Friday, January 20, 2012

Printing Project Life 2x3 Pictures

At first, I was using Photoshop to edit/prepare my pictures into a 4x6 template to print 2 – 2x3 pictures in one 4x6 print.  Well, I noticed that my printer has options to make this sooooo much simpler and my life has gotten so much easier and printing pictures for Project Life has gotten so much FASTER!

I have 4 steps in my process for printing photos using the software that came with the printer. I don’t always use it. I often use Photoshop or Fireworks (yes, I’m odd, it is the programmer in me) to print my digital scrapbook pages. But below is a screen shot of my Photo Printer software.

image

Step 1.  Select Images

Step 2.  Select Paper (I select borderless 4x6)

Step 3.  Layout print – you can see the preview below.

Step 4.  Print.

So easy.  I knew printing my images at home was going to be the KEY to actually doing Project Life.  Short Cuts like this help as well.  Yes, I will still use Photoshop on occasion to edit a special photo, but I don’t have hours per week to edit my photos.  This makes it so much easier.

Thank You project Life for getting me scrapbooking again.  It feels great!!!

More about Project Life Here: http://beckyhiggins.com/ and

here: http://www.themomcreative.com/category/memory-keeping-and-crafts/project-life-tuesday

Project Life Tuesday - Week 2

Week 2.

Things I learned.

1.  I need to take notes to remember what I did each day, because the journaling was HARD.

2.  I need to figure out how to take better iphone pictures, or I need to get back out my SLR!

Sorry the pictures are blurry…

Week 2

Week 2

Wednesday, January 11, 2012

Project Life, Week 1

I haven’t done my title page, but I’m not stressing it.  I will get to it shortly.

What I have done, is set up my system.  YAY.  And completed my first week, which also happens to mainly be about Ryan’s first birthday.  I will do the first 2 weeks of January in the spread next week.  This is exactly what I envisioned Project Life being for me.  Not about a “picture a day” but about making the task of scrapbooking in the moment EASY. 

Lets see if I can actually do it for more than a few weeks.  {SMILE}

So…drumroll….my first layouts.  I have a feeling once I get in my groove, my layouts will get better, but this is a start. 

Project Life Week 1

 

Project life week 1

What do you think?

I still need to complete 2 journaling cards, will do that tonight.  But besides that, I have his first Birthday scrapbooked.  Feels good to be doing something creative again.

Monday, January 02, 2012

Blog your heart

One of the blogs I follow, has a blog your heart challenge monthly.  I’m going to try to start participating.

1.  Something happened last week that scared us both to our core.  Last Monday, the day after Christmas, we got a call because Eric's cousins wife passed away suddenly of a massive heart attack. She was in good shape, not over weight, and was young (in her 40’s). Eric’s cousin is only in his late 30’s, maybe early 40’s and they have a son that is still in high school. His cousin is taking it really really bad, which is understandable!

Death is so scary, and it can sneak up on you so quickly.  You can never truly be prepared and you never know when it is going to be your time.

This scared us both big time.  Neither of us slept well for 2 days.  And it is just a really sad situation as well. 

Unfortunately we haven’t seen his cousin in a long time because after he got married, he became distant and hasn’t come around in years.  I’ve been with Eric for over 17 years now and have only meet him once.  But what scares us so bad, is how quickly your life can change.  How precious it really is.  And Eric has a heart condition, it is more like a arrhythmia (murmur), so he was scared a bit more than the average person, because he has had heart episodes on a handful of occasions himself.  He takes special medications for it and has it under control, but he is only 32 so it definitely worries us for long term.

Just one more reason to get healthy, live everyday to the fullest, and make sure you really let those you love know.

2.  Family issues!  I actually went and talked with someone last month on base (for free) about our family issues.  Thanksgiving (and being around family) always stirs up stuff.  And I’m getting to the point that I’m tired of it and I just can’t stand being around certain family members.  It is just getting OLD.  Well the counselor helped me come to a few conclusions, I really need to blog about this in it’s own post.  But I need to let it go, or we need to stop going around the family functions until certain family members clean up their act.  It is hard.  Life is HARD.  But I don’t want to be stressing all the wonderful family holidays for years and years because these issues haven’t been dealt with.  The boys are young now, but eventually they will pick up on the stress and I don’t want to put them through all that.  Eric and I are going to continue praying about all this to figure out what we need to do.

3.  Biggest Loser Challenge – starts today!!!

I’m so pumped.  I’m down almost 20 lbs (from Sept).  My goal is 50 by July for the beach.  So I have approximately 30 lbs to go.  If I lose 15 lbs in this 12 week challenge (I lost 15 in the last challenge) and then if I lose 15 again in the next challenge I’ll be looking and feeling so great.  Just those 20 (OK – 18.6) lbs have me feeling soooooo much better.  I even posted some pictures of MYSELF on Facebook for the first time in a YEAR.  That is huge.  It feels so great to start feeling like myself again.

4.  Ryan is finally sleeping through the night most nights.  And I’m sleeping in my bed, in my room.  And those 2 glorious hours I get with Eric between the 8:00ish kids bedtime and our 10:00ish bedtime are priceless.  PRICELESS.

5.  I’m doing project life this year.  I posted about that a few times in December, this being the most detailed post.  I think I might even try to do the iPhone version of Project 365 because honestly, I take at least one iPhone picture a day anyway.  I failed miserably at Project 365 in 2009 and 2010, so we will see how Project 365-2012 goes.  I think I’m going to name it iPOTD.

If your interested in participating in Blog Your Heart , click the link/picture above which will take you to Stephanie’s blog. 

Sunday, January 01, 2012

Christmas

Favorite pictures from Christmas…

First the collage

Christmas Collage 1

The boys had a blast.  We did end up getting an elf this year. Everyone seemed to have one and Peyton kept talking about the elf.  Santa sent us Christopher Pop-InKins late in the season and we only had him for about a week or so, but he was a BLAST while we had him.

IMG_0944

Isn’t he cute???  We miss him already.  He really was a lot of fun.  Looking forward to his arrival next Thanksgiving. 

Ryan

Ryan is soooo adorable.  He got some good Christmas loot.

 

Ryan_Santa

And Peyton – age 5

Peyton Christmas Morning

Santa was good to Peyton as well…

Peyton_Santa

I will TRY (we know how often I talk about TRYING to do something) to post more about Christmas before I forget it all.  :)