Week in the life


Starts today! It’s not too late to grab your camera (or phone) and participate! I’ll be blogging the next seven days with a timestamp and some photos. Easy. Later I’ll put them into some kind of album. I don’t have a plan. Who cares? I’ll never regret the extra documentation of our lives. Is anyone else joining me?

Random bits

Just some random things today.
I’m reading this book. I love it. It’s so easy to forget how far women have come in the last 60 years. It makes me want to learn even more and keep my brain fresh. It makes me want to question things, and I love that. I already got a copy for my mother-in-law and I’m sure to buy more as presents; I think any woman would get something out of it. And a lot less deep, but also hard to put down is a Vintage Quilt identification and price guide. I got it because the $2.99 price at Border’s was too good to pass up and it is full of inspiration and information.
(side note I love everything about my Kindle, except for the not being able to hand someone a physical book to borrow when I’m done thing).
Tuesday has the biggest book appetite of the family right now. The Rain Train (really wish it wasn’t so fitting…) Goodnight Train (I wish it were MORE fitting, ha!) Our bird books, including new ones: A field Guide to the Birds of North America and Complete Birds of the World. Both were super clearance at Borders (which by the way is closing so if you have a gift card use it now before it gets turned over to liquidators!). I want to do some more research about bird guides, maybe check some out at the library and find some that are very relevant to us. I don’t think these are the best, but for the price I like having some in our growing resource library. Tuesday and I were reading one in the back yard laying on the grass and as I read things like, “it eats aquatic animals and mice” she kept saying, “ohhh!” There were also insect and butterfly books on clearance ($3.99) we picked up.
Oh and I can’t forget the Piggie and Elephant books! We got them buy one get one half off and Tuesday is a huge fan. So far we have a great one about rainy days, sharing toys, dancing, and including friends.
I think I better have a very serious budget in place as Border’s goes through liquidation because once those books start being seriously discounted… well lets just say there are some art books and gorgeous nature books I’ve had my eye on for a while (I can totally see Bj hiding my credit card while I sleep)! I once saw an article by a dad who made his kids a wall of awesome (can’t find the link!). It included all kinds of books he got amazing deals on. The higher the shelf the more advanced the material. It took up a long wall in his house and the top held globes, microscopes, etc. So cool.
I’m doing lots of little things. Organizing my stashes of various supplies, which always has the effect of making me want to start many more projects. Almost done with the ridiculousness that is hand stitching four very long curtains. And then I just need to find the most perfect orange bowl and I might be able to show you my “new” living room. I love it.
I faced a fear of needles and got two of my moles shaved off yesterday. Ali warned me that the local would sting a bit so I was ready for it. But it really was not that bad. And as she said, the alternative is much worse. So go get your skin checked friends!
I’m getting ready for

And I’m very excited. Last year I simply posted a photo along with a timestamp and that is my plan this year for the blog as well. I hope you enjoy the peek into my life. I’ll work on putting the album together the next week. This weekend I hope I have time to gather up supplies, envelopes and charge my camera batteries, as it is so helpful to go full steam into the project and not miss a minute. I’m hoping I can get more photos of me in action, like last year. You can see all of my week in the life posts here.
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More of the same, and something new.

While I was going through all those photos and organizing my storage binders I became obsessed with scrapbooking 2008. It was just a year of so much change, and excitement. The remodel, the pregnancy, grandpa, travels. I feel like I’m on the verge of forgetting it all. Of course 2008 was also the year of Sciarrino doing a ton of stuff for me, like sewing all these cloth wipes.

I certainly want to remember the craziness of thinking I’d need 300 wipes! Thank goodness I didn’t 🙂 And the excitement of getting all the wee diapers ready to go. Sigh.

I love how so many pattern paper companies now put a little strip of coordinating paper on the bottom of a sheet. Cut your paper right and it’s an instant embellishment, as I used it here. My obsession over Sundara yarn, oh man I still have so much of this stuff! It is beautiful though.

And this paper is really “cheating” (I say that because it reminds me of “cheater” fabrics for quilting). In addition to going through old photos I’m also going through random bits and bobs I’ve saved, like this stitched maternity tag, I love it. Sadly after this tag my electric typewriter started acting possessed. It won’t type any letters I press, it randomly decides to type other things in their place (a=# for example). No idea how I managed to do that!

Not a lot of journaling, just remembering my sweet god-daughter as she was freshly born five years ago.
And now my favorite:

Oh how I love this layout. I really don’t think I would have ever scrapbooked my pregnancy in this way unless I had printed all the photos for my system. I think this will be one of those layouts I love looking at (and hopefully Tuesday does too) a lot over the years.

(obviously I was channeling my inner Marcy Penner) There are a ton of different colors (and black and white) and quality of photos going on here. But pulling it together with strips of paper, my FAVORITE trim from Ribbon Jar (comes in so many delicious colors), and glimmer mist splatters really worked I think. The thing I love the most though is that I used all these photos on one layout and told a great story. The story of nine months. In my previous line of thinking this might have turned into ELEVEN separate layouts. Or more likely, I would never have scrapbooked all of these photos. A few left over pregnancy photos I may scrapbook singly. Two made it into the category drawer about me, and one got tossed in Tuesday’s bin. I am excited to try this new style again, and am going to look for more stories that lend themselves to this long term page approach.
So there you have it, a handful of the 16 from the last week. Since I’ve started this blog I’ve flitted about topics and go in and out of scrapbooking (and knitting, and spinning, beading and painting, home decor and garden projects). But you know, I think that’s ok. I may feel a little overwhelmed about where I’m going to store all this stuff, but I’m never sorry about getting a story down. It’s a great feeling and hopefully I’ve inspired one of you to take a look at your digital photo library or piles of prints and remember one too.

Tons of photos.

I recently got a huge order from Shutterfly (where I get my snapshots printed). Because it had been months (five) since I’d had any photos printed I needed to re-organize my storage binders (based on the Library of Memories/Photo Freedom concept taught at Big Picture Classes).

These binders hold my printed photos by year (and further separated by season). When I want to/get to scrapbook I can pull photos out of these binders or from category drawers that hold various pictures of things that we do, people we love, places we go, etc. The idea is that after five years any photos left in a binder would be either tossed, filed into category drawers, or put in cold storage. I’m way over simplifying here and there are great classes/books about this topic (and recently a paper-clipping podcast). I really have loved using this system for the last four years, but the one thing I don’t like is the waste when I toss pictures. Now I keep the leftovers for a little scrapbook buddy who is not so picky about the pictures she works with so it’s not as much of an issue. When I was re-organizing the other thing that I was thinking about is the fact that Tuesday is only 2.5 years old. We have a lot of living with her and documenting her to go and what am I going to do with all of these photos/layouts?!?!?
Sarah and I recently had a scrapbook day (love them!) and I whipped out eight layouts. It was fun, and they were super simple. I got the stories down that I really want to remember. This blog helps a lot to remember details (and I have the date printed on the back of each photo to help me remember that). All my layouts were multi photo. I admit I love showcasing one photo and cool techniques, but I was feeling the space crunch and I wanted to use more photos.

Now there really isn’t much to this layout. It’s super simple, but it works. My car was one of the things I was thinking I wanted to remember but didn’t have a layout about it. Oh how I loved this car! Two photos didn’t make this layout (and I already had them printed) one got put into a category drawer under vehicles and the other one was tossed into a box for my glue stick happy two year old.
Think I can’t get simpler? Well this one took me all of 15 minutes.

I like remembering this crazy project because I don’t stay up until 3:45 AM to finish baby-shower gifts much any more.

Something I’ve been wanting to scrapbook for a while…

The journalling about driving through Portland on the way home from the airport and general thoughts on the city are tucked in this envelope.

I think it’s important to record big achievements and this sweater was one of mine. I debated cropping the bottom right photo, but I like seeing the little bits of my ubiquitous tote, the iron and blocking process, and the TiVo in the back. I’m sure those things will date this (in a good way).
I’ll continue with some of the (16!) layouts I’ve made this last week tomorrow, but I want to hear from you. What do you think about all the layouts you made or pictures you print. Are you worried about storing them? Are you staying mostly digital? I love the idea of Tuesday flipping through books but I am a little torn. What did your parents do? Do you wish they saved more or less? Let us know in the comments!

Easy gift – initial shirts

I can’t remember where I saw initial shirts initially (ha!), but they were love at first sight. The shirts I saw were screen printed but I wanted to try out my new fabric interfacing with my Silhouette so I chose that medium. Donna made one up by hand with Ws for William, but I used my machine for these. A Tt shirt for Tuesday:

She wore it today with an interesting outfit choice. Though obviously I should have known buying her this tutu would mean she wanted to wear it all the time.

So I used the actual Silhouette brand sewable fabric interfacing for this shirt. Then I went to Jo-Ann’s and realized that Heat n Bond lite (available with the other interfacings) is the EXACT SAME THING. And it is $1.99 a yard, so really .99 a yard since everything is on sale there always (the Silhouette branded stuff is $7.99 a yard to compare). Here’s a shirt I made with that stuff.

Exactly the same. It cuts out of the machine so easily. You iron this interfacing on the back of the fabric for two seconds, let cool, peel off protective cover, place on a cutting mat and cut (speed 3, thickness 30, double cut for best results). Once cut you can iron it onto your fabric for a temporary hold (that I found very secure) while you stitch around the letter or image. I used a narrow zig-zag stitch for these with coordinating thread.

These shirts were a big hit with the kids just learning their letters. If you have a Silhouette you should try experimenting with cutting fabric. It’s fun and so easy. The Heat n Bond also comes in an ultra hold which I believe is the same as the no-sew fabric interfacing Silhouette sells (they call it clean cut, but I do not actually think it cuts more cleanly). Let me know if you do, I’d love to see the projects!
P.S. I’ve been a slacker blogger because I decided my new curtains all needed to be hand sewn to their linings. Is that over the top? Please say no.