Week 12

Week 12: March 19-25

Here's the first page:

Here's the second page:

There's also an insert, but it's not done yet. I took my little one to see Disney on Ice so that will be on one side. Then I took the 12-yr old to see The Hunger Games and I'm waiting on some journaling from her to finish the page.

I think this is kind of cool though. We painted two rooms this weekend and I used the two paint swatches from the store as my journal card. I just trimmed them down to the right size and ran them through my printer like I do any time I print on journal cards. Now I have the writing about painting AND the actual paint colors we used instead of using up bigger slots trying to take pictures of the newly painted walls. Originally I was going to print my text on vellum or a transparency - but I was too lazy to go find one tonight.

Thanks for stopping by!

Project Simplify - Kitchen

This week, Simple Mom, has challenged us to clean & declutter our pantry & fridge. I shared a little bit about the current state of each and my plan of attach on this post.

First...the Pantry!

Here's what is looked like at the beginning of the week - not horrible, but not great either. When I was cleaning it out, I found 3 half used boxes of lasagna noodles. My lasagna recipe only uses half a box and instead of ever checking, I just bought a new box each time I made lasagna...whoops!

And after some cleaning. I really only did a lot on the top three shelves. The bottom shelves got a little more organized, but nothing major. The basket on the top shelf has some snacks for my toddler in it so that I can easily pull it down and let her pick what she wants.

Next...the Fridge!

Here's the before - I needed the clean out some leftovers and the shelves were way overdue for being taken out and washed.

And the after. I ended up throwing away about half of the condiments because they had expired. We mostly use ketchup or mayo, so the mustard that I get when we're having people over ends up hanging out in the fridge forever. Also, why did we have four jars of salsa?!?!

Week 2 is DONE and my fridge hasn't looked that good since we got it!

Project Simplify: Pantry & Fridge

This week, Simple Mom, has challenged us to clean & declutter our pantry & fridge. The organization of my pantry & fridge comes and goes based on how much my husband or one of the kids decides to "fix" it. My husband pretty much thinks that means pushing everything to the back of the pantry. My step-daughter moves things to where she thinks they go - although I have mostly broken her of this habit because then I can't find anything. And the three yr-old puts EVERYTHING on the canned goods shelf, because that is where she can reach.

A before picture of each place...

I actually do have quite a few plastic containers meant for holding some of this stuff, I've just gotten lazy recently and haven't been using them.

The leftovers need to go and it's probably time to check through the condiments for expiration dates.

Plan of attack:
Throw away any food that is expired.
Pull everything out of pantry & clean the shelves
Return items to pantry - put things in the plastic tubs instead of being lazy
Pull everything out of fridge and quickly clean the shelves (maybe just move things around so as to not worry about spoilage).
Return items to fridge in orderly fashion.

We'll see how it goes...

Week 10

Week 10: March 5 - 11

Wow! It's already week 10 and I am still keeping up with this project. I'm definitely loving the process of picking & editing my pictures on Sunday or Monday night and then picking them up the next day. Unfortunately the Target that I normally use is going through a re-model so I had to order from Walgreens this week. The pictures from (my) Walgreens are a teeny tiny bit smaller than 6 inches and they are darker. If the Target photolab is still closed next week I'll have to try some where else.

Since I knew I was going to fill most of my slots with pictures this week and not have much room for journaling, I did a little journaling a couple of my pictures. I downloaded a couple of the fonts that I saw on The Lilypad Blog and used them this week. Love it! I really feel like this week is a better mix of kid pictures and life pictures. Although I suppose I really ought to include a few of my husband eventually!

I also love the insert that I made this week. I'm really loving Becky's 6x12 page protectors - this week's insert is about our trip to the zoo. The bottom of the 6x12 insert will have another picture, but I decided that I wanted a different picture instead - a collage of some of the animals we saw.

Thanks for stopping by!

Project Simplify - Kid's Clothing

Simple Mom is hosting Project Simplify this month and the first hotspot was kids' stuff.

That worked out well for me because the consignment sale that I like to consign at is the last week of March, so this got me going with my organizing & pricing early! However, in the interest of being honest all of the clothing that is NOT in their rooms is now in tubs around the perimeter of our master bedroom.

Here's what we started with in each girl's closet:

After Pictures:

I didn't get as much accomplished as I wanted too; the week somehow got away from me - it was suddenly Friday! But the clothing that doesn't fit is all out of their closets. And most of it is priced and ready to go for the consignment sale later this month. And soon, all of the "winter" items that I have to hold on to until the next sale will be folded and stored nicely in tubs...maybe.

Week 9

Week 9: Feb 27 - March 4

I had to go back and count the number of weeks to figure out which week this was. I have done all the weeks leading up to this week, I just haven't posted anything about them. Maybe eventually, but probably not.

I have a couple of things I have noticed as I have worked on Project Life this year. Almost my entire layout every week is of my daughter, well every other week is also about my step-daughter since she's only here every other weekend. I feel like I ought to make at least one of two of the pictures be not kiddo focused. I'm not sure what I want to do instead though because let's face it, I LOVE the pictures of my kiddo. Last night I took a picture of our dinner, so maybe that will make it into the week 10 layout as my non-kid picture. I just feel like since this is our only scrapbook right now, that maybe it shouldn't entirely revolve around a 3 yr old - although that is pretty accurate as to what my life is like right now.

Normally I leave my date cards alone. This is my third year of Project Life and I think this is only the second time that I have EVER put anything on "date" card. And the first time was last week when I put a picture on it. This week I used some number stickers from the Cobalt core kit and wrote a couple lines about the corresponding pictures which are marked with white number stickers. The corresponding pictures are all in the insert.

I still want to put something on the picture of Claire & I playing with the iPad. We had just gotten a new app, an amazing app that we both LOVE, Draw & Tell by Duck Duck Moose. It is awesome. Anyways, I'll probably add a label of some sort.

Close up of the journaling on the "date" card.

The paper for my insert is some cardstock from the Turquoise kit. I'm not a huge fan of pattern paper these days so I didn't buy the Cobalt paper pack. This is actually the first sheet out of the Turquoise kit that I have used.

Week 5

I have had a really hard time the past two weeks getting motivated for Project Life. I put Week 5 together last Monday, but didn't get around to taking pictures of it until the 8th, and here it is the 16th and I'm just posting them when I should be posting Week 6, but it's not done yet because I just ordered the pictures tonight!

Anyways, here's Week 5: Jan 20 - Feb 5

I think I like having 4 of the smaller slots open for journaling, that seems to be the right amount for the number of stories that I usually want to tell.

The little tag that says 'You make me happy' is a punch out from the top of a Burger King kid's meal.

Linked up to TheMomCreative.com.

Week 4

Week 4: January 23 - 29, 2012

Compared to the first three weeks, I hardly took any pictures this week. The only big "event" we had going on was some voluteer work that my step-daughter and I did on Saturday. Volunteer work is not conducive to picture taking because we were BUSY the entire time. Which means this week I did not have an insert!

During a random visit to the grocery store I bought a pretty bouquet of flowers - just because they were pretty. Claire LOVED sniffing them. I got an email from her teacher at preschool about her progress so far this year so I printed a section of it out to include (I smudged out the teacher's name and the school). And on Monday I took her to school and snapped a quick picture of her with her bag before walking her over to her teacher. Which worked out nicely with the email from the teacher.

I used a couple more of the cobalt pennants that I made in photoshop to write notes about a couple of pictures, things that didn't really require an entire journaling card, but I wanted some context as to what was going on.

And that's pretty much it for this week. The first 3 weeks have seemed really BUSY and full of things - this week seems more like a normal week for us.

I decided to be a follower and link up to TheMomCreative.com this time!

Week 3

Week 3: January 16 - 22, 2012

I ended up using a couple of different methods for journaling this week.

Last week as I was doing some other computer work, I went ahead and added my journaling to the picture of my daughter & I making a cookie cake for her birthday. I took the picture using the self-timer on my camera & setting it on the counter on the other side of the kitchen. The framing isn't what I would've done if I had been able to see what I was actually aiming at, but it worked out well to have so much of the pantry in the view so that I could put my journaling over it. I also used a SMASH sticky for a note about sitting on the floor in the hallway using the iPad during bathtime (directly outside the bathroom door, but it keeps the iPad out of the splash-zone).

I had some journaling already typed up for the pictures of Claire painting, so I just used a journaling printing template that I made in photoshop and then held the journaling card up to my screen to fit the text around the decorations on the card. I ran out of places to put journaling again this week (in fact the journaling on the other 3x4 card is about how many pictures I took in one day) so I ended up cutting down a grid card to add some journaling about taking "semi-professional-but-mostly-amateur" pictures of Claire using a sheet and lots of natural light in our diningroom. And I used one of the cobalt pennants that I made to add a note on the trampoline picture.

I also have an insert this week. It is an 8x8 page protector. The front will have a collage of pictures from some shopping my mom, sister-in-law and I did on Saturday - I decided to order it from Persnickety because I was ordering other pictures and it was cheaper to just add the 8x8 on to that order instead of ordering from Target. The back side is Claire's painting with one of her hand-prints on top of it.

Goodbye 2011

I finally finished up my 2011 Project Life album.

I'm already liking 2012 more than I like 2011. Possibly because the pictures are better with my new camera, however most likely because I am putting more thought into what my layout will look like through out the week.

Tonight, I did FIVE weeks worth of 2011, which was pretty much standard for last year. I would wait until I saw SnapFish was having penny prints and then I would order 5-6 weeks worth of pictures. Then spend an evening clipping the corners & putting pictures into the correct slots in my book. Then I would pull out my journaling cards and figure out stories to fill in the blank areas.

So excited to have this done(-ish). I was just looking back through the few weeks prior to what I finished up tonight and realized there is one week in November that has a few open spaces. I'll need to check to see if I have pictures or if I need to do something else. There are probably some other weeks earlier in the year that need to have some filler, but I think for me - this is good enough.