Halloween House Tabletop Decoration

Here's another Halloween project using Nikki Sivils Victoria's Street Chipboard album and Boo-tiful stamps. The only difficult part of this project was cutting out the windows since the chipboard is really thick and sturdy. Once the windows were cut out and the whole thing was painted black, everything fell into place.

I'm planning to put a candle inside so it looks all spooky at night with the light coming out through the windows.

Please check out Working Mom magazine's Oct 2009 issue for my article on displaying kids artwork.

Kiki-Art Toot!

Yipeeee! I made it to the Kiki-Art Design Team! Kiki-Art is a a new scrapbook manufacturer, based in Canada, that debuted at the recent CHA. It is different because having a multi-cultural perspective is a fundamental part of their existence.

It was named Best New Company for the Summer 2009 CHA by http://www.craftcritique.com/ because what they are offering is very different than anything else on the market right now. They are the first trilingual scrapbooking company, but their lines aren't only themed in French, English and Spanish.

It's 1st design team is a huge group divided into 4 categories (combining languages, cultures and countries):

Francophone team
- Nathalie Gregoire - QC, Canada
- Annie Legace - QC, Canada
- Annie Carignan - QC, Canada
- Sylvie Sabourin - QC, Canada
- Kim Brouillette - QC, Canada
- Fabienne Delvaux - QC, Canada
- JJ Sobey - QC, Canada
- Cathia Leblanc - QC, Canada
- Melissa Mercier - QC, Canada

Allophone team
- Vivi Rahman - Brunei
- Ria Van Son - Netherlands
- Ann-Katrin - Norway
- Ria Mojica - Philippines
- Sophia Allison - South Africa
- Annika - Sweden

Anglophone team
- Michelle Galatuik - AB, Canada
- Kim Toms - QLD, Australia
- Megan Epperly - FL, USA
-Keely Yowler - KY, USA
- Sarah de Guzman - CA, USA
- Nicole Rixon - CA, USA
- Carole Stirrat WA, USA
- Lynda Lindley - WA, USA
- Katrina Hunt - MO, USA
- Ellen Sosnoski - PA, USA
- Nicole Renee Martin - OK, USA

Hispanophone team
- Lida Garcia - Mexico
- Al Marie Campana - FL, USA
- Magdalena Vazquez - Peru

I did some research on the word allophone - from Wikipedia:

In Quebec, an allophone is a resident, usually an immigrant, whose mother tongue
or home language is neither English nor French. The term is also sometimes used
in other parts of Canada. The term parallels Anglophone and Francophone, which
designate people whose mother tongues are English and French, respectively.

I'm so excited because Kiki (Arantza) is particularly interested in adding our local flavor into the mix (she's actually been to the Philippines!). I'm also looking forward to practising some of my rusty Spanish! I can't wait to start playing with their bright and colorful products!

Kids @ Heart

Halloween is definitely in the air...gotta start decorating the house. Here's another LO from our trip to HK Disney last year.

That was a really fun trip -- we all went to Disneyland at night wearing costumes. I wanted to be a witch but the kids wouldn't have me be a bad witch so I guess I was a good black witch. Bud went as Elvis -- I swear he loves that shiny red satin costume of his! It was fun to dress up and feel like a kid again.

Title: Kids @ Heart

Journaling: Halloween '08; Nothing brings out the kid in us like a visit to the happiest place on Earth!

Materials: Nikki Sivils patterned papers; Bazzill cardstock; Hambly transparency; Cosmo Cricket, Basic Grey and American Crafts chipboard alpha; Making Memories paint; Zig and Ranger pens

Trick and Treat Album

Here's a Halloween album using Nikki Sivils adorable Boo-tiful line and the matching shaped ghost mini-album and stamps. These are available in the Philippines at Lasting Impression.

Materials: Chipboard ghost album, patterned papers & stamps - Nikki Sivils; small chipboard alpha - Basic Grey; white chipboard "&" - Heidi Swapp; Ink - Tsukineko; Pens - Zig and Ranger; Paint - Making Memories; Glitter - Pink Paislee; Embossing Powder - PSX; Glaze - Judikins; DYMO label maker; MM Slice Spellbound; misc ribbons

Doing our little bit...

I wanted to teach the kids a lesson about sharing so last Wednesday, after my gym class, I headed to Makro (our version of Costco) and got some items to make relief packs for Typhoon Ondoy victims. I also invited some friends and their kids to come the next day to help out in packing.

Luis was very excited when he saw the car loaded with stuff for repacking and even helped bring some of the boxes into the house. He even took the initative of making signs to indicate where everything was and assigned duties for those who were coming.

Those who came to help were Sam (who was celebrating his birthday that day) and Roxanne, Cole and Kensie and Aerol, plus Lilian and Maget and my kids Luis, Nadya and Bianca. Together we made 50 relief packs -- 1 of which went to our driver whose house was flooded, 15 went to the maintenance people in Bud's office and the rest went to the factory workers of Bud's friend whose export factory and inventory (including finished goods awaiting shipment worth $100,000) were all wiped out.

This is not much, I know, as everyday, we hear more stories about people we know who need help, but it's a start.