Epiphany Friday Favourites

It's been an odd start to the year, but I think things are (finally) headed in a good direction!

{one}

I'm going to be a little 'cryptic blogger' right now because even though I've tentatively started wandering down another path I'm not sure how it will all play out. I do know that even if it's not at all what I had in mind six months ago it feels right. And yesterday I came across this verse which kind of gave me goosebumps.

{two}

I bought Savor last year but it was March by the time it arrived and even though I would occasionally read a few pages here and there I never made a habit of it. This year I got to start from the beginning on January 1st and it's become one of my favourite parts of the day. 

{three}

Over the course of the last week I've lost track of how many eagles I've seen. During my drive home from H. & R. on Monday I spotted at least six (maybe two more but they also might have been seagulls) and yesterday I saw another one while I was driving. Eagles aren't necessarily a rare sighting around here, but close to a dozen in one week is out of the ordinary. Since one of my intentions for 2017 was to listen to the universe I'm going to go ahead and be encouraged that eagle sightings are often interpreted as a sign of new beginnings, stamina and courage. 

{four}

Monday R. & I went on an adventure and checked out a local bird sanctuary that I sort of knew existed but have never actually investigated. Turns out there are all kinds of hiking trails, friendly chickadees that will eat from your hand and so many squirrels. At one point I was standing on the trail and there were eight squirrels surrounding me. It was magical. I felt like a Disney princess.

{five}

I got the last of my 2016 photos printed yesterday so I'm excited to spend the weekend adding the final few pages to my Project Life album and getting started on 2017. I love that I've found a memory keeping system that works for me. When I counted a few weeks ago I had close to 100 completed pages! Do you know how many pages I have completed for 2015? None. I have one large Smashbook  from the summer but that's it. I don't think I'll ever be a retro-active scrapbooker but I'm happy that I have a system moving forward!

What I Learned From My First Year of Project Life

I set off this year to do Project Life on a monthly basis but then decided that during the summer I would make a separate album for camp and document each session individually,  so I inadevetrly got a taste of two of the most popular methods. I really like the weekly method and it worked perfectly for camp. I don't have a significant other, children or close friends that live nearby my life isn't that exciting so I'm not sure that weekly is the answer for the full year but I am tempted to give it a try. There's also the logistics of printing photos every week, if I do dive into the weekly method I will probably still print photos once a month but it will change the way I put my spreads together.

Keys to Success:

Organizing photos regularly. As often as possible I uploaded photos and got them organized. I kept a folder on my desktop labeled "PL - Month" and whenever I uploaded photos from my phone or SD card I looked through them and added the ones I thought I'd like to print for my album into the folder. At the end of the month I went through the folder and deleted some photos if I felt like there were too many. Occasionally I would go back through all of my photos and add more in but for the most part I had chosen plenty along the way. From there I roughly decided what photos I wanted which size. The easiest to choose were always the ones I wanted to keep 4x6 the others I just sort of filled in where needed. When I first started out this tutorial taught me everything I needed to know to resize photos using PicMonkey. Once that was done I put all the photos for the month on a jump drive and printed them off at Wal-Mart.  

I had a system. Once I had my physical prints I roughed them into my album (like plumbing, only with more glitter). I put them into pockets and chose filler/journalling cards creating a bunch of rough drafts. Then once that was done I went back and worked on the individual cards/pages. Is this a time consuming way of doing things? Absolutely. Is there an easier way? Absolutely. But this is what worked for me. 

I love Project Life. This system works for me, it might not work for you. Just like anything else if you don't enjoy doing something you're probably not going to keep doing it. It definitely took me some time to find my groove (honestly, it probably wasn't until camp season when I was doing things weekly that I really figured out my style).

One other thing that really helped was watching process videos on YouTube. I know they're not everyone's cup of tea but seeing what others are doing got the creative juices flowing and helped me figure out how to get started, because getting started is always the hardest part! My favourites are  Annie LuMaye, Froggie251 and Mercy Tiara.

This is a roughed in page. The photos and cards are slid into the pockets but nothing is glued down and I haven't added any journalling or embellishments. 

Bumps Along The Road:

I fell behind. (Sort of.) As I mentioned before, when camp season hit I started a new album just for camp and documented after every session, because there is more than enough stuff to document on a weekly basis during the summer...sometimes I could have done a page each day. While I was focused on my camp album I neglected my monthly album. And once camp ended it left me figuring out how to fill in the gaps from May-September without repeating myself. I decided that I would use the leftover photos from the summer (Some PL-ers pre-plan pages and exactly what they need for each page, that's not my style so sometimes I end up with extra photos) and call it done. The end result of this is that for July and August I only have two pages, which sort of bugs me but it solved a problem so I went with it.

I'm kind of boring. I eluded to this above, but there were months (February & March) where I really didn't do a whole lot other than work. At that point I was even working overtime on Saturday and Sunday so I wasn't left with much to document. This is my biggest fear in switching to the weekly method. There might be weeks when the only photos I take are what I ate for supper one night, a screen shot of my phone and a handful of cat photos.

I went a little overboard. I really tried to start with just the essentials. An album, some page protectors and one core kit. Less than six months in I had three full core kits along with half a dozen mini kits plus all of my traditional scrapbook stuff. It was/is excessive. If I could do it over again I would have subscribed to a monthly kit and invested in one core kit or started the process earlier of cutting my 12x12 pages into Project Life sized cards. Eventually I will use the cards I have but I fully recognize that I didn't need that many to start.

One thing that is certain is I will 100% keep up with Project Life. I absolutely love the concept and how relatively easy it is. I love the finished product and will happily sing the praises of Project Life to anyone who will listen. Full Disclaimer: Project Life has no idea who I am, while I have given them a lot of my money over the past year they have given me nothing in return (other than great memory keeping products).

Weekly Faves & Weekend Plans

{one} 

Jones Soda Root Beer

This is my new obsession. About two weeks ago I got a craving for Root Beer but I knew I only wanted a taste of it and refused to buy a big bottle or a whole box of cans. Turns out root beer is rather hard to find in the kind of single serve bottles that are usually found everywhere. Then on Sunday J. and I were in the grocery store and I told him about my Root Beer struggle when he pointed out that I should have looked at the speciality soda display. And luck would have it the Jones Sodas were on buy one, get one free. Craving satisfied and I've totally found a new treat! Plus, it comes with a bonus inspirational quote under the cap. 

{two}

Camp coffee is both terrible and a necessity. So to combat the terrible I started using flavoured creamers this summer. Once I got home from camp I stopped because I know they're terribly unhealthy and generally I'm happy to drink my coffee with a little bit of cream and sugar if it's regular coffee. But the creamers were on sale this week and they called my name as I strolled through the grocery aisle, so I caved and bought one. And wouldn't you know, creamer made camp coffee tolerable but it makes regular good coffee delicious. 

{three}
Project Life App

You might recall I recently posted about my new found obsession  love for Becky Higgin's Project Life. And yesterday I wrote about upgrading my iPhone. Which means that I can now download apps again. I'm planning on doing 90-95% of Project Life using the physical product but I decided to go ahead and invest in the app as well. I figure it's an easy way to keep up if life gets busy and I can include mini-pages within my regular physical album that I make on the app. I haven't had a chance to play around with it much yet but I'm optimistic that it wasn't a waste of $2.50. I am a huge 'paper saver' if a camper or a Spark gives me a craft you better believe I'm going to keep it and all those crafts take up space but I feel so guilty throwing it away. Thanks to reading countless mommy blogs suggesting to scan or take photos of all (or at least most) of those papers and then tossing the giant popsicle stick sculpture. It was also pointed out that construction paper isn't acid free/archival, it's not going to stand the test of time so to speak so taking a photo is the way to go. 

{four}
Maybe I should save this for Wednesday but I'm confessing now that I can't get enough 'Elf on the Shelf'. I want one of those little fellas in my house to creatively move around from room to room each day. Do they make elves for cats? Would that be weird? They better still be a thing in 5-7 years when I (hopefully) have kids old enough to appreciate an elf in the house. Seeing everyone's photos of elves sipping syrup and hiding in the tree has been one of my favourites this week.

{five}
This weekend I have plans to decorate J.'s Christmas tree on Saturday. I will never be a fan of fake Christmas trees but I will play along. I'm using it as an excuse to try the new sugar cookie donuts that are out and I can always get on board with donuts. Sunday I'll be spending the evening at the Guider Christmas potluck, which I have mixed feelings about. On the bright side the 'theme' is Christmas pyjamas so at least I don't have to go through much trouble to get dressed.


Linking up here & here.

Project Project Life 2016

I jumped on the scrapbooking bandwagon pretty early in life, I don't remember exactly how I got started but I know that there is a stack of Scrapbooks documenting my junior high self. And yes, there are just as cringe worthy as you imagine. In high school Facebook made it's debut and I was a little more focused on making sure my Facebook albums were up to date than I was about creating scrapbooks. My high school years are documented through boxes of photos and 'stuff', maybe someday I'll feel inspired to put it all into albums but that day is not today (or tomorrow...and probably not anytime soon). In university I didn't take a whole lot of photos. I do have a Smashbook from my fourth year and I've got some traditional photo albums filled with camp photos. Post university life I pretty much stopped taking photos because I didn't feel like I had anything to take photos of, except for camp. Camp is the exception, my camp life/career is fully documented each summer has it's own album and/or box of memorabilia. A year and a half ago I got my DSLR and (re)discovered a love of photography. And now I find myself identifying as one of those people with thousands of photos on their hard drive without a purpose in life other than to pop up when my screen saver comes on.

I know I need to get a handle on the situation before it gets even more out of control but I don't necessarily want to spend hours meticulously cropping/cutting/pasting/embellishing two photos at a time. And so I've decided to hop on the Project Life bandwagon. I've happily waved as the PL Bandwagon passed by the past few years but I never felt like joining. I've even invested in some PL supplies when I've seen them discounted at Michael's. The journalling cards made a great addition to my Smashbooks, I used the bright patterns for card making and they are the perfect size to write a quote on and include in a package. They were also perfect for writing warm fuzzy notes to counsellors this past summer. I guess you can say that I had the Project Life Bandwagon on speed dial but hadn't bothered to call and make a reservation.

Until now. After a lot of in-depth research courtesy of Pinterest I've decided to jump on the Project Life wagon. At first I really liked the idea of following the Project 52 formula, a two page spread every week of the year. Then I did some more reading and realized that's not really what I'm interested in doing at this point. I'm not going to invest in a fancy printer to print my photos at home and I'm not going to order prints every week so the Project 52 formula isn't really going to work. I still want to keep life in chronological order and "document the everyday" but I know that some weeks won't really be all that action packed. So I've decided that my formula will keep Project 52 in mind, but focus more on the month than the week. I'm confident I can commit to printing photos once a month and carving out a Sunday afternoon (or two) to document them in an album. In fact, I prefer to scrapbook in large chunks, I don't think I would enjoy just doing a page at a time. And enjoying what I'm doing is very high on the priority list.

Album//Seasons Core Kit//Kraft Core Kit//Page Protectors

Like all scrapbookers I have a sizeable stash. I wasn't about to purchase a whole lot of new supplies but I did let myself buy a few new things in preparation. First up I wanted a Project Life Album, I ended up with two because they were Buy 1, Get 1 Free. I will use one for 2016 Project Life and the other I will either save for later or I'll use it as a traditional photo album for photos that I don't want to include in the Project Life album. I know it won't go to waste. I used a 50% off coupon to buy a core kit. I decided to invest in the Seasons kit because the cards are made to go through the entire year. There's a few for each holiday and I know that they all coordinate. I know I'll supplement with the cards from other kits I own and make my own cards but I like having a core kit to set the theme. And of course I needed pocket pages so I used another 50% off coupon to buy the variety pack. Which gives me everything I need to dive into Project Life in 2016. I also ended up buying the Kraft Edition Core Kit because I happened to find it at Winners for $20 and I just couldn't pass up that kind of deal. When I got it home and went through the cards I realized it would make a perfect camp album. So we'll see what happens.

I am eagerly awaiting January 1st when I can convert all my enthusiasm into creativity. Until then I'm going to stalk the Project Life blog and admire Kelly Purkey's amazing memory keeping skills. Is anyone else a Project Life convert for 2016 or a long time fan of the memory keeping system?

I was saving this post for later on in December but Becky announced this morning that on Thursday Creative Live will be broadcasting 18 hours worth of Project Life 'how to' for free! I know Thursday is Thanksgiving for those of you in the US but you might want to check it out post turkey dinner and for those of us not in the states know you have your Thursday plans!

**It's worth noting that Becky Higgins has no idea who I am and what my opinions are on her products. I bought all this stuff entirely by choice with my own money. I'm just spreading the love because I believe in documenting life. 

Warm and Fuzzy Friday Favourites

{one}

I got this e-mail from a parent on Monday evening and it made my day/week. Parents are often the hardest/worst part of working with kids. To a certain extent, I get it, you want your kids to be happy. Sometimes the 'helicopter' parent thing takes over and it's just not good. So getting this e-mail was the greatest. I like when parents are happy, when parents are happy their kids stay involved and that makes me happy. You know that saying "happy wife, happy life"? Well I'm a believer in "happy parents, happy program". You might not be able to please them all but life sure is easier when you can. 

{two}

Someone posted this verse on Instagram this week and it stuck with me. 

{three}

I had a bunch of photos of flowers and bees from this summer and I wasn't sure how to incorporate them into my album. They were too pretty not to use...but they also stuck out like a sore thumb next to action shots of soccer baseball and chaotic cabin photos. And then I happened to be searching my blog archives for something and came across a post from earlier in the summer when I shared the quote about the bees. And realized it worked perfectly because on the next page is a bunch of photos of people doing chores, moving furniture and working around camp. Memory keeping makes me happy. 

{four}

CBC

This article. I don't know either of these people but it's the cutest thing I've read all week. I'm rarely interested in elaborate wedding details and the process of how people begin their relationships is often kind of murky. Engagement stories are usually very clear cut, it's a moment in time when something very specific happens and is usually very unique. So this story gave me all the warm fuzzies this week. I hope they serve french fries at their wedding.  

I only have four favourites this week, I'm sure if I tried really hard I could come up with a fifth, but I don't want to and I'd rather choose four really awesome favourites opposed to four really awesome favourites and one thing that I kind of liked about this week. 

Somehow I've managed to find myself without any plans this weekend. I'm sure I'll figure out something but it's also nice to enter the weekend without any commitments! 

Linking up here & here with all of the other ladies in blogland celebrating Friday!