You've come a long way, baby

Now it's my daughter's turn to go to the prom. It was a flurry of phone calls, text messaging, on-line messaging, after-school-get-together-to-plan thing, Friday night sleep-overs to discuss what-to-do thing, Saturday meetings to plan-some-more thing. Sending pictures of shoes and prom dresses they plan to get, including hair styles downloaded from the internet.
She has to have a gown, a long dress - not a short dressy-dress because such is "not a prom dress, such is more of a turn-about kind of dress". Her prom dress has to be light minty green, just like the nail polish she put on. She has to have silver jewelry and silver shoes.

Ok, Babycakes! Planning is easier than shopping for what you have in mind. So off we went to the mall last Saturday evening. Remember now, she made up her mind about going to the prom two weeks before the date, and shopping for her dress a week before! Arrrggghhh!!!

We went to 3 department stores - Carson's, JCPenney, and Macy's. She couldn't find the color she envisioned; we couldn't find any gown that would fit her [she's 5'4" and wears a size 3!], and I couldn't find the dress that fits my budget. At last we found one at Macy's..and being Macy's and the only size 3 in the entire prom dress department, it was beyonnnnddd my budget! Still we had to buy it. And oh, it was not minty green after all.

She and her friends will be picked up in a limo, driven to Rosemont Horizon (not the school), have a wonderful dinner after a night of fun and dancing.

You've come a long way, Baby!

Materials used: Far East papers; Font: Wonton ICG

This is also the LO I entered for the Scrappin'Moms challenge for May.

Junior Prom

When I had my Junior prom YEARS ago I didn't wear a gown. It was supposed to be a mini-dress but the older maids wouldn't hear about it! it was a sleeveless, turtle neck, "tent" dress with paisley design [which was then called "psychedelic" design]. Oh, yeah... that just tells you my age. That was the period of the hippies and I'm quick to tell you, I wasn't one.

The prom started at 3pm. The endless summer sun was still bright and hot as ever. I didn't have a limousine to pick me up, nor a date who brought me a corsage ...I crossed the street, walked up the hill and there it was, the high school building, just across the street from our house. I was there at 2pm to help with the finishing touches. I wasn't there 30 minutes when one of my friends sounded the alarm...well, it was just her big booming voice, "Marissa....your grandma is here and she's headed towards the PA system." Arrrggghhhhh!!!!! I had to run up the steps to meet her, just in time for me to be between her and the microphone. She was about to make an announcement, she said, that it is time for me to go home.

If it were today's generation, they would have died of embarrassment! They would have probably sued their grandma! or would have run away from home never to be seen in school again! You would be reading about it all over the Teen Magazines, under the title: My Most Embarassing Moment.

So I went home with her and when she was content I was going to be home for the rest of the afternoon, she busied herself preparing dinner. That's when I went to my father for the rescue. I told him that no matter what happens, not to let grandma out of the gate! If he has to tie her down to her rocking chair he has to do it. For my sanity. Puhleezzz!!!

This picture was taken weeks after the prom. THAT is my prom dress. And the baby doll is my sister Lee.

Thank you, Lee for keeping a copy of this picture!

How was my Saturday, you say?

I tried to stay away from any store that sells scrapbooking materials. Really! I did! But then that 40% off coupon in my purse kept screaming, "let me out! let me out!" So I went to Michael's. I told myself I am going to buy just one thing today. Just a paper pack that would cost me almost half off the regular price.

Oh...those voices beckoning me to go see the next aisle and to touch everything in sight! What should have been a 10-minute trip ended up to be almost an hour. How I'd love to paper-scrap again! Instead of the 120-page paper pack I usually buy, I opted to check out the special packs - the likes of Basic Grey, Tim Holtz, Brenda Walton, to mention a few. After several minutes of agonizing as to which one to get, I decided on the Sparkly Sweet pack by K&Co.

When I got home I admired up close each page's beautiful design. It is a shame to cut them up or cover them with pictures. I already have a few LOs in mind. But in the mean time...I did what I usually do after buying my paper supplies...scan them first before chopping them into pieces.

This is the cover of K&Co's Sparkly Sweet 24-pc double sided cardstock.

The picture was taken when I visited the Philippines with my daughter who was then just 6 months old. [L-R] Girls: Lee, May, Marissa, Jophen, Bessie; Boys: Nani, Jolan, Joy.

Credits: K&Co Sparkly Sweet kit cover; AmberClegg The Gazebo flower; JennyLimayo Love Is You oval tag; Blushbutter tag with purple flowers; IsabelleCyr JeTAdore heart charm with pink ribbon Fonts: Splendid MT, Tall Paul, Ravie

Scrapbooking Alone

I scrapbook alone. I do not go to scrap meets or groups. Archivers and Michael's are 5 minutes away from home. Joann's is 20 minutes away. But I still don't have time to go and meet other scrapbookers. I guess because I have put paper scrapbooking on hold for a while. I've made paper plopper albums for 3 wedding showers. I've made some paper layouts and gave them away as gifts. It just takes me too long to do a paper layout. I stare at the papers and embellishments for the longest time because I want everything to be perfect. I've encouraged friends to scrapbook. Even went to the lengths of teaching them how to scrapbook digitally. They were excited at first but soon enough much as they want to scrap they are too busy with the other activities. I've encouraged my sister, Lee. I am so happy and proud she has pursued scrapbooking. Now she is way ahead of me. She even goes to scrap meets and have met so many friends online.
But here I am, scrapbooking alone. having all my supplies in one place, within easy reach. Discarding supplies here and there if I don't like how my LOs are turning out to be as I know they are endlessly available. I can scrap anywhere I want...down in the kitchen or family room; at the office during my lunch breaks, out on the patio in the Summer time, in front of the TV in the loft, or in my kalat room with the cat and one gold fish as my companions.
But it's OK. I can concentrate on what I truly want my children and their children to know about me. I am starting on something called.. My Life As A Child. Perhaps I will have to steal some of Lee's journaling for the next LO (hehe).
Credits: ChristineHonsinger FabFleaMktFind Bow Ribbon Green
DurinEberhart Caribbean green flowers
CarlaGgibson NewYear
CherylBarber SliceOfSummer indexcard
Fonts: Times New Roman, Edwardian Script
Pictures: downloaded from the internet. Perhaps Lee can take some pictures for me, especially the inside of the ice cream canisters.

Too short

This weekend is too short!!!! What have I done? hmmmm....Saturday...just 3 digi-LOs of my daughter (here's one of them); then crawled the web reading other people's blogs... then cleaned my closet to put away my Fall and Winter clothes and replaced them with my Spring and Summer outfits.
Sunday: slept till 10am since I went blogging till 2am; Lennart came home for a visit. We all went to church, then to the Pita Grill for lunch. We tried some Jordanian cuisine. I didn't bring my camera... so I wasn't able to take any pics.

It is a beautiful day! too warm for my comfort - it's about 80 degrees F. outside. I took some pics of our backyard. But tonight, as I write this blog I am using my daughter's computer so I can't share any pics or LOs I made. Maybe next time.

Credits: MarieStones Labor of Love baby pink hearts and Spring Bursts lt. green alpha background papers; word art; apple 1; Earwig Factory alpha; gel flowerFont: MaSexy

The Wonderful World of Disney

forgive us our sins

i worry about what happens when someone goes missing, praying that s/he be found alive and well. i cry when a young life is snuff out. what happened in virginia is one of those moments in life where i cannot comprehend how easy it is for some people to just take away precious life.

every night before i fall asleep i pray for the forgiveness of my sins and everybody else's. i ask God not to get angry and end all of us in one swoop. i pray that the good out weigh the bad. but i know..God is a giver of life, not a killer. and He forgives.

my prayers to those who lost their lives senselessly, and to those who are left behind to bear the pain.

Spring has Sprung

At last! the cold wintery-weather is gone...well, kinda. It still is nippy outside but there won't be any signs of Old Man Winter coming back for another 9 months!

Some of these pictures were taken years ago in December but I am just in the mood for Spring.

Credits: AmberClegg Charmed bg paper
AmberClegg Charmed wings
ChandraJames WishWonder ribbons
NRJ Chip Alpha
Kimberly Giarrusso Serenity Blue Flower
Font: Curlz MT

These are Stephanie and Christina, first cousins once removed - they've been friends since they were born [so to speak].





Credits: AlisonFolendore Falling ForYou pine over you & round about paper
Font: Easily Amused
KeriSchueller Fancy Corner brush
Samara Gugler Power to the Flower

First cousins Sarah, Danielle, Kathleen.

A new breed of budding best friends.

I made this for Maria...a picture of her daughter taken last Easter.

Credits: TheresaKavouras - Spring to Life Pink Dots KrisMyers Speckled Eggs
MistyCato FunkyFlowerStickers
BoBunny sunshinesplatter paper
DianeRooney Brushed Sugar bow
KariQ Spring Word - CutiePie
KirstyWiseman floribunda







I love this Easter LO of Christina and Stephanie when they were younger.

Credits: Paper: DaisyD's butter polka dot, girlfriend's stripe lime bg papers

Font: Palace Script

Mrs.Schmuck's pink diamond petals & green stone

Some Angels Had a Blast!

Some Angels had a sleep-over and had a blast. They had a pillow fight, I think...or perhaps planned to bake an angel cake. They giggled and laughed and started throwing stuff at each other until the down pillows burst...or was it the flour bags. But whatever it was...all the white stuff floated down to earth and made everything white again.

I drove my daughter to school today. It was slipping and sliding all the way. I nearly hit the car in front of me at a red light because my SUV just went on skidding forward. At the last moment I steered to the right. The sidewalk broke the motion but now I don't know if the wheels will be OK. But I was OK. So is the car in front of me [whew!]

I took some pictures when I got home from my daughter's school. Boy! everythin in nature is so confused today. I am confused...is it Spring or is it still Winter? Are we going to skip Spring and jump right into Summer this year? The plants are confused. The buds are now all frozen. I don't think there will be a lot of flowers in the garden this year. The birds are confused as well. I saw some geese last week. Where are they now?

This picture reminds of when as a little girl we made Christmas trees out of tree branches and covered them with "snow" made of ground hibiscus leaves, water, and powdery laundry soap - like Tide.

I love it when each branch and twig is outlined with snow!

I got to the office an hour late. I came in singing "Jingle bells, jingle bells..." Someone said for me to stop singing Christmas carols, to which I replied, "where in the song does it mention anything about Christmas?"

I surfed the web for the lyrics of Jingle Bells and found this:

"Believe it or not Jingle Bells, one of the most famous American Christmas songs, was originally written for Thanksgiving! The author and composer of Jingle Bells was a minister called James Pierpoint who composed the song in 1857 for children celebrating his Boston Sunday School Thanksgiving. The song was so popular that it was repeated at Christmas, and indeed Jingle Bells has been reprised ever since.The essence of a traditional Christmas is captured in the lyrics of Jingle Bells and the sound effects using the bells have become synonymous with the arrival of Father Christmas or Santa Claus to the delight of children of all ages!"

We still have our Christmas lights outside the house; and the star lanterns (parol) that my sister brought us from the Philippines about 3 years ago hanging on the windows. My husband planned to take them down when it gets a little bit warmer so he can also clean the glass windows. But it didn't get any warmer. So tonight, when I get home, I will turn those on, just for kicks. Someone up there is having fun, we might as well have the same down here.

My first born

April 8 I've been having contractions. We went to the doctor but after the examination I was sent home. Nope! That kid is not "all the way down yet". The doctor said my due date is April 14. I had pain all night and all day, off and on.

April 9, 10:00 am we went back to the doctor. Again, I was sent home. More off and on pain all day and all night.

April 10...yes...back to the doctor. By this time I was in so much pain I kept rubbing my head on my pillow. I rubbed it raw! and I kept asking people to massage my back/hips. Somehow it soothed the pain. The doctor wanted to send me home again. Said I wasn't ready. I said, Yes I am!!!

So he made me wait in the patient room. They should have called it impatient room! By 5pm I found myself in an ambulance and they rushed me from the doctor's clinic all the way to the hospital.

By 6pm I was prepped for a c-section. The last thing I remembered was the anesthesiologist asking if I wanted a boy or a girl. I said "boy".

I heard all these weird noises coming from afar, like drifting in and out of space. When I was half-awake I realized all the relatives were in the room waiting for me to wake up. I thought to myself why are they all here? I want to rest.

The first thing I asked was, "where are my legs?" I couldn't feel my legs. It felt like half of my body (the upper half) is on the bed and the lower half is dangling on the side of the bed.

Everybody laughed. I asked about my legs first, not about my baby.
A baby?! I thought. Oh, yeah. I had a baby. It is so weird. It didn't feel like having a baby. For the longest time after that, staring at the baby, feeding him, cuddling him, I still couldn't believe I have a baby! I guess it's because it was not a "natural" birth.

Happy birthday, Lennart! I love you.

The labor pains were well worth it!

The Song That Made Me Cry

I held back tears while in church yesterday. But it didn't work. This song is so touching.

Thank you for the cross, Lord
Thank you for the price You paid
Bearing all my sin and shame
In love You came
And gave amazing grace.

Thank you for this love, Lord
Thank you for the nail pierced hands
Washed me in Your cleansing flow
Now all I know
Your forgiveness and embrace

Worthy is the Lamb
Seated on the throne
Crown You now with many crowns
You reign victorious
High and lifted up
Jesus Son of God
The Darling of Heaven crucified
Worthy is the Lamb
Worthy is the Lamb

by Australia Hillsong

It just says it all.

Organizing - Part 2

Alright! So here's my final orgnization system. It took a while because of the many files I have. I brought my laptop to work and worked on organizing my files an hour a day (during my lunch break) for 2 weeks. It was a perfect time. I didn't want to go anywhere because of the snow or cold weather so I spent my lunch hour in the waiting area of the building where I work.




I organized the names of each folder to read: name of designer/initials of website/title of kit for example: SuzanneWalker-DSP ChiliNights. Then I went to each file in the folder and pasted the folder name onto each file, leaving the name of the file intact (folder name in red, file name in yellow): SuzanneWalker-DSP ChiliNights flower01.jpg







After I renamed everything, I created a folder called "Digital Supplies" and created sub-folders for

• photo holders (includes frames, prongs, pins)




• flowers (includes paper, silk, gels, doodles, leaves)




• word art




• stitches and staples,




• digital papers




• alpha




• tags, journals




• ribbons, bows, fibers




• buttons, beads, jewels




• brads, eyelets, bookplates




• charms, stickers

Brushes, textures, fonts, etc. have their own folders. I don't want to drown my program with these as someone told me that too much will make your program not work.

Then I moved everything in the proper folders. So now I have all papers in one folder, all flowers in another folder...

It works great for me for the following reasons:

1) with the thumbnails view I can browse through files and be able to see everything I have in the folder. It's so easy to pick the paper or embellishment I want to use.



2) with the designer, website, and kit name available, giving credit is as easy as A-B-C.



As I said, it took a while. But it works for me! If you have an easier way to organize your digital supplies, let me know.

Organizing - Part 1

How do you organize your digital downloads?
Me? I've tried everything [I think] but it seems that the more I organize, the more I become disorganized. Have you ever felt that way? The first time, I organized my dowloads by the site where I found them. When I get too many I then burn them onto CDs/DVDs. So I ended up having a full disc or 2 for every site I visited like http://www.shabbyprincess.com/, http://www.digitalfreebies.com/, http://www.oscraps.com/store/, http://scrapbookbytes.com/, http://www.scrapartist.com/, http://store.scrapgirls.com/. I have other places I've visited and might have to link them some other time. These are just a few examples.

But once burned onto discs and they're gone from my computer, I seem to forget what I have and still have a difficult time remembering where to find a particular designer or kit even though I've labeled each disc. So I went into the extent of making an Excel worksheet for each website. My worksheet is composed of the name of the designer, title of the kit, a brief description of what the kit is all about (Christmas, birthdays, teen, Spring, Summer, etc.), and the disc #. I even have a worksheet for the designers, i.e. under the ScrapGirls column I listed all the names of the designers. That way when I have new downloads and don't remember which site I found them, I can look up the name in the "Designer" worksheet. The worksheets worked because then, before purchasing or downloading another freebie I find, I can check my worksheets to see if I already have a copy of the download. See how that works?

But I still get frustrated not knowing what I have. I know I have tons of downloads and it takes a long time looking for the perfect paper or embellishment that goes with a particular picture. Can you imagine going through each worksheet reading the "brief description" trying to remember what the supplies look like?

Arrrrggghhhhh!!!! There has to be a better and quicker way!

A Gold Mine!

I've been busy surfing the net these past few days that I didn't get any LOs done. But it was worth it. Through a few tutorials I found I learned new things.

One search led to another...and another...and another. Gosh! my computer gave up downloading those freebies! Those designers are just so wonderfully talented and soooooo generous. I have to return the favor and introduce them to you...or you to them...how about that?

So here's one http://www.freedigitalscrapbooking.com/index.html
Download to your heart's content. Thank you, Marie Stones!!!!! Whooo-hoooo!!!!