Instagrams on the wall

Howdy friends! I've got a super simple project I completed recently that took minimal effort (awesome), but makes a huge statement (again, awesome).

My Pops recently had a birthday, and I wanted to give him something that he couldn't buy himself. Enter....Instagrams. Since he's not even ON instagram, I've got literally hundreds of photos of me, and his grandkids, and ME, and the hubs, and ME that he's never even seen. I showed you in THIS post how I print them out on computer to be a 4 x 4 square, then I picked up a 24x36 poster frame (on sale AND with a coupon) since I could fit a row of 6 and a row of 9 instas PERFECTLY.

I turned the paper insert from the frame over onto the white side and used that as my base for positioning the pics...

and to attach them, I used a small piece of washi tape. A scrapbooking tape runner would've also done the trick.

Then, ya know, I just kinda lined them all up....

it takes a while. Not gonna lie. There's 54 pics, after all.

It's probably best to keep any 2 year old's away from this project.

Just sayin.

Once I had them all stuck down, I stuck it back into the frame, and thar she blows...

And I'm happy to say that he and the mum LOVED it.

So did I.

I loved it so much I'm super jealous it's not mine.

Looks like I'll be making another for my house soon...

So tell me- do you use instagram? Do you love it? Have you taken any from your phone and plastered them onto your walls and in frames around your house? Do tell.

how I documented an entire year in one week with Project Life

It's been a while since my last Project Life post. Two years ago, to be exact. HERE'S that post where I gush about my love for Project Life and the simplicity of it and show you several pages from my 2010 book. (And for those of you who've never heard of Project Life, it's the system I use to document and keep up with our family's everyday life. It's simple, doesn't require any special scrapbooking 'tools', and as you'll see in this post, I was able to put an entire year's worth of photos together in about a week. Much thanks is owed to the creator of this system, Becky Higgins. You can check out her site and watch a video all about Project Life HERE.)

While the ideal way to 'keep up' with what's happening in your life would be to write about it/print pics weekly and stick them into your album so you don't forget the details, I find that even THAT is sometimes too much for me to handle. (case in point: my 2011 Project Life album is empty) Taking pictures is the easy part for me, especially since the iphone makes it so darn easy to take not 1, but 428 pics every.single.day. I promise I don't take that many- but I totally could.

Since I had some time off work during Christmas break, I decided to tackle my 2012 album, and I mean ALL of the album. The computer keeps track of what day I took each photo, and since I download pics from our cameras and phone every few days, I had PLENTY to chose from. Picking which photos I wanted to print was actually the most time-consuming part of putting the book together since I literally had thousands to go through. I pulled out a calendar to record which photo I wanted to print for that day and wrote down which folder and which number each photo was so I could go back later and throw them all onto a flash drive. (I print the bulk of our photos at Sam's where it's quick and super-cheap, and doesn't use up our printer ink.)

Once I made it home with the photos, I pulled out my 2012 calendar again and started sliding in the photos. Again, love the fact that no adhesive is needed.

Now you may be wondering, "What about those days where you want to include, say, 165 photos instead of just 1?" Like maybe a birthday party or a wedding or a trip to Disney World?

Excellent question.

I printed 87 photos for the girls' Wizard of Oz party alone, and plan to make a separate 'mini' book for occasions such as this. As luck would have it, a new Project Life mini album made it's debut last week on Amazon. In 5 beautiful shades, no less.

Each of these mini albums has space for 80 4x6 pictures and 80 3x4 journaling cards (or smaller pics/pieces of memorabilia.) Just think of all the possibilities!

Back to the 2012 album.

I mentioned my love for capturing bits and pieces of our everyday life with my phone's camera and to be honest, most of my photos now go straight to instagram. Can I get a quick show of hands from those of you who would like to confess your love for this app as well? I thought so.

Lots of hands raised here.

Of course I'd want to include my fave instagram shots in the book, and Sam's is NOT the place to print these for you, my friends. Instagrams are square, and Sam's doesn't do square. I've heard of several great resources for printing insta's, but haven't used any, so I'll just tell you what I did, k? 

I select the 4x6 option to print, which allows me to print 4 pics at a time. The new printer we have prints them at a perfect 4x4 size, which is ideal for the album. The previous printer/program we had would also print these 4x4 when I un-clicked the box 'fill space', as in- Do you want to stretch these square photos into a rectangular 4x6?

No. No I do not.

Once they're printed, I simply chop off the excess, and voila. Printed 4x4 instagrams, perfect for use in a Project Life album. Side note- if you're a whiz at photoshop, you could reduce the size a wee bit and fit more than 4 instas on a page to cut down on the waste of photo paper. I am not a whiz at photoshop, so this is how I do, YO.

Once all of the photos are in place (yes, this step takes a while as well if you're doing a year at a time), it's time to write about what was happening. You can write a lot, a little, a page, or 2 words- it's evah.whatcha.want.

Once the journaling is done, (and just to be honest, I'm still not done with this part, but for the sake of the post I'm skipping ahead) it's time to go through and add any memorabilia that you want to include. This could be wedding/birthday invites, show tickets and programs, special pieces of artwork made by your kiddos, etc. I keep all of this together throughout the year in a file folder in the top drawer of my chalkboard file cabinet. See?

I literally drop anything and everything I want to hang onto into a folder with the year at the top. 

Yes, it gets pretty thick...

so I go through it once the year is over and decide what goes and what stays. I also put everything in order by date so that it's easier to add it into the book. Some items get inserted into the appropriate week, and some go into a folder in the back of the album.

Here's a layout from my 2012 album:

This particular week had two 8.5 x 11 pages that I wanted to include, so I dropped them into a plastic page protector.

Here's a closer look at the left side:

Love including bits and pieces of things the kids make, like this letter that Oliver wrote to us:

On the back side is Eliza's ballet coloring sheet from that week:

And here's the right side. Sorry for the crappy photos. These were totally taken after midnight, otherwise known as the time I blog:

For those of you into making digital books, Becky offers those too. She's partnered with Shutterfly, and when you add up the cost of the physical kit + book + photo processing, it's really about the same as making your book digitally and having it printed + shipped to you.

Some other recent additions to the Project Life line are baby kits:

(for HER, HIM, and in neutral colors)

And three different editions of a childhood mini kit:

(perfect for adding to your PL album, OR a separate album for each child)

There are also 2 new designs of Project Life available as of last week. I'll be using the Seafoam edition this year, and plan on 'keeping up' with my book week by week instead of waiting until the year is over. Although a year's worth can be done in a week, as I've clearly just proven with this post.

So tell me-

do any of you use Project Life? I know I had a few e-mails after my last post from people who purchased the kit. I'd love to know how you tackle the album- by the week? month? Anyone else do an entire year in 7 days?

Or perhaps you have another method entirely of documenting your 'everyday'.

I'd love to hear...

our week via instagram

Happy Friday friends! Hope you're having a fabulous day at whatever hour it happens to be in your neck of the woods. I've been a bit MIA this week which is a sure sign that hubs has been working a crazy amount of hours. Thank you, hubs, for working crazy hard for us. Even when I don't have time to sit and write a post, I've always got time to snap a few photos. I'll be linking with Jeannett today who came up with the brilliance that is InstaFriday. Here's a look at our week via Instagram:

worked on some monogrammed notecards for my aunt over the weekend. plan to list this item in my shop...whenever I find the time.

the hubs made a late night trip to Target Sunday night and picked this up for me. Because he knows I loves it. And also because....

the purpose for his late night trip to Target was to pick up ingredients to make homemade-made-from-scratch blueberry muffins. I think the blueberries he found in the fridge sparked the idea. Do we eat a lot of blueberry muffins? No. Does hubs do a lot of made-from-scratch cooking? No. Just a hankering he had to make something spur-of-the-moment, not unlike my late night "I have to make this craft thing right now while I'm thinking about".

they was real good, by the by.

real good.

Sometimes I buy things on eBay that come from distant lands. Like Batman cookie cutters from Hong Kong.

Makes me feel ever so important to pull things like this out of my mailbox.

My little man had a Fairy Tale Valentine party at school Tuesday. Here he is with his best bud from his class, pre-party-

and here's a during-party shot-

His teacher had the cutest decor- everything from a Snow White sitting on a full-sized well, to center pieces depicted different fairy tales. See the pumpkin, mouse, & glass slippers on O's table? (Cinderella) Pure cuteness...

Rachael Ray has arrived at our Target. That garbage bowl totally came home with me and I need her cookware. No really, I do...

I made little somethin somethin for myself and little man as sort of a Valentine-before-bedtime treat. Bananas split down the center, filled with peanut butter, topped with vanilla ice cream, caramel syrup, and chocolate cookie crumbs.

As Rachael would say, "yum-o"

I found my 3 just like this on Wednesday night.

Be still my heart.

Ready for ballet Thursday and wearing a new rockin' flower headband made by me. Hubs said it was ridiculously big, but I disagree. I think it's presh.

Yes, I just said presh.

During class...

Found some inexpensive cabinetry to make our kitchen banquette out of. Nearing the end my friends. We may just win the longest-kitchen-reno-process-ever award...

This is how MM likes to snack on goldfish:

lying on the kitchen floor, blanket in hand.

And why not?

and this is where E likes to eat goldfish.

In my bed.

Making lots of under-the-cover crumbs on her daddy's side that he finds when he comes home from work.

Made some awesome thrift store finds this week. This horsey was only 1.48 and with a fresh coat of white spray paint looks 100% better than it did when I brought him home. And yes, it's totally a 'him'.

And that was our week in a nutshell.

What about you?

How was your week? Any Valentine goodies you're excited about? Or was your hubs working on V-day so you're celebrating this weekend, like me? Make any great thrift store finds lately? Have a kid that likes to eat on the floor?

Do tell....



Insta-Friday

Hello friends!

It's time for another round of Insta-Friday-

linking once again with Jeanett at Life Rearranged.

Here's a glimpse of our recent happenings via instagram-

Impromptu saber fight in the kitchen last Friday after school.

This has now entered my 'top 10 favorite pics of the kiddos' list,

and rightfully so.

Finding MM sitting in the sun like this totally reminded me of our cat.

He used to LOVE sitting in the sun coming in through the doors + windows.

It also looks like firewords are coming out of her head.

No worries though, 'tis just the plant outside.

If you read THIS post, then you know full well the significance of this photo.

I let Oliver go wild taking pics on my phone over the weekend and have enjoyed scrolling through them to see what he deemed worthy of capturing-

one of the several shots he took was this one of his seesters toys,

and this one,

which is clearly something he holds dear, even at a young age.

The beloved remote.

Found this ad for shoes in a magazine a few days ago.

How fab would this be framed in my classroom?

The hubs picked up Japanese food for us Sunday night.

I told him not to order any sushi with my meal, but he did anyway.

Because he knows I love it so.

And that, my friends, is just one of the many reasons why I loves my hubs.

This is what I found in my cookie.

Does anyone else out there keep all of your fortune cookie fortunes, or am I the only person that does that?

Since the latest tropical storm dumped a gazillion inches on us all.day.Monday,

MM and I decided that if we were going to be cooped up, we might as well be cooped up inside Target. While the rain pounded the roof, we strolled the aisles full of beautiful eye candy. I found this lil mummy pumpkin in the pages of a Fall/Halloween magazine.

(now why didn't I think of that?)

Took MM to the Dr this week for her 15-month check up.

Love the expression I caught on her face as we waited for the nurses to come in with the shots...

We found out at this visit that it would be our LAST visit with our Dr.

Some sad and unexpected circumstances have necessitated the closing of the practice and we are heartbroken. Our Dr. is the ONLY Dr. our kiddos have ever seen. She delivered all 3 of them.

I do not want to find a new Dr.

The hubs + a slice of cheese= 2 little girls who stick like glue to his side and consequently go through 2 more slices of cheese

(Eliza stopped eating only briefly to swing the saber)

I simply cannot wait to decorate for Halloween.

Not only do I have brand new goodies that I purchased at the after-Halloween clearance sale at Target last year, but I also have a custom made Halloween drawing, courtesy of my son.

And yesterday,

in the floor of the kitchen,

the girls had a little playtime on daddy.

Love Love Love having him home this week during daylight hours.

Hope you have a magnificent weekend!