Project Life | Week 12

Look at me.  This is three blog posts in a week!  Woot.  I’m actually staying fairly caught up on my album, just not the blog.  :)  But, today, I bring you week 12.

Zach took a trip to Portland.  He has now been to every single US state except Alaska and Washington.  Pretty awesome, right!  And I went to San Diego to celebrate my sister-in-law‘s upcoming wedding!  So, needless to say, this week was busy!

Here’s a look (sorry for the less then awesome photos, it was way too bright for me to be taking photos, but if I didn’t I might never blog them!) :

I used a few of Zach’s amazing landscape photos this week.  We bought new running shoes for hitting our goal of running 50 miles.  I’ve actually since returned the Newton’s and got some Nike Free’s instead.  I thought the Newton’s were hurting my feet, but I think it was actually the insoles they sold me on.

 

Last minute getting crafty for the Easter egg hunt.  I filled the eggs with little water balloons instead of candy for Holden and Oliver’s egg hunt at school.

Zach got to go to the US vs. Costa Rica soccer game.  It was snowing like crazy and he was directly in front of the one and only goal scored right at the end of the game.  He said it was intense to watch!  I love this photo he captured!

While I was in San Diego the boys painted and FINISHED my new craft room.  I’m so in love with this room.  I spend every waking moment in here now.  It is such a great place to sit and read, drink my morning coffee (on the days I wake up before the chaos), and work on my project life.  If you haven’t already, be sure to click over and watch the timelapse.  It’s awesome!

Zach volunteered with Habitat for Humanity and got to preset the family with their framed portrait.  Since I was in San Diego, he had to take the boys with them.  He said they did awesome.  They were perfectly still, quiet, and respectful!


Kiwi Crate Craft Kits

 

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Document Life Workshop | Life Changing Words

I love that these challenges make me think outside of the box.  Encourage me to tell a story I may normally forget to do.  I typically stick to the process of taking a photo of what we did and then writing about it, repeat daily-ish.  But, sometimes, you have to remember to tell the stories that aren’t necessarily the day to day activities.

This week the Document Life Workshop challenge was to use Life Changing Words.

Love Never Fails | Project Life Inspiration | Hidden Journalling
Hidden Journalling :

It wouldn’t be amazing if it wasn’t hard. We want amazing.

Forgiveness is better.

With God, all things are possible.

Remember to love amongst the struggles.

And find beauty among the chaos.

Pray together and for each other.

Be intentional.

It’s worth fighting for.

Project Life Inspiration | Documenting advice and lessons learned

A few places that have inspired me and are worth a look :

[one] Choose Love.

[two] Play together and pray together.

[three] If I have faith that moves mountains, but do not love, I am nothing.

[four] Kiss in the morning. Kiss at night.

[five] Speak his language.

I used a few things from past Studio Calico Project Life kits and a filler card from the Midnight Edition of project life.

Project Life Inspiration | Studio Calico Kit

Besides the journalling card I picked about 5 fun photos (mostly iPhone selfies) of Zach and I.  Used photoshop to make them look sort of like mini polaroids and printed on cardstock.  I might go back and reprint on photo paper, but maybe I’ll just leave like this.

Project Life Inspiration

And here is a close up of the journalling card.  You can see how I used my own handwriting (which I hate, but think it’s important to use).  I made my own photoshop brushes of the yellow dots and all the words in my handwriting.  I was surprised at how easy it was and will probably be doing this more often.  I also used our old typewriter and love how it turned out.  It’s definitely not perfect, but that’s what I like about it.

Project Life Inspiration


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josh - I love this post. Thanks for sharing some of our stuff as well!

Megan Anderson - I love your handwriting! Your mix of colors and fonts on that card is perfect.

Also, that’s what I love about challenges too: they get me to tell stories that I wouldn’t otherwise think to tell, and they often end up my favorites.

Project Life | Week 11

I’m sitting here writing this post about 2 months after these photos took place.  Normally I would not be able to tell you really what went on.  Of course, I could look at my calendar and tell you the big things.  But, that’s about it.  If we don’t take photos and write down our stories, they are too easily forgotten.  That’s one of the reasons I love this project so much.  You may wonder… But, do you ever actually go back and look at the albums or are they just collecting dust.  And the answer is… YES!  I look through them all the time.  I actually just pulled out each and everyone out and paged through them in there entirety a month ago when my mom was visiting and just yesterday I pulled them all out to see what we had done on Mother’s Day in past years.

Here is a look at our week 11 of 2013.

Zach got his shots for his trip to Afghanistan.  Zach went to see Anberlin.   Andrea and I did our Body Pump class at the gym.  It was national Pi Day and the boys and I celebrated by picking up a pie at Village Tavern. Coda has his spring recital. The boys were part of a science experiment.  Zach went to Arizona for spring training.  Holden started soccer and got a haircut.

Phew… Our lives seem much more interesting when we look it this way.:)

Have you ever included a screen shot of your text messages?  After this series of messages between Zach and I, well, I just knew it was going to have to go in the book.  Remember week 10 when Oliver decided to squat fully dressed in the bathroom.  Well, this little conversation between Zach and I serves several purposes.  A. It’s a little update on the previous weeks story, updates are important, and I think often forgotten. B.  It shows how we communicate together in 2013.  C. Shows the types of conversations you have after 10 years of marriage.

Holden was very excited that I decided to just live in the moment and “celebrate” pi day with a yummy pie.  I think we’ll make this an annual tradition in our house.  Why not?  Who doesn’t love an excuse to eat pie!

I often will document my personal stories in our book as well as family things, so of course, I also want to include Zach’s stories.  This weekend Zach went to Arizona with his dad, brother, and future brother-in-law for a little bachelor party spring training fun.  I’m glad that Zach will willingly contribute and take a few minutes to journal a little something for me.

And don’t you love this before and after of Holden’s hair cut.  I just can’t get over his face in the before photo.

Soccer started!  This boy lives for the game.  Any game!


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Project Life | Week 10

This week I included an insert with my layout that I made documenting our dinners for the week.  You can read more about that here.  On the back I included some bits and pieces that I had collected, receipts from the grocery store, movie tickets, my race tag from last week, and the programs from the Awana derby and Coda’s play.

Here is a look at the full layout.

Isn’t Finn so pretty.  Gosh, we have pretty animals.  I mean, seriously, for stray mutts, they sure are pretty.

I love that I get to remember this about Oliver forever.  Maybe show it to his future wife.  :)

I love that the boys can go over to the neighbors and play [or vice versa, they can come over and play at our house].   Here Holden was next door.  I love that she sent me a text with a photo of them playing, she started project life this year too, so she must just know.  Coda had a rewards assembly for being on honor roll AND having perfect attendance this past year.  Pretty proud of that kid!

Have I mentioned how much I love eating at home now.  We used to eat out so much before.  But, lately, we really cook at home more and more.  I cook a lot of different foods thanks to using eMeals.  And the boys have been eating way better.  They eat fish, shrimp, tons of new vegetables.  I’m loving it.  Here we had fish and rice for dinner.  Oliver was being a pain about eating the fish.  So I took some nori (dried seaweed) and put rice and fish in sushi style and he loved it.  He still says, “I like fish!” now.  And every time we have rice with anything, he has to eat his dinner sushi style.

And here is the back of the insert.  I just included lots of memorabilia that I wanted to keep for the week.  I also made this cute little envelope with the We R Memory Keepers Envelope Punch to keep the food receipts from the week.

Project Life Inspiration | Keeping memorabilia

Project Life Inspiration | Keeping memorabilia

Wednesday (top left) was the big Awana derby race the boys get so excited about.  Last year they belonged to a much much larger group and did not do so well.  But this year, they both got SECOND!  They were so excited.  They both got trophies.

Thursday (bottom left) was Coda’s big performance in Jack and the Beanstalk.  He did so awesome!  He really did a great job of staying focused and projecting his voice.  We may have found a future Oscar winner.  And… his very best girl-friend, Aubrey came to see him.  He lit up after the performance when he saw here.  He ran off stage, right past YaYa (which is a HUGE deal, that boy always hugs his YaYa first) and right over to say hello to Aubrey.  It’s the cutest crush ever.  And I think it’s mutual, she equally lit up when he came over to her.

Friday (top right) we treated Coda to a night out.  The three of us went to dinner at Outback and then we let him go to a Kids Nite Out at the rec center.  He had been a couple times and LOVES it.  We use it as a reward for good and mature behavior.  And since he did so well in school and in his play and overall was a good kid, we thought it was a good time to let him go.

Saturday (bottom right) we had a little incident with the Awana trophies.

Holden got upset at Coda and threw Coda’s trophy out of anger.  After sitting in his room to think abut it for 15 minutes, I knew he felt horrible.  he apologized and offered to share his trophy with Coda.  Coda was such a mature kit and told Holden it was OK and gave him a little note that said, “I <3 Holden.”  I love to see these boys love and respect one another.

Project Life Inspiration

I love this journal card I made.  A little different then my normal style, but that’s what I love about project life.  I can go super simple or over the top all on one page.

Project Life Inspiration | Make your own journal card
Our new favorite date is a morning movie.  The movies are dirt cheap before 11am.  And who doesn’t love popcorn for breakfast.  :)  We saw Silver Linings Playbook.  Such a great movie.  LOVED IT!

Sometimes I don’t always have a photo for the stories that I want told.  I had Zach use this UPDATE card to write about his thoughts on his upcoming trip to Afghanistan.

Project Life Inspiration | Use photos as embellihments

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Project Life | Week 9 part 2 and an intro to March

Here is a look at the full spread.  The left side is my intro page to March.  The right is the end of week 9, March 1-3.

When I first decided to do a monthly intro/ review page, I assumed I would do the same thing each month.  But, for March, I decided I did not want do do all the graphs again.  It seemed too soon.  I definitely want to do it again, but maybe April or May.  Give it a few months in between.  You can see my February intro / month in review here.  I knew I wanted to define the upcoming month and have a place for our plans.  I plan to keep this going each month.  Other then that I wasn’t really sure until I started to play around with what I had.

Zach and I decided to make a goal of each running 50 miles in the month of March.  And once we completed that, we would reward ourselves with new shoes!  I like the idea of having these mini goals each month, so I’m going to try and keep that habit in place for the rest of the year (my goal for April is to lose 5 lbs).

Project Life Inspiration | Documenting Goals

I feel like I have lots of quotes and filler cards that I always want to use but never have the room for.  So, I decided to include them here.  You can get the Dr. Seuss card here.  The marriage quote is something Zach read in a book he was reading and put it on Facebook.  He is not so secret about thinking I got the better deal.  But, I know that he definitely got the better deal, I’m just better at keeping that a secret.  :)

I also love this travel filler card that I made.  We don’t typically do this much traveling in one month, so I wanted it to be visual.

Project Life Inspiration | Travel filler card

The end of week 9!  Only a few days, but they were awesome ones.

Zach and I both were able to help out at Shine.  You just have to watch the video to really fully grasp the awesomeness!  Click here to watch.

I love this picture of Zach!  For my weekly header cards I decided to do them all digitally with the dates and then a photo.  It was super simple and I like the way it turned out.  (on a side note, you’ll see this again in May, I liked it that much!)

Project Life Inspiration | Week card

I also ran my very first official 5k!  Quite awhile back I put together a 101 in 1001 list [101 things I wanted to do in 1001 days], on that list was to run a 5k.  I’m so excited that I can officially say that I have met my life goal!  :)  AND….. I was #1 in women 19-39.  I’m pretty excited about that!  It was a super small race, only 110 people or so, and a lot of walkers just out for fun.  But still!  I’m going to take it.  You can read about my new more lofty running goals here.  And if you are a new runner, I highly suggest getting into a race, even if its just  small one.  It was fun and really pushed me.  I did one of these, neighborhood fun runs.  But, if you don’t live around here, maybe try and ask your local running store if they know of any organized group runs or races.  This one was only $5!

Project Life Inspiration | Documenting accomplishments

And of course, I have to include this photo.  I’m sure my mother-in-law is going to love me for posting this!  I love that she’s just goofy with the boys.  Or maybe this is her serious face.  :)  But, the best part of this photo is Holden looking over at them like… WHAT THE?!?   <—- An expression that him and Oliver seem to love right now.

And, since it’s Tuesday… I guess I’ll link up over at The Mom Creative.

Online Quilting Class

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Emily - I love your spread! and the way you’re documenting your mini goals! What a great trade off – 50 miles for new shoes – love it!