Take a Peek: Project Life March 2014

So, I haven't shared any of my Project Life pages since about....November. I took pictures of what I had finished for March 2014 this morning (I haven't done last week yet) and I wanted to share my layouts and ramble about Project Life in general...

I like to focus on getting good everyday pictures in my layouts. Pictures of things that show what we're doing or just a bit of everyday life. I love when people use really nice artistic photos in their PL but I know myself and I know in the future, many years from now, I'm not going to want artistic shots. I'm going to want pictures of my life and my family doing ordinary things.

Lots of my pictures are cell phone pictures. I greatly prefer pictures taken with a camera but some busy weeks a majority of my pictures are cell phone pics. You have to carry around a lot of stuff sometimes when you have a toddler. I don't always wanna carry a camera too but I'm always going to have my phone on me.

My layouts are very mish-mash. I use whatever I want but I do place pictures in chronological order. I do divide the pages up by months, but not necessarily "Week" layouts like a lot of Project Life-ers do. I would think that it would be to constraining for me personally. I already spend too much time of this form of scrapbooking that is marketed to be "easy and quick." Haha.

If you see in the picture below (and above) there's a "Week 12" card. This is the first time I've made one of those. I think I might start including them. Just because I don't make week layouts doesn't necessarily mean I can include week cards.

Sometimes I have a ton of pictures. (Like from my bike ride!) The best way for me to fit them all in is to make collages. I do have Photoshop and I even took a class in college, but I'll admit....I do my photo editing in PicMonkey. It's easy, it's fast. I know where things are and how to do them. It's my goal to one day learn to us PS properly but I'm not going to put that pressure on myself. Years from now I won't care what photo program I used...just the fact that I have lots of photos to look at. :)

It's hard to see in some pictures, but I put the date on every picture. If one ever falls out I'll know where it goes, but truthfully, I'm excited to look back and know exactly what day that picture was taken.

I went a bit crazy with some word stickers on this page. I didn't really care for the page. I thought it needed some brightening up...it has a lot of dark plain-ish pictures. Stickers...can't go wrong with stickers.

Often I look through other blogger's pages of their fancy PL pages and I sometimes have a hint of competition. ("Gosh, I need to use more embellishments!" "I need to journal more" "I need to color coordinate and buy specified sets!") Then I remind myself that's just not going to work for me. I've always been a "throw it all together, learn as I go" crafter. I also like to pretend that my style is sometimes that of The Burrow in Harry Potter. Nice, homey, comfortable...but not necessarily as nice and fancy as other people's styles. Not that mine is any "less," just different. :)

For example, like above, I could have re-written the whole card because I messed up writing but I tell myself that years from now it won't really matter. I want my things to look like I made them. Like a human made them.

Occasionally, I'll use inserts for a special occasion. We went horseback riding through the vineyards a week or so ago. We had an awesome time. Every time I started taking "selfies" on my horse I just started cracking up to myself. It seems like such an odd thing to do. But hey, I wanted a picture of me on a horse dammit.

These last couple pictures the sun didn't want to cooperate with my photographing Project Life anymore so sorry for the glare. (Photographing Project Life is one of the hardest things to do, I swear. Does anyone else have this issue? I've read articles and tried their tips...it's just never that awesome. Except for taking all the pictures out and meticulously laying them in the same spots on top of the page protectors for photos, but let's be real...ain't nobody got time for that. Well, some people might, but I sure don't.)

 

So, there you go! Most of March's Project Life and a bunch of me rambling in between. I hope you enjoyed it.

Has anyone else finished some Project Life pages recently? Feel free to leave you links in the comments. I'd love to check them out!

-Mrs. 246

My SAHM Day

*Pardon my make-up free face...I had no one to impress today other than Luna and she loves me just the way I am. :)*

Today was Mr. 246's first day of work (training) all day. I just happened to have the day off of work (Lincoln's Birthday...who knew? Kind of silly...) so I got to play make-believe Stay-At-Home-Mom. I haven't had Luna to myself for a whole day since she was two weeks old. At that time, she pretty much still slept all day and I was still recovering from my c-section. Well..let's just say that I am POOPED. She had one of those days that babies have where they refuse to be put down and you have to hold them all day. Luckily I had the Ergo. (Which is almost impossible to put on by yourself...)

So here's some of today's highlights:

Hanging out in the Ergo because she couldn't possibly sit and play like she usually does 90% of the time. Haha. We also went on three walks 'cause that seemed to entertain her...

She didn't want to make any cute faces. Lol. Then we found some flowers! (I was on the hunt!)

I've had a flower craving recently. I can usually find some around the apartment complex but times are bare. None of the plants are in bloom it seems. Our apartments are "garden apartments" so there's a ton of landscaping. The right time of year and I have tons of roses I sneak from the rose bushes by the pool. Hehehe. I promptly put them in water when we got home (Luna helped!). They look bigger than they are, they're in a baby food jar...

At one point Luna decided all her toys were boring so I brought out the big guns: tupperware. That seemed to keep her entertained...

So, while she did that I worked on my Mini Art Quilt for the MAQ swap and I'm almost done!! I just have to finish the binding. I've purposely not been posting about it because I want it to be a surprise for my partner, but here's a sneak peek:

Hopefully that doesn't give too much away. I also decided to make something I found on Pinterest and it came VERY close to becoming a Pinterest Fail. Here's what I was supposed to be making:

Photo credit: http://griffithsrated.blogspot.com/2012/02/valentine-prezel-buttons.html (This also has directions!)

The original picture I had pinned didn't have directions, but someone had said to bake them at 350 for 6 minutes. I've come to realize after a kitchen full of smoke that this may have been too high of a temperature (especially since the link I posted above says to do it at 200.). I caught it just in time though, and though the bottoms were "browned" they still turned out delicious. So much so that they're pretty much all gone. This is the best picture I have of the finished product:

I have some of the stuff left over, I think I may try again. The kisses didn't even melt all the way. Gosh, this is seriously probably the easiest "baking" you could do and I still messed it up. As soon as I saw the smoke I had to start laughing. On another note though, I made a bomb-ass dinner. One of those beef roast crock pot kits with the veggies. I left it in the crock pot perfectly and it was wonderful. (Forgot to take a picture though...too busy in delicious food heaven.)

I decided at some point that the little flowers I picked weren't fulfilling my flower craving so Luna and I went to the grocery store. I didn't like any of their cut flowers, but I found a lovely pot of bright red/golden orange tulips! They're sitting near the front door, just happy to greet me when I get home. :)

Then, after Mr. 246 got home, we got a silly surprise. Our apartment complex does cutsy little things every once in a while. They recently had a "pick the Grammy winner" type thing to win money off your rent. We looked at the form and pretty much didn't know ANY of it. There were like 3 names we recognized and somehow by blind guessing we got SECOND PLACE. hahahahaha. It's just silly. We did not make any sort of educated guesses whatsoever. But, hey...I'll take $60 off rent. :)

So yea, I survived. Luna survived. I think I may be sore tomorrow from having to carry her every where, but that's okay...I'm glad we could have a girls' day. I love my little Bean. I'm going to go finish my quilt, then take a nice hot bath with some Harry Potter then it's time for tea and bed. :)

-Ms. 246