Sunday, December 27, 2009

It's a great feeling to be noticed!

What did you do during the Christmas weekend?

Nothing much for us. I actually enjoyed the quietness but also felt quite bad for Neill, because we're alone here in Thailand this time of year without Papa. That means there's basically no Christmas Celebration going on for him as opposed to a huge one that we would have been enjoying if we're in South Africa. So I took him to lunch with my friends and we both had a blast!!

One great thing about Neill is that he gets along with new people easily. He's polite without being shy and capable of having good conversations with adults without my holding his hand the whole time. At the lunch he volunteered to write down all the names on scraps of paper for our random gift exchange. His spelling is quite good for a 6-year-old!

In the end we both drew gifts that we really like (a big, big box of pineapple tart for him and a compilation CD set of songs from the 80's for me...hehe.) However he told me later that the best thing was that his present (the one he picked and helped wrap for the event) was picked up by a friend of mine who came with her 5-year-old beautiful daughter! Yeah, that's my son, always aiming to please ladies. :)

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Got some layouts to show you! Today is pretty special and it's the reason why this blog post has that title. The 4 pages that I scrapped most recently were all mentioned as Gallery Standouts (GSO) in forums! Yes, ALL FOUR! I still can't believe it myself!

Starting with this one. I made it from my dear friend Lisa's (Aprilisa Designs) part in her new collab kit Family Ties. I also used Chelcee's (Pure Creativity Designs) template for DSC's 18-25 Dec. Template Challenge.



Here's what I made with them: It's called "Exhilarated" and it was mentioned in GSO at ScrapMatters!

(Please click on image for bigger view)

Credits:
Template by Pure Creativity Designs
All papers and elements from Aprilisa's part in kit Family Ties


Journaling reads:
"exhilarated - when the brothers are united": 10.26.09 Pretoria, South Africa

These are my son Neill, and my stepson Michael. They just can't get enough of each other. :)

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Next is a layout made from a kit that couldn't have come at a better time for me. LOL!! It's a bright and fun boy kit designed by Double Dutch Designs called Touchdown. I know it's American Football themed but it's also perfect for Neill's latest passion: his football (soccer) lessons! I also used one of DDD's Template 2 pack with it.





Here's my page called "Football Lessons" and it's mentioned in DigiShopTalk's GSO!


(Please click on image for bigger view)

Credits:
All papers and elements from kit Touchdown by Double Dutch Designs
Template from Template pack 2 also by Double Dutch Designs


Journaling reads:
Neill had been asking repeatedly for a while whether he can take football lessons instead of Tae Kwan Do. At first Mama was skeptical but after a few sessions, it became clear that this suits him better and he's obviously happier. His techniques have also noticeably improved over time. We only hope he wouldn't get bored and fall in love with something else too soon.

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The last 2 layouts are from the same kit: a collaboration between Designs by Anita and Angé Designs, Éclosion. This is such a classically beautiful kit and I really wanted to portray that in my layouts. I chose the pictures and the stories carefully and I was very satisfied with the outcome. The pages are about how proud we are of Neill.


Both pages I made from the kit are called Bloom. The first one is on GSO at DigiShopTalk, while the second one made it to ScrapMatters' GSO.




(Please click on each image for bigger view)

Credits:
All papers, elements, and wordart from collab kit 'Éclosion' of Designs by Anita and Angé Designs
(For Bloom 2) Scraplift of Memories by Kriszta anyu (Thank you so much!)


Bloom 1 - Journaling:
Since he was very young, Neill has been encouraged to study and practice both Buddhism, which is his Mama's religion, and Christianity, which is his Papa's. We want to give him the freedom to choose and believe, and teach him to respect other people's choices at the same time. He's doing really well so far. We couldn't be more proud.

Bloom 2 - Journaling:
The love of reading runs deep in the family.
Growing up in a house full of books has no doubt turned Neill into a bookworm like his Papa and Mama.

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Not only my layouts that were noticed in the past week, my freebies as well!

I looked through the blog traffic and saw that some visits were from forums that I'm not familiar with. That's how I found out that 2 forums (other than
DSC's Scraplift challenge that I told you about before) are running challenges using my template freebies right now; one for Simply Secured layered frame template (there's a lot of great layouts there so far!), and another for Be You template.

I just want to say THANK YOU SO MUCH for noticing my works. If they can inspire you in any way, it'd be an honor to me. I can't post at those forums because I'm not a member and don't understand French but I would be so happy if any of you there would drop a word or say Hi here sometimes. And I just LOVE seeing your pages there!

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I'm ending this post with my RAK results!! Congratulations
Åsa and Lulutoo!!! You BOTH won my Simply Secured layered frame template set as a CU product. I'll contact and send you the download link soon after I've published the post. Thank you so much for playing with me!

Oh!! And I must say THANKSSSSSSSS to all the lovely ladies who left comments at the end of last post. I love you girls! I replied to you there. :)

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Next blog update is on 1st of January. I'm set to be hosting Digital Scrap Cafe's template challenge of the week starting that day, and of course there'll be a template freebie to share there as well as here. It'd be my first time as challenge host! I'm so excited!!! Woohoo!!!

See you again in 2010! Stay happy and be safe!! :)

5 comments:

PaMam said...

Wowwww ...what a wonderful memory here.

Love all images you scrap in this page ja.

Glad to be the first to comment this blog eiei.

iNg said...

wow!!! pom, your layouts are beautiful... definitely on my inspiration folder. i'd like to scraplift some of it, if you don't mind... hehehe...
take care... :D

PaMam said...

Stopping by your blog again and again eiei.

Lisa said...

You know, I save all of your layouts in one folder just because I looooove to see them ;p
Congrats for all he GSO's!

Anonymous said...

I totally fell in LOVE with your Bloom 1 layout, that with the buddhist munk. You gave that moment great deapth, and i don't mean only because of the layers!! I lovelovelove it.

ViVre