My Craft Area

Here it is......(drum roll please)....my craft area!!!!!


This is my main working station. The table used to be a door. The drawers below houses my scrapbook stuff and the tool box on the right side houses my beads. I have a good view of a part of our garden on the right side. The front part opens up to our mini "bahay kubo" where we stay in the afternoons for snacks and for a little chat. The whole area used to be our dining area and receiving room.

I also displayed my old and worn out stethoscope. Its nice to recall my nursing stint from time to time. Brings me back to reality when Im so saturated with creative and maddening ideas.

This is a panoramic shot of the whole right side area. I made a sitting area of my own for friends and clients who visit. I still have to ask my husband to take pictures of the left side of my area where my magazines, family pictures and computer area is located. And things I thought of using as storage areas. Stay tuned!

Its nice to be organized again. It helps me be creative, resourceful and productive. The neat freak that I am, I always make it a point to clean after every project. Though it takes time to sort and put things in order, still I do the task at hand enjoying every moment of it.

A few days ago after arranging my stuff I got a call from a previous client ordering a few dozen of my beaded spoon and forks with rice ladles. To think the Holiday season is over. What a treat!!!!
And to top it all, just yesterday I got an sms from my Aunt's friend ordering 30 pieces of my bag jewels! Wow! Hmmmm, maybe I need to do this organizing stuff more often. ;)

New year....new look

... for the longest time I wanted to re-arrange my craft area. But....the procrastinator in me always, always kick in and laziness takes the precedence over anything else topped with an "it will not harm anyone" attitude eventually yield a result of chaos, disorder, disarray and my own madness!

With the new year and the goals I shared with you, I decided to include my craft area in my "very important thing/s to do" list. Now, the questions: will my area stay where it is now or transfer to another place in our home? will I still follow the same arrangement of all the things I need, will I still use the same furniture as before, and the bigger question is, how do I arrange my own clutter????

I have been tossing these questions since January 1, searching the web for sample pictures of scrapbook rooms, beading rooms, craft rooms and reading each blog article of Aby Garvey's Simplify 101. To answer the questions running through my mind, let me first tell you about our home. My home is divided into 3 sections, the first section welcomes you to our terrace which houses our dining area and receiving area, the second section welcomes you to my craft area/office and a little sitting room and the third section is going to the kitchen and a walk way towards the rooms.

Now that I have decided to revamp the arrangement of our home and finally making the big leap of arranging my craft clutter, our terrace now welcomes my family, relatives and friends to a new look: my craft area, with a small sitting room in a corner. The second section became our dining area with a new bookshelf to house my hubby's collection of books and the third section remains as is. I will share with you the pictures when everything is all dolled up and ready for a little photo session ;)

2009 Goals

Every first month of the new year I make a list of what to accomplish for my family, my craft and myself. A list I always have difficulty following. Why? Well, I dont know! Haha! For some reason I have this urge to make a list of what to do, make, give and create for a particular year but then again I hardly follow them. What a shame!

For this year, I will again make my list and hope to God that I will be able to follow them. Maybe I will be effective on following them if I share some of them with you.

For my family:

• to help Din with our financial goals
• to continue to make a comfortable and stress free home for Din and myself
• to share with Din the excitement of having our own car by August
• enjoy every minute I spend with my Hanebe
  

For my craft:

• play with glue and paper (decoupage)
• experiment with resin (I just hope I could find all the raw materials I need)
• enjoy with making paper beads
• have the guts to dip my hands with making something out of microscope slides
• join more bazaars
  

For myself:

• be stress free ( I know this is difficult to do but I have to try, my psoriasis will be very very very happy)
• loose some excess baggage (I should try boxing again, maybe do some rounds with the jump rope and revive my enjoyment with aerobic dancing)
• reach my personal financial goal

Well I think that's all for now. Hmm the big question is...will I have the power to do all of these? My answer: YES I CAN!!!!!

Baguio Road Trip

During the holidays my cousins and I made plans of visiting the Pine City after Christmas. We all woke up very early on December 27 to prepare ourselves for a very long ride going to Baguio. If memory serves me right, there were about 11 of us who went up North. We were met by our cousin Marie and her family. We stayed at Marie's friend Inyong's rental house for 3 days and 2 nights. 3 days of eating, talking, enjoying beer,shopping and site seeing.

The best part of our road trip was the bonding every cousin made with each other. It was decades ago since our last bonding time at Baguio thus when the opportunity came about, we all dropped our schedules and went through the plan.

Pictures Din took of our trip.

Arellano Christmas Party

It has been a tradition in my mother's side of the family to celebrate the birth of the Lord on its eve. Everyone of my mother's siblings and their family (my cousins) gather at one of our Aunt's home to be together and be merry. We always start with a prayer of thanksgiving for the food we will all share. Eating time is always, always a blast since we are a family who loves food and most especially loves to eat. Anyone could see it in our sizes haha! After dinner we gather up and have some games both for adults and children as well. And when everyone is perspiring, tired and hungry again...we gather up for more desserts! Then an hour before midnight we get all our gifts and start with gift giving. By midnight we all eat the family's tradition food, what we all call "lelot" (arroz caldo or chicken rice soup). It has been a family tradition passed from our grandparents to our parents and now to us. By 1am on Christmas day we again gather to start enjoying the booze each of us brought.

Here are some pictures of my family's Christmas Party.

(L to R): my cousin Irene, me, my niece Yanna, cousin Pia, niece Randi and my Auntie Fe
with my cousin Meg


Here with my nephew Enzo ( I just gave him a 50 peso bill). For 3 years now I have been assigned to be the Santa Clause of my big family. Nobody would take on the task of being the host, game master and Santa Clause....so when one of my cousins volunteered me for the job, I head on took it and its been now a tradition that I do my job during our party. its not really a job right?! Its for the love of family and merry making.

As the family's Santa, I have the priviledge of collecting funds from my Mom and Aunts to give away to the children in the family. Even grown up nephews fall in line to receive money! haha!

This year we started with the monito/monita theme for gift giving. I received a brown bag and gave away a set of scented soaps to my Tita Baby. Everyone received well thought of gifts and gave beautiful one too.

Next year will be another Christmas blast with lots of cousins, food, gifts, booze and all those catching up! Oh and maybe next year, I'll be able to get myself a santa costume ;)

Merry Christmas and a happy New Year!

Hope Im not tooooooooooooooooooo late with the greetings. Had a very hectic schedule second week of December up until after the New Year. Year end bazaars and lots of family gatherings, an all cousin trip to Baguio City, and lastly family budget meeting for the year 2009.