Beautiful Smile

I was really jealous of my niece's ability to break into a beautiful smile upon request (i.e. when you point a camera at her). Andrea is at that stage when she flat our refuses to stay still, much less, smile for the camera.

At least, until a few nights ago...

Elements from Nanet's 'So Precious' kit, and mask from Laurie R (Laurie Made Me Scraps).

I stayed very still while watching her, afraid that if I made any sudden move, she would notice me watching and stop. So I very slowly grabbed the closest camera on hand... which is my camera phone. And she did stop after that first shot *sigh*. Oh, to have captured this using my SLR (which is currently buried in a pile of stuff somewhere in our house right now... I have to look for it one of these days).

Good news though... after her practice that night, my daughter can now smile upon request. Although her idea of a smile right now is crinkling her eyes and showing ALL her teeth. We're working on toning it down a little ;)

Free Quick Page: Sweetness

I participated in another contest yet again at Coolscrapsdigital, the QP Contest for February.

For this contest, we were given this kit:

The task is to create a Quick Page freebie from the elements of this kit only. And here is my Quick Page.

Download here.

There are a lot of other really pretty Quick Page templates on the forums, in case you're interested.

Now that that's over and done with... I want to share something that dissipated all negative energy that has been surrounding me for the past weeks. And here it is... Today, I was able to fit in my pre-maternity jeans again. YES!!! After 2 years!!! A couple of friends asked me if I lost weight, and though I doubted it, I decided to try some of my old jeans last night when I got home to check. I was in a mild state of shock when I was actually able to close the button.

Anyway, that's it for this week for me. I have to do general cleaning at home tomorrow... Aaarrggh! Hate it but it has to be done. Hope you guys enjoy your weekend!

CSD Cool Motto Challenge for February

I'm like a regular stalker of the Coolscrapsdigital forums now. And I joined another challenge. I am having so much fun with digital scrapbooking, can you tell? :)

This new challenge is called Cool Motto challenge. We were given this quote:

"All of us need to grow continuously in our lives."

by Les Brown

And this mini-kit to work with:

The challenge is to create a layout using the quote and the mini-kit, and here is my layout:

I'm not so fond of the font I used, but I'm not really very good with designing Word Art (or clusters, for that matter) yet. Something I need to work on.

I love working on these challenges because I think my image editing skills has improved a LOT since I got into this.

Anyway, I mentioned some bad news yesterday... Well yesterday, I thought I lost my phone. It wasn't in my purse when I got to the office and it was already unattended when my friends tried calling it.  I'm not too attached to gadgets, cellphones even. My primary concern was that my phone has a lot of my daughter's photos in it and I don't feel comfortable thinking it was in the hands of some unknown person. If I did lose it, then it's gone, I will not stress about it. I was already moving on the the 'Acceptance' stage in the Stages of Coping with Loss by evening and was resigned to the thought that I need to get a new phone.

However, for some good news... it was not lost after all. My husband found it with our daughter's messy pile of toys on the bed. So all good! (though the feeling of wanting to get a new phone now will not leave me!).

Hope you are all  having a great day!