How about making a mini album about all the reasons you love your special someone?
I wrote a blog post at The Lilypad today about making a love-themed mini album as a gift. You can read about it here. Also, my Love You Mini Book details and process is documented here on my blog. ♥
Wednesday, January 25, 2012
Thinking about a Valentine’s Project?
Monday, January 23, 2012
Year of the Dragon
Today was Chinese New Year and it is the Year of the Dragon!
My friend Sandra at work organized a lunch at Pearl to celebrate Chinese New Year, and of course eat some good Chinese food. I’ve been going to this celebration almost every year since it started.
There was a 20 minute presentation of dragon dance. It was choreographed and very well-done. 
Tradition has it that you stuff the red envelopes into the dragon’s mouth for good luck. So this guy handed us a bunch of red envelopes and we each got to “feed” the dragon. 
At the end of the show, there was also some choreographed sword swinging. He was really good! 
My friend Joanne made these dragon head cake pops from scratch! They were adorable. She made a bunch of them so that we each got to take one. She’s always so creative, talented, and generous. 
We ate family-style, with lots of little dishes on the table. 
Yum yum yum! 
The group of us at our table. 
I brought my dragon cake pop back to work. He was so pretty that I felt like I shouldn’t eat him. 
But I did. His head was filled with red velvet cake, and he was delicious! 
Happy Chinese New Year! And happy Year of the Dragon.
Sunday, January 22, 2012
San Diego Zoo Safari Park
On Friday we both took the day off work so that we could go to the San Diego Zoo Safari Park in Escondido. It had been a few years since we’d been there. We purchased San Diego Zoo memberships last February and they were about to expire. We had gone to Nighttime Zoo this past summer, but hadn’t been to Safari Park with our membership.
After lunch, we headed over to Safari Park (formerly Wild Animal Park). It was a gorgeous and clear day, temperature in the 60’s. The drive there was beautiful and rustic. It’s so weird to me that a couple of miles off the I-15 becomes so rural. We got to the Safari Park and parked with no problem. It was good to go on a Friday, because it was a lot less crowded than the weekend. Parking was $7 for members. They've remodeled and moved things around, such that we didn’t recognize where anything was. We walked around and saw meerkats. They were standing around, so cute!
Check out this little one… awww!
All standing up and lined up. Meerkats really crack me up!
In 2008 we had the chance to go to a meerkat reserve in the Morongo Valley, where we got to hold and feed meerkats. So our affinity for them is quite strong!
A map of the Safari Park.
I love looking at gibbons swinging around so gracefully with their long limbs.
We headed to the Safari Tram and was pleasantly surprised to find virtually no lines. A group of us waited about five minute and a tram came and we boarded.
On the Africa Tram Tour.
The exhibits at Safari Park were created to simulate real living conditions for the animals in Africa. Many different types of animals live together in peace, in the open.
A herd of giraffes.
A rare sight. A cheetah on a tree limb. Soon after we saw him he ran off and laid down in the grass.
A giraffe close-up.
Some antelope.
This giraffe family was in an enclosure because they’re new to the park and not yet acclimated.
A rhinoceros resting in a sand pit.
A family of buffaloes. Look at the little baby, he’s only 2 days old!
The zebras were the only species living in an enclosure. We were told that they don’t get along with others and will try to get in fights.
At the end of the tour, we came upon this sight. A female lion (left) and male lion (right) taking a nap. Wow!
The tram ride was 30 minutes. Then we headed over to the “Frequent Flyers” bird show, where we saw many birds including an Andean Condor.
The birds were flying too fast for my camera to get a good shot.
After that, we hung out by the gorilla enclosure and saw a family of gorillas, including mom, baby, and dad!
Size comparison between Todd and a gorilla.
We ended the visit with the Cheetah Run at 3:30, which was spectacular. The cheetah is the fastest land mammal. During the Cheetah Run, the cheetah races on a straight 330-foot-long track that allows the cheetah to really stretch its legs and reach an astounding speed: 0 to 70 miles per hour in just 4 seconds while chasing a mechanical lure attached to its favorite toy.
Here’s the track that the cheetah runs on.
Even my DSLR was too slow to capture a good shot of the cheetah running at full speed.
Here she is, after the run and after eating her treats. She’s gorgeous.
A parting photo of us in front of the Safari Park entrance.
After leaving Safari Park around 4:15, we went south on I-15 and went to Wahini Kai Shave Ice. Todd loved it the first time we went, and kept talking about going back. We shared a large (Big Kahuna) pink lemonade with azuki beans, and vanilla ice cream.
It was so good. Even better than most of the shave ice we've had in Hawaii!
We had an awesome day off on Friday. I love 3-day weekends.
Thursday, January 19, 2012
2012 Project Life | Week 2 + Digi Show
This week for Project Life I've kept it pretty simple again. I don't want to overwhelm myself in the first few weeks of the year with this project. I'm aiming for the victory of getting it done, rather than trying to do too many things with it and spending too much time on it. Between photo processing, picking out photos, printing them out, and doing the journaling cards, I probably spent three hours this week. One thing I actually did was round the corners of my photos and on the digital journal cards I printed out. I thought I would experiment and see if I like having all rounded corners better. Turns out it doesn't matter to me. I actually like having square corners on some photos, especially the ones that are collages. So I think I'll not make it a habit of rounding the corners going forward, since it makes no difference to me and takes time to do. :) Oh and sorry about the photos with glare on the page protectors this week. I was literally on my way out the door this morning and just didn't have time to take better photos.
Left hand page: On Sunday we went to Phil's BBQ with our friends Dejah and Roby. Todd had taken care of Roby's cats for a couple of weeks while they were out of town, so they took us out to lunch. They also brought Todd a tshirt back from Miami that makes fun of Ohio State and Jim Tressel. All in good fun!
Once again I used a mix of journaling cards from the Clementine Core Kit and from my digi supplies. I also continue to mix handwritten journaling with typed out journaling from my computer. It doesn't bother me that I don't have a uniform look. The lower left collage I made in Adobe Lightroom. This is the next video tutorial that I'll be working on.
I wanted to do a graphic for which week we're on, so I decided to design a number cutout in my Silhouette Studio software and cut it out on Bazzill kraft cardstock with my Silhouette SD. I used my Signo Broad white pen to draw stitches around the "2" to make it stand out more. I went back to my week 1 layout and did the same thing to the week header pocket page.
Again, a mix of handwritten and typed journaling. The journal card in the middle is from Clementine Core Kit. I typed out the journaling in Photoshop and then printed it out. You can see my recent video tutorial on how to print out computer journaling onto Project Life journal cards here.
I also want to point out that I journaled about starting to track my daily calorie intake on Daily Plate, even though I don't have a photo about that. I'm ok with telling stories in my album that I don't have a photo for, or showing photos that I don't journal about. I just do whatever I feel like at the time. Just remember that it's YOUR album and you can do whatever you want. There are no rules! :)
Right hand page: We hung out with our friends AJ and Meera and their kiddos. Todd made my favorite soup, Tuscan Potato Soup from Cooking Light. It is so yummy! Todd got a new Ohio State Buckeyes long-sleeve shirt and it actually fits! He has really long arms so it's hard to find longs-sleeved shirts that fit.
The labels on the soup photo and above the kid photo are digi products called "Mega Label Pack" by Amy Wolff at The Lilypad. I recorded a video tutorial for the Lilypad blog about printing and cutting digital items using the Silhouette. Those labels were the result of the tutorial.
Close up of computer journaling printed out onto a 3x4 Project Life journal card. Again, you can see a video tutorial on my blog here on how to do that.
I've included the supplies I used below. Can you let me know if it is helpful to you to include the supply list? It takes me a long time to find the images and links, so if it's not helpful to you then I may not include them anymore in the future.
2012 Project Life | Week 2 Supplies:
I also wanted to let you know that I was a guest on The Digi Show this week, discussing point-and-shoot photography tips and phone photography with Steph and Katie from The Daily Digi, and my good friend Peppermint (One Little Bird). I love capturing everyday moments with my point-and-shoot camera and my phone. You can click here to listen!
This was actually my third time on the show. I was on the show a couple of times before it was spun off from The Paperclipping Digi Show.
Here were the previous episodes that I've been on, in case you're interested in the topics.
Episode 032 | I'm Learning So Much Today (about recoloring digital scrapbooking products)
Episode 029 | The Year In Review (about creating year-in-review scrapbook pages)
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)