Family Vacation 2012 (Yes, I said 2012)

We went on our first family vacation in June, last year. We went to Kentucky for my cousin's wedding and headed to Florida afterward to take Keilani to The Wizarding World of Harry Potter at Universal Studios Orlando. She has waited so long to experience it; almost as long as she has been waiting for Mommy to finally finish putting those memories in a book so she can enjoy looking through them!

I finally did, last week.

While we were shopping in the Wizarding World, I purchased a cute Harry Potter themed luggage tag album. It measured 4x6, held 102 photos, and boy, did I fill it up! I didn't think I forgot that I even had that many photos! I thought I would have to remove some of the pockets. The finished product is pretty chunky.

If I put the Marauder's Map in one of the pockets, it would be a pain to take it out every time we wanted to see it, so I adhered it to the inside cover for easy access. I wasn't sure if my small Zots would be strong enough on the material but it worked great!

Here is a peek inside. 

I bought Harry Potter theme scrapbooking paper and embellishments for the album. Nothing fancy, every page is simple. The photos alone were very decorative. The Paper just gave it a little more pop. 

You can't tell unless you look VERY closely, but I spelled Myrtle's name wrong. I cut a matching piece from the same paper I cut to make the journaling card, stuck it on top of the mistake and wrote her name correctly. Meh...it'll do.

Week 15 and 16

I can't believe it's already May! Sharing my weeks 15 and 16, along with a little project I made for my cousin's baby shower. My nephew is due in June and I'm over-the-moon excited!

I decided to document these photos with no embellishments. Purely Project Life. Although I like to dress it up once in a while, the simplicity and crisp clean look makes me smile. Can you believe I got all this done in about 20 minutes? And that's only because I had to think of what I wanted to write on my journaling cards. Ahh, the beauty of Project Life. You have saved me so much time and I always get the same beautiful result on my layout, as I would with embellishments.

I love happening upon photos that have space for me to add my favorite quote. They add more to the story of my photo and my daughter will end up with a collection of great quotes to read when she needs some inspiration. I use my iPhone photo apps to add the text. Some of my favorite photo apps (for adding text to a photo) are: Phonto, TitleFx, Typic, Phoster, and the newest addition to my app collection (introduced to me by my daughter) is PicLab.

In Week 16, I added an extra layout for my cousin's baby shower. I was going to TRY to have all of 2013 in ONE ALBUM. Doubtful. At the rate I'm going with all of our life events, I can just hear my Magic 8 Ball saying: Ask again Later.

My favorite things about the Baby Shower

1.  The adorable jungle- themed dessert table my cousin, Shelley (the mommy-to-be's sister) made. 

2.  The Onesie Table:  Guests got to make their own onesie for the baby by tracing + cutting templates with a fabric piece of their choice. Then my daughter iron it on for them. She was in charge of the station to make sure the iron was being used properly by the kiddos; probably by the adults as well!

3.  The "Pin The Uterus" Game. Everyone wrote their name on a "sperm" cut out. After everyone was done placing them on the Uterus, The Mommy-to-be was blind folded to pin her "egg" (cutout) onto the Uterus. Closest sperm won! That's the first time I've even seen that game at a baby shower. 

I used the Project Life Mini Album to make a guest book. The guests could pick any journaling card to write well wishes or parental advice on and slip it right back into the pocket for the parents-to-be to enjoy reading later. I also placed photos from their pregnancy photo shoot in random spots throughout the album, so guests could enjoy looking at those while they write on their journaling cards. 

I must give credit to my husband for this adorable idea. He thought of it at the VERY last minute; Like 10-minutes-away-from-the-party-kind-of-last-minute (hence, the makeshift sign). He knows the Daddy-to-be is a huge football fan. He bought the baby his first football for all of the men to sign as they came in. Everyone loved it and the women ended up signing it too.

Well that's about it for April. Hello, May! Bring it.

Tips + Tricks From The Creative Team

Hi there!

Here is a video that Becky Higgins put together of our creative team, sharing tips + photo ideas, as well as their favorite layouts with you in honor of National Scrapbooking Day (this Saturday May 4th). There are some great ideas in the video. I hope you find these ideas helpful and add them to your way of documenting for Projec Life!

Click here to check it out! 

Project Life Debuts on HSN!

I hope you marked your calendars because this is a pretty BIG DEAL. Project Life will be appearing on HSN all throughout the day on Monday, March 25th. They are introducing Core Kits and bundling them up with coordinating goodies at an awesome low price. This is the perfect opportunity for everyone to hop on the Project Life train and grab one for yourself, one for a friend, and {heck, why not!?} another one for yourself! Check it all out in detail on Becky Higgins' Blog.  Be sure to tune in because another edition will be introduced also. If you're on the fence about starting a Project Life of your own, Monday would be the perfect time to decide. I know you all have pictures, sitting around waiting, to be shown off the way they deserve to be displayed.

I was given such a fun opportunity to create sample pages using the JADE EDITION (shown above) to be featured on HSN! I took a trip down memory lane and used photos from my childhood as well as photos from every day life. This kit is so versatile! Here's a peek sans journaling so you can see how beautiful all of the cards look together in plenty of different color combinations:

MY CHILDHOOD SAMPLE LAYOUTS

While title cards are most commonly used to label the the week you are in currently, I used it as more of a "time period" title card, like I did for my "The Toddler Years" layout {below, which I labeled later.} You want your childhood memories to be displayed beautifully even though most of the pictures from back then (wow, did I just say "back then"?) are not very good quality. I was able to do that with Project Life. All of the paper (Title cards, journaling/filler cards) just added that simple, yet beautiful pop that old pictures need without any heavy embellishing taking focus away from the precious photos. I had so much fun journaling about the specific things I remembered from these photos and jotting down the stories I remember my mother telling me about some photos as well.  

EVERYDAY SAMPLE LAYOUTS

Using the Jade Edition to document Everyday Life was great because of the color palette! I was able to mix and match the title/journaling/filler cards and my layouts looked like they belonged to the same album, while every page still looked different. It gave a lot of variety to my layouts. I did a little embellishing with the every day life photos to show the versatility of the Jade Edition. The possibilities really are endless!

Project Life is like a great pair of jeans. You can dress it up {with lots of embellishing} or dress it down {using only the cards in the kit}, and either way it ends up looking beautiful! I myself love embellishing here and there, but the simplicity of slipping in my photos and journaling is what I gravitate toward the most because it's quick, simple, clean, not cluttered, and beautiful! I leave the more detailed embellishing for when I do my 12x12 layouts. 

And that's all folks! Tune in on March 25th to see all the goodness Project Life has to offer and you'll also see all the beautiful layouts from other members on my creative team. My goodness, these ladies are talented. 

A CRAZY FEBRUARY FOR PROJECT LIFE.

WOW. It's been a while. February was absolutely HECTIC! With my daughter being in State Cup for soccer, I had to really find time to squeeze in her birthday party, my mom was here for a visit, and State Cup pretty much took up every weekend in the month of February. I was finally able to catch up on Project Life. Week 7 alone had two extra layouts added to it in order to fit in my daughter's birthday, her birthday party, and State Cup.

Here are some snapshots from my {now 11 year old} daughter's birthday party. She wanted to have a birthday celebration in spirit of the Hunger Games. So she and a few friends attended an archery class and got to shoot with a bow and arrows. They had such an awesome time!

 LET THE TRAINING COMMENCE! 

READY. AIM. FIRE!

THE TRIBUTES ENJOYED SOME PIZZA, CAKE & GAMES AFTER THEIR TRAINING SESSION.

Project Life Week 5

This week, I really didn't take that many pictures, so I filled my last two spot in with a snapshot of all of our favorite TV shows. I will like seeing how those change from year to year. 

Project Life Week 6

I love the Becky Higgins 8x10 Horizontal insert fit the Farrell's menu perfectly. 

Project Life Week 7

The week of my daughter's birthay, Valentine's Day, it only seemed appropriate to use the title card from Studio Calico's Project Life Kit along with some of their themed 3x4 cards. 

 State Cup deserved its own layout since I took so many pictures for week 7. This is February 16th {Semi-finals} and 17th {Finals}. Our Club colors are Black and Yellow; My Seafoam Core Kit had the perfect cards and designer paper for me to express our team spirit in this layout. I was so excited! 

Our team won State Cup Governer's Division for 2013! So proud of our girls; it was a great accomplishment and I'm glad I documented the journey to their win! 

Overall, this month was a busy, but great one. Stay Classy, February. 

Our Valentine Tradition

I can't believe it's already February! Time really does fly. Speaking of that, my daughter was born on Valentine's Day. In our family, Valentine's Day is completely centered around our little Valentine. As it should be! 

In 2011, I started a Tradition for my daughter. I would give her a Valentine every day until her birthday, February 14th. I'm so glad I started this. Every year, she looks forward to getting a Valentine at her bedroom door each morning. 

Her Valentines are both store bought and handmade. I only buy them if there is a card that I know she'd absolutely love! The handmade ones are really nothing fancy at all; VERY simple, but get my message across. Sometimes they're funny and sometimes they're more on the mushy side, but ALL of them are sentimental; something she will always have to look back on years from now and remember me by.

FEBRUARY 1st 

Since she's all about mustaches and unicorns lately, I figured I'd just made a simple mustache Valentine card for her.

Happy February everyone...For you, it may not be a birthday, but I think any one can start this tradition to make your little one feel special. I plan on doing this until she isn't my baby anymore....But wait. SHE'LL ALWAYS BE MY BABY. 

PROJECT LIFE WEEKS 2 TO 4

I'm finally up to date with Project Life. We're in week 5 right now and I usually wait until Sunday of each week to review my pictures and start laying out. I made some changes to my week 3 because my Seafoam Core Kit came in. So I ditched the printable journaling cards that I printed out on regular copy paper and put fresh, new ones in their place. (For some reason, my printer wouldn't take my cardstock, although it used to....anyone know how to fix that)?

The beauty of Project Life is that you don't have to cut and adhere (sometimes I do, but not always, depending on how busy I am.) It's just me, my pictures, my Core Kit, and my thoughts. When life gets busy, it is comforting to know I can just pick up these title and journaling cards and get it done instead of staring at my stock in my scrap closet, wondering which paper goes with what stickers, etc.

I just added a couple of things to my layout: Letter stickers from the Studio Calico Project Life Kit and numbers from Lilybee design; wood veneer camera from Studio Calico that I colored orange with a Paper Mate flair marker. You never need to add anything to the Core Kits since they add so much "pop"by themselves, but I wanted to place the title Week 2 somewhere on the layout. 

 

Of course, CHA had to have its own extra insert! 

Week 3, adjusted. 

Week 4