I’ve recently added SuzyQ’s blog to my Reader and I’m glad I did. I never would have seen her tutorial if I hadn’t.

Tomorrow is World Photography Day! I wish I had known earlier so I could cook up something for The Newbie Photographer to commemorate the event. After shift tomorrow, I’ll make a list of things Alfred and I can do for WPD. That should be fun, here’s hoping I’ll have the energy to make something happen!

What are you doing for World Photography Day?

I know we’re already more than half-way through 2011 but I was so happy to read about Project Scrap Twenty Eleven from the Shabby Princess Designs Blog.

Bloggers and scrappers alike are either working on a Project 365, Project Life or Week 52. Project Scrap 2011 can be yet another supplement to all these efforts to take photos and scrap.

Shabby Princess and her team are providing two-page templates each month, and lots of inspiration, to everyone who wants to play along. I’ve gone ahead and downloaded the templates for January through July, and hope to make something of them. Towards the end of the year, SP will also provide templates for cover pages so that, by the time 2012 rolls over, the book of at least 24 layouts can be ready for printing. Cool!

Read all about Project Scrap 2011. By all intents and purposes, it does look like we’re already late if we’re just joining along now. But I say, better late than never!

Although I don’t think I will ever be a full-blown paper scrapper, Project Life will be as close to it as I’ll get. And though I haven’t created a single layout this year, I am a digital scrapbooker at heart.

The video is wonderful inspiration for all sorts of memory keepers.

I came across this video on the author’s guest post at Ali Edwards’ blog (yes, a blog I also subscribe to via Google Reader). From there I clicked along to Shimelle’s blog after watching the vid. Haven’t explored much yet, but I think I’m going to love that site.

What happened in the last 365 days? A lot. I wish I had a photo for each day to tell the story.

But I don’t. Hopefully though, by this time next year I’d have a full album to look at to remember the year that was. It could be a photo-a-day, or just a spread for the week. I’m not sure how it’s going to shape up, but I am so excited.

Tracy, thanks again for inspiring me and leading me to Project Life.

Last week I laid down the cover and end pages. This is how the first version looks like, but I doubt it will remain the same until next year.

Yesterday I added our very old family photograph:

The photo is old, and needs to be restored. I hope I can find a reliable shop to entrust it with.

I posted a scanned version of that photo in Facebook, and my mom left a comment giving insight into the occasion it was taken. I’ll share a better view, and the story behind the photo some other time.

I will be printing yesterday’s photo and will be adding it into the album today. The journalling for that is actually already done. I don’t know if there’s going to be a picture for today or not, but I hope there will be

The PL Kit has a lot of these journalling cards included, and I have set aside two each designs to carry with me wherever I go so I can take down notes anytime.

I am so excited already and have so many ideas for this album. I can see it branching off to at least two projects, but I don’t want to get ahead of myself and so I’ll just take each day as I go for now. Amazing.

In the meantime, fill yourselves with more Project Life inspiration from the wonderful Ali Edwards.

It’s such an amazing product, a simplified scrapooking system for those of us who don’t have as much time or creativity to build full scrapbook pages from scratch Learn more about Project Life from this video from its creator:

But I will blog about this more in more in the coming days and months, for now let me highlight how easy it was to have it shipped to the Philippines.

Easy Amazon Transaction

I ordered the kit via Amazon on the 28th of March. The cost meant that the package qualified for free shipping within the US. At the time, there was a free trial available for an Amazon program and I signed up for that. It allowed for my package to be delivered for free, within 3 days.

I loved how it was so easy to track the package from within the Amazon site, and how real-time the updates were.

My-Shopping Box

So from the store it shipped from (I’m guessing Becky’s homebase), my kit travelled to the US address assigned to me at My-ShoppingBox – a package forwarding service that consolidates your packages and sends them when and where you want them to.

Package arrived there on the 31st of March. I authorized the shipment, made the payment, and waited a full month (+ a few days) before I finally received it.

There is an easy way to track the package from My-Shopping Box as well. However, updates are not done as real-time as, say UPS. In fact, it’s only today that I actually saw the status change from Departed from US.

The service had some problems with their website last week – logins were not being accepted. I did get an answer from customer support about the issue, and they gladly gave me the status of the package upon giving them the tracking number. And guess what? They were pretty accurate. They said to expect the package on May 10 or 11, and it came today!

I love it. I don’t have time today to work on it, but I will make time this weekend. Excited!

Anyway, back to the shipping service… My-Shopping Box collects an annual membership fee. I forgot how much, but I got in for free because I’m a BDO credit card holder. There’s also supposed to be a rebate for shipping when you use your BDO/AMEX cards but I haven’t checked yet if I got any. There’s a good number of questions in their FAQ page that should help anyone decide if they’re going to sign up for the service.

You pay them per package you have shipped. To save money, you can consolidate several smaller items you purchase from different sites (or were given to you as gifts) into one package. If not all items arrive at the same time, you may have to pay a minimal storage fee if your package has been in the facility for more than 15 days. This shouldn’t be a problem as long as you plan your purchases.

Though they weigh your package and charge accordingly, it’s still cheaper to ship via this service than if I shipped directly from the seller to my home. The time it took to get the package delivered would probably be just the same – 4-6 weeks.

The convenience is that they deliver it to your door and no more unexpected exorbitant Customs fees.

Have you tried My Shopping Box or any similar service? How was your experience?

Here are the details from their shop:

On March 11, 2011, an earthquake struck off the coast of Japan, churning up a devastating tsunami that swept over cities and farmland in the northern part of the country leaving a tragic amount of destruction and devastation in its path. Recorded as 9.0 on the Richter scale, it was the most powerful quake ever to hit the country. As of March 31, the official death toll had been raised to more than 11,600, and more than 16,000 people were listed as missing. Although there may be some overlap between the two groups, the final toll is expected to reach nearly 20,000 lives lost. To help the people of Japan in our own way, Sweet Shoppe Designs has created a kit which 100% of the profits will be donated to the American Red Cross for their Japanese Earthquake and Pacific Tsunami fund.
Kibou means ‘Hope’ in Japanese, and it is a very special kit jam packed with 3 dozen papers, more than 70 elements, 2 templates and more! It will be on sale for the month of April only, and is for such a great cause that we truly hope you will help us reach out the people of Japan in their time of need.

Personally, I think it’s a good buy. Donating ten dollars to help in the rehabilitation of the devastated areas is that one small thing we all can do to help. Getting this fabulous kit is just the icing on top.

Click the image to go to SSD.

Today, I received another ad which in itself is already a source of page design inspiration:

Too bad I couldn’t capture the full page. It’s not one whole image but an actual page put together in HTML so right-click save would only save it in parts. I used the Snipping tool to take two screenshots just to capture everything.

I love the pattern on the coat – I wish I was bold enough to wear such a pattern and that it was actually cold enough here to wear the chic jacket. And I love how they used the same pattern on the ad border. The full page is something that can be lifted for a digiscrapbook page. Maybe my first layout will be inspired by this page. And maybe my first page this year will be about our upcoming Cebu vacation (We’re still finalizing our trip details and waiting on a possible deal for the hotel we picked. It’s sad that there’s no one ultimate resource for Cebu vacation deals like this one for Branson Missouri vacation packages, it would have made planning this trip all that easier.)

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