What are you most proud of in 2008?

Have you looked back on your blog posts in 2008? Its very interesting to see what happened in a span of a year. Thanks to Anette over at our Illustration for kids forum for suggesting this great topic: "What are you most proud of in 2008?"

Highlights of my year:
-Attending the SCBWI winter conference in February.

-Meeting many blog friends in person!!! Hello Alicia, Kim, Leeza, Courtney, Gina, Deborah, Edrian, and fellow Illustration for kids member Jenn!

-Seeing my book, The Haunted Ghoul Bus at Barnes and Nobles front and center. Truly a dream come true.

-My Scholastic's "I'm Reading Now!" series coming out, seeing it in the book club catalog. I was working on this non-stop for a year. So good to see the fruits of my labor!

-Doing a signing at the Friends of lulu/MoCCA table at the NY ComicCon. I felt so cool for an hour...hehe!

-Attending my rep, MB artists' party and meeting so many clients and fellow artists. Such a treat for a freelancer that works from home!

-Getting many interesting and full filling projects, which I can't talk about now, but many will be out in 2009.

I can't mention highlights of this year without also mentioning about getting engaged. :-) Also, the trip to France and San Francisco was also wonderful. I love traveling.

My goals for 2009:
I'm going to keep it short this year....since there are lot of things that will be going on for me personally.

I'm planning to just CREATE.
-write and illustrate- finish one dummy book
-create artwork for licensing/products/greeting cards
-re-vamp and update my website

Happy new year to you all! What are some of your highlights of 08 and goals for 09? I would love to hear about it.

Roast Duck and Asian American Children's Books

Its MY Roast duck restaurant!

I've been wanting to do illustrations that have anthropomorphic animals in an Asian type setting for a while now. I don't see much of that in American children's books and I miss that. Usually when there are any type of Asian American children's books, its usually to teach Americans about Asian culture, so they don't use anthropomorphic animals. Its usually happy Asian children celebrating some sort of Asian holiday.

I was looking through my Japanese children's books and was so pleasantly surprised to see animals eating noodle soup with chopsticks...its just so cute and fun. I guess if it was anyone's responsibility to incorporate that in their work, its me.

Of course, I wouldn't have the evil butcher guy to the right in a children's book and give little children nightmares. Or would I!?! (insert evil laughter here)

Christmas Stickers

Here are some Christmas stickers I designed for the greeting cards class I was taking at School of Visual Arts with Cheryl Phelps. I became one of those students who showed up with very little work....which defeated the purpose of taking the class in the first place. I've been pretty busy (very thankful right now in this economy.) It was a great class though and I felt very inspired. Cheryl is a great artist and very open and generous with information. (thank you!) I would love to take this class again.

I'm off to San Francisco for Christmas! I definitely need the warmer weather and a change of scenery. Happy holidays to all of you!

Chicken....I mean, Christmas...Tree

Its been very busy here but I managed to get a mini Christmas tree and put up the few ornaments that I have....yes, thats right- chicken ornaments. Friends always manage to get me all chicken things- and ornaments are no exception!

I hope I'll post some more before the holidays. I want to thank you Edrian Thomidis for giving me an Uber Amazing blog award and Vela over at Little Star Soup for tagging me. I've been meaning to use the tag to do a favorite podcasts list....hopefully I'll get to that soon. In the meanwhile, keep warm :-)

HighFive Magazine and Scholastic book club

A few things printed recently:
My spread from this month's High Five magazine.

And here are my I'm Reading Now! series in Scholastic's Firefly book club catalog, November.

Yay! :-)

PikaPackage #5

Just wanted pop in here to quickly mention that I am in this month's PikaPackage giveaway and a little interview in The PikaPackage Zine....along with alot of other fabulous artists! Head over for a chance to win the giveaway here, and you can download the zine here.
And my contribution to the PikaPackage! If you don't know what a PikaPackage is, head over to Pikaland.com for more details.

Thank you for all the comments on my holiday cards this year. I'm busy trying to get them together to send to friends, family, and clients. More later!