Week in the Life 2019

Once upon a time, I liked to scrapbook. A lot. I read scrapbook magazines, bought scrapbooking books, read alllll the scrapbooking blogs. You can guess where a chunk of my play money went, too. 😉 I loved this creative outlet. In a sense, it was my form of gratitude journaling as I documented school memories, places we went, books we read, etc. However, as it's gotten busy, scrapbooking has taken a backseat to schooling, teens, all the driving, and just life. Scrolling through other people's photos and adventures took place over documenting our own. (Sad, but true!)

This week, I'm taking back a little bit of me. I miss writing and story telling and taking photos. I've found an old Week in the Life kit I purchase a few years ago from Ali Edwards and have dusted it off. (Quite literally with the dust!) I'm making plans to be mindful of next week. What I do, where I go, what I eat, what I'm reading, and what I'm grateful for. While I'm also working on getting back into the swing of our family's Project Life albums, I think this project will mostly be for me. I haven't decided if and/or how much I'll document online. I don't want to pronounce that I'm going to blog every single day ... that's a sure-fire way to set myself up to fizzle out by Wednesday. Maybe an occasional photo on Instagram here or there, but maybe not. This is about really being present and so grateful for MY life and no one else's.

Project Life Reality :: Catching Up

So. I'm pretty behind in my Project Life album. I didn't touch it much this summer and now that the weather is cooling off, I'm definitely feeling the urge to get out my scrapbooks and see where I'm at.



Catching up for me means two things:

1. Make a list. Instead of feeling overwhelmed about what I have and haven't done, get a list actually on paper and see what is missing and needs to be filled in and completed. Then I break it down into somewhat manageable chunks. After looking at my list, I initially noticed that I hadn't printed photos for most the summer. Since I was at least pretty diligent about getting the photos off my camera and phone and into our external hard drives (I'm mildly obsessive about cleaning the photos off my phone so I don't run out of memory) they were at least all in one place. : ) It took a couple of hours on a weekend and I had a huge batch of photos uploaded to Sam's Club and ready to pick up 24 hours later. At least now the photos were in my hand and not on my computer.



2. Start at the present. I flipped to the end of my album and did the most current week - which for me was the first week of September. It's for sure quicker (and more enjoyable) for me to scrap the current batch of photos when my memory is the freshest. I definitely want to get back to the older photos but my enthusiasm is definitely higher at getting the fun pictures from our weekend at a family camp we attended and time a mini-maker science fair (and my new favorite photo of me and B with Chewbacca). : )



I still love Project Life and am so thankful for this way of capturing our family's memories. It has definitely simplified this process for me while still allowing me to be creative and preserve photos and memories for our family.

A Day in the Life :: May 12, 2015

Yesterday, I (casually) participated in Ali Edwards' Day in the Life project which she does a couple times a year. I absolutely love the idea of capturing our day in photos and took a handful of pictures throughout the day Tuesday. This was an unusual Tuesday for us - we were out of the house almost all day, traded one of my kids for someone else's for the morning, and went on a date night where my phone stayed in my purse a good chunk of the evening. All absolutely ok and I ended up with less than a dozen pictures that gave me a great capsule of our day.



6:30am // for me this is sleeping in a bit. A little person woke me up in the night and I had a hard time going back to sleep. But now, coffee and Jesus before a full day.



8:30am // picnic packing for our field trip and homeschool park day. @thepioneerwoman steak bites on salad.



10:45am // in the middle of our walking tour of our local downtown area on a homeschool field trip.



11:45am // ending our field trip with frozen yogurt.



1:00pm // feeling incredibly nauseous watching them spin on the tire swing.



1:30pm // park day with friends is the best.



3:15pm // finally home. Sorting and putting away boy clothes.



3:45pm // we all need to sit and rest for a bit so read aloud time it is.



5:20pm // thawing the taco meat for dinner.



6:30pm // date night.

Thanks, Ali, as always, for the inspiration to capture the everyday dailyness of life.

Project Life 2015 Looks a Little Like This

Project Life has been my go-to scrapbook approach for the last three years now and I still love this concept. Pictures that pop into pockets. Cards that have lines for quick journaling. As little (or as much) embellishment as I want ... it still really works for me.

That said, I was ready for a little change in the way that I worked through my album. Especially as we have started foster care, my time is even more limited for scrapbooking and I'm finding that I'm even missing pulling out my camera for moments that I do want to remember which I REALLY don't like!

The plan for now: no weekly layouts. I just don't have a guaranteed time that I can sit down and work on the album as my days change, well, daily around here! For now, I'm printing pictures again at home with a little Selphy printer that Travis got me for my birthday. Definitely NOT as cheap as sending them to Sam's which had been my go to for the last couple years, but having the pictures in my hand in a matter of a couple minutes has made it a little easier to get them in my album.







This year is about using up some of the PL cards that I have been hoarding. I've cancelled my Studio Calico kit subscription which I enjoyed the last several years and am all about using up my stash.



Line through the bottom right photo because of a speck of something in the printer. I'm embracing imperfection and putting it in there anyway!





I'm also all about using up the different size page protectors that I've accumulated around here. On the left above is the story of the table that Travis BUILT for us and I stuck a journaling card in behind one of the pictures. The back is filled with miscellaneous school notes.



A recent story by B - definitely needed including.



Another random page protector that I found. I used the Project Life app on my phone to make some photo collages that I could print as 4x6 prints and then just cut them in half. Super easy.





And the best - the photos from our trip to the zoo on Monday are already in my album so that we can enjoy them.

Still sold on Project Life and it's simplicity for  me and am really enjoying a more laid back approach to it for this year!

Because it's Friday

Because the sun is shining...



Because a girl dusted the family room...



Because the kitchen table was almost completely cleared off...



Because there is only one girl that is sick at the moment as opposed to multiple sicklings...



There were oatmeal-on-the-go bars baked...



And enjoyed ...



And photographed.

Because that's what mama's do when they get a little stir-crazy after a couple weeks taking care of sick little people and the sun is shining in so beautifully.

Day in the Life :: May 8, 2014

Danger, danger. Photo overload. : )

I absolutely love Ali's Day in the Life (and Week in the Life projects) that she has posted about on her blog. I love the reminder to capture the little stuff that makes up our day - what we're eating, what toys are strewn about on the floor while I read, what the kids are up to when I can covertly capture them. This was our Thursday and it was a good one.

I was up a little after 6am and the first of the kids got up around 7:30a. Several of them had a hard time going to sleep last night so it was a slower start to our day than normal. It worked our well because this is the first day in I-don't-know-how-long where we never left the house. Lovely.

7:30am - crafting.



8:30am - sleepy breakfast face. With her nose in a book all the time right now.




9:00a - music practice. Our recital is in a little over a week!



9:30-ish: caught reading while one of the other girls is practicing and I'm getting laundry going.



9:45a: starting our table school work for the day. (I've been asked to post a better picture of my planner and I will soon).



11:00a: mid-math.



A small break to admire his plane.



More math. Y'all, the fact that none of these numbers is backwards ... big stuff.



12:30p: Lunch. Sandwiches for kids (though the boy requested a cut up hotdog) and a salad for me. Little things I want to remember: N1 only wants turkey and provolone and typically only want bread if we have these kinds of sub buns; N2 likes provolone and isn't as picky about her meat - today it was this really good salami that T bought; B wants turkey and American with "that white stuff on it" (she has recently discovered mayo on her sandwich and is obsessed).



2p: Afternoon read-aloud. Lunch break doesn't usually last as long, but there was a Frozen sing-along going on downstairs while I finished up lunch (and the book that I was reading - just a few! pages! left!) and I let them have a few extra minutes.



2:45p: exercise while the kids have a rare afternoon treat of watching Carmen Sandiego.



4p: afternoon chores - picking up the upstairs, laundry finishing, cleaning the glass on the mirrors and front door.




6p: dinner. Taco salad tonight.



6:45p: the kitchen is tidy and its time for outside. Bike riding and ball playing and running around.



This is where my photos stop for the day. We came in a little before 8p and popped some popcorn for a before-bed snack and watched one episode of Little House on the Prairie (someone got Season 2 for her birthday). Then everyone was in bed with lights out by 9p, after stories all-round. The boy and I read Goodnight Moon (and something else that is escaping me), I read an Elephant and Piggie book with N2 and B (all ages in this house love E&P), and N1 and I are reading through Anne of Green Gables at bedtime when it's not too late. Then I went downstairs and collapsed hung out with T for a bit before I crawled into bed.

Really, this was a very normal day for us at home. The fact that we didn't have anywhere we needed to go was so nice for a change; no hustle and fussing from me to "finish your math before we have to leave!" Dinner around the table with no rushing to eat quickly so we can head out the door. I'm looking forward to many more of these days this summer.

You can read more about the Day-in-the-Life project on Ali's blog here. All photos today were shot with my iPhone 5 and most were processed through PicTapGo.