Yes I am still alive!

Yes, it's been a while since I last updated. So much has happened. I had fun 6 weeks with Joaquin, I got married to my Ane (view our kwento's and pictures here, although I haven't posted that much yet!), one of my layouts was featured here, I've been an efficient housewife, I've cleaned up our place (more like a home now rather than just a box..heheeh), I had a minor foot surgery...and I'm loving every minute of my life now.

I haven't updated because we don't have internet connection at home yet (dang that landline service provider...making us wait for almost three weeks now!!!), my laptop decided to bust on me (still in repair center!) and I just realized I can actually use Ane's old desktop, however slow it is. Not to mention, in almost two months since we moved in, I was stranded at home because of the floods for about a week or so (not continuous tho) without cable, landline and internet. That made me soooo lazy even reading a book bores me! Rants! Rants! Rants! Hahahaha...

Anyway, I'm back and I hope to keep on posting...I photoshopped the picture above using the tut found here. Thanks to Flea for sharing! I posted the original one here in August last year. Ain't that cool? :)

And this is the digiscrap layout that got featured in Susan's blog (yeah yeah, i know there were only two submissions! but still noh?) :



Credits: Papers, metal tags and chain by Rina from her Gone Fishing kit at SBB; Cliplock by Shabby Princess from her Urban Kiwi kit at SB.

Toddlers rule :-)

Only a few more days to go and our darling J will be here. He and his dad will be here early Tuesday morning. His lola has been bugging us with daily countdowns, hahahaha (which leaves me thinking...she's been missing her countdowns na, eh?)...

Excited or not, we gotta be ready for this little boy. The last he was here, he just turned one. Now he's almost three, and his mom is preparing us for the worse, hahahah! He runs faster now. He's a bit stronger now. And he just might cause too much racket around. :)

Side kwento, an example of his kakulitan:
Him: Mommy, kiss my kili-kili. (His mommy would oblige)
His Mom: Jack, kiss my kili-kili. (And promptly lifts her arm..)
Him: Yuck!

Ahahahaha, kulet! Anyway, I think he's got the American Idol fever as he's been singing songs. My sister even asked if he could sing at the wedding. Nyaiks, hehehe! Sample of his songs:

"You had a bad day...."
"I know I'll never love this way again...(with stress on the word NEVER as my mom would sing it, cute!)
"Don't you wish your boyfriend was hot like me...Don't cha?!"

Anyway, I'm sharing with you my latest layout...of him of course!

Credits: Joaquin's Picture by JMCP, papers and elements by Martie Retrodiva from digital freebies, font used -- Elephant


Howell, this toddler just might rule over us!! But we can't wait! :)

Ikaw nga!!!!

Nagtataka ako kung baket ang tagal ng clearance mula sa DFA. Lampas dalawang buwan na ang nakakaraan nang magreport ako, sa pamamagitan ng isang travel agent, ng LOST PASSPORT. Ang pagkawalang ito ay may kinalaman pa rin sa nangyari sa bahay nung Pebrero pa. Yung kay R, ok na eh, inaantay na lang ang report mula sa Pampanga para mag-appear na siya sa DFA sa Manila.

Nung isang araw ko lang napagtanto ang mga salitang binitawan sa text nung travel agent (kasi pinaliwanag na niya, finally!!!)...malamang sa malamang ay may gumagamit ng passport ko sa kasalukuyan. Basta, dahil hindi daw nagmamatch ang records whatsoever.

Tama! Dahil active ang passport ko, madali daw mabenta iyon para baklasin at gamitin ng iba. Ito pa, nabibili daw ang mga active passport ng daang-libo (isipin mo lang, may mga taong magbabayad ng ganun kalaking halaga para lang makapag-abroad, eh di ba kaya sila mangingibang bayan para magkapera? san nila kinukuha ang daang libo?!?). At may lintik na bumili.

Kaya ikaw na nakikisakay sa bulok na sistema ng buhay sa Pinas...ikaw na gumagamit ng identity ng ibang tao...ikaw na bumili ng binaklas kong passport...humanda ka!!! Pipilitin kong maipadeport ka at pareho kayong mananagot ng letch na nagbenta sa iyo niyan!!!!


Ang nakakainis pa, ako na nga itong naagrabyado, nasa akin pa ang burden na i-prove sa DFA na hindi ako yung taong nasa labas ng bansa, na ako pa ang maglalabas ng mga dokumentong magpapatunay na halllerrrrr, andito ako at hindi magkandaugaga sa buhay sa Pilipinas. Tsk!

Hindi naman ako masyadong galit nyan...

it's backkkkk!!!

My Zen is revived! It is back from deep sleep. Yayayayyyy!!!

I tried to re-download the firmware upgrade using my laptop (the first download, we used mah bros' desktop). And thank goodness it worked! And most of my files are intact (lost all photos and videos, but those are saved in my harddisk anyway, yey!)

Well, I can now add songs again, after I almost got pissed off again, aheheheherrhehr...


Happy, happy!

Lesson learned the hard way...

BEFORE ANYTHING ELSE, READ THE MANUAL!!!!!


I am not really a techie person. But I admit, I'm into gadgets, that RSS and a couple of his friends claim that I am in fact a "biktima ng teknolohiya".

Except with mobile phone units, I usually ask advice and help from RSS, my bros, or friends when I encounter problems with any gadget (camera, laptop, pda, etc.). Because I am so ignorant when it comes to these things.

On Sunday, I planned on adding more songs and a couple of movies to my Zen. Impatient that I've always been, I easily got irritated when my transfer would literally hang and make me wait. So I would disconnect the USB, remove the battery, and wait. And everytime I would turn it on, it goes directly to "recovery mode". I did this about three times and I was really frustrated in the end. I tried to "scan disk", and to "reboot", even stopped myself from choosing "format disk" coz I knew I would loose my files by doing so. But there was one option that's been picking on my curiosity -- it said "reload firmware".

What I was thinking for choosing that "reload firmware" option is out of my grasp at the moment, but I did just that! I even chose "yes" when it asked for confirmation. I then run the CD that went with it and found nothing. NOTHING!!!! And I started to panic. Really Panic, mind you.

And upon reading the Manual, I realized that I should have downloaded first the Firmware update from their website even before I resorted to such drastic measure. That reminder was even a word of caution! Gosh!!! Naman naman!!!

The other night, RSS helped me with the downloading of the firmware (see, I'm really not into troubleshooting talaga). We were able to save it, but when we tried running the .exe file...it won't run!!! Something about the .exe file not being a valid win32 application. Sadly, RSS was not able to solve my problem. We had to give up since it was already midnight.

Until today, my Zen is considered to be on a coma. If there's any one good soul willing to help and knows the solution, please, do help me revive my helpless baby. :(

Singing Joaquin

This cutie cute cute nephew of mine never fails to make me smile. Even just looking at pictures of him. There will be lots of layouts of Joaquin that I'm planning to do...simply because he has a lot of expressive shots like this. :)

Credits -- Joaquin's pic by jmcp, papers by jade of scrapbook-bytes from gentleman's study kit, fonts - algerian and pristina

Chelsey

The picture was taken during Chelsey's 1st birthday party. Chelsey's parents are friends of Ane. I so like her eyes. I call them anime eyes. Ane calls them matang singkit na dilat. Ehehehe...I had fun doing this layout. I've applied some tecniques I recently learned. I'm happy with it but I'm sure I could have done better. :)

By the way, this is my very first attempt at 12x12 layout. Before this, I would use 4x6 and smaller. Wala lang nasabi ko lang. :)

Credits -- Picture from dep's cam, Sweet Chloe kit by mrs. schmuck of younique; fonts -- porcelain and basic font.

Quite productive

For the past few days, I've been sitting in front of the laptop reading. And actually learning! I've been surfing and searching for some techniques used in both Photoshop CS2 and Paint Shop Pro X (Thanks also for the tutorial from DEP). I realized that my learning threshold is still high but my attention span remains like that of a five-year-old, hehehe. At least I am learning. Teeehhheeee. I'm focused on digital layouting, moreso, on designing kits. I so wanna be a designer (since I'm too stingy to buy kits, I only use freebies I get in the net). I realized also that the possibilities are endless. So far I have only designed these papers:

and these ribbons (scalloped and grossgrain, respectively):

And on editing pictures (I had to learn to 'clean-up' old pictures that I scanned), I learned that from this:

I can end up with something like this (I really hope you can see the slight difference!):

So there. And aside from making my eyes hurt from too much looking at the monitor and not getting enough sleep, I was also able to prepare some tarts (13 containers!). I 'copied' 4xForce's recipe of their mango tart...just by remembering how it tasted (I had that for dessert last saturday). The tart is actually just some ref cake, packed in individual containers. I experimented further by using, aside from ripe mangoes, peaches and blueberries. My LBB loved both mango and blueberry (didn't try the peach), while Ane and FIL2B 'fought' over the one container of peach variant that I sent them. Hehe, cute. :)

Anyway, if there's one thing I'm guilty about for being that productive, it is not attending church lenten activities as actively as I have in the past years. But that's another story.

This is where I will be...

Okay. I'm back. And I decided to "maintain" just one blog (aside from the wedding blog, of course, which I have neglected as well. I promise myself though to update...soon!).

This is where I may be found from now on...whatever...whenever.

In short, halo-halo at labo-labo na dito...digiscraps, rants or raves, stories, pictures, etc. etc.

I haven't worked on the template yet. I guess I'm not so over pink and green yet...heheh...

I'm glad to be home.

Updates?

I plan to make some major changes in this blog...lay-out, entries, images, etc. How and when to do it, I dunno. And when that happens, I hope people will still find time to visit me and appreciate my "work".

Teehee!