December Daily: pages part 2

Today I'm showing a few pages from the middle of the book where I worked on capturing the boys school art and events.  They bring home so much stuff that I'm always completely overwhelmed.  I am ok with recycling the worksheets but the stuff with their writing or art on it is harder.  I try to narrow down and keep only best or the most representative items... but that requires thinking so I put it off.  And when I do bring myself to do it, I find that even the "best" stuff still ends up just sitting there, without anything done with it.

For this album I picked one page from each boys stash of creations and folded it up to 5x7 and put it in the book.  I really like it in there.  Because it is squared off, it has a neater look than I though it might.  I added it on the day I was showing pictures and journaling from Sammy's program and Zack's class party.  These were also their last days of school for the semester so it forms a big finish for the "at home" portion of the book.  After that it's all travel - a "most delightful journey" (if the fortune cookie says it, it must be true).

December Daily: Pages part 1

Sammy was so funny with the chopsticks this day! I couldn't resist pulling out the camera in the restaurant and getting a series of pics. Then when he resorted to the fork it was priceless! I didn't show the picture here, but on the back I put in our fortunes from the fortune cookie - it said Sammy has "a magnetic personality". Well, I think so!
I wanted the pictures all in one long row, so that the progression would show, but to print them small enough to do that in 7 inches really wasn't cutting it.  I ended up making this accordion fold so that you have to pull out the tab to see the final (fork) picture.  I just used three sheets of heavy cardstock with "hinges" made out of brown paper punched with the Stampin' Up Modern Label punch.  

I like the view of various pages and embellishments that peeks through when you are looking at a different page. Here, the little heart from the picture of James reading to Sammy shows up after two more pages are turned.

And how could I have a December Daily album without a Starbucks sleeve? That would be as wrong as a December without a Peppermint Mocha! In this case it gave me a place to talk about the evening James and I spent shopping, just the two of us. I didn't have any pictures of us but it was a memory I wanted included.

I'll be back tomorrow to show how I included some of the kids school events/work!

December Daily: Finished Album!

I am sure many people are soooo over the holidays and December, but I'm excited to have finished my December project!  I don't care that it's the end January - I'm thrilled to have finished anything.  I mean seriously, how often do I start AND finish something, and all in a row too?  (You don't need to answer that.)

This is a December Daily album, as inspired by Ali Edwards and many others (here's another extremely pretty one). I showed my kit a while ago. I finished (notice how I am repeating that word finish?) it Monday but it took me until today to work up the energy to photograph it! It turned out kind of large. But hey, it's a whole month!

I do this project a little differently than some - I don't fully make the pages ahead of time and I don't work on it daily. The upside of making a kit instead of pages is that I can choose the papers that I like for each photo and I'm not locked into a certain page size for each one.  The downside is that it takes a little longer during December, a month that is already over-full.  But, the creative part is what interests me and draws me to the project, so that's better for me.  One big mistake I made was not making the cover ahead of time.  Somehow I had a hard time getting started on the pages without a cover to draw a color scheme/style from.  And making the cover was daunting so I kept putting it off.  That led to me starting way late in the month, which I hadn't intended.  Next time I want to stick with making the kit rather than finished pages but finish the cover ahead of time.

There are a couple of reasons that it works better for me not to work on this daily.  The first is that I print my photos at a photo shop (meaning not at my own house, on my own printer), so I don't have the photo for today at the end of each day.  I like the color by sending them out to be printed and Costco is close, cheap and our local Costco's prints are great (I think they calibrate their machines more often than other places).  I don't my going by there a few times a week so it isn't a big delay, but it isn't daily.  The second reason is that I can't really work in the time to make things every day.  My time is organized more by week.  I have two or three two-hour blocks that I try to use for creativity.  A lot of times I can do a little more here or there, but I just don't like the pressure of trying to work EVERY day.  Too much stress!  And this is supposed to be fun :)  When I realized that my time is structured weekly like this, it was very freeing and inspiring.  And fun!

The think I like best about my finished album is the way the pieces peek out the sides and top, and out from behind the other pieces, but without the whole thing feeling too messy.  And the fact that it is finished!

I'll be back with some pages to show soon.

12 x 12 in 2012

Wouldn't it be fun to take 12 photos on the 12th of each month in 2012 and put them together for a look at what our everyday life is like this year? At the end of the day on the 12th I suddenly remembered I wanted to do this... I had to scramble for some photos and several I filled in from other days, but no big deal! This is still what our life looks like in January (notice I left out my hiding indoors from the cedar pollen. Hm. I don't know that I really want that included anyway!).

It turns out this is not an original idea. Lots of people are doing it - check it out here!

as promised...

...another desert picture, this one taken by my dad!

Pics from the Desert

Since I haven't had time to write anything, I am going to try to put up a few recent pics instead. Here's one of Zack hiking in the mountains outside Tucson!