Project Life 2014 - Week 3

January 12 - January 18, 2014:

This week, we had a great Sunday - a Krispy Kreme breakfast of sprinkled donuts and POG just because we could, then some quiet reading at home before Joel and Dean headed out on one of their typical Sunday adventures (they did one of their favorite hikes - Four Waterfalls - lots of running through bamboo, jumping off waterfalls, swimming in jungle streams, and boulder hopping!). Then Sunday evening Joel and I enjoyed the first episode of a new HBO show we've been excited to watch - True Detective with one of my faves Matthew McConaughey and Maui resident Woody Harrelson. We are definitely intrigued. (of course, we don't think HBO does anything badly). Dean had a dentist appointment, we got our piano tuned (FINALLY - it's super old, we bought it used, it spent like 30 years in a home literally 25 yards from the ocean which is not really good for pianos, so it was very, very badly out of tune - it took the tuner man 8.5 hours to tune it!!). Saturday Joel and I enjoyed a fun date day driving over to the West Side for a Barnes & Noble run and some shopping (even with the stressful drive over the Pali with all the tourists driving like crazies while trying to look at all the whales instead of keeping their eyes on the road! ha!). And most exciting of all - we booked a trip to Disneyland with my Mom for mid-spring!! 

As for products used this week, a few things from the Copper Mountain Studio Calico kits as well as a journal card from the Midnight Core Kit. The rest is pretty much from Emily Merritt's new Choose Happy kit - love it! I also used Emily Merritt's Dotted Numbers to mark the week number again. 

And that wraps up Week 3. I love being caught up on this album. I'm hoping to finish up my December Daily album in the next few weeks, so if I manage that I'll be sure to share. Enjoy the rest of your weekend!

Project Life 2014 - Week 2

January 5 - January 11, 2014

Around here, it was a fun and busy week. Downton Abbey season 4 started, Joel and Dean started playing some tennis (neither of them has any idea what they're doing, but when asked if he wants to take lessons, Dean informed me: "Nah, I don't need to. I'm already really good". Then he told me he beat Daddy 53 to 37. Um, OK. Ha! Wednesday, Dean started back to school after a nice long Winter Break. We've been getting some much-needed rain in the Central Valley of Maui. I crocheted Joel a beanie (have I mentioned I'm now completely obsessed with crocheting? I'm sure I'll be annoying all of you with my humble brags about my many crochet projects this year). Joel played golf with some buddies Saturday afternoon (another sport he's really not very good at, but enjoys playing - he is definitely a wrestler in every way). And I got a new little chair for the living room. If you followed my 2013 Project Life, you know that we've been slowly progressing with a major Living Room Makeover for about a year now and are really, really close to being done with that! Yay! 

I used lots of my Studio Calico goodies this week. I hadn't been finding a lot to use from my kits the last few months - I think because fall and winter colors just don't fit well when you live in a perpetually warm climate maybe? I find it hard to work with those warm, fallish colors. So I really loved this month's kits as it was a return to more of my style. I also tried something new on my "anchor card" and journaled - kind of Week in Review style. That 3x4 number 2 is from Emily Merritt's Big Number Week Cards No. 2 - like I mentioned last week, I'll be using those pretty consistently this year. I also used some of the Grey Alpha Stickers by Becky Higgins (These and several other Project Life products are currently 25% off over at Two Peas, btw). One of my favorite photos this week is that super simple 3x4 picture of all the Calvin and Hobbes books on Dean's bookshelf. Such a perfect example of his everyday life right now. Trying to remember to capture more images like that this year.

I actually included TWO! selfies on the right side of the layout this week - unheard of for me as I am really bad about avoiding the camera. The first (4x6) one I snapped in the car on the way to school the first morning back after Winter Break. LOL. Perfect capture of how each of us felt. The second one is there mostly because I just wanted an excuse to use that #selfie card from the SC Project Life kit. The "Let's Make it a Good One" card is from Emily Merritt's new Be Brilliant kit. And finally, that 4x6 "yes!" journal card is from the Teen Boy Theme Pack by Becky Higgins.

And that wraps up my Week 2. Thanks for stopping by!

Project Life 2014 Cover Page and Week 1

Hi there! Happy New Year! It's been over a month since I blogged and I realize I still haven't shared the last of my 2013 Project Life layouts or the rest of my December Daily Album. However, I want to try to stay on top of sharing my 2014 Project Life, so here I am! I'll try to eventually get around to sharing my December Daily Album. I have lots of plans for the blog this year, including a big clean-up and redesign coming in the next week or 2. I'd also like to share other projects here besides just Project Life - including my attempts at other craftiness and a little bit of "real life" every now and then. We'll see how that goes. I still won't be blogging on any kind of regular basis, but just when I have time and happen to have something to share. Your comments help me know if people like the content I'm sharing, so please let me know what you think!

So, today I'm going to share my Project Life 2014 Cover Page and Week 1 Layout. My goal for Project Life this year is to keep things really simple. I want my pages to come together quickly and for the focus to be on the photos and memories. I'll mainly be using a mix of Becky Higgins Core Kits (my plan is to mostly use Jade and Coral with a little bit of a few others thrown in when it seems right). I do subscribe to the Studio Calico Project Life kit, so you'll probably see some of that mixed in here and there as well as a few of my other favorite products. I especially like to add the Studio Calico digital printable labels to my photos. But other than that, I will likely be keeping embellishments to a minimum. You'll also be seeing LOTS of Emily Merritt printables again this year. I'm a HUGE fan of Emily's designs and my plan this year is to use either her Big Number Week Cards No. 2 or her new Dotted Numbers each week in a 3x4 pocket to mark which week number we're on. Last year I used my Silhouette to cut out the week number and added it to my "anchor card" each week. I really liked the look of that, but dealing with my Silhouette each week was just too time consuming. Don't get me wrong, I love my Silhouette and will still be using cut files every now and then, but not every week. Remember, Simple and Quick is the name of the game for me this year. For me, my Silhouette is neither of those.

So, with Simple and Quick in mind for the entire album, I decided to make my Cover Page a little more fancy than the rest of the album will be. I absolutely LOVED what Jenni Hufford did with her Cover Page and decided to do something very, very similar. I give all inspirational credit to her.

I used a 8.5x11 inch Coin Collection Pocket Page insert. It has twenty 2x2 inch pockets that I filled with a variety of embellishments, instagram photos, and cropped 3x4 filler cards from the Sunshine, Jade and Coral Project Life Core Kits. I also added a little die cut image of Maui, the island we live on, to one pocket (I downloaded a cut file of Hawaii from the Silhouette store and deleted all of the other islands). One of my favorite things is that cute little 2014 Flair button.

I added more bits of filler cards to the back sides of the pockets and then each member of our family got a pocket with our details (age and current "job title").  I'm really happy with the way my Cover Page turned out. It gave me a chance to get really creative and pull out all the stops with embellishments since my plan for most of the rest of the album is to keep things pretty clean and simple. I also liked that using an insert for the cover page left just the front of the first actual page of the album free. This was perfect to use for Week 1, since I wanted to start the album on Jan 1, which was a Wednesday, so my Week 1 was really just half a week! So my Week 1 is contained in a single Design A page:

Week 1 was short and sweet. I included photos of Oklahoma's awesome Sugar Bowl win against Alabama - Boomer Sooner!! (Joel and I are both OU Alumni), MACC tickets from a fun Date Night New Year's, a picture of Dean wearing one of the beanies I made him for Christmas (he LOVES them - and he's never been a kid who will wear any kind of hat, so that makes me really happy!), and finally a selfie of me right after cutting 11 inches off my hair!! New Year, New Me!! I used lots of Coral kit cards as well as a recolored card from Emily Merritt's new Be Brilliant card pack and her Dotted Numbers collection. I have to say that initially, I wasn't all that crazy about the Coral Kit when I first opened it up and started sorting through the cards. But now that I've started using it, I think it might be my go-to kit this year. Jade is still my fave, but I love how well Coral and Jade go together. I think you'll be seeing a lot of those 2 kits from me this year!

So that's it. I'm super excited to be starting another year of Project Life. This is my 3rd year documenting my family's memories using the Project Life method and I absolutely love it! I'm also determined to finish Dean's Baby Album this year and hope to share more of it here on the blog as well.

Thanks for stopping by!