Scrappin' Seminole

Project 365 pause

I was afraid it would happen eventually - just not before the end of the first month! 

Lack.

Of.

Time.

And.

Inspiration.

I've had a long, hard, tiring week.  I've been helping Dad with the house painting every night for as much time as we can fit in before dark, trying to ramp up my 10k training and school has been really busy with a new marking period underway and state testing looming. 

Today was super crazy anyway and with a bomb threat that delayed our lunch and kept us out in the midday sun thrown in - today was actually hot at just above 80F - well, I'm just wiped out.  This is the first time in a long time that I just came home right after school and went to sleep.

So I'm a few days behind on my 365 but I think I've got everyday covered up to yesterday.  I'll be back this weekend with my week's worth of photos.

In the meantime, here's my silly monkey at the breakfast table (i.e. sippy cup of milk, cereal pile on the table) yesterday morning.

Project 365: Days 24 - 27

{Day 24}

On Wednesday, it was cold here in South Florida!  Now you northerners are probably thinking, yeah right.  Maybe.  But overnight temps below 50 degrees is newsworthy, so when it gets below 40, that's even bigger news.  But the really big deal is when it doesn't get above 50 even by afternoon.  That's cold!

{Day 25}

Artwork of the day from the 1.5 year old.

{Day 26}

There's Em in the car line where I pick her up every day after school.  Almost every day she comes skipping over to the car with a huge smile on her face.

{Day 27}

Lyss noticed Grampa out back painting the trim on the house so she got out her favorite Christmas toy - the laptop from Mandy - and parked herself at the table on the patio so she could hang out while he painted.

Project 365: completed week 2

This is before I figured out how to keep my journaling cards from moving around, so they still looked a little askew at this point.

Project 365

Oops!  I posted day 23 before I posted day 22.

{Day 22}

We had Monday off school for MLK Day and first thing in the morning, the girls were out on the patio playing.  Em is very into food display and presentation.  She loves Ultimate Recipe Showdown and really gets into creating her own *recipes*.

Project 365 & keeping those little journaling cards from moving around

{Day 23}

What else could this day be?  Found this cool aerial view of the inauguration here. 

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{How do you keep those little journaling cards from moving all around in the pocket?}

This has been bugging me for weeks now.  Seriously bugging me.  Should I just leave the card 4x6 size and use it for two days, should I stitch them or what?  It finally dawned on me the other night after fixing and re-fixing those cards all the time:  photo squares!  I put two right along the middle seem of the front two cards, then place the back two cards right over the front ones.  VOILA.  I knew there was an easy solution but it took forever to realize it.  Now my album looks so much better.

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I'm a little behind on posting my photos this week.  They need to be edited and I am working on getting that done today but I have a little date night scheduled for later and they may have to wait ;)  I am pretty sure that will be today's photo.

Project 365: Days 20-21 & digital 365 stamps

{Day 20}

This is a pretty common site in our house.  My sister, Mandy, says Lyss is the only kid she knows of who doesn't complain or cry when she's hungry, she just goes and gets what she wants.  See that shelf in the back right of the photo?  That's where we keep most of our dry goods.  Lyss just keeps taking boxes down off the shelf and bringing them to us until we tell her that what she's picked is okay to eat.  Sometimes she tries to eat the same thing all day.  Sometimes, when she doesn't get a quick enough response, she just shoves her hand in the box and takes what she wants.  Sometimes she stops halfway through eating and goes and gets another box.  No matter what the day, we always seem to have a collection of boxes all over the table.

Decorative Photo Clipping mask: Anna Aspnes of Designer Digitals

{Day 21}

Here we have a simple photo of the girls all dressed for church and walking over to get the Sunday paper with Grampa.  They upped the price of the paper without Grampa knowing it, so Em made her first trip across the street by herself to come back and grab another quarter while Grampa and Lyss waited for her.

Blank Numbered Label and Grunged Up Photo block: Katie Pertiet of Designer Digitals 

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{Digital 365 Stamps}

Just was over at Designer Digitals and noticed that there is a set of weekly journaling stamps for Project 365. They are nicely priced at under $4 - don't you hate when people say that?  They're $3.99. 

The best thing about these files is that you do not need Photoshop to use them.  They are png files which can be opened in Preview (which is a basic default program for viewing pdf, jpg, png files, etc.) on my Mac and they can be printed from there in the desired size.   This works pretty much the same for a PC.  So if all you want to do is print your own cards instead of using the files for digital scrapbooking, you're good to go with these.

Project 365: Days 18-19 & TTV frames

{Day 18}

One theme that I'm sure will recur in this album is food.  We like to eat, drink and be merry.  Plain and simple.  Andy and I find ourselves without kids and near Chik-fil-a  one evening every few weeks (What's that?  Why, yes, this is my second Chik-fil-a photo in the past 3 weeks).  It has become a kind of date night for us.  Not fancy, but it gives us a chance to relax and talk without interruption.  Personally, I am all about their tasty new chicken fingers and Chik-fil-a sauce.

ttv frame:  58 by mad plumerian

{Day 19}

You may be surprised to learn that Grampa likes to tease the girls.  When he opens up a new cold one, he presses it up against Lyss' leg or arm and says, "Cold."  For some reason, she loves this.  Friday night, she saw him get a new bottle out of the fridge and walk past her.  She said, "Cold," and waited for him to tease her.  He obliged for a minute, but that was not enough for Lyss.  She followed him and proceeded to put her hands and feet up on the bottle.  Funny kid.

 ttv frame:  TTV_3 by Miles D. Scott

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TTV Frames

I first heard of these from Tara.  Now I absolutely love using them.  Technically, ttv stands for through the viewfinder, which means that the photo is taken with one camera while looking through the viewfinder of another camera.  Mine are digital fakes.  Some photographers are purists and don't like fakes of ttv, but I am fine with it.   Plus I am a Photoshop junky.  I'll probably get around to making a real one someday.

There are many available online that can be layered on top of your photo in Photoshop to achieve the same look and it's not really complicated.  I noticed many frames that are made with other objects as well, like empty cans and binoculars, even. 

This is the most basic tutorial I found.  It works for either PS or PSE.  There are other more complicated tutorials if you look around.  The only thing I do differently is drag the ttv frame over my photo instead of the other way around.  I then resize the frame to match to photo.  And I use a lot of square ttv's for rectangular photos.  The distortion is barely noticeable and adds to the ttv look.   There are many large-sized frames available here on this Flickr group.

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Coming soon

Weeks 2 and 3 of Project 365.  I am just getting caught up writing out all my journaling cards today.  I've been printing all my photos.  I've basically done my journaling on here so it's an easy transfer.

Project 365: Days 16-17

{Day 16}

When we were kids, my sisters and I would spend a ridiculous amount of time pouring over the Swiss Colony catalog.  Mainly, we would have this little contest to see who could spot all the Chris Mouses each time we turned the page.  We dreamed of getting one of those things every time we looked at a catalog.  Now Becky sends one to us every year "for the kids."  This is what he looked like Tuesday night:

{Day 17}

On Wednesday, Em was making her lunch when Lyss pulled her little stool up to the counter to check things out.  She almost lost her mind when she spotted the bread, so Em gave her a piece which she, very happily, sat down to eat.  This has been a cranky week for Lyss, so it was nice for all of us that this was a happy (i.e. quiet) moment for her.

Project 365: Days 14-15

{Day 14}

Sunday afternoon we spent time in the backyard while the girls played with their outdoor grille playset.  Em put this little Publix apron on Lyss, who was fine with it until she tried to climb into the chair and it kept getting in her way.

 

{Day 15}

Had to include a photo of Target, because Emma and I are there at least 3 days a week.  We have two new Super Targets in our area and we must do 95% of all of our shopping there now.  We are always stopping in for some little thing like milk or bananas even though we try to do a big shop once every two weeks.  LOVE that place :)

Project 365 & a couple questions

{Day 13}

We had a dinner for John's birthday on Saturday.  The cake was a big hit and tasted great.  Andy found it at BJ's.  When we took the pics, Lyss got herself in the picture, too. I love how you can tell that she was saying, "CHEEEESE!" even though she had the pacifier in her mouth just before bed.

Also, a couple of questions that I've had in comments:

fonts:  I get most of my fonts from dafont, which are free for personal use.   They have a huge selection of all styles.  They also have a feature where you can type in some text and see it in any of their fonts.

page protectors:  I haven't stitched my bottom row pockets to divide them in half.  Mostly because I didn't think of that, but honestly, I'm not a great seamstress and not sure how that would come out.  My little journaling cards are moving around (and driving me crazy) but I don't know what my solution will be.

Speaking about journaling cards:  If you are really out of the loop and haven't seen Becky's blog in the past couple of days, she has posted jpeg files of her "week of" and journaling cards, as well as a few extras that were part of her kit.  This way, you can print your own on 4X6 cardstock and just hand-write on them or type text over them in Photoshop (you can even alter the colors if you don't prefer them) before you print.  These are good because you could put the whole card in the 4x6 pocket and they wouldn't move around like mine do.