A DIY Book

Being a user of an online scrapbooking site that was recently acquired by another, I received a special offer from the new site last Feb/Mar. I tried to avail of the discounted photo book offer and proceeded to link my Flickr images and to do the layout. The process was quite tedious for me, not because of the site, but because I had a lot of images to choose from. You know how hard it is to pick only a few from a huge (digital) pile, right? That was where I spent more time on, than on deciding how to lay them out on pages.

Quite self-indulgent alright... but I thought I should do a picture book to review the year 2010. This approach gave me a more systematic way to design the project. Now after picking the images, it was just a matter of choosing the templates for the pages. In no time, my book was completed. Delivery took more than a month as I opted for the cheapest mode of delivery, but this didn't matter. The books (yes, I got 2 for the price of 1) were exactly as I imagined them to be... really cool!




You may click here to see the contents of the book.

Art Attack

Since vacation started, I was on the lookout for summer activities for our youngest boy to keep his computer, game console and tv time to a minimum. We have tried learning to bike (still ongoing, he prefers to use his scooter though), sketching / drawing (using various color media - crayons, water color, colored pencils, etc.), solving Math problems (seriously! i bought him an activity book for this one!)...

Sometimes, he reads books. His favorite is Manga Messiah which his Tito Junnie gave. I think he has read it more than once and it's very apt for the Holy Week. :)

At other times, he plays with his Lego pieces, wooden Jenga bricks, miniature cars or plastic, pose-able figures. Pretend-play makes him more imaginative. It's like he's in a different world all his own.

My "mission" now is to keep thinking of things for him to do just to wean him from computer, PSP or iPhone gaming. Anything, as long as it's non-electronic... Hehe... And it's not easy to keep his enthusiasm high. Before you know it, he's off to do something else.

This afternoon, something piqued his curiosity. He requested us to make him stay at Toys@Work (at BTC) so that he could try out a new kind of (art) activity. He spent at least an hour making his project while Jerry helped and I took pictures. It didn't come without cost though. For a plate, we spent P200, but I'd take that over electronic gaming gizmos, anytime.





Busy Jake with Jerry who just arrived from an official trip today.

Absence

The days go by ever so slowly when you are waiting for someone or something. If not for the short trip of my sister May and her kids in Cebu, the week would have been long and uneventful for Jake and me.

In our party of five, Jake and I were the only ones at home. Hubby was in HK since Tuesday for a business trip and will be arriving in Cebu in a few hours, eldest son is still in Manila for his finals week in DLSU and middle son is in China for his immersion in Mandarin.

Whether I like it or not, I have to start getting used to not having everybody in one place... Luckily for me, I still have the seven year old Jake to keep me company. And I take every bit of opportunity to enjoy this time with him, before he goes off on his own.

*Sigh* (Mommy blues mode on.)



Missing our Kyle who is in China until May


Longing for everyone to be here and for a complete family pic again

My Affair With Alex

This image was taken using the Galaxy Tab, uploaded to and edited using Picnik, and posted using Blogger. The Tab was borrowed from my sister, who is presently in Cebu. This gave me the chance to have first hand experience on the Tab's functionalities... at least those that I'm familiar with.

Because I am a newbie when it comes to using Android, it's no surprise that it took me more than an hour and a half to post this. U-huh! That's from taking the pic, cropping the image a bit and up to writing / publishing this post.

Being a Mac and iPhone user for quite some time now mostly because of my job, I can't seem to bring myself to use any other non-Apple product. Thus, my short foray to Android tested my wits. A simple task such as creating a post with an image, I found my learning curve was veering towards "steep". LOL. I don't know about you but this really needs a lot of getting used to. :P

I guess I'll forego the urge to get a Tab or even an iPad, until I come across something that will really blow me away. Right now, I'm more inclined to replace my 13-inch Air with the 11-inch version... if budget permits. :)

That's my short take on Android. It turns out that Alex is safer in my sister's hands.


Alex = name of my sister's Samsung Galaxy Tab.

I Got My Hand Dirty Today

I remember my mother enrolling my brother, Junnie, in a Chinese calligraphy/art class with my cousin Bingo one summer many many years ago. I so wanted to join them but for reasons that were unclear to me, I wasn't able to. My brother's drawings and painting materials fascinated me so much. And everytime he came home from art class, I would borrow his brushes and bottles of paint and copied his art work. I"m not sure if Junnie enjoyed drawing the four seasons, cherry blossoms or exotic birds, which are staples in Chinese artwork, but I did. :)

After breakfast last Sunday, I took hold of Jake's sketch pad and #1 and #2 pencils and started drawing while using one of the pics in my iPhone folder as my inspiration. I think I put in about an hour of work that time and resumed the sketch just this morning until I finished.

Sans any formal drawing lessons, the image I did could very well look strange or resemble somebody you or I know, but I actually want it to look like the picture of my Jake sipping fresh young coconut juice.