleck's sketches to do this LO. I saw this in the March 2009 issue of Creating Keepsakes. Wow! using one of Becky's sketches really saved a lot of time!

Supplies used: white Thickers; background paper & journaling tag, DCWV Nana's Kids; flowers from Prima; bling from Darice; pink Ofray ribbon; Fiskars' sunburst punch; scrap papers from My Mind's Eye, Colorbox fluid chalks (green and brown).

Stitch Me A Song

I get to be the February challenger for the Kaya! All Filipino scrapbookers...wherever on this wonderful planet you are... are invited to join this challenge.

February is love month [I just made that up, just 'cuz Valentine's Day is embedded somewhere in those 28 days]. So the challenge is all about making a loving layout about the thing, or people you love using a love song or two [3 is maximum]. Use any scrapbooking style you have but for this challenge, you have to use stitches! Real ones - hand- or machine- made. Because of this requirement, only traditional scrapbookers can join the challenge. But then, Lee suggested to have the digital scrapbookers join, too. I am also a digital scrapbooker so I don't want to disregard my fellow digi-scrappers. So, OK, digital scrapbookers, you, too can join the challenge!

The stitching technique might be a little intimidating, perhaps because they look so complex and too time consuming. Those were my thoughts when I saw super beautiful layouts using real stitches! So I challenged myself to make one and I love it! The technique I used is very simple. Perhaps using the sewing machine would have been simpler but I was too lazy to pull that out.

Here's how I did my stitches:

I used supplies that are pre-holed - like the journaling tags which I "unscrewed" from the wire that bound them together, and the canary yellow border with the tiny little holes in them.

I arranged my layout on black cardstock and took pictures so that I will know how to put them back together again. I glued just the tips of the first layers in place so that when I make the holes on the black cardstock, they won't be moving out of place. I found a 12" cube styrofoam cooler and used that as my table [I did my work on the floor while watching NCIS]. I punched the holes with a big safety pin, going through each hole of the journaling tags and through the black cardstock. Then I stitched away! It is really so easy and not so time-consuming. I finished this LO in one night. The longest part was planning the layout - it took me days and several headaches!

As for the picture, I placed one of the journaling tags on one edge and punched holes through the picture, through the journaling tag behind it, and through the black cardstock. Of course I glued two corners of the picture first so it won't move out of place.

The hardest one to do was the swirl with the string of pearls along its side. I have previously glued this swirl on 2 layers of white cardstock to give it some dimension. It wasn't my plan, during that time to sew the beads along side it, so boring holes through it was really, really painstakingly-slow. But it's all worth it!

My original title was Cherish by Kool and the Gang. But since I only chose a few lines from the song and I love the lyrics of It’s Easy for Me to Say sang by Clint Black and Linda Hartman Black, I wrote the entire lyrics on another journal tag. I opted to use "I Love You" for the title instead of "Easy for Me To Say". The real title probably would have been a better choice but I ran out of space and didn't have smaller fonts to use. TFS!

You Called It Home

Home is where the fun is.

Ever since we moved to the USA, we made several apartment buildings our home. A year after Christina was born, we rented my SIL's basement. It was an English style basement. It has a sliding door that led to a short stairway and into the backyard. Christina just loved the outdoors. The fenced-in backyard gave her the opportunity to play safely in the open space. During that time I worked at a company which manufactured leisure products such as slumber bags and playhouses [tent-like]. With employee discount, I was able to purchase one Barbie playhouse. Then there was another one that was used in a photo shoot for advertising which was given to me by one of my supervisors. I had those set up in the backyard. Christina and her cousins had fun playing house, pretending to be neighbors, or turning one of the playhouses into a shopping store. Their imagination was endless! And so was Christina's wish for DH to build her a tree house. DH promised her that when have our own house and yard he would. So here it is....

Several years later, one summer DS and DH built this house from scratch (no, this is not a kit). DH made drawings and measurements; he started cutting out the materials for the posts, the roof, the doors, the windows, etc. With the help of DS the house took shape.

Of course, the Christina and her cousins who visited often were very excited to see the house and their imaginations and plans took shape. Christina chose the colors - milky white, pink and her favorite color, purple! She even helped paint it.

The house is 6' high from the center of the room on the top floor. DH built the ground floor by putting up a lattice fence on 3 sides and putting in wooden floors. When we had summer backyard bbqs, the kids would dine underneath the house. Upstairs is a room that would fit 3 adults [my size (^.^)]! There was a bookshelf filled with books, little toys adorned the walls, I put up a wreath above the front door, and there is a "home tweet home" hanger by one of the windows. There are plexi glass walls on both sides of the front door to let in more light. The door was taken out after a little accident with someone's fingers. The spindles used to decorate the front porch were made in the Philippines! Oh yes, I brought those back with me when Christina was only less than a year old, with plans to use them in building book shelves. The roof is made of real roof material to protect everything against the weather.

The house is complete with a little green mailbox! I remember one time, Christina came up to me with a sad face. She expressed concern that the mailman does not see her mailbox that's why she doesn't get any letters. Doh! How could I forget that. There were times that I would sneak in the back and put all the junk mail in her mailbox. She was happy as a lark when she opened her mail!

The house was finished in time for Christina's birthday. We had pre-schoolers crawling all over it, although the plan was not to have the party outside because it was a cold October day. They saw it from the main house, opened the back door and out went the goblins and witches and fairies [it was a halloween b-day party!].

People who visited couldn't resist not having their picture taken by the playhouse. The following summer, DH added a regular stairway so the little kids could go up and down the steps safely. He also added a back porch so there'd be more room.

The last two pictures on the second page is of Christina when she was 13 years old. I took lots of pictures of her in and around this house. That was the year when we moved to another city. It was sad to leave this house she called home. But we know that it will make another kid as happy as Christina was!

Supplies used: Papers and cutouts [the Paper Studio]; birthstone gem stickers blue zircon [Martha Stewart]; flowers [Prima]; heart charm [Blue Moon Beads]; fluid chalk Chestnut Roan [ColorBox]; journaling tag [Making Memories]; foam squares [Miss Elizabeth]; chipboard alpha [ChipChatter/Pressed Petals]

TFL