steph's stuff

It's going by so quickly

I am getting so darn sappy about Emily finishing 8th grade. I know she's not moving away or going to college yet, but I know how fast high school goes and it just keeps hitting me that I only have 4 more years with our family under the same roof.  All supplies from Designer Digitals: Finer Things No. 01 Paper Pack: Black Finer Things No. 01 Paper Pack: Red Autumnal Artistry Paper Pack Fading Words Brushes and Stamps No. 01 Labeled Journalers No. 05 Geometric Hints Brushes and Stamps No. 02 Memory Grunge Strips All Bent Up: Hearts No. 01

 

Thank goodness for Mondays

Our weekends just get busier and busier and I grow even more thankful for Mondays as we get closer to summer. Don't get me wrong - the weekend busy stuff is usually fun stuff! But I always end up wanting a weekend to recover from my weekend. This past weekend was seriously fun - we needed that, honestly. 

This weekend, Emily was Alice in Wonderland.

And then she had an Academic Super Bowl meet where she was captain/member of three different teams.

There was a wee bit of fun on Saturday night, too. ;)

As well as a busy Sunday that started off by working at the food pantry.

Today will be spent doing all of the chores that I didn't do over the weekend. And I'm really hoping to blog another week or two of Project Life!

Happy Monday!

 

Project Life - Week 14

I went radical this week on Project Life. I didn't round the corners. Yes, you heard that right. I left all the corners straight, square and unrounded. Deviating from a design style at this point in the game is not something I had planned to do. Those of us who get twitchy over these things will understand why I'm jokingly but not really making a big deal out of this. 

But it happened by accident and I'm too cheap to fix it. Here's what happened. 

In a fit of productivity over the weekend, I sat down in my big comfy chair with my laptop and printed off the whole week's worth of pictures. (I have a wireless connection to my photo printer.) And when I went in to look at the photos, I realized that I forgot to uncheck the border option in my printer settings on all but two of the photos. 

So, I had a couple of options. I could trim off the border on all of them but that would make them all a bit small for the openings. I could round the corners but that would cut off the border on the corners and would look funny. I could reprint them all but ink is expensive. Or I could just go with the flow and leave it. And that's what I did. And I kinda like it. :)

So, here's the two-week spread without inserts. This week was our spring break and Andrew's birthday so there are a lot of photos. 

And here's the two-page spread with the two inserts. I had to blur out a page because it has a digital layout out it that I can't show just yet. 

Here's page one up close. It includes photos of the Museum of Science & Industry, photos of Andrew reading and playing on the computer during spring break, a photo out my back window, sone of Emily's friends who came over, and one of the girls sneaking the dog up on the couch. I also included one of Ali Edwards' Journal Cards here and I will definitely be using these more - love them!

Page two includes all the movies we watched during break, a trip out for ice cream, a couple of birthday-related photos about Andrew and more snuggling photos. But my favorite part of the whole darn page is the journaling card that Andrew wrote on his birthday. LOVE it!!!

The first insert is messy but oh well. This is definitely a go-with-the-flow week for me. I meant to print the journaling much lower on the cardstock but messed it up. So, instead of reprinting, I threw on the digi layout I made about Andrew's birthday. Perfect fit on an 8.5 x 11 piece of cardstock.

The back of the journaling and layout were blank so I put our museum maps and tickets in there. 

The second insert is all of our museum pics in half of a Design F page protector. The top slot is the only 4 x 6 and to mimic the look of the other pockets yet still use 3 x 4 photos, I simply printed 2 3 x 4 photos on one sheet of paper with a thin border between them. I also cut up our admission tickets and stapled them on.

And that's it for Week 14!

WEEK 14 SUPPLIES:

InLinkz.com

Ahhhhhh.....

Today is the first day in over two weeks that I have to myself. Ahhhhhhhh......although "have to myself" really means do the laundry, clean up the downstairs, and organize some food for the masses. But I'll take it. It has been crazy nuts around here. So I'm shutting off the phones and probably even putting away the computer. Gasp. At least until the kids get home. 

Here's just a few celll phone photos of the last week or two. 

Libby got contacts.

Tom and I visited a local stable and OMG there was a 5-week-old foal. I could have stayed there with him for hours and hours just watching. 

The Darren Criss obsession continues.

We've had friends over.

We've had crazy hair day. Which - with our blond kids - involves gelling your hair and then spraying it black.

We've had dance parties and dinners out at warehouses and in a construction zone (one of the best parts of last week!)

We've had lilacs.

And grandparents in town.

We've had more crazy (beautiful) hair days.

And 100lb. lap dogs.

Some of us have been playing with sharp objects.

While others of us run away with the spoils.

And one of us has met about 11 deadlines. 

So today is going to be an ahhhhhhh.......day.

See you tomorrow!

Digital Journaling Questions

I've gotten a lot of questions about how I digitally add my journaling to Project Life photos like I did in this photo.

I've also gotten questions about how fast it is to add journaling on the photo rather than doing it all by hand. I will do a quick tutorial on it all the first of week, I promise!

In the meantime, I'm trying to work on weeks 14, 15 and 16. I went nuts on one week and did NOT round the corners. ACK!

And then I went all fan girl about Darren Criss on another week. Oh yeah. I went there. 

It's a good thing. ;)

Happy Week End!

A new series at Scrapbook Update

You may have noticed a new weekly series at Scrapbook Update. It's called Gallery Highlights and it's a really fun feature! Our goal is to find layouts and cards and other paper crafts in the various online galleries that are worthy of a special highlight - those that really jumped out at us when we looked through the gallery and made us want to take a closer look. It is soooooo much fun to do!!!

And I've gotten a few questions so I thought I'd post just a couple of points here:

• We find the layouts simply by having the oh-so-tedious* task of looking through various online scrapbook galleries. *please note the sarcasm - this is quickly becoming the best part of my week. :)
• Right now, I am the one choosing the layouts but I'm sure there will come a time when Nancy or someone else also chooses them.
• We are open to ALL kinds of scrapbooking and paper crafts - layouts, digi, cards, mini-albums, etc... I'm looking at all of them. 
• We will request your layout before we post them. If we don't hear back from you, we will not use your layout. So, please, please check your private messages at the various scrapbooking sites. ;) And saying, "Thanks but no thanks" is totally okay, too.
• We will ALWAYS link to your layout and give you credit!!! Our goal is to draw more attention to all the amazingly creative projects out there and to draw more attention to the designers' works. We want to give you the attention. :)
• So if you have a friend say,"What the heck is this message about a layout request???," send them here or to Scrapbook Update to learn more. :) 

You can find the first article here and the second one went live last night here. 

Happy Friday!

Elizabeth is learning Photoshop

I gave Libby her first lesson in Photoshop tonight. As I mentioned last week, we've all become obsessed with Darren Criss' music. Not that I have a massive schoolgirl crush on him or anything but that man is hotttttttt.

So she asked for a photo of Darren Criss and then asked how to resize the image, use the text tool, and add paper. So, I showed her. 

And this is what she came up with.

I am dying laughing!!!!!! Libby wants to be famous so badly and she thinks she's found a way. ;)

And she's right about one thing - Mom does think he's so pretty. ;) Not that I'm 19-years-older than him or anything.

Credits: Bound Paper Pack No. 02 by Katie Pertiet. Designer: Elizabeth Vetne, 11-years-old.

I'll bet this is one of the most original uses of Katie's paper yet. :)

 

Keeping up with Project Life when Real Life gets crazy

Keeping up with Project Life when Real Life gets crazy - I could have written a more eloquent title for this blog post but there's really no other name for this. Real Life is crazy right now and I keep looking for more hours in the day but can't find them. 

So many of you have enjoyed my postings about Project Life organization - you can read those here and here and then here when the craziness set in - so I thought I would show you what happens when Real Life gets in the way of Project Life. 

It looks like this. 

Sorry for the blurred part - it's part of a project for Scrapbook Update that hasn't gone live yet. So how do I handle the craziness and still not get hopelessly behind on Project Life when my desk looks like this and my to-do list is a mile long?

I have two tools that help me keep up. The first is paper-based and the second is digital.

To make sure my kids continue to journal every week, I have cards ready for them and they wander into the office whenever they want and journal about something. All I ask them to do is sign the cards and date them and they can put anything they want in Project Life. 

For example, this is what my week looks like so far in the album.

It's just journaling cards so far and I'm still three weeks behind besides this week. But my kids are doing it! And that is priceless! So it's worth it to me to keep those tools available for them. 

And then my digital tool is an app called Day One. I'm pretty sure it's the same one Cathy Zielske uses. It's a simple app that prompts you to journal daily. Here's my screen shot of my April calendar. 

The blue dates show when I've journaled and the black date is today. So even though I'm three weeks behind in completing the album, I've journaled all but two days of this month so far. 

Somedays my journaling reads like, "Dog groomed. Boo had bad day at school. Emily happy about (insert boy's name here - lol!), Daddy home early. Use photos of Daddy and Andrew playing football and photo of puppy shaved."

Other days, my journaling is more thought out. But either works for me. I'm still keeping up even though you can't tell my looking in my album. 

So that's how I keep up with Project Life when Real Life gets crazy! How about you? I'd love to hear what you do when life gets crazy. :)

Big sale at Designer Digitals

Just in case you need some enabling. ;)

There is a paper pack and template sale going on right now at Designer Digitals!!! The sale runs from 5pm EST April 13th (that's now!!!) until 6am EST Saturday, April 21st. All paper packs and templates will be 30% off and there will be a new item at 99 cents every few days during that time. 

Here's a direct link to the sale - sale link.

Happy shopping!

Project Life - Week 13

This week was absolutely full of  photos for me! I had a ton of cell phone photos, plus a big event for Libby. I think there are 17 photos in this and two inserts. No wonder it took me an extra week to get this done. ;)

Here's the two-page spread without the inserts. Because there were so many photos and inserts, I added journaling on top of all the photos - it just helped me to make sure every story was told. The weekly journaling was then able to highlight the more day-to-day routine stuff.

Page one includes the weekly card (and I totally hate the green card but oh well - I'm not changing it now), photos from Andrew's awesome job of quarterbacking his football team to a win, and lots of day-to-day photos of our week. I'm trying to get more photos of the kids with their friends and was pleased to be able to include a few this week.

Page two includes more photos of the kids, the house, and photos of the crazy puppy. It also includes a photo of a dead frog. Don't ask. (Totally traumatic event - frog-sitting for friends while they were on vacation and one frog died. UGH.)

My favorite photo of Andrew for the week. LOL.

And the weekly journaling - my journaling didn't take up the entire template in Ali's 6x12 layered template, so I just used part of the template and cut a 6x 12 Page Protector down to fit. 

And here's a funny. Emily's choir concert was the week before this. But I couldn't find her concert program. I finally found it and realized I didn't have room in the previous week to include it. So, I just put it in an insert this week and added a little label about it. :)

Working on weeks 14 & soon-to-be 15 later today! And, as always, you can see the rest of my Project Life posts here. 

Happy Friday!

WEEK 13 SUPPLIES:

InLinkz.com