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Week in the Life 2016

So far 2016 has been one giant project slump. Nothing is getting done. Maybe I'm still recovering from the book project? More likely, I'm just lazy :)

Oh well.

I am committed to doing Week in the Life which I try to do every Mother's Day week. I almost forgot this year but, luckily, it coincides with the week that project founder, Ali Edwards, is doing HER Week in the Life.

I started Sunday. Here are some favorite images from the past three days. As always, these are SOOC (straight out of camera). Far too lazy for photoshopping.

That last image of a yoga-mat-burrito-kid is kinda the best.

Also, we had friends over for dinner and went through the past 5ish years of WITL albums and I reminded myself why I do this project every year. I really love it. I find it's tricky to do this while at day job all day but I take photos when I remember and, in the end, it's cool no matter what.

Week in the Life

I've said it before, I'll say it again. Ali Edwards' Week in the Life Project is my favorite scrapbooking thing. It's absolutely perfect for my attention span (apparently, one week) and captures just enough of the day to day to be really fun to look at in future years.

By happenstance I've chosen the week of Mother's Day a few times so, this year, I was intentional about it. I started documenting on Saturday which was the day of our all-family photo shoot (the gift we gave my mom) and I'll continue through Friday.

I love the photo shoot outtakes and snapshots so much, I can't wait to get the real photos.

On a related note, Ali is doing her Day in the Life project tomorrow (today by the time you read this) so I figure I'll play along--really I already am.

Love this one. Biscuit's "what the...." face and Oscar looking at her with an "ok, what should I be thinking/doing right now????"

behind the scenes

And a few shots I've captured the past couple of days outside of the photo shoot. Lighting really does make a big difference.

 

Chat books

A few weeks ago the chatbooks app was making the promotional rounds on the blogs I read. I thought I was on the cutting edge but when I called my sister to tell her about it she was like, "oh, chatbooks? yeah, I've been meaning to try them out."

Younger sisters. San Franciscians. Always in the know.

Anyway, I DID try them out. At first I was kind of annoyed I had to order ALL the books of ALL my photos from the beginning of my Instagram account. But then, at $6/book, I figured, why not? Since I had been keeping printed Instagram photos in a book through July 2013 I excluded all photos prior to that. I also flipped through and excluded the many many photos of my running shoes and a few other things. I had fun selecting cover photos and then I stopped worrying about it entered my credit card info.

A few days later I got a little box.

I like them. I like that I got the random captions printed in the book. I like that each photo is dated. The quality is very acceptable for the price. As soon as they arrived Mr. H and Biscuit started flipping through and exclaiming over forgotten moments. $66 well spent.

Now, if I was a good blogger I'd give you an affiliate code right here so you could get a free book and I could get $1 toward my next book but, eh. This isn't exactly a money making operation. There are lots of free book offers floating around. I think I used Molly1 from Mommycoddle blog.

Unrelated: I got home early from work leading to a chain reaction that saw Biscuit asleep before 8 pm (!) and Oscar staying in bed by 8 pm and asleep (!) on his own (!) by 8:30 (!). Please let this be our new normal.

Week in the Life 2014

I do love the week in the life project Ali started. But I also learned my lessons this year.

1. Choose a week that ends with a Sunday where you will be at home, with no commitments, to complete the scrapbook before you entirely forget what happened.

2. Don't order photos by mail (even if it's a really good deal). Get them from Costco in an hour.

So the busy schedule, slow-to-arrive photos and our summer vacation plans meant that the week I recorded in late May wasn't put into a book until last week. Still, I'm glad to have it done and on the shelf. Better luck in 2015 with recording the details.

Also, I ran out of the original packet of photo pockets I purchased the first year so switched over to Project Life inserts and albums. I was initially resistant to using these supplies but now I don't know why. It was SO convenient. I bought a packet of the "Kraft" edition inserts (cause it was 50% off and I liked the look) and I'll have inserts (and space in the book) for at LEAST 4 more years of WITL so it'll definitely save money and hassle and shelf space in the long run. I wasn't planning to use so many of the generic inserts but I forgot so much detail they were great for filling space.

After taking these album photos I must admit to being very impressed with those bloggers who share their project life albums each week. It's HARD to take a decent photo of photos in those plastic pockets. Sorry these are so bad!

 

Photo memory books for Oscar

I have a lot of photos of Oscar on the computer and on the internet but really wanted him to have some sort of scrapbook. As much as I love traditional scrapbooking it just wasn't happening so I figured something was better than nothing and had two books printed. One for age 1 and one for age 2. I ordered them just before his third birthday.

I ordered from Artifact Uprising on recommendation from Ronnie and Elise and really do like the quality. Paper stock makes such a difference. These were quick to lay out, reasonably priced and, most importantly, they're done!

Doing an entire year at once was actually pretty fun because while I generally put photos in date order I was also able to group photos by theme so the look is more cohesive.

I didn't type any words and left plenty of white space. I figure if I want to I can write in captions in my own handwriting but so far I haven't felt an need to add anything.

Of course, now Biscuit wants books of her own ;)

Scrapbook on the road--Roadtrip 2014

As I've done in past years, during our roadtrip I kept notes, scraps of paper and other ephemera in a scrapbook. Since arriving home I've added photos I printed--I had left blank pages throughout to allow for adding photos. 

A few notes. I had fun cutting out shapes in photos and it let me squeeze in a lot more images. I was really into the flora this trip and enjoyed putting in pressed leaves and flowers. Envelopes are great to have in a scrapbook (but make for a puffy book). I highlighted some funny quotes from the trip (three year olds are good for funny quotes)--I think that's my favorite part of the book. Lots of flaps and overlapping elements.

And that's it. I love coming home and having the memory book 90% done. It was even more gratifying because my parents headed out yesterday on a roadtrip along the same path as our 2012 trip. They were able to look at my 2012 book for things to see (or not see) that I never would have remembered.

Ok, now about a million mediocre shots of the scrapbook interior.

Yet another new scrapbooking plan (and some texture)

If you've been around here for long, you may know I have scrapbook angst. I still haven't quite convinced myself it is NOT REQUIRED to create scrapbooks for your kids. And actually I do like making the scrapbooks, just not the (self imposed) guilt when I get behind.

Enter plan #2402323 (or so).

Oscar's birthday is four days away. His scrapbook is up to date through about 9 months of age and I have thousands of photos on the hard drive. The last few days I've been culling through and choosing my favorites of him and creating books on Artifact Uprising. I've read enough good press that I'm convinced the books are going to be awesome. In my perfect world I'd have text and stories and whatever but in reality it's all photos. (but there's plenty of white space should I want to add in handwritten text). I'm excited about this plan and will report in on the result.

In related news, I'm doing the "week in the life" project this week. I finally realized there isn't going to be a "slow" or a "normal" or an easy week to do this so last Sunday I jumped in. I'm not documenting everything but I am having fun.

I'm thinking about how I'll scrap the photos at the end of the week given my 4-year run with thrift store photo pockets and faux wood binders has come to an end due to lack of supply availability. I'm thinking I'll use the Project Life photo pocket things and bite the bullet for a 12x12 book size. It's bigger than I like but the scrapbooking world is all 12x12 and finding 8x10 is close to impossible. I was perusing the PL goods and Michaels and the core kits are super cute but also seem a little cliche. I love the pattern papers so I'm making my own by taking images of textures as I take my week-in-the-life photos this week.

Textures. Surprisinging interesting to photograph.

Holiday album

Two years ago I participated in Ali's December Daily project but found it overwhelming and never finished. December is a crazy time to try to scrapbook. But then I saw on Joanna's blog the idea of a holiday album. It comes out at Thanksgiving, gets put away with Christmas and documents the season.

I had an album purchased on impulse at the thrift store and a pile of papers from this season so today, after packing up the ornaments, I decided to go for it.

I started by writing off the top of my head about this season. I filled up three pages and immediately realized I missed several things. I decided not to worry about it.

Then I pulled out papers collected. I think it's a little bit odd to have a scrapbook philosophy but it turns out that for this book I have one. I decided not to include any photos other than a few from my new Instax. I want this book to be about the little treasures of the season that don't have a natural home: the choir performance program, the Nutcracker ticket stub, the gift purchase receipt, the party rsvp list etc etc. So I just started pasting and taping stuff into the book and called it good. No embellishments, just a few notes and all the stuff. Really not fancy at all but I'm cool with it.

Then I put some glitter on the cover.

The Christmas boxes are packed and I just need to get them to the garage. I think I'll put this in my "open first" Christmas box so we can look at it during next December (and hopefully remember to save bits and pieces to add to it). I'm hoping it will become a fun tradition.

Grandma Camp

Teachers. It's all vacation all the time come summer break. Mr. H is a teacher (and I have been at my job long enough to accrue a lot of vacation) so we are on vacation again. And we have wifi so it's blog catch up time!

Mr. H isn't the only teacher, my mom is also a teacher so she spent 4 days of her summer break hosting "Grandma Camp" for Biscuit last week. My dad was there too but it wasn't really his gig.

My mom planned a beach theme and let Biscuit choose from a laundry list of possible activities. She got to do all her top choices including: swimming in heated pools, going to the beach, having a luau dinner and the pony ride at the park. She also went to Shrek the Musical and helped my mom host dinner for friends. She had a blast!

And since my dad is a great photographer they took his photos and made a photo album finished during the car ride home so even though I wasn't there I got a taste of Grandma Camp.

Thanks, Grandma! (and Grandpa!)

Week in the life 2013

The first week in June I made the snap decision to do our annual "week in the life" project. This is really Ali Edwards' project and I noticed today that she's 'hosting' the project this year in September. Maybe I'll do a Fall book in 2014 but for this year, June was perfect.

I decided to start on Sunday which happened to be the day of the triple birthday party (Oscar, Mr. H and my dad). I promptly forgot my plan until dinnertime Sunday but because of the party I'd taken about 4 zillion photos anyway so decided to go for it.

This year I used PicMonkey to put text onto one photo from each day to note the date. I wish I had added the day of the week but oh well. I pasted the 5x7 on a divider sheet of cardstock. All other pages were sheets of photo pockets I got 4 years ago at the thrift store for this project. I finally ran out on the last day of this book.

I took notes all week and when I assembled the book at the end of the week I transferred the notes into journaling on scraps of paper and directly onto the photos. Quick-n-dirty.

As always, I didn't manage to take too many photos of myself (actually, I think the only two I like are shown on the spread above). I did learn how to do a screen capture on the iPhone to show how HOT it got that week. Of course after this week where we had several days in a row over 105 that single hot day doesn't seem so bad.

I used 8.5x11 sheet protectors to hold all sorts of papers and what nots. This year I did a terrible job keeping receipts, wrappers and the daily detritus that makes this project so interesting but so it goes. Better luck next year.

The week included Biscuit's last day of second grade. She wouldn't take a camera to school (bummer) but we took a few shots of her with her teacher and I included some of the papers and art she brought home on the last day as part of her portfolio of work.

I think I say this every year but there are a million things I could have done better on this book but what I love about this project is the focus on just getting it done and sticking it on the shelf. It got done the day before we left on our trip so phew. 2013 is on the shelf.

Cheers :)