Twins Club Gathering

I've joined this group of parents who have twins in the family and we finally decided on a date to meet up. Yvonne (group shot is hers) was great enough to setup the whole thing. The meeting place was just perfect. It was in a new restaurant called 'Sydney' which had a big sandpit area for kids to play while parents mingled and ate in peace.

It was just a great experience to be able to meet other families with twins and it was also very interesting turn out as most families had a boy/girl or girl/boy combination! Both Samuel and Audrey had a great time and so did we.

Childhood Memories Mini Album

Just before Christmas, I got my copy of Ali Edwards' new book entitled: Sharing Your Story. This book has inspired me to create some hybrid mini albums.

Since I started doing some digital scrapbook pages in late 2007, I've never really done much more than document my kids life except print out the pages and putting them into a scrapbook album. Didn't also think much about getting into the traditional scrapbooking road because I've no place to store embellishments and nor do I have time to spend putting pages together.

Anyway, so I found out that you can do what is called "hybrid scrapbooking" which is mixing a bit of digital and a bit of traditional.

After reading this book, I have done 3 mini projects so far. The 3rd one (first 2 you will find in my other blog) is one I did for my kids. It's documenting a few memorable bits and pieces of things I loved to do, loved to eat, or remember of when I was growing up in Tacloban City, Philippines. It was also something of a walk down memory lane for me and was interesting challenge to find pictures. Majority of the pictures were 'borrowed' from Filipinos I found on Flickr as well as some of my old photos. You can see the pages of this mini album by clicking here.


When all was done, I gave my kids the album and they loved it! That was the most rewarding part. Even if they cannot read what is written inside yet, they were curious to know what I've written and what all the pictures were about. We've revisited this album a few times already as I've included a few pages about songs I remember and they've asked me to sing them a few times... I'm hoping one day I'll get to take them to my hometown and show them the actual stuff...

I cannot thank the Filipinos who shared their pictures enough as otherwise I wouldn't have been able to put this together. So THANK YOU once again...

Shanghai Sculpture Space

We just discovered recently this place called Shanghai Sculpture Space and were impressed at how big the place was and well-maintained it was. Above all, we were allowed on the grass!

When we arrived, the kids immediately were running around looking at each piece of sculpture scattered around the lawn. They kept asking: "What is this?" or "What is that?" As there was also a little hill (more like a mound), they decided to roll down the slope while at the same time singing the song from The Wiggles titled: "Rolling Down the Sandhill". They enjoyed themselves that they kept telling us not to go home yet.

We had lunch at a nice restaurant called BECA Cafe and with the clientele they had that day (Valentine's Day), it felt like we were in Europe. Just interesting to be in Shanghai but to be in a place that didn't feel like you are in Shanghai...

There are some sculptures inside the buildings, too, but some were a bit 'too scary' for Audrey that she kept wanting to find a way out. There were also some design studios inside the buildings around the park and it would be interesting to have an office there. Unfortunately, it is for us, a bit out of the way. We're more used to being in downtown.