The last few days of 2011.

Just a couple of pictures collected for the last few days of 2011, really!

 Having the photos printed | Mom's spectacular shrimp and garlic pasta in the middle of the week | Carissa's Christmas gift, nomnomnom | My baby nephew's first birthday | His birthday cupcakes | New Keds-like dark blue shoes from Payless (wonderfully half the price of classic Keds!) | And a soft leathery LuLu bag for the weekend which wonderfully fits my essentials and a book! Thanks, Mom and Dad. :D

Cannot believe time flies by so fast! I wish I could stay in the memory of this year's summer forever, but alas, we must grow up. Le sigh.

The Giveaway Winners

Finally drew the winners today (a day early so that the winners know they won already and we can all enjoy New Year's Eve!). First off, thanks very much to all of you for joining! You've made me and my sponsors very happy!

I listed the entries in Excel and randomized them again via Random.org's List Randomizer, and then ran the True Random Generator to pick out three numbers.

And without further ado, the winners!

Christmas That Was

Just a bunch of pics, really, of what transpired two days before Christmas to two days after it: an epic seven-hour Monopoly Deal marathon; what I wore to ze high school barkada dinner; Mom's baked cookies; The Best of Chico & Delamar's Top Ten from Mom (because I've recently become a Rusher, YAY!); Aloe Vera juice from Korean Del Monte; wrapping Christmas gifts; the annual Christmas Eve get-together; the cousins drinking; Christmas lunch; cutiepatootie time with the cutest shihtzu puppy Pepper; just snippets of Christmas gifts this year (LOOK! A Fully Booked gift card, YAY!); a vintage leather purse; a perfect polka dot shirt for the New Year; and OMGGGGG an RF cap from Mariel! WOOOT WOOT. (Yes, I've long been a tennis fan, and it has been many dreamers' dream to get a cap with Federer's logo on it.) 

Thought I'd use Chai's curve to try it out on most if not all of these pictures, and it does make a whole lot of difference! I love it. I've never attempted post-processing pictures using Curves before (I always just went by blending changes, vibrance, Color Balance, Brightness/Contrast, Saturation and whatnot), so now I think I will. Thank you, Chai. :)

Happy Christmas!

I just wanna send out the greetings before getting ready for tonight's festivities!

Have a wonderful Christmas Eve and God bless! 

Love,

Carla

P.S.

Four days left for you to join the giveaway! Join now before it's too late :)

I'm in the middle of experimenting postcards and whatnot, so watch out for that around January!

Le Christmas Wishlist

Background Source

Here's a rather gay-with-all-those-hearts and happy wishlist I have for this Christmas:

Washi tape! 

I've heard it's only available in Heima, but I do know you can order it in Multiply as well (I know; I've searched. HAHA!). 

Postcards. 

That photo is from Fikafikafika, which, btw, is such a delightful store.

A Fuji Instax camera.

More red velvet cupcakes!

Ala-riding shoes from Ichigo.

A cute leather log purse from Ichigo. Two lovely bags received this season, yay!

A geometric necklace from Wear Mauve! 

(Heaven knows how I've been going back again and again to that store!)

A pleated midi skirt! 

That picture is from Chick Flick, btw.

And MORE WASHI TAPE! 

I really want those washi tapes. They're so adorable, fufufu. :3 

I think they retail for PHP150 in stores, but it's cheaper online by PHP50. Still, though, if you include shipping, I suppose it's still the same price. Point is, I WANT THEEEEEEM. *sigh* So if you've got spare change in your pocket and are feeling nice, do give me one roll. HAHA! *facepalm*

Anywho, if you still haven't joined, join my giveaway before it's too late!

If you haven't done your charitable part, donate and help Typhoon Sendong victims in Mindanao.

Shooting Candidly

 I didn't get to stay for the end of this year's Lantern Parade (which I'm hoping is my last as a student), but on the bright side, I did get to see my first and hopefully my last Oblation Run. Stupidly enough, I didn't snap any pictures of that event, mostly because I was dumbfounded when I found myself along the lines of the AS corridor, with nothing left to do but watch as the naked frat men ran past me and a lot of other people. Most of them were in the right mind to whip out their cameras and document the once-a-year event while I stood there, scandalized and thinking I was so lucky (really!) to have an awesome view of the, er, men. I didn't look, though, and tried my best to call my friends, who were in some other viewing site and were apparently screaming their butts off. Hehehe. 

So while I didn't get to stay long enough to even watch the beginning of the parade, I did get to photograph what I love most - people, whether candidly or with consent. Every Lantern Parade, that usually means my friends and my batchmates,. :) 

(The lighting wasn't too great, and while I would love to edit these full-blast, I didn't, and simply did the post-process brightness/color adjustment.) 

Val and Merri, my crazy friends!

More friends! Yay.

An orange/red velvet cupcake from Celine! Yay. 

The bold yellow colors of our building and the brickwork.

The Carillon, jutting out in the distance. 

I love UP. I have to admit that part of the reason why I chose to go there was because of those
lovely canopies of trees, intertwining right at the center of the Oval where they meet. 

We didn't march with the college this year, YAY! I've waited four years to earn the right to be a spectator instead!

Crazy friend Val. HAHA!

Just the crazy past week.

Thesis submission's finally over and done with, at least for this part of the semester. (The above pictures are the perspectives I did for the submission. YAY Photoshop and Kerkythea! And yes, I'm doing a zoo.) That was one crazy weekend, and as always, I wish I could have done better. Here's to hoping for a confident and encouraging 'go' from our thesis faculty, that they may be feeling the Christmas spirit and bestow upon all of us thesis students a definite yes to proceeding to the next step! 

Apart from that, I finally got my pretty notebook from Tabula Rasa. My friend Eandra along with her other friend started selling a new line of notebooks specially made to inspire and encourage us design students with quotes from famous creative people.

Excuse the graininess as I only took these with my camera phone!

Reasons for purchasing? For one, I love and collect notebooks. For another, they're blank! The pages are soft and cream-colored, and I like that the size I ordered is almost half the size of an A4 sheet of paper. While I already have my official thesis schematics notebook, I'm saving this one for the new year. :) I adore the butterfly wing on the cover and the fact that the quote is quite the spirit-mover. :)

Beginnings of Christmas

Christmas decorations are slowly but surely adorning the house, and today I began wrapping the tree with last year's lights. I ran out of still-working strands from last year, and had to abandon continuing decorating it further. *sigh* That and while I was supposed to go out and work on my thesis in some coffee shop, I didn't - mostly because my mom suggested just doing that on Monday (and she didn't trust me with the car just yet to drive on my own) and my brother didn't want to drive me. :( Huhu. 

The cute belen is back! Hihi. I love that they're all so round.

YAY! Christmas prezzies for the girlfriends (college and high school). Yeah, decided to go practical this year and give out hand sanitizer. Order 15 pieces from One Beverly Shop for only PHP495!

My work table. And yes, that's The Hunger Games beside my laptop, because I flipped through it again today.

Sketchup-ing the thesis model. HUHUHU. 

Untangling the lights 

Reflections of the pretty lights off the window. :">

I'm feeling the Christmas spirit already, YAY! While the holidays aren't the same anymore and some of my favorite relatives are moving and have moved to greener pastures, or are deceased or something, I can't help but love this season so much. I think it's my favorite, if only for the awesome memories it has given me in the past twenty years. :)