Blank cards

Finally I found some time to work on some stationary. Made a few blank cards for all the Thank You cards I'm sending to people.

Ella's nursery

A few months ago during winter break, I enlisted my 2 very talented cousins, Charming William and Lovely Emily, to help me paint Ella's nursery. Since this room was just recently painted with a rich dark blue hue, we didn't want to paint again. Therefore, we decided on a night forest scene with lots of birds and owls perched within trees. We then went out to search for stylized images in shops around the City that fit our vision. My initial idea is to have the images to be either simple geometric shapes or with an Anime flare.

At our first stop, SF MOMA giftshop, I found some postcards by two different artists that had many images of birds with the geometric shapes, but they weren't exactly what I was picturing in my head. The next stop was Kinokuniya Bookstore in Japantown, where we came upon a book with illustrations from a group of local artists, Gama-Go.

We purchased the book and went to town with it. First, a few illustrations that fit our theme were chosen and outlined with white color pencils.

Emily worked on the wall that is opposite the door, the main wall. The scene here is owls perched on leafless trees.


William based one of the illustrations on our beloved Sherbu.


Next, we filled in with leftover house paint, which we had a gazillion cans of. It was like working with a large coloring book!!


The entire project took about 3 days altogether. It was really quite fun. We just hope that Ella won't want to paint over all our hardwork anytime soon. Maybe when she goes to college...

Here's the finished room! We also worked Ella's name into the design, can you find it?



Her view of the room in the crib.

A day in the life of Sherbu...

Helloooo World, I've arrived!

After 9 1/2 hours of labor and 45 mins of pushing, little Ella Penelope Young joined our family on April 20th, 2009 at 4:30 am. She debuted at 7 lbs 8oz, 21 inches, and with a full healthy set of lungs. She was also very curious of her new surroundings and starting looking around right away.


This was the next 24 hours. Mostly sleeping and the occasional dirty diapers.


At 3 days old, Ella was eating more and spent a little more time just looking around.

Herbs in a can

I got these coffee from Cafe Du Monde last year in New Orleans, and had wanted to use them for herb planting ever since. Finally, all of the coffee have been consumed (or dumped in my flowerbed). We now have basil, pepermint, and cilantro at our fingertips.

Baby Cakes

Recently I've received 2 very special cakes for welcoming Ella. Both are made by extremely creative individuals and are very original and unique.

This Beautiful cake is made from all diapers! It was given to me by my friend Shirley. A very impressive creation for a first timer!! Thanks! We love it :)


This little garden themed cake was made by a very talented co-worker, Angie. Her hobby is to make cupcakes and boy is she GOOD! I thought it was fake at first glance. I brought it home to share with some friends and family after dinner that night and everyone were equally amazed by the appearance and the taste!

New toys for parents to be

Besides busy preparing for the baby, we've also been searching for new toys for ourselves. Didn't want all the toys to just go to Ella.

We purchased a new camera to capture all those upcoming special moments. It was a toss up between the Canon G10 (which Martha swears by) and this beautifully made Panasonic Lumix. We decided on this camera because of its ability to take beautiful photos in low light conditions, which is perfect for a newborn, and its compactness. We've always had somewhat bulky cameras, but now with the baby coming, it'll be much easier to toss this into the bag and go. Of course, it's beautiful retro design (classic rangefinder cameras of the 40's -60's) and the Leica case that happens to be compatible was a huge deciding factor. Afterall, who can escape vanity?? The big plus is that it takes wide angle lenses, which is a big plus when shooting indoors.


Another toy we've been keeping an eye on is a turntable. Our last one broke down a couple of years ago, and we haven't been able to listen to all our vinyls since. Tim found this used Bang & Olufsen on Craigslist for a really really good bargain, so we had to have it. This timeless design of clean and simple lines of brushed aluminum and wood accents is appropriate today as it was in the early 80's.


Now that we're both satiated with our new toys, we can focus on being selfless parents (or parents to be) at least for a while.