Project Life 2016: Week 16

During this week, I went to my sixth Original Women's Conference in Rockford, IL. In years past, I was normally trying to get good pictures but then ended up not liking the quality. So I think beginning last year, I wised up. I enjoyed the conference, took pictures with my people, and then took screen shots from Instagram of key conference moments. I made sure to show that it wasn't me who took the photos and give credit to whom credit is due. ;) Plus it also documents bits of social media that I'm OK with. And there you have it - week 16.

Project Life 2016: Week 15

We are loving the warmer weather of spring where we don't have to bundle up and have on as many layers of clothing. As pictured below, the kids are loving their new outside play dishes and kitchen utensils.

Project Life 2016: Week 14

I played around with some different photo sizes but none of them were "speaking" to me. So I settled with a tried and true, clean line look. I always seem to gravitate back to that which is totally fine by me.

Project Life 2016: Week 13

After I completed this spread and was ready to post it, I realized there were two photos I wanted to include. I forgot about them because of how this spread is divided by two months - March and April. I keep all of my photos grouped by month as well. But as I thought about how I already had my spread complete, I would leave it be. It was ok that another snowy picture wasn't included - even though it could have been the last. Sometimes it's hard for me to let that go because of the need I feel to include a little bit of everything that happened in a week. But, I'm moving on! 

Isn't that caterpillar picture so cool?!

Project Life 2016: Week 12

This was another week with not many photos to show. However, when that happens, I'm able to enlarge pictures. I like doing that and it's a rare treat.

Project Life 2016: Week 11

For a few weeks (starting around week 11) I started getting out of the habit of paying attention to taking photos. By the end of a week, I would realize I didn't have much to show for that week. I'm not sure how I fell out of it, but I'm working to get back to being more "with it". There's a balance that's needed for being in the moment and cherishing that yet also trying to document it.

Project Life 2016: Week 10

I think we are finally done with snow for now - April 12. It's been crazy. Snow, melts, rain, snow, melts, rain. But it's suppose to start warming up now. We normally like snow however we are ready for a steady spring.

Project Life 2016: Week 9

• Ten year old pictures ... three months late. Oops. 
• I normally have a bowl of peanut M&Ms and get weirdly excited when new colors come out for the changing seasons - like these spring time colors. 
• Oh, and I turned 33.

Project Life 2016: Week 8

Winter Storm Petros, donuts, basketball, and family time round out this week. 

Project Life 2016: Week 7

I almost had this spread done when I was looking through my DayOne app where I record our daily happenings and any pictures that go along when I spotted a picture I hadn't included. Somehow it wasn't even in that month's folder on my computer. It's the photo of the kids in the pines with the "week seven" stamp on it. I'm not sure how that picture got missed when transferring photos from my phone to the computer, but I'm sure glad I caught it and was able to save it from my app to be used in this spread. Technology is amazing in more ways than one! I love that photo because it's now the only one that shows the kid's "snowcakes" before the warm weather melted all of them.

One of my favorite colors is green. I had a red heart paper that I was thinking about one day and thought that I should make the hearts green just for fun. So in this spread, I did that. I really like being able to change the color in something to go with what I have in mind. I'm hoping to incorporate more green in my spreads. 

Project Life 2016: Week 6

The cast of the old and new Star Wars came to visit this week! Who is who?!

One of my new favorite pictures is the big one of the kids playing in the pines. ♥♥♥

Project Life 2016: Week 5

Golfing in February, snow, kids drinking beer... (what?)

Project Life 2016: Week 4

Lately I haven't been able to carve out as much scrapbooking time as I would like or as much as I'm used to doing. My schedule has been off and I'm hoping to get it back to what works well for all of us.

I'm really liking the colors in this spread. I've been picking up some fun quotes through different people and sites I follow on Instagram regarding family, homeschooling, etc. I'm looking forward to including more of those quotes in the spreads to come. I like having one quote per spread as it gives you a little nugget to consider.

Project Life 2016: Week 3

Normally my spreads have a decent amount of color but this one is pretty basic. For now, it'll stay as is. I haven't been this far behind in a current year of Project Life and I'm hoping to change that soon. ;) I truly enjoy working on it.

Project Life 2016: Week 2

Two spreads in two days - yay! I'm happy to be getting caught up with 2016. Once I am caught up, I hope to start working on 2011. 

I finished 2010 on the day of the Super Bowl so that I could order pages during a sale. I may still end up posting the pages here. I ended up completing 2010 (!!!) and ordered all of that year and the second half of 2015. What a huge accomplishment! 

Project Life 2016: Cover Page and Week 1

Welcome to Project Life 2016! Yay! 

For my cover pages in the past, I've used our family picture that I sent out in our Christmas cards. This year I decided to change that and use pictures from the first week in January during a family walk. I wanted to have individual shots as well. These are just photos taken with my phone, so everything isn't perfect with them or the lighting, but it works and I'm happy with it.

I've done some Q&A things before but not in a long time. So I thought it would be cool to include our current favorites on the cover page of 2016. It was fun seeing what each other picked and the similarities between people. Some of us had a hard time picking just one thing, but I just encouraged them (and me!) to just pick their current favorite.

I'm sticking with the same templates as in prior years because I like the rounded corner look, I'll be using lots of Ali Edward's word art since it's still a favorite, I'm using Paislee Press's "This Week" word art for my weekly countdown, and plan to use Paislee Press's paper kits as well. Other than that, I don't like to be too boxed in case I'm feeling something different one week than another.

One change that's kind of big to me is the format of my weeks. For 2010, 2014, and 2015, my weeks have gone Sunday-Saturday, just like a calendar. I thought that since that's how a calendar works, I'll do it that way. But lots of times our weekends were broken up. We would do something as a family Friday-Sunday, but Sunday had to be in the next week's spread. That bugged me but I just chalked it up to it being the way a "normal" week works. But THIS year, I'm changing that. My weeks will be Monday-Sunday so that I can include the full weekend in a spread.

Cover Page:

Week 1:

Project Life 2015: Week 53 (Say what?!)

Week 53? Say what? Oh, trust me, I said "what?!" too! I was typing out my weeks and dates for my 2016 check list and things just weren't adding up at the end of the year. So I looked in to it and learned something new. 

#1: Some years have 53 weeks (2015 was one of them)

#2: The first week of the year includes either January 4 or the first Tuesday of the year

In case you caught it, I did have this (almost) same spread as my 2016 week 1. But I removed it, changed things around, and added in a day. Now it's week 53!