Monday, January 21, 2013

Project Life...revamped!

It's only mid-January and already Project Life, taking pictures every day and documenting everything, every day was becoming tedious. But, I didn't want to quit. Some days I really enjoyed taking photos of the little things in life. With some advice from some great people, I decided to change things up a bit. 

Project Life 365 is now Project Life-A week in review! 
Now I can take pictures when I want, or don't have to take any pictures at all. No stress. What fun is a hobby when it becomes tedious and stressful? None at all. So I've used many of the same photos and changed the layouts to an 8 1/2 x 11 collage format. This size will be easy to print and store, as well.

The cover is the same. I just changed the size from 8x8 to 8 1/2 x 11.


Here's the intro, since I still wanted to use my 2012 Year in Review collage...
Let 2013 begin!
  Week 1:
 

Week 2:
     
  Week 3:
I hope you'll sit back, relax, and enjoy my journey through the year. If you think you want to participate, but you're not a scrapbooker? DO IT ANYWAY! Take your camera, and have fun with it. You don't have to scrapbook your photos in any fancy way. Put them in an album with a little note on the back about the photo. It's so easy, anyone can play! Share with others, like I am, or keep them to yourself. It's totally up to you. The beauty of it is, there are no rules!

“Taking pictures is savoring life intensely, every hundredth of a second.” ~ Marc Riboud


Monday, January 7, 2013

IMPROVE 2013

It's the time of year where we make all these New Year's Resolutions. We're going to do this, that and the other thing to make life better. We're not going to do things this way anymore, we're going to change everything. 
What are your resolutions? 
Do you believe in them?
Do you follow through?
I've never been on to make specific resolutions because I have no will-power to stick to them. There's no diet plans, exercise plans, etc. There are a lot of things I would like to be different in this upcoming year. But change can be a little intimidating and sometimes demand more than we can handle.
The best thing that I can hope for this year is to IMPROVE. It's easier to improve on something than it is to completely change the way we do it. We can improve our relationships without making changes that scare our family and friends. We can improve our attitudes without changing who we are. We can improve our healthy (or not so healthy) habits and keep some of our old. A little improving goes a long way. It's like taking baby steps instead of jumping right in.
Remember when I started this blog in the summer. I spoke of the One Little Word project that the good folks at Club CK have gotten me hooked on. 2012 my word was success, that was my first blog post. Now it's time to introduce my One Little Word 2013....Improve!
I'm so excited that I get to help out on the board and make these badges for everyone and they can show off their word for the year. It gives me a chance to see all the different words that people are choosing. This is fun! I'm glad everyone likes them and wants more! It's a good start to focusing on my word. Improving my relationships at Club CK. Everyone is great over there. I love to help where I can without over-committing myself.

So how am I doing with my improving this year? Well, it's still too early to tell. One day I do good, other days not so good. I'm keeping up with Project Life, but that is in it's early stages. Still looking for a better job, but baby steps, as I've said before. We'll see how the year goes as we complete these fun little challenges from my friends at CK. 

Here's my January 2013 One Little Word Challenge...
The layout is digi. The kit is from Red Dog Designs Summer Soft. I used CK Ali hand for the font.

It's been a pretty bad day for me today and I'm still trying to keep my over-all outlook up. While I'm a little down, I know things could be a lot worse. Sitting around moping doesn't help matters, so I decided to come on here and blog. That comes with my word again...improving my attitude. I'm working on that!
I love this quote:
“If you try anything, if you try to lose weight, or to improve yourself, or to love, or to make the world a better place, you have already achieved something wonderful, before you even begin. Forget failure. If things don't work out the way you want, hold your head up high and be proud. And try again. And again. And again!” ~Sarah Dessen;Keeping the Moon




Thursday, January 3, 2013

Project Life...The Beginning

It's a blistery, cold morning, as I sit here and type this. It was 0 degrees this morning and colder than that in our surrounding neighborhoods.  Buuuur. A good morning to sit in front of the computer with a hot cup of coffee and post the beginning pages of my first Project Life album.
I chose to do this project digitally, as it will be easier to keep up with. I'm always in front of the computer, so why not? After spending a lot of time digging through my digital collection and trying different things, I chose to use the Shabby Princess Promise Collection Kit. The background papers are subtle and won't take away from the photos, there are plenty of little elements to use and the alpha font is neutral, but stands right out. I downloaded some freebies from Becky Higgins website. It's important to be consistent with this project and document everything. Between the kit and some of Becky's freebies, it'll be easy for me to keep track of what is what.
For starters, an album needs a cover. I took this photo yesterday to use it for my cover page. Me with a camera...appropriate for this project, don't you think?
January 1, 2013...I wasn't sure how to start the album off, since this is my first time. Do I just dig right in and take an "everyday" photo or should there be some sort of introduction? I like having an introduction, so instead of choosing a photo from this day, I made a collage with a bunch of different photos from 2012 and put them together for a layout. I took some from the good, not so good, random events through out the year and put them all together. It was  fun to look through all the pictures from the past year.
January 2, 2013...A room with a view! This is where we put our Christmas tree, in front of the window. The Christmas decorations came down today, we've gotten a bunch of snow over the past few days, so therefore, here's a picture of what we see now that the tree is put away. The view never gets old. On a day as cold as today, it looks much better from the inside!

Stay tuned for more Project Life photos as the album continues to grow!

Today's quote is on the 1st page of my PL365 2013 album:
"If you want to keep your memories alive, you first have to live them" Bob Dylan