Here we are at week three—still working on new habits, like meal planning, and still getting back into the groove of life after the holidays. This week I was able to include some fun things around work and home. Early in the week I made our own whole wheat bread with sundried tomatoes and parmesan cheese. It was surprisingly easy and really good. At work, my show season is in full swing, and things are BUSY! An image and a quote were chosen for a feature story in an industry magazine, so that was exciting. Not so exciting? The weather. It was dreary and disgusting.
I guess this page is out of order because the wall wasn't torn down in the bottom pictures, but during the week we watched a couple movies on the big screen—Forks Over Knives (documentary) and Toy Story in 3D (hence the 3D glasses). I still can't believe that I can watch 3D movies in my own basement, let alone movies that are projected at 120 inches wide. In the top right picture, we started building a LEGO Eiffel Tower.
Dan worked on the basement and knocked out more of the wall. On Saturday morning, we went to the hardware store to buy all the lumber and supplies for the wall structure. The basement looks so different every time I see it. It's really cool to see the transformation and the work that Dan is putting into it.
Not much to explain this week, and still loving this project.
Week two, still loving this project, and feeling a lot less pressure. Getting things figured out during week one was the hard part, so now it's smooth sailing. Week two was when I discovered clean eating. Actually, I should say that week one was when I discovered it and bought a related magazine, but week two was where I actually took action and pictures. I used the magazine to plan our meals for the week, and during my grocery trip I bought a lot of ingredients to replace the "dirty" ones in our house. I included a couple pictures of the pantry organiztion. Last year, Dan and I made a huge change to our diets and started buying better foods so our pantry wasn't horrible when it came to certain things, but others changed a lot—like replacing sugar with agave, raw honey, and evaporated cane juice. I also made a batch of clean-eating almond flour chocolate chip cookies with my new mixer, and they were delicious!
So far it's been a mild winter, but we finally saw some winter temperatures, ice, and a tiny bit of snow. I took a screenshot of the weather forecast with my iPhone, and printed it to fit. When Dan and I weren't trying out new recipes, we were keeping warm and snuggling with the cats. In the upper right corner, I included a screenshot from a funny video I took of Merry and a train car. The orange "LAUGH, LOVE..." card came from my clementine kit.
I'm sure it doesn't seem that interesting now, but I decided to include a song verse from a current favorite—Head Full of Doubt / Road Full of Promise by The Avett Brothers. I know it will be fun to look back and see what songs I liked during the year.
Overall, I just documented a bunch of mundane life during week two, but that's what this project is for me. I enjoy including the boring bits of the week because I know they'll be cool someday—whether that someday is months from now or years from now.
If you're curious what Project Life is, it's a scrapbooking system created by Becky Higgins. You can learn more here.
By Vicki | Posted on 03/20/12 | Posted in Personal, Project-Life | 0 Comments | Post Comment
Here we go—week one. I felt a lot of pressure this week to start everything a certain way and keep it consistent throughout the year. The top left pocket, for example, could either have a title card from the clementine paper kit or a printed card with a typed week-in-review. After I reminded myself that this project can be whatever I want from week to week, and that I bought the clementine kit to make this thing easy, almost all of my decisions were made for me. So, I'm using the clementine title cards with a stamped date range on each week, and that's the extent of my rules.
The first week of the year was pretty laid back for us. Even though I took a picture each day during the week, there were some that I didn't care to include and some that had the wrong orientation for the remaining pockets. So, I included what I wanted and even included the Lego London Tower Bridge twice because I liked two different images of it.
On New Year's, Dan and I worked on Legos and made our traditional cabbage soup. Also, Merry loves to lay on my office chair lately, so I wanted to capture that. To show the work Dan had done on a basement project up until this point, I included a 6x12 page protector as an insert with progress shots of the corner Dan demoed. The description (MISSION card) includes Dan's basement task list that I pulled from Google Docs. I printed the images separately, lined them up in the page protector, and then used my sewing machine to sew in the gaps so the photos would stay in place. Here you can see the front of the insert.
Here, you can see the back of the insert. (Yes, that's our sump pump in the corner and it really was enclosed by a structure that the previous owner built.) Otherwise, the first week's spread included a couple work-related pictures of things I see on a daily basis (my desk, notebook, and a plane landing over the highway), and a picture that I took of a friend and I at our first ballet class. At the bottom is a photo of our kitties eating their usual Saturday morning wet food, which is a weekly treat for them, and a punch bowl picture from a friend's baby shower. I cut down a half-sized index card and rounded two of the corners to have a photo description.
Overall, the first week went well and I love how easily everything came together—just print and slide into the pockets, adding some journaling here and there. Voilà!
If you're curious what Project Life is, it's a scrapbooking system created by Becky Higgins. You can learn more here.
By Vicki | Posted on 03/14/12 | Posted in Personal, Project-Life | 0 Comments | Post Comment
Just a quick show and tell—the first weekend in March found us exploring a couple different locations with our friends, Mike and Erin. Their little girl is due at the beginning of April, and Erin is looking fabulous. Here's a little sneak peek for them to enjoy this weekend.
By Vicki | Posted on 03/10/12 | Posted in Shoot, Maternity | 0 Comments | Post Comment
I was convinced that 2012 was going to be just another year in the memory-keeping department. I always have the greatest intentions to take more pictures, remember our everyday lives, and document more. Then, when the holidays are over, I go back to work and those good intentions disappear. The days turn into weeks. The weeks turn into months. Before I know it, half the year has gone by and I have nothing to show for it. At the end of the year I'm left thinking we have no pictures of ourselves, and not much from the things we did this year either. What did we do this year?
Enter Project Life—a way of scrapbooking that I read about at the very end of 2011. It called out to my passions of memory keeping, picture making, and story telling. Unfortunately, since I was late to the game most of the products I wanted were unavailable. I had to wait over six weeks for the products to become available again. During that time I questioned whether I really wanted to go through with this project, but I had already invested some time and money preparing for it. After I returned from a work trip late-February, the products were at home waiting for me and I was more excited than ever. I am going to do this. I am going to document our 2012 and it is going to be a fantastic year.
I've spent the last two weeks catching up on the last nine, and now it's week 10. I'm fascinated by this format and the process. Unlike traditional scrapbooking, I totally enjoy the process and look forward to sorting through the week's photos and seeing which ones make the cut. Some weeks I'll only have a handful of photos and other weeks I'll have dozens. [By the way, I've also decided to take at least one photo a day this year, which has helped tremendously.] I like that I can do as little or as much work as I want each week, and I don't have to wait for the year to be over to fully appreciate the project. I already enjoy looking back through the weeks I've done.
Now that I'm caught up, I'll be posting weeks 1-9 first to keep things in order. Here is the title page I created. I took inspiration from Cathy Zielske's title pages, and the 6x12 insert design came from her here. I replaced the patterned paper with one from the Clementine digital paper pack.
The "living life one day at a time" card is from the clementine paper kit (see link below). I created the silhouettes last year with the intention of hanging them somewhere in the house. I'm glad I was able to use them for this project. I also created the map of Cincinnati / Northern Kentucky last year by digitally hand-tracing a Google map (seriously). I placed a star where we currently live. I may add monograms to the silhouettes later, but for now I'm happy with the title pages.
Have I mentioned how excited I am about this project?
If you're curious what Project Life is, it's a scrapbooking system created by Becky Higgins. You can learn more here. I have the Clementine kit, Design A page protectors, and 6x12 page protectors. I also have the black classic album from We R Memory Keepers. I'm printing everything at home on my Epson R2880 wide-format printer.
By Vicki | Posted on 03/08/12 | Posted in Personal, Project-Life | 0 Comments | Post Comment
By Vicki | Posted on 03/22/12 | Posted in Personal, Project-Life | 0 Comments | Post Comment