December Daily: The Beginning!

Oh December Daily! I tried you for a very short time last year and I never finished you! Maybe this year will be the year.

I've been Pinterest-ing lots of stuff to get ideas for the past month or so but even with all that guidence I keep expecting some sort of set directions on what you're supposed to do. I've come to the conclusion it's kind of whatever you want which leads me to feeling like this as I put it together...

I see lots of people doing their basic layouts so they just plug in their pictures and whatnot. I wanted to do that. I really did. I just could not figure out how to pick stuff out when I didn't even know what I was supposed to be showcasing for that day. So yes...I'm definitely just making it all up as I go along. I've made my own unofficial rules for myself to keep myself sane:

•  Use your own handwriting dammit! You'll get it done a lot quicker if you're not fiddling with a typewriter.
• Things do NOT have to be perfect. Getting it done happily is a lot better than hating the project and everyone around me.
• I am not a professional scrapper in any sort of the way. I am not a designer. I am a regular person and it's okay to scrap like one. I do not have time to be all Martha Stewart about it. Lol.
• Anything goes. Just get it done. 

Anyway, on to the pictures....(and in keeping with the keep-myself-sane way of life, they are not ideal pictures but I got them done so that's what counts. Haha!)

I love love love how the cover turned out. Little button tree! I'm so proud of you! (Also, took a lot longer than I care to admit to get the sizing/layout just right.)

I'm also in love with the title page. It's impossible to get a proper picture of because it's set on a clear page so you may have to use your imagination as to how it looks in person and without glare.

Next up: Intro/first page. The calendar is a printable from Stitch In Time. I'm going to write a little something each day.

These pages are all actually November because I just simply couldn't wait to decorate.

Here's the other side of the insert along with pictures of us decorating. I'm doing #30lists as well so throughout my album there will be lists!

The page on the left was inspired by Luna and a little story of the "Magic Christmas Star." We finished decorating the tree and she declares that it "needs a star on top!" What the heck? You're two and a half! How do you know it needs a star on top?! Lol. We didn't have a star which prompted a trip to Target. On the way she said we were getting a "Magic Christmas Star!" Hahaha. A day or two later when we were watching a Christmas episode of Paw Patrol I realized that's where she learned it from but it really threw us for a loop. Haha! It was super cute!

The right page is our Elf On the Shelf's letter from his first day of visiting! He brought breakfast from the North Pole. I'll include pictures of that later when I get prints made again.

The next page includes my list for Day #2 of listing. On the 4x6 wood insert I'm going to put a picture of some sort when I get it printed.

The other side of the 4x6 is Day #3's list and a 2x2 shaker page of all our new ornaments that we got for the year. There's one for the Columbus Zoo, the Oakland Zoo, Big Trees State Park, Rudolph (since she watched it for the first time this year), and a polar bear (because that's what Luna picked out.) I'm sure we have some other ornaments somewhere in the house. I try to pick up an ornament anytime we go somewhere neat so then we can remember all those fun times each Christmas.

SPOILER ALERT: If you haven't looked ahead to tomorrow's (12/4/14) listing prompt for #30lists do not scroll down!

On the other side of the shaker page I did my list for tomorrow. :)

If you've really been paying attention you'll realize I have no pictures from December in here yet. Lol. I've got some editing to do tonight and hopefully I'll print them and add them in tomorrow! I want to try to keep us because as soon as we leave for Ohio I probably won't be touching the rest of the month until January. Lol.

Hope you enjoyed looking! If you're doing December Daily as well leave a link so I can check out your pages!
-Mrs. 246

Project Life October 2014

Believe it or not I'm actually caught up with Project Life. (Okay, well...I may be lying a tad. I haven't scrapped September yet. I was sick of being behind so I just started back up with October. I was more motivated to do a current month.)

I tried for a more "put together" look this month. I used my typewriter a lot. (I'm not the best at it and I pretty much left all mistakes "as-is.")

I also printed all my pictures with a white border. I always think it's pretty when people do that with their pages and I like the cleaner look it gives my own. 

I did a lot of Halloween colors. Even with non-Halloween related things. It was also Mr. 246's birthday this month so that means...birthday week!

I had a fair amount of pull out things for when I wanted to include just one more thing or a little tid-bit.

A half page insert for our Pumpkin Patch trip...

I've been debating about what to do with cards. I just can't keep keeping them. They take up a lot of space and I'm still relatively young. I've decided I'm going to keep the super special ones and photograph the rest. That's what these two pages are: pictures of birthday/Halloween cards. Some of them aren't the right orientation and the pictures aren't the best but it's all very readable and takes up considerably less space than the actual cards.

See...I did keep some stuff! These are some random inserts I'm including as well. The two little books of memories reside in the birthday envelope.

More birthday celebrations...

A little pull out with pictures of Luna poking the cake, a little memory about Luna wanting nothing but cake and for good measure...I included the recipe as well!

Another little pull-out of a picture I just couldn't NOT include. There was a rabbit at the Autism walk and Luna insisted that it was the Peter Rabbit. So cute!

 A 12x12 page highlighting Luna's costume! (The picture didn't turn out so well of this one. Oops!)

More everyday life....

And a half page insert just for Halloween!

That's about it...I've been super quiet lately on the blogging front. (It's actually been quite nice! I think it might be too much for working full time and having a life and blogging but I'm going to make it a point to check in every now and then.)

Hope you're all well! Please feel free to leave a link to any Halloween or October project life pages you've done. I'd love to see them! Thanks for stopping by!

-Mrs. 246

Project Life Catch Up: April 14 - 28!

I'm still chugging along trying to catch up to present day (again). I finished this layout last weekend and it shows April 14 -26. (Roughly week 16-17.) It's very Luna-centric because when we don't have much going on Luna's really the only thing we photograph.  Haha.

This page is actually the back half of my Yosemite layout from April 13th so I had a 12x6 area to fill. I decided it would be cute to highlight our sidewalk chalk art from 4/14. Let's be honest...it's pretty sweet. Haha. I hadn't done sidewalk chalk in forever and it was way too much fun. Luna was kind of into it. She kept asking me to draw turtles then decided it would be more fun to play cars outside. I, on the other hand, totally went for it.

 

Nothing too special about the sidewalk chalk bits. I found these cute little stickers at Target that had rainbows and clouds which I decided would be perfect for my rainbow/clouds masterpiece. 

I feel like these kind of stickers aren't really "in" for scrapbooking right now but I say "Pssh!" Use what you like! It's your scrapbook. I think I'd drive myself insane if I tried to make some of those pages I see. They are gorgeous but they're just not me. It's not going to be fun until you stay true to your own style.

As for this section...I LOVE it. Even more so because this picture was taken after Luna used the potty for the first time!!! I never really do split pocket type layouts but I loved how this turned out.

• The "One Sweet Moment" is from one of the me & my big ideas pocket card sets, I just don't recall which one.
• The chevron card is from Becky Higgins 5th and Frolic Core Set.
• The "medal" was actually a pretty ugly flower embellishment that I added the "i did it!" circle on and glued some scrap ribbons on the back. It might just be my favorite part! And yes, it's on top of the pocket and not in it.
• And the typing?! Well folks, that's on my new typewriter! More about that on a later day but if you look through my Instagram Feed you can catch a sneak peek! (And feel free to add me, I've been really enjoying IG lately.)

Just a close up of the awesome flower/medal thing. I'm really quite pleased at how it came together. Now for the second page...

Isn't this page more matchy-matchy than you're used to from me? I kind of like it! Lots of purple/blue inspired by blue eyes and a purple dress.

I used the same purple (and yellow) washi tape on all the pictures from this "session" to kind of tie it all together. The card above is actually kind of plain but all the elements come together pretty well I think! The card is from the 5th and Frolic set and I made the QR code for the video at this website.

If you choose to scan it and watch it...be warned...it's a minute or so long video of Luna eating an apple. It was such a peaceful moment and I'm so scared that I'll forget tiny little details like how cute she is eating an enormous apple I just want to include everything!



More pictures from the park and another (pretty cute!) video of Luna on the swing. So cute.



Here's the last couple pictures from this portion. Washi tape is my friend. I have alot-ish. (I've seen much bigger stashes.) I just like how easy and cheap it is to add a bit of color/pattern and to "tie" groups of pictures together. My collection doubled in size when I bought the Memory Keepers Washi Tape Set. I like how it has pretty much ALL the basic colors in two different sizes/patterns so it's perfect if you like washi tape but don't have many projects where you can break out your kitty cat washi tape.

And for the end little bit...a flip page! I only had a couple pictures left I wanted to include in before I did our Easter (we did it later in the month since I was working on actual Easter) and the last of the month so a flip pocket was perfect.

I already have those pictures printed out so I'm ahead of the game...just have to finish it!

Has anyone did their Easter pages yet? Leave a link because I'd love to see them and steal all your ideas before I put my layout together. ;)


Thanks for looking!

- Mrs. 246

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Project Life Catch Up: April 1-6 2014

EDIT//06.03.14// A lot of people really liked the calender I used for this page and I did too! This calender in this post is from a PL kit buuuuut I just made a bunch of similar free printables for you to use! Check them out here: Project Life Calendar Printables.

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Hey guys! I haven't posted about my Project Life pages since this post back on April 2nd and since I've been on a Project Life kick lately I'm even more motivated to share my most recent pages. I've been looking at a lot of different people's pages and getting lots of ideas.

Sometimes when you do this kind of project it's easy to use your old stand-by techniques without a second thought but I was relying more and more on just adding extra elements in the photo editor instead of actual embellishment. That's fine and all (especially if you're doing digital pages!) but my aim wasn't to do digital pages. It was a bit silly just to do everything digitally, print them out, cut them up, put them in pockets with the occasional embellishment. It is time for me to shake things up a bit in my scrapbooking. 

Here are my pages from April 1-6 that I just finished this past weekend:

In what I'm calling my signature style of "mish-mash-anything-goes" I love this page. Lots of bright and happy and fun memories.

The "April" Title card was a bit more muted then I'd like and it was hard finding elements that would go together to fill up the space. Don't you just love those letters though?

Holy moly. This calendar is probably my favorite part of the whole page! I think it'll be so neat to look back on this years from now. I didn't keep track of what we did or anything. I just kind of looked through pictures to jog my memory of what we did and for days I didn't have pictures  and didn't know I just kind of filled in whatever. (i.e. "Mommy working" and "TGIF" Lol.) I think I may use one of these every month. And actually keep track of things better for it. I love it! *The card is from the 5th and Frolic Edition Core Kit by Dear Lizzy. I think it's a Michaels exclusive. I love this kit.*

I had more journaling I wanted to do on this card so a little pull tab worked perfect. I love including some hands-on elements too. I think it's neat!

Before if I wanted to jazz a picture up with some text I would do it in the photo editor but I'm trying a bit more to use handwriting on my pictures. I definitely need a better pen for this but I like the way it turns out. And yes, that's me and little Boo Radley cuddling in bed. (Cell phone pic quality for sure. But thank goodness for cell phones because if not, I'd have a lot less pictures.)

This page was kind of "eh" in my book. But the memories are documented and that's all that matters, right?

Here's the neat part though! I came across this Flip Flap pages by Close to My Heart somewhere on the internet and I knew I just had to have them. They have all sorts of different sizes and there's an adhesive strip on one side to attach them right to your PL pages and you have a fun little way to add extra pictures or journal. You can even layer them for a little mini album within your album. Ahh! The possibilities! (This is perfect if you have one to two more pictures you want to add to a layout but not enough to justify adding another whole insert. Plus, it's a fun hands-on element!)

And moving on....our day trip to Big Trees State Park!

I used a Becky Higgins Design H Insert for our Big Trees State Park pictures. We didn't take a ton of pictures since we've been there a fair amount before, just not with Luna!

I forgot I had this too so I had to put it in. We had bought Luna a sticker book full of bear stickers at the gift shop. I needed to entertain her a couple days later and asked her to make mommy a bear card for my scrapbook. She happily obliged. This girl LOVES stickers.

This picture didn't turn out so well since I had a lot of glare on the photo pocket but how freaking cute is that picture? I had a mini running theme for these pictures of words on stop of that clear and green striped washi tape, as well as black handwriting/stamps.

 

I didn't have a ton of room for journaling so I included a insert card and used lots of tiny writing. The card is from that same 5th and Frolic Becky Higgins Core Kit. I slipped in our parking pass from the day as well.

 

Another Flip Flap page! The typed sticker saying are from various Cosmo Cricket Tiny Text packs. I LOVE these packs. Easy cute embellishment on the cheap. I have 3-4 different sheets. I'm making it my goal to get them all. Lol. Note the journaling right on the picture. I'm liking it! I used to not want to do it. What if I'm ruining the picture, I thought. Well, it's the digital age. Print another one. Problem solved.

I forgot to take a picture of the whole back of the insert but this is in the top spot. A mini collage of us and the HUGE trees. I used a combo of letter stamps using Staz On ink (a new favorite!) and handwriting for the embellishing.

A new favorite!!! QR video codes!! I've thought about doing this for a while but I couldn't help but thinking that it was a bit silly. QR codes haven't caught on much and in twenty years will I even be able to scan them? What will the next technology be? Then I figured it can't hurt if it's not around anymore or something happens to the links. It's pretty neat for right now.

I was sold on the QR video codes once I was reading someone's blog this past week that their 4 year old loved looking through the PL books and her favorite part was scanning the QR codes and watching all the home videos. I think I should still be able to scan them in a couple years and I'm pretty sure Luna will get a really big kick out of it. (And so will I!) Expect more QR codes in the future!

The last picture of the insert. Luna and Ryan at the warming hut after our hike, having some hot chocolate (Luna's first taste!) and Luna playing in the snow.

That's it for now! What I've learned on these pages: I love journaling/writing right on the picture and I love QR codes. Expect more in the future.

Thanks for taking a look! Let me know if the comments if there's any fun little "techniques" you've come across for Project Life. I'm open to anything!

-Mrs. 246