June Blog Hop

Hi and welcome to our June Project Life Blog Hop for our Project Life Connection Group “Project Everyday Blessings” We are here to sharing with you each month where we are with our Project Life System, Albums & Techniques. Its our hope that we will inspire you to capture memories and record them.

If you missed the full line up here it is:

Katina Martinez {Loving Life's Little Blessings}

Melissa Miller {Living Life Creatively & With Twins} 

Deveney Stolk

Lisa Wilkinson 

Dionne Carter 

Jenny Bamford-Perkins {This Every Day Life}

Tiffani Paini

If you came from: Katina Martinez {Loving Life's Little Blessings} You are on the right track.

Now Lets get started …. Here is my Project Life for this Month:

My life, like many others, has been crazy over the past few months. However, I still want to share what I am working on and my progress on Project Life. In order to be "caught up", I have a long way to go, however the following is my current list of scrapbook projects and where I am at with each of them. I have a lot of goals at the moment, however I feel that as long as I am making progress on each thing that I am doing well.

2013 Project Life: I am very behind! I skipped all of May and have started the first week of June. In order to "keep up" and not feel overwhelmed by how behind I am, I am doing the following things.
1. Printing photos every week, labeling the envelope with the dates/week number and putting it into the Iris box that has my pre-determined supplies for that month. (Early on in 2013, I created an Iris box for each month with stuff from my stash and new supplies. This works really well for when I sit down to work on a layout, as I'm not using a Core Kit this year.)
2. Print and fill out a journal sheet for each week and stick in the box with the photos. This helps me when I go back to journal, so I can remember more of the details.
3. Don't stress about it! I have twin toddlers, who demand a lot of my time and I am in the midst of a looking for a new job. These things consume most of my time, and I try to find 10-20 minutes a day to sit with my supplies and work on a project.

Mini Albums: I am in the midst of working on three mini albums. I tried to make 2 ABCs of Me mini albums for the twins a few years ago, and I'm not sure that I really enjoyed working on them as much as I had hoped, so I set them aside and haven't finished/looked at them since. I know that the notes, photos and embellies are all stored together, and hopefully I can fall in love with these other minis I am doing to go back and finish them up. The three mini albums I am working on are all pocket page albums, two are the new Becky Higgins mini albums (Minnesota Zoo Field Trip and our backpacking trip to the Porcupine Mountains in Michigan); the other album is a Bo Bunny Misc Me album with Misc Me pocket pages for our 2013 Summer Bucket List project (which you can view on my blog).

2012 Album: I haven't touched this since January, but it is not complete. I have all the photos printed, and I just need to find time to sort through the photos and place them in my album.

2011 Album: This album is a process I am hoping to devote some time blogging about. I have tried many times to search in Google for suggestions on organizing to catch up, but I haven't found much out there for solid information. Currently, I am setting up everything to start this project, and will hopefully be starting my series of blog posts shortly on how I'm going to do this. I'm hoping to make this into an every Friday series of posts until I finish the album. If the process I have planned goes well, I feel that the rest of the albums I need to finish will also fall into place quickly for me and then I can move on to some older photos that I would like to scrap.

2010 Album: I actually have this year broken up into 2 parts. My twins were born in July, so I have my pregnancy (late 2009-July 2010) in one album that is almost complete. I am hoping this album will be completed by the end of the summer. I have a lot of notes and journaling, and the pictures are sorted and most are placed. Right now I try to take a little time each week (one afternoon/evening) and work on a week or two of this album. The other half of this year is much like 2011, the pictures are printed, but not much else has happened with it. July to October is finished, okay mainly complete, in the boys' books, so I'm not too concerned about getting those 3 months done quickly and I have notes for October through December.

Twins' Albums: These tend to get the back burner, because I feel that if I can get caught up in our family albums that going back and catching up in theirs will go that much faster. I'm trying to formulate a plan for working on their albums, and I think starting on their 3rd Birthday (end of July) I'm going to switch to using the Honey Core Kit and a slightly different plan of action.

Wedding Album and Pre-Pregnancy albums: These albums are a lot of ideas floating around in my head, and I have some papers and core kits saved for specific albums, but until I get caught up from late 2009 to today, I will not be working on these albums.

Complete Re-organization of my Scrapbook Space: I have been struggling with my tiny scrapbook space, a small closet upstairs. It has not been overly functional, as I haven't been able to rein in my supplies an organize it. Additionally, I feel the disorganization has been holding me back from getting as much done as I could some days. My mind craves organization, and it is frustrating to see my things scattered everywhere. During National Scrapbook Day, I signed up for an organization class through scrapbook.com, and so far that has been helping! I have gotten as far as taking everything out of my space and boxing the items based on what they are. The current week that I am on, involves sorting and organizing all my paper. This is taking me considerably longer that I thought it would, but I bought some new organizers and am hoping this will start to go faster.

Thank you for stopping by today, and I hope that you join me in my renewed blogging journey as I share my progress, struggles and triumphs in preserving memories and catching up.

Please hop to – Deveney Stolk

Thank you for coming by and you can find more Project Life fun at

http://projectlifeeverydayblessings.blogspot.com/

2013 Summer Bucket List Activities 1-3

Today, I thought I would share the first 3 items we checked off of our 2013 Summer Bucket List!

#1: Irvine Park and Zoo
We joined some friends and took the kids to see the animals at a local park/zoo. They had a blast looking at all of the unique animals and even checking out the petting zoo.

#2: Farmer's Market
We have been trying to go to the Farmer's Market every Saturday morning, to get fresh, local produce. Taking the boys with us has been an adventure, but they seem to enjoy it. This particular morning we met some friends so the kids could keep each other occupied.

#3: Dance
While at the Farmer's Market, there was a small band playing, and everyone was dancing. So we joined in! The kids especially loved it.

Thank you for checking out our progress on completing our summer bucket list! There are still a lot of items on our list, so stay tuned for more adventures!

2013 Summer Bucket List Album

I finally received my album and the I {Heart} Summer collection! I wanted to share my initial setup pages with you.

First, the album seemed a bit plain on the outside, so I used some stamps to stamp "2013 Summer Bucket List" on the front. That seems to have helped! If I have some leftover stickers, once the album is completed, I may go back and add a couple to the front or side of the album.

Next was the title page. I used a 2013 card from one of my Doodlebug collections and then spiced it up with a leftover sticker and some stamps. Everything else came from the I {Heart} Summer Collection.

Then I decided that I wanted to do a "month" page at the beginning of each month, so I could keep track of which days we did activities. The 4x6 calendars came from leftover Doodlebug collection cards (Fruit Stand, Flower Box, Take Note, or Stars and Stripes). I stamped the month and year on the cards and will use a small camera stamp to stamp over the date of the activity. The one this that I think is going to bother  me about these cards is that they are not specific to a month, and the days don't go with my standard calendar. I'm hoping to be able to get past this, as the cards look so cute! As for filling the 3x4 pockets on these "month" pages, I decided to use a pocket with a tag for one side and then a filler card for the other.

Stay tuned for the first few pages from our bucket list! Thank you for joining me on this journey, and I hope you are inspired to create your own summer bucket list!

2013 Summer Bucket List

There seems to be a craze recently for making summer bucket lists. My guess is they have been around for a few years, but I seem to be seeing these come up a lot on scrapbook message boards. It got me thinking, maybe I should make one for our family. We have talked about doing many of the things on our list, but never really wrote it down. Most of our list is for our whole family, but there are a couple of things that are just for the adults. Here is our 2013 Summer Bucket List...

I will be documenting these in a small album (Bo Bunny Misc Me! Family Is Binder and Misc Me! 4x6 & 3x4 Page Protectors). I have decided to use Simple Stories' I {Heart} Summer Collection and an assortment of washi tape from my collection to put the album together. I am very excited to get started! I think we are going to have a fun and exciting summer. Please join me on this incredible journey!