i LOVE weekends!!!

Yup, another 2 days gone by! Time always seem to past by so fast when it's the weekend. Anyways, it was a really good weekend, did so many things in 48hrs ~ had a great dinner at ml's (thanks for the fantastic spread sp); cropped, shopped and yakked at TVC; finished a good book (thanks ps); finished a baby gift for a friend; made some progress with my wedding album; started (again) on the donut poof for gracie's room (gotta get stuffing - anybody knows from where??)... hmm,and yes! visited the zoo :D *and made muffins as well!*; learnt a new song from cbbc (boom boogie woogie); got reacquainted with my piano ~

so, here's some of my fav pix:





lately, gracie has been saying this before she sleeps:
mammie-kool. daddie-kool. pi pi-kool. miao miao-kool. *heh* we're all cool! :D

life is a balance

been very busy at work lately, hence the inertia to update my blog. Also, life's been pretty low these few days.

so, just to remember the little things of which i'm grateful for today-
1. gracie - she makes me smile the moment i open my eyes and hear her call out 'mammie'
2. family - my mom and dad crack me up everyday with their mundane msn conversations. vic being always there - i love our quiet breakfast moments.
3. friends - wat will i be without them: my daily friends - the funny emoticons are great cheer me uppers; the overseas friends - who drop that occassional postcard and phonecall; my forever friends - whom i can't stop talking with once we've gotten started.
3. scrapbooking - the whole creative adrenaline when i create a page. And of course the immense pride when people leave nice comments about them.

here's to finding that balance in life!

Scrapbook competition

I'm on Round #3.5 of the Last Scrapper Standing competition!!! Out of the 400+ that entered, only 40 of us are left! :P
For those who haven't seen the previous entries, here they are:

entry #3.5_challenge - to use a wet medium for the LO. Paints are not my strong point, but i guess wat i wanted to do was to transform normal media with the application of paint. So i backpainted the Hambly screenprints and also the clear buttons, so that they had a gradated effect.


entry #3.0 - to use circles on a LO - no lines, just circles...


entry #2.0 - to use 13 pix on a single LO! another toughie for me, who usually only scraps with 1 pic on a page. But i'm totally liking this LO - really captured the mood of our fun times in Japan that one pic can never convey.


entry #1.0 - to journal on a photo. the idea for this LO has been in my head for awhile, and the challenge was a perfect oppurtunity to execute it. :D

weekend pix *warning - many pics!

hectic weekend, first a swim party in the morning, then off to the weekly 'meet the great grandparents' session. BUT! great oppurtunities to play with my new toy :D

here's the happy stuff-

Playing with Marcus




at New House :

the battle of the cameras

CANON 350
Pros -
8 megapixels
Richer colours
Maximum compatibility with printer
Free printer in bundle
Cheaper by around $300
Lighter and more compact

Cons -
Entry level Lens
Sharp annoying shutter click sound
Smaller LCD screen
Plastic body
No memory card given

NIKON 70S
Pros -
Better quality lens and motor
Better quality graphite body
Light metering option
Nice shutter click sound
Free 2GB memory card
Free Bag & UV filter lens

Cons -
6 megapixels
Heavier body
More expensive
No printer in bundle
Older model

SO - GUESS WHICH ONE I GOT????

heeheee... call me superficial, but the grip and sound and feel of the Nikon made me choose it above the Canon! :P I have been having so much fun with it, learning all about apertures and shutter speeds.
Here's some pictures i took while there was still daylight on Sunday:


pardon the unsightly pose of the sleeping daddy in the background. :P

when the WWW is down -

1. you can't check your emails every other minute
2. you can't multi-task between work and everything else
3. you can't make weekend plans with your friends online
4. you can't look at yr event planner which is online
5. you can't gossip with other people in the office who just sit opposite you about other people in the office who sit next to you
6. you don't remember how to look for a phone number or street directions the OLD FASHION way
7. you can leave work on time!
8. the day just sucks

on another note-
i've managed to my take some pictures of my TAG album that i made from the freebie generously donated by the the velvet cat -this is what i did! :
U Changed My Life

[U changed my life]

gracie is growing up so quick. very soon she'll be squirming everytime i want to give her a kiss! better grab them and smooch while i can... heh.

just a visual record on how much she's change my life - can't imagine she was only born LAST YEAR!!!! gosh, before that, my life had NO gracie... how incredible is THAT?

[the BOSS is IN]

it's too much hassle maintaining and uploading onto a 2nd blog for just my scrap pages. So i've decided to combine them all into 1! heh heh... that means this blog gets updated more often!

sheena passed me a HILARIOUS photo of ellie last weekend. the title just popped! love it and love the pix! :D

[some more pics]

I've been trying out my photo editing skills. Here's a few i just finished :

the Velvet Cat - launch party!

So so happy for Lina and Lisa - great friends of mine from WAY back.... :D
It's just so cool that they followed their hearts and went all the way to start up this really cool scrapbooking store!! I love the way the online site looks, love the stuff they have brought in. Only thing is - I have a strange feeling my wallet is about to suffer from now on.... heh.

here's something i made at the launch party :






o, ellie by the way is sheena's daughter - and the 'w' stands for Wong.

happy birthday sheena

had the most wonderful time at sheena's place last weekend. It was especially significant as gracie and marcus have finally started to show some signs of being able to play together. I love the way the both of them are starting to hold their own little verbal exchanges, how their vocabulary is soo similar! It's a little strange to hear the same words, but from Marcus instead of Gracie! So cute.... And ellie as usual was the sweetest little baby :D Gracie really enjoyed herself there (especially with uncle whye kay - the greatest entertainer i know!) - she slept all the way home.

here are some pics from peishan's camera (it was the 'official' camera, so i'm not sure which one of us took the pics!)

[grace]

rock-a-bye-baby

 
these pictures are so bitter sweet. They show gracie drinking from her favorite little bottle. She's growing up so quick, when she climbs here and there and talks really intelligently about what she wants what she has done. But these pictures of her drinking from her milk bottle reminds me of the days when she's still a little baby...... oh my rock-a-*bye bye*-baby! 

step it up!

 
Everytime we visit "new house", gracie loves sitting at these steps. We don't really know why, perhaps is the feeling of mobility she gets from climbing up those first few steps, perhaps a feeling of security to find her little 'corner'. Whatever it is, she can play with the steps and little things around it for quite a long time! 

fireworks and nature walks

[fireworks]
[leaf?]

how do you keep a 17-month old toddler occupied over the weekend? We constantly try to expose gracie to new environments and new experiences. This weekend, we headed down to the bay to catch the Fireworks Festival! It was really good fun, although i must say the drive back was pretty torturous (can somebody tell me why the CTE is always jammed???). Gracie loved the fireworks - "flower" & "stars" were her description of it! Plus "boom boom" and "works" when shown the video the following day. Also took a drive to the West coast of Singapore to spend some 'back to nature' time at Labrador park. I must say it was very enjoyable! Even though we had to pick her up when she fell over a few times, i think gracie quite liked the outing. 

small talk

Finally had some time over the weekend to do up gracie's room a little bit more. We bought the pretty red chair from Ikea, and moved the chinese chest from our bedroom into gracie's room. She's been having a lot of fun drawing on her huge roll of paper (she can just about sit properly on her chair). I love the way she's really starting to communicate really well with us.
Conversations run something like this:
Gracie: draw draw draw. Sit!
Mummy: Gracie, dun draw on the floor! wat did mummy say?
G: Draw draw draw! (while drawing on herself)
M: hey!
G: *cheeky smile* Draw, PAPER! (runs to draw on her paper)

[what i like about babies]

watilikeabtbabies_copy, originally uploaded by jacqueline_yeo74.

Had a really fun day at sheena's place a few weekends ago. She wanted to practice her photo skills on toddler, i just wanted to play with her camera! I took this photo of her and keemeng with sweet little ellie. (i still can't get over the wonderful coincidence of both our babies being born on exactly the same day!) Will be giving this to Sheena as a little part of her birthday present. Hope she'll like it!

The Life of Mami

A follow up to the previous post, this is a simple LO i did of my mum and me.
Journalling reads : I was just a tiny tot then, about the same age as gracie now. i look back at the past 30yrs together with great fondness. the happy moments have far surpassed the sad and angry moments. i have often wondered about mum's life, about her dreams at my age, about her work, how she juggled work life and home life, about her happiness, about her sadness. could it be, she wanted the same things for me as what i want for gracie, to have a life worth living, to be happy, to be always loved, to know extreme joy, to learn from extreme sadness. to bring about joy and laughter, to be gracious, to be unique, to have fun. I love you.

Mummy & Me

I love this photo of my mum and me. I guess i must have been about the same age as gracie is now. My mum looks so good! :D

Did a Layout about us and our often-times stormy relationship. It's that age old 'mother-daughter' conflicts....

It is amazing that Gracie looks so much like vic when she was born, now more and more she looks like me... can't say i'm not happy about that! :D

The Sand, The Sea

We had a really good time at Sentosa. I had my first taste of being a fully mobile SAHM the last 3 days i took time off work to spend with Gracie. We had so much fun! Public transport when seen through the eyes of a 17 month old is just so exciting! On friday, we went to Sentosa. Gracie loved digging into the sand, loved kicking up bits of sea, loved finding me little sea shells. Life is good.