Project Life - Week 3

We had a good week last week! We started the week at church on Sunday.  When I dropped Maddie off for evening church that night, her nursery was short a worker, so I offered to stay and help.  I enjoyed being in her class and seeing her play.

 Maddie and I did a sippy cup study this week.  We received four sippy cups in the mail, and Maddie tried each of the cups for a couple of days.  After she had tried them all, I had to fill out a survey about the cups.

 We ended up with four new cups and $20.00 for participating in the survey!

 Drew and Jim love to wrestle on the bed!

 Drew got a Nerf gun for Christmas, but he waited to use it until Jim could get one too.  Jim and I saw one on after-Christmas clearance at Aldi for $10.00, so we grabbed it so the guys could fight.  They had a great time!

 I gave the boys haircuts on Thursday night.

 Drew got a really good report card this week.  We are so proud of him for working hard and doing a great job at Kindergarten!

 I am gathering clothes to sell at an up-coming Mom-to-Mom sale at church, and I have a few bins of clothes in the hallway.  Maddie got into the bins twice this week!  I finally found the lids for the bins, and we are hoping to keep her out of the bins now!

 It was Jim's birthday on Saturday!  The weather was fairly warm (for January in Michigan!) that day, and he had to work.  The children and I took lunch out to his work, and we ate and hung out with him there for a little while.

 After he got off work, we went to the Trader Joe's near his work.  Jim had gotten a gift card from one of his regular customers for Christmas, so we spent part of it that afternoon.  Drew liked pushing his little cart through the store and searching for the tiger.  He found it in the produce section!

 That evening, I made one of Jim's favorite dinners - chicken with couscous and a spicy orange juice sauce, and we had his birthday cake.

 Jim found the recipe for this cake on a blog.  It was Chocolate Chocolate Chocolate Mint Cake - a chocolate cake with chocolate mint mousse between the layers and a white chocolate frosting.  We loved the mousse, but thought that the white chocolate frosting was just ok.

 As we started eating our cake, Maddie reached out and grabbed a big handful of Drew's piece of cake.  We were so surprised that she had tried to steal the cake (although we probably shouldn't have been - she is a great eater!).

 Here is my Project Life layout for this week.  This is how last week's page will look beside this week's page (once I finally get around to getting an album).  I kept the color scheme the same since they will be together in the album.

 I made a little insert for Jim's birthday pictures.

 This is Week 3's page all by itself.  I made a photo collage about the sippy cup study.

 This is the front of the birthday insert,

 and this is the back.  I made the insert by cutting off part of a Photo Pocket Pages - Design A page.

I ordered the Photo Pocket Pages - Design F  and a Photo Pocket Pages - Small Variety Pack 1, and I am looking forward to using them in the next few weeks!

Imagination Library

Today I have a quick post about something that our family is really enjoying - the Imagination Library.  I signed Maddie up for this program when she was a few weeks old, and a month or so later we started receiving a new book in the mail each month from the Imagination Library.  These are the books we've gotten so far.  They have all been hardback or board books so far, and they have all been nice little books to add to Maddie's collection.

 Children from birth to age five are eligible for this free program, and when the books come, they are yours to keep!  Maddie will have quite a few books from this program by the time she turns five!

If you have a child that fits the age requirements, and if you want to build your child's library, you should check out the Imagination Library!

Project Life - Week 2

We had a busy week last week!  Everybody was settling back into the work and school routine, and we also spent lots of time trying out some new Christmas toys!  Jim and Drew spent a couple of evenings assembling Drew's new Angry Birds K'Nex set.  They enjoyed building it, and Drew has been having fun playing with it.

 Here is Drew with the finished set!

 Maddie likes her new stacking bathtub cups.

 We ran to Target one evening, and Maddie kept trying to stand in the cart.  We were teasing that she looked like Rose standing in the front of the ship on the "Titanic" movie, and Jim hummed the "Titanic" theme song throughout the store.

 Maddie started doing this little squinty smile while we were at my parents' house at Christmas.  It makes us laugh!

 Drew was playing in his bedroom with his cars one afternoon, and Maddie tried to join him.  He was not very excited to have her grabbing at his cars.

 Drew had Farm Day last Friday at Kindergarten, and he loved dressing as a farmer.  He also got to stay for a full day of school that day, and he loved getting to eat lunch, have recess and rest time, and do some extra work at school that day.

 Jim put Maddie's new shopping cart together, and she did great at walking along through the house with it.  I put one of her Georges in the cart for her to push.  She loves George, just like Drew does, and she already has three of them!

 Maddie tried her first little Timbit on Saturday.  She loved it!

 This is my Project Life layout for Week 2.  I used some patterned paper with toys on it since we played with new Christmas toys so much this week.  I just did one photo collage this week - Maddie with her Timbit.

I am really enjoying this project!

Project Life - Week 1

I love scrapbooking, and I've scrapbooked for many years.  I kept up pretty well with scrapbooking about the first five years of Drew's life, but since Maddie has come along, my scrapping time has been cut back, and my scrapping material has doubled!  As I've tried to rethink my scrapping, I've realized that scrapping every event for our family is impossible.  I want to keep a record of our lives, but I know that I need to simplify.  After seeing lots of blog posts and advertising about Project Life this past year, I decided that Project Life might be a good "main scrapbooking" method for our family memories and that traditional scrapbook pages can still be the way that I document the special events for Drew and Maddie.  

In order to keep up with Project Life, I've decided that for most weeks, one page will probably be enough.  If we ever have a really big or special week, I can always add a second page.  I normally take enough pictures each week to fill a page, and I can include extra pictures by making a photo collage on a 4x6 print for special events or by adding a small photo insert. 

This is my first Project Life page for the first week of January!  I used Picasa (the free photo editing program from Google) to help me add text to the pictures and to make photo collages.  I printed all of the 3x4 inch photos by twos on 4x6 inch prints, and I made a 4x6 inch photo collage with four photos from the birthday party at Pump It Up.  I took a couple of these pictures with the camera on my phone.  I e-mailed the pictures from my phone to my computer, and then I was able to print them.  I printed my pictures at Sam's Club, and I was able to print the whole week's worth of photos for less than a dollar.

 I decided not to order a Project Life core kit this year.  I thought that I might get tired of using the same color scheme each week, and I wanted to save a little money.  I have a huge bin of scraps that I've sorted by color, and I am planning to use them to make my own title and journaling cards each week.  I will die cut my titles using my Slice or my Cricut.

Jim ordered me the Project Life Big Pack of Pocket Pages (Design A) for Christmas, and that is what I am using so far.



I would also like to get the Design F Pocket Pages since I take a lot of vertical photos

and the Design H Pocket Pages so I can add extra photos on fuller weeks when I have a few more photos than a full page will hold.

I am enjoying Project Life so far, and I like that it is helping me take more day-to-day, real life photos.  I think it will be fun to look back through this album at the end of the year - if I can keep up with it all year!  I am trying to sit down each Sunday afternoon or evening to edit and order my photos from the previous week, and I hope to post my weekly page here on my blog each Tuesday.  We'll see how it goes!

Post Christmas Catch-Up

We've been busy getting back into a routine after Christmas and travel.  Drew went back to school last Wednesday, and then over the weekend, we had two family birthday parties!  Last Saturday, our nephew, Danny, had his sixth birthday party.  The party was at Pump It Up.  Drew is a very cautious little guy, so we tried to give him a pep talk before the party about how much fun he would have if he was brave.  He decided to be brave and start at the big slide.  Here is is going up the steps.

 And here he is coming right back down!

 I ended up having to go down the slide with him three times before he decided he could do it on his own.  Here was our first time.  Those feet you see coming down behind me hit me in the back a few seconds after this picture was taken.  Ouch!

 The first two times we went down together holding hands.  The third time, I gave Drew a shove, and let him go down on his own.  He ended up loving it, and he went down the slide many more times all by himself.

 He also went through a big obstacle tunnel.

 Maddie hung out with the adults.  She loves to chew on Jim's hoodie drawstrings.

 Maddie and Aunt Sharon.

 She liked climbing around on the mats.

 She thought she was stuck,

 but Jim came and rescued her.

 Uncle Larry tried to help her walk a little bit.

 We moved to another room after a little while, and Drew loved shooting these little cannons.  We loved his goggles!

 Watching the birthday boy open his presents.

 Drew, Maddie, and I all had colds this past week.  We spent a lot of time in our jammies when we were at home.

 Maddie got a ton of new hair bows from my mom and sister at Christmas.  I added them to Maddie's bow holder, and it is really looking full now!

 Our niece, Lilly, had her fourth birthday party on Sunday afternoon.  I didn't get many pictures of her party, but I got one of Drew with the pinata.  He had fun playing with his cousins again that afternoon.

Jim's mom is still recovering at home.  She saw her doctor this week, and he gave her some more information about her blood clots.  She actually has blood clots in both lungs, as well as in one of her legs, and he said that her situation was really quite serious.  She was fortunate to get to the hospital in time for treatment.  She is going to have to take it easy for a while so that the blood thinners can do their job.  Jim has spent some time this week helping her with some things at her apartment and with some errands that she is unable to run herself.  We are praying that she will continue to improve and that she can start getting back to some of her normal activities in the next month or so.

I am planning to post again on Tuesday with a new project I am working on.  I hope you all have a great weekend!