Month: November 2012

Christmas Time Is Here …

… and for me, that’s the happiest season of the year! After all, I get to invite my students and have them help me decorate my home. They get all excited about doing something they’ve never done in their whole lives, and I get to have the pleasure of enjoying their excitement as they examine the Christmas ornaments and learn about some of our various Christmas customs, and about the fact that Christmas apples, in fact, are a Chinese Christmas custom (not a Western custom as they assume).

Journaling Café: Getting Ready for Christmas

My favorite time of the year – the Christmas season – is about to start, and so today’s journaling prompts are all about getting ready for the season: And since I also had something to say about my preparations, I made a page, too: The font used for the prompts is my own handwriting font DJB Squirrels In My Pants by Darcy Baldwin (available at the Sweetshoppe).  

Chasing My Fridge

It broke the day I had to turn it off to prepare for my travels this past summer: my refrigerator. It didn’t cool anymore, and so I knew that this was going to be on the list of things to do after I got back: Getting it fixed. Getting it fixed, however, was quite the adventure. First, I didn’t know where to start looking for someone who’d be able to fix a refrigerator. There’s no such thing as the Yellow Pages around here, and most local businesses like that wouldn’t have any internet representation. Then, after I finally managed to find someone who could hook me up with a contact, I needed someone else eloquent enough to communicate in Chinese to help me negotiate things. Which again took a couple of weeks. (You see, things around here often take time and a lot of patience.) Today, however, I finally managed to have an appointment set up and have someone come and look at my fridge. That’s when they decided they needed to take it to …

Happy Autumn Day

  Yes, autumn has not quite left us yet, and so today, we decided to give it another shot and try playing in whatever capacity of leaves we may get. Remember those devious tree shakers I told you about last year, who always try to make chasing autumn leaves as little fun as possible? Anyhow, we found ourselves that favorite spot again, where chances of finding leaves are at least existent (though small), and where last year we’d had a blast with our autumn photo shoot. And it seemed like we were lucky yet once more. Of course, the wind found that place, too, and decided to share it generously with us and the dust it whirled around. But we didn’t care. We love leaves. And we love leaves in fall. And so we enjoyed a very happy autumn day!

P2D Inspiration: Sweet November

A while back I came across this layout, and I thought about how much fun it would be to scraplift it. I loved the arrangement and layering of the different papers, and that pocket in which Kelly (the scrapper who created this page) had inserted the tag. So, I sat down to work on a page, and it was that page that got me into creating the Thanksgiving kit “A Grateful Heart,” which I’ve been sharing with you lately.

Freebie Friday: A Grateful Heart, Part 2

I’m happy to share with you the next part of my digital scrapbooking kit “A Thankful Heart.” Today you’ll get the first part of the papers, and if you come back next week you’ll be able to pick up the remaining paper parts. And for those of you who have tried to download the alphas and the link didn’t work last week: I’ve fixed the link (at least I hope I did). Sorry for the inconvenience of that broken link. I’d copied the link as I was supposed to but then when I posted it, it reverted back to the original image’s link without me realizing it. I tried a couple times and it always reverted back to the old link, and it took a while for me to realize that I had to completely delete all links embedded in the image for it to finally accept the correct one. Anyhow, you can scroll down to find last Friday’s part (if you haven’t downloaded it already), and keep me posted on how the downloads work …

And Now Winter May Come …

The other day I told you I had brought my down coat to the cleaner, and today, I picked it up again. Not quite as clean as I had expected it to be, but it certainly will keep me warm. And now that I have finished washing all my other warm winter stuff, I’m ready to face whatever cold may come. Of course, I hope that this winter that cold may also bring lots of snow, since we hadn’t had a really snowy winter in a long time. But only time can tell what will happen. Until then I’m content with knowing that this winter at least I’ll be warm and cozy!