These photos have been kept in a shoebox hidden in my closet for years. These are just a few from a big pile. The shoebox is filled with all sorts of old photos taken by my grandpa who I call Papa Ners. Papa Ners always loved taking photos & videos of daily life including all the travels he did. I’m guessing that these photos were taken with a poloroid. I love them! It’s beautiful to see the world as he saw it back then.
Capturing bits & pieces of daily life taken with Instagram on iphone 4S. Happy Friday everyone! Christmas is already next weekend. Yay!
Here’s to a new chapter of Luna’s monthly photos. Thanks for the recommendations of changing up the set every year. Great idea! I was getting tired of the red chair and alphabet poster so I needed a change myself. The poster on the background was designed by Peter and I for our talented friends, Jonathan & Anita of Rollout.
Luna loves pesto pasta (just like her mama!), cakes, doughnuts, chocolates & her yellow shoes. She loves her yellow shoes so much that we sometimes hear her talking in her sleep whispering “yellow shoes, yellow shoes”. She’s also had a few nightmares lately where she screams out “choco milk, choco milk!”. Apparently, chocolate milk can be very scary.
Luna’s favourite song to dance to with Peter is UMI Says by Mos Def. Every night when Peter comes home, they dance to it together and it has to be played over and over again until dinner is served. She’s got some awesome moves too which totally works with the song. I video taped her dancing to it one night so I might just post it up one day.
Our home is featured on Design Sponge today and some of you couldn’t believe that our home in a little seaside village outside of Vancouver can look like the North Pole in the wintery months. Our winters are usually pretty mild but we’ve had a good share of bad winters. Don’t these photos look like they were taken in the North Pole? I took these photos in December 2008. What you see is the beach (Boundary Bay beach) at the end of our street. It was covered in snow and ice. We walked on it but got too afraid to walk too far as we weren’t sure how thick the ice was. Those footprints you see are not polar bear footprints, they are ours! It’s beautiful isn’t it?
Happy Monday everyone! It’s sunny and gorgeous here in Vancouver which makes for a good start of the week. And, another reason for why this Monday is special is because our home is featured on Design Sponge today! Thanks to Anne for taking the time to put our story together. You can see the sneak peek of our home here.
Every holiday season, I always like to think of different ways of how we can give back. This year, I have started a tradition with Luna to give back to children her age. It’s a simple shoebox project organized by the Samaritan Purse.
All you have to do is find an old shoebox. Determine the child’s age category and if it’s a boy or girl. I decided to give it to a little girl with the same age as Luna. That way, Luna will have a sense of connection with it and understand that she is helping another girl her age somewhere far far away and she’s making her own small difference in this world to help a child in need. Once you’ve determined the age category and sex of the child, all you have to do is fill in the box with all sorts of things. So off we went to our local shopping mall. While choosing what items to buy, I kept on thinking of the basic necessities a girl Luna’s age needs most. If Luna was this girl, what would she need? So I filled the box with pink & white socks, little girls undies, shirts, colourful pencils, drawing notebooks, colourful hair ties, soap & a toothbrush. But how can I not give a child fun things too? So I included some stickers, candycane and a small teddy.
Luna helped me pack the box with all the things we bought. Then once everything was tucked inside the box, Luna took the teddy, gave it a quick little kiss and a hug before we squeezed it back into the box.
When we dropped it off, the lady said that the children in Ethiopia should receive them by January. Oh, how I wish I could see the little girls face when she opens her box. A special gift from Luna to another little girl living on the other side of the world.
Congrats to Kate & Jojo for winning our first ever giveaway partnered with Bloesem Living! And thanks to all of you who had participated and gave us a lot of ideas on what products you would like to see in the The New Domestic Shop – we’ve taken notes of all your awesome ideas! Thank you.
As soon as I finished Luna’s First Year of Life book, I promised myself that I would continue doing these books for her and document her life year by year. And now, we have Luna’s Year 2 Book! Just like her first book, I spent a year working on this. It’s a 222 page book with different chapters for every month of her life. I would spend a few hours per month working on a chapter which helped a lot. Otherwise, It’s a huge project to take on if it’s all done at once. It can get quite overwhelming. I find having different chapters also helps when looking through the book. It’s a lot of pages with a lot of photographs to look at so the chapters almost becomes a little breather and a pause before starting a new chapter with more photos.
Just like last years book, I always start with a little write up summarizing that year. Here’s what I wrote for this years book:
To my daughter Luna,
I had promised myself that I would continue to create these books for you as a memory of all the wonderful days we’ve spent watching you grow and become a beautiful little girl. When you’re older, you may not remember all of these special times that we’ve spent with you and all the milestones you had accomplished. Thus, this book documents all of our happiest memories together as you explored the world from month 13-24. The biggest accomplishment this year was learning to walk and talk. As soon as you started walking, I was there beside you holding your hand as we walked down the street together side by side. I never left your side. I knew from that day on that I would see the world in a brand new way – I was rediscovering the world as you explored it for the first time. It’s been such a joy watching you explore the world with so much enthusiasm to learn and feel things. You’ve opened our eyes and made this world a lot more colourful by pointing out and expressing all the little things you’ve discovered – birds flying, leaves on the ground, gravel on pavement, flowers blooming, airplanes flying overhead. You have helped us see and appreciate all the little beauties of this world. My hope is that when the day comes and I am no longer here with you, this book will tell a story of the beautiful life we spent together and the love we have for you. There are no words to describe this love but this book tells it all.
Love, Mommy
I’ve been getting a lot of emails this past year from such lovely moms who I have inspired from Luna’s First Year of Life book with questions on how they can do the same for their little one. I use Blurb to print the books and since I have a design background, her books are totally custom. All I have to do is download their indesign plugin and use that to custom design her book. Below are the specs I used for Luna’s books:
- Standard Landscape (10×8″)
- Hardcover, image wrap
- Premium paper, matte finish
I hope I have inspired more moms to do these yearly books. It’s not that much work if you just spend a few hours a month working on it. It’s so rewarding to see it printed as you flip through the pages and see a life full of happiness.
xo, Nerissa
My little girl is growing up. I finally finished Luna’s year book two and is on it’s way! I can’t wait to see it printed. It’s so nice to see her monthly photos side by side and to see the comparison from year one & year two. You can see how she’s so much more playful in year two and her personality shows more. I almost gave up on these monthly photos and only missed 1 month (month 21) but I’m so glad I continued doing it and plan to continue until she decides she’s had enough. I’m debating if I should keep the red chair & alphabet poster for her year 3 monthly photos or completely change it up. What do you think?
It gets a little harder to get her to sit down for long periods so towards the end of year two, I had less than a minute to capture her sitting on her chair. Mmmm…. I’m already late for her month 25 photo. Gotta get on it!
I just started using Instagram and loving it! I like following peoples photographers as it shows snapshots from around the world. But sometimes, I think people are from places they are not because of the subject on their photos. When I was looking at my photostream on Saturday, it could have been from several places from around the world but it was all shots I took in Vancouver.
My Saturday felt like a culinary trip around the world. We started off at Joe Fortes for old school New York style brunch with Oysters Rockefeller and classic Bennys. Then it was off to Thierry for french style patisserie for sweets. Dinner was Japanese Izakaya at Guu Garden. We were stuffed by end of day but definitely a Saturday filled with yummy goodness mixed in with good company.
Bon Journey bags are temporarily sold out! We couldn’t be happier with the response we got on these bags and just didn’t have enough stock to keep up with the demand. We will be getting some more in January!
To make sure you get a hold of one of these bags before it sells out again, you can place your order now for the January shipment (I already have a few on hold). These bags are all made (painted) to order so the sooner you place your order, the sooner I will be able to paint your bag when they arrive and send them off to you ASAP.
We are happy to announce our very first giveaway with one of our very favourite blogs! We have partnered up with talented Tiffany King from Bloesem Living and we are giving away Seawind & Willows and Eye of the Storm. So this means there will be 2 winners! That just gives you a better chance of winning one of our totes.
To enter, head over to Bloesem Living blog and simply leave a comment on what products you would like to see in The New Domestic Shop.
Good luck!