Project Life- Week 11 (aka Spring Break)

This was a very full week for us – it was spring break.  We didn’t actually “go” anywhere, but we kept busy, so this week has a full 2 page spread as well as an insert.  Let’s get started, shall we?

left side

right side

I’ll share the insert further down in this post.  I’ve been looking for ways to challenge my “this is how I usually do it” method of doing these layouts.  One thing is that I keep my title/week card pretty simple – just the date and week number.  This week I decided to “get wild” and add a little more to it.

This was the weekend/week we really got our vegetable garden planted and going.  I learned several years ago that the girls were more willing to try (1) vegetables they didn’t know and (2) vegetables they didn’t like IF we grew them in the garden and they got to help. Don’t get me wrong, they still have phases of “oooohhh, that’s gross”, but not as much as I see other kids around us.  Sydney also loves her different “journals” at school, so we did a science journal for the pepper plants she picked out.  You should be able to read the journaling:

We’ve been watching Once Upon A Time together as a family and it’s made me sad how many of the fairy tales the girls just don’t know. When I was little, those were the majority of what I read – Disney fairy tales.  Our girls have a library full of books here at the house and most of them are not fairy tales, so I planned a movie marathon day of watching Disney movies so the girls were a little more informed.  I had them each journal about it – it was important to me that they journal as much as possible about spring break.  I want to have their voices “heard” in this album and want to show HOW they remembered all of their childhood.

I treated the insert as an extension of the layout, so here is the first side:

(again, please excuse the dark prints from Costco … again)

Our week continued with a craft day (to finish their Snap Albums about last summer – they did it in a mini Project Life style) and later that afternoon was the butterfly release for Syd’s first grade class. (see previous post) The families that were not out of town met in front of the school and we had a “release party” for the painted lady butterflies.  Sydney was too nervous to release one herself, but Natalie was more than willing to jump in a do it (2-3 times, I think).  Natalie had the same teacher and I’m pretty sure this was her favorite part of first grade.  The top two journaling cards(one bi-fold/one regular) were the girls “overviews” of the week.

The back of the insert:

After the butterfly release, Monkey surprised the girls and took them to a hockey game (he’s an off-ice official and rarely gets to just watch a game to enjoy it) and let me have a night off!  I handed them the camera and they came back with several photos.  The next day we headed up to the school playground to get some serious monkey bar training in, then had lunch/frozen yogurt with my mother.  We don’t get to see her much, so the girls were very excited to spend some time with her.  Natalie is doing her QUEST (creative/gifted children’s program at school) project on Thailand.  My mother and step-father went a few years back, so she’s been talking to Natalie some and helping her.

While we were eating frozen yogurt, Monkey was checking out a new trail to run downtown.

(wow, I did not realize how blurry that shot was – my bad)

Friday, Monkey took the day off so that we could take the girls to a movie. He and I actually met at a movie theater (we both worked there) and most of our dates were (free) movies.  Ever since I stopped working at a theater, I have a hard time paying full admission for a ticket.  I know how ridiculous the prices are and almost none of it goes to the theater … anyway, so most of our family movie outtings are at the dollar theater.  We took them to see Wreck It Ralph, even though it actually just came out on DVD.  I am a firm believer in the fact that movies are much better on a large screen

The final little story I want to share is this one:

the journaling card on the right side

I know it sounds so cliché, but it really is scary sometimes how quickly they grow up.  My girls are moving past the playing with toys, watching cartoons and listening to whatever we listen to phase of their life.  They both love this Disney show and were so excited we were going to let them pool parts of their allowance together to get this CD. (last week it was another one- Kidz Bop)  I remember how grown up I felt when I purchased that “Out of the Blue” Debbie Gibson *record* with my allowance.  I didn’t stop listening to it all weekend long.  How about you – do you remember the first record/tape/whatever of music YOU bought?

 

As always, I will be linking up with The Mom Creative - it’s a great way to check out other Project Life blogs and layouts.  There are a lot of creative people out there.  Thanks for looking!

 

Project Life-Week 10

If I’m going to get caught up, I really need to post more than once a week, huh?  Well, here goes for week ten:

left side close up

right side close up

This was the girls last full week of school before spring break.  Traditionally this is the week that the first graders (Sydney this year) do their butterfly release with the butterflies they have kept in the classroom to study, so I stamped a bunch of butterflies and tried to color them like the “Painted Lady” variety they had.

I’ve seen lots of layouts where people do a “week in review” style card.  It’s not what I usually do, but I had this journaling card from We R Memory Keepers and thought I’d give it a shot this week.  I just gave brief notes and saved the details for the journaling cards.

While I was outside snapping this photo of my husband, I looked over and saw our dogs sunning themselves on the deck.  Our sweet Little (Loralei) is getting older and won’t be around a lot longer.  It makes me sad, so I thought I should remember to photograph her as much as possible (like I did towards the end for our Rottie, Chewie).  She is not a big fan of “posing” for the camera, so it takes a few shots.

Natalie had her first practice of our state regulated tests this week, as well.  It was her first time, so after we talked about strategies to change for the next one.  I asked her to journal about it and this is what she gave me:

I kind of thought this was a funny reaction from a girl who loves to read.  Recently I’ve had more stories about/from Sydney, but this week it was Natalie’s turn.  Wednesday and Thursday I focused on her as well.

Just a quick note – I got one of the Echo Park Photo Freedom page kits with the page protectors inside.  Each one I got was either scratched like the above photo OR the bottom of the pockets were undone at the seam and I had to use washi tape to keep the journaling card/photo from falling out.  Anyone else had the same problem or did I just get a bad batch?

When I got the “rain” filler card from my SC PL kit, I thought “When in the world am I going to use this?  We never get rain.” … Low and behold, we got rain that Friday before spring break and the colors even worked well with the layout.  Yay!

As I said at the start of the post – Friday would be the day Sydney would’ve done her butterfly release, but sadly the weather just did not cooperate. Not only was it rainy and yucky out, but because of the unusually cold days we’d been having, most of the butterflies were still in their cocoons and hadn’t emerged yet. Fortunately Syd has an awesome teacher and she quickly emailed the parents Friday to set up a “release party” during spring break.  This journaling card explains all of that AND gave me an excuse to put another butterfly on this layout AND use the enamel dots for the first time.

Well, that about wraps it up for week 10.  I will be linking up with The Mom Creative for Project Life Tuesday. I would love to read any feedback/comments that you have.  Thanks for reading!

 

Project Life-Week Nine

Welcome to another week, here we go with

This week ended up with a lot of the honey/yellow color from the Seafoam kit with some bits of turquoise mixed it.

left side close up

right side, close

From time to time, the girls will get/earn tickets to various events from school.  They did a health/fitness-type thing and earned tickets to a basketball game (and the t-shirts they got at the game).  We are a hockey loving family … basketball, not so much.  A good friend of ours, on the other hand, happens to eat/breathe/sleep basketball and offered to take the girls to the game.  He is a great guy (single) and great with kids, so the girls had a Sunday basketball date with Uncle Greg.  On a side note, he hates having his picture taken and the ONLY time I can get a decent shot of him?  With the kids

(please excuse the white balance in the left photo – I forgot to fix it before handing my husband the camera)

 

Tuesday was one of those days that everyone has – nothing really all that interesting to document.  I sat and thought a few minutes while the girls unpacked their school things and decided documenting what their homework looks like at this age and the differences in the level of detail would be something interesting to look back on.  I do have to say that I have been having problems with Costco printing some photos *extremely* dark and others just fine.  The homework photo was way darker than it should be.

1st grade-monthly; 3rd grade-daily

The girls had an early release day.  I can honestly say that on just about any early release day I would be able to take the same photo.  The girls head straight for the backyard.  That day they were doing slide stunts.

love the clipboard journal cards from Doodlebug

Friday that week, I was up at school to scrapbook with a class, so I got to peak in to an assembly.  The library had an author (Keith Graves).  He illustrates his books, as well as writes them.  He read to the students and then did a drawing game with them.  He had them pick 2-3 animals and then drew what those animals would look like as one animal.  The students brought paper with them and got to play along.  I got copies of my daughters’ drawings and added them as inserts (see below).  Here was one he drew:

This was Monkey’s(aka, my husband) contribution for the week.  He went to a concert Saturday night and then did some journaling for me.  I guess I’ll keep him

As I said above, I did inserts with the girls versions of Keith Graves-style art.  I also included Natalie’s multiplication test for the week because it was her 12′s, which is as high as they go.  I gave both girls free reign over my label stickers and then them explain their pages.

Sydney, age 6

 

Natalie, age 9

That about wraps up week nine.  I’m going to link up with The Mom Creative to share my layout for the week.  If you like what you see, you should check it out and see what some other people have done.  I can’t wait to see everyone else’s weeks.  Thanks for looking!

 

Project Life – Weeks 7 and 8

Welcome to another weekly update.  Let me start with week seven:

For whatever reason, when I took these photos, I forgot to take separate photos of each side of the layout (oops!)  I did remember to get a close up of the week card, though.  This was the week of Valentine’s Day, which was an excuse for me to use some pink on my layout.  I had also recently gone thru some of my older Echo Park kits and was trying to use up some of the pieces.  The “Love you” cutout was on the journaling cutout page for Playground kit.

Monkey happened to home from work with another throat illness early on in the week.  Tuesday was Mardi Gras or Fat Tuesday(or something like that) and he was excited to go have Cajun food at a local place called Stuffed.  We went to New Orleans for our honeymoon (over 12 years ago) and he has been in love with all things New Orleans/Cajun since then.  He was being goofy for the camera, but he really was that happy about all the crawfish on that tray in front of him

Valentine’s Day at school means class parties.  I scrapbook with several classes at the girls’ school, so that means I am running like crazy that day trying to photograph all the parties.  Natalie complained this year that she wanted me to be in the room for the whole party, so I had to work extra hard to get there and stay there as long as I could.  I even had her teacher take a photo of the two of us together so that I could prove I was there!  And poor Syd, I was so busy that I forgot to have her teacher photograph her and I together.  I went back at the end of the school day and caught her and she was nice enough to take the photo, so I have proof I was there for both girls   I’m always on the other side of the camera, so I wanted to make sure they remember that I really was THERE.

I started watching the ABC show “Once Upon a Time” when it first came on.  This year I decided that it might be something we could actually watch as a family, so we got the first season on Netflix (bare with me, I’m coming to a point here, I promise).  Sydney has preferred short hair for quite a few years, but calls it her “boy haircut” and I’ve tried to let her know that girls can have short hair, too.  Well, one of the main characters in this show has a “boy haircut” (Ginnifer Goodwin- “Mary Margaret/Snow White”) and Sydney loves her hair.  So out of the blue I asked if she wanted short hair again and she said, “Yeah, can I cut it like Snow White?”  It just made my day that she stopped associating it only with “boy” hair.  Even better?  The look on her face when she saw her haircut:

 

It really amazes Monkey and I how much her confidence improves when she gets a haircut:)

 

And with that, we are on to:

What makes me laugh is that I took these at the same time I took the above photos, yet I remember to take shots of the individual sides of *this* layout.

left side, close up

 

right side, close up

It’s kind of funny, when I saw this card in my Studio Calico kit, I thought I wouldn’t use it.  What makes ME happy is usually pretty far down on my list, after making sure Monkey and the girls are taken care of, but then I saw someone’s layout and they put pictures of their scrap stuff.  I don’t remember who it was, but they said that it was such a big part of their life, but they almost never document THAT and I realized (duh) neither do I.  So, that’s when I decided this card was perfect after all.

This also happened to be a week where my kids said some particularly cute things that I wanted to remember.  In first grade, they get caterpillars and keep them until the become butterflies, then release them for spring break (one of my absolute favorite things to photograph all school year).  Sydney had just started this process and was just randomly telling her sister and I facts on our walks home from school.  While I love that she was excited about something she was learning, I also love that she mispronounced “caterpillar” over and over and was okay with it.  (Natalie did the same thing – it’s a hard word!)

And then on Tuesday, this happens:

(yes, I just went back and fixed the word “dropped”)

They crack me up when they do that. (It happens a lot – this was just the first time I got that explanation)

Thursday, Natalie had her third grade play.  Actually, there were five little plays and she was in the one about a toy shop.  She chose to be a bunny and that was fine, because it was an easy costume AND I got to use a stamp I don’t get much use out of:

The Stamps of Life (older set)

I made a 6×12 insert for the week and this was the back side of it:

My sister and nephew came over and went up to see the play with us.  I took a few photos of her before the play at our house and then one of her, her sister and cousin.  I love these goofy kids.

Friday nights are our usual night to grocery shop.  Sydney, for whatever reason, was bored this night.  I hate when they try to walk and play games on our phones, so I suggested she take pictures instead.  I totally forgot about it until I started working on the layout and I went back to check.  I thought printing them all to show her “point of view” would be a fun thing for her (and everyone else) to see.  I made a mini collage (4×4 I believe to leave me space in the 6×6 space).

Last of all, this was what I chose for the front of the 6×12 insert for the week.  I knew I wanted to do one with the play photos and this was the one photo that I didn’t have room for, but really wanted the story told.

As always, I will be linking up with The Mom Creative.  And in between checking out everyone else’s layouts, I will be photographing more of mine to get caught up on here.  Thanks for looking!

 

 

Project Life – Weeks 5 and 6

In the effort to try and get a little more caught up and current, I thought I’d post 2 weeks together this time.

week 5, full spread

 

As you can tell, I ended up using mostly a soft aqua, gray and red for the layout this week.  To tie it all together, I added some red dot and gray dot washi tape to the week card and used the same colors for the “week five” lettering.

The week started with Monkey’s one year anniversary of him getting into shape.  He started with the “Fatty Challenge” at his office.  He has lost 40+ pounds and now is a runner.  I am so very proud of him and all that he has done!  And let me just say that I got his permission to post this photo up here.  He says he still has a lot of work to do, but really, he has come so far!

This week at his office they all pooled their money together for a big order from Franklin’s BBQ.  It’s been mentioned on Food Network shows and it often sells out in less than an hour, so it’s a big deal.  I asked Monkey to get a picture so we could document it.  This is all part of my effort to include more of Monkey’s day to day stuff, as well as getting the girls to journal about things in their own handwriting.

This week my husband also had a day at school as a Watch DOG.  If you aren’t familiar with that, it’s a program that gets dads to volunteer in the schools.  They are like rock stars – the kids love it when a Watch DOG comes up.  Even though I didn’t have to be up there that day, I ran up during both our girls’ lunch times to get a photo of them with their dad.  I love these photos and I know these are important to the girls as well.

Lastly, this was the week that we finally split the girls up into their own rooms.  Since Sydney was literally a toddler, the girls have shared one room and the other room was their playroom (later craft room/library).  They have been fighting almost constantly lately.  Yep, that’s right, I said it.  I always see these layouts or read blogs of women talking about how wonderful their kids are and they say all these wonderful things and I wonder what the hell I’m doing wrong.  Don’t misunderstand me – I love my girls and they are great, but they also drive me crazy(er) a lot of the time, too   So, we’ve “threatened” for a few months to split them up and finally this week just told them it was going to happen.  Natalie is getting to that pre-teen stage where she wants more privacy and Sydney needs her alone/downtime, so …

I almost forgot … we’ve been putting Natalie’s weekly multiplication tests (copies) in the album as inserts.  The first time we wrote up a little note and since then I’ve been wanting to add *something* to it in the form of journaling without repeating myself.  I finally remembered these stickers from the Simple Stories Snap series.  The pack has several sheets in different colors.  I love the simple style of journaling.

 

 

AND now, on to:

Here’s the full spread

Up close

left side

 

right side

This week was more earthy wood tones.  I have 6×12 pieces from Simple Stories that I’ve been wanting to use and I thought it went well with the week card color.  This week Sydney took a photo for me of something she built while working quietly in her room.  If she grows up to be an amazing architect, I will not be surprised at all.  She loves to build with anything she can get her hands on.  This is actually the building that is on the cover of the box that these blocks came in.

This was the week of February break for the girls (teachers have a conference).  This is also the week we usually work on the girls’ school Valentine’s cards.  I make them and have the girls help – I’m really big on making things instead of buying them if we can.  This year Natalie did them on her own with just a little direction from me.  Sydney found some in a book order that were cartoon kid versions of the Star Wars characters and I thought they were so her right now, so I said okay.

The last picture I had to share simply for the cuteness factor.  My sister’s dog had puppies and she is trying to find them homes.  She thinks she is being sly and says she just wanted the girls to be able to see them, but what she is really hoping for is that we will agree to take one.  They really are so cute and soft and cuddly, but there is just no way!  Like I said in my journaling – it’s like with babies … they are great to hold and remember how yours were at that stage, but there is no way I want to start over again

I will be linking up to The Mom Creative this week.  Slowly, but surely I am catching up on sharing my weeks.  Maybe I’ll get a couple more posted later in the week.  Thanks for reading and I can’t wait to see what everyone else has done!

 

Project Life- Week 4

I’m on a roll!  Here is the overview of the full spread:

As silly as this may sound to some of you, this is the first time I’ve added anything to my title/week card other than just Thickers!  I usually just spell out “week” or “wk” and the number.  This is the first time my week card has had printed words on it and I don’t usually use patterned paper like that.  I wanted to try something different to make the week number show up better.  So proud of myself in a dorky way.

On Sunday, I hosted a 31 Party at our house.  My friend (and a fabulous 1st grade teacher at my daughters’ school) sells 31 and during January you could earn double hostess credit.  I had more than 1 photo I wanted to use and also wanted to include my girls playing with friends they hadn’t see in a while, so I did a flip flap (used a CTMH brand one).

flap open on top

I also did a flap on the opposite page, but that information is of a personal/medical nature.  This week also marked seven years since my father passed away from lung cancer at age 56.  I was pregnant with Sydney, so she never knew him and Natalie was 2 1/2 years old.  This collage shows exactly every photo I have of him with Natalie … that’s all.  Lately, that is what makes me saddest about him being gone.

dad and Natalie

I miss him a lot.  It was a rough end of the week all around.

Thanks for looking and I would love to read comments from you guys.  What new things are you doing with YOUR layouts lately?

 

 

 

 

Project Life- week 3

What a complete difference from the previous week’s colors!

left side

 

right side

On Sunday, our oldest went to her teacher’s house to help out and play with her children (ages 3 and 18mos(?) twins). We thought this would be good baby-sitting training for when she gets older and help her (wonderfully awesome) teacher out in the process.

Natalie and Emerson

Syd also got her glasses this week. And of course I took that as an excuse to buy Lawn Fawn’s “Clear to See” (glasses) mini stamp set She is so excited about her glasses!

Natalie (oldest daughter) has been worried about her push-up test in PE for a week or so and when she finally did it, she did great! I had her journal about it:

Finally, on Saturday we were so busy that I didn’t think to take pictures until after the fact. I went back and grabbed our necklaces (Archiver’s Make and Take I did with my girls) and photographed them. I also used some stickers my youngest got with some of her kid kitchen tools and let her put them on the journaling card since she is the one that made dinner. I made a little error in my journaling, but already had all the stuff on it, so I just crossed it out. I also did that to show my girls that grown ups make mistakes, too. Natalie often will ask me to write something or cut something out for her because she doesn’t want to make a mistake. I usually tell her that it’s the only way she will learn and that I make mistakes all the time.

And that completes the look at week three!