Project Life 2012 Week Seven

Every blog I read about Project Life lately talks about how much the author is still in love with the system. I wholeheartedly agree. I think what surprises me is that I look forward to working on it each week instead of feeling like I have to do it. Maybe it's the right time in my life for this kind of project, or perhaps my word for the year, tend, is helping me think differently about it. It could be that it is easy to use, modify, figure out and there is so much freedom to make it my own, or the community of people working on the project alongside me. (It seems like it has exploded since I first heard about it.) I think that all of these things have come together for me this time around. Of course, I say this 7 weeks in. The year is a long one and we will get busier, but I hope I can continue this habit. It brings me joy, shakes me with gratefulness, and leaves me eager each week to share it.

This week was a bit weird because we dog/housesat and so we weren't at home much.  

I cut one of the Design B Photo Pages because I only wanted a small insert here and I didn't have as many 4x6 portrait oriented photos this week. I really love the Pink Paislee Cupid Postcards  I got mine at a local store in Champaign called Prairie Gardens which I think is associated with Jeffrey Alans but Pink Paislee's websites says these are retired, as is much of their collection I worked with during the week. I moved this insert several times because it doesn't mark that a new week has started with any kind of date stamp or anything and could certainly seem like a continuation of the previous week. It also didn't actually begin the week; the page behind it of the Grammys did, but I finally left it here at the start because, in my mind, it frames the week.

Back of insert. Though it has been a bit colder, these buds appeared on the trees outside of one of the classrooms. I was talking about them with students who told me they only bloom once a year and if they bud too early, it's unlikely we'll see the beautiful flowers in the spring. 

I printed off a list of the Grammy Winners and included it (front and back) in an 8.5 x 11 insert. 

I was really excited about watching the Grammy's this year because I adore Adele and I knew she was singing for the first time since her throat surgery. I was ecstatic that she did so beautifully and won so many awards. I printed the picture of Adele from the Grammy website. Beside it is a printable journaling card from KaylaAimee.com which is also where I got the Week of card. I stamped the dates using Inkadinkado Months & Days clear stamps. Many of the PL posts I read included news of Whitney Houston's death in their Week 6 layouts but I included it here because of the tribute on the Grammys. Underneath, I used a Clementine kit card and attached a sticker that reads "Life is an amazing gift." The heart with it is a Deja View clear heart, not sure which collection it's from. The bottom left is from the cardstock in the Clementine kit. I cut it to the 4x6 size. I used the Dear Lizzy Roller Date Stamp to stamp the date but I didn't realize it was set to the wrong year, so I wrote over the wrong dates. M got a PC she can game on and I bought her a laptop desk as an early Valentine's Day present so now when we watch TV together I see her face behind the screen.

For some reason I cannot get a good picture of this page. I took this one on my phone and you can see a bit more of the details than the other pictures I tried of it, but it still isn't great.

The orange is so much richer than this picture shows. I found myself wanting to write more this week, despite the very picture heavy layouts you'll see. I used one of the fold-up journaling cards from the Clementine kit and just wrote across the fold to use here. The top picture is of a hawk, which I was so excited to finally capture on film. I wrote about how I see hawks on my way to work every day and always wish I could stop to take a picture. This hawk was just hanging out in my neighborhood, across the street at my neighbors! 

The mason jar is a Dear Lizzy Neopolitan stamp. I was playing around with it, not sure if or how I was going to use it. I liked the way it looked on this small cardstock. Inside of it is a DejaView Love clear cut out. I stapled it using my Tiny Attacher. Behind it, I wrote on the back of a Clementine journaling card from the previous page. 

The bottom orange card I cut from Citrus card stock. I stapled more Dejaview clear cuts on top and added a clear quote sticker, which I cannot find the name of anywhere. 

I like that this page has pictures of Michelle. We were goofing around shopping for sunglasses one afternoon and when I posted the picture on facebook, everyone said M looked like someone different. The bottom picture is of M getting some Nora time in after I babysat on Monday while she was at work, she wanted her baby fix, too. 

I used a Martha Stewart Home Office with Avery Secure Top Sheet protectors to collect the Valentine's Day cards and ephemera. Michelle wrote me a Valentine's message on the back of a receipt. She also gave me Lady and the Tramp, which I haven't seen in so long. 

The back of the envelope showcases a card from Dillon and Charlotte as well as the card I got Michelle peeking behind it. I love these little envelopes that hold this kind of stuff. 

This is probably my favorite page. I love all the hearts and also the cardstock colors. The striped cardstock is Pink Paislee Bow and Arrow from the Cupid Collection. On top is another Pink Paislee Cupid postcard, attached with Pink Paislee Bella Brads. Next to it is a Pink Paislee postcard of "10 Things I Love About You" where I wrote what I love about M. 

The heart stickers are Martha Stewart.

The photo challenge for the week was heart-shaped and I was determined to find hearts for interesting pictures. I drew a heart on the window after my shower and I totally love the simplicity of the shot. We made Valentine's Funfetti cupcakes for bowling. M shaped them in a heart for her picture. 

The Happy Valentine's Day card is also Pink Paislee Cupid postcard. It's on top of Imaginisce Love Me, Game of Love card stock. I wrote a few of the highlights from our Valentine's Day together and stamped the date using the Dear Lizzy stamp. 

I also really like this page. We went to a local popcorn shop in Decatur and tried the popcorn my students rave about. It was a little rainy and gloomy outside but I snapped a picture of the sign because it's bright with neon and old fashioned bulbs and there's something about it I really like. I used the Pixl-r-matic app on my phone for the picture as well as for the picture of the earphones on the bottom. Beside the popcorn pic I attached a bag from Del's to the back of the cardstock from the previous page. I love that Paislee Press has such beautiful two-sided card stock. 

On top of the yellow bag is a Heather Bailey for Paper Bliss 3-D embellishment where I wrote about our small adventure. I ripped some of the paper while trying to figure out where to put what on this card so on top of the rip, I stuck a Dear Lizzy Thoughtful Remarks embellishment. 

Again, I used a Clementine journaling card (unfolded) to write about the middle of the week. Beside the card is a Clementine card with a Making Memories Je t'Adore Amour Banner and another clear quote about love. I wasn't sure about this card and kept trying to put with Valentine's Day but I kept moving it back to this page. I guess to encapsulate the way the week was about celebrating love and life and all the stuff in-between.

on being careful of each other

The Mower 

by Philip Larkin

The mower stalled, twice; kneeling, I found   

A hedgehog jammed up against the blades,   

Killed. It had been in the long grass.

I had seen it before, and even fed it, once.   

Now I had mauled its unobtrusive world   

Unmendably. Burial was no help:

Next morning I got up and it did not.

The first day after a death, the new absence   

Is always the same; we should be careful

Of each other, we should be kind   

While there is still time.

I woke up this morning thinking about this poem, its last lines in particular and the idea of being careful with one another. I chose the word "tend" for this year to frame what I wanted to pay attention to, what I wanted to invite: tenderness, watchfulness, care. I don't know that I always do a good job. I have, in the past, been careless with people and their feelings. And it's a habit I've been trying to break for some time now. On Valentine's Day I posted my favorite poem by Emily Dickinson that talks about bringing your heart to others. Imagine facing situations with kindness, open-heartedness, instead of assumptions or selfishness. One of my favorite meditations is Metta Bhavana, the development of lovingkindness. The meditation focuses on ourselves, good friends, people we feel neutral towards and people with whome we have a difficult or challenging relationship, and all sentient beings. In the meditation I do, I move through the phases, focusing on one during each meditation and then choose one day to do a longer focused meditation trying to move through all of the phases. Sometimes M and I do this together. 

The thing I have learned is that emotions don't just come over you out of nowhere; we're not always conscious of them. Emotions can be cultivated, grown, tended. As I learn to cultivate positive emotions, I am better able to express them instead of choosing the emotions of anger, pity, self-righteous indignation. For me, lovingkindness is about creating a pattern of how I think and feel about others. Some days, I do better than others. The point is awareness, watchfulness, tending. 

 we should be kind
 while there is still time 

Project Life 2012 Week Six

Each week, I look forward to Sundays and Mondays when I work on Project Life. It's a time that I spend alone, going over my week, printing pictures, reflecting on how amazing and full and rich my life is, reminding myself that no matter what else is going on, I am a damn lucky girl. 

I do not plan my color scheme or even which page layout I will use. I let the pictures I've taken guide me. I've always approached scrapbooking in a kind of creative chaos way. I do collect ephemera throughout my week, sometimes mail, sometimes receipts, sometimes a thought or image I want to remember. I've been trying to be more conscious about collecting these pieces and M pitches in regularly even if she does tease me about it. There are so many ways to do Project Life and that's what I love about it. I enjoy reading what others are doing because I like to be inspired, and think of ways I might interpret or use some of the same techniques, approaches and ideas. One of the things I saw a few weeks ago was including pieces of the news and I've wanted to do more of this but can't exactly find my entry point. I did, however, begin week 6 with the Superbowl which M and I watched together. 

There isn't much here but I wanted to use the word bubbles (from Me & My Big Ideas) and Reflections' bird embellishments (found at Michael's) so I included them on top of a Turquoise edition cards. Most of the cards on this page are from that kit to match the blue in the Superbowl screenshot. 

There's a lot of blue in the color scheme this week. I gravitated to it perhaps to reflect the cold and frost that descended upon the week. Blue is also my favorite color.

M took the picture of me at the top for a Photo Challenge and it's one of my favorites. I love the lighting in it. The quote is a print from Jessica Swift which is gorgeous and reasonably priced at $20. The grass and leaves are covered in frost so I created a card using white card stock and some Deja View Clear Cut Winter snowflake embellishments I had in my stash. The gumballs are actually bouncy balls from our collection which I used for a distorted lens photo challenge. The T-Mobile packaging is from my replacement phone I ordered when my previous phone died on me. It froze up and never came back to life. I wrote about the incident on a card from the Turquoise edition. Beside that is some of my favorite damask design paper from my stash, (My Mind's Eye Best of Damask) a Reflections' flower embellishment and I cut one of the Clementine cards into the size I wanted so I could write on it. I think the colors blend better in person. 

I traveled to Rhode Island for an interview and it was amazing and beautiful. 

I took the picture of the clouds as we were taking off from Springfield. The neon lights I snapped on the people mover walking from one terminal to the next in O'Hare. The picture doesn't do them justice at all; they change periodically and as you're walking through it creates a very cool effect. I cut down a few of the pictures to fit into the 3x4 size.The middle one is an anchor sculpture on the boardwalk of the Harbor near my hotel. I love nautical stuff so I couldn't resist taking a picture, but on its own it wasn't a very interesting photograph. Ali Edwards talks about being an agressive cropper and I certainly think it worked well in this case. I cut the picture of rain sluicing down the plane window so it fit in 2 3x4; I've done that a lot in this week and I really like the effect. On top of the picture is a Martha Stewart Crafts Modern Damask label.  I took all of these pictures on an old cell phone (remember, mine was frozen). I used cards from the Turquoise kit as background for my handwritten notes, a  tag from my plane-side checked luggage and my ticket. 

The previous page was travel-related and this one is meant to showcase some of what I saw in Rhode Island, the water, the bridges, the boats. I took a picture of a boat in the Harbor near my hotel; the other images are postcards. Again, I cut one in two so I could fit it in here. I used a Clementine card as well as a Smash Entertainment card to record my thoughts and the food I don't want to forget. Below is the Clementine date card which I stamped. It smeared as I slid it into the sleeve but I left it. I cut a Clementine card to fit on the envelope so I could write about the thank you note I received for a shower gift I sent. 

On Friday, after a long day of traveling, M and I went to a Valentine's  Dinner as a fundraiser for the UP Center. We ate at the 5:30 dinner and volunteered at the door for the second dinner, which was fun. Our friend, Tamra, took these pictures of us and I love them. The billboard photo on the top right is a picture of the Adams' Sky Gallery, where six artists were chosen to have their work displayed on various billboards around town. This is the only one I've seen so far and it's on the way to M's work. The You & Me folder is a Soft Spoken embellishment I had in my stash and I've been wanting to use it. A small card slides out and I wrote about our dinner on it. It sits on top of Reflections' hot pink damask cardstock.

I had a few things left over like our tickets that I wanted to display so I used an American Crafts insert.

Behind the tickets and our table cards is Citrus cardstock. It has an interesting texture that doesn't show up here but I liked the colors.

This is the back of the insert where I just played with things I had to sum up the week. The middle picture M took while it was snowing. It's a view we don't pay attention to, that of our mailbox. We don't use the front door often at all. I don't know why but I really like the image. Above it is Chocolat Mon Coeur (foil) cardstock from S.E.I I cut to fit 4x6. The bottom embellishments are on Citrus stack cardstock and one of my favorites from the collection. The valentine-y owl I've had a long time and I have no idea where it's from. 

It was a busy week and I am incredibly thankful for this project so that I could record it. 

Project Life is a product and a system created by Becky Higgins. There is no one way to use Project Life, which is why I and many others love it. You can jump in any time. Start now. 

all I have to bring

I have always had mixed feelings about Valentine's Day. I appreciate a chance to celebrate all the people I love but I know it's a holiday that has become commercialized and full of expectations. In the past, Michelle and I would plan Valentine weekends for one another. As our lives and schedules got busier, we've done smaller things like the Valentine's Dinner fundraiser for the UP center we attended recently. We also volunteered during the later dinner, which was a nice way to give back and spend time together. 

It's important because we lead hectic lives, as we all do, to take the time I can to say I love you with my whole heart. I love the sentiment in this poem of bringing one's heart to situations. If we did more of this in our daily lives, the world would be a different place. This is one of my favorite poems by Emily Dickinson; I hope you enjoy it and find a way to bring your heart to everyone you meet today. 

Project Life 2012 Week Five

Hello February! 

I did a lot less digitally this week and much more with pictures and embellishments. I used a fabric Smash tab on the top of the box my owl ring came in and I also added a RememberThis sticker and a Monday sticker from the Clementine kit to the box top. We went downtown on Monday and took pictures. We browsed a local thrift store where I found the owl ring, which M says look like a professor so we had to get it. There were a few birds perched on the brick wall outside one of the parking lots and even though the picture of the bird taking flight is blurry, there is something I loved about it. I used some stickers from stash with birds and swirls to make a note of what I'm grateful for this week. The bottom left is a picture of a sculpture in downtown Champaign that I've always thought was interesting. I used a Smash tab on the top on the picture and I love how it turned out.

I used a blue sharpie to write "hello february" on a card from the Turquoise kit. I used Martha Stewart's Owl Embosser to cut and emboss owl shapes, which I glued to the card. The diamond cut out is from a Martha Stewart punch that was harder to punch than I imagined and think I need a much harder surface if I'm going to do more with it. 

I am not happy with any of the pictures I got of this page. Every Tuesday, Michelle and I bowl in a league. I took a picture of our score, not because I did great but because I wanted to capture that part of our weeks that haven't appeared in PL at all. I had the bowling embellishments in my stash. I included the Go Red for Women pin and part of the card it was attached to on a card from the Clementine kit. 

I journaled with the sharpie on a Clementine card. I stuck a clear journal sticker on top of it. I don't love it but I like that I'm capturing the everyday with this page: Culver's treat!, blue skies, bowling, February days.

 A February flower and Amazon mailing slip from an awesome surprise birthday book from my friend, Sandy, finishes off this page. 

More Smash! products in use below.

We grilled in February! I used the chicken the next day in pasta and it was really, really good.

I included a quote card from Smash with a quote by Georgia O'Keefe that I read in O magazine this week. "I decided to start anew, to strip away what I had been taught."

The Live, Dream card is from the PL Clementine kit as is the black lettered card behind the Smash envelope. The Fabulous card is a blank Smash pad. I like how the background of the card ties in with the picture of the typewriter I took. I brought the typewriter home from my office at school, the first step in cleaning out. 

This page makes me happy. I don't often use the bigger kit cards in place of photos but I liked how the blue sky picture from Friday looked in the 2 4x3 spaces in the middle of the page. I finally got a pedicure which made me happy and my feet were happy, too. The "Be Bold" is a screenshot of my desktop, which I changed for February and is something I'm trying to remember as a mantra. I love the color scheme of the kit card with the Soft Spoken Ellen Krans Smile stickers on it.

Saturday, I went to the Blind Pilot concert and had an amazing time. I started 3 blog posts about it but words couldn't express what I was feeling. I only had my camera phone so the pictures weren't great. Luckily, I pulled the one of the lead singer off the venue website and printed it for my PL album. At the concert, I got the new album which I took a picture of. 

I used larger cards from the Clementine kit to journal how very cool the concert was as well as a Smash pad. 

The colors for this page ended up really muted. I like the postcard-style "always remember" journaling card from the Clementine Kit. I definitely want to hang on to the memory of that night. I saved my ticket stub and arm band, as well.

I haven't been very structured about when each week begins and ends. Typically, I think of it like Sunday-Saturday but sometimes it works Monday-Sunday. I usually spend Sunday and Monday building the album pages for the previous week. This Sunday was one where M worked so I spent time working on presentations and putting PL together. And for me, this means it will be the first page for Week Six.

After almost six weeks of doing this, which I can't believe, I'm still really excited to complete the pages. I appreciate that M gets in on the act, saving ephemera for me, reminding me what pictures I could include. Before the year is out, I'm going to have her journaling.

When my froze and wouldn't come back to life yesterday, I thought, "well, this little adventure should be reflected in PL." I look at my world completely differently and I am made more aware of moments as they happen that I want to remember, that I let myself feel completely so I can write about them later. I am much more "on the watch" in this respect. I think this is what Becky Higgins means about cultivating a good life and recording it.