30 Days of Gratitude: Days 16-20

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 #16: All about the beach. We don't get there very often, but it is decently close (less than an hour) and oh so pretty!

Day #17: Our new house has hardwood in the dining room and kitchen areas.  Thank goodness!  Having carpet under our dining room table is just horrible.

Day #18: All the days of the week.  Or most accurately, that I'm alive to enjoy all the days of the week. (Thinking some morbid thoughts lately, good to remind myself that I am alive and can enjoy life.)

Day #19: Love when I see RAKs out in public.  Thank you others for being courteous and considerate.

Day #20: My most favorite flavor combination!  Yum yum!

30 Days of Gratitude: Days 11-15

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 #11: While the Midwest is getting snow, we're still enjoying moderate temps. Love our California weather.

Day #12: Yep, I'm grateful today for online shopping. I shipped Arthur's supplies to my mom's house for our vacation there.

Day #13: Loving the beautiful falling leaves.  Too beautiful.

Day #14: I love books.  That is about the core of my being.

Day #15: The other twin.  So grateful for my wonderful sensitive boy.

Arthur's Birthday Pages

Arthur's first project life album ends with his first birthday.  While the family album is done by calendar year, I feel that marking each year of his life with a new scrapbook made more sense to me... As I finally printed the photos from his party, it was time to finish his first PL album! The last official page before the ending inserts features his 12 month photos.  I ended up going very simple with four photos, his month card, the stats card, and two filler cards. I wanted the pictures to stand alone with no embellishment.  Clean and Simple.

At his party, I put out some PL journaling cards and asked friends to write him a birthday message.  Most people did leaving me with a stack of cards.  Instead of sprinkling them in, I decided to have one page dedicated to the cards.  I love how they look all lined up in the sheet.

The last page in his album is the once a month photos I took over the course of the first year.  I just slide them into pockets without embellishment.  Simple, yet very striking.

And now it's on to Arthur's second PL album.

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

October PL Swaps (Part 3)

I joined a Project Life Swap group on Facebook a few months back and have really been inspired.  Basically every month, the admins post swap themes (8-10 usually).  You sign up for how many you want and commit to making usually 10 cards utilizing the theme.  Before the due date, you send your cards to the swap host.  She collects everyone’s cards, sorts them, and sends you back a packet of cards.

This month, I joined nine swaps.  I'll be showing the last four of the swaps today:

Movies -- While simplistic, I think it does the topic justice. I just did some simple stamping with my alpha stamps and star stamp (masked out the other two stars).  Mounted on nice red paper, it was still missing something until I added the gold washi tape.

Stars -- My favorite PL swap card of the month. These look amazing in person.  I stamped Midnight Muse stars onto the navy paper and then stamped a star and moon cluster in craft white.  The craft white is much more of a contrast in person.  I then add some silver glitter tape and alphas.  I ran out of appropriate letters in silver so a few cards have gold.  Both look very nice.

Coffee -- I always forget about this stamp.  It's an oldie but a goodie.  I stamped in Blackberry Bliss and Baked Brown Sugar onto vanilla cardstock.  I threw on some Color Me Autumn washi tape for added visual interest.  Finally I mounted the small card only some lovely brown polka dot paper.

Nontraditional Christmas Colors -- For this swap, we had to make a Christmas card in nontraditional colors.  A few options were given and I went for the pink and lime.  I really like how these came out.  I stamped a sentiment and star from Christmas Bliss in Melon Mambo or Wild Wasabi.  I added some gold chevron washi to the background layer for some added interest.  Finally I punched out a gold shimmery paper Christmas tree.  This is a fun card!

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 W35-36

Week 35

Very simple this week.  So many pics included tie dye shirts that I went simple with the embellishments. The missing pockets are for two pics from our mom's night out that I forgot to print.  Will add those in later.

As for our activities, this week was all about parks and play. We visited two different parks (one new to us) and spent a ton of time at home playing.

Supplies:

• PL Turqouise
• SU Everyday Adventure stickers and embellishments
• Random stickers

Week 36

Another simplistic week.  Lots of pictures to showcase with some simple embellishments.  I love my little labels and stars.

Another big park week. Pictures were from two big park days. Plus, I got a shot of Arthur destroying the wax paper.  Cute even if that was half a roll wasted.

Supplies:

• PL Midnight
• My Mind's Eye die cuts

October PL Swaps (Part 2)

I joined a Project Life Swap group on Facebook a few months back and have really been inspired.  Basically every month, the admins post swap themes (8-10 usually).  You sign up for how many you want and commit to making usually 10 cards utilizing the theme.  Before the due date, you send your cards to the swap host.  She collects everyone’s cards, sorts them, and sends you back a packet of cards.

This month, I joined nine swaps.  I'll be showing three of the swaps today:

Leftovers -- Just grabbed 7 of the leftover cards from previous PL swaps. Didn't take a picture of the leftovers.

Open -- I grabbed a 6x6 pad of fun papers and a set of similar but different cards. I like the layers on this set.

Pumpkins -- I used SU's Fall Fest and Fun Fall stamps and die cuts for these cute pumpkins.  The patterned paper is actually a green polka dot (looks brighter in person).  And the sequins are from Studio Calico.  Simple yet cute pumpkin card.

October PL Swaps (Part 1)

I joined a Project Life Swap group on Facebook a few months back and have really been inspired.  Basically every month, the admins post swap themes (8-10 usually).  You sign up for how many you want and commit to making usually 10 cards utilizing the theme.  Before the due date, you send your cards to the swap host.  She collects everyone’s cards, sorts them, and sends you back a packet of cards.

This month, I joined nine swaps.  I'll be showing two of the swaps today:

Leaves -- I used a ton of scrap paper for this card.  Yeah for destashing!  I also added some die cut leaves from SU's Fun Fall framelits and the sentiment from SU's For All Things.  This is a simple card, but I really like the layering effect.

Banners -- For this swap, I again used a ton of paper scraps.  I decided to stick with the blues to give the set a uniform look even if they are different.  The banners are all cut between 1/2 and 3/4" and then free cut for length.  I used my trusty Hexagon punch for the banner ends.  So easy!