Star+Flower

Fruits

YUMMY FRUIT

I thought I kinda liked plums, but now I think I really love plums. Actually I love plums so much I want a plum tree just like Mom G. The kiddos and I can eat plums all summer long and we'll be saying a collective "mmmmmm" as juice dribbles down our chins :)

FRUITS OF LABOR

Painting of the house is done!

Our mantle was originally maple-stained and now it's painted with Dunn-Edwards Swiss Coffee mixed with gloss. Swiss Coffee is what we have on all our main areas. And just in case...prints bought at Etsy (L-R: SuspectShoppe, betsywalton, myfolklover, ashleyg)

Another view of the mantle.

This is the master bedroom painted with Dunn-Edwards December Sky. It's such a calm light-blue shade. Oh, and you can see what our flooring looks like. It's vertical carbonized bamboo. I will never, ever go with carpet again.

This is what you see as you walk into Mia's room. The paint here is Dunn-Edwards Camellia. Pink is her favorite color.

And this is Aidan's room, the brightest room in the house! He picked the color himself. I've adjusted to it but truly my first reaction was "whoa" and I thought the painters had made a mistake. The paint is Dunn-Edwards Lightning Bug.

This really isn't part of the painting but the stairs were redone and I think it looks nice. Solid bamboo treads :)

This is the first room you see when you enter the house. It was originally a formal dining room in the builder's plan, but I decided to make it a library of sorts since we're not the formal type. The paint is Dunn-Edwards Morning Calm and I really, really love it.

AMAZING FRUIT

My boy turned 8 last Sunday. He kept asking me the week before his birthday, "Mommy, can you believe I'm going to be 8?" No, I still can't believe it. We had a small, just-family gathering for him but celebrations will continue 'til next week as we're headed to paradise this weekend. Oahu, here we come!         

Still Here

Imagine this is me thinking that maybe I should update the blog. As much as I want to it's hard to get back into the groove. Plus I didn't want to sound too much of a whiner about the house although I have to say that there's still the painting and countertops to be done. The painting might start on Monday and we were told it would take 3-4 days. I'm just crossing my fingers that it will actually happen.

I purchased this camera a few weeks ago on eBay and I hate that I'm absurdly late in knowing how wonderful Polaroid pictures are. While surfing the web for inspo I came across My Polaroid Blog which led me to Nectar and Light. Such gorgeous, gorgeous pictures. It's a shame that Polaroid has stopped making instant film so, yes, I've made my share of purchases before there's no more left. Sigh.

Life hasn't been crazy, but I just feel like there's not enough time right now to do everything I want to do. I guess that's been the case for the past couple of years though! Anyway, my head has been so wrapped around house stuff and, as much as I want to get it all done, there's just times when I want to get away from it all and step outside, breathe in fresh air, and clear my mind. I was feeling sorry for the kiddos because every weekend it's either been cleaning up, buying furniture or putting together furniture. We took them to Kidspace Children's Museum in Pasadena two weekends ago and they had such a good time. The place was just the right size and not overwhelming at all. We spent about 4 hours there and I'm sure Aidan and Mia wouldn't mind going again. The price is pretty good too at $8 per person. And, yeah, what you see is right! Aidan wears glasses! He's had them for the past month.   

These are my layouts for the April Story Of My Own kit. Have you seen the announcement where they will be on hiatus and will ship again beginning September? Alas, May was my last month as a DT member and I will miss those beautiful kits, but I just feel it's time for me to go. It's been such an honor to have been able to design for both SOMO and October Afternoon. A huge thank you goes out to Kim and Jon (although I doubt they will read this) for having me since September 2006. 

Signing off for the month!

My layouts for the March Story Of My Own kit:

(I really love that orange floral paper.)

(This one goes down as one of my most favorites.)

Last Saturday was Aidan's First Communion. I'm really just amazed at how time has flown. I keep thinking about him when he was smaller asking if he could have a taste. We ate out afterwards at our favorite Korean BBQ place in DBar.

The work in our house starts next week and I've been going through our rooms purging all the unnecessary stuff we've accumulated over the years. We could have another garage sale! I'm excited. I'm going to redo my craft area and we're going to totally redo Aidan's room and paint over that awful blue I chose years ago (yes, I'm taking the blame, Beez).  Right now I'm going to put away all my scrap stuff because that built-in in the loft is also going away. Talk about major spring cleaning!

(A simple card for Prima.)

I'm really sorry I haven't been around, visiting and commenting on my favorite blogs. Promise I'll be back in normal mode once all the house stuff has settled. TCCIC!

How you gonna fix it,

fix it, fix it. Mia and I have been singing the new Danity Kane song, Damaged, for the past few days. It's so catchy.

It's been a little crazy in our house since we found the water damage. For the past week and a half Allan has been busy getting quotes from various contractors to fix our flooring, cabinets, and kitchen countertops. We're anticipating that all the construction will start after next week, but the time before that has to be used putting everything out of the way so the job can get done. And since we're going through all this hassle we decided to put wood flooring throughout the house. That means I'm going to have to pack up all my scrap supplies so I'm trying to get my assignments for this month finished as quickly as I can. Tomorrow we're going to go shopping for granite! Ayayay, there's just so much to do right now.

I've been so lax in posting my pages (yep, gotta get that done too), but here the most recent ones.

These are for Prima:

A litte Wonderpets action. I cut that image of Ming-ming from a NickJr. mag.

I'm trying to like my handwriting on my pages. Sometimes I do. Most of the time I don't.

These three are my pages for the KI gallery:

Hmmm...I really have to do some more pages of Aidan!

Thank you to my friends, Rita and Iris, for making my day! You two really do inspire me so so much. I'm passing it on to The Girlahs because they are super special to me.

I'll be back next week! (I'll post my 7 random things. Thanks for the tag, Christy! And about the SEI box, I know now why I got it. Caroline, thanks so much for telling me! I should've known! Duuuuuh!)

Favorite Things in Pictures.

 

Aidan loves throwing the football around with Allan and I'm loving the father/son bonding time.

Last Saturday, preparing to make kare-kare. Allan prefers it homemade, but it had been a long while since I made it last and it was good, but it could've been better.

The girl asleep in her own bedroom.

Oversized letters that spell "LOVE" and recycled glass vases from Pottery Barn. I think the stargazer lilies look absolutely perfect in them.

Yellow is my color du jour. I have yet to wear these because they're too pretty. (from Piperlime.)

I saw this print by Mati Rose on sfgirlbybay and I had to buy it (here). I showed it to Aidan and he liked how it was blowing out flowers.

Mad girl. I forgot why she was upset but it was something that Aidan did. She walked over to the door and just sat there with her head down. I can't help but smile because of her little face peeking out from under her ratty, bed-head hair.    

Lots to Say

I felt so sorry for Aidan yesterday. Wednesdays are probably the hardest day of the week for him. He gets up at 6:30 a.m. for school and comes home at about 3:15 p.m. He asks for a little break so I let him have 30 minutes before he starts on his homework. He has math, spelling, and, the hardest part, answering questions from his reading book. By the time he's done (but sometimes he doesn't finish) it's time to get ready for Taekwondo and he doesn't get back from that until 7 p.m. So when he gets home he will finish his homework if he hadn't done so already and then we eat dinner, then he takes a bath, reads for 20 minutes (which is also part of his homework) and then sleeps by 8:30 p.m.

He gets easily distracted and that accounts for some minutes wasted while doing his homework. I get upset with him sometimes because he likes to get up and walk around while thinking about his answers, but I know it's doesn't do him any good because he eventually comes to me for help. I know on some days he doesn't want to do homework. Sometimes Mia distracts him with her playing too. But I really do feel sorry for him on Wednesdays.

He's almost done reading the first book of the Narnia series, but I wonder if the books are age-appropriate for him in terms of comprehension. My brother didn't read them until high school. Maybe it's time to go to Borders and buy the rest of those Spiderwick Chronicles books.

Mia has a new obsession: Ni Hao, Kai-lan. It debuted today on Nick Jr. coinciding with the Chinese New Year (Happy Chinese New Year! It's my year...year of the Rat!), but the first episode has been on Video on Demand for the past week and she has been watching it several times a day. It's already grown on me because it's so cute, plus we get to learn a little bit of Mandarin at the same time.

I decided to play dress up with her today and put her hair in really high pigtails and she wore her prettiest dress. I let her jump all over my bed while I took pictures of her. This made me appreciate having a digital camera even more because I could just keep shooting away without worrying about running out of film. 125 pictures and I was able to get a few good ones.

Oh my goodness. I look at this picture and I feel like my heart is going to burst from happiness. Now I need to have a photo-shoot with Aidan.

Peekaboo!

Here's a layout using Prima's new Tea and Silk Collection papers. Have you seen all the sneak peeks at the Prima blog yet? This release is going to be amazing.

And I'm doubly happy because the new products KI Memories has coming out are so awesome. I'm totally giddy about it. Sneak peeks will be coming soon and it will definitely be worth the wait. 

Catching Up With Blogging!

Ah, that was a nice break. Well, actually, now I'm a little sick. I have this cough that won't go away. We've had lots of rain and it's been windy-cold. I'm sure Aidan and Mia miss being able to play outside. I can't believe I'm saying this but even I miss the warm weather! Spring can't come early enough, that's for sure.

Today, Mia and I went outside briefly so I could take pictures of a couple of layouts that I made for the Prima booth. She's wearing her PJ's, her sweater that she's been using all this winter, and her Uggs. I sure do love her in boots. And she has a lollipop in her mouth. It's early morning and the first thing she thinks about is candy. This girl has a major sweet tooth.

We went to Aidan's First Reconciliation last Saturday and this is what Mia wore. She looks like a little elf with her hat but I think it's so cute that she wants to wear it. She's such a girly-girl too that whenever we go out she has to have her bag. She will not go out the door without it and she just puts in whatever she happens to like. In this picture she had a flashlight inside. Right now she has an empty plastic goody bag and a book in it.

Aidan was a bit nervous that day. All the way up to the time he met with Father he kept telling us that he didn't know what to say. When he finally came out, he seemed subdued and I thought he was going to cry. I would ask him what he was feeling and he would just shrug his shoulders. I'm still wondering what he confessed. I tried to get it out of him but Allan laughed at me saying that whatever Aidan said was between Aidan and Father and God, of course. But I imagine he would've said that he sometimes doesn't listen and he leaves his room a mess and leaves his clothes on the floor. He really has hardly anything to confess. He's such a good boy, my Aidan.

I'm in the midst of a busy scrapping week with new Prima goodies and the SOMO kit. The ideas are not flowing very easily, but I have to finish! I won't be attending CHA, but I'll have projects at the Prima and Xyron booths :)

It's the 7th

I'm a whole week late to the party.

The holidays were tough times. Allan was sick two weeks before Christmas. During the next week the kids had a horrendous bout of what we think was the stomach flu. It was so bad that in one day I did six loads of laundry. Instead of being outside and experiencing the joys of the season, we were stuck on the couch watching cartoons all day. Poor Aidan wanted to watch Christmas shows "to get his spirit up." Luckily, we experienced a miracle and the kids were well enough to celebrate on Christmas Eve and Christmas day. I had a lovely time watching them open presents. Aidan got everything he wanted and Mia loved all of her gifts.

And then it was my turn to be sick. Sore throat, coughing, and I almost went to the doctor because I thought I got pink eye, but that was New Year's Eve so I waited. After two days, my eye cleared up but I'm still a little out of it. I've been experiencing headaches in varying degrees of pain everyday since Christmas. We think it may have to do with my blood pressure and that means I need to go back to my healthful eating habits. Suppressing my love for apple fritter doughnuts is hard, but I have to get it through my thick head that I'm just not the kind of person who can eat whatever and get away with it.

Aidan goes back to school tomorrow. I'm sure Mia's going to be asking all day long where her Kuya is. They've been playing together so much lately. One minute they'll be riding their little cars all around the house. Then they'll go and push their carts around, crashing into each other. Then they'll play "kitchen" and Mia will inevitably get mad at Aidan because she doesn't entirely understand the concept of sharing yet. Then they'll sit side by side as they play video games, Aidan with his DS and Mia with her Gameboy and her Dora The Explorer game. When all that's done they watch TV and I can almost hear them saying to each other, "My turn!" Yeah...that's how it is here.

(So serious...)

My latest layouts:

I like that every year I have a Christmas photo layout of the kiddos and I love this layout alot. I didn't even plan the title so I was really proud of myself for pulling it out of the hat, so to speak. I used embellies from the SOMO's Dec 2006 kit too ;)

These are for the KI Memories gallery:

11.28.07

I'm so sorry I haven't updated in such a long while! I haven't been doing anything new or different though...just the same old busy-ness! Allan was on vacation last week and it was fun having him around all day long. Thanksgiving was pretty quiet. We cooked and had our family over for dinner. I can't believe we're looking forward to Christmas now, but I love it. Christmas is my favorite holiday. So while I was away from the computer...

1. I set myself a goal of reading The Golden Compass before the movie comes out on 12/7. Well, I actually finished all three books in the series. I couldn't stop reading 'til I got to the very end. It was fun and exciting!

2. I got a page picked up for the April 2008 issue of Scrapbooks Etc. As Aidan would say, "Self high-five!"

3. Watched Hitman and I give it a 2.5 out 5 stars. Still, it was more fun to watch than Beowulf. Bleh.

4. Finished my projects for the November Story Of My Own kit. The new gallery is up now!

5. I rediscovered Playdoh and the kiddos love it. That was the only thing I bought on Black Friday. We went to Target, went back home, and then they played with it over an hour. It was definitely worth it.

And here's my latest layouts for the KI Memories gallery:

Here I mixed Pop Culture with the older Color Theory Black line.

For this one I used stuff from my most favorite Pieces of Me line. I really, really love that Coloring Book Flower stamp too.

These next two are for Prima: 

The pics were from our pumpkin patch trip at Cal Poly Pomona.

Aww...I can't help but feel wistful when I look at Mia's baby pictures. Too sweet...

7 Things

In bloom, finally.

I was tagged by fellow KI girl, Danni, to post 7 random facts about myself so here they are!

1. Touching raw meat grosses me out. If I have to cut it, I will use a fork to hold it down.

2. I have a recurring dream of finding gold coins underwater.

3. I sing in the shower.

4. My favorite board game is Scrabble.

5. I have an addiction to lip balm and lip gloss.

6. Spiders scare me.

7. My first ever job was at an Arby's.

And I'm suppose to tag 7 peeps so I'll tag Ces, May and June, Gigi, Grace and Derrick, and Ate Patty :)

We watched Bee Movie last Saturday and Aidan enjoyed it, but I fell asleep and I missed most of the end. It was just so comfortable having my head tucked between Allan's shoulder and his chair. Well, for me, the best part about going to that movie was seeing the trailer for The Golden Compass. I was blown away. I've started on the book and I'm hoping to finish it before the movie comes out next month.

Mia is so fun right now because she does and says the darndest things. For example, we were hanging out in my bedroom because I had to fix my hair. I thought she was watching TV and playing with her toys, but when I looked in on her she had taken off both her pants and her diaper! I asked her what she was doing and she said, "I'm going to change my clothes."

Then on the same day, I was telling Allan something but I didn't know he was passed out and snoring away. Mia was playing next to him and she says to me, "Daddy's sleeping. Don't bother her." So she doesn't get gender-specific pronouns yet, but it made me chuckle.

Tonight Aidan was trying to teach Mia some of his taekwondo moves. She had his purple belt on and she was doing these little kicks and bowing and saying, "Yes, sir!" to him. I can't get enough of them and I could talk about them forever.

These are my recent pages in the KI Memories gallery:

I love love love the Pop Culture line! Happy Friday!