Kids and Technology

Posted on | January 20, 2011 | 8 Comments

Wow, it’s Thursday AND pass mid-month. Before we all know it’ll be February!! There’s nothing overly exciting over here, just looking forward to M’s birthday party in a few weeks.

Check out the little babe above. She’s been into playing games on my phone. Jovie is quick with the computer. I copied her signing video onto my laptop’s desktop and she can go from turning the machine on to watching it. She’s been doing this for a month or two, I can’t remember.

Many kids are surrounded with technology nowadays. This week my grad. students are discussing our digital nation and it’s been very lively. Here’s the video if you’re interested.

As much as we embrace technology my students and I agree that there should be a good balance between real life and technology.

M has access to many things, dangerously too many and I am on them quite a bit too, but I want to teach her to value real life gatherings and to not be texting/on the phone/gadgets while she’s with other people — unless it’s an emergency of course or adding other people’s phone numbers/emails. Right now, as much as she ask for it, we don’t have a DVD system in the car. We do games or look outside when we drive. Whenever she gets a portable device there’s no ways she’s going to be walking and be on that thing. At a restaurant she’s going to interact with all of us and not be tuned into her little gadget. If we’re all waiting to be seated I’ll let her entertain herself but once we’re all conversing, gadgets off. Most of you know we don’t have TV subscription. We do have NetFlix though and M can only watch on weekends. Besides reading and mathematics practice everyday (paper and pencil) we encourage play-time with friends and doing activities outside the home.

What do you do to balance your kids’ tech usage?

On the page… it’s been a while since I scrapbooked just because. Lately my work’s been design team related so it felt nice to just use whatever. Also, I’ve been working the last few and the last time I sat to craft was ages ago it seemed that this little bit of activity felt extra nice. It helped me unwind.

Here are some details of my work… The flower I didn’t make. My super talented friend Terrie did (you should check out her blog… there’s an AWESOME paper bow tutorial!!). She sent me some lovelies soon after we moved to the UK. She decorated this box with the below flower. I’ve since moved the goodies into one of my IKEA drawers and I thought that this flower was just too pretty to be on an empty box. So it moved and it fits so perfectly on the page! Terrie also gave me some pretty pins and I used two of them here. The pink chipboard is Crate Paper.

Before Christmas I got a few things from Etsy and one of the store used the below ticket as a thank you tag. I saved it because it’s so cute and here is its permanent home. The key is from American Craft.

This page was created using Pencil Lines’ sketch, #221, I LOVE it because of the simple design and also the butterflies. I added this big piece, just one, since there are already butterflies on the Webster’s Page pattern paper. I’ve also dug out the American Crafts dimensional butterflies before I got to creating this page and so didn’t want to clutter up the page too much with butterflies. I added some rhinestones for a bit of blingage.

K, that’s it. Have a great one and take care!

Webster’s Pages

Posted on | October 10, 2009 | 6 Comments

Have you gals ever seen their products? GASP!!! Drop dead gorgeous, especially in person!!! Also, the paper, they smell different. Good for sure!!! I’m not sure what it is. Might be the ink but goodness, it’s better than sniffing Crayolas ha ha ha!! I found them yesterday at the expo. I’ve been wanting to get some but since I haven’t found any locally I’ve been putting it off — waiting for a big order so that I can get free shipping from somewhere. Yesterday I wish I have $120 or so extra so that I could buy ALL their stuff there but I couldn’t. So I just got a few 12×12 (Postcards from Paris) for some pages and the pack of 6×6 which are the 12×12 100% shrunk so that I can cut them out for embellishments. I also got a couple Christmas pages with a pack of the 6×6 for future pages and some cards. Here’s the neat part, their site is getting ready to launch some digital stuff. So sometimes soon we’ll be able to buy, download, and print their products at home. YEAH!!! I think more and more companies are going to make some of their products digital.

Ok, I don’t work for them but just amazed at their works. Great artist!! So here’s my card that I made with one of the 6×6. I just trimmed the images to create this.I’m not sure if I’m happy with it. I don’t think it really showcase the gorgeous paper.