Hello everyone! This is not good. This once a month update is almost close to nil but it's such a busy last few weeks but yes, I'm doing good.
The repairs and maintenance activities at the school are almost done. Has to be because school opens on August 5th. The supply room is finally organized and waiting for new supplies to come in as ordered. The Art Room is finally taking shape. The library shelves have been delivered yesterday so probably the librarian is finally organizing the books delivered the last couple of weeks. I might post some before and after pics later on. I hope nobody expects some Nate Berkus makeovers here. We just purged, cleaned and reorganized furniture around.
The papercrafting business is doing really well also. I'm very thankful to have the time to do them despite other things. Other things being other projects outside of the usual things I do and the domestic day-to-day stuff nobody can really escape from.
Ah! And there's something else I want to talk about. I am an architect and was very active professionally until about six years ago and shifted to what I do now. The reason I left the practice is another story altogether but what I want to say is, I was hired by an architectural firm to revise, rewrite and design their company profile. Yay!! They got me because I'm an architect, I know the business so I know what I'm going to write about.
I'm so very excited about this most recent project because as much as I love papercrafting, I also love writing. And I've been craving to write something in a more professional capacity. So, when they called one day and asked if I could, I grabbed the chance. They also put forward a couple more projects for later this year: a brochure for their spa and training center, and souvenirs for their daughter's 18th birthday in December. I'm very, very thankful for this.
2010 has been very, very good to me and my husband, most especially to him. It's been awesomely fantastic so far. I can't thank God enough for such beautiful year so far.
July Update
June Update
Hello everyone!
It's been awhile. Personal projects have been on-hold for more than a month now. I have been really busy at school since a couple of weeks before the Moving Up Ceremony. Now it's cleanup time. The amount of rubbish generated in 10 months is astounding! Seven balikbayan boxes of trash... and that's just from the Art Room. I had some repairs and repaint that need to be done so I left it as it is for now. The queue for carpentry work is quite long.
While waiting for that, we tackled the library today. Drew a floor plan to help us rearrange the shelves, and we moved them. We'd still need seven shelves to follow the plan, though. It doesn't matter if we won't fill them up with books now. A library is a library, it will eventually get full. My architectural knowledge need not go to waste. heee!
Next week, the science laboratory and supply inventory. Need to schedule the painting job too. All classrooms need to be repainted as well as the corridor.
All these, and I'm not even an employee of the school. What do I call this job? Building repair supervision and consultancy? What?
I signed up on Twitter days ago (see side bar) but I find I'm using it to rant or rave about tv shows because I love tv. If you like to follow me, please do. Just a warning though, I do rant a lot. If it's your favorite show, I'm apologizing in advance for hurting your feelings but I won't apologize for seeing it the way I see it and saying it out loud.
Moving Up Day
Yesterday was the kids' last day in school and of course, their Moving Up Ceremony. I did that background signboard or whatever you call it. The logo and the header are printed in large format. Then, the tarpaulin was stapled to a wooden frame without a plywood skin so it's lighter and easier to transport and haul up those undulating panels. We wanted it to be reusable so I decided that the other elements are paper cutouts in primary and secondary colors. Many thanks to IRRI's carpentry for making us that frame and helping us attach it behind the panels.
As to what the stage looks like... well. Until now, I'm still bad at arranging plant stuff. So I just framed the background with plants like so. And IRRI lent us a truckload of plants! I didn't know what I'd do with them so the others I just lined on the floor in front of the stage. In person, the whole front including the stage actually looks like a rain forest. LOL!
Shipping Today
Here are two mini-albums I'm shipping today for a friend. I'm still finishing four other minis, two of which are identical. I really do enjoy doing these small things. It's like doing scale models again.
Finally, My Own Scrapbook
I know! Isn't it pathetic? Remember my New Year's resolution about me creating a 2010 scrapbook? Well, I'm finally finished with my March double-page spread and starting with April pages. I also did the album on this one I think I'll be able to post this in January of next year.
I found that if I'm creating for myself, I tend to make it very simple. There are usually lots of frilly embellishments when I do scrapbook for others but here, it's not the case. But as always, there are a lot of photos in a page. I can't do just one photo. I tried, but I really can't.
Then there are the birthday photos of my niece, Kyla. I'll do a mini-album for those after the April pages.
And oh! Gerry is in a short film for Plan International under the direction of Lem Garcellano. I'll probably do a mini-album for his pictures there... a no-frills album as usual.
I Just Got Back from School
I will share with you what my students were working on for the last 11 weeks. It sounds very grand, but it's actually just 11 hours total because we're only working for an hour every week. It's an After School Activity at Brent-IRRI in Los Baños, Laguna, and it's on Scrapbooking and Photography. Sound a bit much? Yeah, I think so too. Maybe next year I'm going to separate those classes.
Anyway, I'm not really a photographer but I know some basic things I could teach the kids like utilizing natural light, effect of the combination of light, shade and shadow in photography, golden hour (but my class was in mid-afternoon so it was just words), rule of thirds, get close to the subject, holding the camera straight, etc. So these are just some samples of what they did:
By Iman Ismail, Fourth Grade
By Isabelle Douthewaite, First Grade
By Xyla Fitzwell, Second Grade
By Anna Heuer, Kindergarten
By Mami Hosen, Third GradeAren't they neat? They just used digital point and shoot cameras for this, but for their grade levels, I thought they did really, really well.
The other part of our ASA is Scrapbooking. Below is a stack of scrapbooks they did. They scrapped the photos they took. I prepared the materials for covers and cut the interior pages. They put together the covers and we punched the sides for the binding rings. We didn't really use any fancy brand-named materials. We just want them to experience to make their first ever album.
Instead of patterned paper, we used giftwrapping paper. We used ordinary acid-free glue stick for all the papers, and a different kind of glue for embellishments. I bought a lot of buttons, ribbons, flowers, feathers, transfer letters and sequins in various shapes. There were a lot of leftovers so I divided them to six, bagged them and gave the rest to them. They were sooooooo excited about that. Next year, I think I'm going to let them use 'real' scrapbooking papers.
So, here are the scrapbooks they did.
There will be an exhibit of their works on Friday, April 30. I sure will be there to support them while they present their work. I'm telling you, these are the sweetest, most innocent kids I ever met. And they did some really, really wonderful job.
