random reflections

Project Life: All Caught Up

It's June 1, and I've already started working on my May Project Life pages! I'm hoping never to get as far behind as I did last year. Today's post is a bit longer than usual. March was a busy month for us; we were only home seven days the whole month. But April was quiet, so there's just one two-page spread. I thought I'd share them both today.

Since I ended February on a right-hand page, March begins with a one-page spread. I used a stamp from Papertrey Ink's "Get Lost" set to stamp a message on the calendar card. We'd had such an awful February weather-wise, and got stuck in a terrible winter storm on our way to Florida, so it seemed like the perfect sentiment! The Long Boat Key bumper sticker made a perfect filler card, and I finally managed to get some memorabilia on my page with a strip from the ticket to the Philadelphia Flower Show. Meeting up with Cheri was definitely the highlight of that stop!

 

Who knew fish had teeth? We came upon these Amish fishermen one morning and one of them had just caught a sheepshead. They have a set of very real teeth!

More memorabilia from two day trips--one to Spanish Point with a high school friend of Tracy's and her husband, and one to Sanibel where we met up with Tracy's mom and her two friends for a drive through the wildlife refuge and had lunch on Captiva Island.

High on our list of places we wanted to visit was the Ringling Museum. It's huge, and we spent the whole afternoon at the Circus Museum, never getting into the mansion or visiting the art gallery. We'll definitely be going back next year. More memorabilia: I cut my wrist band apart for the strip on the filler card and the elephant embellishment on the journaling card. I had saved a postage stamp that came in the mail just for this occasion! Everywhere we go, I pick up business cards from the restaurants where we eat. I never know what to do with them, so this time I made a pocket with an embellishment from Pink Paislee's Atlas collection and a stamp from their Sentiment Series.

All the photos on this page are from our last day in Florida. We visited the Selby Botanical Gardens in Sarasota (definitely worth a return trip), and took a selfie at our last meal out.

We were home for just four days before heading off to Chicago to visit Sarah, Adam, and Caleb for Holy Week. With two full-time pastors at two different churches, some babysitting, meal planning, cooking, and general help around the house was in order. Needless to say, we were happy to oblige. Although we were only there the beginning of April, my whole spread for this month documents that visit. Once we got home, we hunkered in. The weather was still very cool, and we had lots of projects on the back burners to attack. 

There's a cute paper craft store about 20 minutes from Sarah's. I don't get there often, but made a quick run over there one afternoon. The cute Easter embellishments all came from one sheet of 12X12 paper by Echo Park. 

 

Several of these photos were posted earlier for a Pairs post, but my favorite photo of the trip is this last one of Tracy and Caleb at brunch after the Easter service. 

Hope your week gets off to a good start. My volunteer stint at the after school program in the inner city ends this week. They take off a few weeks before starting the summer program. We're gone so much this summer, that I can't participate in that. I have a committee meeting, some entertaining to plan for, and two lunches out with friends. There should be plenty of time to get to the gym, finish the May Project Life, do some decluttering, and keep up with some other ongoing projects.

February Project Life

February was the coldest month on record in Rochester. It never got above freezing the whole month. But despite the cold, it was a big month in the life of our family, and almost all the photos for this month were taken during the week prior to and right after Sarah's ordination as a Teaching Elder in the Presbyterian church. In the Presbyterian church there are Ruling Elders (I am one), and Teaching Elders who are the pastors or ministers.

Although Sarah was eligible to be ordained over eight years ago, just finishing your Masters of Divinity, and passing all the ordination exams is not enough. You must receive a "call," and while Sarah was pursuing her advanced degrees, that didn't happen. Last fall, however, she received a call to be Acting Associate Pastor at a Congregational Church, and that started the ordination process.

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I took advantage of a sale at Shutterfly and had quite a few photos printed. I couldn't justify the expense of reprinting them in my usual "Simply White" templates. All these photos are from the Sunday morning service.

The photo in the Title card is of the Ordination Commission getting ready to process after the choir. I wasn't present for that because my part in the service was the Call to Worship, so I was in the sanctuary. The members of the Ordination Commission are set by the Book of Order, and must include pastors from different congregations and ruling elders from at least three congregations. The young lady pouring the water into the baptismal font is the granddaughter of our friends, Bill and Tina. The bottom photos are where the acting Moderator of the Presbytery (our head of staff) presented the questions to Sarah, and of the Laying on of Hands by any Teaching or Ruling Elders present at the ordination.

I cut out the announcement of the ordination from our church newsletter, and finally found the perfect use for the letter press filler card from a Cocoa Daisy kit.

 

It is customary for family and churches to present the new minister with stoles. Sarah received several beautiful ones. They are different colors that are to be worn during the different liturgical seasons (white for Easter, for example.) Although Sarah wrote the whole service (except for the sermon given by our pastor), her only part in the actual worship service was to give the benediction. Adam's parents flew in from Washington state for the service, and spent five days here.

We spent one morning while they were here with Matt, Betsy, Skylar, and Ella at the Strong Museum of Play.

There was another big event in February, Matt's 32nd birthday which we celebrated rather quietly. I included my favorite photo of Ella from February looking at herself in the mirror as she tried to roll over. It wasn't long after this photo was taken that she was successful.

I also included some photos from our trip to the George Eastman House with Adam's parents. Just by chance, one of my very good friends happened to be the tour guide that day. The journaling card here was created with some of the Monthly Moment stamps by Papertrey Ink---just perfect for the occasion.

Project Life: January 2015

Well, finally, I've gotten to the current year. January found us in Wilmette with Sarah and Adam, and then quickly after our return, on our way to Florida with my mother-in-law's van. 

Last year, all my title cards were created with Papertrey Ink's Monthly Moment dies and stamps. For 2015, I switched to the Paislee Press Calendar Title cards, and I like them very much. I wish the family photo on the card showed up better on the layout. It's one of my favorites. The journaling card and the filler card are both from Papertrey's Monthly Moments Journal Collection, and the mittens were punched with a punch I bought so long ago, I have no memory of where I purchased it.

Adam thought we ought to take Caleb on a "bean hunt," so we headed to Millennial Park for the morning. Sarah thought it was way too cold, but she was a good sport, and I appreciated the opportunity for some good family photos. Caleb was fascinated with the ice skaters on the level below. This was also the weekend of Sarah's official start as Acting Associate Pastor for the Winnetka Congregational Church.

I decided at the beginning of the year, to do another Capture Your 365, but this time soley with my iPhone. I've kept it up for 4 1/2 months now, and have learned to use quite a few of the apps I had already downloaded to my phone. When I looked at them for January, I realized they painted a pretty good picture of my life:  family, travel, and some of my volunteer commitments. This is the first page of them. The photos of the beautiful pottery are from the Cameros Collection on view at the Rockwell Museum in Corning, NY. It's one of our favorite museums, and we stop there whenever we go through Corning.

I created the filler card with some patterned paper from MME, and some stamps from My Favorite Things and Live, Love, Life by Papertrey. The die is an old Spellbinders: Label II.

The filler card here was created with some Avery Elle paper, "Sorbet," and a wood veneer from Ali Edwards. The photo of Ella and me has to be one of the very few selfies I've ever taken that I liked enough to print! I was babysitting, and the mirror over Matt and Betsy's couch proved to be a great way to get a photo without the iPhone showing.

I was sick the whole trip to Florida. We managed to get to an Antique Auto Museum in Tallahassee (photo on the Instagram page), and drove out to St. Mark's Wildlife Refuge. When we finally arrived at Fort Myer's Beach, I basically vegged out the whole five days. Not many photos to show for it.

Project Life

When I returned from Chicago in early April, I had nine months of Project Life pages to complete. Tuesday I finished them all!!! It took six weeks, which isn't bad considering all the other things that were on the calendar. Now my goal is to be like Becky, and get the pages done as soon as the month ends. Even with a lot of upcoming travel this summer, I think I can do that. 

Today was the perfect spring day, warm temperatures and sunny. I took a long walk to the Ellwanger Gardens, and then through Highland Park. Today was the last day of the Lilac Festival, and it was very crowded. I'm so glad we have easy access to the park when it's not under siege! Although there are a lot of lilacs in bloom, it's not yet at peak.

So sharing a layout from last December seems kind of odd, but in the interest of chronology, that's what I'm doing. You'll get a heavy dose of Project Life pages in the next few weeks.

 

The title card was made with a variety of die cuts from Papertrey Ink, Savvy, and a couple old punches. I used an Ali Edward photo template to collage four photos of the Christmas decorations. I created the journaling card with some washi tape and a cute little house clip that came in a kit (not sure which one.)

I've saved Christmas cards that I thought I might be able to use in my scrapbooks for several years, but I think this is the first time I've actually used one. The little Christmas tree made the perfect filler card.

We celebrate Christmas twice, once in Rochester on Christmas Day with Matt & Betsy and all of Tracy's family, and then again in Wilmette with Sarah, Adam, and Caleb.

The top card was created with a Silhouette file, and an old sticker from Michaels. Once again Cathy Zielski's Tiny Template came in handy for some journaling.

The big event in Wilmette is not Christmas, but Caleb's birthday which comes very quickly after our Christmas with them. There wasn't a party, but he had a wonderful day! Adam found a grocery store that created a Thomas Train cake for him; just what he ordered! 

You might remember a craft exchange among bloggers several years ago. Alexa sent me all kinds of wonderful goodies, including these metal letters that spelled out Caleb's name. She probably wondered if she was ever going to see them put to use! The balloons were die cut from a Simon Says set of balloon dies.

The adorable "three" clip is another of the goodies sent by Alexa. I cut a small slit in the Simple Stories journaling card to hold it.

Now that I'm caught up with Project Life, I'm on to the next BIG undertaking: purging! I've gotten a good start on my studio. Despite the fact that I got rid of at least half of what I owned last year, it's clear there is still way too much stuff here for one person to use. I think it was Ali Edwards who said it's so much easier to make decisions when you have fewer things to consider. I've eliminated almost all my patterned 12X12 paper, I kept just one container with papers I thought I'd use for Project Life or card making. Embellishments have been cut in half as well, and today I packed up 3/4 of the button collection I'd accumulated to take to the paper crafting charity shop. They'll be happy to see me. 

The rest of the house is in pretty good shape from last year's purging, but our basement and attic haven't been touched! We will have been in this house 30 years come September and I'm guessing we'll be into the fall before this project is completed.

 

Project Life: November 2014

It's been a few days since I've had time to make any progress on my Project Life pages. I've switched gears a bit, and am working on getting all the photos printed for the last four months I need to do to catch up. I'm hoping by this time next week, I'll be done. Meanwhile, I do have photos for the November layouts, so it's time to start sharing again.

I rarely do a page with all black and white photos, but I love how this came out. Most of these photos were taken in the hospital by a professional photographer, and we have both color and black and white versions. I converted the rest to black and white, and used Papertrey Ink's new Mini Market Kit and Monthly Moments stamps and dies to embellish the page. I love the pink and gray with the black and white photos.

Tracy gave me a three month subscription to the project life kit at Cocoa Daisy a year or so ago, and I still had this card from one of the kits. The letter stickers are from Hobby Lobby, and the little bird is from Wee Folk. This photo of Betsy and Ella is one of my faves.

It's not often that both my kids are here for Thanksgiving, but thanks to Ella's arrival, Sarah, Adam and Caleb arrived from Chicago to spend a long weekend. 

We spent a lot of time at Matt and Betsy's taking turns holding the precious baby!

It's hard to tell, but the die cut on the Paislee Press journaling card (Simon Says Stitched Circles) and the die cuts here (Paper Smooches) are cut from a bronze metallic paper and have a beautiful shimmer to them.

 

Project Life: October 2014

October saw us on the road again, off on the postponed July trip to Petoskey, MI and Door County, WI. A friend of mine lives in Milwaukee and vacations regularly in Door Co. and a friend of Tracy's made a winter trip to Petoskey and we were intrigued. Of course, we ended up in Wilmette for some time with Sarah, Adam, and Caleb.

I finished September's layouts with a Design G page so went with a smaller title card: Papertrey's Monthly Moments die cut, some stamps from the July Monthly Moments set, and a piece of Washi tape on a Becky Higgins' Midnight card. The photos (clockwise) from top left are Petoskey; my friend, Nancy and her friend, Mary; the lighthouse at Muskegon, MI; Peninsula Park in Door County; and a dramatic sunset after a cold, windy, rainy day in Petoskey. (The photos look a bit out of focus here, but it's the photo of the pages causing the problem.)

I scanned two pages from my travel sketchbook to show our itinerary, my favorite photos of Caleb at the garden center and Kohl's Children's Museum, and ended up with two photos from our stop on our way home to meet our friends, Karen and Mike, for our annual weekend in Niagara-on-the-Lake.

I had fun creating the cards for the Halloween spread. I used an OLD piece of Scenic Route patterned paper for the title card with some equally old Doodlebug border stickers, and a stamp from Monthly Moments on a Keep it Simple Frame die cut. I die cut the Journal Card #5 from a piece of patterned paper from the Lawn Fawn "Beachside" paper pad and layered it over a contrasting piece from the same set. The cute little owl is by Doodlebug that I picked it up recently in a lovely little store near Sarah's. 

Caleb tried on his Halloween costume which I made for Matt when he was little. The only alteration needed was to hem the pants. He practiced his roars for us, as well. When Halloween actually arrived it was cold with hail. After three houses, he announced he was ready to go home. Candy was definitely not worth slogging through the terrible weather. When I asked on Face Time about trick or treating next year, he said, "NEVER!" We'll see.

It wasn't great here, but not quite so bad. No surprise, Skylar was Elsa from Frozen, and had a better time than Caleb. The pumpkins are Matt's creation; every year he gets a little more creative with them.

The second page of the layout is just photos from the trip. Door County is known for it's lighthouses as it extends into both Green Bay and Lake Michigan. We visited several of them. Here are a few more photos I added at the end of the month's pages.

Although it's hard to read, the third photo on the left-hand page is of the plaque at the 45th Parallel which we crossed twice on this trip. It marks the theoretical half-way point between the North Pole and the equator. The hot dog on the right-hand page is a Chicago Dog--which I actually had in Petoskey, MI. It turned out to be the best one I've ever had. (I've eaten three of these calorie-laden dogs now, and I'm quite sure there are more in my future.)

Today is International Scrapbooking Day, and with some time off to go to spinning class, and walk down to Matt's to get our bikes out of his garage, I expect to be working on Project Life. It's May, and I didn't quite meet my goal of getting caught up. I did, however, finish all the pages for 2014, so there'll be more spreads to share soon.

Project Life: September 2014

Although we made our annual weekend trip to the Adirondacks, the big event in September was Skylar's third birthday. I had a lot of fun embellishing the birthday pages, using stamps and die cuts from my card making supplies.

I added a die cut and a stamp from the Monthly Moments set by Papertrey Ink to a photo this month. I like it a lot. The other noteworthy event from the month was going to our first Food Truck Rodeo at the Public Market. I don't know how we missed these all summer. This was the last one, and it was a lot of fun. There were probably 20-30 food trucks set up around the perimeter of the Public Market downtown. The choices were amazing---wings, Thai, Chinese, barbecue, sandwiches, Cuban . . . We finally decided on comfort food: mac and cheese because we'd heard so much about Mac'Rollin. It was a bit of a wait in line, but worth it. There's live music, too, and the crowd was as diverse as the food offerings.

I found the digital stamp by Katie Pertiet to create this filler card for the Food Truck Rodeo.

I recently purchased two Market Kits from Papertrey Ink: Party Pops and Clipsters. Both came in handy. The candles and banner on the title card (from the Midnight edition of Project Life) came from the Party Pops kit. I wanted to document the transformation of the swing set from a pile of boards to the completed, and truly enjoyed, final product. And I scanned both sides of the invitation to include in the layout.

 The photo of Skylar before the party is one of my favorites from the whole year. By the time the party was over, she'd had enough of photos, but I loved this one of Matt and Betsy, even if Skylar is hiding.

 This card gave me a chance to include one more photo of the birthday girl and play with my new goodies. The same banner from the previous page, and one of the Clipster clips.

I've taken a couple of days break from Project Life, but am four months down, and five to go. That's pushing it to be done by the end of the month, but I haven't given up!

Project Life: August 2014

I've continued to make good progress on catching up with Project Life; not quite as good on getting the pages photographed for the blog. August found Sarah and Caleb still here; Adam joined them a few days later when he returned from his mission trip. All three stayed through the rest of the week and we spend most afternoons and early evenings with Tracy's family for the annual vacation at Conesus Lake.

Again, I kept it pretty simple with the Simple White photo templates, a couple Tiny Templates (#4) from Cathy Zielski, and a wooden veneer from my stash. The patterned paper for the title card is from a paper pad "Print Shop" by Studio Calico, the camera sticker is from a collection by Simple Stories, and die cuts from Papertrey Ink.

I seem to have a fondness for photos of Caleb walking away from us. This is another fave.

Those of you familiar with Rinda's Summer Scavenger Hunt will remember this photo of Tracy's family creating a parade for me. It ended up being one of my favorite photos from the summer.

The last page documents our excursion to the Strong Museum of Play in downtown Rochester. An awesome place, and there will be more photos from here later in the year. At the end of August I helped organize a picnic for the Urban Presbyterians Together, a group dedicated to supporting the ten urban churches in our Prebytery as well as incredible efforts to improve the City Schools.

 

 

Project Life: June 2014

There won't be any scrapbooking done in March since we'll be away more than we're home. Once we get settled in again, Project Life needs to rise up to the top of the priority list. June was a pretty quick month to put together. It only needed two pages.

Sarah and Caleb left at the beginning of the month after being here for Matt and Betsy's wedding reception. I love the photo of Caleb pulling his suitcase down our front sidewalk. It's always so poignant when he leaves!

A week later, I left to go to Detroit for the Presbyterian, USA General Assembly. Our head of staff was standing for moderator. Sadly (for the Presbyterian Church, and for John) the election did not go his way, but I learned a lot about how the larger church functions, and enjoyed my time in Detroit with my church friends.

Abi asked on a recent blog post, if her readers really felt like adults, or did we still feel like kids. I'm so far into adulthood, that I guess it's a moot question. Nonetheless, I really did feel like there was a shift when Matt and Betsy asked us to their house to celebrate Father's Day. I love to entertain, but it was so nice to be asked to celebrate with them. And I just adore the photo of Matt and Skylar. I don't know what the topic of conversation was, but it's clear they both were taking it seriously.

June marks the month of the beginning of Farmer's Markets in the area. Before then there isn't enough local produce to warrant the market. We make weekly trips to our local Brighton Farmer's Market, and almost always, make a trip to the Ithaca Farmer's Market some time in June. Taking photos at the market is one of my favorite things to do. 

When this post goes live, we'll be on our way home from Florida. It's been in the high 70's and low 80's the whole two weeks on Longboat Key. Rochester's temps are still varying widely from the 30's to the 50's. Matt says the snow has melted off our roof, but not from the yard. It's going to be an adjustment!

 

Project Life

There's a great quote that a friend and I keep reminding one another of:  "You can do anything, but you can't do everything." And it's so true. Nonetheless, there are SO many things I want to learn, and I keep adding projects and even new hobbies to the list. This summer I decided it was finally time to bite the bullet and try to learn how to draw. It's something I've always wanted to know how to do, but I had no art instruction growing up, and therefore, little to no experience. There'll be more about this in a later post, but sketching and online sketching classes have consumed a lot of my time since July. All this to say, that I'm very behind in creating my Project Life pages. Like 8 months behind. Fortunately, I keep a daily journal, and my photos are pretty well-organized in Lightroom, so it's not hard to recap the month. Just time consuming.

May was particularly time consuming, since I had over 100 hundred printed photos from Matt and Betsy's wedding reception held on Memorial Day weekend. I ended up cropping some of the 4X6 photos to fit in the 4X3 windows which actually improved several of them. So here's a long, photo-heavy post with the May Project Life pages.

 

The photo of our church in the page above was the HDR project, and it came out great. I should have printed it on better paper for the album, but everything else was being printed on Epson Premier Presentation Matte paper. It's so much less expensive that the pearl photo paper I love from both Ilford and Canon, and usually works out just fine for Project Life. This was a fantastic class, and I learned a lot!

The photos with Betsy's mom are so poignant. Sally felt good the day of the reception, and little did any of us know that within a month and a half, she'd be gone.  

 

One advantage, I suppose, of falling behind is finding some new product that works out perfectly. I recently picked up a pack of Heidi Swapp overlays that I just love on this page.

I scanned and resized the invitation so I could include it.

The cute typewriter on this card was a brush from a One Little Bird digital kit. The rest of the pages are just photo pages added to the back of the May spreads.

That spread finished my first Project Life album. I started the project in August 2013, and the album ends with May 2014. I have no problem with that which surprises the obsessive-compulsive streak in me to be orderly.

I'm hoping to get a good start on June today. We are truly snowed in. The big blizzard that's crossing the country appeared to be going south of us, but turned north, and we've been getting steady snow for hours now. It's beautiful, but like many people, I cancelled the appointment I had for this afternoon. All the schools are closed, and I'm guessing we have at least a foot of snow already--no end in sight. Maybe scrapping spring/summer photos will cheer me up!