Project Life-Week 5

Still. In. Love.

I’m having a blast with this project. Something that occurred to me while working on this week is how quickly the time is passing. It’s really flying by, and there are so many little things that we don’t notice, or forget because we’re always so wrapped up in our busy-ness. This project is helping me to stop and take notice, and I’m so excited that at the end of the year I’m going to have this awesome book filled with all of these little moments.

Anyway, here’s week 5:

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LEFT:

Nothing too out of the ordinary this week. A couple of kids home sick (all better now), school stuff, haircuts, a couple of restaurant visits, and some beautiful weather for this time of year, especially in Chicago. I had to include a picture of the sunshine. Along the bottom right side in used both 4×6 slots to place three Instagram photos and a journal card from our restaurant trip. I didn’t get a shot of all of us, and the three pictures wouldn’t fit on one slot, so I added the letter stickers across the bottom to tie them together. I used stuff from my PL kits, and added some stickers and journal cards that I got while sneaking off to Archiver’s last week. Oh, and I added that card with the heart on it and a February sticker, because we changed months mid-week. I’m not great at keeping track of products, but if you want to know where something is from I can try to figure it out.

I’m linking up with Jessica at The Mom Creative. She has a ton of links to other PLifers, as well as her own fabulous pages for the week. Go check them out!

If you are visiting and have your own pages to share, I’d love to see them. Please link up in the comments!

I can’t believe we’re starting week 6! Still going strong!

Friday favorites

This week has flown by. Two sick kids, each picked a different day to become from school, lots of school volunteerish stuff, i don’t know, just made the week zoom past me. It’s been a decent week,though. Even though I had a couple of sickies home, thankfully they didn’t stay too sick, and all is well.

Favorite things I read this week: aside from the craziness that has been my life this week, I had a chance to actually read some of my favorite blogs. I enjoy reading all types, parenty-type blogs, healthy living blogs, scrapbooking blogs. Funnily, this week I have a favorite from each.

Ryan’s blog is technically not a specific type, but I found him while he was blogging about his journey of losing weight and getting healthy. He now blogs about, well, whatever is on his mind. And his voice is fantastic. this week he wrote, Dear Pixar, Thank You, where he talks about his son’s connection to these awesome movies, and how it broke through the walls that Autism can put up between us and our children. It really struck a chord with me, it’s so similar to the experience I had with my son, Christopher and our love of all things Disney. And judging from the comments he received, it also hit home with many autism parents. Go read it.

Roni is a blogger who I found while searching for information when I first started Weight Watchers, almost four years ago. This week she posted about her weight loss “a-ha” moment. . As I’ve shared here, over the past almost for years I’ve lost almost 80 pounds. I still have about 20 to go to get to my “goal.” Roni talks about how trying to lose those last pounds is so much different now than it was when we first started losing weight, and how we need to appreciate and embrace those changes. Another smack in the head for me.

Becky Higgins, the genius behind Project Life, introduced us to her friend Claire, who suffered a life-changing injury. Claire already struggles with a developmental disability, and this accident has added greatly to their family’s stress. She is, thankfully, home from the hospital, but there are loads of things that need to be dealt with now. Becky has placed some ads on her blog, in order to help out the family. Click that link and go check it out.

Lastly, Sue wrote the most beautiful birthday letter to her oldest child. This one got me good. I just mention it here because I think everyone should read her writing. It gets me in the gut. Every.single.time.

I hope you’ll find something that is as inspirational to you as these bloggers have been to me. Now, on to enjoy the weekend!

Project Life-Week 4

I cant believe January is over! I feel like I just recovered from Christmas. And the weather here is crazy, almost 60 degrees in Chicagoland today. Which means come May we’re sure to have a blizzard. Just look at that sunshine!

The huge snow from just last weekend is just about gone. It’s nuts.
Anyway, here’s my week 4

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I confess, I did sneak off to the scrapbook store this week, didn’t spend a ton, but got some more cute labels and stickies for my pages. I’m determined not to buy much, but sometimes a little something every now and then keeps things fun.

Click on that button up there to visit The Mom Creative. She posts her awesome updates every Tuesday and I have found them super fun and inspiring. I am still loving this project, I’m so happy I’ve started. I can’t say I’ll always have my pages done on Tuesdays, but it has been so much fun I’m looking forward to getting them done every week.

Project Life-Week 3

Well, I made it to week 3! I’m really starting to love this project. I love the simplicity of it. Pick some photos from the week, and tell some stories. I’ve said it before, but I think what is making this go a little more smoothly is the printing at home, and my iPhone. Having the ability to sneak a couple of pictures without dragging out my big camera is awesome. And there are so many fun photo apps to play with! Of course I’m a huge Instagram fan, I pat all of my faves on my tumblr photo blog. I also purchased picfx, which has some really cool filters. I had this picture os Sam running to catch the bus, and I added this bokeh effect to it

I thought it added a cool feeling to the photo. So much fun.

Anyway, on to my pages for this week. I’m not finding a way to grab a good shot of them, so here goes.

It was hard to get both pages in one shot, so part of the corner is cut off a little.
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I included a piece of the email I received for my daughter’s callback, and a couple of stories about little things that happened this week. It’s pretty simple. What I have yet to include are some great photos for playing in the snow. I’m going to put in another insert to include them, as soon as my order arrives. (hurry, ups man)

I’ve been having great fun looking at everyone’s pages. I also found this lovely woman, who had the brilliant idea of doing a Disney inspired version of Project Life. I nearly smacked myself in the head when I heard that idea. Brilliant, and right up my alley. I can’t wait to see it.

I trying really hard to keep myself out of the scrapbook store to buy more stuff. But I may bust out a coupon or two and splurge on something fun this weekend. I can’t wait to get started on next week!

Project Life: Week 2

Wow! That went fast! I feel like I just posted week one and here we are at week two!

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Again, the photos are pretty stinky, but they’ll do. I feel like I got into a bit of a groove this week. We did have a couple of fun, non-routine things happen which made it fun. We went to a party this week where they had a magician, and he was fantastic! I got up close to take pictures, and I couldn’t figure out how he made that little girl balance on one chair. Madelyn hosted a Girl Scout meeting on Friday, and she had an audition for a part in a show on Saturday.

I was also surprised at how quickly this one came together. I actually finished it on Sunday night. I think part of what has made this a little easier is printing at home. I don’t have photoshop to adjust things much but I can crop and resize things if I need to. This week I also added a few little stickers and labels in. Nothing fancy.

I’ve had a great time looking at others’ pages on the blogs. I’m sure there are tons out there, but so far I’ve found Monica, Nathalie, Lisa, Cathy, and Kayla. I know there are tons more out there, I love checking out everyone’s pages.

So, it’s been a good productive week around here. Seems like we’re back in the swing. I’m back to Weight Watchers meetings after the holiday, and am almost done kicking off the extra holiday pounds, thanks to some kick-booty spin and step classes. Here’s hoping next week will go as smoothly.

Project Life-Week One

I did it. I finished week one in my Project Life album. I took photos of my pages to share, but be warned, they aren’t great. It’s hard to photograph and get a shot without glare, and I don’t have photoshop to fix ’em up.

TITLE PAGE

LEFT SIDE

RIGHT SIDE

This week was a little tricky. I found myself taking a lot of photos, and then having a hard time deciding what to include. I also neglected to consider orientation, and wound up printing, and then going back and resizing and cropping and reprinting. But it’s done. And I’m excited. I think that each week I’ll learn a little something that I can use the next.

So, yay, me! On to week two!

Week 2

Well, we survived our first week back to school. It didn’t really count as a week, however, since we started on Wednesday. This, of course, left my mama brain dazed and confused for the rest of the week. By the time I felt back in the swing of things it was Friday, and the weekend had begun. Oh, I love a weekend, but getting into a routine again is nice, too.

On to week 2, this isn’t even a full week, technically. Kids have a half day on Friday, which means no school for the Kinder boy, Madelyn’s “half” day of school gets her out at 10:20, and Christopher is out at noon. And it’s a three-day weekend. So by the time we actually get a whole, full-on week of school? It will be nearly February. Routine, schmoutine.

But, I did manage to get some stuff done. Tree is down. I think it’s a record for me. Maybe I said that last year. Anyway. Even with the crazy week I got three gym days in and was back to my weekly WW meeting on Sunday. Don’t ask about that. It actually wan’t horrible. Nothing a couple of weeks away from the damn cookies of clean eating can’t fix.

One thing that I am excited about, besides all of my no crap eating healtified routine, is that I have started scrapbooking again. I was a big time, spend a ton of money on supplies and buy every magazine and book written, kind of scrapbooker. I started shortly after I got married, and had another burst right after the kids were born. I had couple of good friends that would gather together, mostly at my dining room table, and we would work on scrapbooks, and chat about life and the kids, and eat way too many M&Ms and pretzels. After kid #3 we kept going, but it slowed down a bit. I barely touched a scrap of paper all of last year. Recently, my little guy discovered my scrapbooks, and started reading them. He spent a load of time looking at pictures and asking me questions. I realized how valuable these books really are. So I decided to get back to the scrapping table.

Enter Project Life. It’s an easy to use scrapbook “kit” that helps to document an entire year. I’ve actually thought about doing this for the past two years, but I think I’ve finally figured out how to make it work. So many other scrapbookers are doing it, and it’s been fun to follow their blogs and check them for ideas on how to work it into a busy life. I’m excited to get going and will try to post some pictures as I go along.

I know this is a long post but I’ll just end with some pictures from our week…