Project Life 2016: Week 5

And now on to week 5...

Supplies:
Template - Pocket Template Maker by Mommyish
Obsession by Just Jaimee and Studio Basic
February 2016 Storyteller by Just Jaimee
February 2016 Storyteller Stacked Pocket Cards by Just Jaimee and Erin W.
Storyteller 2016 Month Calendar Card by Just Jaimee

Project Life 2016: Week 4

On to week 4... everyone was healthy this week!

Healthy and very busy with lots of performances...

Supplies:
Template - Pocket Template Maker by Mommyish
Alpha - January 2016 Storyteller by Just Jaimee
Storyteller 2016 Calendar Card by Just Jaimee
Everything else - February 2016 Storyteller by Just Jaimee

Project Life 2016: Week 3

Clara had had a great school year up until this point with not being sick or injured.  This was our first big ordeal.  Clara started throwing up in the middle of the night, and since she had complained of a sore throat the day before, I assumed strep.  Made an appointment to see the doctor first thing in the morning and had no clue that we would be sent straight to the ER (not strep).  Her heart rate was way too high and they needed to get it down (assumption was that it was due to dehydration).  We spent the day in the ER getting her rehydrated, which would have gone much smoother if it hadn't taken 5 tries and an ultrasound machine to finally get a vein for the IV.

Here's our week 3...

Supplies:
Template - Pocket Template Maker by Mommyish
Highlights word art - Year in Review by Just Jaimee and Mommyish
Storyteller 2016 Calendar Card by Just Jaimee
Everything else - February 2016 Storyteller by Just Jaimee

Project Life 2016: Week 2

I'm not sure why, but this year has been a struggle.  Both with keeping up with project life and with posting here.  I just listed out all of the layouts/spreads I have to post and I do have 22 to post... sounds like a lot, but I'm still behind (and I don't even want to think about the fact that I haven't finished 2015 yet).  BUT, the good news is that I'm loving my PL plan this year, I really like the way it looks.  I just think that being behind is what's weighing on me.  Once I get closer to caught up (and maybe finishing up 2015), my motivation levels will change.  I think my issue is that the more I document, the more I want to document.  I want EVERYTHING scrapped and in books, it makes it hard to stay focused sometimes.

So today I'm going to spend a little time getting some blog posts done!  Here's week 2....

Supplies:
Template - Pocket Template Maker by Mommyish
Calendar - Storyteller 2016 3x4 Month Calendar by Just Jaimee
Everything else - February 2016 Storyteller by Just Jaimee

Trip Album: NYC

What in the world is wrong with me and blogging this year?  2016 must not be the year of consistent blogging like I thought it would be.  Life has been messing with my scrapping this year.  Lots of stuff going on which means more things to scrap, but less time to do it in.  Plus we've had a couple things going on that has messed with my scrapping motivation (Clara's knee injury for one).  Clara and I have a trip coming up over spring break which has all kind of scrappy projects spinning around in my head.  I've been having more fun planning that and gathering information than actually working on the project. That needs to change soon.

And my other distraction?  My NYC trip album from last June.  There shouldn't have been any pressure to complete this album BUT back on Black Friday I bought a voucher from MyPublisher for a photo book.  My thought was that it would be for our road trip album that I was making for my parents.  But when I was almost done, MyPublisher offered a really good coupon that I decided to use instead... thinking that I would use the voucher for my NYC album since I always have lots of downtime after the first of the year (I should have knocked on wood!).

The voucher was a really good deal.  $40 for up to an 80 page classic sized book with a photo cover and lay flat pages.  I'd been wanting to try lay flat pages for a while, but could never justify the cost.  The voucher was good for 90 days which seemed like forever at the time... but January and February were much busier than I had expected, so it came down to the wire.

But, here's my book and I love it!!

I kept things super simple... one, because I thought that worked well with NYC pictures and two, I just plain ran out of time.

In the past, with making books on MyPublisher, I had just used their templates... this time I scrapped 8.5x11 pages and uploaded them.

I used two sets of templates:

I don't see it listed on the graphic here, but the template maker includes different sized bases, and I used the 8.5x11 one.

I'm in love with this size for trip albums!!  I work so much in square pages with PL and other scrap pages, that working with these dimensions was a nice change.  The only thing I'm not sure about is the lay flat pages.  I wasn't sure what I was expecting, but this wasn't it.  The pages are normal pages and they appear to be adhered to something in the spine that makes them lay flat.  Again, maybe this is the norm, it just wasn't what I had expected.

Now that a few of my projects are getting completed and I haven't really added anything new in a while, I hope to get back to posting again.  But with the way I've been going, I wouldn't hold your breath!  :-)

Project Life 2016: Week 1

Aaarrrggghhhh... I still can't decide what to call my posts this year.  Isn't that crazy?  It's such a minor thing, but it's really bugging me.  I have changed the title several times now... curious to see which one I land on.  My overall project is called our Family Yearbook, but my weekly pages are the most traditional project life pages that I've done since the first year.  So, my current thought is to call my posts with my weekly spread Project Life and call all other posts relating to my book Family Yearbook.  We'll see if this sticks.

So after all of that nonsense, here is my week one...

Now, the info on the product that changed my project life world... the Pocket Template Maker Actions by Mommyish.  I'm totally in love!  So many possibilities, so easy to use and the clean look I was going for this year.  It does take a little effort to create a template from scratch each time, but I'm finding that takes no more time than trying to fit photos into a template that doesn't quite work.  Now I just open up the photos I want to use, go through them one by one and create a "pocket" in the size and orientation that I need.

Here are the rest of my supplies (links on pinterest)...

Family Yearbook 2016: Week 0

Wow!  I can't believe that I didn't post one single time during the month of January!  January is usually one of my heavier posting months, as I always start out the year with good intentions and can be a little over ambitious.  This year had a bit of a rough start on the scrapping front.  It wasn't until a couple weeks into 2016, before I really figured out my direction for this year.

Not long after my last post, I saw that Cathy Zielske had released a new set of clean and simple templates that could be used for project life.  I was drawn to them and the clean look, so I immediately bought all of the 12x12 sets and declared them my templates for 2016.  I did one set of pages and called them week one.

That was all fine and good, until week 2.  I couldn't make it work.  Just not enough choices yet (I'm assuming that she will continue to add options to this collection).  I was seriously stuck.  I lamented about it at The LilyPad and was immediately steered toward the product that would change my Project Life world!  But that information will have to wait until my next post.

Now what to do with my original week one?  I could redo it completely with the new templates, or I could figure out a way to make it work in my book.  So, since this year's book is supposed to be a mix of styles along with my project life pages, I decided to leave these pages mostly alone.  I did take out the week one card and replaced it with the "bring on 2016" one.  This was questionable as a week anyway since it was only 2 days.  The main reason for my delay in posting is because, although I have completed other spreads for this year, I just now made the adjustments to this spread this morning.  I was a little distracted this month, as I participated (and finished!) the Month of Challenges at The LilyPad... thirty one pages/projects in 31 days!  It was so much fun, but I'm looking forward to some downtime to get caught back up on a few things like posting here.

So, after all of that rambling, here is week 0 (not sure what else to call it)...

Also to add to my confusion this year... I'm not sure what to call my posts.  I had decided on Family Yearbook, but now I'm not so sure.  That's the title for my actual book, but I may title my project life page posts as project life again.  Hmmm.... I just don't know!!

Supplies (links on pinterest):

Family Yearbook 2016: Title Page and Plan

I'm still here!  The holidays got the best of me and I'll keep working to catch up with my posting.

So, it's that time again!  Time for a new project life plan.  I didn't make any real significant changes in past years, but this year I'm shaking things up a bit more.

I think my title page speaks to a bit of it...

So here are my changes for 2016:

1. I am no longer calling my project "project life", it's now our family yearbook (more on that in a bit).
2. I'm no longer limiting myself to one template set per year (crazy, I know!). 
3. I'm going back towards the original PL plan with my weekly spreads.  No extra pages, just a two page spread summary of our week.  My weeks got too complicated and too big in 2015, I didn't like the flow of them and I lost all motivation to work on them when all of my weeks were turning into obnoxiously long 8-10 page spreads.
4. So, the point above might make one think that I'm going against my "scrap all the photos" philosophy of last year, but that's not the case.  This is why this is now a yearbook vs. a project life book.  Each week will have a project life spread, but behind that spread will be scrapped pages of any photos/events that need more space.  My project life page will serve as an index, so to speak.  Why do this?  Well... this year my weeks got out of control and when they got out of control, they got really weird.  For example, in December I had a week (which I haven't posted yet or finished for that matter) where Clara had a dance performance on Friday night where I took lots of photos and then we had a one photo event on Saturday.  The flow ended up being a two page spread of dance photos with a random single event photo tacked onto the end.  I don't like that. It bugs me.  So now, a photo representing the dance performance and the one other event photo will go on the PL page and a spread with the rest of the dance photos will go behind.  These extra pages will probably still be pocket pages, but I'll have more freedom with my template choices and I'll get the chance to play with more fun, themed kits.  The one thing I need to watch though is keeping these extra pages an even number.  If this ends up being a problem, I may split the projects into two... with a PL book and a book of the other pages.

Things that are staying the same:

1. I am still printing these as 12x12 photo books from Shutterfly.  I will print multiple times a year again.  Three times worked well last year, but I might up it to quarterly depending on how many extra pages I'm adding.
2. Ideally I would like to pick one template set for the year for the PL spreads in my book (I know I said above that I wasn't going to limit myself, but that was for the book in general, this is for my PL spreads specifically).  This was my plan, I even bought a whole new set of templates when they were on sale.  I see people using these templates all of the time and I LOVE the look.  However, I sat down to use them on my title page and I just. couldn't. do. it.  Sigh.  It was another case of a style that I admire and love to look at, just not working with the way I scrap.  I was having huge internal battles with myself just trying to make a title page... I couldn't do that to myself for a whole year.  So, now I'm on the hunt for a new set to use all year (suggestions welcome!).  The template I ended up using is one I bought for my extra pages, but it worked well here and buys me some time to find a new year long set.
3. I would like to have a set journaling font like I did last year.  That worked out really well for me.  I'm not 100% sure, but I think I'm going to be using The Sidekick by Heather Joyce. (I tried it out on my title page here)

Hmm... I think that's it!  I'm excited to get started and see how this new plan works!

And as before, I have new pinterest boards set up this year.  One for pages and one for supplies.

Capturing Christmas 2015: Advent Calendars

One tradition that the teens aren't ready to give up yet is the Lego Advent Calendar.  I wasn't sure, so I asked before I bought it.  They made it very clear that it will be quite a while before they outgrow it :-)  And since I was at Trader Joe's and they were only $.99, they also each have their own chocolate advent calendar as well.

Supplies - Storyteller 2015 3x4 Month Calendar Cards and Storyteller Riley by Just Jaimee.

Capturing Christmas 2015: The Chicago Tree

I'm still here, still chugging right along with my Capturing Christmas project.  Last week just got away from me.  Last week was crunch week.  It was the week I needed to get all of my photo gift projects done so I could send them to print and get them back in time.  After the photo gifts were done, it was time to figure out what gifts were left to buy so I could place orders if needed.  I think everything is pretty much under control now (except being weeks behind on PL, but I have bigger issues with that than just time), so I'm back to posting!

Here are my pages from when we put up our tree at home...

Made with Photo Overlays:  Christmas No. 1 by Sahlin Studio, Storyteller Riley by Just Jaimee and The Sidekick Font by Heather Joyce.

Capturing Christmas 2015: The Tree and a Movie

Finishing up the last of the pages for our weekend at Bearski.  So far I'm liking my approach to December Daily this year.  It was a little overwhelming at first because I had so many "events" that happened and I was feeling behind.  But once we were back home, the Christmas activities slowed down.  I'm almost caught up and I'm looking for things to document :-)  I think that's what is next... more of the "things", like maybe walking the neighborhood and taking pictures of the decorations or getting down the stories of some of our decorations here at the house.  The beauty of documenting things is that they don't really have to be done, if I get crunched for time, it's okay.

So here are my last pages for Thanksgiving weekend...

Made with Storyteller Riley and December Papers and Accents by Just Jaimee.

Project Life 2015: The last of week 44

Finally coming to the end of my week 44 pages.  I started working on my Halloween photos and then realized that 1) I had only enough for one page and 2) I had forgotten my monthly sibling photo for October when I did my first pages for this week.  So, I did a single page for Halloween and then stepped way out of my current comfort zone and did a more traditional page using the sibling photo (I did use a template, so I didn't get too crazy - but it did get me thinking about my plans for next year).

Made with Thirty-One and Thirty-One Pocket Cards by Amber LaBau Designs and Sara Gleason.

And here is October's sibling photo...

Made with Storyteller Luka by Just Jaimee.

Capturing Christmas 2015: Garland

This page is super simple.  I wanted to document the new garland we got for Bearski.  The photo on the "deck the halls" card was a total accident.  I was trying to take a quick pic of the kids putting ornaments on the tree, but didn't realize that my lens had gotten switched to manual focus.  That was the resulting photo.  I thought it was cool and would make a neat title card.

On this card I used Photo Overlays:  Christmas No. 1 by Sahlin Studio and a card from Shelf Elf by Just Jaimee and Mommyish.

Project Life 2015: Week 44, Part 4

 So... what do you do to entertain 15 8th grade girls during a birthday party at your house?  First off, you feed them Chipotle... I can't believe how excited the girls were when they came upstairs and found a Chipotle catering set up.  It was perfect!  Second... you set up a photo booth.  By the end of the party, the girls had taken 1,008 photos.  I did buy some props, but since they were all still in the costumes from the Halloween party at school, they didn't use many of them.

I'll give you a brief run down of how I did this and if you want more details, let me know.

1.  Backdrop - this I owned already.  Back in the day (like 10 years ago) I briefly played with the notion of being a portrait photographer and bought a few basic supplies.  I dug this backdrop stand and black backdrop out of some boxes in the garage.

2.  Lights - last time I tried this, I used my external flash.  The results were really dark, but fixable in PS.  I didn't want to have to edit photos this time, so I decided to buy a cheap set of studio lights off of Amazon.  They were definitely worth it.  The color cast is a little off, but I probably could have adjusted for it if I had wanted to mess with it.

3.  Camera set up - I used my Canon 5d, with my wide angle lens (20mm, 2.8).  I set the exposure manually and left it alone.  With my lights purchase, I also added a cheap tripod and a wireless shutter remote.  I did spend money on the equipment for this set up (~$100), BUT it was still way under what we would have spent to host a party for 15 girls at some outside venue.

4.  Photo delivery - thankfully every girl at the party had an iPhone.  Clara set up a shared iCloud album for the photos (free).  I had two memory cards, which I went down and switched out periodically.  I have a Mac, so the next part went really smoothly.  I would download the photos to my computer and then batch processed them with a saved for the web action that I wrote.  Once they were resized, I uploaded everything to the iCloud album.  The girls were all instantly able to see all of the photos and download the ones they wanted.

5.  Props - since it was around Halloween, we went with that as a general theme.  The girls used very few of the props I bought but what I bought, I was able to get at the dollar store by shopping early in the month.

That's basically it!  Please let me know if you have any questions about anything!

Oh... and the scattering of scrapping supplies came from Storyteller Kenner by Just Jaimee.

Capturing Christmas 2015: Elf & Photo Shoot

I got a start on my Capturing Christmas album!!  Partially because I had several events to scrap and partially because I'm avoiding a project I'm supposed to be working on (a gift album that I have GOT to get ordered by the end of the week).

Our Christmas activities start on Thanksgiving night each year.  We watch the movie Elf and this year we broke out the egg nog as well.  Egg nog is one of Alex's favorite parts of holidays.

On Friday, we took a walk in the woods to try to get our Christmas card photo.  We got a good one!  I included one of the runner up photos on this page and will save the actual photo for when I put our printed card in the album.

Made with the Storyteller Riley collection by Just Jaimee.

Project Life 2015: Week 44, Part 3

October 30th was a busy day... Halloween Parade at Clara's school and her birthday party at our house after school.  This day alone ended up being four pages.  Again, if I wouldn't have messed up with forgetting Thriller, I might have been able to pare this down by two pages.  BUT, I'll never regret having the extra photos scrapped and in my book!

Week 44...

Made with Simply cards, elements and papers by Amber LaBau Designs and Acceptance elements and papers by Just Jaimee.

Project Life 2015: Week 44, Part 2

After my Christmas project post, I'm going to hop back to Halloween for a bit.  Back to the week that exploded into 10 pages!  Not only did we have a lot going on that week, but a mistake on my part also played a part in the large number of pages.  I know it's probably hard to believe, but somehow I completely forgot about this event when I was putting together my project life pages.  Completely forgot.  I went on my merry way, scrapping the rest of the week and it wasn't until a while later that I remembered Thriller.  I was faced with either redoing the pages I had done, or making this event into it's own two page spread.  The easy answer was making this it's own two page spread, so that's what I did.

Here are the pages for Clara's Thriller performance...

Made with Bewitched by Little Dreamer Designs (the link is to their Facebook page, since I'm having trouble getting to their actual site at the moment).