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!

and sometimes it pays to take the slow lane

Posted in Travel by

Our default mode of operation as a society these days is rush.fast.get-it-done.shortest line.express lane….you get the picture.  Last Saturday I experienced making the case for the slow non-express lane.

I was starting my journey home from visiting my friend Kimberly in Tucson.  I decided to check in at the counter rather than at the self-check kiosk…I’m not exactly sure why… I almost got our of line and did the kiosk because of a large party in front of me but decided to stay put.  Well, am I glad I took the slow lane that day.   The agent took one look at my ticket and told me there was no way I’d make my connection in Dallas because the incoming plane was running late, then she tells me the later flight(s) had been cancelled because of the snow storm…same for NY and Chicago.   She re-routed me through LA, got me the seat that I wanted and didn’t charge me for my checked bag.  And, she was super nice and friendly through the whole thing.   Needless to say, I took her advice, had two extremely uneventful flights and came home to this…and then got safely home from Logan

logan blizzard

Now, maybe someone would have caught it at the gate but chances are, had I self-checked trying to save time, I would have been stuck in Dallas overnight and stressed out about getting home.  The lesson I took away from this …. SLOW DOWN, listen to that little voice in your head.  The fastest way isn’t always the best in the end.

just thought I’d share….and yes, I did just email American Airlines and told them what a great job the reservation agent did for me!  Share the love people!

and yes, the top is done!

Posted in Craft, Creative Practice, Handmade, Make Stuff, Sew this by

I realized while reading Amanda Soule’s blog (if you don’t read it, you need to pop over here, right after your done with mine) that I never shared my completed sewing project that I started in … June.  OK in all fairness, it did not take me until November to finish a shirt…it just took this long for me to post the results.

IMG_0509I started with the buttons and buttonholes on the placket…they are my least favorite thing to do so I figured I’d get them out of the way.

IMG_1427This top was a fun one to make, setting in the bib was a bit tricky but going slowly and paying attention (!) it was fine.IMG_2697So please don’t laugh too hard at my photo in the dressing room mirror (at the Gap trying on jeans while the girls were at a birthday party) Charlie is always teasing me about the look on my face in these types of shots.  Anyway, love the top, it’s fun to wear, very easy, love the fabric.  Will definitely make another one but maybe a touch longer (Top is the Tova Top by Wiksten patterns)

I’ve been sewing quite a bit lately, home stuff mostly, hoping to get more posts up soon.  Very happy to be returning to my sewing machine after too much time away!  Thanks for stopping by…what projects have you been working on?