Project Life March 2016

I embraced March's color scheme of green, brown, and gold. And I kept my embellishments to a minimum. Page one includes pics of my birthday cake (omg so yummy) and some random pics of Arthur. Of course I had to add a few alphas.

Page two collects my favorite vertical pics from the month. I try to stick to Design A page protectors, but sometimes I have great vertical pis to include.

Page three highlights our monthly trip the Oakland Zoo. I finally used some of the leftover safari stickers in my stash. Hard to see in these pics, but definitely noticeable in real life.

Page four starts our trip to Indiana. I finally got a great shot of San Francisco as we took off from the airport. We always seem to be on the wrong side of the plane. I also included a few shots from O'Hare and random pis of Arthur. And I used up a ton of the green heart stickers I had laying around.

Page five includes pics from a visit to Grandma and Grandpa's house and our unexpected trip to Muncie for Nick's doctor appointment. I repeated the lime green stickers but used the flowers on this page.

Page six is all about the twins' birthday party. Not the best pics, but they were all action shots in an oddly lit place.

Page seven -- Easter egg dyeing! Loving this page. The pictures are so busy that I didn't use much embellishment at all.

Page eight finishes out the month with pictures from our family Easter dinner. And I got to use some Easter specific cards from the PL Seasons Mini Kit.

Not included: Four pages of pics from the mom's retreat.

Project Life January 2015 Part 1

Title Page For Volume 1 of 2015, I wanted to create a title page using fun bright colors.  I wanted a family photo, but J refuses to get his picture taken. So instead I just put our names. I added the "Home" stamp (and colored it in) and star brad (at our approximate location) to the map card. "You are my whole heart" is an overlay that I placed on top of the fun chevron card. I added a bit of journaling to the "hello" card and some sequins all over the page. Lastly I added the silver glitter numbers as my focal point. I love the brightness of my title card.

January - 1st half

This year I am doing my spreads monthly instead of weekly. This has freed me so much. i don't have to stress about getting the right amount or orientation of pictures for each week. And I can group like photos (e.g. preschool photos throughout the month) if I want to. I have also decided to take my color cues from the Echo Park Through the Year month cards. January's color scheme is blue and gray. I sorted through some of my giant stash of PL cards for gray and blue. And I sorted through my embellishment stash for similarly hued pieces.

Page 1 features Fort Wayne pictures with a bit of journaling about how we started the month in Indiana. I added an overlay to one of the pictures, some alphas, and a few stickers. The weather photo was taken using Instaweather app. Lots of fun!

Page two is the other Fort Wayne pictures. As it was so cold I got to add the little snowman and snowflake stickers. Unfortunately they don't work for the rest of January in California. I added a few random word stickers and a graphic card to complete the page.

Page three heralded our return to California. Some more word stickers and a cute cloud for my fog picture add to the page. I'm trying to add more story journaling instead of just listing where we went. This card highlights our return home and the three playgrounds we explored this month.

Page four rounds out the first half of my January pages. All I added to this page was the mustache sticker (just thought it was too cute!) and a small word sticker on the top left photo. I also journaled about us hosting preschool the first week back. Fun fun!

Supplies:

• Echo Park Through the Year
• PL Seasons
• Random alphas and embellishments

30 Days of Gratitude: Days 5-10

For the first time, I'm participating in 30 Days of Gratitude.  I even joined a FB group with other listers. While many use mini albums to document, I created a simple insert to my regular PL pages. You can see my prep work in this post. Once the month started, I realized that I did't really want the extra duty of picture taking, so I'm going strictly with journaling. I thought I would share my daily cards and a few extra decorative ones.

Day #5: All about sweater weather. It's still warm here, but slightly cooler.  The mornings are cool enough to actually wear a sweater!

Day #6: I knew I wanted to incorporate some of my closest people as part of the month.  Today I am grateful for J.

Day #7: After thinking about J yesterday, I had to highlight being grateful for my littlest boy. After one miscarriage, we got lucky with this incredibly amazing little boy. Can't wait to see what adventures await us during his second year of life.

Day #8: We make a library trip once a week for lots of great picture books and a few novels for me. Currently ours is 1 mile away, perfect for walking to and from.  And they have a great storytime on Tuesday mornings.  We'll have to scout the library after we move. I'm sure Castro Valley has a great one.

Day #9: The first twin, if only because he pushed his way to the front.

Day #10: I've found a great group of friends through my parent's group, the Mountain View Parents Association. We won't be in MV for much longer, but I'll definitely keep up the friendships I've made. Looking forward to our next event and especially mom's night out next weekend.

30 Days of Gratitude: Days 1-5

For the first time, I'm participating in 30 Days of Gratitude.  I even joined a FB group with other listers. While many use mini albums to document, I created a simple insert to my regular PL pages. You can see my prep work in this post. Once the month started, I realized that I did't really want the extra duty of picture taking, so I'm going strictly with journaling. I thought I would share my daily cards and a few extra decorative ones.

Day #1: Today was all about coffee.  Arthur had a rough night and day of not sleeping. Coffee became my best friend. I added some nice navy alphas and cute brown flowers to complete the card.

Day #2: After another rough night, I did not want to cook.  Thankfully we have a great street of restaurants only two blocks away.  The journaling note and flair came from random PL supply stash. I finally found a use for this fork, knife, and spoon flair.

Day #3: Another rough night, but I needed to run a ton of errands with the baby this morning.  Thankfully there's a great local coffee shop near my current house.

Day #4: It was Election Day!  Made me think about all the sacrifices of those who came before (especially people like Alice Paul) who helped make it possible for me to vote today.

Day #5

30 Days of Gratitude Prep

Randomly I decided that I wanted to participate in 30 Days of Gratitude in November. I have seen many great examples using mini albums or small notebooks.  I wanted to prep something ahead of time, but make it something I could incorporate into my usual scrapbooking.  After thinking about it some more, I decided to do two dedicated pages in my Project Life album.

I dug through my PL card stash and found a ton of fall themed/colored cards. I used a ton from WRMK's Harvest collection. Once i chose some great cards, I used the stickers from SU's Days of Gratitude kit to label my inserts. Even though the cards and stickers come from very different kits, the pages flow together nicely.

I have a few special cards thrown into the mix.  I used an overlay from the WRMK Harvest collection for one day.  I also pulled on the "Fall" PL swap cards I received last month.  I love the little felt pumpkin!

Once November hits, I plan on grabbing the day's card and doing a bit of journaling as to what I am grateful for that day.  I may add some more embellishments if time permits.  Or I may wait until the end of the month.  Either way, I will be sharing my completed pages at the end of November.

Project Life 2014 W28-29

Week 28

Week 28 was a huge week for photographs.  I had taken over 200 photos and somehow had to narrow those down to ~20.  I had to include a insert to get all the essential photos for the week.  Because of the colorful nature of the photos included, I limited the embellishments.  In fact, I didn't include any for the pictures of the summer social.

Supplies:

• PL Americana
• PL Seasons
• Enamel dots

Week 29

Another huge picture taking week.  Plus, it was Arthur's 9 month birthday.  So I had to include his 9 month photos.  The rest of the photos are typical shots of our weekly events.  I did add more embellishments for this week, but pulled them from my random stash.  I love the little "Happy Birthday" stickers added to our friend's party.  Very cute!  I even finally used a button on a card.

Supplies:

• PL Seasons
• PL Baby Neutral
• Enamel dots
• Random embellishments

Project Life 2014 W15-16

Week 15 This week was huge!  We flew back from Indiana and had our mom's group's Easter social.  We had so many great pictures that I had to include an insert page (design H).

In terms of my design, I went simple yet colorful.  I pulled out a ton of spring themed cards from the Seasons Mini Kit to accent our colorful pictures.  I grabbed the kit on clearance thinking I would like a few cards.  I found that I love the entire kit.  A great investment. The embellishments stayed on the cards.  I didn't want to alter the pictures.  My favorite added feature is the plane and heart stamp on the first page.  I've used that stamp at least 5 times already and love love love it!  Overall, this spread is a great example of my style: clean and simple.

Supplies:

• PL Seasons Mini Kit
• PL Days of the Week stickers
• SU Travel Themed Stamp Set (retired)
• Stickabilitiies alphas
• Recollections stamp set
• My Mind's Eye die cuts
• Michael's camera stamp
• WRMK Dreamy Kit

Week 16

Week 16 is all about Arthur turning 6 months old and fun Easter pics.  We didn't do much, but I still managed to get some pics from our week.

I went with a yellow, blue, and gray color scheme for the week.  Seafoam was the first kit I purchased and yet it gets pushed to the side in favor of others.  I need to remind myself to use it more often.  I do like the simple geometric card design.  I accented the pictures with a few stickers.  Another clean and simple layout.

Supplies:

• PL Seafoam Kit
• PL Days of the Week Stickers
• Studio Calico Alphas
• Basic Grey Enamel dots
• Heidi Swapp stickers
• PL Baby Neutral Kit
• Recollections I Love You stickers

Archives: Project Life 2014 -- Weeks 9 and 10

Originally published on March 15th, 2014

Week 9

Family Album: This week I decided to change up my color scheme.  I put away the Seafoam and Sunshine kits in favor of the Seasons Mini Kit.  I took a look at all the cards for spring and choose the pink and yellow ones.  I then added some great stickers from the My Mind's Eye giant embellishment pack for some flair.  Lastly I rediscovered these cute gold rimmed tags.  Love the inclusion!

As for the weekly events, Arthur started solids so I had to include a ton of pics and some journaling.  I love the middle eating picture.  He looks so proud of himself after eating the entire bowl of rice cereal.  The right hand page is all about the Arthur's first official playdate.  Lots of pictures from that event plus some nice journaling to remember the day.  Lastly, I added "the weather today" insert to highlight our unusual (rainy and chilly) weather on playdate day.

Supplies:

• PL Seasons Mini Kit
• My Mind's Eye die cut and sticker pack
• Random embellishments from Studio Calico kit

Arthur's Album:

Supplies:

• PL Baby Neutral Kit

Week 10

Family Album: I again turned to the Seasons Mini Kit for inserts.  This time I used a variety of colors, designs, and sizes.  I love the way the layout turned out!  I added more of those gold tags, some alphabet stickers, a birthday sticker (for my birthday!), enamel dots, and a cute word bubble.  This week's layout is busier than usual, but I'm loving it!  I imagine that I will end up using the rest of the spring cards within the month.

This week was about a ton of candid shots of our family.  I love the little moments I caught of Arthur being extra cute.  I can't believe that this is my first naked baby butt shot!  It was too cute to not include.  I had to add a card for my 32nd birthday...  Per usual, there was no party, but I did got out to eat twice this week (once with Pam and once with J).

Supplies:

• PL Seasons Mini Kit
• Enamel dots
• Birthday stickers
• Random Embellishments from Studio Calico Kit
• Random Alphabet stickers

Arthur's Album: I used one card from the Baby Boy mini kit I found on clearance at Michaels.  Hoping to add more color in the coming weeks.

Supplies:

• PL Baby Neutral Kit
• PL Baby Boy Mini Kit

Archives: Project Life 2014 -- Weeks 5 and 6

Originally published on February 15th, 2014Week 5

Family Album: This week wanted to really bring out the fun bright colors from the photographs.  Thankfully I had purchased a third of a Honey kit from an Etsy seller.  They were the perfect colors to play with.  After I looked at the pictures to choose from, I decided to do an entire page (well almost an entire page) dedicated to telling a story about Arthur and his new favorite toy.  I love the idea of doing this type of theme pages more often.

Supplies:

• PL Honey Kit
• PL Sunshine Kit
• Studio Calico Alphabet stickers

Arthur's Album: For his album, I stuck with the yellows and grays with some fun inserts.  I love the right side with the corresponding pictures splitting the page.  It gives a nice mirror effect.

Supplies:

• PL Baby Neutral Kit

Week 6

Family Album: Week six was all about pink and turquoise.  I had the repeating camera insert already in place from last week (other side of the flowered journaling card).  it was so cute, I had to use it and ended up designing the entire spread to correspond.  The left side was highlighting some pictures from our usual routine (baby playing with Sophie, Shoreline walk, crafting time).  I even used a journal card to highlight my week in crafting.  Nice to see a spread not completely focused on Arthur even though he is just so adorable.  The right side is dedicated to pictures and journaling of the mom's group Valentine's Party.  I even remembered to snap a few photos of the event.  (It was gray and gloomy out, so the pics are pretty dark.  And this is after lightening them up on the computer.)  I forgot to add in the February calendar card at the beginning of the month.  The party turned out to be the perfect occasion to use it as a Who, What, Where, When, and Why type journaling card.  I then used a red design card from the Holiday mini kit to list all the attendees for the party.  It's a nice way to remember who was there since I didn't get pictures of everyone.  Overall, I absolutely love this layout!

Supplies:

• PL Honey Kit
• PL Seasons Mini Kit
• Random embellishments from Studio Calico

Arthur's Album:  Arthur's weekly spread included more pictures of him and some highlighting of our party.  I stuck with the usual color scheme, but changed up the design with the 4x6 journaling card and alternating 3x4 inserts and photos.

Supplies:

• PL Baby Neutral Kit

Archives: Project Life November and December

Originally published on December 16th, 2013

I've only been at this for a few weeks, but I've already learned so much about what to do and what not to do.  My main realization is that I need to make PL work for me and just me.  I've looked at so many different examples of styles and usage and they all look amazing.  But, I can't get too wrapped up in copying some other's design.  I need to make PL work just for me.  It comes down the fact that I like simplicity.  I don't like a lot of clutter, a lot of layering, a lot of embellishment.  While it can be very pretty, that's just not my style.  My simplistic uncluttered style is evident in my pages so far.  I like clean photos and relatively clean inserts.  Although I am experimenting with adding some washi tape accents in the coming weeks.

Secondly, I really loving taking a bit of time each Sunday or Monday to do my layouts.  I figure out what pictures I want, where to put them, and which inserts to use.  Then, I journal and put the inserts in the pages.  The photos will be printed later, but I've already got each spread 90% done by Monday night.  As an extra bonus, working on my pages is a nice break from mommy duties.  I can focus just on me for 30-60 minutes.

Thirdly, while I would love to have my pictures printed instantly, I have accepted the plan of printing monthly instead.  I just don't know if home printing is worth the money and hassle at this point.  I save up my pictures until Walgreens or Snapfish or Shutterfly have a good deal and then print them.  So far, so good.

Fourth, I have added a ton of PL related products to my Amazon wishlist.  While I love everything I see, I have limited my list to my favorites.  I just need to remember to not get too stash buying happy that I over supply myself.

Fifth, taking pictures of my pages while in their plastic sleeves is tricky.  To get better pictures, I've resorted to taking the pieces out, laying them on the desk, and then photographing them...  Much better looking on the blog.

Finally, I joined a Studio Calico class starting in January for extra motivation and inspiration.  I've heard about so many people losing momentum at some point in the year.  I want to make it all the way.  And having a bit of extra help will certainly be a great idea.

Nov. 4 - 10

Highlights: This week was all about hanging out near the house...  As for the design, I stuck with my basic design of 4x6 prints and 3x4 inserts.  I added the day of the week stickers to my weekly highlights for the family album.  I'm trying to add more embellishments to my pages, but haven't quite figured that out yet.

Nov. 11 - 17

Highlights: Arthur turned one month old this week.  I made sure to add the special 1 month inserts to his pages to highlight the occasion.  For the family album, I stuck more toward the pictures speaking for themselves.  A little bit of embellishment on these pages.

Nov. 18 - 24

Highlights: A couple of trips outdoors this week.  Arthur and I went to two new parks.  I love discovering new places around here...  The holes you see were pictures that somehow didn't get printed by Walgreens.  I have about 10 different photos that didn't print, but were clearly on my order.  I had to call, complain, and get them to reprint my photos.  I just haven't stuck them back into the albums yet.  I added a few word stickers to the family album.  I don't want to over embellish my pages.  I like the cleaner look.

Nov. 25 - Dec. 1

Highlights: Arthur and I started our weekly walks at Shoreline with the mom's group.  Shoreline is a gorgeous park with gorgeous views.  We are really loving the walk, socializing with other moms and babies, and lunch at the cafe afterwards.  I caught some great Arthur expressions in this week's photos.  For the family album, I started including my photo-a-day challenge photos.  When they don't easily fit into the spreads, I have collecting them into their own inset page for the end of the month.

Extra bonus: I added in a Thanksgiving insert for Arthur's photo shoot with the turkey hat.  I didn't want to lose out on including other photos just to get these adorable ones in...  An insert seemed like the perfect way to go.  I plan on doing another insert for Christmas photos.

Dec. 2 - 8

Highlights: A pretty quiet week at home.  For my photo-a-day pics, I added each day's theme on washi tape.  I love the look and it utilizes more of my craft stash.  The cut out heart was a random chip board piece that was lying around.  I love how it stands out against the dark background in that picture.  Plus, lots of regular day-by-day style journaling.

Dec. 9 - 15

Highlights: Arthur turned 2 months old this week!  I had to include his 2 month photo shoot pictures.  If you look closely, the monthly stats insert isn't filled out.  I finished doing that yesterday.  I wanted to get his stats from the doctor's appointment.  Since we didn't do much this week, I condensed my day-by-day journaling inserts into one weekly highlights insert.  This allowed me to include more Arthur and photo-a-day pictures.