Project Life...

Random Happenings...

I put this Project Life page together to remember some of the things that happened early on in our summer this year. The app is so fun!

Project Life App Awesomeness!

For the past couple of years I haven't been taking as many pictures in part because I didn't want to have to deal with uploading them to my computer, printing them and putting them in some sort of album. 

When I found out Becky Higgins was launching an app for Project Life I knew I would want to use it especially for everyday life pics. It came out last week and I LoVE it! So easy to make a cute scrapbook page and document some of the stories of our life.

Finally Creating...

I have been feeling the need to create lately. I have had to ignore that urge in order to get other things done. Even though I have a lot of laundry to do and needed to start packing, I sat down tonight to create a digital scrapbook page. I bought a Cathy Zielske template and used other things I had on hand. I really like how it turned out. It's the first page for Sage's baby scrapbook.

Today...

We've had kind of a busy week. I was hoping we could just relax today. Today is normally a big chore day but I thought we could do our chores tomorrow instead. I was hoping the kids would play nicely and entertain themselves and I would work on some fun things. I was hoping for a quiet day.

Today is not working out that way so far. The boys have been fighting a lot already. There has been a lot of whining and crying to me about what the other has done. Parker bit Caden on the arm. No one is playing nicely so far. I did finish this scrapbook page in the midst of the chaos but it wasn't the refreshing experience I had hoped for (and I'm not totally satisfied with the final result). Anyway, I am going to post this and then figure out something for the kids to do. They are probably going to rest time soon. Or maybe I'll take them swimming - our days always seem shorter/better when we work in a trip to the pool.

I also made this page a few weeks ago. Both were created from templates I either got for free or for a $1 (I've been buying a lot of supplies at JessicaSprague.com on Wednesdays).

Birthday Party Invites

Like I usually do when designing something digitally, I started by searching designerdigitals.com for products that I could use to make simple invitations. I was inspired by these digital cut-ups for the design of the boys' invites this year. I made a 6x4 file in Photoshop and then started making rectangles and adding text in different fonts. The invite had a bit too much white space so I searched my files for photos I could use to fill in the background. I then had them printed as photos at Wal-Mart.
This was the first year I did two separate invites. Mostly because we invited more people from school (vs. church) who only know one of the boys. I'm really happy with how they turned out!

Things I want to do this year...

I am really energized to do a bit more scrapbooking this year. I'm going to start by making a book of my blog for the past two years. I haven't decided if I will make 1 book or 2 (one for each year).

I was looking back at summer 2008 entries and laughing at some of the funny/cute things my kids said. It should be a fun process looking at our past two years. I'm using blurb.com in case anyone else is interested in making a blog book.

I also really want to make more physical scrapbook pages. I'm not going to school this semester and probably won't be as busy with my photography business. I will need a creative outlet and I'm hoping to have that with paper and pictures.

one spread from Project 365

I have spent a lot of time this year working on Project 365 (~one photo per day with short journaling blocks). It has been a lot of work and I have enjoyed sharing our story in this way. I haven't been perfect about taking one picture every day but I have been able to capture a lot of our everyday stories. I still have to finish September, November, & December in that album. I have ordered Project Life (which should come tomorrow - YEAH!) and will continue doing this page divider style scrapbooking. I'm just not planning on doing it as intensely as I did this year. I may pull in some older photos and tell those stories along with our current ones.

Being Creative...

I watched this tutorial last week on creating digital scrapbook pages from pre-made templates. On the same website they have products for $1 on Wednesdays so I only paid $1 for this template and got 3 pages out of it.

I've been doing some digital scrapbooking for 3-4 years now and I'm a little embarrassed that I didn't really know how to do this until this week. It is easy and fun! I whipped out these three pages today with some photos we had taken in May. I love how they are each different and yet the same.

I'm loving and missing my kids a bit today. It is great to have these days home alone but I know I will be ready to see them when they come home on Friday.

Listening to Jon Schmidt radio today on Pandora. Perfect for a creative Sunday.

Remembering why...

...I enjoy digital scrapbooking. There is no mess. You don't have to have a clean surface to get started (that is a problem here lately). You can work for a few minutes here and there. Finish and print. It is especially nice to have my printer now and print the pages instantaneously. This is the page I made today of some of the pictures we took while building the house. My two favorite colors, scarlet and lime.

I haven't done this in awhile...

When I first started my blog, I posted several scrapbook pages that I was working on. I haven't done that in a long time. A lot of that has to do with the fact that I don't scrapbook as much now that I blog. I tell my stories here instead of there.

I was feeling down in the dumps this morning until I realized what I could work on. I have been wanting to print out some digital scrapbook pages I have made over the past 2-3 years. While I was finding the pages I had not printed, I also found a few pages that I started but didn't complete. It was fun to finish pages while I waited for pages to print. It was productive and easy - just what I needed. I have about 8 pages to add to my scrapbooks after a day of finishing and printing. It was great. It also helped that we finally have both computers working in here. Parker happily played computer games while I worked on my project.Several months ago I typed up all the events from my 2005 calendar. I decided to put that information on a scrapbook page but never finished it. Today I put on the finishing touches. It is fun to have this view of our life in 2005.
When Allie got home from school, she wanted to know how I got the scrapbook pages I had printed to look like they do. With a little help, she made her first digital scrapbook page this afternoon. Very funny pictures of Parker the summer he turned 2!
This is another page I started last year and finished today. I really like how it turned out.

Although I couldn't fathom finishing the laundry this morning, I happily conquered it this afternoon after my morning of "filling up". I need to remember that.