Project Life | Week 10

To catch-up with your Project Life posts, I believe, you have to blog more than once a week. But that doesn't seem to be happening right now. So, still catching up, here is Week 10:

On the left hand side, all products are from the PL Turquoise kit. I just put the entire weeks journaling on one card. It's not so clear on this photo, but in the album you can see the homework that Reuben is busy with. I thought that was nice to document. The "Hello Life overlay is from Ali and available at Designer Digitals. (And I wish I knew how to do those easy links at the bottom of your blog, sorry!).

One insert, containing a larger photo. The lay-out was inspired by Laura Kurz' amazing pages (but ended up not looking anything like it!). You'll see that I used a PL card on the left hand side. The boy tape I've had for ages, happy to give it a home! Top left I included a map (found in a newspaper advert) of our area (blurred it out a bit). I liked seeing that lines emerged as a theme this week. On the map and drawings (and even in the knitted wool perhaps?).

I'm so impressed with this very sweet (and I think first) family drawing by Liam. That's me on the left ;)

Stripey paperclips was found at Waltons Stationers. The card on the next page pulls out to reveal more photo's, of me with my hair curly, and straight (after a trip to the hairdresser). But I also started blowing it out straight on a daily basis not long after this. I forgot to photograph it for the blogpost. The speech bubble was a digital one I had, that I added text to, printed it out on a photo, and then cut it out and pasted onto a PL card.

No one but me would probably notice it, but this week marks a change in the way I take photo's. I took photo's in that way before, but subconciously steered away from it for a while. Perhaps because so many big events took place that just required mostly portrait shots. But this week I had myself inspired again by my favourite photography blog, Maine Momma  to look at photo's differently. To pay attention to the details, to see the beauty in them, the "photo opportunity". Photograph feet, and toys...

Another very inspiring blog is Habit, where a few women practise the daily habit of taking a photo and journaling something from the day. I find the journaling very interesting, but haven't gotten myself so far to journal in that style yet, usually because I save too little space for journaling, and then feel the need to just document the when, where and what. Yes, I still love every page more than the previous!

Project Life | Week 9

Welcome to my PL week 9. In this week I started playing more with stuff added on after my photo's were printed. I've scrapped digitally only for a few years, and the transition back is slow. PL is actually the perfect blend of the two for me since the scetch part of a Lay-out was never the favourite part for me. The little bird stamp was carved out of a rubber and stamped with powder paint onto a PL card. I borrowed the idea from Pinterest. I especially like Geninne's rubber stamps.

An (extra)ordinary week, documenting the boys starting Chess (Ali overlay from Designer Digitals). I also used some freebie journaling cards downloaded via my PL Pinterest board. We discovered beading at Women'sgroup...

We went to the Jesus Culture sessions at Rhema church. Another free downloadable journaling card there that I added typed journaling to. This page contains an insert that I made by cutting off one pocket from a 4x6 3-down page protector, and using the other two pockets. I added another overlay from Ali to the "Bedtime reading" photo. The same words was added to the overlay in Ali's hand font that I downloaded from Creating Keepsakes. (CK Ali Hand). I'm not sure if it's still available. I love that photo of Reuben taken at the MacDonalds play-area. And for a full view of the two pages....

And here's the back of the insert:

I loved seeing PL'ers enlarging photo's and dividing it into more than one page pocket. So had to try it. The overlay is from Ali at Designer Digitals. I think it's called "AE title and journal block overlays".

The other side documents a trip to the wool shop, fun! And a day at Hobby X, a very large annual Hobby Expo in Jo'burg. It was sad to see that South Africa is not aware of PL yet, and that the scrapbooking shops are far more focussed on the "embellish" side of Life Documenting. I found very few products suitable for PL'ing. (And still spent too much, haha!)

Project Life | Week 8

Welcome to my Week 8. The "one little week" is a free down-loadable wordart from Ali, and I thought it very appropriate documenting the one little week visit from my Mom.

The cute days of the week journaling cards are also free downloads, from Cathy Zielske. Find them here.

We took a lot of photo's on both the Friday and Saturday, so I decided to do Digital Lay-outs for each day. In retrospect I might have wanted some of those photo's bigger. This is a template from Ali called AE Layered template nr 33. The "relax" button was bought at a coffee shop! The back of this layout contains another digital template lay-out. It came out blurry on the photo I took of the page, and I can't remember the origin of the template, so I'll leave that out. It's very similar to this page.

A glance at both pages...

And the last page. The days of the week overlays are also from Ali, available for purchase at Designer Digitals, I think they're called "AEdwards 6x4 journalers". The cute aeroplave card tells the story of trouble with the airline that my Mom was flying with. It was a freebie from somewhere, but I can't find it now. I think it's called "Let's go". You can try my Project Life Pinterest board. I usually pin all the freebies I come across on there. And I mostly use freebies apart from my kit. And that was Week 8, which flew by because I anticipated it so much, and wanted the visit to last longer! 

Project Life | Week 7

Hello there! Still busy catching up here. I have to say that I just love this Project more every week! Thank you Becky (Higgins)!! I'm always most thrilled with the week I'm busy with. Find myself going over the pages again and again. I'm sure I'm not the only one...

Here's the first page of "Valentine week" :

It documents a morning (the only one so far) that Liam didn't want to go to Pre-school, and how good it was to just be home for him to spend the morning with me. The balloon was a Valentine's gift Reuben ordered for me from school. (Love that I'm his Valentine still). Some crafting at Women's group. A photo from my Brother's wedding (we couldn't make the trip). I like it that he is looking straight at the snapshot while every-one else is concentrating on the official photographer.

Here's a full view of both pages, with the insert to the right. It contains a Valetines Day card from my DH . And I just love pages that has crayon somewhere in them. Liam impressed me with these beautiful flowers he drew. He didn't like drawing much before, but has really grown in this area this year.

Here's the other side of the insert. It contains a Valentines Day card from Reuben. It says "Mama I love you" in our home language, Afrikaans. Also a photo of a Valentine's Project I did (seen on Maine Momma's blog). I melted bits of crayon pieces in the oven in heart shaped ice-trays, and stuck the finished & cooled hearts onto paper with a message. They went to school with the boys. The photo in the red frame was a hug I captured from my perspective. The photo at the bottom right is a flip up that I sewed on:

Here you can see inside. The top documents a Pony party we went to, and this is a photo of my Mom's arrival at the airport, and lunch we had there. Sunday we lunched somewhere else again. The Valentine and "All you need is love" cards are freebies I found on Pinterest. You can find them on my Project Life Board here. Sorry, I'm too focussed/busy/lazy to look it up now :)

Thank's for looking!

Project Life catch-up | Week 6

Welcome to week 6:

We were into February here, and I liked going for reds and dark browns and creams. Intentially and unintentionally. This week records the first week of going on an eating plan (after the previous week's spiritual fruit & veg fast). It was quite challenging in many ways, but at the same time easier than we anticipated. We (yes "we" :my husband kindly joined me, lot's of brownie cellery points for him!) actually started to love and want healthy food. We tried some very new (to us) things, like Quinua (still don't want that!) The plan is Dr. Gillian McKeith's 30 day eating plan and I lost about 3 kgs in the first week.

This week I also recorded a bit on my husband's work-life (he's a Project Engineer). He went on a 2 day site visit and took the camera along. The "big love" word-art was a freebie from Robyn Meierrotto at Design House Digitals. Their weekly freebies are worth checking out.

This week, surprisingly, only has two pages! It also documents me going for my very first crochet class in my friend's gorgeously colourful home. I've included one of the little things I've crocheted. The week-end our church had our second de-clutter day where everyone chucks out their unwanted stuff in the morning, and come and "shop" for free in the afternoon. It's a lot of fun, and I again had some good finds, including some oil paint and a handbag made from Indian sari's.

And here's the full spread:

If anyone reading here is not familiar with the Project Life concept, and wants to know more, you can read all about it on  Becky's blog.

Project Life catch-up | Week 5

Yes, it's happening, my PL posts are getting ticked off one after the other! Here's week 5:

A relatively calm week after all the Birthday and New-school-year craziness. I focussed on an aspect of my "One little word" {Flourish} for the year, nl. Nourish and shared it (my OLW) at Women's group. A lot of focus on Reuben this week, I know. Showing off some of his new school gear. I'll restore the balance again with a more Liam focussed lay-out at another time. But he doesn't always enjoy posing for photo's as much as his brother. And other times he enjoys the posing part a litlle bit too much!
The "love you to the moon and back" word art is from Robin Meierotto at Design House Digitals. The days of the week (Wed) was typed in with Ali's Handwritten font, and the other one (Tue) I think was downloaded for free from Design Editor.

 The highlight of the week was that Reuben started horseriding lessons. I made a special insert for this in my Microsoft photo editing program. I just opened a photo. Cropped it to the size I wanted. Then I set transparency to 100% and worked on the blank page, dragging photo's on and adding text. Then I digitally pasted the two sides (back and front) on one page and prited as A4. It's the easiest way for me, even though I do own and use Photoshop Elements for template lay-outs. It printed a bit too narrow, so I added some paper from the PL Turquoise set. PS: I have bought & added a tab to the side of this page after I've taken the photo.

And this is the other side. The journalling tells the story of why I felt that he should go for riding lessons (he's great with animals) and how we ended up at his riding instructor. And then I tell of how the first lesson went, the pleasure of the farm experience, walking past an apricot orchid to the field.  And how confident he was and how impressed his instructor was. And that she allowed Liam to ride the horse at the end of every lesson.

And as if his past couple of weeks wasn't exciting enough, Reuben still went and lost his first tooth this week :) I've been getting a lot of lower case toothy smiles on photo's since. Some felt crafting with a friend, lazy late summer days... And the Sunday was the ordaining of another set of elders at church. We are part of New Covenant Ministries International (NCMI). This couple is such an inspiration, so humble, and so on fire for God and ready for new challenges in their 60's. Love them and honour them. Oh, and our church also fasted this week. I was on fruit and vegetables and it was a wonderful time. A cool week!
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7 Cool things about Reuben's Birthday Party.

I'm interrupting my PL catch-up posts with this list of cool things about Reuben's Rockets and Robots party:

(it was totally inspired by Ali's post on cool things about her son's party.)

COOL THING #1: Defnitely Emile arriving wrapped in foil from head to toe, with a foil rocket on his back.   Totally cool!

COOL THING #2: Red  jelly, vanilla icecream and blue bubblegum sauce. The kids loved it and the parents  also wanted some.

COOL THING # 3: The Rockets and Robots theme. It was a great theme to work with. So many fun stuff to make, like the tinfoil robots and the paper rockets. And the Rocket cake!

COOL THING # 4: Friends. Good and comfortable friends that stayed till late. Even after they got soaking wet in the rain.

COOL THING # 5: The rain! Jumping castle + rain = fun. The kids loved to take their shirts off and play in the puddles. It was Reuben's favourite part of the party.

COOL THING # 6: The fact that it was a street party & that a lot of our neighbours attended it too.

COOL THING # 7: How Reuben paused and took in the words on our card before he opened his gift. (And the fact that it was Kid's Monopoly and he can't get enough of it!)

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Project Life catch-up | Week 4

Hello there, I hope you're feeling a lot better than me right now. Dealing with some flu bugs here. Seasonal changes I guess. Anyway, here is the first intalment of week 4: This week, like week 3 ended up being two double pages. I won't be doing this a lot, I promise. (Though most weeks do end up with an extra insert.) This was my son's "Rockets and Robots!" Birthday party week, hence the need for more "space" (hehe) for photo's and stories..

The first half of the week was mainly about party preparations. Those little robots was an idea on Pinterest. I wrapped small Smartie boxes with tinfoil and then added folded (and silver sprayed) arms, legs and heads with googly eyes. Labour intensive, but I just loved them! They went into party packs with sweeties and rocket & robot themed stickers.

Some more bits and pieces of the week. I've tried to find some info on the Robot scrapbook paper I've used, but it's been cut to pieces! All I can say is that one is from Craft n Craftin Item # R008. Some "Night Light" journaling cards from October afternoon, and some more robot paper from http://www.scrapcollection.co.za/.

The last bit of the page is used to introduce the party. Don't you just love that his best friend showed up wraped in foil from head to toe? We live in a great neighbourhood, where most of the kids have their parties in the circle outside. We did so too, and hired a jumping castle for the day. First time I did that. I'm far more a fan of partygames. But concidering that there was a lot of carting stuff hence and forth, I decided to save that bit of energy!

The second double page looks like this:

My boys are carrying "jetpacks" made from Pringle containers wrapped in foil and some "fiery" cellophane added. I also printed out some Nasa tags for everyone (found them on Pinterest).

Any-one interested in browsing my Pinterest board can go here. That cake took quite a bit of "Rocket science" but baking and decorating, or more the decorating part, is one of the highlights of my kid's parties for me.

And this is the last page, still mostly documenting the party, and the fact that we got caught out by an unexpected rainshower.. Love that my friend got those photo's of the kids playing in the rain while I was running around getting stuff indoors. I would have totally missed that, and I think it was the highlight of the party for most of the kids! You might have noticed that on the previous page the card peeking out (middle left on this page) differs from the one you see here. That's because I realised only after posting on the blog that those two cards were actually turned around (facing the next week) in my album. I suspect I had nothing to do with that.

And here's the entire second double page:

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The big PL catch-up | Week 3, second page.

Yes, me again, back so soon! Here is week 3's second page. You'll see from my previous post that this was a very  FULL week with a Boy's Birthday and 1st day of school all in one go. Just too many photo's for one spread. But doing it this way meant that I didn't feel the need to do an additional Digital lay-out of the First Day. This year my focus has defnitely moved from Digital Lay-Outs to PL. The digital stuff is still very handy in PL too, though. And I still want to {make time!} & do Digital albums.

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This page just documents the morning drop-off of the 1st day. It includes a little leather school shoe tag. The alphbetical tags from the Turquiose kit were perfect for this week. Mama just blocked out a little note containing their school names (one is in Primary, one in Pre-school now). The "Playing" circle is from Ali Edwards at Designer Digitals. The pack is called "Prep school".

Another A4 insert containing a welcoming letter Liam got from school..

Um, yes, in case you're wondering why my pages aren't in an album, I'm still waiting here at the Southern tip of Africa for it to arrive...This page is about the rest of the week, some kid's art, parent meeting at school, athletics, Sunday school..I find it hard to not document something from every day. Most of my weeks have a story for each day. I can be rather chronological with some things.

And that was week 3!

The big PL catch-up| Week 3

Oooh hello, what is this? My blog?! Gasp! I've just about almost forgotten about you! I'm sorry, but you know, life got in the way, friendships and hobbies and birthday parties and kids starting school and pre-school for the first time and ..and.. all in random order. But I have kept up my Project Life album, just haven't posted my efforts anywhere.

Well, here is the first of my major catch-up: Week Three:

My apologies again for the photo quality. I have to take them with my little canon, as the only working lens I have for the SLR is too long. This week consists of two double pages. If it's your son's birthday and first day at school (and your youngest's first day at pre-school) you cannot get away with anything less than 2 pages. (Not in my world in any way.) And there is another insert containing some memorabalia from his "Rockets and Robots" Birthday party, which thankfully wasn't that week, but a lot of preparations happened here. Such as the invite that can be seen hanging in one photo (middle 1st). An actual invite is included in the inserted A4 sheet. The "Happy Birthday" wordart was a free download, but not sure from where.

The invite is written on the reverse, the top sprayed silver, and decorated with stars. All cut in a spiral and hung from a string, with the rocket (the one on the left) dangling at the bottom. The idea came from a beautiful party book called "Childrens Parties" by Rose Hammick and Charlotte Packer.

And this is the right hand side where I start to document the first school day (In South Africa school years starts in January). In the back of the A4 insert I included a certificate my youngest got on his 1st day at Pre-school. Very protective Mama just blocked out some of the info on there. The little schoolboy picture and "First day" word-art is from a "Wicket Smart" freebie, no longer sure from where, sorry! My youngest is actually not in uniform, it just looks that way since he happened to be wearing a denim shirt.

Well, that wasn't so bad. Back on the blogging horse I think!

Project Life | Week two

It's already Wednesday, and such a buzy few days, but you'll hear all about it next week! Here is my lay-outs for week two, quite a full week as well:

The picture was created by my eldest, after he asked what Project Life is all about, and I explained him a bit. He then wanted to know if he could help, and I said "Yes you can!". The little "instax" photo with frame around was made digitally from a normal photo. I used a photo frame called "Instax Frame" by Gina Cabrera, but saved it in such a way that I'm not sure where I found it, the case with a lot of my digital stuff.

I found a link to this questionare on Ali's PL blog. Download the New Years interview here. The arrow strip is cut from the Turquoise kit's paper.

Oh, by the way, our first language is actually not English. (Therefore please be patient with my blogging!) We speak Afrikaans at home, one of the many official languages in South Africa (I think there's 16). So, if any sentence pops up that doesn't make any sense, it's probably in Afrikaans! I've decided way back when I started scrapbooking, to use English on my pages, for a few reasons, such as that it would be more accessible, say for potentially English speaking friends and generations to come. A lot of digital stuff is also available only in English off course. But I love my own language, it's warm and passionate, earthy and intimate. It says things in a way that doesn't come out the same in any other tounge. I think I will still scrap some pages in Afrikaans.

This page contains a handout from the Planetarium we visited on Saturday. I'm planning to add a strip with Ali Edwards' "Title and journal overlay" from Designer Digitals at the bottom, telling the story of the trip, and hiding the outdated date on there.

I then added in an extra pageprotector- the 3 down 4x6 page protectors from Becky Higgins. I included a postcard with the Southern (as in Hemisphere) skies.

I know that that photo at the top left is just going to get funnier every time we see it. My boys on a frog walk. I did another "instax" photo for the journaling card (I cut it from the Turquoise paper kit). I was sorry to see that the numbers included in the kit only goes up to ten instead of 31. I suppose that you can put two circles together, but I'd prefer the number on one sticker. I think I'll just start adding them digitally.

And that's week two! Thank You for stopping by...

The Monkey sanctuary.

South African schools are currently coming towards the end of an approximately 6 week break. One of our treat outings for the holiday was a daytrip to a nearby Monkey Sanctuary. It's about 20 mins drive from Jo'burg, near Hartebeespoort Dam. When we lived in Durban, we were quite used to wild monkeys coming into the homes, stealing fruit. Here in Joburg it's been a while since we saw any.

The monkeys at the sanctuary all live in an enclosed area of lush rainforest-like vegetation. Tours of about an hour each are then taken through the area. You get to see the monkeys really up close. They have all been "human imprinted", i.e. they have lived with humans. Apparently people import them as babies, mostly from South America. Once they grow older, and sometimes more aggressive, they are then brought to the sanctuary.

Some of them adapt well to the wilder environment, and others not so well. There was a twosome that stole some-one's waterbottle right out of his pocket, to everyone's amusement.

One of the water "thieves" then decided to ride along on one of the ladies' head & shoulders. There was no way he was getting off. Another monkey, who was acting very aggressively towards the others was apparently found abandoned by his owners who emigrated to Cuba.

But there are some happy stories too, like the mothers we saw with little ones. Isn't that one too cute! They said that the tell tale sign that the monkeys have adapted well is when they start breeding. I would have uploaded a lot more photo's, but it is taking extremely long. I'm hoping to do a digital lay-out and then I'll upload that at some stage. It was a great outing, I just wished we could have had more time to just enjoy the forest at leisure. It reminded me a lot of Durban's coastal forests.

Project Life | Week One

Did I mention that I love working with the paper kit? LOVE! I'm keeping January's pages very light & summery, since it IS summer here. Blues and greens are the colours I go for right now, and this is the Turqoise kit after all!

I'm still waiting for a date stamp to fill in the dates. The "start here" was cut from "Circa 1934 Borders" patterned paper by Cosmo Cricket. The half circle (far right, middle row), was cut from the paper that comes with the kit. I wasn't planning on getting the paper, but it was going to come with the PL kit. When the full kit wasn't available, my husband accidently still ordered the paperpack. But I'm starting to see that the paper might be handy...I also used it to extend the balloon photo that was printed too small by the printers.

"Summer" word-art is a freebie from Karla Dudley. The black "PhotographyFrames" was a digital freebie from Joanne Brisebois.

Just a collage of some close-ups. Since my digital album last year didn't really have any embellishments, mostly just words & photo's, I'm still quite focussed on photo's. That might or might not change during this project. At the moment I defnitely have more photo's than pockets!

"Flourish" is my one little word (Ali Edwards inspired) for the year. With that I quoted Isaih 54:10.

"Father, You never change, Your love for me always remains the same. The mountains may move and the hills dissapear, but even then Your faithful love for me will remain. Your covenant of blessing will never be broken. In you I relax, in You I am safe, in You I am free to blossom into all You have planned for me! I become complete."