Malaysia scrapbook

My mum passed away in 2006 & according to my custom (Hindu), we observe a year of mourning at the end of which we have a ceremony, like a memorial. The plan was that we, as a family, would go back to Malaysia for 3 weeks, like we always do but 7 months after losing my mum, hubby's mum passed away in Feb 2007. Neil understandably didn't want to leave his dad & be so far away... I didn't want to leave Neil alone... so we decided that I'd go alone for my mum's ceremony but only for one week & leave the boys with Neil. I've had to leave & travel without the boys for various reasons over the years, something I've grown to detest but I couldn't not attend the ceremony.

Meantime, my friend Hatty had lost a dear friend then her grandad had passed on... I'd joked about her coming back to Malaysia with me... Anyway, one thing led to another & it turned out that it was feasible, her coming with me. So that's how we ended up going back to my hometown together & despite the emotions, it was fab, seeing the city I'd grown up in through someone else's eyes.

Afterwards, I made Hatty a scrapbook about our trip and that's the reason why its taken me TWO years to make a similar scrapbook for myself! It was fun though, reliving the memories...

I decorated the colourful album (part of a kit from 'Creating Keepsakes') with tropical cut-outs & part of my airline ticket...

In the 'car' card are printouts of the emails & texts Hatty & I exchanged leading up to the trip.

Instead of trying to squeeze in the journaling for each day onto the pages, I wrote it out separately & placed the journaling pages in an envelope glued onto the back cover of the album.