This week’s Happy Planner layout is flowery — because, well, people in Manila are currently bringing flowers to the cemetery for All Saints’ and All Souls’ Day. Haha! Joke lang. What actually happened was: what I wanted for this layout didn’t quite work out, so I ended up adding flowers and leaves instead. Hence, that curved floral thingy smacked right in the middle of the spread. Such an ugh layout, but oh wells.
I used the Happy Memory Keeping Floral Memories and The Encourager sticker books for this week’s spread.
Sentiment for the week: Girl, you are super amazing.
Crafty things I worked on last week
I finally turned my Bee Happy Weeklies Aall & Create “paper dolls” into cards! It was a little #Inktober inspired project I worked on one afternoon just so I could play with my Distress Oxides again.
I made a hybrid scrapbook layout for Traci Reed’s Sketchy Sunday — it’s a layout for my mom’s India trip that I’ll be adding to the scrapbook I’m building for her. You can read about the Sketchy Sunday challenge on Traci’s blog here.
I also worked on two mini albums for Traci Reed, but I can’t share them yet! I already mentioned one of them (and the sketch!) during my TRD Creative Team announcement the other day.
The second one uses the Grit and Grace collection — a stunning new release coming on November 7.
And… I made my first-ever digital scrapbook layout!!! I used Canva, and honestly, it turned out pretty good for my first try. I’m starting to appreciate digital scrapbooking because I can totally see myself doing it while traveling — “scrapbooking” in real time while memories are still fresh. Still, nothing beats the charm of old-school, paper-and-glue scrapbooking.
Life lately
We managed to do our annual clothes donation again, now our third year doing so! Here in Saudi, there are convenient donation drop-off bins all around the city, which makes it so easy to give back.
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| That's how it looks when open. The bags are the bags of clothes we donated. |
October felt pretty busy — for both me and Ton, especially Ton with work. But last Wednesday, we sneaked in a little midweek date night after errands and tried Ojo Restaurant. It’s such a pretty place, and the food was really good!
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| Yaki Tori Chicken |
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| Chinese Fried Rice |
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| Shrimp Popcorn |
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| Raspberry Mojito |
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| Gyoza Chicken |
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| Chinese Noodle |
Bits of Christmas have started showing up around Al Ahsa too!
Starbucks already rolled out their "seasonal" merchandise — hello, red cups! Friends from the Philippines who used to be here with us in KSA have asked to have a couple of these brought home already.
Flying Tiger had some “winter” plushies and Christmas pens, but that was it. I saw a Riyadh blogger post their branch though, and it was super Christmasy! So I guess the lack of stock in Al Ahsa is just a province thing and not a KSA one.
Weekend getaway to Bahrain
We spent the weekend in Bahrain and tried a new Filipino restaurant, PinaSarap (a wordplay on Pinas and sarap). The staff was friendly, the bagnet was delicious, but the binagoongan was… interesting. hehe. Still, the bagnet totally made up for it!
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| Binagoongang Bagnet and Lumpiang Toge |
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| Kare Kareng Bagnet |
We stayed at Fraser Place again and even got our usual upgrade.
In the evening, we checked out The Avenues Mall to see if they celebrate Halloween there. There were some activities like face painting, but no real Halloween decorations, except for a coffee shop that had tiny pumpkin toys. At Lulu Grocery, two staff members were wearing scary costumes at the entrance (more annoying than scary haha), and they also had face painting there too.
Of course, I had to visit Flying Tiger! Their Bahrain store had tons of Christmas and Halloween goodies!
We wrapped up Friday with another amazing massage at Haven Spa in Fraser! And yes, it was as relaxing as ever. Ended the night with a bubble bath, of course, with my trusty bath essentials.
Fun fact: it’s confirmed that Fraser has staff who clean guests’ cars in the parking area! Ton actually saw them early in the morning while picking up the bacon and Spam we ordered from a Kabayan there. How cool is that?
A quick stop in Al Khobar
Before heading back to Al Ahsa, we dropped by the Khobar Season Market in Ajdan Walk to check out pricing for our upcoming winter market. Based on what we saw, I think our prices are pretty competitive! The only question is whether handmade crafts appeal to locals and expats here — we’ll soon find out.
And yes, we made a quick stop at Boba T for my favorite Boba T Special Surprise (look at these adorable plushies I got!).
Christmas countdown: 52 days to go!
I’ve mentioned before that my decorating doesn’t really stop until Christmas — I’m one of those people who keeps tweaking and adding little things all season long. But I think our tree is officially done for this year! This year’s theme: pink Christmas!
For decor, I signed up for two different Christmas countdown events — one by Craft with Sarah and another by Jennifer Maker. The projects I make for those will definitely end up as part of our living room decorations (and maybe even sneak into the Christmas corner of my craft room). Plus, anything from my Winter Market Christmas stock that doesn’t get sold will totally find a space in our home too. Hehe.
And for my reading corner, here are all the books I finished in October, including three from last week! I’ve kind of paused watching House for now, but hey, finishing three books last week so it's ok!
Gratitude journaling and my first pet
Before I wrap this up, journaling friends — come join Traci Reed’s November Gratitude Prompts! ’ll be joining too, though I haven’t decided if I’ll blog it, journal it, or just write a few lines in my Happy Planner (space might be an issue). But I'll probably do it all of these ways and just document them digitally after so they're uniform in one way. You can check out her prompt list here.
Prompt #1: A pet or animal I’m thankful for.
For this one, I made another digital scrapbook layout dedicated to my first “official” pet, Lucy. She’s my first because she was the one I truly took responsibility for in terms of feeding, vet visits, and all — with my own adult money. Lucy had several litters over the years and made a lot of my friends happy when I gave them kittens from each one. Our current cat, Lucky, is actually from her last litter — the sole survivor before Lucy crossed the rainbow bridge.
So yep, that’s life lately — a lot of crafting, a little traveling, a lot of pink Christmas charm, and maybe too much coffee. Can’t wait to see what November brings next!
“Roses are red, violets are blue This planner is amazing and so are you"
ReplyDeleteI'm so proud of you and Ton always "giving back" .
"Do al the good you can, to all the people you can, in all the ways you can, as long as you can, " - DL Moody
Never thought that a rich country like Saudi would have a donation drop off bins.
Al Khobar photos were nice.
And I really love the November gratitude prompts which by the way I'm going to ask you to print one for me so I may put it on my ref door- pls pls pretty please.... and thanks in advance😊
Remembering Lucy, you loved her so much that she gave back the love giving Lucky to you and Ton.
BTW your table top Christmas 🎄 looks amazing!
In anticipation of your November happenings. So excited on your upcoming bazaar. Good Luck!
-aMOMymous