We had a great weekend. We went to the city, had a very yummy lunch at an Indian restaurant, Korma Sutra in Overland Park, and also stopped at Archivers which was just a few (huge) blocks away from the restaurant.

It was nice going there, found a few items, but a bit disappointed because I couldn’t find anything unique. They just have more of what’s at the other craft stores or a scrapbook store closer to where I live. Of course I bought a few items, some more pretty papers, and alphas but really, I could have gotten those without going to Archivers.

Then we went to Science City. It’s a children’s science/museum type of place. Emma had a great time although the first 30 minutes were not the best. M’s a big shady about new places but once she familiarized herself with the place, she was happy and excited about trying out the different activities. That was our Saturday and after dinner we just watched a movie while I scrapbooked.

Today, I was suppose to play volley ball but I left my workout shoes at work and I couldn’t get in my building. It was funny, last week, a colleague of mine said, “Hey Savitri, do you know that your name’s (and my coworker’s) on the key control’s list?” I said no and I thought that they were just keys to the lab (in another building) for the database class. Ha! Now I know!!! Nobody ever told me, or my supervisor, that we needed new keys. I know her name was on the list too and she was clueless when I told her. So I watched hubby and these other people play. I’ll play next week — I just have to remember to take my shoes home.

Here’s a card that I did. The paper is Tinkering Ink which came with my Studio Calico March kit. It was leftover from the page that I did (which I’ll show you later). If you’re a regular visitor to my site, the card design is exactly the same as my “You’re Invited” card. I used my Nestabilitie sets for the scallop and the blue and white card stock. The ribbon, instead of cutting a seperate piece for the tie, I wrapped the ribbon around the white piece of paper and then did the tie. Isn’t it amazing how colors effect the feel of something? I’m not sure who I’ll give this to. I just wanted to make a card. I was going to do Beate’s sketch but got distracted. Ok, have a great one!

Tags: stampinup, card

Everybody has an off day, right? Well, this was mine. I can’t remember when I did this. I think it was last weekend and just wasn’t feeling it. This was actually a re-do and the first version (never got it done) was terrible that I never got back to it until now (1.5 years later).

This was our trip to the Zoo. M was 2+ (4th of July break) and dad was one duty overseas. We thought we’d go visit the grandparents. We had a good time but wow, did I not like MS in the summer. The mosquitoes were terrible!! The in-laws live on a lake, might be the reason, but we couldn’t go out for a few seconds without getting attacked. Ekk!

I got tagged. I’m not sure who to tag, so if you’re interested in sharing your randomness, considered yourself tagged. It’s Friday night, not sleepy, and even though I should probably sleep or do something more productive, I am not motivated. So here goes…

1. I am pretty low maintenance and every day, except for training or meeting days, I am on casual Friday attire — minus the jeans. Often times people who doesn’t know me thinks I’m a graduate assistant. Ha!

2. I am a food snob. I am all about quality and not quantity. I’m all about organic and natural. But I eat anything really. A little bit of anything doesn’t hurt, right?

3. I can eat A LOT. It somewhat contradicts my built and really fools buffet restaurant owners. I guess I’m lucky that I’m Asian? It scares my husband though… sometimes he thinks he’s the guy in Shallow Hal… ha ha…

4. English is my second language. Ah ha you say… no wonder her grammar is often off {::SMILES}

5. I love France and anything French. Oh la la… I so want to be fluent in French.

6. I love to sing off key and dance the crazy dance in front of my husband just to drive him crazy.

7. I don’t like to admit it but I am a geek especially in applications.

I say part I because this is the easiest pattern you can do — stripes. For the second time I’m using ColourLovers for this tutorial. There are so many cool things that you can do on that site. I’ll show you more later if you haven’t figure them out yourselves yet.

Those who has PSE will also be able to go through this tutorial. You have the pattern and fill option. TFW — thanks for watching!

EDIT: If this is your first visit, don’t forget to check out creating pattern using the pattern sample from ColourLovers. Oh, also, don’t think that you can only pick colors from the swatch. You can use whatever color. I just want to show you how you can incorporate color pallets that you find online — in case you’re stumped or need some visual help.

This is the other page that I did for the Scrap Artist challenge. I thought I was suppose to do two pages from whatever kit and not one from my own kit and one from the freebie kit. Last night at midnight was the cut-off date and time. I’m just waiting to see what the results are. You can see the submissions in their gallery. Quite a bit, huh? Not hoping much, but we’ll see. Like I said, I had fun, got some LOs done, AND got a free kit. What else can I ask, right?

The Internet is a BAAAAD thing for me. Especially now that I’m so into challenges and contests AND blog candies. I’ve never gotten anything from the last but it was still always fun to participate in all and hope that maybe one day I can get some cool freebie. I can’t do them all but I’m trying to do something from the different ones that I love. Prima has a new monthly sketch contest now. It’s called Prima’s Build-a-Page. You get prizes. Just don’t forget to submit your layout by the 25th. I love the sketch and I have the perfect photos — just found them last night {::SMILES}.

Do you know that PaperTrey has a blog hop contest each month on the 25th? I just found out today but I might try it for next month. I love their stuff. If you have a blog and either have or will be getting some PTI stuff, watch our for April’s hop. Should be fun. I should put it in my calendar, huh? {::SMILES}

Ok, have a great day. We just did our taxes yesterday and I feel so good (although both our muscles were tense during the process). I hate tax time. It was also nice too that we didn’t have to pay. I think the tax people made a mistake but whatever, they did check two-three times. I’ll let you know if we go to prison, ha! It might not be bad… more time to scrapbook and make cards… ha ha ha… I wonder if I’d be able to blog too… ok… enough of that… laters…

My partner in crime from Tara Sroka, the great and talented Gabi Butcher, has some neat freebies. Check them out. Be sweet and leave a comment if you download — or if you are there. She’d love it. Pair her freebies with the tuts that I have here:

Texture Overlay - this is for her texture download
Alter your Elements/Alphas - this is for her shapes download

So if you want to use her shapes, you just select the white space around the circles, inverse, and use the outline to outline your paper — just like the video.

Tags: freebies

Another house — this time on a card {::SMILES}. I used the Love Elsie stamp set that I purchased from SIStv. Love Elsie has some new products and she named them Emma. They’re soooo cute and wouldn’t they look good on some Emma pages? Urgh… it’s crazy but I feel the need to buy and I haven’t even used what I just got except maybe one or two items. Again another different card, more doodles, and just free styling stuff, but every now and then I like to branch out and try something new.

To not bore you, I want to share the below. It’s HILARIOUS!!!! I am the hardest person to amuse, hubby hates it, and I was busting out laughing at this one.

A WOMAN’S WEEK AT THE GYM

This is dedicated to everyone who ever attempted to get into a regular workout routine.

Dear Diary,

For my birthday this year, my daughter (the dear) purchased a week of personal training at the local health club for me. Although I am still in great shape since being a high school football cheerleader 43 years ago, I decided it would be a good idea to go ahead and give it a try.

I called the club and made my reservations with a personal trainer named Belinda, who identified herself as a 26-year-old aerobics instructor and model for athletic clothing and swim wear.

My daughter seemed pleased with my enthusiasm to get started! The club encouraged me to keep a diary to chart my progress.
________________________________
MONDAY:
Started my day at 6:00 a.m. Tough to get out of bed, but found it was well worth it when I arrived at the health club to find Belinda waiting for me. She is something of a Greek goddess - with blond hair, dancing eyes and a dazzling white smile. Woo Hoo!!

Belinda gave me a tour and showed me the machines. I enjoyed watching the skillful way in which she conducted her aerobics class after my workout today. Very inspiring!

Belinda was encouraging as I did my sit-ups, although my gut was already aching from holding it in the whole time she was around. This is going to be a FANTASTIC week-!!
Read the rest of this entry »

Ok, this is a bit different than my usual style but thought I’d go a bit nutty since I was inspired by Dr. Seuss. Thought I’d try a Scrap Mojo challenge (#11). I used “The Cat in the Hat” sketch for this layout. I’m still trying to figure out if I like it or not. Yeah… I’m hard on myself. The kit I used is from Scrap Artist and the leafy floral on the left was extracted from one of the background paper. Although I will blend here and there still, I just love it if I can digi scrap just like how I would paper scrap. Just an update if you’re new to this blog: Last week I submitted a layout for a contest at Scrap Artist (I blogged about it Saturday) and from that submission I received a free kit. I have to create a LO with this kit in order to be fully eligible for the prize which is guest CT. There are a lot of awesome submissions so I’m not sure if I’ll get the spot but what I’ve done so far was worth the work. I got three great LOs done and a free kit.

I have to do one more digi layout for this month and then I’m done. I want to do more traditional LO since I have so many new pretties that I want to use. After this month I will only be the CT for Tara Sroka and guest CT for Dana Frantz for one more month. Unless I get the Scrap Artist guest spot, I won’t look for any new ones. I want to try for some scrapbook kit CT or card CT position after I’m done CT-ing for Dana. I think having a hodge podge of things, paper and digi, will be fun and also keeps me motivated in both departments.

I have a conference at the end of next week that I’m presenting at and I have one PowerPoint done. Yeah!! I’ll probably add more to it but at least the basics of it is complete. I just have to prepare for one more; I have two different sessions that I’m leading. A bit stressed but I think I got it. M will be going with me; I found a drop-in center (actually the YMCA). She’s soooo excited. We did this before and she loved it. My friend might also go with me, we’ll see. So either the Y or my friend will be with Emma for a couple hours each day. Hubby was suppose to go but his work has something in store for him — of course! There’s a good outlet mall there and a scrapbook store. I guess it’s a good thing hubby can’t go {::SMILES}.

Have a great day!

I want to share a card that I did based on Beate’s #40 sketch. It’s more colorful than I’m use to but this was what I got out of the sketch. I used the Always stamp set, Polka Dots and Paisley DP, Wasabi, Chocolate Chip, Barely Banana, Regal Rose, and White card stock, and Regal Rose ribbon. Then I pierced around my center design. It’s such a sturdy card… with all the card stock layers {::SMILES}. After some getting use to, I like the colors.

I hope you had a great Easter weekend. We missed all the egg hunting but did make it to church. We went to a different church and their hunt was before mass and not after. It was nice though and the important part was that hubby liked this church a lot better.

M did love her Easter basket from the bunny. She woke up at 6:30-ish and my baby is not an early bird on weekends, this chick can sleep until 10:30 a.m.! But not Sunday morning. She came in the bedroom and said, “Mommy, I think the Easter bunny came already.” So I got up, went down with her and asked how she knew. She said she came down already to take a peak - HA! So we looked at the basket and she noticed eggs all over the downstairs so we did some hunting. That was fun. Then I told her mom’s going back to bed, ha ha!! She went to her room and when I finally got up, I found her under her covers, awake, just cuddling her new bunny. Sunday afternoon after church I got some good pics too. I’m working on a LO.. I’ll share when it’s done.

This is a layout that I did last weekend at the girl scout crop. I’ve been wanting to post this earlier but there’s been more interesting stuff to share it seemed. 

There’s typo on this lo but I never got to uploading the updated version. It’s We and not Wee {::SMILES}. This layout was created using Dana Frantz kit that you can find in her store. It’s called Whisper. I’ve only used five of the kit content, there are a bunch more! It’s a fun kit, you should check it out. But the five that did use are my favorites and the reason why I was drawn to this kit.

Now, have you been on Flickr? If you haven’t, this place is an awesome source of inspiration and resources. From Flickr you can find people and their work, maybe a blog, and maybe some other sites that they love to go to that you don’t know about that’s listed on their Flickr or blog. If you have an account, you can favorite different work. You can join groups and send your work/photo very easily to the different groups. Love this place!

Hope you’re enjoying your time with the family! Happy Easter.

Prima has a blog candy. Check them out. Subscribe to their blog if you haven’t. They do blog candies quite often! A winner will be chosen on Monday around 4 p.m.! If you’re wanting something to do this weekend/next week and love Dr. Seuss, check out the Scrap Mojo challenge for this week. As usual, I’m going to try a Beate sketch and do a few more LO. I am on track for my 2008 scrapbooking goal!

Another page that I did last night. There’s a contest at scrapartist.com. If you submit a LO, you get a free kit. With that free kit, you need to create another LO and after you submit two LO, you are eligible to win a spot as one (out of three) Scrap Artist’s guest CT. Go ahead, give it a try. If nothing else, you get a free kit {::SMILES}. Oh, you do need to use their products. If you don’t have any, check out their store. A LOT of awesome stuff. The ones I used for my LO are my favorites! I’d be great if I can be a guest CT, but if not, the freebies alone AND the layout that I can now print, is worth it. I love all these challenges and contents, they help me get motivated and try my best.

This year M’s going to get an Easter basket. The bunny told me. M’s so funny, she’s been going to the middle of our field and wishing, “Bunny, I’ve been a good girl, I want a little chicken and some stickers, mommy wants a little book and a pencil, that’s it. Thanks, bunny.” I love her, she’s so precious. I’m so glad I was chosen to be her mommy. The other night at dinner, we were pretending that we were in a ship. Emma had one little piece of chicken left and I said, “Oh, I see pirates coming our way, M, eat your last chicken. If you don’t eat it, the pirates’ are going to get it.” She looked at me and seconds after I completed my sentence she stuck the chicken to her fork, shoved it on to dad’s plate and said, “daddy, eat my last chicken so that the pirates won’t eat it.” We had to turn around so that she won’t see us laughing. Then hubby said, “No, you eat it, if not the pirates are going to cut your leg off.” She fell for that and shoved the chicken in her mouth. Great parenting skills, huh, leg cutting and pirates {::SMILES}

Hope you’re all having a great Saturday. I’m not expecting a lot of you to visit today but if you do, happy Saturday!