Project Life: Week 4

Still plugging right along with project life!  This week was another tough one since my photos were all over the board (in both colors and subject matter).  This was also my first week to not include a photo for every day.  I took a photo every day, but I had bigger events that I wanted to showcase.  Plus, the photos I opted not to use were of our typical weekly stuff... so I have a feeling that in one of these upcoming weeks, I'm going to *need* more photos and I'm going to be glad that I haven't overused certain activities in my layouts.  I'm happy with this week's layouts, but I'm not feeling that it is as cohesive as it could be.  Oh well... I've got 48 more weeks to play with!  :-)

 Credits: 

Template - Amy Jaz Designs

4x6 Templates - Paislee Press

Titled Templates - Amy Jaz Designs

Instagram template - Cathy Zielske

Patterned Paper - In Review by One Little Bird

Journal Card - Today Journal Cards by Valorie Wibbens

Winter Fun tab - Winter Frost by Amy Jaz Designs

Credits: 

Template - Amy Jaz Designs

4x6 Templates - Paislee Press

Journal Card - Today Journal Cards by Valorie Wibbens

Grid Paper - Every Day Essentials by Amy Jaz Designs

Journaling Card by Traci Reed's Hawt Mamas

Rock Star Stamp - Keep Calm and Rock On add on by Little Butterfly Wings

Project Life: Week 3

We were out of town for the long weekend, so I was running a little bit behind with week three.  I also struggled with the pages since I wasn't real thrilled with the photos I had to work with.  Once again, I had nothing by photos from my phone... I need to do something about that!  :-)

 Anyway, the momentum is still going and week three is done!

 Credits are listed here.

Christmas morning...

This Christmas was a little light on photos.  First off, I have no photos of our Christmas with my parents.  Clara and I were still getting over the bugs we had and I just didn't get my camera out.  I took a few (and I do mean just a few) on Christmas morning and then the next day, I got sick again with a cold and my camera just sat around collecting dust.  I did take a few later in our trip, but not nearly as many as I would have liked to.  Hopefully my attempt at project life will help motivate me to take more photos this year!

The calm before the storm, our little tree at Bearski...

Jeff and I bought that tree at Target the Christmas before we got engaged!  I was hosting a Christmas party at my apartment and needed a tree.  I guess we've had it for 17 years now (or is it 18??)... yikes!!  It was in that apartment that year and then was in our condo we bought when we got married.  It didn't see the light of day for several years, until we moved down to Dallas.  There it was in the kids' playroom for a couple of Christmases.  Then it got called back into real service when we moved back here.  That first Christmas we were back, we pulled our big tree out of storage only to find that we only had the bottom 2/3rds!  No clue when and where we lost the top 1/3!!  So, the little tree was our tree for a couple of years until we found the perfect tall, skinny tree to fit in our city space!

We decorated it with some plain little ornaments that I bought for the tree when we first got it, but we've also been adding stuff that we've gotten locally.  Every Thanksgiving the resort hosts a holiday event where kids can go from spot to spot doing different activities.  There are usually a couple of stops where you can make ornaments.  Those are on there.  We've also picked up ornaments from local attractions that we've been to.  The star is one Alex picked out and bought at our church's Fair Trade Bazaar.  He put it up there himself :-) Very pleased with our little tree and can't wait to add more ornaments to it!

The kids were up super early... they were so excited!

Here they are going through their stockings...

 Yay!!  Toothbrushes!!!  :-)

Figuring out what to open next...

Yes... there is a box of Hungry Jack there.  Bearski got a present from Santa too... it got a waffle maker and mix, a kinect game and some family board/card games!

And the aftermath...

It actually doesn't look all that bad... does it?  We got up, opened presents, had our traditional breakfast of Land of Nod cinnamon rolls with sausage and Jeff and the kids were still able to get out of the slopes as soon as they opened!  They had a great day of skiing since the slopes weren't very crowded!

filling in gaps...

Last gap to fill in before moving on to Christmas photos.  Back near the beginning of December, Clara was in the Nutcracker production of the place where she takes modern (and an extra pointe class).  The week of the performance, they discovered that the high school where they would be performing had double booked their theater!!  So, that is why it looks like they're performing on a gym floor... it's because they are!

If you were able to attend additional Saturday rehearsals, you could have an additional role.  Clara was a party parent (her "daughters" are on the bench behind her)...

Their modern class performed the Arabian dance...

That's Clara with one of her best school friends and one of her best dance friends!  It's funny how circles constantly overlap here in such a big city!

Clara also performed Frosty with the performance troupe at the end of the show.  The girls had such a good time!

Project Life: Week 2

Okay... still loving project life!  I know it's only week two, but I seriously can't wait for the week to end so I can scrap my next set of pages!  This week I didn't take a single photo with my big camera... these were all with my phone.  Previously, this would have made me twitchy... but now with PL, I love it.  I have a whole series of glimpses into our everyday lives... not just the big "big camera worthy" events... but the stuff that makes up our days.  I think, if I can keep this up, we'll have a really neat record of our year.

 I'll post a link to the credits here once the site where they're posted is back up.

These are already uploaded to my Shutterfly album and I love flipping through the virtual pages!

better late than never...

I know I said I would upload this last week, but stuff happened :-)  First it was issues with our wireless modem (actually the extender) and then Saturday we had the great file migration debacle (trying to transfer stuff from my desktop to my new macbook pro).  So today I'm back in business and I have other things I want to post, but I'm getting this done first before I move on.

Here is the Russian dance...

I didn't do too bad considering I wasn't looking where I was shooting... just propped it up on my knee and hoped I didn't move it during the piece.  The lighting was tough, so the girls periodically turn into glowy angels... but that's okay :-)

Russian...

The last week before break, the dance school where Clara takes ballet and character had their winter show.  Clara and her friend performed the Russian dance from the Nutcracker.  She loves this dance (and the costume) and couldn't wait to perform it!

However, she wouldn't look at me for photos... sigh...

 A series of shots of Clara with her friend and partner for the dance...

Think she was tired of me taking photos?

 Clara and another one of her friends...

... they've gotten really close over the past year and now dance together three days a week at three different places!

And now for my performance shots of questionable quality.  Jeff was out of town and Alex was at a Christmas party, so I was on my own to either shoot still shots or take video.  I couldn't decide, so I attempted both.  I had my flip video camera balanced on my knee with my left hand and my camera in my right... but I shoot fully manual and wasn't able to make adjustments for lighting as I shot, so everything ended up overexposed.  My video turned out a little funky too (I'll post that tomorrow).  But I guess video and still shots of questionable quality are better than not having them, right?

Anyway... the girls did a FABULOUS job!  They were really good, strong partners for this dance... I just loved watching them...

as promised...

here's frosty...

Project Life: Week 1

Crazy... I know!  Two posts in one day!  What's even crazier is that I finally decided on my format for Project Life and have actually completed week one!!

I love the idea of the traditional PL as it was designed... however, Jeff and I have decided that this is the year of house projects... serious purging, painting, updating the kids' rooms and general maintenance stuff.  The last thing I needed to do was add more stuff before we had even started getting rid of the old stuff in our house.  So, I thought about going digital yesterday, today I committed to it and completed my week one layouts!  I'm so excited about them!!!  My main motivator for doing Project Life is to get my photos OUT of my computer and into some format that we all can flip through and enjoy.  My main fear of doing PL digitally is that my pages would just end up trapped in my computer like all of my other photos and digital scrapbooking layouts.  However, I have a plan.  As soon as I finished these pages, I uploaded them to Shutterfly and started a new 12x12 photo book.  These pages are already in there and no stuff is added to our house until my finished book (please let me finish it!) arrives around this time next year!

So, here are my first two pages...

 supply credits can be found here

Project Life is not meant to be a complete album of all of the photos you take during the year, but more of a snapshot... the week at a glance type of thing.  So, these photos are a teaser of posts to come with more complete sets of photos from our break. Can't wait until next week, so I can do another set!

frosty photos...

After You're My Only Shorty.... Clara and her friend performed Frosty the Snowman with the junior performance troupe!  Some of those little ones had some serious attitude on the floor... you can see it in the video I'll post tomorrow.  They were adorable!

 

I love looking at these photos and seeing the genuine smile on Clara's face!  She's having so much fun with dance this year!!

we're back!

Wow... the holidays were as crazy and chaotic as ever this year!  But they were completely wonderful as well (even after a bumpy start)!

On the last day of school before break, I got a call from the school nurse that Clara wasn't feeling well.  Apparently, she turned white as a sheet and started shaking in class.  Very strange since she was was perfectly fine and super excited about their Christmas party that day when I had dropped her off about three hours before.  I picked her up and she spent the afternoon writhing around in pain and wasn't able to keep anything down.  I called the doctor's office and given her symptoms, they sent us straight to the ER with a suspected appendicitis.  After five hours in the ER, they were ready to send her home... but then the pain came back and her temperature shot up so they admitted her for observation.  About this time, I confirmed that it was a stomach bug and not appendicitis by coming down with it myself... ugh.  Thankfully I was able to get a cab home and get settled in before it fully hit (and, thankfully, I didn't have it nearly as bad as Clara).  We were quarantined until Sunday and were able to have Christmas with my parents that day (we kind of messed up their visit with our stomach bug drama).

After that we headed to our place in Michigan for the rest of the break!  I have a few photos to post from that trip (I immediately followed up my stomach bug with a massive cold, so I didn't take as many photos as I would have liked).  But I'm going to try to catch up on my pre-break photos and videos before I move on.  I also developed a major itch to do Project Life this year and given that I'm already a week behind, I need to get that started ASAP or scrap the idea altogether!

So, for this post, I will leave you with the video that goes with the last post I did (prior to our Christmas card)... You're My Only Shorty from the DePaul Women's Basketball game...