Our Anniversary! The First!

As of last weekend, we've been married a year! A year, can you believe it? Well I know we have a hard time :D.

And so much has happened in that year. We went to Hong Kong for our honeymoon, I got my fiance visa (technically our wedding in the Philippines was only a religious ceremony), my whole family flew to the US, where Gerard and I got legally married, and we settled into our apartment. And I settled into life in Concord.

We went to L.A. for Thanksgiving and spent Christmas in Virginia. I got my driver's license, a total of two haircuts the whole year (they're expensive) and started taking graphic design classes. Gerard traveled a lot for work, L.A., Chicago, Vegas. And he's going to Germany sometime this year too.

We moved apartments, bought a washer/dryer, and settled into our current home. I work from home, cook dinner, and help Gerard catch up with his laundry. We go for long drives (usually in search of some craving I have, some random thing I want to see), movie dates, and walks in the park. Our place isn't always 100% neat but I've learned to live with that.

We watch TV, run errands, and we're starting to plan our meals too.

Sure, we fought. But I figured that's part of adjusting to living together, learning about each other, and being married!

For anniversary weekend, we did quite a lot.

We cooked a yummy dinner of Seared Scallops, Salmon Sashimi, Mussels and Pasta + BBQ Ribs on Friday night.

Saturday, we drove to Napa and had merienda at the Oxbow Public Market, a "Napa-fied" version of San Francisco's Ferry Building.

I really wanted to try the ice cream from Three Twins but their freezer was buggy so they were only selling by the pints and gallons that day.

So I got me some mini cupcakes instead from Kara's Cupcakes (I love the Fleur de Sal one! My new favorite!)

 

And we had the Cachapa or sweet corn pancake with meat and cheese filling from Pica Pica. 

It was really yummy!

Afterwards, we drove to a few Napa thrift stores where I scored some awesome books, especially a design book recommended by my illustrator teacher. It's price at $15 on Amazon but I got it for $1. Thrift store shopping rocks!

And stopped by the golf course on the way home to take some pictures. Good thing too! Cause when we actually went to play golf the next day (my awesome anniversary gift to Gerard) I had left the memory card at home! Rookie mistake.

But here are some shots of us at the golf course in Napa. (We didn't play here though, we played in Concord. This was just for a photo op.)

Our golf game was pretty awesome even though golf cart rentals were only for seniors and the disabled. So we walked, I dragged my bag along, played 9 holes and tied at that! Was a decent game with both of us scoring two over bogey.

Happy Anniversary to us! Here's to many more years of adventures ahead!

(Sappy sentiments not to be posted online, only written in cards.)

Enter Project Life

Whee! I'm super excited! I think that's probably why I couldn't sleep last night!

My Project Life Kit arrived yesterday! 

So um, what's Project Life?

It’s called a complete scrapbook system but that’s not how I like to think of it. (I really don’t like scrapbooking!) What it is, is a complete, easy to assemble album complete with journaling cards for you to jot down little notes about the photos. It comes with monthly dividers, title cards, journal cards, stickers, even a date stamp! There’s no need to cute anything, just choose where you want things to go, slip your photos and journal cards and you’re done!

There’s no need to cut anything, punch out anything, go back to the store for matching accents, everything you need is right in the awesome Becky Higgins box. (There are photo albums dedicated to this box alone!) And what kind of timeline you use, is up to you! There are 54 photo pages that come with this kit, including one page for a front, one for a back so it you can use it one page per week. Or day. Or month. Or however you like.

Here’s a better photo from Amazon. com, where Project Life kits are primarily sold.

I was so excited to start using Project Life I begged Gerard to let me open it already even if our anniversary isn’t for another two weeks. (Traditional gifts for anniversaries call for paper. I'm not complaining! )My excuse was that I wanted to document our whole first year of marriage first, starting with a few wedding photos, our honeymoon, our first apartment. I’m not following a specific time format, I just want to chronicle all the adventures we’ve had in the last 12 months. Maybe my next kit I’ll do weekly! Who knows 

What really appealed to me about this kit, were the journaling cards. I love to write, I love to jot down my thoughts and photo books don’t really give you that opportunity. With Project Life, I can take a journaling card and write a few sentences for every photo in the album. It’s like a photo album and journal in one! And if you like, you can insert a few mementos like ticket stubs, receipts, and other things too!

The only slight, slight downside is that the photo pages are only set for horizontal photos. But you can buy additional pages that feature vertical photos. I’m actually just buying more photo pockets, period!

So I’ve spent a good part of the day uploading photos to seehere.com, Fujifilm’s online print service. I’ve always preferred Fuji to Kodak but I’ll save my thoughts on seehere.com for another day.

Have I piqued your interest? For more about Project Life, check out beckhiggins.comwhere they’ve got all sorts of info, inspiration, and additional products for Project Life. There’s even a digital edition! And a whole community of Project Life users who share their ideas.

I’ll give you a peek at my first few pages as soon as I’m done.

Hello, Whimsy! Holiday Rush

I have been so busy preparing packages and cards for the holidays I've barely had any time to blog! So I thought I'd just catch you up with the packages I've been preparing. Some of these are special orders, some are gifts for family friends. These are photos of the stuff I've been doing on my new design blog, hello, whimsy!

Special Delivery: Chocolate Bark Gift Box

A Gift Box Full of Chocolate Pockets!

Chocolate Bark Gift Tin

Full of Pretty Chocolate Pockets

Another Chocolate Gift Tin

Full of Chocolate Bark in Assorted Flavors

So that's what this busy elf has been up to! Working with lots of new chocolate bark flavors too, like White Chocolate & Macadamia, Milk Chocolate & Macadamia, and Dark Chocolate with Walnuts. And lots of candy making and gift-wrapping in the works!

Can you believe it's 14 days to Christmas?!

Shutter Happiness

I've been in and out of photo ruts lately, part of the reason why I decided to sell my dslr and shift to a compact camera, the Canon g11 (which I now absolutely love). And yet again, I find myself lacking inspiration and wanting to do more.

So here's another attempt to keep me snapping away. I've started a photo blog on tumblr, and my goal is to snap at least one photo a day. I do love being shutter happy. Please check out Shutter Happiness at http://shutterhappiness.tumblr.com or click on the link on top.

Enjoy!

Rayvin + Louanne, The Perfect Blend

Over the weekend, my whole family drove to Dumaguete to see my cousin Louanne marry her longtime sweetheart, Rayvin Pinero.

It was a lovely morning full of love, joy, and tears, as the eldest daughter of a brood of four officially tied the knot. Yes, I said morning! They had a beautiful ceremony at 7 AM at the grounds of the South Sea Resort in Dumaguete. The weather was perfect, windy, and not too warm nor humid. A yummy brunch followed, held at the hotel as well. (I loved that we could eat lechon at 9 in the morning!)

As you can see from the photos, Louanne and Rayvin chose the cheerful colors of yellow, orange and brown as their wedding motif and coffee as the emblem of their wedding as they got to know each other over many cups of coffee.

Here are some photos from that beautiful day.

My mother's magic. From this...

To this!

With the maid of honor, my cousin Issa

My parents getting to ready to march as Principal Sponsors

The beautiful bride being escorted down the aisle by her mom and uncle. And while she was walking, her groom was singing "Bless the Broken Road." I couldn't help but shed a few tears!


Welcome to the Family!


Issa, maid of honor, got picked for the garter!

Beautiful shot taken by one of the groomsmen, Meltoy Ferrero. How do you like the dresses I designed? The secondary sponsors dresses were orange and brown as well! I love how the colors came out!

Congratulations to the newlyweds, Mr. and Mrs. Rayvin Pinero! So happy for you guys! It was a beautiful wedding!

Wonderful Wedding Photographers

I, the queen of promptness, is being told that she was late for her own wedding.

I had wonderful wedding photographers, and I couldn't have been happier with them.

Let me introduce you to the men, Joey Reyna and his partner, Nelson Petilla.

Joey Reyna was referred to me by a friend and since I felt I hadn't quite found the right photographer in Cebu, I decided to check his work out and see how I felt about it. With all the stress and everything, I just decided to go with my gut, hired Joey and Nelson, and hoped I'd made the best decision.

When it came to our wedding photos, I knew that a good wedding photographer was on my top 5 list of non negotiables. That was one thing that I was willing to really budget for. You have your dress, cake, flowers, and everything else, but long after your wedding, you'll still have your wedding photos.

One month after our wedding, I've received 5 DVDs of raw files, and I feel that I could not have hired a better tandem.

One of the things I love about their style is their ability to capture emotion, and "moments" if you must. Sure you'll still have posed photos. But so many of Joey's and Nelson's photos are unexpected surprises which I really love.

So, thank you, Joey and Nelson, for all the wonderful moments that you captured for us! Thank you a million times!

You can view Joey's blog entry about our wedding here.

First Shots.

Shots from today. Tomorrow is Nanang's (my grandma's) one year death anniversary. In preparation for tomorrow's activities, Dad and I went around doing errands.

I must say, a smaller camera is so much more wonderfully convenient to capture important, everyday moments.

IMG_0001

Flowers from Nanang's "suki"

Father and Daughter

We miss you, Nang.

The New Dream

I think it's time to give up my big camera and get something that doesn't feel like it weighs ten pounds. I think one of the major reasons I don't take that many photos anymore is the fact that my Carrie Camera is big and heavy.

I think this is my new dream, the Canon Powershot G11.

Maybe after the wedding :)

Snapshots

I haven't posted in a while, mainly because last week was such a busy week.

I finally got around to downloading the few pics I had in my DSLR and I just wanted to share these shots from Dumaguete.

Shot of the banana turon from Azalea restaurant. A popular Filipino snack of banana, langka wrapped in the lumpia/egg roll wrapper, coated with brown sugar and deep fried. Haven't had a turon in a while!



Singer sewing machine turned cashier's table! Thought it was an interesting touch.



Lastly, a shot of a fisherman in the sunrise, taken from South Sea Resort.