Project Life, a wedding, and more

Did you watch?

Did you rise early to see the Prince get married? I did, although I was getting up early anyway, so it wasn’t a special thing that I got up so stinkin’ early. But I have to say, it was beautiful. She was simply gorgeous – elegant, regal and so feminine. And the princes looked so relaxed, Harry even joking around.

The girls (my girls) were cute – I woke them to see the wedding (it was time for them to get up anyway) and Little Bit wasn’t sure she wanted to wake up for the wedding or not. “Can I go back to sleep afterward?” uh, no. “Then no, I don’t want to watch.”

But I think they loved it anyway.

On another note –

My Project Life kit arrived! Hooray!

I spent a little time yesterday starting to get things together. I have been snapping pictures for a few weeks with this project in mind, although I don’t have that much from January/February, March onwards is covered pretty well.

After looking at lots of other Project Life pages online, I have decided this year to keep more memorabilia and some of the kids’ schoolwork – this album will be THE place I record 2011 – everything is going to go in there – digital pages, snapshots, everything.

I have everything scattered out on the kitchen table now, but I think I’ll be moving it to my basement scrap space tonight. I can’t stand the mess there and I’m paranoid about getting food or something on the pages.

Finalizing my plans and preparation for my business trip next week. I used to travel all the time for work, but I am so out of practice these days. I have been obsessing about the trip for weeks and have my bags partially packed already. Today I’ll be sneaking in a mani/pedi so that all is groomed and tailored for next week. I’m so accustomed to wearing jeans/yoga pants and casual clothes that it feels a little strange to be planning to dress up, even just a little bit. But it will be fun to be a “grown up” for a few days – not just Mommy in yoga pants who happens to work, too. 🙂

Posts are scheduled throughout the week, but if I miss a day or two, don’t think I’ve forgotten you. I plan to take photos and have plenty to share when I return!

Project Life Update

I spent some time last weekend updating my Project Life album. I hadn’t worked on it since my surgery at the end of February even though I have been taking pictures here and there and saving bits and pieces to put in the album.

I have to say, I am still loving this format and the kit. I also loved how I realized that there were quite a few pictures that, once I put them in here, I didn’t feel the need to create an additional layout in the family scrapbook. I had told the story here and captured the memory… why do duplicate work? I love that! My family book is becoming more of a place to capture more in-depth stories and moments and special events. Project Life is capturing the everyday.

I am even considering inserting some “regular” scrapbook pages in here and making it THE album for the family for the year. Haven’t decided if/how I will do that, though. Just thinking about it.

Here are some of the pages I did. Still have a little journaling to do, but I was not in a writing mood at the time I did this. I will go back and update those this weekend.

If you're visiting from The Mom Creative, welcome and please come back!

Freaking out… just a little

I’m having some surgery on Thursday… nothing serious… just making myself healthier. But, I’m freaking out just a little at the whole idea. It’s a lot to organize – knowing you are going to be out of the house for a few days and out of circulation for a few more after that. I don’t know what is freaking me more – the surgery itself, or the logistics of all the things going on around here that have to keep going even if I’m not here to do them.

So, with all that said, I may (or may not) be somewhat sporadic in my blog posts over the next week or so. Bear with me. I am coming back, I promise.

Ok, enough with all that –

Here are some Project Life pictures for the past week:

Want to see more Project Life pictures? Check out the Mom Creative for more Project Life Tuesday posts.

I promised circus pictures, but I have over a hundred to sort through before I do that. Maybe tomorrow.

Oh, and if you have read this far I have two more things:

1. Thank you. Thank you for reading my blog entries, for commenting, and for caring enough to come back and see what I have to say each day.

2. I wanted to know: what do you like most about my entries? What type do you like the best? The scrapbook layouts, pages,templates? Stories about my family adventures? Random observations about parenting? None of the above? Let me know! I’d really like to hear from you.

Project Life Tuesday (er, Wednesday)

I hope that you enjoyed Kate’s guest post yesterday – and visiting a few new blogs as well! I had great fun hosting Kate and posting on Helen’s blog. We are hoping to do that on a monthly basis, so you’ll be hearing more from those ladies in the future. Let me know what you thought of the swap in the comments. I’d love to hear your impressions!

Here’s my Project Life post – a day late but better late than never:

And the pages are in-progress as well:

I am already working on this week’s pages – I went ahead and printed the pictures I had so far and stuck them in the pages.

You may notice that this week I used a white border on my pictures. I think I like it better than the rounded corners of the week before. I think it sets the pictures off a little.

What do you think?

Project Life Tuesday

I started my Project Life album this weekend. I got through the entire month of January in less than an hour, including journaling all except last week. I am just thrilled with that little statistic.

To me, that is one of the beautiful things about this kit. Everything is laid out for you, coordinated and organized. All I have to do is put my pictures in and do my journaling. How simple is that?!? Heck, I might actually make it all year if it is going to be this easy to do!

Here are some pictures of the pages I completed.

Cover Page
I decided to include a picture of the family on this page
and I stamped the year on one of the cards.

(you can click on the pictures for a larger view)For this week (the first week of Jan) I included a picture from New Year’s Day just because it was silly and I liked it. The rest of the pictures are from the snow that we had at the end of the week. All of the pictures are from a two day period of time, but I decided that it was a momentous enough occasion that I wanted to dedicate the whole two pages to it.

I have also decided to do my pages Friday-Thursday because New Year’s Day was on a Friday.

I have also decided to include more memorabilia this year than I did last year. Why I didn’t think about it then, I don’t know. Sometimes a piece of ephemera is more appropriate to capture a day’s memories than a picture. Anyhow, I used movie theater tickets for one weekend. We went to two movies in a weekend – almost unheard of for us – but with the cold temps and snow we had to do something to get out of the house for a few hours!

I have also decided that I am going to include bits and pieces from the girls’ schoolwork, awards, etc in this album. Because it is a 3-ring it is so easy to just pop in an 8.5×11 page protector and include the extras. I love that. I have always struggled with what to do with the things they bring home that I love and want to keep but that I didn’t really want to take up an entire page in a 12×12 album. This is a perfect solution.

As a matter of fact, I am seriously thinking I will move to the 3-ring format for more and more of my albums. I started out as a Creative Memories album exclusive kind of girl. Then, in the past few years, I have branched out and tried some post-bound albums. Both offer some great features, and both have some drawbacks. The 3-rings I have shied away from because the albums seem so heavy and bulky. But I am loving the ease of adding pages, moving things around, and my girls commented that it was easier to turn the pages when they are looking through the book. So, I may be trying a new album type this year.

The second page of this spread had exciting pictures like my dog, the scrap space and a sick girl, so I didn’t bother taking another picture.

I don’t know if you noticed, but I also decided I am not doing anything special with the “heading” card. I am just hand-writing the dates and circling the months. I decided that I was not going to stress myself out with this book by trying to make it “artsy” or extra-crafty. I am going to release myself from that expectation and just focus on capturing the pictures and stories. (and it feels good!)

Are you doing Project Life or a similar project? How are you approaching it? Leave me a comment and let me know (this means you!)

My Project Life

I’m starting my Project Life this weekend. I am looking forward to sitting down and putting the book together and getting my first few weeks of pictures in the pages. I am determined that this year I will stay more caught up than last year. So, I am hoping that I can sit down at least once a week (or once every two weeks) and get the pictures printed and the journaling done.

I thought I would share some of the pictures I’ve taken the last two weeks – they aren’t terribly exciting because we’ve had strep running amok in our house for the past few weeks. But that is part of what this project is about, right? Capturing everyday life in all it’s nuances. From the exciting to the mundane.

So, here are some of the shots:

Oh, and here is a great link to an article I read about making your Project Life/365 successful. Great ideas.

Weekly Challenge #2 is ready

If you are following along with our Scrap Weekly Challenge Blog, thought I'd let you know the new one is up and ready for viewing.

Here's a hint:

Hop on over and take a look!

Scrapbook Projects for 2010 – what are you doing?

If you are looking for a little inspiration for your scrapbook pages, or a new project to focus on this year, there are tons available:

There is the now-classic “Project 365” for those of you into a photo-a-day project. You can even purchase Becky Higgins’ new Project Life kit to help simplify the process.
One of the gals from the Blogging for Scrapbookers class (Dolly) is offering her own set of prompts: 52 in 10. It’s a weekly challenge.
Shimelle is offering a free class “Document 2010”
Cathy Zielske is offering a template: Seven Days, to document a week in your life. It’s a cool template, regardless of how you use it.
Simple Scrapper is offering Project 10×12, focusing on the top 10 photos each month of the year.

What am I doing?

Well, I tried Project 365 last year. That required a little bit more diligence and dedication than I had in me.

While I love the concept, life is just too busy/crazy for me to remember to take a picture every day, journal something, and then put it all together. I still have pictures from June/July of my P365 album I need to scrap. Nope, that won’t be me again.

I did buy the Project Life kit, though.

And here is what I thought I’d do.

I’m always taking pictures. Some days I take 5, some zero. But I thought I could use that for the quick and easy scrapbooking to document those little bits of life.

I am also curious about Dolly’s class and Shimelle’s class. So I will probably do a few pages based on their prompts as the inspiration strikes me.

Other than that? I am going to focus on two things:

scrapbooking more STORIES this year.
scrapbooking more about me… what my life is like, my hopes, dreams, thoughts, etc. I want my girls to know what life was like when they were little (when and if they read the scrapbooks when they are older) and I want to document what my life is like right now so I can look back one day and remember life with my little ones.

What about you? What are your projects for this year?

New Jessica Sprague Idea/Inspiration Book

I am new to the world of Jessica Sprague. But I have very quickly become an avid follower. She has very well put-together classes, great content on her website and is always coming out with nifty things to inspire, help, encourage the scrapbooker in me.

Her newest nifty thing she announced today: Inspiration in Hand, a quarterly (FREE) book which will include ideas for “layouts, stories and projects to spark your creativity.”

I am downloading my copy now – you should too!

Puppy Love

I’m finding more and more inspiration for scrapbook pages in reading online blogs and looking at websites selling pre-made digital templates.

Because I’m not using PhotoShop, most of those templates are not much use to me. It is easier to make my own in StoryBook Creator than to figure out how to re-layer the many files that are sent with a downloaded template. (I’ve tried it on a few freebies and decided it was way more trouble than it’s worth)

What I have been doing, though, is much like what we do when we’re scrapbooking traditionally. (and I use this technique for both digital and traditional pages) I simply “eyeball” the page and make my own version using rough estimates on what sizes the pictures are and where the embellishments are placed. This challenge has been fun and I have been enjoying seeing if I can reproduce what I see online with some relative semblance of accuracy. Here’s an example:

I saw this layout from Designer Digitals:

And decided to create this layout:

You will notice I took some creative license with my design. I didn’t add the dotted/stitched border. I added an additional embellishment. I had planned to put a background in there once I was finished, but then I decided I liked the clean look of the white page, so I left it.

I’ve been thinking about doing a page on Sydney for a while, and have been waiting for the right inspiration to hit. Well, one look at that layout and I was ready to go.

Inspiration can come from many places. You can be inspired by a picture, by an advertisement, by colors, fabrics, sunrises, etc. The trick is to be open to the muse and either act on it right away or write your ideas down so that you can act later.

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