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30/05/2016

Project Life | Week 17

Today I'm sharing Week 17. This week I used the Spring Time digital cards from The Crafty Pocket (available here) and a card I made with some patterned paper and a die cut from the Inspire Value Kit by Becky Higgins (here).

Left side; previously all of my title cards had the week number stamped onto them, but I had these pink alphas on my desk, and they matched so perfectly that I couldn't help but use them on my title card. This week is close to overflowing with photos of Gracie and I'm totally okay with that. Otherwise I'd have an empty spread. The flair is from this set by The Crafty Pocket (also comes in a coloured set).

Right side; It started off warm and spring like, but snowed by the end of the week. The hello spring card is used in a slightly ironic sense, but I still love it. Sock's collar was frayed to the point of falling off when I pet him so we need to get him a new one, but I still documented the breaking of his old one. Gracie is in the habit of sitting at the table with us if she's tried to get our attention and we ignore her.

Thanks for coming by to see this spread. I hope you have a wonderful Monday!

23/05/2016

Project Life | Week 16

There's just something about black and white spreads that makes me so happy.

Today I'm sharing week 16. Sorry for the glare, I was in a hurry to photograph this spread and the sun wasn't quite where it usually is when I photograph pocket pages, so I have some glare and no time to fix it. This week I used mostly black white and grey cards with the odd pop of colour.

Left side; I had this wooden April piece from Studio Calico from last year's April kit. I decided to just use it up on my title card for this week instead of hoarding it until I finally just give it away. This week I didn't take many photos but included one of the models Jon recently painted (it's easily my new fave) and the mermaids Tori and I created. She loves making one of everything for everyone in the family (which ends up being 10+ mermaids, butterflies, bunnies, etc.). On the bright side it keeps her busy for most of the afternoon and she loves making crafts.

Right side; The kids are also in love with Snapchat. They love face swapping, or being a puppy or a rabid bunny rabbit. Emmett makes the funniest faces. My Week in the Life kit arrived, I read Me Earl and the Dying Girl, Gracie cuddled Jon (so cute) I got my flairs from The Crafty Pocket and I documented Jon's Dad's birthday this week since I forgot to include it last week.

Sometimes I look at my mostly repetitive spreads and think "this is so boring and mundane, why would anyone find this interesting?" I'm sure you don't think it's interesting, but in the grand scheme of things, it'll be fun to look back at this in 10 years and see what we were up to. I imagine Snapchat would be much different by then if not obsolete or less popular than it is now. Jon's Dad celebrates his birthday based on the Chinese calendar (13 months instead of 12) so his birthday is never on the same day (which is interesting to me but also confusing).

Anyways, enough of my ramblings. I hope you have a wonderful Monday!

20/05/2016

Week in the Life | May 2016

Most people participated in Week in the Life (WITL) last week (May 9-15) along with Ali Edwards. Today I'm sharing my thoughts on the project, as I finish up the last few days of documenting my week. For more details on the project you can visit Ali's blog (here). I warn you that this post is very word heavy, so you can skip reading it if you want, and I'll be back on Monday with a Project Life spread.

First, I'd like to just say that I rarely get this open on my blog, but given that my word for this year is Brave, and that means being vulnerable at times, I've decided that I need to share this. Though a lot of it may be written and edited out.

When I woke up on the week everyone else was doing WITL I basically forgot until halfway through the morning. Not much had happened (made coffee, watched something from the PVR) that couldn't be written about, if a delayed photo wasn't taken. I took some photos through the rest of the morning, but they were all forced. I wasn't excited about the project and the level of resistance I felt to documenting the week was immensely overwhelming. I gave up, or quit, or however you want to look at it. Through the rest of the day I thought "I could be okay with documenting the week starting on Tuesday. This whole starting on Sunday or Monday nonsense is just because people want their week to stay together. Or I could start on Friday because it's my work Monday." But because we were taking a trip over the weekend I decided to just start it the following week on Monday.

Our weekend trip was amazing; we went to the city to celebrate 4 years of being weird together. We saw some friends, ate some delicious food and found time to lay around in the hotel and just relax. I made a mini album from the trip that I'll be sharing here later on. It felt like the perfect recharge before documenting an entire week of mundane details in our life.

Then Monday morning came around. I still felt traces of the resistance I experienced the week before. It wasn't an overwhelming amount of resistance that made me just want to stay in bed and leave my phone out of arms reach, but still slight resistance. Then I took some photos. My pictures aren't perfect, they show our messy house and things that I might not want to remember in the future, but they're an accurate depiction of our life right now.

I took some inspiration from Ali's 2014 album opening (here) and wrote out a short reason why, and some stats about us right now. I didn't consult Jon on the things I wrote about him, but made observations about what he's been doing right now and included those.

My reason why card says "We're both a little weird, and we love that about each other. Jon doesn't understand why I'm documenting the little details of our life, like when I do the dishes, or he forgets to take out the trash. These little mundane details make up this season of our life, and they're worth remembering. He forgets to take out the trash because he's been working almost every day for the last few months. I'm usually the one who does the dishes because it's easier than telling Jon he's not doing it the way I would do it. This is the realness of our life, and I want to remember it."

After I wrote that last night and printed it onto a card and got a little crafty with my album, something changed in my attitude towards the project. I decided that I don't care if my photos for each day are exactly the same. That's my life. We don't have kids, we work a lot and when we're not working, we watch a lot of TV we don't have time for otherwise. I'm telling our story and it might not be interesting in the slightest to anyone but us, but it's still worth documenting. Your story is important too, even if no one cares about it's details but you.

Have a wonderful weekend. If you made it this far thank you for reading my ramblings. I promise not to have too many posts like this, I just needed to get some things out of my head and written somewhere. Even if no one is interested in them.

18/05/2016

Hunting Layout 5/24

Today I'm sharing another hunting layout. I didn't make any in March, made 1 in April (this one) and trying to be okay with all of that. My hope is that I'll have a month or two where I make a bunch of extra layouts, and it will all balance out. My goal is to make 24 layouts (even though my sketch tracker only goes to August - more about that in a later post).

Today's layout features phrase stickers on labels I made using this set of new Kellie Stamps. I made a text box and printed the "hunt sleep repeat" onto the tag and love the result.

These phrase stickers have been on my desk for ages. I think someone needs to create a hunting stamp set (or several) so that I'd have things to stamp into these labels. I used the digital Wild kit from Ali Edwards (no longer available) to colour the labels to go better with the spread - even though the one orange printed a little more pink than I wanted.

Thanks for coming by to see this spread. I hope you have a wonderful day!

16/05/2016

Project Life | Week 15

Today I'm sharing Week 15. Since cancelling my subscription to Studio Calico, I don't feel overwhelmed with the amount of cards I have sitting around waiting to be used (even though I have a dozen or so Becky Higgins brand core kits to use). I feel like my spreads come together much easier because I don't have as many supplies to use, and I don't feel obligated to use them.

I love Ali Edwards' Story Kits (info about that here) and the stories they encourage me to tell. Based on my photos for this week (all were taken during the week) the Craft Story Kit was the perfect one to tell the stories of what I was creating this week. Since I subscribe to both the stamp and the physical kit, I get the digital kit for free, so I printed off a few of the backs of the cards to fill in this spread. 
It was actually fun to document a week centered around everything I was creating. But of course because I forgot that we celebrated Jon's Dad's birthday this week until after I finished the spread, so I'm adding that particular moment to next week.

Thanks for coming by to see this spread. Have a wonderful day.

11/05/2016

May 2015 | Travel Mini Album

Today's post is going to be a long photo heavy post. With our anniversary trip coming up this weekend, I figured it was time to finish our album from our trip last year. This album basically covers the drive down, the zoo, and a couple other small moments from the trip. During this trip my old iPhone actually died for good, and I lost a few of the photos I'd taken, so I used the ones that Jon had taken (which was most of them anyways because his phone camera was better than mine at the time.


I definitely prefer chunkier mini albums, but given that this trip happened last year, and this years trip was fast approaching, done is better than perfect, but of course I added whatever ephemera I had from the trip - movie tickets, parking passes, business cards, and a few flairs and random little pieces.


This flair is from this set by The Crafty Pocket. We had to take a photo of this because it was barely stuck on the 1000 point section and some random guy stopped us to high-five us because we won 1000 points on the pirate wheel in the arcade. We were over the moon about this. We have so much fun at the arcade.



I included the map from the zoo as well. I had to fold it a little more to make it fit inside the album, but I love how it looks. I did it in such a way that you can sort of unfold it without taking it out of the rings. Flair is from this set.
















This random acrylic zebra piece has been in my stash for a while, so I just stuck it on the rings here with the photo of the zebra.







The penguins are easily my favourite section at the zoo. They're just so active and excited all the time. I love watching them swim. Flair is from this set.

Used Kellie Stamps from this set and this set and printed it on some acetate because I received these stamps after I'd already printed the photos, but still wanted to use them in this album.





The end. Thanks for coming by to see this mini album. Calgary is easily one of my favourite cities in the province. We don't think we could live there full time, but we absolutely love visiting and going to the zoo. I'm so excited to go again this weekend and see the penguins!

Have a great day!