Category Archives: Week in the Life

Week in the Life 2017 (and where did the first quarter of 2017 go???)

Posted in Documenting Life, Memory Keeping, Week in the Life by

I am not exactly sure where the first three months of this year got off to but they were certainly not spent with me writing on my blog !   Snow, moving Dad into a new apartment which entailed multiple trips to ROC, Snow, some cold, basketball, homework, Paris travel album project finished (!),  Hawaii travel album finished except for 2 sets of journal cards my family needs to fill out (!),  sleet, basketball,  all of my Modern HST Sampler blocks DONE!, pussyhat knitted, Women’s March attended, beer sampled, snow, bird feeders finally filled and hung, family, family, family (in the best most everyday way possible) gift quilt project started and top finished, meatballs made, shopped with teenagers, memory keeping projects worked on, business changing conference attended, new friends made, dog walked, sticks collected, moss wreath made (!)

OK, now you are caught up!

My next memory keeping project coming up is “Week in the Life” .  WITL is a memory keeping project conceived by Ali Edwards, you can read more about it on her website here.  It is an in-depth documentation of one ordinary week in our life.  I first participated in 2011, then in 2012 and 2013.   I organized my files in preparation for this year and realized that it looks like I did 2014 but never printed it out (?) I worked pretty much all digitally in 8.5×11 format for 2011-2014.  2015 I took a stab at but didn’t get far.  2016 I purchased Ali’s kit in the 6×8 format, but never really did anything with it…or so I thought !

Witl 1

LOL I decided to use my 2016 kit (I think there are still some available here) to document 2017…and when I pulled it out to get set up, look what I found… all the stuff and writing from 2016… well, all this will just get slotted in to the Project Life spread for that week because I’m only on March 2016 I think and this was from May.  Lemons=Lemonade.

This year, I am starting my documenting on Sunday, the 16th which is Easter.  It will be fun to document as we are hosting dinner and a lot of family will be here.  This will be the first year that I use physical product i/o digital so for me, setting up in advance and having a plan works much much better!  Here is my plan for this year….

Witl 4.jpg Yes, it’s super high tech..chicken scratch sketched on a piece of scrap paper!  Each day will have 2-6×8 slots for either a large photo, a good amount of writing or a cute 6×8 fill-in insert that I purchased last year in digital form.  4-4×6 slots, one of which will hold the “day” card (or maybe not, might move things around who knows?!)  2-3×8 slots, I have digital templates that I can make up and print out for these, or maybe just pretty paper or ???   7-3×4 slots, at least one of these will be a journal card, the rest depending on what’s going on, we’ll see.     I have set up my album with all the page protectors and cards in place and ready to go (with the full realization that I will most probably be moving things around…

In preparation, I also went in organized all of my digital elements.  I made a folder for WITL 2017 on my desktop and the a sub-folder for all of my digital items.   I copied all of the digital templates, artwork and files I may use into this file with a note to DELETE when done as I have the master copies in a WITL Master File.  I also made up a folder for each day to help organize the photos and what I’m going to print out.

Witl 2.jpg

I gathered up all of the kit elements, printed out the daily sheets (available on Ali’s blog), and found a pad of Studio Calico “printshop” paper that goes perfectly with the color scheme, just in case I need background paper for something I don’t want to have to go hunting.  I will most probably not use all of the items in the kit… I can see using the stamp set (need to find my “good” black ink), rubber word embellishments and the word stickers and a few of the round chipboard circles definitely.   Anything I don’t use will go into my soon to be re-arranged stash.

Witl 3.jpg

So here we are ready to go!  Baking tins too beat up to bake in make awesome project bins.  I’m really looking forward to this project this year after a few yeas off.  I was going through my past WITL spreads and the girls seemed so little! And we were in a different  house!  And the cats were still with us!  So much fun to look at all those memories now!  I hope you’ll join us next week!

 

Week in the Life – Monday 8/17

Posted in Creative Practice, Documenting Life, Memory Keeping, Week in the Life, Writing by

I wasn’t going to do a Week in the Life project this year….last year my heart wasn’t really in it for some reason and I abandoned the project after a day or two.  It’s OK to drop projects and change gears, wasn’t working, move on.  This year, I have too many unfinished projects, too many things in the air and no sense of completion….perfect!  Let’s take on another project.  My goal this year…. write every day, take a few photos, post to my blog.  It’s Wednesday and I’m posting Monday so here goes 😉

MONDAY

****And I realized when I looked at the photos I’d taken, all 8 of them, that there were no people in them.  Was it because I’d decided late in the game to do witl and hadn’t “prepped”?  Or, was it because this is what a large part of my day looks like being the Domestic Goddess with two kids in school and a more than full time working hubby….that there just isn’t that many people around?   Think I need to think about this a little more.  A lot of isolation, not necessarily a great thing.

This week is the last week of summer vacation for us.  It is completely depressing, I am happy with the school they go to, but at this time of year I’m ready for them to have an extra week or two of summer as the other schools around us do.  It is especially bittersweet as they are going into HIGH SCHOOL next week (not sure why I have to capitalize that when I write it), I have been waffling between disbelief and excitement for them all month.

In the spirit of “last week before summer vacation” I made the girls get up at 9am even though we didn’t have to leave the house until almost 11.  Groan, moan and they’re up.  After being a slug for the greater part of the summer, I got up with Charlie a little after 6am and made him his tea to take with him to work.  I have to admit, I get waaaaay more done in a day when I am up at 6am vs. 9am.

The girls had soccer practice this morning so I picked up Kenzie & Peyson and dropped everyone at the field, then hightailed it to the Apple Store to pick up a new wireless router (ours was ooold as I realized) and then to Best Buy for network cable and other tech stuff all to be used as part of the upgrading the wi-fi signal project.  Just made it back to soccer in time to get everyone, drop everyone off, bring the girls home to get their bathing suits and some Elio’s pizza to take to Kenzie’s pool…pick up Lauren on the way over and drop everyone off to swim.  Lucky that Janice will bring everyone home.  I’m so so thankful to have a group of girlfriends who live nearby and who like to share in the kid-schlepping chores!

photo 5 edited

After the pool, the girls have to do their “concussion training” for their school soccer team, I get them the links to the site and they each curl up on their beds in the a/c  go through the course.

photo 4

Also in homage to getting back to a schedule, I wanted to get back into the habit of “money monday”, doing the bills/paperwork/greasing the cogs that run this show.  I know if I do this every monday, it won’t take very long and I will have a far better grasp on money, projects, and to-do’s and won’t be wondering if I called the chimney guy or where the paper was with the deposit on it.

photo 1

In the spirit of trying something new, I tried the “deposit by phone” app with our bank and snapped a photo of the check, entered some info and away it went!  Too bad I can’t get cash out of my phone, save me a trip to the cash machine.  I spent hours on this project but managed to get a lot of things cleared out, ticked off, paid and filed.

photo 6 edited

In an effort to clean out the fridge, I made grilled lamb tips from pache’s, a spinach pinwheel dish to use up the puff pastry and good old zucchini cakes from our frozen garden zucchini.  Round it out with sliced tomatoes from the garden and call it good!!

photo 2

After dinner, Charlie worked on our taxes and the girls read their summer reading book “1984”.  They are under strict orders that they can’t go camping this weekend with their friend unless the reading and all the “entries” they have to do are completely done, printed out and in their backpacks ready to hand in on Monday!  Charlie gave me my own “homework” of things to work on to get our taxes in order, which I’ll work on this week.  I had some more paperwork/computer stuff to take care of before joining him for sliced plums.

photo 3

We have been ending up the evenings in front of the TV usually watching sports or “Big Bang Theory” re-runs.    It is nice to come together at the end of the day and hang our for awhile.  Gwen went to bed early but Lily got some ice cream and hung out with us for awhile watching TV.  It’s still weird that they don’t go to bed at 8pm anymore, its fun to hang out but I sometimes miss grown-up evening time.  As we get closer to Monday, bedtimes will be dialed back toward 9.  This summer I’ve also been having Lily do the evening dog routine of pill/food/outside then put her to bed in her crate.  Shadow likes the routine and I like not forgetting to put her out until I’m over-ready to go to bed!  Books and crosswords for us then lights out, Charlie at around 11 and me around 11:40…need to dial back bedtime for ourselves as well!

 

Memory Keeping:: Week in the Life 2011

Posted in Creative Practice, Digital Scrapbooking, Documenting Life, Every Day Life, In the Studio, Layouts, Make Stuff, Memory Keeping, Week in the Life by

Oh the blog updating fun continues!!  Week in the Life 2011 is uploaded!  Hop over HERE and take a look!

WITL2011-07

Week in the Life / Memory Keeping update

Posted in Creative Practice, Digital Scrapbooking, Documenting Life, Layouts, Memory Keeping, Photography, Week in the Life 2013 by

Hi all!  I am finally getting around to some oh so much needed blog organizing and updating and wanted to give everyone a heads up that I’ve updated my “Memory Keeping” section to include my “Week in the Life” pages from 2012 and 2013.  2013 was probably my most favorite year so far.  Hop over HERE and take a look at 2013 and HERE for 2012!

WITL-13-Cover Page

2013 memory keeping retrospective

Posted in Creative Practice, December Daily, Digital Scrapbooking, Layout A Day challenges, Make Stuff, Memory Keeping, Project Gal- Memorykeeping, Project life, Project Life 2013, Week in the Life, Week in the Life 2013 by

I love memory keeping and telling our family stories.  I am happy to be the gatekeeper for the family photos and memorabilia and the designatee to get it all organized in a format that we can share with our little family, our larger extended family, friends and with the world at large.

Plus, it’s fun

Toward the end of this year, I felt that I hadn’t really accomplished much as far as my memory keeping / scrapbooking projects were concerned.  I know I have a big bunch of on-line classes that I am going to finish up next year, as well as other ongoing memory keeping projects (that is another post for another day) but I thought I’d tally up my efforts this year and see where I really stand (I am planning in my “to do blog list” to share about some of these projects)…

Project Life

PL-for-Blog-PostYes, as of the close of 2013, I am still working on 2013 while looking forward to starting 2014.  Am I OK with it?  Yes.   Does it work for me? Yes…  Am I going to continue with this way of documenting our lives weekly?  Absolutely.    I’ve found during this my 3rd year of this kind of documentation, that sometimes this works best for me if I can “batch” it and do several weeks at once.  Earlier this year, I put together 8 weeks of layouts (8 double or 16 single) in less than 2 hours (!)   For 2014, I would really like to keep more current on this project but we’ll see how it goes.  The most important part is that the photos and the stories are getting documented.

Tally:  52 weeks of 2 – page spreads  (or 104 single spreads) (plus some extra stuff thrown in for good measure)… am going to down grade the number of weeks completed because I realized after I published this post that I’m still working on the last 4 months of 2013….that would be the not-caught-up-but-its-ok part of the project !

Revised Tally:  36 weeks of 2 page spreads (or 72 single page spreads)…still a good number!

Albums

Florida Keys vacation 2012:  

FLA-album-for-blogI was really happy to find a way to liberate the photos and stuff from this trip and get it into an album we can all enjoy.  I still need to corral everyone to write a few things down on some of the journaling cards but it’s basically done.   Love how it all came together, since I had everything all categorized and organized ahead of time, it took about 3 hours to pull the actual album together.

Tally:  20 double spreads/ 40 single pages

50/50 for Charlie’s 50th birthday:  

50/50 Timeline-album cover pageWhen I thought about my memory keeping efforts, for some reason I did not count this album or Project Life (???)  I know, silly.  This project was a true labor of love and I’m so so happy that I made this gift for my wonderful husband.  In short, the album was a 50 year retrospective of my hubby’s life to date, including photos from 1988 forward that I had, and photos from 1963 to 1988 from his mom.  Everything until about 2007 had to be scanned, cropped and edited (!)

Seriously love this book!

Tally:  202 photo album pages or  large images scanned

484 images edited/manipulated/printed

48 double page spreads / 96 single pages

50th Surprise Birthday Party Album

party-album-for-blogThe album about the party (yes we were just a little party-centric earlier this year!) I almost forgot about this album…I used the same type of album as the Florida Keys vacation, slipped in photos taken at the surprise party and notes from the guests.  Easy peasy done.

Week in the Life Album

WITL-13-Cover-Page I almost didn’t do it this year but at the last minute decided to jump in and keep it SIMPLE which I think I succeeded in doing…. layouts are printed and note sheets are all tucked away just waiting to but put into the album.  This project was all digital which was the only way I could keep it super duper simple and it worked.  I shared about this project on the blog (yay!)

Tally:  24 single page layouts

December Daily Album

December Daily 2013-startWork in process…I don’t think I’ve ever actually finished one of these in December (!) and thats ok.

Girls School Days Albums

Had them each pick out an album color, ordered the albums and started sorting current year and last year items loosely into each album….ongoing project I hope to work on more in 2014, but hey, at least they’re started.

Layouts 

Layout 2013-Julia's kitchenAh the backbone of scrapbooking and part of my memory keeping toolkit.   I love making layouts and have to admit, that I’ve been doing a lot more digital scrapbooking than paper but I’m making a concerted effort to do more paper scrapping to:  a) step away from the screen b) use up the large amount of scrapbooking supplies I own.  I am working on a better system to keep track of the layouts that are in process, completed, printed out (for digital layouts) and photographed (for traditional layouts) so I kind of feel I have work all over the place but here is a rough estimate of layouts completed….

Tally:  103 single page layouts   …   61 digital  … 42 paper

More than I would have guessed, I think my tally was helped by a weekend crop in January, and Layout-a-Day challenges in February and May.

GRAND TOTAL 

124 Double Page Spreads  (or 248 single page spreads)

127 Single Pages

375 Single pages (counting double spreads as 2 pages..which they are)

Wow

More than a page a day

No way would I have dreamed it was that many!!  Awesome.  So glad I tallied it up.  So happy that all of these memories are written down and in albums for everyone to enjoy and for those who are wondering…yes, I printed out all of my digital pages.

How did you fare this year on your projects/hobbies/memorykeeping exploits?  I’d love to hear!!

Bring on 2014!