Project Life: Wrapping Up October

Since I'm weeks behind on posting Project Life pages I thought I'd just to a month by month look at what hasn't been shared. Today I'll finish off sharing pages from October.

October 21 - 28

October 28 - November 3

We spent a lot of time dressing up for Halloween, baking sugar cookies, decorating our house for all and probably eating too much candy.

I haven't started working on a Project Life album for this year yet. I'm still deciding how I want to manage the project. Might do a smaller album. Also thinking about doing a spread per month instead of a spread per week. I love this project, but it took a lot of time to keep it up all year and I'm not sure that I'm ready to commit all of that time to the album again this year.

Are you doing Project Life in 2013?

December Daily Days 16 - 25

I'm wrapping up my December Daily pages today. Yes, this probably should have been done in December, but better late than never, right?

On day 16, I included our family Christmas card + photo. My husband designed our card this year and loved that it was a one of a kind card.

A quick visit with Santa at our family Christmas party. We are lucky enough to live near a lot of family and went to a party where about 80 family members got together to celebrate Christmas.

Our cards are in the mail! I always feels like a great accomplishment when the Christmas cards are sent.

Making salsa. One of our family traditions is to deliver chips and homemade salsa to our neighborhood friends. We think it's a nice break from all of the sugar.

Class winter party. I'm a room mom in Hannah's class and we had fun at her class party. That night our boys brought home a special Starbucks hot chocolate delivery. Even though the hot chocolate delivery isn't an annual tradition, I love that I have a place to document this photo and memory.

Our 16th wedding anniversary!  We had a great night checking out these shops, eating dinner at Chelsea's kitchen, getting dessert at Sugar Bowl and seeing the movie Lincoln. Such a fun night!

Most of the presents were wrapped and under the tree. This was a bit of an accomplishment because some years the wrapping hasn't started until Christmas Eve.

Prepping some asparagus to take to my parents' house for dinner. Plus the girls set up a school in their bedroom and had their friends come over to play along. They spent 3 hours that afternoon playing school. Loved it!

Christmas Eve! We started the festivities at Benihana for our traditional lunch with friends. This place is perfect for lunch because it's not very busy, the prices are cheaper and the kids (and parents) are entertained throughout the meal.

We spent the evening at my mother in law's house enjoying our traditional Mexican feast and opening of presents.

We finished off the night by stoping by my parents' house for reading and acting out the nativity and a Christmas Eve toast.

The final page of the album covers Christmas day. We started off the morning with the 5 of us opening gifts and then we had family come over for brunch. After a nice afternoon nap, we went to my parents' house for an Italian feast.

Yes, I feel blessed to have such a great month. I think documenting it makes me even more grateful because I can write about all we did and look back at the great memories we made as a family. Sometimes it takes some work and effort to make everything happen, but in the end, I think the traditions and memories are the things that help our family grow stronger and it's worth the effort.

Other pages from this year's album:

December Daily Day 1 - 5, 2012

December Daily Days 6 - 15, 2012

Trying Something New: A Quilt!

Early in December I was trying to come up with a great Christmas gift idea for my husband, Ward. I don't know about you, but my husband in not easy to buy gifts for. He either wants expensive electronics (that he would need to pick out for himself) or he just picks things up when he wants them and then there is nothing left for me to give him.

So, back to thinking about something to get to him for Christmas. After a few boring gift ideas, I came up with the idea of making him a t-shirt quilt.

I know the concept of t-shirt quilt isn't new, but for a non-sewer like me it was a pretty big idea.

Ward had a big stack of t-shirts in our closet that he had moved out of his clothes wearing rotation, but he didn't want to part with the shirts. Years ago he has said that he would love to have a t-shirt quilt with all of his shirts. I laughed and said, yes, that would be great, wouldn't it!?!

I did a web search and found a couple of sites (here and here) that gave me guidance on how to start this project.  I also talked to my sister Melanie to get details on the project since she's made them before. It's too bad she lives across the country from me or we could have worked on it together!

I set off to Hobby Lobby with my supply list in hand. Rotary cutter, cutting mat, interface (did you know you can buy it buy the yard?!?), batting and thread. Oh, and I went to Target to buy a grey full sized sheet for the backing on the quilt.

One of the trickiest things about putting this together was that Ward works from home a lot of the time. He luckily has one set day in the office each week that I knew I could freely work. He's in and out of the house the rest of the days to meetings, so I was always listening for the garage door to open and signal that it was time to put the project away.

Luckily I never got caught!

One of the coolest things about making this quilt is that my husband designed about half of these shirts. He loves t-shirt design and did a full line of shirts a few years ago. It was such a fun free time project for him. Hopefully he'll be able to do it again sometime!

One thing I learned was that I really enjoy crafting with paper much more than fabric. Of course I loved the process of making something meaningful for my husband, but I don't think I'll be taking sewing up as a major hobby any time soon.

Success! Ward loves his quilt!

Now I wonder what I will come up with next year for his Christmas present.

December Daily Days 6 - 15

One of my favorite things about December is that it is full of family traditions. We had a full calendar last month and it was fun to document all of our activities in my December Daily album.

I kept the album pretty simple so that it would be easy to keep up with throughout the month. All of the photos are printed at home on this printer that I've had for a few years. The journaling was all done with either a gold or black sharpie. Simple!

This is the third year that I've done a December Daily album and I really enjoyed the process.

December Daily Days 1-5

12 Favs of 2012

Happy New Year!

I'm excited to welcome a new year. 2013 is going to be fantastic. I'm excited to get it started.

I thought it would be fun to take a look through my scrapbook pages from 2012 and post my favorite 12 from the year.

 

2012 was a fun year for creating and I'm looking forward to making a lot more paper crafting in 2013!

Us

This morning I woke up and went right into my scrapbook room. With all of the holiday craziness, there hasn't been much time for creating layouts. Luckily, I did keep up with my December Daily album with month and my project life album is current. But sometimes I just want to make a layout.

So today was the day for a layout.

I've had my January Scrapbook Circle kit sitting on my desk for a couple of weeks and I've been anxious to dive in and use it. The grey, pink and teal combo is one of my favorites right now.

For the background paper on this page, I sliced it into strips and then attached it to a piece of card stock with the stripes slightly staggered. This idea came to me because I wanted to use my new typewriter on the page, but 12 X 12 paper doesn't fit into the typewriter. So I cut the paper with the intention of just putting it back together as it was, but then played around with the new paper placement.

Want to see my new typewriter?  I must say that I love it!

After I got the typewriter, my sister mentioned that my parents had an old typewriter table on their back patio. My dad said I could have it if I wanted it. Seriously?  How cool it this?

I'm pretty sure I'll be typing on as many projects as I can.

Have you seen the January Scrapbook Circle Kit, Only You, yet?

Plus there is a fun add-on kit, You and Me, too!

Hope you are getting a little extra time to spend with your family this holiday season!