Project Life 2013 + Week 2

I know I say this every time I share, but I heart this project! It's just a simple and special way to document the everyday moments of life! Having a photo printer at home helps, but I've done my fair share of printing online to get the photos into the book. In fact, I have about 8 weeks worth organized to help me finish up 2012. Luckily, during the Christmas break, I was able to get caught up with 2012 until November, so that makes me happy!

Today, I am sharing week 2 of my project... We had a TON of birthday parties going on this week. We should have had one more for my dad, but between my schedule and my older (much older) sister's schedule, sometimes it's difficult to find a time when we can all get together... So we had to postpone...hopefully we can get that back on the calendar soon!!! Here is a look at the full spread...

Most of the pictures are of PJ this week, but they also include her hanging out at one of three parties this week...

Also, I added a 5x7 page to show off her cool art work for the week...

Around here, we have a lot of parties at the Gymnastics Academy and this girl lives the big rope and jumping in the foam pit! Too bad we lost one of her special lady bug socks! She is still sad about that!

Thanks for stopping and checking out my Project Life - I have a lot to share this week, so be sure to come back and check out the fun!

Tweet

Project Life 2013 + Week 1

Today is exciting because I'm sharing my first spread of Project Life 2013! I decided that while I'm waiting on the last couple of months worth of pictures to arrive so that I can finish up last year's project life edition, that it would be fun to try and keep up with 2013 as it happens, epic, right!?!

I am really happy to be using the Cherry edition this year. I love all of the fun an vibrant colors and I LOVE how it was packaged! Last year, I ditched the box that it came in about halfway through the year because it just wasn't efficient for me, but I am loving the newer edition! If you are interested in checking it out, Becky Higgins just came out with some even newer versions, but since I like to ask for the new kit as part of my Christmas Present, I went with the ones that were available at that time. If you want to take a peek at the newest versions, here is a link to her blog introducing the newer lines...(click here)

In the meantime, I'm excited to intro my week one of the project... here's a look at the full spread...

One of the benefits of doing this project in real time is that I can capture and remember some of the more simpler moments of the week, like time spent with cousins and a special painting she sent to her Daddy in the mail... I was also able to incorporate a piece of her artwork she brought home from pre-school. I've found that when I work on this project months later, it's hard to remember all of the details and even harder to figure out which piece of artwork she brought home that week...

Love this frosty...

Love these pictures of her Ice Skating - we had such a fun time on that Friday Funday!

Thanks for taking a peek at my project - I plan to share last week and what my finished 2012 book looks like in the next week or so :). Have a great day!
 

Tweet

Around here... Words & Reflections

I'm inspired to dive back into the business of documenting life. Recently Ali Edwards posted a prompt to write using "today" or "around here." The following are my words and reflections using the prompt...

Loving the fall air and all of the festivities that the season brings including our local Maple Leaf Festival and Halloween get-togethers.

Enjoying every minute I can spend with my little sweet girl while also learning more about the virtues of patience.

Watching coverage on Hurricane Sandy and feeling thankful to be living in the Midwest.

Listening to True at First Light by Ernest Hemingway in the car on the way to class and feeling inspired to write more.

Jamming out to the new Mumford & Sons, Babel and absolutely loving it!

Celebrating my relationship with my husband as we come closer to our 10 year anniversary and loving him more everyday.

Waiting patiently for the end of the semester to draw near and feeling anxious for my student teaching semester.

Savoring all of the smells and tastes of the season - I can't get enough of those Starbucks Pumpkin Spice Lattes! 

Planning for my upcoming projects including December Daily and getting back into Project Life.

Working towards letting go of those insecurities that tend to bring me down and letting my light shine through.

Looking forward to spending more time creating and all of the joy that the holiday season brings

Thanks for stopping by and look for more from me as I continue to find my way back to my creative self...

Tweet

Project Life...Week 10

Happy Wednesday, everyone! Today, I am sharing a quick post from week 10 of project life! I'm slowly getting caught up on this project, but I still love it and am very motivated to work on it when I have the time.

So here's a quick look at week 10...

 Highlights include:

• Seeing Radiohead Live at the Sprint Center...
• Having a fun impromptu barbecue at our house...

I love seeing these pictures of Peyton and her cousins... So much fun watching them interact and grow up together!

And a look at the full spread...

Thanks for stopping by - have a great day everyone!

Tweet

Project Life...Week 9

Happy Friday, everyone! I'm deviating a bit from my regularly scheduled Friday Photog to share week 9 of Project Life. I am quickly moving through the weeks, so I decided to go ahead and share a week at a time, so that I don't overwhelm myself or my readers with a bazillion different pictures :).

Regarding Project Life: I'm really excited about the new lines being available at Amazon, too! As much as I love my current design, I may splurge for my birthday and buy a more girly line to use to wrap up the rest of the year... Becky Higgins released an update earlier this week and you can find it here....

It's kind of fun to be sharing the first week of March in the middle of the summer because it's so darned hot here and seeing us wear stocking hats and sweaters makes me realize that this heat can't last forever, right?!?!

At this point, Peyton was really into wearing her KU cheerleading outfit and since it was so cold she was painting a lot, thus the smock in half the pictures :). 

It's so weird that we had a little bit of snow... oh what I wouldn't do these days for some temperatures below 100 degrees in the afternoon...

Speaking of hot temperatures, just a quick story about the heat right now...

Yesterday, we were all headed to our local pool and when we arrived, the pool was closed. They stated that it was due to a 'sickness in the water,' whatever that means. So the city was going to have to come and check to see if chemicals would be added. Peyton was pretty sad, so we decided to drive twenty more minutes to a different town to go their pool. Right as we got out of the car to pay and enter, we noticed that the lifeguards were shouting for everyone to get out of the pool. Apparently, there was a kid who was having a heat induced seizure in the pool, so they closed it down too... Unbelievable, right?


I guess the moral of the story is that... it's crazy hot right now and everyone should be mindful of that and take care of themselves!

As for us, we are planning to spend some ample time in the air conditioning!

Take care, everyone and have a great day!
 

Tweet

Project Life - February (better late than never!)

Happy Tuesday Everyone! Hope everyone is having a great week, so far! As always, mine continues to be busy, but good. I have had several photo sessions during the past few days, so that has been a lot of fun. Which also means, I will have a lot to share, so that's good, right!?!

In today's post, I am sharing my project life for February. Although I am still a bit behind in this project, I am still very happy to be working on it. I anticipate that during July, I will have a bit more time to dig in and get caught up. So without further ado, here is a look at my project life for February...

This week was a lot of fun because we spent a Saturday in Kansas City visiting the Nelson Atkins Art Museum and the Anita B. Gorman Discovery Center. At the Discovery Center, they had a snake exhibit and Peyton was brave enough to touch the snake...

Week 6 was a pretty average week. Some of the highlights included taking pictures for the Lawrence Business Magazine and having a date night with Jake.

I love this cute photo below... While I was taking pictures for the blog, Peyton decided she wanted to look at the book... Which makes all of the work I put into it SO worth it!

Week 7 included our only snow of the year... It only lasted about 6 hours from snow to melt, but that was long enough for us to get out on the sled and to build a snowman... The worst part of this week was that Peyton missed her Valentine's Party at preschool because she had the flu...

During week 8 we mostly took it easy so Peyton could recover from having the flu... Since the weather was mostly springlike, we spent some time outside and set up the tent in the backyard. It's been so long since we set it up that I had forgotten what it looked like :).

Thanks for stopping by everyone! I hope you have a great week!
 

Tweet

Week 4... Project Life

Happy Thursday, everyone! While I am waiting impatiently so patiently for my printed photos to arrive, I thought I would take a minute to share week 4 of my project life with all of you! I loved putting this week together because I managed to integrate some different digital and printed elements into my Project Life core kit to give it a little bit more personality.

One of the new elements that I purchased was these cool tags from Elle's Studio Here's a closer look at some of the tags I used for this week...

I also ended up incorporating some digital elements from Ali Edwards at the Designer Digitals website. There are a TON to choose from over there... I love how these words are simple outlines and how you can color fill them to match any photo you are working with...here's a closer look at that...

And here is a closer look at the first and send pages as full spreads... I really love how this Project Life Core kit works with these tags and digital elements. It makes it really easy to put it all together.

As always, thanks for stopping by! I am sure to have many more fun pages to share once my prints arrive and hopefully that will be this weekend! Have a wonderful day :).
 

Tweet

Getting Organized...Project Life

Okay, so first things, first! Time to get organized.... And just in case any of you were looking...you probably noticed that my last Project Life post was for week 3 - (YIKES)! Actually, to be quite fair to myself, I am actually caught up to week 8, I just need to get those pictures updated on my blog... and don't you worry, I'm well on my way to getting that done. In the meantime, I want to share my plan for getting all of my pictures organized (in the off chance that anyone else out there might be behind in the process, as well). So let's get to it...let's get organized.

Step one... Figure out what needs to be printed...  

So the first step in my 'get organized plan' is to figure out what in the world I need to print. Now, typically, I would simply fire up the Mac Book Pro, flag some pics from the previous week and then print them at home on my my lovely Epson Stylus... However, I'm thinking I have around 100 pics that need to be printed for my project life book, so I'm going to spend a little more time on the front end and then subcontract the rest of my pics to another company so that I don't have to worry about all of the time that will be spent next to my printer...so, I've thought about it and I want to narrow down my printing process to Instagram pictures and then 4x6 and 6x4 pictures...

Step Two... Printing Instagram...  

Although I am very savvy with using Photoshop and could most definitely import my Instagram pictures into the system, I am going to take advantage of some really great programs available to me. Not only with this save me some time, but it really does create a big piece of mind when all you have to do upload the photos and then have them sent to you. So, I did a little research today and found this really great app on my Iphone that I can use to upload and order all of my Instagram photos directly from my phone. I'm sure many of you are well aware of the program Postal Pix, but for those of you who use Instagram, but have never printed them professionally, this should definitley be an option to consider. It was so easy to use and I loved taking care of the ordering process right on my phone. Hopefully, the delivery process will be just as simple. I ordered 4x4 prints and they ended up being .29 a piece, which was pretty reasonable considering how much time I saved from having to print and crop. I will definitley let everyone know how they look when they show up on my doorstep!

Step Two... Printing....the rest...  

After having a few minutes of shock and panic at how behind I am... I then just took a few moments to breathe....next, I regained my composure and decided to turn on the Mac Book Pro and flag some of my favorite pictures to print at an external site. So the next step was really fun, it really just entailed going through the pictures and figuring out what I really wanted to print. Although I really love mpix for more professional style prints, I couldn't beat the price of Shutterfly at .19 a print. Plus, I haven't printed for a long time, so I couldn't remember my password. So I started a new account and received 50 free prints... Yes! As a result, I ended up printing a total of 100 pictures and paid for half...not bad!


So there you have it friends... I'm well on my way to getting project life back in order. Wish me luck... and if there are any of you out there that are like me and are a little behind...have no fear! You can do it!

 

Tweet

Project Life - Week 3

Hey Everyone! Today, I'm sharing a look at my week 3 of Project life. I know I've said this before, but I'm really loving the colors in the turquoise kit of Becky Higgins project life. Here's a look at the full spread of week 3.

Here's a closer look at the first half of the week. We all got to share Monday off for the Holiday, so we were able to take advantage of the great weather! I also got a chance to check out a new coffee shop...

This week, we also were able to visit our local History Museum with some good friends. Also, I'm in my second to last semester of school before I start my student teaching, so I documented a little about that.

Thanks for stopping by and checking out my project life. I'm getting ready to print pictures for week 4 and I'm also excited to because I ordered some fun tags from Elle's Studio, so that will be fun to add in. Hoping to share week 4 in the next couple of days. Have a great rest of your weekend!

Tweet