Before 2012 began, I’d been thinking of my one little word. The one little word that would guide and inspire me this year. On the third day of the year, it just came to me. My word would be START.

start/stärt/

Verb:

Come into being; begin or be reckoned from a particular point in time or space.

Noun:

The point in time or space at which something has its origin; the beginning of something.

Synonyms:

verb.  begin – commence – initiate

noun.  beginning – outset – commencement – inception – onset

There are so many things that I aspire for – so many that I want to do. This is the year to begin working towards achieving them. Nay, this is the time to start living my dreams.

Many times, we are stuck at where we are (it don’t matter where we want to be) because we fail to even begin to take the first step. So this year, I shall take many first steps, and hopefully still have enough in me to keep on going.

Learn more about Ali’s One Little Word movement. I didn’t sign up for the class (it must be fun though) but I chose a word and choose to be inspired by it.

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?

This plant is one of three small ones that sit on top of her desk. I think she wipes the dust off its leaves from time to time.

On Friday, an accomplice kidnapped the plant for me so I could take more pictures:

I used my macro filter for this shot.

Before I returned the plant to Ann’s desk this morning, I took another photo:

Do you notice any change?

Today, we took him to Petshoppers’ Haven, a pet shop in front of my highschool alma mater St. Joseph’s College along E. Rodriguez. We’ve been buying pet food and other supplies from there since they opened, but for vet and grooming services we used to take Zune somewhere else. Today’s visit has completely convinced us that the folks at Petshoppers Haven are the best ones to groom our Zune baby. They are very nice and they treated him well. They were also very thorough. Zune’s had puppy cuts before but this time they cut super close to the skin. That’s good because it allows Zune to be cooler this summer. Besides, his skin has been dry lately and they gave us plenty of tips to get him back in shape.

Here’s how he looks now:

You only see his head here so I don’t know if you’ve noticed: he’s lost weight. He is so skinny! Because of the heat, he hasn’t had much of an appetite on some days. Good thing is that we see him eating better already. The parasites have also probably caused damage. Oh he’s healthy and strong and makulit, but he definitely looks tiny now. He looks like he took slimquick extreme to lose weight! I hate it, how come he can drop the pounds so quickly while I can’t? I’ve passed by the health kiosk and all I see are slimming supplements like the slimquick and the cookie diet. They are mocking me! Haha.

Anyhoo. We picked up Heartguard and some supplements for better skin and coat, and an oatmeal shampoo for him too. We also decided to have his 5-in-1 yearly booster shot and the anti-rabies shot administered a month before he was due.  I was surprised that the cost of the makeover, the shots, and the goodies wasn’t as much as I thought it would be. Good service and fair prices. Nice.

So I pretty much eat anything.

On Sunday afternoon, the beginning of my weekend, I felt itchy all over my body. I thought it was just mosquito bites because there’s swelling involved (how do you say pantal in English?) It did feel weird though: why would I have insect bites even under my clothes? I passed it off thinking that maybe it was just the heat. I dozed to sleep now and then in front of the tv and didn’t pay much attention to the itchies. When I woke up on Monday morning to take a shower though, I saw just how bad things were. I had big blotches all over my belly, on my back, arms and legs. Even my feet were starting to itch. Scrubbing myself clean didn’t help although water helped cool me down and I felt relieved for a bit. I put powder all over where there were breakouts, thinking to myself that maybe I got exposed to higad somewhere. But when and where?

I still didn’t take it seriously. Until after having lunch (KFC chicken). Oh my goodness, I could not take it any longer. I asked the boyfriend to scratch my back and he saw them ugly blotches. I wanted to stop scratching really, and he kept trying to reprimand me lest I end up hurting myself and cause some bleeding. I couldn’t stop! He took some ice and rubbed them over the itchiest parts. That helped soothe me, but not for long. Then I felt some of the swelling on my neck crawling up to my cheeks. I started getting scared, should we go to the hospital? Neither one of us drives. Having three cars outside at our disposal was useless to me. The brother was sleeping and I didn’t really feel like waking him up unless it was an emergency. I called my mom: do we have anti-allergy meds here? No. I sent cousin Ada a message: do you calamine lotion at home? Nope. The boyfriend couldn’t stand it anymore, so he volunteered to go to the drugstore and get me some meds. It was hot when he went out, and he had to walk all the way there and back. He looked toasted when he got back, haha. But perhaps that’s because he hit the beach on Black Saturday while staying with his family in Bicol.

It was pink stuff that finally started to give me some relief. Caladryl/Calamine lotion is something we used to have around the house when I was a kid. This time though, Caladryl isn’t as pink as it used to. And they don’t dry up like chalk. It felt cool and soothing. Much like how aloe would feel on your skin. He also bought Benadryl, they’re pink too.

I was able to sleep early thanks to the Benadryl, and it was a deep sleep too. I woke up briefly before midnight as the boyfriend was saying goodbye and taking off for work. Then again at 530 when my brother came home from work. The only time I really got up though was around 7am. The blotches on my arms were almost gone, but the ones under my clothes were still there. And there’s still some itching, though not as strong as yesterday’s. If there’s one good thing that came out of this though, it’s that I’ve had plenty of sleep again.  Though there are things to worry about, at least it doesn’t include searching around for the best eye cream for dark circles. Now if only I could sleep so soundly every work night, minus the allergies while I’m awake…

So what triggered the reaction? I don’t know! I had shrimp sinigang for lunch on Sunday, cooked by my dad. I love shrimps and I sure hope that’s not what I’m allergic to Alfred says maybe it’s rice, since things got worse after eating rice and chicken for Monday’s lunch. Ugh. I still don’t know. Maybe it’s the heat again.

Now they’re gone.

I can’t tell whether the mistake is mine or someone else’s. For all I know, I could have forgotten to actually download them and then just went ahead to delete the photos in my camera. Or, I might have downloaded them but saved them somewhere else. Or, someone might have downloaded new photos and accidentally overwrite them. Sometimes the photos are just named numbers instead of Month-Year-Number and it messes things up if that happens.

In a way this is an eye-opener for me. I should definitely get to organizing my photos, and get an online backup system up and running. Besides, one reason that got me derailed from P365 was that I wasn’t uploading daily. If I’m to restart 365 by April 1st, I gotta start cleaning my act up, er cleaning up my files. Once I get that cleared, I might just be able to digiscrap again. Might.