December Daily: 10th, 11th and 15th

Random days this post.  I've managed to stay on top of events, but need to go back and do filler pages to complete my book.

First up, we have Clara's party she had with her school friends at our house.  I was not allowed to take any photos of her and her friends (how embarrassing mom!), so I have lots of random detail photos to fill my pages...

Next is the photos from Clara's winter ballet show...

And finally, we have the photos from Alex's School of Rock show...

The videographer posted this to youtube this morning, so I thought I would include it...


Alex normally doesn't play bass, but they asked him to for this song.  I have more videos of the show, plus videos of Clara's dance performance, that I'll try to get posted at some point.

Project Life: Week 49

December Daily has been a struggle this week, some good days, and some I'm going to have to do filler pages for later.

Project Life, however, is still chugging right along!  I can't believe that I've almost made it through a whole year!

December Daily: 5th, 6th and 7th

Okay... so I redid day 5 and, although I don't love it, I at least like it well enough to post.  I've had to do some grasping lately for subject matter.  The weekend was okay, but today is going to be another tough one.

As usual, the templates are by Designs by Lili and everything else is by Emily Merritt!

Project Life: Week 48, Part 2

Finally got part two done!  I'm also still caught up with my December Daily project.  I won't be posting day 4, as it's about our Christmas cards.  I don't want to post anything too publicly about them until I get them mailed out.  Day 5... I just didn't like.  Lack of subject matter made for a so-so page so I doubt I post it.  But these, I like.... :-)

December Daily: 2nd and 3rd

So far, so good with this project.  Today is going to be a challenge, but I'll find something (I hope!).
The mantel needs work (and something larger to cover that hole!), but I'm pretty pleased with it for our first year in the house...

The page above bugs me though.  I really don't like the up close picture of the skates next to the skates in the big picture.  BUT... I do like that photo a lot and I couldn't get it to work anywhere else.  Oh well.

Wasn't sure what to do yesterday and then the kids insisted that we do our countdown to Christmas with books again this year.  We've been doing it now for about 11 years, I think!  I had put it off with all of the move chaos, but they insisted that it wouldn't be Christmas without the books.  So, here they are... (well... at least most of them, I ran out of wrapping steam - and tape - with about six left to wrap)...

Templates are from Designs by Lili and everything else is by Emily Merritt!

Okay.... I had a request for our book list, so I thought I would add it to this post.  It won't be complete until after Christmas as I'm not sure what books I have wrapped up. :-)  I'll try to link them to Amazon too so you can get more info on the books.

I have way more than the 24 books needed for a countdown to Christmas, but I like being able to switch books in and out over the years.  This is year 11 (I think) of doing this, so things have changed over the years.  We started out with several board books, which I think I still have packed away somewhere.  Also in the beginning, I needed a bunch of books fast, so I went to the used book store and bought a stack of cheap books.  Most of them were character type books (Barney, Elmo, etc.) and most of those have been donated.  Only favorites from the early years were kept.  We also used to live near the 75% off bookstore, so I picked up a lot of books there.  Some good, some odd... but some of those odd ones became favorites so they're still around.  After I had the bulk of our books, I continued to pick up books on clearance after the holidays.  I haven't picked up any in a few years, since I keep thinking that one year soon the kids won't want to do this anymore.  I probably should still keep adding books though.  My plan is to start adding in my December Daily books so we can look back on years past together.

December 1st:
The First Christmas (top left corner of the photo) - This has been our first book, every single year.  Yes, it's a board book, but it's tradition :-)

December 2nd through 23rd choices:

Dream Snow by Eric Carle
How the Grinch Stole Christmas! by Dr. Seuss
A Charlie Brown Christmas by Charles M. Shulz - not the version we have, but may be the same
The Twelve Dogs of Christmas by Emma Kragen - by far Clara's most favorite book of the bunch, ours came with a CD and we all belt out the song together as loud as we can :-)
Are You Grumpy Santa? by Gregg and Evan Spiridellis
Santa's Favorite Story by Hisako Aoki - beautiful little book that has Santa telling the story of the first Christmas
Kipper's Christmas Eve by Mick Inkpen - a LONG time favorite... and we will all be very sad when the little red lightbulb on the last page burns out.
Santa's Stuck by Rhonda Gowler Greene
Morris's Disappearing Bag by Rosemary Wells - one of my favorites, so sweet and so funny
The Latke that Couldn't Stop Screaming by Lemony Snicket - the title says it's a Christmas book, but it is a Hanukkah book with Christmas references.  It is a good book for our kids who have several Jewish friends and like understanding Hanukkah a little better... plus it's Lemony Snickets. :-)
Froggy's Best Christmas by Johnathan London - Alex absolutely loved the Froggy books when he was little, so this was a must own for us.
Jingle Jokes by Katy Hall - what kid doesn't like jokes and riddles?
Santa Cow Studios by Cooper Edens - strange little book, but more fun now that the kids get more of the movie references
Snowie Rolie - by William Joyce - Alex was a huge Rolie Polie Olie fan when he was little.
Phoebe Clappsaddle has a Tumbleweed Christmas by Melanie Chrismer
Little Red's Christmas Story by Sarah Ferguson, The Duchess of York
The Berenstain Bears Meet Santa Bear by Stan and Jan Berenstain
Christmas for 10 by Cathryn Falwell
Wise Old Owl's Christmas Adventure by Robert Kraus
Pieces of Christmas by Teri Sloat
Dumpy Saves Christmas by Julie Andrews Edwards and Emma Walton Hamilton
Emily's Christmas Gifts by Cindy Post Senning and Peggy Post - a Christmas manners book :-)
The Nativity Play by Nick Butterworth and Mick Inkpen
Merry Christmas, Big Hungry Bear by Don Wood - almost forgot about this one because it's MISSING!  It's another favorite, so I need to find it!
A Yuletide Ice Cube Fair (Veggietales) - Another board book, another tradition.

December 24th:
The Night Before Christmas Pop Up by Clement Clarke Moore - Our Christmas Eve book has always been some edition of this story... first it was a board book, then a regular picture book and then finally (once the kids were older) I found this beauty for 75% off after Christmas one year.  They had no idea I had bought it and were so surprised when they opened it that year.

Project Life: Week 48, Part 1

This week took me a while to get started.  I have a ton of photos from the weekend and just a few from the beginning of the week.  Wasn't sure how to split things up so that it made sense over a four page spread.  I'm still not exactly sure how I like the split, but we'll see how part two pans out in a couple of day.

Most of the cards are from Emily Merritt and the photo collage templates are by Designs by Lili.

December Daily: the 1st

As if I needed another project :-)

I've been wanting to do a December Daily album for years, but never really got it started.  This year is underway and I hope I can keep up with it AND Project Life.

Templates by Designs by Lili and everything else is by Emily Merritt.

Project Life: Week 47

And just like that... I'm caught up again!  It was a big day of waiting around for deliveries and such, so I had the time.  Now this gives me some time this week to plan out my Daily December album.  I really hope I can keep up on both.  I've posted in the past about our family tradition of unwrapping a Christmas book a day as our countdown to Christmas.  The kids still love the tradition but have truly outgrown a lot of the books.  I would really like to start adding in a Daily December album (and maybe make some albums of pictures from Christmases past) to our books to unwrap.  I think it could be a fun way to keep the tradition going and to have fun reminiscing about previous Decembers.  Of course, we'd still have to keep our favorite Christmas books in there, but I think it could be a fun mix to have the albums and the books.  We'll see though... we're just a few days away from December and I still can't decide what size and format I would like to do the book in!

Well, enough of that... here's week 47...

Project Life: Week 46

I'm closing in on my goal... another week done!   I'm going to be sitting around tomorrow waiting for the alarm guy, a furniture pick-up and a furniture delivery, so maybe I'll get week 47 wrapped up as well!

 This one mainly features the I Feel Great cards by Emily Merritt.

Project Life: Week 45

Still here and still project life-ing!  We've moved and are settling in rather nicely into our new home!  Lots to do still, but it really does feel like "home" already.  The one thing that is holding me back is our lackluster wifi coverage in the house... however, that should be remedied within a couple of week.

Very Merry Collection from Amy Jaz Designs at One Story Down

I'm going to start week 46 today and hope to have it and week 47 done by the end of the week.  Then I'll be caught up again.  Two reasons for the push... 1.  I like being caught up and 2.  I really want to attempt a December Daily/Document Your December type project and I don't feel like I will have much chance of success if I'm behind on PL too.  Wish me luck!  :-)

Project Life: Week 44 Part 2

The second part of week 44...

I really love how these pages turned out as well!  I think a big part of it is that I had my big camera out more than usual this week.  I like being able to use bigger photos on my spreads.  My phone photos have printed well... but I still like to keep them pretty small.  I also really like this kit by Amy Jaz Designs (Eye of Newt)... it worked great to tie everything together!

I'm already not too excited about putting together week 45... it's halfway through the week and I think I have a sum total of about 3 phone photos to work with so far.  And with heavy duty purging and packing this weekend, I'm pretty sure the big camera won't be out much, if at all.  Oh well... the holidays are here soon and my big camera gets lots of use then!

Project Life: Week 44 Part 1

Lots of fun photos last week, so I decided to do a four page spread.  I need to remember that I can do more of those since I'll have lots of pages available after splitting my book in two.  I love how part one turned out...

Project Life: Week 43

Another week done!  I can't believe I just completed week 43!  Less than 10 weeks left in the year... that's both really exciting and really depressing.  :-)

Project Life: 2013 Book One

Okay... here it is!  My book for the first half of 2013!!  I am really, truly in love with this book and love to look through it over and over.  There are some things I already know I want to do differently next year, and there are some typos I missed that kill me a little every time I see them (but now I know where they are and don't look at them any more... lol!)... but to say that I'm pleased with how my first book of my first year of Project Life turned out is a definite understatement!

I printed mine as a 12x12 book through Shutterfly...

I used a template by Emily Merritt from The Lilypad to make the cover.  I plan on using the exact same thing on book 2, just switching out the photos.  My one beef I have with my cover, is that I forgot to put book 1 on the spine!  It just says Project Life 2013.  I'm going to label book 2 on the spine, but it's going to bug me a little that they don't match completely.

Cover page...

I'll be honest, I didn't put much thought into this.  I had a Shutterfly coupon that was about to expire that night so I threw some things together (Cathy Z freebies) and made the cover page.  Haven't come up with a plan on the book 2 cover page yet.

 The inside pages...

Please ignore the glares and blown out areas.  That's not the printing, it's the lighting I had on my deck when I took these photos.  Everything printed beautifully!!  I really couldn't have been more pleased!  I use my phone a LOT for PL and I was a little leery about how those photos would print, but they printed great.  So did my phone screen shots and images I grabbed from the web.

I mentioned this summer how excited I was that my son's camp allowed free downloading of the photos they took everyday.  Those printed great as well...

 ... and I was so thrilled to be able to include him in our weekly pages even when he wasn't with us!

And lastly, my oh so exciting last page of the book...

I can't believe that I'll be starting to put together week 43 tomorrow!!  First I'm having a hard time accepting that the year is almost over already and second, I'm very surprised that I've managed to keep the momentum going on this!  In fact, there's so much momentum that next year's planning has begun (I just need to find a way to take a small break between the 2013 book and the 2014 one without getting too far behind).

Project Life: Weeks 41 and 42

Well... I knew I hadn't posted week 42 yet, but I was just sure I had posted week 41.  Then I came here today and realized that I had never posted it!  That shocked me, since I do think week 41 is one of my most favorite recent spreads.  It came together really well...

On the flip side of that... week 42 is one of my least favorite.  Taking a photo of Alex's swim ribbons seemed like a good idea at the time, but I think they overpower that page.  However, I was low on photos this week, so I left it in.

Oh... I took photos of my book for the first half of the year.  I'm that much closer to actually getting my post done!  :-)

Project Life: Week 40

 CAUGHT UP!!!

That is all :-)

Project Life: Week 39

Another week done...