It’s been almost four months since I completed a Project Life page. When I started back at it again this week, I was happily surprised to fall right back into the pleasure of reliving our lives through documenting them. I started a new album with these pages. I don’t worry about doing one album a year. Whenever the album feels full enough, I move on to a new one. Several months ago, I ordered The Everyday Edition of Project Life from the Becky Higgins site, and ordered this album which I love.

It came with a plastic “page protector” with a lovely printed quote.

 

August was a quick page after many, many pages for July documenting our trip to the Canadian Rockies. I used two cards from Simply Stories “Sunshine and Happiness” set.

September was Skylar’s fourth birthday, and so there had to be a page to document her wonderful birthday party. I found some perfect patterned papers and a sheet of stickers by Reminisce called “Cowgirl”last fall that took care of all the embellishment.

 

 

The second page documents a couple other photos from the party, the Fall Fest at Skylar and Ella’s school, and the end of the 2015 Summertime Photography Scavenger Hunt. I chose six of my favorite photos from the hunt, including the hardest one to find (three flags on a flagpole). 

Here’s a look at the two-page spread.

As always, I used Tracy Larsen’s Simply White templates as well as templates from Paislee Press Pocket Guide #1 and All the Stripes. I used some black and white Washi tape to create two more embellishments to carry the stripes through the layout. I’m glad to be back at it again, and hope to keep going although we’ll soon have a house full of company so it won’t be easy to keep on track.

 

It probably won’t happen again, but I finished the May Project Life spread on June 1!!! Happy dance, here. It was pretty easy since there wasn’t any travel and I never took any photos on Mother’s Day or my birthday. 

Although I’ve been keeping up with my Project 365 on my iPhone and getting each day into the Collect app, this is the first month I’ve exported the photos and printed the cards. I like them a lot. There’s lots of white space, the captions and date are great for Project Life as well.

When you’ve survived a long, cold, snowy winter spring flowers are such a pleasure! We spent lots of time outdoors in May and it was a treat.

I found these beautiful pink and purple sequins by Pretty Pink Posh when I was in Buffalo a week ago, and knew right away I wanted to make a shaker card for this layout. When I carried the album downstairs to take the photo, they arranged themselves in a lilac shape—how convenient! I really like the Paislee Press Calendar cards as titles, and may continue that again next year.

I found two tiny wood veneers in my stash and combined them with a narrow piece of washi tape by Little B to embellish the journaling card.

We have the most amazing hedge of spirea on our property line. Every June I’m amazed by how beautiful it is; I wish it lasted longer. I included Collect cards with two of my favorite photos of Skylar and Ella from this month, my meeting with Melissa in Buffalo, and my new bicycle basket–my birthday gift from Sarah, Adam, and Caleb. I almost always change up the mantle decorations for each season, and include a photo of the summer themed mantle. A new addition are the three candles under the wreath which I purchased in April from Crate and Barrel. I should have taken a closer shot of them. I layered two colors of sand in the bottom of each, and am really happy with how it turned out. The filler card was made with a piece of patterned paper from my stash (unknown). I cut the camera image from a Cocoa Daisy filler card and used some dimensional tape to pop it up a bit.

June will likely be a bit more involved since we’ll be on the road again, and there are several big events planned.

I’m still plugging away at purging. I took four big bags of supplies to the charity shop today, but still haven’t totally finished going through my studio to say nothing of tackling the basement.

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 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.

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.