delight in life

project life 2012

Believe it or not, I did actually keep up with Project Life last year, though I completely gave up on posting the spreads on the blog. I stopped for a few months during the late spring/early summer when I was in my first trimester pregnant and couldn't keep my eyes open for more than five minutes, and I thought that would be the end of the whole project, but in August I managed to get all caught up with the whole summer.

I didn't try to make a spread for each of the weeks I missed. That would have been pointless since mostly I was just lying around on the couch, not taking any photos. Instead I printed out photos I had and did the whole summer in 5 or 6 spreads, hitting just the highlights. I also did the whole month of August in one spread. I'm so glad I gave myself permission to be flexible and let go of the "rules" of Project Life. If I hadn't, I never would have gone back to working on it, and I'm so happy I have 2012 documented in that way.

2012 is broken up into 2 albums. Most of the first album was actually posted on the blog (you can see them here), so here are a few highlights of the second.

The title page:

(The pink block is actually fabric, and the white one is a woodgrain textured paper. The bottom left is all hand-stamped by me.)

The month of August:

A spread from December:

The last week of the year:

I had waaaay too many pictures to choose from and definitely not enough time, so I went super simple. Nothing else was worth talking about this week anyway. :)

And finally, the end page:

On the right is a Big Envelope Page filled with all the cards we got in the mail in 2012 (excluding Christmas cards).

Seriously, seriously love this project.

project life, week 11

Week eleven, hurray. I can't believe we are nearly a quarter through this year. I still feel like it's January.

I don't have too much to say about this week. It was simple and quiet and unremarkable.

One excellent thing about last week was the incredible weather. I certainly enjoyed that to the max. (And it's pretty chilly outside again today, so I'm happy to think fondly of last week's shorts weather.)

I included a picture of a pizza mishap, and a screenshot of the ensuing hilarious comments on facebook, as well as something I tweeted about a funny text my mom sent me.

Many weeks, I've been including an Instagram of my temporary tattoos (all from tattly), and I love the continuity week to week.

The second page is mostly photos from St Patrick's Day, which we spent celebrating calmly at our friends' house. I also squeezed in a bit from a sweetgreen menu and another Currents card from Tina's shop.

I used my Silhouette a few times on this page, and my favorite bit are these little clovers I cut out of white cardstock. I backed them with some pretty green paper and used a border punch to add another strip of green. I think those little clovers are so cute!

(You can see the rest of my Project Life pages here.)

project life, week 8

Week 8 has a lot going on. Two inserts! Here's the spread:

On the left, a receipt, some packaging, and some silly photos of Chris and the cats. The small photo on the left, he took and sent to me. I'm so proud.

The first insert is about our dog, who I wrote about last week when my family had to say goodbye. He definitely deserved a little memorial in the book. I cut out the title on my Silhouette Cameo and printed out most of the photos I used in my blog post.

On the back of the Ollie page, more photos, another Silhouette die cut, and the text of my blog post on a 4x6 card.

And put a self-adhesive file tab on the page, as usual.

Here's the spread with both inserts in view:

The second is the program from a concert Chris played in last Sunday.

And finally, the second half of the week spread:

Photos from our Dairy Godmother excursion, my sick day, and a little collage of a really fun evening of board games and libations with Molly and Hiram. I also included one of Tina Aszmus's "currents" cards, which I really like as a snapshot of a particular moment.

A really full week, and I love how that is reflected here.

(You can see the rest of my Project Life pages here.)

project life, week 7

Week 7!

I decided to go strong with the Valentine theme for this spread. On page one I had some step by step photos of the pizza I made for dinner one night, movie ticket stubs, a prescription refill label (with personal info blurred out), a couple miscellaneous snapshots, and some brief week-in-review journaling.

Page two pretty much focused on our Valentine festivities, since that was pretty much the only interesting thing we did all week. Good thing I took lots of photos! The red postcard was Chris's Valentine's card this year. I wrote a schmoopy note on the back and taped it to the gift. I was glad to include it in the spread! I put the embellishments on the outside of the pocket, though, to protect the card itself. It can be easily slid out if anyone wanted to read the note.

The cats made their first appearance in the book this week. Can't believe it took till week 7! I think I've been trying to avoid it for fear of seeming like a crazy cat person to future scrapbook-looker-at-ers. But let's be honest—we are cat people, so I might as well embrace it. (The cute love card is from Jamaica Makes.)

(You can see the rest of my Project Life pages here.)

project life, week 6

Welcome to week 6! Big news this week is that I got a Silhouette Cameo diecut machine. We got our tax refund, so Chris and I each bought one "toy" and put the rest into savings. This was my pick! (His was music. So boring!) I played with my mom's Cricut a while ago and it definitely made me want a diecut machine. Right around then, it seemed like every scrapbooker with a blog got a Cameo and I thought they seemed super cool. And now I can tell you, yes they are.

Here's the spread. I added an insert for my "day in the life" documentation, which I'll talk about in a second.

(You can click on any photo to view it larger.)

Chris had a recital last Tuesday night, and I used the Cameo to cut out the word, then stapled it to the photo. I really love the way it looks. We had lunch with friends and I finally remembered to grab a few photos with people in them. I used to be very much in the habit of good-naturedly forcing my friends to smile and pose once or twice at every gathering, but I dropped that sometime over the last few years. I'm pleased to be starting to pick that up again, thanks to this project.

We stopped at Krispy Kreme on the weekend—I can't pass up that hot doughnuts sign—and they gave us a sheet of KK-themed valentines! Totally made my day. Funnily enough, the first thing Chris said was, "this will be perfect for your book." I also swiped the Foursquare mayorship at my office, so I had to include a screenshot of that.

Ali Edwards encouraged people to document "A Day in the Life" on Wednesday of this week, so I gave it a try. I wasn't too pleased with my results. I didn't take too many photos, and to be honest, I didn't like most of the ones I did take. I think my weekdays are pretty boring so I found it difficult to pull much of interest from the day.

Once I cropped the photos down to 2.5x3.5 to fit into a baseball card protector, they looked a little better. Ali offered the "day in the life" square as a freebie on her blog, so I cut it and the cute little camera out with the Cameo. I love the transparent aspect! I included a spot of journaling on each side and a file tab on the edge with the date.

Even though I didn't think the events of the day were very interesting, I am glad I did this. I even got Chris in on it, and he took a few photos of his day. I think I might give this another try in a few months! Below is the back of the Wednesday insert:

Page two: we had a Super Bowl party on Sunday so I included a few photos (and a beer label) from that. A picture of my Starbucks cups that have been collecting on my desk, and a funny shot of Oscar on top of the bookshelf.

More journaling, a tea bag wrapper, and a shot of a self-promotional image that I liked a lot on my Metro bus.

This makes me officially caught up, and I'm very happy about that. I love flipping through the pages in my book, and I can't wait until it's totally filled up.

(You can see the rest of my Project Life pages here.)

project life, week 5

Week 5! This is the week I started my job, and I took very few pictures. It was really a challenge to fill up the whole spread, but I am happy with the results. (Actually, the reason I'm just now sharing is because it took me a week to remember to snap a photo of my new desk.)

(You can click on any photo to view it larger.)

I decided to do the main journaling for the week in a 4x6 slot, mostly because I didn't have enough photos to fill it up! In order to keep it looking neat, I typed it instead of handwriting it. I don't often do that but I am happy with how it came out.

My 2012 calendar came with tiny images of each month on the back—perfect for project life, especially on a week when I was scrounging for stuff to stick in the pockets.

That card on the left is a broken sewing machine needle! The journaling says "weirdly proud of my first busted needle." I totally love that I had somewhere to put that.

A while ago we ordered a cat scratch lounge from Fab.com, and it came during this week. We were ecstatic to discover that Battlecat liked it. We have been trying for ages to get her to stop using our carpet as a scratcher, and finally we are making some progress. This "Thx" card was part of the packaging from Fab.

On page two, the big news was that our best friends Hiram and Molly moved to town! I totally failed at getting pictures of them, but I did at least get one of their daughter Olivia.

 The stickers are from Olivia. The first night we went over there, she sat next to me on the couch as we all chatted, and when I got home, I discovered these stickers on my feet, cheeks, and collarbone.

The teal card has a text message conversation between me and Molly that actually happened a few weeks earlier, but since it referenced the move that happened this week I thought it was fair game to include.

I knew a sparse week like this would come up sooner or later, and I was worried that I wouldn't be able to complete a spread and it would end up derailing my whole project. I'm so pleased that I was able to fill it up and keep it going!

See the rest of my project life posts here.

project life week 4

This is a week late, but we had a super busy weekend last week and I didn't get a chance to put this together until Sunday night. Then I started my new job on Monday and didn't have any daylight hours at home to photograph it. I thought I'd just double up this week, but then I got busy again and haven't had time to get to week 5 yet! Let's just say I'm grateful for the simplicity of this memory-recording system right now. I am already a little behind, but I know it will be easy to catch up.

Week four had the US Army Band Tuba-Euphonium Workshop, which Chris played a big role in hosting and organizing. He was really busy all week and I didn't get to see much of him, but it was great because so many of our friends from college were in town for it, including Chris's professor.

This week was fun contrast to the previous week, because in week 3 I had a lot of fun putting a lot of embellishment and detail on each slot. This time, I was crunched for time and put it together really quickly with primarily just photos and label stickers. To me, that's the coolest part of this project: I can do whatever I have the time for, and not worry about making everything super complete and artistic.

Here there's a screenshot of an iPhone game Chris and I have been playing, a picture of my temporary tattoo for the week, a tag from an online purchase, an business card from an awesome store I found, and a photo at the Marine barracks where I volunteered for a few weeks.

The conference had lots of good photo opportunities, so I decided to use a 6x12 divided insert to include extras. I really liked doing that and I'll definitely be looking for more opportunities to use extra pages!

The second page has a ew more conference photos and some journaling about the conference, a photo of Margaret's quilt, some fun wrapping paper from a gift Chris received, a few photos from a nice lunch we enjoyed, and that pretty pinky-purple picture.

One month of project life complete already!

project life: week three

Yay, week 3! I am having trouble taking pictures of my pages, for sure. There's not a lot of good light inside our apartment, and outside I am fighting the glare. We'll see--I'll keep searching for a good place to take the pictures!

The first two weeks I printed the pictures and pulled everything together on Saturday, but this week I printed photos as I went and tucked things into the pockets throughout the week. I liked this approach better; it helped me to see where I had holes and needed to think of something to stick in there.

Chris's birthday was definitely the focus of this week. I was glad to have that to fill up the pages with, as it could have been a pretty empty week otherwise! I'm sure before too long I will have a genuinely empty week. That will be a fun challenge.

I had fun thinking of each pocket as miniature scrapbook page and adding lots of embellishments (more than I usually do, at least).

Can't say it enough: I love this project. (See the rest of my pages here.)

project life, weeks 1 and 2

Two weeks in and I totally love this just as much as I thought I would. I like having a place for the scraps and labels that I save because I think they're pretty, and I like having something to do with my Instagram photos. This is week 1:

And then a semi-close-up of the left and right sides of week one:

I used ticket stubs, the labels off some fabric I ordered online, packaging from a few different things, and Chris's "take a number" slip from the pharmacy. The rest is mostly photos, which honestly surprised me. I didn't think I'd have very many pictures each week, but I was pleased to have more than enough. (The orange arrow in the photo below is pointing to the Capitol building. It didn't show up well in the photo but I wanted to draw attention to it!

And this is week two. (The top left card on each week's spread is the "title" card with the dates of each week stamped on.)

This week I didn't have as many photos, but I still didn't have much trouble filling all the pockets. I used a Chipotle receipt, a fabric scrap that I practiced stitching on, a shopping list, a screenshot from my phone, packaging, the text of a tweet that really made me laugh, and a postcard I found at the movie theater where we saw Beauty and the Beast. (!!)

I think my favorite pocket of week 2 is my Amaryllis Watch 2012 collage. (Update: the plant has 4 flowers, one bud, and a whole other stalk that will have 4-5 more flowers in a week or two. So awesome!) I also really like the map screenshot, which shows the route between two friends' houses.

I've been putting the spreads together on Saturday, and I really look forward to it all week. It actually takes me quite a while to do the whole thing, but so far I've enjoyed the process. Yay for having fun with paper again!

project life 2012

My blog is working again!! I am so relieved that everything's back in order. 

I've decided to do Project Life this year and I am super excited about it. SUPER excited.

I haven't scrapbooked at all since like, March, and not regularly in over a year. A few months ago I moved some of my supplies to our storage unit to make room for my new love of sewing, and I canceled my lovely Studio Calico subscription in the spring after two or three months of not even touching the kits.

Cutting and sewing fabric has mostly replaced the urge to cut and glue paper lately, but I have missed the documenting part of scrapbooking. It seems such a waste for my pictures to languish on my hard drive. This project seems like the perfect way to use my photos and play with paper a little without the pressure of full pages. I totally love the idea of having an entire year recorded week by week.

Anyway, so this is my title page. It was fun to put together and only got me more excited about the project as a whole. One thing I discovered is that I don't have many good pictures of just me. I really hope that Chris will become a little involved in this project, and especially start taking more photos with his phone. Then maybe I'll be in a few. :) I was thinking it would be cool to have some sort of info on each of us at the beginning of the year, like ages, jobs, etc, so I might go back and add that now.

One thing that is going to be super helpful for me are iPhoto's "smart album" feature. If you have and use iPhoto, this might work for you too. You can create albums that automatically sort the photos based on a set of criteria. I am going to set one up for each week, so it will pull in all pictures taken between Jan 1 and Jan 7, for example. It should make choosing photos to use on each week's spread really simple. It's also really useful in combination with the Faces feature! For this title page, I used Faces and a smart album to find all the pictures of Chris and me together in the year 2011, which made it much easier to find a few pictures for this page.

Can't wait to put this album together and see what it looks like in a year!

(I wrote this post last week, right before I realized something was wrong, so I'm just now posting it. I've already competed week one of PL, which I can't wait to share soon.)