SMASH Journal Cover

Mother's Day

First of all let me start by saying Happy Mother's Day to all you wonderful women out there. I hope that you had a good day and know how tremendously important you are. You're role in nurturing and guiding your children is immeasurable. It is vitally important. Being a mother is beautiful, challenging, amazing, work. Give it your top priority. God will help you in this amazing work. 

For my mom for Mother's Day I made her this Grandma book. I used the Flea Market Collection from Maggie Holmes. It is one of my very favorite collections and I was surprised at how well it worked for boy and girl pages.  I love these cut apart pages. The first thing I did was cut apart all the tags and words and put them right at arms reach. I was amazed at how many embellishments you got from this one page!!! (the the bowl are several pages all cut apart). 

I used the 12 x 12 paper pad for the Flea Market Collection and the 6 x 6 pad. The album was a plain chipboard album that I covered with paper. It had a few page protectors inside and then I simple added additional pages that were not in a page protector. 

I wanted this book to just be a collect of fun memories of my children with Grammy. 

I love you mom!

I also had to include these cute pictures below. For Mother's Day my girls and I did some scrapbooking together. I worked on Project Life and they worked in their scrapbooks. It's so fun sharing something I love with them! 

I am so grateful for the gift of being a mom!

Frozen Birthday Party

Have you been walking around singing the songs to Disney's Frozen in your head? That totally describes us, except it's everyday and not in our heads, but loud and off key. We were pretty much counting down the days until Frozen came out on video and have watched it almost everyday since. When it came time to plan sweet Mckenzie's birthday party, there was no doubt it was to be the best Frozen party ever!!!

My two girls helped with a lot of the planning. One very important detail was to have Olaf outside to greet people. 

Then we turned the house into a winter wonderland. The best decoration of all were the paper snow flakes. They were cheap and easy and made such a big impact. We probably made a hundred of them and taped them up everywhere. 

I bought some digital files on Etsy and printed out a banner and some signs. It was great to have the characters from the movie as a part of the party. 

We did a party Saturday morning complete with PJs and pancakes! All the kids had pancakes dusted with snow (powdered sugar) and decked out with sprinkles! Mckenzie even had candles in her pancake tower. 

 After pancakes and presents the kids colored Frozen coloring pages and made snowmen out of marshmallows!

Our party favor were these wonderful snowflake cookies we made and decorated ahead of time! 

It was a great day. 

Project Life

If you are someone who is new to Project life this is for you. If you have seen all the great Project Life supplies at Micheals and want some this post if for you. If you have some Project Life stuff and don't know how to start, this post is for you. If you have been doing Project Life and just want some more ideas. This post is for you! 

I love Project Life. I have been doing it for a number of years now. This was my first album ever in 2010. It is the Cherry Edition. 

I fell in love with it right away. I loved the layout and the way it told a beautiful story of our lives. I used days of the week stickers to connect the photos to the journaling and I took a picture everyday. As I look back, I love the pictures, but I also love the journaling. I love reading about what we were doing and thinking. There are so many little details I would have forgotten is they had not been recorded. And my favorite thing about looking back through my Project Life book is it helps me to see the good. I know we've had struggles and hard days, but through it all, there has been so much good, so many little miracles, so many small blessings. 

Every week follows the same format. I have a title card in the upper left corner with the dates and then a picture for everyday of the week and journaling cards for everyday of the week. Then I use the days of the week stickers to coordinate the pictures and journaling cards. (These stickers no longer come with the kits, you can buy them on-line at Two Peas in a Bucket.) I also make some later on.

If you are new to project life or want to keep things simple, this is a great format to follow. One thing I have always loved about project life is the design is done for you. Instead of trying to come with a great scrapbook page design every time you sit down, you can focus on documenting the memory. It's fast, simple and wonderful. 

Here is another album I did for 2012 using the Amber Edition. This was my favorite kit to work with. I loved the bright colors. It seems to go with everything and fit me perfectly.

This year I was learning more about mixed media and started adding paint and rub-ons and alphabet stickers to my pages. I didn't have time for a lot of traditional scrapbooking so I started using all my cool supplies in my Project Life book and was loving it. 

I used the same basic format, but dressed it up a little bit. This is a title card, where I included the date, but also a title for the week. 

This is one of my favorite layouts ever. School was out and I unintentionally took a picture everyday of my two daughters together. I didn't even realize they were together in every picture until I had developed them and was putting them into the layout. It's my favorite because it shows what good friends they really are. 

I also started adding more paper details from our lives, like receipts, cards, pictures the girls color, business cards, programs, ticket stubs, or even pictures from on-line. 

paper, paint and doodling... 

So the big question everyone asks, is how do you take a picture everyday? And do you want to know my secret? I don't. I know this might seem a little unorthodox, but it is what works for me. I try to take a picture everyday, but some days you forget or are too busy. So when I have my camera out and am having fun taking pictures of my kids I take a couple extra "filler" pictures to fill in on the days I missed. Because this picture of my baby with baby food all over her face could really be on any day. We go through the messy baby food routine everyday. For me I can easily take my camera out on Monday, and take a picture of a child in their favorite PJs, take a picture of our favorite cereal, take a picture of my other daughter with her back pack all ready for school, take a picture of the babies cute smile, take a picture of the kids playing, take a picture of the dog, take a picture of my husband when he comes home from work, or the kids riding their bikes and I easily have enough material to fill our whole week. Some other ideas for filler pictures are, take a picture of the rooms of your house (don't let a lack of design and decorating inhibit you, one day you'll love the memory and the imperfection), take a picture of your Facebook or Instagram feed, take a picture of a sweet text message, use a recipe card, save some of your kids art work, look up images of your town or favorite restaurant online, take a picture of a book your reading, cut a picture out of a magazine or write a note to your kids. The possibilities are endless. 

Now this isn't what I typically do. I do enjoy capturing moments everyday that I never want to forget.   But don't let the idea of having to take a picture everyday stress you out. If you try to take pictures and add in some "filler" material you'll find you will have enough stuff to work with. My biggest asset in getting pictures taken everyday is my iPhone! How did I ever love without it? I always have it with me and can easily snap that precious moment no matter where we are. 

Another thing I hear people say, is I don't have a lot of kids so what would I document? There are lots so people out there you do Project Life and don't have kids. It's a way to document or journal your life, whatever that maybe. If it's mostly pictures of your travels, your thoughts, art work, photography, grandchildren, things you are grateful for, etc. It can be something you do just for yourself or maybe you do it so your grandchildren can get to know their grandma better. Make it your own. Make it work for you. 

Now you don't have to follow the format of taking pictures everyday. You can simply use it to document the pictures you do have. You can have it summarize pictures from January or memories from a fun trip. It's a great way to document almost anything. 

This was a trip we took to Arizona and I have way more pictures then these, but I love picking out a few pictures to tell the story of what we did the whole week and it's easy to see and remember all on a 2 page spread. 

This is from my 2013 album. You can see I really started adding more embellishments and scrapbooking techniques. At the time I couldn't find any days of the week stickers so I simply printed up the days of the week on my computer and printed them out. Then I made little flags out or scraps of patterned paper or used washi tape behind the day print out. 

This little card has all of my favorite things, negative space, phrase stamps and wood veneer. I love using the leftover pieces from when you've cut or punches something out. For a scrapbook layout I did a while a go I had to cut out a whole bunch of circles. I saved some of these scraps to see if I could find a fun way to use them. I just had a small piece and fought it would be a fun layer to this 4 x 3 card. I love how it adds more pattern without covering everything up and I loved that I could stamp "smiles" into the circle and it highlights it perfectly. 

Here is another title card where I stamped all the dates. I love roller stamps with dates and phrases!

This is a recent page I did from last year. Yes I am still trying to finish my 2013 book. I usually stay up to date, but with having a baby in the fall, I got behind. Heck I was behind from the very beginning last year.  I loved using this Project Life Winter Themed Cards. 

 I hate that it's hard to see all the details in this 2 page spread. I balanced the whole spread with pink and turquoise, gold accents and wood veneer. 

Spring Break is still very snowy here in Colorado. 

One of my favorite things about doing project life is that it has inspired me to take more pictures of the details of our lives. I love capturing everyday moments. It's the little things that I love the most. 

This is my Favorite picture from the spread! It was Mckenzie's birthday and she was tickled pink! I love this sweet girl. 

For more project life info and products check out Becky Higgins. Good luck on all your Project Life adventures!