*jing @26

The first birthday which MT celebrated with me was my 26th birthday, so i know i had to scrap a page, to remember it. in fact, i am planning to scrap a birthday page for every birthday we celebrate together. I was hoping to do the same for MT but i cant find any pictures of us(alone) celebrating his birthday.

This year, during his birthday, i'll need to remind myself to ask someone or anyone to take a picture of the both of us with his cake.

for my 26th birthday, MT had bought me an ice-cream cake , because i told him that i had never had an ice - cream cake. However, as the picture turns out, i did not have a picture of the cake, just the chocolate writing.

I will have to do better this year in documenting our birthdays.

*Home

is where the heart is. the home altered alphabets were made for MT's Dad birthday. I was toying with the idea of making one for MT's room vs ordering it in.

when MT's Dad asked MT to come up with something for their house, without asking me, MT decided that i will be able to come up with these altered alphabets and i was up for a challenge - even without me signing up for one.

so, i spent half a day creating this "HOME" and currently, it is mounted on the wall for the past 6 months. The alphabet "m" took the longest time to finished while "h" was the fastest.






another weekend is here and today marks the 4th year of me working in the same company.

Happy Weekend.

*a little piece of history

i got this picture off my granny last weekend. after going through the photos frames on the shelf, i realised that i don't have a single picture of my grandparents together. My grandpa passed away when i was six and back then, we did not have the habit of taking family pictures. My mom told me that the picture on the left (my grandma and grandpa) was taken in a studio so there is the only copy. As for the picture on the right, it is my first aunt ( i have 6 aunties all together). Not only she was my first auntie, she was also my sister's godmum. unfortunatly, she had also passed away when my sis and i were studying overseas. This old photoframe had contained very precious memories for both my sister and I.

My first aunt lived really near to the school where i was studying (for 11 years) , i had spent many sat afternoons in her house, waiting for my sister to completed her ECA so that my dad can come and pick us up together. Without fail, my aunt and uncle will always prepared lunch for us. Very yummy lunch for the two of us, i really miss those days. there were times when we don't have to go to school on sat and forgotten to let them know, my uncle wil still prepare the yummy lunch for us, waiting for us to go over. this is how much the both of us were loved. I will always be in my uniform, eating fried chicken , specially bought for me.

since it is already the 8th month, the mooncake tasting and shopping had already begun for me. i love the Mid - autumn festival. Not only because i love eating mooncakes, it is also a time when our extended family will gather in our granny's place to have dinner, pray to the deities and of course, carrying lanterns.

another perks of moon cake shopping will be seeing their different packages of the mooncakes. I had bought three different brand of mooncakes.

this is from Tai chong kok, where the package of the mooncake is really traditional and oldschool. highly recommended by MT, i had never came across this brand. I love the package so much. I bought this for godmum and hope that she will enjoy the mooncake.

this is the mooncake from shangri-la, MT bought this for my mum and i love the taste of the mooncake. My mum and I don't like the yoke in moon cake, we had bought the whilte lotus for my mum. on the first night , my mum and i had finished more than half of the mooncake.


the last mooncake which i bought is from Goodwood Park - thier famous durian snowskin mooncake. I love the yellow colour but this year, the snowskin doesnt taste as good.

*honing my skills

i had been trying my hands at these layouts and so far, i am happy with the results. I am not a big layout kind of scrapper, more of an mini album kind of scrapper:the first scrapbook class i took was for a mini album.

Big layouts like this scares me away, i am afraid that i am unable to fill up the whole space and left a sense of emptiness. one fine day, i decided to give it a try at a big layout and i am hooked. first of all, they are alot faster to complete as compare to a mini album - all the cutting and pasting (over and over again).

these are my recent big layouts which i had accomplished and i hope to have more to come.

the pictures taken for the *sky dining layout were on our first anniversary with MT. the sky dining was a surprise from him. I saw the houses and clothes on a transparency. i assumed that they are rub-ons and i love a rub- ons. with the clouds and the houses, i was trying to create a landscape similar to sky dining. however, when i tried rubbing the design onto my layouts, it refused to stick onto the paper. then i realised that it is not a rub-on. in fact, i dont even know what it is called thou i love the effects it had on my layout.

the song "bulit to last" is MT's first ringtone and still is his present ringtone. i wanted to document down our first cycling trip at east coast park, hence this layout. the hearts on the left hand side were hand drawn by MT. Also, he writes does all the writing on my layouts.



it is already september and from now on, it will always be a mad rush towards the end of the year. that's how i feel when year end is appraoching. Decemeber is a big month because together with the xmas,new year's eve, MT and me are year end babies.

*with love

this mini album was created for V- Day this year for J for the record's love challenge. it was the first time i entered an online challenge and created this mini album within 3 days. It was all good fun and i think that it made a perfect present for my boy.

this is the cover.

second page will be earlier this year, MT and I painted the wall of his living room green.

MT & i work together and this is his favorite drink at work.

Lunch at Ikea and i like how his hair looks in this picture.

these shots were taken on new year's eve last year.

MT is a gamer boy and this is him trying to teach me how to play the PSP. this shot of was taken by his 8 year old niece.

I like this quote so i thought of using it as the back page.

Happy Weekend.

*brunch lover

i love having brunch because i like to sleep in, just a little bit longer in the morning. other than scrapbooking, i love going to different parts of our little island to have good food. what i meant by good food = food at reasonable price and where the place is not too crowded.

Rider's cafe is one of my favorite places to have brunch, especially on a weekday. It is away from the bustling city,tucked away in the west where you can watch horses while we have our brunch.

i shall let the pictures do the talking.

cup of tea

pancakes

Rider's Breakfast

Rider's cafe is located at 51 Fairways Drive Bukit Timah Saddle Club.

*love coupons

I was inspired Jessica to makes these love coupons for my one year anniversary with MT. Instead of making a card for him, i had decided that i will write what i want to let him know on the back of these love coupons. I spent about 2.5 hours making these coupons - i am a slow scrapper.

this is the first page

followed by a relaxing back rub

a dozen of home made cookies

movie night you pick

one night of complete control oof the remote, since my boy does not watch the tv. this allows him to game all night.

1 home cooked dinned

dinner out at your favourite restaurant

and one lazy day to do whatever you want - i think this is for gaming.

*a love story

Using the first couple picture taken, i made the very first layout for MT and me. I love the blue background and the polka dots water from lily bees.

While creating this layout, i felt that the colors used were too pale which resulted in a very bland layout. I will need to really look very closely before I can see the rub-ons. Hence, after this layout, i always remind myself that i need to choose colors which contrast with one another, rather than combining all the similar pastel colors together.

a closer look

on the other hand, there is a new scrapbook shop in town : paper market. this is located at raffles city shopping city. Did a bit of scrapbook shopping after lunch with wanxin at the hand burger. And, the best part of this weekend is my boy is back.

*Happy Friday

because,

i am watching the sun rise as i waited for the bag i want to go on sale,

i dont have to work on a friday,

i had finished my performance apraisal for O9,

my boy will be out from army tomorrow,


and

i am heading to my fave supper place: block 85 to have dinner.

note to self: update blog more often

*why do i scrap ?

i get this question in my face alot or to be more specfic , it should be "you're STILL doing your scrapbook?".

there are several reasons as to why i scrapbook :
first off, i will like to capture those moments, by putting them into my mini albums, layouts ensures that i do not let this daily moments pass in an instant.

second, i want to be able to remember all this little moments which made our life beautiful and a happy one.

third, scrapbooking had became my hobby already. i love the fact that i am able to create, seeing my ideas coming to life, making hand - made presents for the people around me. I like ME when i am scrapbooking. i like to be able to switch off from the real world, get my eyes off the computer, use my glue, paper and my materials to jot down what i will like to remember.

fourth, if i dont capture that moment, don't you feel that it is a moment lost. I wont be able to go back to that particular moment and re-create that particular moment.

lastly, i want to be able to look back and see what had shaped me in this year. these daily pictures might be boring for some but to me, all these daily "boring" moments reperesent the what i had gone through this year.

i also like my picutres printed out, scraped or at least put into an picture album. it is just different from viewing it from my computer screen.

this year is the year that i had taken the pungle and i had been actively writing my thoughts down, making sure that i am scrapping those moments that makes up the year.

one comment/remakrs which i had been receiving is why do i spend so much $$ on scrapbooking - it is not alot by my standard thou sometimes i do go overbroad. However, i do make sure that i used up all my scrapbook materials that i bought, i store all my papers, ribbons, rub-ons, buttons, etc. so there is no wasteage.

at the end of the day, i dont want to put a price tag on my memories because they are priceless - at least to me.

*i will be fine.