Tag Archives: Documenting Life

How I document this crazy journey called life

December Daily 2018-Loose plan & Day 1

Posted in December Daily, December Daily 2018, Digital Scrapbooking, Documenting Life, Memory Keeping by

Well then… one post every six months seems to be the way we are going lately!  Not that there has been a lack of making…there has just been a lack of posting.  Lots of making getting done and hopefully I can get around to sharing some here soon.

It’s the first day in December and in the memory keeping world that means it’s time to get started on December Daily. December Daily is a memory keeping project brought to life by Ali Edwards, awesome all around person and memory keeper extraordinaire!  I have documented December every year since 2009…tho in truth…last year’s is not complete but I am hoping to correct that this month.  For fun, I’ve gathered all of my past albums together and am keeping them in a basket in the family room for the season.  It is so much fun to go back and look at prior years and see what we were up to.  

 

I wanted to get day one completed and posted before I go out of town for a few days to kick things off.  I am very motivated to complete this year within a few days of the 25th… I have not decided if I’m going until the 31st or just the 25th.  Some years I have and some I haven’t, we’ll have to see.    My plan right now is one 6×8 photo with some embellishment and one 6×8 page of text for each day…we’ll see how that shakes out.  I’m hoping that only having to work with 6×8 for the main part of the album will make it quicker and easier to complete.  I am planning to be almost all digital only adding in tactile elements as I come across them and I’ll probably hold everything until the end and decide what to do with the ephemera then.  I have the kits I’m using and templates all ready to go in one file on my computer so I will not have to go hunting each time I want to make a page…we’ll see how that goes!    So with out further ado…here is day one:

 

I will be out of town for days 2-6 so I’ll have lots to share later this week.   Happy December everyone!

 

You can learn more about Ali Edwards and December Daily HERE on her blog.

A few photos into a book…

Posted in Craft, Creative Practice, Documenting Life, Family Fun, Memory Keeping by

Well…so this is how  – let’s send Dad a few photos from the girls prom –   turns into… let’s do a whole project…involving other people…just a few days before father’s day!    But it’s done done done.   Is it fancy?  Nope but will he like it?  Yes.  And that is the whole point.

I lucked out and found a Heidi Swapp storyline album on sale at JoAnn’s so I snapped it up as the base for the album.  My sister Tina sent me some photos and I included a few snaps from my sister Nora that I grabbed from a few places online… mixed them all up with my organized and tagged photos from Lightroom (not to be confused with the photos that are still waiting to be organized and tagged) and voila!  A book for Dad.  So excited to get this in the mail to him today but wanted to share a recap for my sisters and friends online.   Here is my not so fabulous completely amateur finished album video!

Family History Strategizing & digi scrapping goodness

Posted in Digital Scrapbooking, Family History, Memory Keeping, Writing by

For the past several years, I’ve been working on “The Triggs Family Archives”.  Really what this looks like is a giant pile of boxes and slide trays behind the living room couch.  We have a mix of printed photos, lots and lots of slides and a box of super 8 movie reels which honestly makes me queasy just thinking about it.    I have been picking away at scanning for the last year or two and it is a slow process.

As I’ve been scanning, I’ve been thinking carefully about the end product of all this work and Ive been formulating a plan that looks something like this:

  1.  Slides scanned at 600 dpi, and imported into their own “family history” catalog in Lightroom for further sorting, tagging etc…
  2.  Certain groups of slides will be made into photo books for gifts (ie. my Dad’s Marine Corps slides were made into a book and given to him for his birthday)
  3. Other various Family slides will be part of digital scrapbook pages, some simple, some more elaborate.  I have already printed a number of these pages out and put them in page protectors in my giant mishmash of scrapbook layout albums.  I had considered photo books for these photos but the random nature of these photos means I don’t know if I’ll ever feel “done” enough to print out a complete book… so printed layouts for now.
  4. Physical photos that we have come across are slipped into 3-up photo albums and as much information as we know written on the space next the photo sleeve.  Multiple photos of the same event are tucked into the same pocket, this way they are safe and secure while I figure out what to do with them.

Did I mention this is only one half of my family???  There are “The Kilmer Family Archives” that I need to work on as well…different set of parameters for that group of items!

A few years ago, I scanned a page of family photos all taken at the same time / day in 1961 at my Grandparents house in Rochester NY.    I made a layout a few years ago with one of the photos and my friend Janet’s “Rooted in the Past” kit from her company, Little Feet Digital Designs.  Last month she re-issued the kit and it’s HUGE !!!  Honestly I could scrap for months.  This iteration also contains Templates from Dagi’s Templates and the whole bundle of wonderfulness is wrapped up under their joint brand:  Partners in Crime Digital Designs.  I went on a little bit of a digi page making tear this weekend and managed to finish up working with all of the photos from that series!  whew!  So without further ado…. a completed set of layouts!!

09-24-Triggs-Clan-1961-WEB1961-Clover-Hills-Drive-RITP-WEB09-22-LFDD-RITP-FST+LFT-1961-WEB2015-39-The-3-Triggs-Men-WEBNot bad for a few days work!  I’m excited to make more layouts with this kit and get more of our family stories told!

Hope everyone is having a great weekend!

 

 

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Home Made Goodness

Posted in Creative Practice, Digital Scrapbooking, Documenting Life, Every Day Life, Food, Layouts, Scrapbooking by

In an effort to ATTEMPT to spend my time creating more and consuming less (GoT excepted)… tonight I sat down and instead of scrolling FB endlessly…I made a scrapbook layout (!) gasp.  I know, I know.  We have actually been super busy in a good way this summer so lots going on but not a lot of sharing. In an effort to remedy that, may I present…

yep, Christmas baking layouts in August!  I had bought the cutest baking kit from Pink Reptile Designs and a template kit from Scrapping with Liz at The Lilypad (one of my fave digi-scrapping shops) and tonight was the night to use it.

Last night I spent my evening catching up with my 2016 photos in Lightroom, and I’m thrilled to say that I believe that 2016 is all done, edited, rated and tagged.  That is why I could find these photos about baking…from my “baking” keyword.  I have a lot of memory keeping to work on.  I have realized that I’ve been catching myself thinking 2 more first-days-of-school until the girls go to college, 2 more back-to-school shoppings until the girls go to college … you get the idea.   One layout to make a dent in the memory keeping list!

Once school starts and we are on a more normal schedule, maybe more posting  (?!)  best of intentions…. enjoy!

Printing it out

Posted in Creative Practice, Digital Scrapbooking, Documenting Life, In the Studio, Layouts by

I got a wonderful package to open BEFORE Christmas… yep, Christmas came early…

prints-close-up

57 layouts that I had printed through Persnickety Prints.  I love their quality and their customer service.  A few times a year, they sell print credits for different sizes so I can print a 12×12 layout for half price.  The credits are perfect because they never expire, they just sit in your account until you are ready to order so…In keeping with my “print it out” mantra, I went into my files and discovered that there were layouts from 2015 that were waiting to be printed (!) no time like the present so I uploaded everything and off they went to the printers.  A week or so later, back came a lovely stack of layouts…and of course there they sat in my studio for two weeks until I finally got a moment to open them…

decprintyourlayouts

Yay for printed out layouts!  I’m so happy with how they all came out.  Now, the next thing?  Getting them all in an album….The thing after that?  Re-organizing my albums by year…because they are all completely random…half a dozen+albums crammed full of randomly filed layouts.  Put it on the to-do list for 2017!

On to more post-Christmas fun!!  Happy Wednesday everyone!