project life 2014 | the beginning

January is seriously flying by! I guess life goes by quicker and quicker the older we get. -Sigh-

One of the reasons I love memory keeping and Project Life so much is that I want to REMEMBER all (or at least some) of the little things that made up our daily lives. I'm finding these days I am less motivated to take photos at big functions (or at least as many photos) and more wanting to take a picture of our farmer's market veggies. But it's all good.

title page

The only way for me to do this project is to keep it super simple. Print our my favorite photos, use some cute cards and add a few little embellishments here and there. Voila, it's all done!

Like clothes (or any hobby, really), it's easy to get caught up in all the new product available out there to buy. I've got enough stuff to make scrapbooks for me, my family and friends and still have left over. The goal this year to use up what I have and not buy buy buy.

week one, full spread

I also want to have more white space in my layouts this year. I obsessively look at Project Life photos on IG and the spreads I am most attracted to have lots and lots of white space.

week one, left side

Still doing this weekly, but using a full photo for the title card this year. I also would like to include more meaningful journaling, instead of just adding what happened in the photo. The writing is the most difficult part for me.

week one, right side

Since the first week of January was a shorter, I decided to dedicate this whole page to my friends' birthday night. So even though I said I won't be taking as many photos of big events, I happened to take quite a few this night. And that's ok too!

project life 2013 | the end

I lost steam sharing Project Life on the blog, but am still full steam ahead on the memory keeping. I can't believe we are through the 3rd week in January already!

NYE

New year's is always one of our favorite holidays to celebrate with our friends. Sometimes expectations can be high but we dancing the night away always works for us. I decided to simply print our a few of my favorites from the night and call it good.

I love creating title and end pages for my albums. For the end of 2013 I went super simple, with some favorite photos of us from the year and cards from the many core kits I own. 

Another one for the books!

finally Friday

Has this felt like the longest week? Friday really couldn't come soon enough!


We have been eating lots of greens from a local(-ish) farmer over the past few months. Learned from an FB friend, once a week fresh veggies are delivered by him and enjoyed by us! I bought a family share and it's more vegetables than I would normally buy at the grocery store.

We are learning to eat different veggies and eat more veggies, which is one of our goals for this year. More real food, less stuff from a box! My goal of not eating dessert (i.e. sugar) during the week seems to have had a welcome side benefit as well...5 lbs lighter without a lot of effort. You really are what you eat. 

project life 2014 | new process

I am in the middle of finishing up our 2013 album. Taking a trip at the end of the year is fabulous for everything but staying caught up with Project Life! Even though we were only gone for 4 days, I obviously took more photos than a usual week. After much deliberation, I decided to print all of my favorites and include them all in the album. While I love the concept of mini albums for travel, etc, the execution never seems to work for me. Hence my 2011 India photos all still in a box! So into Project Life they go. Yes the album will be a little fat, but at least they will be in there for us to enjoy in the future.

For this year, I am making the leap and doing everything on my Mac! Since the hubs works from home the majority of the time, I find myself fighting him for time on our main computer. Then it dawned on me that my laptop could be used for more things than blogging and surfing the internet!

Currently I am using iPhoto to organize my pics and PSE12 to edit them. Unfortunately many of the cool actions I used in PS doesn't translate but I'm hoping this will force me to learn Photoshop a little bit more on my own. 

The photos will automatically go into smart folders by date, which is making things so much easier. I've got a pretty good system going so far and am actually caught up with 2014, almost 2 weeks in. Yay for learning new things!

unexpected

We saw this last night and it touched me in a most unexpected way. Emma Thompson was wonderful as Mrs. Travers and now I want to see Mary Poppins again!

finally Friday

The weather this week has been more crazy than usual. Hard freeze on Tuesday, 70s today. That's Houston for you!

Having the holidays in the middle of the week has also thrown off our equilibrium. I still feel like I'm on a boat, although it's much better now. Now just working on this hacking cough/allergies that aren't allowing me to get a full night's rest.

And we're still recovering from our NYE, birthday festivities. I am happy to report the hubs and I are doing better. Baby steps, I suppose.

TGIF!

rough start

2014 has already been full of some highs and lows.

Been good for the past 6 days about eating less sweets. Baby steps!

Been spending good time with friends.

However, anyone who tells you marriage is an easy thing is lying. Ours is being tested right now...

Happy happy

Another year has begun. The possibilities are endless. Resolutions will be made (and broken).

This year, in order to keep myself on track, I have decided to make 4 small goals each month, rather than one large thing to keep myself to for the whole year. I am not a good goal setter but there's no time like right now than to start.

1. Dessert that is not fruit limited to weekends only.

2. Clean clutter in bathroom (i.e. try to get rid of 100 items)

3. Use the dSLR at least 3x/week and in MANUAL mode at least 1x/week

4. Plan a date night with the hubs

Now that it is written it will be done. Here's to a great start to 2014!