this is because i can spell confusion with a k

so...i'll be a bit out of order for a while.

let me explain. the other morning, while walking out of the room to get my coffee, i tripped over my power cord AGAIN and completely wrecked my computer. I CAN'T BELIEVE I DID THAT. ugh. i am currently on my mom's friend's mini laptop (which measures about 9"x6" lol) as a temporary solution.

ack. do you know how hard it is to scan (actually. scanning is close to impossible)/format images of your projects when you don't have proper image editing software installed on your computer?! especially when you have deadlines looming. argh. paint is an absolute headache. but thank goodness for picknick on flickr.

anyhow. these are all from the other day...BEFORE i broke my computer. i realized that i live about 12 blocks from golden gate park and walked over the other day. it was about 30 minutes, and a bit hilly, which makes for good exercise. i was there in the late afternoon, which had some pretty, glowy light, so i experimented with sun flare!






in other news...my KI box arrived this morning, and i promptly sat down and played with the new stuff. this is for this week's blog challenge, which is to scraplift yourself!

i can't remember when the earth turned slowly

it's quite chilly tonight. brrrr. my "living room" (where the TV is) has a huge window/glass door and it's freeeeezing in there.

anyhow.

studio calico reveal night was today. my last one :( i hung out in the chatroom for a couple of hours...some good times. had lots of laughs. heee.

here are my projects -






lovedlovedloved this kit. i want to marry it. i love the color combinations and the cherrry blossoms and that fortune paper....everything!
the rest of the DT gallery is quite amazing.

have a good one :)

forget yesterday, we'll make the great escape

i'm moved in!!


settling in here and exploring my surroundings. i've unpacked most of my stuff (my scrapbooking stuff is still in storage bins and will probably stay in there)...my room is smaller than the one i had back home, but it works. i'm living with a family friend, who has this commercial space downstairs in their building...it used to be a chiropractic office...so there's a sink in my room and i also have no closet. i solved that problem by buying a garment rack from target...except it kept crashing down about 5 times in the last 24 hours. i think i've solved the problem now, though :) they're in the process of converting this space into a residential space, so i eventually will have roommates, a shower in my own restroom (i currently have to go upstairs to shower) and a stove.

i live right along a MUNI (light rail) route, which is very convenient, but the noise takes some getting used to, lol.

i've been walking around the neighborhood, checking out what's around...have been yelping the eateries in the neighborhood, and will eventually venture into them :) lots of good hole-in-the-wall type places. i also noticed that i could see the ocean from my place, and discovered that it's about 20 blocks away. so, i took a walk there yesterday...it's only about 20 minutes. hooray :) there's also a cool recreation area/park a few blocks away...will venture over there in the next few days.



i love san francisco :)

from the west side to the east side

in between the packing, organizing, and cleaning, i've been on this "leaving LA food tour," and have been trying to hit up some of my favorite so-cal food places. some of the places i'll miss -


good pho. (i.e. golden deli)


dots


fosselman's


portos

and then there's tapex, the taco truck, pinkberry (i don't understand why they don't have a pinkberry in the bay area?!?!), lucille's, phillipe's, asian cafes, el tepeyac, among others...

oh, and we also threw in the griddle cafe, which has the most ginormous pancakes one has ever seen!


they were quite good, though.

of course, we all know i love eating in norcal, so being surrounded by all that good stuff excites me. but i will miss my favorite joints down here...

on a completely unrelated note....

this blouse is completely fabulous!

have a good one :)

and now i'm ready to be extraordinary...

as i watched the inauguration festivities this morning with the rest of the nation (gave me chills), all this talk about change and new beginnings has me contemplating all the changes going on in my life this week.

in a few days, i'll be here....



okay, that's nothing new. i'm always up in norcal. but unlike all the other times, i will be living there.

whoa, what?

over the summer, i decided to switch my major to graphic design. i know this will just add more years to my already-taking-too-long-schooling, but it just felt right. i also took that major change as an opportunity to look into transferring into a school up in the bay area. if not now, then when, right?

if you've followed my blog for a while, you've come to know how much i've fallen in love with the bay area, and especially san francisco, over the 2 years or so. it's so weird, because i really was not a fan of san francisco the first time i visited, which was when i was, like, 12. it was too cold for wimpy, so-cal me ;) but then we took a trip up there for labor day in 2006. i completely fell in love. i fell in love more and more every subsequent visit after that, and it was getting harder to leave (although, there may have been multiple reasons for that, eh?). so to say that i'm EXCITED about this move is an understatement.



i am so excited to live in the city, and to be surrounded by all that san francisco has to offer. san francisco is such a beautiful, charming, eclectic place. i've seen plenty in the city, but i love that there is so much more to explore and so much more to discover. of course, being 20-ish miles away from the boy, instead of 400, is a huge plus ;) we've been making plans for things to do, places to go...it's so fun because we won't run out of time and can fit everything in now!

i'm nervous at the same time, being on my own for the first time, away from the familiar comforts of home. i'm always worrying about how i'm going to make it work, but i guess this is just all part of it.

of course, this means that i will be stuck in GIANTS territory. i guess i'll just have to be a lone dodgers fan in the bay area :) hee.

unfortunately, this also means i won't be at CHA this year. i'll miss walking around and looking at all the fabulous new product, and seeing everyone!

eventful month for me, no?

it's the sound of the unlocking and the lift away

so....


i'm a garden girl?

almost exactly 4 years ago, armed with one of those DCWV stacks that my mother gave me (it was the stack 3!), i decided to try my hand at scrapbooking. i'd dabbled in it before, but this time i was determined to use up the damn stack and make this hobby stick. looking for inspiration, i started searching for scrapbooking sites, and stumbled upon two peas in a bucket. i never looked back since, and became hopeless addicted to this thing called scrapbooking.

over the years, i've spent countless hours posting on the boards (i miss the late night threads in the pub!), gazing at the fabulous layouts in the gallery, and was always amazed by the inspiring layouts in the creating garden. oh, how i longed to be a garden girl myself. that dream seemed impossible...until today.

i'm truly shocked and honored to be a garden girl right now. of course, this news came with a bit of sadness for me, because it meant that i had to step down from my positions on the designer digitals and studio calico teams. it was a difficult decision to make, and one i thought hard about. i had an amazing time working with the people there, and they were both a huge part of my life the last few years. i will truly miss working with both sites, and am really sad to go, but at the same time, am excited at this new opportunity that has been presented to me.

studio calico hasn't been able to get rid of me quite yet, though! i will submit my final projects with the february kit, which will be revealed on the 27th.

it's been a crazy, crazy few days.

folks from california can't live without their sun

^^ the above lyrics are soooooo true. (they're from starsailor)

anyhow.

they're opening a new chipotle near us, and today was a pre-grand opening party...which meant free burritos for all. the line was a bit long, but you can't go wrong with free chipotle, right?


so the other day, we drove by the americana, and i noticed a crumbs - but we were too lazy to turn back. i'd seen a photo of a crumbs cupcake once, and i remembered that they looked SCRUMPTIOUS. the next day, amy IMed me going "OMG, WHY WEREN'T YOU MORE PERSISTENT IN MAKING ME TURN BACK?!" apparently, she saw pictures of the cupcakes on yelp and wanted to go. so we did.



mmmmm.....

i also really liked these walls. i kinda wish my hair was cuter and that i wasn't posing with the cupcakes boxes. oh well.


fabulous day :)

he’s the only one that would think to tell it that way

orlando was amazing.

i'm still processing and reliving the past weekend - 33 of us from the designer digitals team gathered at disney world for 3 days. i'd met some of the girls before, but there were many more that i met for the first time that weekend.

being in florida and at disney world for the first time was fun, but what made the weekend truly special was the connection i felt with these women. we'd known each other online, but something truly magical happened when we all gathered and met "IRL." we're all so diverse - from different parts of the country (and even around the world!), and different ages, but none of that mattered. it's hard to explain and put into worlds, but i seriously had an amazing time.

unfortunately, i ended up passing through 6 airports and was on 5 planes in 6 days, so i came home absolutely exhausted (and came home quite upset because i lost my ipod on the plane. grrr). because of this, i still have to go through and edit most of my 600-ish photos (i am following through on my "take more pictures this year" goal, aren't i?)...so those will just have to be a separate post!

i probably should've stayed in florida for an extra day, and joined some of the girls who flew in on thursday...but i had to celebrate linda's birthday ;)

her, judy and kenneth flew up from so-cal to celebrate in san francisco. we had dinner and drinks at the poleng lounge, and everything was awesome...especially the sweet potato fries. and the sisig. and okay, well, everything. it was a fun evening - even though we hit traffic driving back to the east bay and got home at 12:30...the following morning, i made the boy drive me to the airport at 5:30. oh well, good times and worth it :)

you'll be the prince and i'll be the princess

my days up here in the bay area have been quite eventful.

for the first time, i decided to fly virgin and fly into SFO instead of oakland, which was interesting. i walked into the terminal at LAX and almost missed the virgin counters because they were tables that looked like an information desk, then walked into the boarding area, which looked like a convention center.

then i was annoyed to discover that my flight was delayed for an hour. this was because of the crazy san francisco fog -


it took me longer than expected to get here, but after i did, off we went to zachary's...


tuesday, i decided to take advantage of free admission at the SF MOMA. they had some cool stuff, like lichenstein pieces -


they also had a room with these cool geometric mirror sculptures.

i swear i stood in front of these for about 20 minutes trying to get a cool reflected self-portrait of myself, but it didn't happen.

the special exhibit at the MOMA right now is participation art, and a part of that was the 1000 journals project. i was super excited to discover this, because about 2 summers ago, linda organized a circle journal group based on it. it was awesome to be able to see the originals, and partake in the project too (they had several journals taped up to the wall, and had a bunch of markers and colored pencils so you could add your own piece to the books).


i've been wandering the streets of berkeley a lot, and i love the fact that the trees still look like fall here. so pretty.


tonight is my last night here, but i'm excited because:
a) a couple of friends from home are flying up to celebrate linda's birthday, and we are going out tonight.
and b) i'm going to orlando tomorrow to hang out with the DD girls!! i'm looking forward to the warm weather...it'll be 20 degrees warmer than it is here right now. what i'm NOT looking forward to is my 6:50 a.m. flight...this morning, i realized that the sun isn't even out at that hour!

have a good one :)

should old acquaintance be forgot...

happy new year everyone! :) i can't believe it's 2009 already.

we rang in the new year in style with a party at a friend's house. the girls all dressed up in dresses and it was quite fun :)


one of my goals for this year is to take more pictures, since my picture taking count really dropped off towards the end of the year in 2008. so one of my plans is to start doing photo-a-day again. here's the first one -

my mom made traditional japanese osechi (new years food) and some other stuff for our family gathering yesterday.

here are a couple of my last layouts of 2008 -


this one was for the KI blog...shannon had a challenge to use leftover wrapping paper on a page.


this was my last playlist layout of the year - all done! i am totally doing them again this year!

2009 is gonna be a huge year for me, including one big change that is happening quite soon. i'll get into that in a future post.

for now, though, i've been eating way too much...and i'll be back up north in a few days to help celebrate linda's birthday, then i'll be off to florida to hang out with the DD girls! i think i'm looking forward to that part more :) lol.

have a good one :)