Baby Card 3

Another card with Nana's Kids by Die Cuts With a View. I didn't make duplicates yet, but I am guessing I could easily get 6 of these babies made from 3 sheets. I also added a scalloped punch behind the monkey by The Paper Studio and a stamp by My Pink Stamper. Plus I used an eyelet I had in my stash, I think by an old Making Memories line.

Baby Card 2

Here is another baby card using the Nana's Kids stack by Die Cuts With a View. I did a couple of variations on this one, but this version is my favorite. I got another 3 cards out of 3 sheets of paper again, so yay for that!

Baby Card 1

Here's a fun little card I whipped up from the Nana's Kids stack by Die Cuts With a View. The best part was that I was able to make 4 of these using only 3 sheets of the paper, and I probably could have made more if I had thought it out better. The stamp is by My Pink Stamper and the brad is from Oh, Scrap! Love it!

Photo of the Day - Week 2 Roundup

Here are my Project Life photos for Week 2:

Source

Tebow-mania has hit Colorado hard this year. Everywhere we go people are wearing jerseys with number 15, and Facebook is flooded with Tebow videos and pictures. Personally, I really could care less about football, and therefore Tebow, even though he is a Christian that has no problem sharing his faith. But, we did enjoy watching the game he won for the Broncos against the Steelers today...

Not a great photo, a screenshot from a video

My Grandma has a TON of dolls. She made most of them, and she probably only has about 1/5 of what she used to have. She found out Cadie loves dolls, so my Grandma took Cadie on a tour of her doll display today. Cadie kept commenting on the things they had or their pretty clothes, and she was very good about touching very gently. It was amazing to see some of the dolls my Grandma had when she was little, and she told me all about the process to make them and the differences between all of them. I had no idea my Grandma was such an amazing artist, and she won all kinds of awards for her dolls. What a special treat! 

 Happy 5 months, Baby J! (Will write more about this in another post)

Baby J finally learned to roll over! All of a sudden she is sitting up better (with support) and rolling over like crazy. It started that I could keep her busy for a few minutes by putting her on her tummy, but now she just rolls right on to her back and giggles. I love it!

 Little Miss C started dance with buddy N today! They loved dance last summer and we are very happy they have the same teacher again. All of the girls in the class have taken a class with this teacher before, so they jumped right in and started working on new moves. Cadie loves to show us her plies and chauces all over the house. 

Photo of the Day - Week 1 Roundup

Here are my Project Life shots for Week 1:

Shot by my best friend

Mister E and his buddy sure love to play Skylanders! They both got the game starter set and some extra characters for Christmas, and they love to have playdates with them and share their guys. 

Happy Birthday, Sarah! My niece turns one on January 11, but my sister decided to have her party a bit earlier. We had it at my church and Jenilee did a great job with a purple/pink tutu theme. She made the tutus and the cake herself!  

 **Note, there are more pictures than are going to fit in the Project Life kit here. That's because I am going to print the vertical pictures in the 3x4 format so they can fill up some extra space and be oriented correctly. I only print and do journaling once a month in my book, so after I finish out January you will see how it all comes together.**

The thing I love about Project Life is that I really don't care if the pictures are perfect. The bathtub picture is definitely not "ideal" since Baby J's eyes are closed and there is a lot of white space, but seriously, who cares?? Low stress and easy is the way to go :)

First Birthday Video

Remember the amazing video recorder I told you about here? Well, that has led to super fun videos like this:



I can't even tell you how much I love this. Seriously, I have watched it probably 20 times. I had to cut out a LOT of content to make it fit, but I still feel like it captured the day perfectly. Plus, I know family will watch this and feel like they were part of the day, and it feels even more special than just pictures. My hubby wants me to go back and make these for our older kids now too. We will see....

New Toys for the New Year

Ahhhhh, what a wonderful New Year this has been. After Christmas we have been taking it easy, chillin' out, relaxin' all cool and shootin' some b-ball..... oh, wait. I finally finished the last of the Christmas presents on Friday night and it's blocking right now. And I am TOTALLY kicking myself for not taking any pictures of the Christmas gifts I made. My camera had a major ouch, right before Christmas. My hubby was shooting pictures of kids making gingerbread houses and he heard a weird grinding noise, then an error popped up that said "error, release shutter again." We tried and tried, but nothing would work. We looked it up online and many people who had this same problem were dumb enough to open their camera and put WD-40 inside of it. Seriously, people!?! No way was I going to do that. I took it to our local camera repair shop, and yes, it was a very expensive repair. Here's how I look at it though: I could either a)cry about it, decide that the repair was too expensive and wait and save up for a new camera. Most likely this would lead to an upgrade, because who wants to spend money on something that is the same as they already have? Probably total cost = $900. Or, I could b)put my tears away and cough out the $200 for the repair, not have my camera for Christmas, and keep using the camera I already know and love and keep exploring with. For me, this was no contest. $200<$900. Camera home > no camera for months. It amazes me how many people I know that would have just said "too bad, so sad," and bought another camera, most likely on credit and paid it off over the next year. I figure I might as well spend less money, take care of what I already have, and not have a very large credit card bill to pay off. Okay, enough ranting.

My camera is back now, and I love it so much. The nice repairman (a.k.a. total jerk until you are sugary-sweet nice to him, then he is super friendly and helpful) actually found sand in it. GAH! Sand!?! I need to start taking better care of this thing. A new camera bag for me is in the queue for sewing projects. Anyways, it was really hard not having it for Christmas, but my hubby got a friend for it under the tree. Here is the new buddy in the house:

Ahhhhhhh, I love having a 50mm f/1.8 lens in my home. I am still learning a LOT about this lens, but oh boy is it fun. The parts that are in focus are very sharp, while the parts that are out of focus are very blurred. We played with a bit of bokeh techniques and focal range points, and I love how well it auto-focuses. It has been really great for taking more monthly pictures of Baby J (photos to come soon) and I love shooting at 1.8 for lots of stuff now. I think I will name it Sherman.

I also ordered a remote for my camera right after Christmas. I am hoping to use this to start getting myself in more of our pictures, and making family photos a heckuvalot easier. It works really well, too!

Another buddy showed up under our tree this year from "Santa" (my parents). Seriously, this has changed how we are documenting our family.

It's not this exact model (I think she ordered it from QVC) but it's an AMAZING video recorder. It shoots in 1080p, it's waterproof and shockproof, and it also works as a point-and-shoot camera. Wow, do I love this thing. I have been shooting random clips from different events, then putting them together with music to make really fun movies. (I'll start posting them soon.) We had a video camera before, but it used stupid tapes and you could always hear the tape humming in the background, plus it was a pain to upload the video. This thing makes it SO MUCH EASIER to capture life on video. Okay, enough blabbing. Look forward to the next month with lots more pictures, videos, and cards to share! And yay for getting 4 new followers after the feature on beckyhiggins.com. I had such a fun time with that, so welcome newcomers :) Blessings!

2011 Reflections - Project Life

(pssst.... this video was featured on Becky Higgins' Blog!! Major yay for the day!)

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My Project Life kit from 2011 is finished! Well, almost. Like, 99.9% done. If I wanted to stop now and not mess with it any more, it would be perfectly okay.

I have to say that I love, love, love how it turned out. Sometimes I would get a little bit down reading all of the amazing blog posts from Becky's blog and links where people would do amazing customizations. Stamps, stickers, extra paper, and even sewing new pocket protectors were popping up all over the place, and sometimes I felt like mine was too simple. But the more I looked at it, the more I was really happy with it. I like simple and clean. I also like easy. Sometimes the pictures are sideways or even missing, and I am 100% okay with that. This is the first year of my life where I actually felt somewhat caught up on my scrapbooking. My kids love to look through the album and have me read it to them. I am amazed every time I look at it how much my family has changed. We had 3 new babies enter our family this year, along with many more all around us. My kids learned new skills and I tried new recipes. Some things didn't change, and it was actually nice to document that as well. Most of all I feel like I grew with this project. My photography and editing got better and I became a bit more bold with the products. I let myself off the hook for not having a "picture a day" and instead focused on documenting those precious times. It might sound corny, but I really think Project Life helped me grow as a person. Thank you, Becky Higgins, for "making my dreams come true." Because of you, 2011 will be a year that myself and my children will never forget.

Photo of the Day - Days 1 and 2

Okay, I know this is probably too high a goal. But, I really want to try the photo-a-day challenge. I finished my Project Life 2011 project at 3am on January 1st and I am so incredibly proud of it. But, it was a LOT of work every month to go through my pictures and pick out which ones I would use, edit them, order them, journal them, and put them together in the book. I am hoping that if I put some pictures up here on the blog it will keep me going and I will already have all of the journaling done ahead of time. We'll see, I might need to stick to posting once a week (which is the likely option) or every couple of weeks. I am so happy with my 2011 project though, and I already have the new Cobalt edition for 2012 so I am ready to go for this year! BTW, I definitely do not always take THAT picture on THAT day. I learned this last year to be really lenient on myself with my photography, and not stress out about every single day being perfect.

Day 1 - Mister E enjoying cereal for a snack. I need to go shopping....
( f/1.8 1/80)

Day 2 - Baby blues melt my heart! 4 1/2 months old and loving every minute of it!
( f/1.8 1/80)

(PS - stay tuned, I have 3 more pictures to print and then I will be making a video of last year's Project Life so you can see it in all its glory!)