Kirstie and my daughter, Hui Xian has been challenging each other over the gold medals their representative countries (Australia and Germany) earned in the Olympic Games in Beijing.

Each time Germany won a gold medal, Hui Xian will get an update on Australia as well. I became a go between these two people, reporting what each one said to the other. LOL

Today I received a package from Kirstie. I told Hui Xian to hold it for me so I can take a photo to send it to my friend.

She happily obliged. Until I asked her to open the package for me.
Then she went, “Oh No! She didn’t! She did! She is sooo mean!” LOL

Her dad said to be kind and respectful So she reluntantly donned on the T-Shirt, cap and hold the flag of Australia - next to her BiiiiiGGG Germany flag and her favorite German football team.

And you know what??? I think she loves the gift. I’ll have my camera ready when she goes out to show her friends! ha..ha..ha… Thank you, Kirstie. This is such a nice gesture

Hui Xian asked me to pass you this message:
See you for the Vancouver 2010!

*go germany go germany woot woot! go germany*

It’s Pickleberrypop’s 2nd birthday and I am having a 25% off ALL Products in my store there!

Click HERE to visit my store.
Don’t forget to visit TheDailyScrapper new Features Event page highlighting the event with so many goodies in the bag!

See you there!

Ladies and gents{??},
Now is your chance to win a super cool Bamboo Fun Tablet! All you need to do is enter the contest with your digital scrapbook layout before the due date. It’s as easy as that!

Here is the contest detail:
Submission deadline: July 31, 2008 (ends 11.59pm Tokyo time)
Submit Site: Click HERE

.:Prizes:.
Grand Prize: Bamboo Fun medium white
Point Shoot Play Award: Bamboo Fun small silver

Wacom Mentor Award: Bamboo Fun medium white
Wacom wants you to teach other artists how to create scrapbook designs by creating tutorials. This award will be given based on best written tutorial. The winner will be anointed The Wacom Mentor.

#You could send your entries for both categories.

Eligibility: All residents of Wacom Asia Pacific countries (does not include China, Hong Kong or Japan). Limited to one entry per person. No entry fee necessary.
List of Countries: Australia, Brunei, Korea, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Nepal, New Zealand, Pakistan, Philippines, Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand and Vietnam.

This contest is sponsor by Wacom Asia Pacific, world’s leading manufacturer of graphic tablets. Bamboo Fun graphic tablets by Wacom are designed especially for hobbyists looking to design great artwork, to personalize and retouch photos, and to draw or paint digitally. Both sizes come with easy-to-use photo editing and natural media painting software. (medium - Photoshop Elements 5 (Win) / 4 (Mac), Painter Essentials 3; small - PhotoImpact 10SE, Painter Essentials 3).

I have been trying to work on a photo book for my daughter and it’s been taking ages to complete because there are simply tons of things to do! With the new project postponed to another week because of computer glitches, I have managed to add another double pager template that I have been working on to the store.

Here’s the second page and third in a smaller version and consecutive pages afterwards:

This is the first meeting of the girls at the airport. The photo was under exposed but I love the girls hugging so I decided to extract them and add a background and some doodling. Accompanying this page, I added the photos of the girls outside the airport looking at the plane that brought Hui Xian’s friend here.

I haven’t created a one pager template for the above yet but soon. Creating the pages as Hui Xian requires it - “I don’t want it to looking like a pretty scrapbook. I want it straight forward and elegant.” So straight forward and elegant it is…

Here’s a double pager sold as HX Double Pager Set 1

and….

Here’s HX Double Pager Set 2:

I have done a few more pages but for now these two templates are available at AliceKohDesigns.com and Pickleberrypop.
We are moving towards weekend now and I hope you will have the time and inspirations to create and add more memories into your scrapbook.

Cheers!
Alice

Hui Xian was late walking Tobie having woken up almost at 12 noon. They took their usual route around the field and suddenly she heard faint yelping. Curious as she was, she went to investigate where the sound came from and found a very small puppy in a used tyre. It had a string around its neck and long bleeds of grass had twine around it. The walk abandoned, she ran back home to call for her dad. They drove to the site and brought the puppy home.

I am still furious at the inhumane act of mankind towards this helpless creature. It was noon, temperature was around 36 degress Celsius under the shade and will get hotter as the day progress. I believe this poor puppy wouldn’t have survived another few hours because it was in direct sun. The cords around its neck was so tight, it took two pairs of hand to hold the puppy down and cut it. He didn’t even resist nor did he drink the water offered in the bowl. I dripped water into its mouth to revive it a bit. Thank goodness he eventually walked to the bowl of water and had its fill. This puppy was covered with creeping lice and scabs! Eeewww!!! We quickly separated him from Tobie, our dog and put him up in my covered balcony. He was so happy to lie in his bed and felt safe.

Tobie wasn’t too happy when she didn’t have access anymore to the balcony. She didn’t know what to do with this tiny puppy. Tobie was so jealous that I was paying attention to the little guy, she growled each time she spotted him. We managed to fix an appointment with our grouchy old vet two days later. Vaccination, de-wormed and de-bugged! I will skip through what came out of his belly after the visit to the vet and the day after! O_0 We treated the scabs and hope to find him a home. We can’t possibly have another puppy because of our travels. Tobie is different, she goes along with us and sometimes our neighbor takes care of her. Anyway, this little guy is a poop monster! Thank goodness for Hui Xian… she is so helpful knowing I can’t handle this chore. In exchange I wash the balcony. We are training him, it takes time and he is simply so adorable. We showed him to a few neighbors but none wanted to take him. I could almost see the digust look on their faces because this cute, little adorable puppy isn’t a PEDIGREE! Geezzz….

Tykes has been 23 days with us and we love him to bits. Tobie has finally relented and I make sure to pamper her a lot when Tykes is around. They play so well together but each time we need to go out somewhere, Tobie will be the first one to jump into the car! We have brought Tykes on two occasions and he loves it! However, 5 hours in the car with Tobie and the poop monster??? Err…; no way! Here’s a layout I created today:

Hui Xian journaled the text. We are going to send this layout to some friends. Hopefully someone will adopt this little guy.
The papers and elements used are from a joined collaboration kit between designers from Pickleberrypop. It’s a huge pack with tons of fun elements and gorgeous papers.

Here’s the preview:
imagine::create::share collab

Thanks for reading!
Alice

Thank goodness the boutique is finally back into a better and faster server! It should have been back before the weekend but we found out the store data base was missing from my account! <horror> For a while there I thought that’s it, it’s all gone and I have to start from scratch. DH tried to get help from the web host help chat but it was no use. Finally he have had enough and decided to call them on the phone. Apparently during the migration process they hit a glitch and after getting 3 technicians to look into the matter, it was resolved within an hour. We also received an e-mail notification about their job completion. Now, that is service! Our yearly subscription ends end of this month and we were actually looking into changing to another web host. However, with the offer to move my account to a better and faster server and now this tech services that had been rendered, I’ll say for just about $8.00 a month we will renew our subscription with them. So AliceKohDesigns.com is back on business and I can add new products in there soon. Phew!

So how was your Mother’s Day weekend? Me, we don’t celebrate the occasion but I had a weekend break from designing. We took the trip that were scheduled before DH hurt his back so it was a nice break from the daily routine. Prior to that, there was a great offer for photo book printing that I couldn’t resist and I had to re-do all the pages I had done for Hui Xian’s vacation project because it will be in 10×10 instead of the 8×8. After slaving through late hours trying to complete the book with a new design, I realized I can’t meet the dateline. It is too tight and I don’t want to compromise my work. Hui Xian doesn’t want anything fancy, rather a straight forward layout design. I thought it would be easy to do but boy, was I wrong. I had to think more about balance and spaces used and actually threw away a few before I was finally happy with the result.

Here are two double pager I have done:
01)These pages are for the second and third pages of the book:

02)These are Hui Xian’s and her friend’s first meeting with new friends. We took her to the old Peranakan section of the town for breakfast:

I’ll be creating templates from them and will upload into the store soon.
Now I have to put my mind into designing mode again! The weekend break was so crucial for me, I am tempted to extend it for a week!

Alice

Saturday ONLY May 03, EST in conjunction with National Scrapbooking Day
Use this coupon code NSD08 when you purchase my products worth $10.00 and above and 20% will be deducted off your total amount.
Click to my Store at 3Scrapateers HERE.

Looking forward to seeing you there!
Regards,
Alice

What do you know… with the unpredictable weather we are having here, I had been happily sitting in front of my computer W.O.R.K.I.N.G undisturbed, or at least attempting too. The thunderstorms didn’t ease up making me nervous because anytime a lightning is close by we have to shut off our computers. I thought I could just sit and work peacefully at home since DH won’t be dragging us out of the house with that weather but alas… as soon as the clouds cleared off, he was all geared up ready to get out of the house.

Tobie was the next one into the car. Hui Xian and I were a bit relunctant, we just had been out so often and recently came back from Thailand. Dragging our feet and sighing loudly didn’t work as the driver and my traitor dog were already waiting in the car with the engine running. It still didn’t make me stop sulking LOL but as soon as we were off the highway and into the country road, I forgot about the heaps of work that I haven’t done, schedules I need to meet and self inflicted worries. Suddenly looking at the snout of Tobie up in the air with the wind blowing at her face released me from my tensions. Left and right new rice shoots were sprouting out of the soil the farmers had tireless ploughed before the rain. The world is renewed after the rain fall and one would really feel the presence of God when the clouds parted and beautiful rays of sunlight shone down upon the earth.

We went back to the place we were before only further using a different road. Found a nice meadow beside a river creek and the grass was low enough for Tobie to run happily around. I could swear she was bouncing with her bushy tail and she would looked back to make sure we were watching her. PEACE at last, away from the noise and bustling of our busy life.

Watching Tobie could teach us a lesson or two. Stop and smell the flowers like she did. Stop worrying what we cannot accomplish today and give us a break. Tommorrow is still another day but for this moment, to give ourselves simply to the beauty of nature and accomplish peace. It’s not an easy task if our works are aplenty, worries abound so I made this layout reminder of what my dog showed me that day:

Layout Credits:
This LO is for Paislee Press Designer Spotlight Challenge #1 at Oscraps
Papers by Paislee Press Fresh Linens Kit
Paper patterns from my Gone Dotty Frame Template and Funky Square Template
Flower from my Garden Flowers Pack 3

Thanks for reading bits of pieces of my life.
Have a good start of the week.
~Alice

You Asked For It and We deliver!
Upon customers’ requests, Pickleberrypop is organizing a store wide sales with 35% off everything in my store starting today, Monday, April 21 for just TWO DAYS. Sales ends Tuesday, April 22nd.

Come shop at my store for items as low as AUD1.40! That’s just about US$1.33!

What’s more…..
when you purchase above AUD10.00 in a single receipt from AliceKohDesigns you will receive a AUD5.00 coupon to shop in my store after the sales end. Coupon is good until April 30th.

Click AliceKohDesigns to visit the store at Pickleberrypop today!

TOP FAVORITE ITEMS from AliceKohDesigns:

1. Straps Basic
2. Loopy Loops Threading
3. Funky Squares Template
4. Get Knotty
5. Lian Double Pager Set 2
6. Ribbons Galore Colors
7. Down & Dirty Page Set
8. Pins & Stripes Alphas
9. Cherry Blossoms Page Set
10. Garden Leaves Pack 3

This has been the weather for the past few weeks. Sometimes it’s sunny skies in the morning but towards the late afternoon, rain cloud as huge as the photo above and even humongous thunderstorm clouds block the sun making everything looks so gloomy. I’ve been having to shut off my computer waiting for the thunderstorm to subside. Being alone at night with DD and listening to the strong wind blowing eerily really spooked me. I tried to be the adult here and pretended I wasn’t terrified! It didn’t help matter when I had been reading a horror story and my imagination ran riot spooking me further. I switched on every light I have in the bedroom and prayed DH quickly come back from his midnight flight! LOL

The rain did take a break for a few short hours and we managed to go for a quick trip to the country. Everything looks so fresh and the green has a beautiful, crisp shades to it. The air smells different too, not to my liking because I don’t like the smell of freshly ploughed land in the padi fields but all the same it is a rejuvenating feeling to enjoy the splendor of nature in this tropical parts of the world. Everything feels so fresh, alive and noisy!

There were egrets, water buffalos basking in the sun and then cooling off in the deep well they made in the padi field, birds chirping and giant monitor lizards the size as wide as the road! My battery went flat in my camera (though there are photos from DD’s) but I wouldn’t have been able to snap at the lizards anyway. I thought they were crocodiles! LOL Ran straight into the car but my two curious and maybe dare deviled family went chasing after them into the swamp! They called out that the lizards were more afriad of us humans but I am not taking a chance. I rather enjoy the beauty of nature in the close proximity of a car. Oh ya… unless it’s a herd of cows coming my way!

We hope to go back to the country again and see how fast the padi field has grown with so much rain. It’s great giving designing a backseat once in a while to enjoy what the outdoor has to offer.