1st post of twenty sixteen

*I just discovered this post that I didn't quite finish and therefore hadn't published. Here it is anyway.


I'm sure you all thought I've fallen off a cliff somewhere. Nope. Still alive. I've enjoyed a month of no school. That all comes to a screeching halt tomorrow when my 8th of 12 classes starts, Teaching Science in the Elementary School. We are on the downhill slide, people. August 26th can't arrive soon enough.

What did I do over break?

• Slept a lot. Took naps. Slept some more.
• Cleaned up after my dog.

• Scrapbooked a little. I started a December Daily album using photos from 2013. Haven't gotten very far because, apparently, it's more fun to read about what everybody else is doing in their December Dailies than to actually work on mine.

• Watched a lot of HGTV.
• Started hanging stuff on the walls in the dining room. Still not finished.
• Went on a musical date without my husband who stayed home sick. I took my friend Barbara. We stopped for a look at the tree in Portland's living room.

The show was An Appalachian Christmas with Mark O'Connor. Lots of fiddles, guitars, bass, and singing. It was so good I think I'll go again next year and take my husband.

• Took selfies in front of the tree with my guy.

Happy New Year!

thoughts on keeping the memories alive when there's no time to scrapbook

I'm clearly taking a break from my behavior management homework (again) to share some of my latest additions to my scrapbook collection. What's different is that these did not involve pretty paper or adhesive, yet I love them just the same.

For my birthday, my friend Barbara knocked my socks off and surprised me with my blog from 2014 printed into a hardback book. She secretly had it done through blog2print.com, just slurping my posts and pictures into easy-to-use (or so she says) templates. She picked a cute cover design and stole a picture off my facebook page. {Side note: I think it's kinda weird that she could do that without having my blog password, but she did, and the result is fabulous.} I have seriously been wanting to print my whole blog in yearly volumes for forever, but just haven't taken the time or spent the money to do it. One of these days. But this, my friends, is current, and none of my other scrapbooks are. The last I did any real scrapping was in my project life album, and I think that was in 2012. And, surprise, surprise, it isn't totally finished. It's very close to finished, but not quite. What I love about this is that it's really like a book I wrote. I've always wanted to be an author. Now I guess I am.

Getting that gift got me going. Shortly after my birthday I heard about chatbooks.com where you can print your instagram pictures into a book. When I set up my instagram account, I decided not to share every single picture on facebook. Some people do, but I kind of wanted to keep the two separate. I do share some pictures from instagram here on my blog, but for the most part, they just stay on instagram. Anyway, at chatbooks they print in chronological order, 60 pictures per book + the date and caption for $6. Shipping is free. You can't even print 60 pictures at Costco for under $10, so this is a steal.

What I liked about chatbooks is that you can choose your cover picture and if there are pictures you don't want to include in your book, you can easily select to not put them in. Once you sign up, it's kind of like a magazine subscription. Every time you have 60 new pictures ready, they'll email you and you have a few days to make changes if you want before it gets shipped to you. I got 3 of them and I love them. The books are 6x6 and the photos are 4x4ish.

So once I got those in the mail, then I got to thinking about a Shutterfly book I made back in 2012 when I did Week in the Life. It has been finished for 2 years, just sitting in my shopping cart waiting to be ordered. Well, a 50% off hardback photo book sale showed up on my facebook feed, so I went ahead and ordered it.

It's cool to look back and see what's changed and what has stayed the same. The master bathroom is no longer poop brown. The main bathroom is still yellow. The kitchen is blue now and I have yet to paint the cabinets white. We still don't have the curtains up in our bedroom. One of these days. . .

Wilson is a lot bigger now and he just licks shoes, he doesn't eat them. I no longer teach kindergarten. In fact, my job has changed a couple of times since then.

So, the lesson in all of this is, get your pictures off the computer and out of your phone, people, so you can have a tangible record of your life. I still have a lot to learn about that myself, but looking at these books makes me happy!

i will finish 2012. . . if it kills me.

I haven't posted any Project Life pages in a while because. . . well, I hadn't done any Project Life pages in a while. But in the last week or so, that has changed. I am into October and have all my pictures printed for the rest of last year. (That whole sending pictures to be printed thing was quite time consuming, but it's done.) For the record, I've also finished 2012's A Week in the Life album, which I did digitally on Shutterfly. I wanted that finished because Sept. 9th starts 2013's A Week in the Life project. And I have a teeny tiny more to finish on 2011's WITL album, so maybe I'll be able to crank that one out too. We shall see.

Here are my pages finishing July, August, and September.

The rest of our trip to Ohio including the ballgame, the state fair, family get together, and grandma's house.

I have a couple other pictures hidden in the 3X4 pockets. I'm waiting on my sister to send me a picture of her house to finish the title card, and I still need to journal.

 Used three 4X6's for pictures of the fires in Colorado and the mountains on the trip home.

 August. I had a lot of pictures of my dog, so I ended up making several 4X6 collages.

 A picnic and a frog in the kitchen sink.

 Gardens, birthdays, job searches.

 A trip to the Dahlia Festival and Long Beach for Phil's birthday. I enlarged the beach picture to 8X12, but I didn't do that great of a job cropping it because when I cut it apart to put in the protector, I had to slice right through the water. It just looks weird.

Covered bridge and more notes about Bible study, worship team changes, and not having a teaching job :(

Our garden and a beautiful sunset. Guess I forgot to get a picture of the back of that one.

My project life goal is to use up some of my stash. I don't have a core kit, but I do love the cut apart journaling sheets and labels. I'm feeling pretty good about the progress I've made this week.

I'm linking up with the Mom Creative today for Project Life Tuesday.

a simple wedding album

I threw together a little wedding album for my friend Katie who got married last night. It was relatively easy and took like maybe an hour and a half to do once I got going. 

I began with these two basics: an 8X8 We R Memory Keepers album (Albums Made Easy, available at Target) and an Echo Park wedding kit that came with patterned papers, stickers, and cardstock cutouts (got that at Craft Warehouse). Oh, and I also had some Bazzill card stock leftover from the stuff I made for her shower. I had my punches out, my cricut ready to go, and I pulled out some pretty pearls, but ended up not using any extra stuff. That's why it was done so fast.

This album comes with the divided page protectors, and you can buy additional refills that are the same or are regular 8X8 size. The pocket sizes in this one are 2X4 and 4X6. I trimmed enough paper to fit all the small pockets and made one 4X6 card for each layout. There is nothing fancy here at all, I let the pretty papers do their thing. The kit was great. The picture shows the front/back of the three papers and you get two of each. I had lots leftover. I wish it would've had a little more specific wedding phrases like 'the kiss,' or 'cutting the cake,' or things like that, but there was plenty to work with.

(Sorry, the pictures are a little wonky. . . I couldn't do much about the glare.)

opening page (now new and improved with Wilson hair. Yowza!). . .

the lavender card stock is the same on both sides, but here one looks light gray to me.

 for family photos or what not. . .

coming down the aisle shots. . .

vows, rings, kiss. . .

 recessional, reception. . .

 couple of journaling spots. . .

leaving the church. . .

And there you have it. Pretty little album, huh?

project life . . .

Back today with more of my project life pages. These document the first part of our summer trip to Ohio. I used the 'My Family' paper collection from Fancy Pants that I bought in the clearance bin at Craft Warehouse a long time ago. It had the journaling cards and cutouts. I added a few travel stickers, labels, and whatnot from my stash. 

Leaving Portland, beautiful Mt. Hood poking up above the clouds. . .

Spending a day with my family. . .

 Impromptu photo shoot with the kiddos. . .

Quite possibly my most favorite picture ever. . . blown up to 12x12. (There's a path on my parents' property from some old trolley tracks. I've been dreaming of a picture like this for a long time.)

 Hanging out at Mom and Dad's. . .

 Getting together with friends. . .(6 x 12 protector)

 Edited blog post about my nieces and nephews on the back. . .

Shopping Day. . .

I'm linking up with The Mom Creative for Project Life Tuesday. Thanks for stopping in!