Hi and welcome to our September 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} 

EE Wang Kachinski http://www.eekachinski.blogspot.com/

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". We have been working diligently to get our house ready to sell, and thus many of my scrapping things have had to be packed up in the process. I will be very excited to move to a new house and pull all of my stuff out...hopefully in my own studio space. :)

As for my Project Life, I have not really worked on it at all since June. I have photos printed and journaling notes taken, but otherwise everything is sitting in Iris containers in my basement. Today, I am fortunate enough to be able to participate in a crop and will hopefully be able to get most of July done. July was a big month for my family, between Fourth of July, camping, and a big birthday party, there is a lot to scrapbook.

I'm hoping to have lots to share with you in October!

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 – EE Wang Kachinski http://www.eekachinski.blogspot.com/

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

http://projectlifeeverydayblessings.blogspot.com/

Project Life - Catching up on 2011: Photographs

Sorry this is late, we are hoping to get our house on the market shortly and I have been cleaning like a maniac to get stuff done.

I scrapbook to preserve memories. Plain and simple. With those memories, I love to have photographs, so today I am going to share with you my process for sorting and organizing my photos after they have been printed.

First of all, all of my digital photos are saved on a computer, external hard drive, and off-site backed up in folders first with the year and then each week has its own folder where the pictures are located. This makes is so easy to go through the photos I have when I need to find a specific one. The best part of digital photos is that I can see the exact date/time the photo was taken, provided my camera was set up correctly.

Here is a look at the drawer that currently contains all of the photos I have printed but not organized from 2010-2012. It's absolutely not how I want my photos to be stored, however they are protected from the light.

Normally, I like to keep them organized in the small 4x6 Iris cases that are made to hold photos. I have a few of the small Iris boxes that hold the photo cases, however I wasn't sure what I was going to do with all of them, so many of my cases are loose. When I pulled the 2011 cases out of the bin that holds my sorted and dated photos, I was quite surprised and excited to see that so many already had photos in them, and a lot of photos in some.

This made my job easier. In a couple of hours, I was able to go through the envelopes from the drawer and sort the 2011 pictures out and then sort them by month.

After the pictures are sorted by month, I use the computer to help me find the dates and use a small date stamp and StazOn ink to lightly stamp the date on the back of the photo. Then I sort the photos by date in the small Iris cases and set them aside to be scrapped.

I was able to complete this entire process (sans organizing them on the computer which I do as I download them off the camera) in 2 days! :) I feel like I am ready to get moving on these albums, and over the course of the next week, I plan to work on the January pictures. Friday, I am hoping to share my January pages, inserts and 12 x 12 layouts.

This system works really well for when I am behind on Project Life, because it keeps my photos together by month and makes them easier to find. Starting at the beginning of 2013, I began printing my photos every Saturday night, after my boys go to bed (weeks run Sunday-Saturday). When I pick them up from the printer I label the envelope with the week numbers and the dates and then throw them in the Iris box for the month I am on to keep the photos with the supplies...eventually I will blog about this process, but it probably won't be until my 2011 albums are complete.

I hope you will continue to join me on this journey and your comments are appreciated. Thanks for stopping by.

Project Life - Catching up on 2011: Getting Started

As I explain how I got started with my albums and organization, please understand that I am Type A...and a little OCD when it comes to my albums. I feel that I need to have everything color coordinated and match up as best as possible when I put together a week, and that does include my inserts.

Main Album

First, I put enough Design A page protectors into my album for the entire year. I know that I may eventually need another binder since this is the only album I do for the year and I end up using a lot of inserts (12x12 and Project Life Plastics) to include all my pictures and stories. Then I sorted my Amber Core Kit by color and design to match up the 4x6 cards with the 3x4 journaling and filler cards as best as possible. Once everything was organized the way I liked, I placed 1 4x6 card, 1 journaling card filler side showing and 6 journaling cards for each week. I also placed the first and last page cards into their respective protectors. These will change a little as I go along, because I like to include a family photo at the beginning of the album along with other embellishments. Additionally, I went through and stamped the dates for each week on the title card...which will probably be all I'll do with them unless I decide to put some embellishments on them for special weeks.

I took this picture before I had inserted the month dividers into the album. They are now in the correct spots in the album.

 

Journaling Binder

In this binder, I have printed 53 "weekly journaling sheets" from Marcy Penner and wrote the dates for the weeks at the top. My plan is to go through my pictures on the computer and make notes about the pictures based on notes I have in my 2011 box and what we can remember about the pictures. I will probably do these one month (about 4 weeks) at a time and do the notes so I don't get overwhelmed and give up.

Mini Album

I have looked through the cards in the Dear Lizzy Project Life Kit and they are so cute and will be fun to use. Until I get closer to working with the pictures from our trip to the zoo, this album, and kit, will just stay in the 2011 box and wait for me.

Pictures

I was pleasantly surprised when I went to collect my Iris photo boxes that are supposedly housing my 2011 pictures. I figured that I had only sorted and stamped a small amount of these photos, however from the looks of the boxes I have more done than I thought. Next week, I will devote my entire blog post to my method for sorting, organizing and storing my photos to make them easier to put into my albums. Until then, this is what 2011 currently looks like. :)

Cardstock Update: I have not made it to Michaels to try to match the cardstock cards from the Amber kit to get some 12 x 12 sheets of matching paper. I am hoping to have some time this weekend to do this and will post the colors with my next post.

I know this process is slow going at this point, but for me once everything is organized for a project it seems to come together a lot faster for me. I hope you continue to join me on this incredible journey on catching up on an entire year of photos using the "Project Life" method and products. Thanks for stopping by!

Project Life - Catching up on 2011: Organization

In a new series of posts on my blog, I will be sharing my process for catching up on all of my photos from 2011. This is the only family album on my shelf that has been entirely neglected and I really want to start working on it. One thing that I did to start working on this project was try to Google the topic of catching up on Project Life, but the only things I found were short picture blog posts and fast paced videos. No one really broke it down in a helpful way for me. I know that everyone does things differently, but I was hoping to see a "step-by-step" breakdown of how someone did this. That is my plan...a "step-by-step" on how I work through this album and a series of Friday blog posts to show you my process, progress and suggestions.

As I want to catch up on this album quickly, I am going to employ the "KISS" (Keep It Simple Silly) method and use Project Life.

My 2011 Album Supply List:
We R Memory Keepers 12x12 Burgundy Album (to match our other family albums)
8 1/2 x 11 Binder I bought at Walmart (for planning pages)
Amber Project Life Core Kit
53 Planning Pages (already in small binder)
Amber Edition 12x12 Coordinating Cardstock (patterned)
4x6 Amber Edition Cardstock Cards
3x4 Amber Edition Cardstock Cards
Design A Pocket Pages (already in binder)
Scissors, Smash date stamp, StazOn Timber Brown ink pad, Recollections photo markers, Tim Holtz tiny attacher, adhesive, We R Memory Keepers yellow corner rounder (1/8" and 3/8"), Fiskars paper trimmer (not pictured)
Bazzill plain cardstock (not pictured...I'm still trying to figure out what colors to buy)
Random Embellies from my stash and Cricut Die Cuts

We took a trip over Easter (2011) with the boys to the Minnesota Zoo. I am going to do a special mini album to document this trip, as I took a ton of pictures that would probably take up half of my 12x12 album in inserts to do.
Mini Album Supply List
Becky Higgins Blush Album
Project Life Dear Lizzy Mini Kit
Random Embellies from my stash and Cricut Die Cuts

Supplies!

This is how I have my supplies organized for this project. I have a Cropper Hopper Paper Holder for the  12x12 papers and the small box to hold 4x6 and 3x4 sized cards.

My photos from 2011 are in a drawer and not very organized, however they are printed. The first post (or two) will be devoted to how I start working with these.

Over the next few Fridays, I will be sharing my process with you. I hope you will join me in this journey. Please feel free to ask me questions!

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!

Hi and Welcome to our May Project Life Blog Hop!!!!  I'm so excited that you have joined us once again on the last Saturday of the month so that we can share some inspirational blog posts with you of our current Project Life Albums & Projects. 
We have decided makes these hops more fun and less stressful by not following a "Theme" each month, everyone is still welcome to follow the "Theme Layout" I posted the beginning of the year if it is helpful, otherwise we just want to see where you are. 
Where is your Project Life Album? what are you struggling with? What systems have you found to work? What product are you using? By sharing, you are helping the rest of us. 
Here is the full line up:
Katina Martinez {Loving Life's Little Blessings} Wendy Cranford -{Luvin' Stampin' Up} Cynthia Atkins {scrapinoma}  Melissa Miller {Living Life Creatively & With Twins} EE Wang Kachinski  Dionne Carter Deveney Stolk Lisa Wilkinson 

For me, Project Life has taken a back seat this month. Life has thrown us a lot of curve balls and I haven't been able to find much time to scrapbook. However, I have been printing my pictures every week and keeping detailed journaling for them. With the holiday weekend and the school year winding down, I am hoping to catch up on my 2013 album. 
I will work to blog about my process in the coming months and how I am speeding up the process of catching up. My goal for the summer will be catching up/keeping up with my 2013 album and doing some process posts for my 2011 album that hasn't been started, yet the pictures are all printed.
Thanks for coming by!
Please hop to: EE Wang Kachinski 

Hi and welcome to our April 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}
www.lovinglifeslittleblessing.com - Please NOTE - my web address is different - I am no a dot.com
Cynthia Atkins Cindi Atkins {scrapinoma} 
http://scrapinomaplb.blogspot.com/
Melissa Miller {Living Life Creatively & With Twins}
http://livinglifecreativelyx2.blogspot.com/
Deveney Stolk
http://deveney093.blogspot.nl/
Dionne Carter
DeezCreativeDesigns.Blogspot.com

If you came from: Cynthia Atkins Cindi Atkins {scrapinoma} http://scrapinomaplb.blogspot.com/ You are on the right track.

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

This month we are talking about where we are in Project Life. I am currently on track and behind. I say this because during the month of April, I decided to start using downloadable/printable Project Life planning sheets from Marcy Penner. These have been helping me plan out my pages and to execute them more efficiently. Additionally, I never really finished Weeks 3-13...I've been going back and using the planning pages to help me catch up on these.

Week 14: Done!

Week 15: Done!

Week 16: Almost complete...I have 3 inserts for Week 16, including 2 12x12 pages.

Week 17: Printing pictures today and working on finishing a mini-album from our field trip on Thursday. I'm using a Becky Higgins mini-album and left-over cards from my Cherry Kit. I'll blog about it when I have finished. 

Thanks for looking!

Please hop to – Deveney Stolk - http://deveney093.blogspot.nl/

Thank you for coming by and you can find more Project Life fun at
http://projectlifeeverydayblessings.blogspot.com/

Hi and welcome to our March 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} 
http://www.twochicsandacricut.blogspot.com/
Wendy Cranford -{Luvin' Stampin' Up} 
http://www.luvinstampinup.blogspot.com/
Melissa Miller {Living Life Creatively & With Twins}
http://livinglifecreativelyx2.blogspot.com/
Deveney Stolk - http://deveney093.blogspot.nl/

If you came from: Wendy Cranford -{Luvin' Stampin' Up} 
http://www.luvinstampinup.blogspot.com/ You are on the right track

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

This month we are focusing on journaling. In my Project Life, this is an important part of the storytelling that occurs. Every night, I reflect/journal about what happened during the day; while making sure that I cover any photos that I took. If someone says/does something particularly memorable, I will write it down at the first chance I get so I don't forget.

Daily Journal Entry

 This is the left side of my Week 10 layout! I have incorporated a few different ways I journal on this page.

Sunday journaling: Z had his camera out today, and since the photos from his toddler camera aren't of the best quality I tend to print them smaller. This allowed me to attach the best pictures to a card and then use the open space at the bottom of the card to add my journaling.

Monday: I attached a picture to the left side of a 4x6 card and then journaled in the empty space on the right.

Monday: This is another image from Monday, I used a journaling card that had the perfect sentiment already printed on it.

Tuesday: I used letter stickers to "journal" on this picture. Sometimes, a picture mostly speaks for itself and doesn't need more that a couple words of journaling.

In our "Family" album, I write everything in first person (from my perspective). In Z and R's albums, I write everything from me to them; unless it is a quote, then I write it exactly as they said it (or as best I can).

Please hop to – Deveney Stolk - http://deveney093.blogspot.nl/

Thank you for coming by and you can find more Project Life fun at
http://projectlifeeverydayblessings.blogspot.com/

February Blog Hop

Hi and welcome to our February Hop, "Preserving the Moments, Not only the events!"

Project Life Blog Hop for our Project Life Connection Group “Project Everyday Blessings”

We are committed 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} 
http://www.twochicsandacricut.blogspot.com/ 

Wendy Cranford {Luvin' Stampin' Up} 
http://www.luvinstampinup.blogspot.com/

Cynthia Atkins Cindi Atkins {scrapinoma}
http://scrapinomaplb.blogspot.com/

Melissa Amick {1 Pirate & 2 Princesses}
-http://1pirate2princesses.com/

Melissa Miller {Living Life Creatively & With Twins}
http://livinglifecreativelyx2.blogspot.com/

EE Wang Kachinski
http://www.eekachinski.blogspot.com/

Dionne Carter
http://www.deezcreativedesigns.blogspot.com/

If you came from: 1 Pirate & 2 Princesses – You are on the right track

Here is my Project Life for this Month:

I actually don't have anything from my Project Life to share with you this month. It has been crazy around my house. We have been digging ourselves out of the snow about every 4 days and I had parent/teacher conferences this week. Since our theme this month is pictures, I thought that I would share a few things with you regarding how I deal with my photos.

Step 1: Download them from my cameras, phones, iPad, iPod or anything else that can take pictures. These go into a folder that is marked with the week number, and dates, in the 2013 folder on my computer.
Step 2: Decide which photos to upload for printing. I don't have a fancy printer, so I upload and print my photos to Walgreens. The quality has been great so far, and they even have a printing deal each week. On Saturdays I download my pictures and print them so that I can pick them up on Sunday.
Step 3: Place in photo pockets. I layout my pictures and stick them into the photo pocket for the corresponding day of the week. Sometimes there is a blank space, for a day that I didn't take a photo, but I leave it for now. This allows me to set my Project Life aside and still be able to know where the photos should approximately go.

Note: Sometimes I take a date roller stamp and stamp the date on the back of the photo using StazOn ink. This has been particularly helpful when I have been printing lots of picutres, like a whole month's worth, and storing them in a safe place.

That's it for me this month!

Please hop to – EE Wang Kachinski 

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

Free It Up Friday!

Free It Up Friday, where I will share some great DIY cleaning/organization ideas!

On the block today, scrapbooking paper scraps. EEK! They accumulate everywhere and I just came across a smallish box of them from a retreat I attended last summer. Since my scrapbook space is a very small closet in our house, I have had to find some creative ways to organize my supplies and my scraps just seem to take over when I forget about them.

Here is the pile that I recently found...

I have 2 organizational systems that I use for my paper scraps.

Organizational system 1...
The first is an series of empty, and cleaned, formula canisters from when my twins were infants. I cleaned them, let them dry and the covered them with paper scraps of the colors that were going to be in the container. I still have a few containers floating around and might have to make another one for my neutral scraps...or just remember to use them on my layouts. These formula canisters comfortably hold scraps that are less than 4 inches wide. Anything larger than 4 inches needs to go in organizational system number 2.

Organizational system 2...

This is made from an old, broken baby gate. We live in an old home, and the door frames aren't exactly square so we have broken a few baby gates from the stress of not quite fitting. I used a couple of wall hooks from Menards to hang it on the wall. Then I bought the really big (2 gallon) Ziploc slider bags to store my scraps. These bags are great because a 12x12 sheet will fit inside. I labeled each bag with the color of the paper and hung them on the baby gate with clothespins. The bags are also great when I go on crops, because I can just zip the scraps inside and they don't get lost in my bag.

It took me an hour to trim up (straighten up the edges, especially if it was a leftover from a Cricut design), sort and put away my pile of scraps. In 2013, I hope to find a way to stay on top of my scraps so I don't have a pile like this stashed away somewhere. I'd love to see what kinds of creative ways you have for storing your paper scraps. 

Project Life Monday

Last week, I did not complete my Project Life spread because life happened. We were just getting over not feeling well. I will not be sharing a Project Life spread today because I did not get my photos printed on Saturday. 

Please bear with me and I hope to have something to share with you later this week!

Project Life Monday ~ Week 4

I have still not completed my Week 2 or Week 3 layouts, however in the interest of staying on top of my Project Life album I am moving forward to Week 4. As I finish up Week 2 and Week 3 I will share them with you.

We had a fairly laid back week this week, but there were some very interesting things that happened...

Full spread with 3 inserts...

As this is the only album I do for our family throughout the year, I tend to add lots of inserts for the pictures that I just had to print but didn't have enough space for in the small 4x6 space. This week I also experimented with Walgreens option to create collage prints. I like how these turned out, however in the future I will do them myself with Gimp.

Left side...

Right side...

*"Hello" Card is from the new Recollections journaling cards at Michaels. 

Fronts of inserts...

Backs of inserts...

Insert 1 is a 6x12 page protector. I love using these when I have one random portrait photo because it allows me to get a few more photos in, along with the ability to be more creative with my inserts. Insert 2 has the extra photos from Wednesday and Saturday, and Insert 3 is my Move More Eat Well weekly insert.

Thanks for taking the time to look at my pages! I hope you enjoyed them, we certainly did!