I'm still chugging along on Project Life for LAST year. And am I crazy to contemplate working on 2014 after I'm done with 2013? I've talked to a couple of people who do a year at a time and it seems doable but holy wow, it's intimidating!
As always, with Project Life when I'm this far behind, my pages are super-simple. Words + stories = awesomeness. :)
I used five pages for this month. I don't plan them as two-page spreads - I simply do each page as they come and put them together. When your layouts are simple and linear, I think it makes the design process so much easier to do this.
A closer look at the pages and the different layouts I used.
And P.S. - I haven't forgotten to blog about the Project Life App layouts I had printed. They're here and I have the post ready to go but just haven't had time to get the photos taken. Hoping to get them on here tomorrow!
The kids have been in school a little over a month now and what a difference a month makes. Seriously. It blows my mind how the kids have changed and grown in just under five weeks. I blogged about Andrew and Libby last week and now it's Em's turn.
Emily
- has one foot out the door already. Sigh. She's only a junior but I can already feel the momentum propelling her out of the house and into adulthood.
- is extremely busy at school taking AP and honors classes, is a student assistant in the school library, works for the school's broadcast network, is on the speech team, and was just recruited to be on the debate team and the mock trial team (but is going to pass up debate, I think).
- is extremely busy outside of school working an after-school job as a nanny and housekeeper, serving on a teen advisory board at our county library, and running a teen knitting group at the same library.
- is also extremely busy with friends and a boyfriend. You can see why we don't see her often.
- loves having her driver's license and is patiently waiting for me to buy a new car so she can have the current one.
- takes her siblings anywhere I ask and invites them along with her even when I don't ask. She is such a good big sister and Libby and Andrew adore her.
- is hamster-sitting for neighbors who are gone for a few months and LOVES having a hamster. Which I didn't see coming at all.
- LOVES anything related to the Spanish and German languages - she's saving for two trips abroad before college.
- along those lines, Enrique Iglesias can be heard from her room at top volume whenever she's home.
- is an absolute joy to be around when we can catch up with her. :)
I love Pinterest and love the kick in the pants it seems to give me just when I need motivation. I've found some great recipes, patterns, DIY links, and so much more. Here's what I'm loving right now:
The kids have been in school a little over a month now and what a difference a month makes. Seriously. It blows my mind how the kids have changed and grown in just under five weeks. I'm going to do a bit of an update on each child this week.
Libby
- is so happy right now that it boggles my mind. Tom and I often look at her and then look at each other in disbelief. Is this even the same child who lived here last spring?
- proves to me every day that you can't take good health for granted. She is a completely different person when she's seizure-free. Completely different.
- loves being in an honors orchestra. And now being invited to be part of an Advanced Jazz Chamber Orchestra. She is over the moon with orchestra this year.
- has found so many friends at her new school so quickly that I'm blown away. I never imagined in my wildest dreams that she would be this happy at a new school.
- is feeling healthy right now. Really healthy. It is such a relief that I could cry.
- spent yesterday in Indy at the children's hospital for her last visit. We are ready to move on and become completely seizure-free. She's almost there - we're hoping one more med increase will do the trick. She's gone from 5-7 seizures/day in April to 1-2 seizures/week now. Sooo close!
- has too many boys texting her all day long. They're very nice boys and smart, motivated boys but I'm so not ready for a second child to be at this stage of life.
- has been through more than any child should ever have to go through in the past six months and turns out sassy, happy, and well-adjusted to a brand new school. I've always said she's the bravest person I know and I mean it.
The kids have been in school a little over a month now and what a difference a month makes. Seriously. It blows my mind how the kids have changed and grown in just under five weeks. I'm going to do a bit of an update on each child this week.
Andrew
- is loving cross country more than he ever thought possible. After two very rough weeks to begin the school year, he has found his groove and and is happier than ever. We don't hear much about school at the end of the day but we know every detail about his practice and his friends from the team.
- loves having a sister in the same school with him. It's the first time in three years that he and Libby have been in the same building and he feels just a bit more secure with her around.
- also loves telling every 8th-grader on his team that they might know his sister. It's a bit of an in with the older kids. ;)
- is finding the honors math curriculum to be too easy and the principal and teacher are watching him and considering moving him into high school math. He's the only one of the kids to get a math gene so go Andrew!
- loves playing the saxophone but hates practicing it.
- is never home and loves it that way! The more people he can be around and the busier he can be, the better.
- does not like being a 6th-grader but only because he's in the youngest class. He wants to rule the school and I have no doubt that he will very soon. He will talk to anybody and everybody he can and feels quite miffed that he's sometimes discounted as "only a 6th-grader."
- may finally be starting that growth spurt that he's been hoping for.
- still loves to cuddle all of us and I'm praying that he's always this loving and affectionate.
I tried out the Project Life app last week and was impressed for the most part. My first thought was that it had the potential to help me catch up with 2014's album very, very quickly. And after working with it, I think it does have that potential with a few small caveats.
What I liked:
I've made two layouts so far and I loved being able to have square corners! Square corners create such a clean look and I love that the app allows you to customize the corners on both the photos and the cards - something I've always struggled with when using the paper project life products. In the app, you can change any of the layouts to rounded or square corners. Love that!
I also liked how quickly I could access my photo albums both on my phone and on Dropbox. That's invaluable because I take way too many photos to keep them all on my phone. Being able to pull from Dropbox is much more likely to make me use the app, honestly.
The app is only $2.99 and comes loaded with quite a few layouts and kits already available. That's a great deal! You have the option to buy other layout packs and product kits but all of the basics are included in the app price.
And really, it is quick! I made each of these layouts in only about 15 minutes! Friends said that they were whipping them up in only 5 minutes so I was surprised that it took me 15 minutes. But let's face it, there's no way I'd do a traditional or digi layout in only 15 minutes so that's still pretty darn speedy! I can't wait to get this concert layout printed. I may still add a bit to the page - it seems to be screaming for a bit of handwriting around the edges and some red embellishments on top of photos - but I don't have to do any of that. It's a finished layout in 15 minutes. Pretty cool!
I love that it saves as a print-ready photo. The app would be fairly worthless without it but I was still a bit surprised that it saved as such a large image.
The caveats:
You still need to edit photos in another app before you use them for Project Life. The app comes with a few editing options but not nearly enough for me to edit my photos in a way that I like. For these two layouts, I opted to use just the app's tools and I definitely think my photos would look much better if they were edited in a photo app first.
Because the photos need to be edited elsewhere, you need to take that time into account when calculating how quickly you can actually put together a page. Just like with regular Project Life scrapbooking, you have to build in time to edit and print photos. You need to build in that time for the app, too.
I would love to see more layout options with fewer pockets. I think many of us like to use larger photos or inserts so it'd be great to see options that allow for a bigger photo on the page. I would happily pay for those add-ons.
Since the pages are designed to be printed directly from the app, I was a bit surprised that there wasn't a drop shadow option. I have a feeling these layouts are going to look much "flatter" than my other digi layouts and that worries me.
Rounded corners:
Same layout but with square corners:
Overall, I think the app is a great one! And it could be a real game changer for the digital industry. I'm interested to see how much this catches on. For only $2.99, I think we're going to see a lot of non-digi scrappers trying it out.
I'm definitely going to use the app but out of all of the issues that might stop me from using it as much as I had hoped is the lack of drop shadows. I'm a digi scrapper all the way and I don't like my layouts to look flat. But I've ordered prints of these layouts from Persnickity Prints and I'll let you know how they turn out. :)
I think children should come with a warning that time speeds up once they reach their teen years. I feel as though I'm in a time warp where my kids are bulleting through life and reaching new milestones almost daily. Some examples:
1 - The girls drove themselves to a high school football game and tailgate last night and left the rest of us at home. Libby was kinda like this picture below. We don't need you anymore, Momma.
2 - Emily has a heavy class load of honors and AP classes, is a library student assistant, works on the school broadcast channel, has an after-school job, and a boyfriend, and is never home. I can completely see why other parents say that they're ready for their kids to go to college because they never see them when they're home, anyway.
3 - I am NOT saying that I will be ready for her to go to college. I will be in the fetal position for months after that. But I see the rationale behind the saying. ;)
4 - Last year, Andrew was at school from 7:30 - 2:30. He and I spent hours together every afternoon and he and his friends played together outside all over the neighborhood. This year, now that middle school and extra-curriculars have started, he leaves at 8:30 and gets home at 6. He has time for dinner, homework, saxophone practice, and a shower before bed. That's it. Where did my baby go????
5 - Without naming names, Emily is not the only daughter talking about boys. Sigh. I feel like Scout sometimes. I just want to bury my face in a soft blanket and ignore the passage of time.
6 - It rarely happens, but when the kids are home, they are holed up in their rooms with music blaring. And it's not Laurie Berkner. Personally, I would love to hear "The Cat Came Back" or "Victor Vito" a few more times before they all leave.
7 - On the other hand, they generally listen to good music! When did my kids get old enough to have such great taste in music?! They generally introduce me to music instead of the other way around now. And that's kinda cool.
About a year ago, we got rid of cable TV and started watching select shows only through streaming services. But after struggling the whole year to find an antenna that would allow us to receive local channels, we gave up and had cable re-installed.*
Andrew and I were sitting on the couch yesterday and he asked if he could watch TV for a few minutes while we waited for the girls to finish something.
"Sure," I said.
After a few minutes of looking through the channels, he sighed and said, "I feel so bad, Mom. I'm not watching much TV lately at all."
I looked at him like he was crazy and barely gasped out, "Huh? Why would you apologize for that?"
"Because you and Dad are paying for cable again and I don't even want to watch it at all."
Huh. How cool?!
No apology necessary for that, little dude. I call that "Mission Accomplished." ;)
*I hate Comcast with a fiery passion but that's another story.
Hmmmmm.........the Project Life app is now available. What do you think??? Will YOU do project life on your phone? Or ipad?
I'm definitely intrigued and am going to try it. It might just breathe new life into project life for me. Which is sadly stuck in August of 2013. :(
Also, there's this little nugget of organizational goodness. ios8 allows you to put the week number on your calendar. That's awfully handy, don't you think?
Last summer, Emily asked for "an old-fashioned patchwork quilt." I let her go through my stash of fabrics and we decided to dip into my grandmother's fabrics, too. When my grandmother died nine years ago, I got all of her quilting supplies and a lot of her fabric. I started quilting partially because of her but I couldn't bring myself to use her fabrics. It made me too sad. But time helps and this was the perfect opportunity to use them. I just have to think that she would love Emily having a quilt made out of fabric that she had already cut and never got to use.
I started the quilt last July and the cutting and sewing took forever. So then it sat for over six months. Story of my life.
But in an effort to FINISH for 2014, I pulled it out this weekend and finished it!
Emily had some specifications for it beyond just "old-fashioned" and "patchwork." She wanted it to be totally random, filled with a very light poly batting, tied, and a solid back. All of which made it very easy to finish.
If it was left up to me, I wouldn't have done a random pattern but I'm so glad that she insisted on that. It really does make it feel older than it looks and she's already had fun finding patterns that resulted. I thought it would really bother me when I discovered that some some of the squares were side-by-side with the same pattern but it doesn't at all. It feels cozy. :)
And the best part? She loves it so much that she had a hard time letting me take pictures of it before I handed it to her. :)
There are a million mistakes in the quilt - honestly, I just ran the darn thing through the machine as fast as I could. It bunched a bit in places and puckered because some of the old fabric frayed and I had to make some of the squares a bit smaller than some of the others. But she loves it. And that's all that matters to me. :)
