Life is in the Details

Week in the Life - Thursday

In the home stretch!

Week in the Life- Wednesday

These photos from yesterday look like a very ordinary day, but in fact it wasn't.  I just missed taking photos of all the out of the ordinary things, and each time I would say after... ugh, I forgot to take pictures! And in fact I only took 25 pictures yesterday at all.  So Day 3 will be more words than photos, and that will be fine. Hopefully today I'll remember to take the camera.

Week in the Life - Tuesday

Typical day today, AC repair man came to service the AC that hasn't been working as well as it used to.  A trip to Costco, picked up some new toys for Eloise and birdseed, along with some other odds and ends. Ana came home and we had chicken hotdogs for dinner and then went for ice cream.  Ana likes to ham it up for the camera! Although this is also typical of her without the camera!

Week in the Life - Monday

 

 

A very busy weekend!

My week in the life album is complete!! And it is huge! Way bigger than I thought it would be, and maybe a little bit of overkill, but live and learn. Next time, I'll be more selective with my photos.  But I do love the results and the process has been really wonderful! You can see the whole thing here: Week in the Life Album .  

I have worked on this project over the past few weeks, a little bit at a time. It is a pretty simple album, but because it's so huge (did I mention this thing is big?? lol) it took a while to finish it all up.  Yesterday I was able to assemble the remaining pages. 

 

For the title sheet, I used a few of Ali Edwards' templates from Designer Digitals mixed together. The embellished circle includes a Catslife Press stamp with some very cool orange Ranger Distress Ink I just bought.  I really loved that color ink, it was perfect for this project and really bright orange.  

Then I followed pretty much the same pattern for each day. 

A cover sheet with the day of the week, and just some simple embellishments. The overlay is also Ali Edwards' from Designer Digitals. It was really easy to make the album match with Ali's overlays which are a similar style. 

For the middle of each day, I used a couple divided page protectors, with a variety of pocket sizes. These page protectors are from Scrapworks, for their Anthologie album, which has since been discontinued. I included 2 pages of these for each day, but I think I should have only used one. The album is very full, and actually I had some problems with the rings on this album.  They didn't close well and the pages get caught on two of the rings.  I love the album, but it is a little annoying, because the pages get caught then partially fall out. It could be that it's just too full.  

The final page of each day is made up of 12- 3"x3" photos, and then 4 embellished 3"x3" squares, these are in regular American Crafts 12"x12" page protectors. 

On Tuesday I included the first few pages of the New York Daily News because it was the day after the stockmarket fell 777 points, which had been a record at the time, although it may have been beat since then. The market has been insanely crazy lately.  I stuck the newspaper into a 6"x12" page protector which is the same as the ones I used for the journaling.

I ended the album with an excerpt from my blog just talking about how I enjoyed this process and a reminder to myself to try it again when my life starts to look a little different. So anyway, the rest of the album, all 50+ pages can be found at the link above or I added a link on the side of my blog under Albums.

The rest of my weekend has been SO productive! Turns out making a list actually works!! This weekend not only did my album get finished, but also the laundry cabinets are installed and the room is painted! The trim still has to get done, but it's like having a second kitchen!! The cabinets in the laundry are also acting like a pantry, and now there is SO much more room in my kitchen cabinets!! I will post pictures of this project tomorrow.  I'm so tired!!  I'll also post my pictures from the 25th, which turned out being pictures from the 25th and 26th. But I'll post them too this week, right now I need to go to sleep. I will sleep well tonight! Feels good though to make this progress! Next weekend... garbage can area! 

Album progress

I am starting to put together my Week in the Life album.  I sent all the photos to Costco last night, and picked them up today.  Well at least I picked up most of them.  There was one package that they didn't give me, so I'll have to go back on Sunday when I get back from Connecticut to pick up the last pack of pictures.

I trimmed them all down to the sizes I needed in the pockets. I am planning to print some of them at home, but most of them are now in their divided page protectors.

I also typed up the journaling that I kept last week, and set up a journaling block with some more of Ali Edwards Designer Digital graphics. This took a while to do. So in between I enjoyed a wonderful little cupcake. Notice the trimmer over hanging the plate! lol

Then I went upstairs to print out all the journaling blocks, using the system that Ali recommended, by doing all the like things together in production mode.

I really love how these came out.  I even printed them out onto textured cardstock and they still looked great. I trimmed the sheets to fit into 6"x12" page protectors in the album. And then cut out little patterned paper squares to add some color to the journaling blocks.  Especially on the backsides of them, there were some big white spaces that needed some color!

There is still much to be done.  I also cut out patterned paper for all the blank 4x6 pockets in the album. And I started to put the papers in, but I decided that I would decorate them before I put them in. So that will have to wait until next week. Hopefully I'll get to see Ali's progress by then too, for some more ideas! I think I'm going to love this album when it's all finished! Maybe it will surpass my Evolution album to be my new favorite!

Diligently working!

I haven't been posting but I have been working on my album! I just wish I had more time after work! But I have now sent all my photos out to Costco for processing.  It took a while to resize everything and figure out what will go where.  But I'll be able to pick up the photos tomorrow! I can't wait to see how they look all laid out in the album! The picture above is going into the photo pocket on the front cover of the album. The 'document today' is from Designer Digitals by Ali Edwards. 

I'm going to use the Scrapworks Anthologie album that I purchased the moment I found out that this project was going to happen! (Luckily since they are now discontinued!) And I filled it up with a mixed bunch of divided page protectors, along with some regular 12x12 protectors and some 6x12 for variety! I hope that once I have the pictures all in front of me the album will go together pretty quickly!! Still thoroughly enjoying the process though! 

This weekend I'll be away for my good friend Laurel's 40th birthday party! I can't believe she's going to turn 40, wasn't it just 3 or 4 years ago that I met her when she was 23? We are going to Mohegan Sun Casino in CT. along with a a few more of our sorority sisters!  I am sure it will be really fun! I can't wait!  

Week in the Life: Sunday

Yesterday was the last day of my Week in the Life project. It was actually strange to walk around without a camera today.  I stayed around the house yesterday for the most part.  I decided to relax after my busy day on Saturday, so I lounged, and took a bunch of cough medicine, and watched some movies and made homemade pea soup for dinner.  Here are some of the pictures I took. 

I am supposed to receive the album that I ordered for this project tomorrow.  I'm anxious to see what it's like before I decide how I am going to put it together.  I can't wait to see it! I also want to see how the other people working on the project are going to make their albums. I'm hoping they will post their work on the Flickr group. 

This has been a great experience. A project like this is not only good for the memories that it will provide down the road, but also is a good way to assess how you live your life. I learned some things about myself last week while taking all those photos. I think I eat out or get take out way too much.  I have to work on that.  I need to get up earlier to get to work on time. Taking the photos last week and keeping a journal made me see how much more stressed my mornings are to get that last 20 minutes of sleep.  I'm not sure it's worth it, or I just need to get to bed earlier. I also didn't realize just how desperately I need to paint my house, especially the trim.  Zoomed in photos have a way of showing you the scuffs and marks that you don't notice on your own. I cleaned my cubicle at work after looking at some of the photos, the dust also shows up in photos. I think I just want to throw out a whole bunch of clutter at work and in my house, even my car. 

I recommend this process to everyone! And the scrapbooking part is not even necessary, just start taking photos of your everyday life.  Don't save the picture taking for holidays and vacations, it's all the things that happen in between that make up your life. Take pictures of what you eat, where you go everyday, the places in your town that you pass everyday, but never really pay attention to.  The people you work with, and the office where you spend most of your days. Years down the road when you live somewhere else or work somewhere else they will be meaningful to you! 

I will post pictures of my album when it's all finished! 

Week in the Life: Saturday

Today was a busy day. I woke up late this morning and had to rush to get to Eloise's accupuncture appointment on time. Eloise  made lots of new friends today at the vet's office and then a few more when I stopped at the bakery on the way home.  I didn't get home until 11am when I finally had some well needed coffee! It's a little risky to wait that long to have coffee, I'm sort of asking for a headache! But thankfully I was fine, had some wonderful pastries and coffee, out on my deck on this gorgeous day.

 

I called my Mom to confirm she could watch Eloise next weekend while I am away, and then Ana and I headed out to a local craft show at Allaire Village, that I had heard about from Eloise's doctor. We wandered around there for a while, wishing that Eloise came too, since we saw lots of dogs there enjoying the crowds and crafty goodness. It was such a nice day, and the craft show was busy.  We also saw a very pretty wedding photo shoot taking place in the park. The only thing I bought was some local honey, but I saw a lot of ideas of things to make!

Since Eloise was not with us, we were able to go from there over to the Christmas Tree Shops in Freehold.  I bought some picture frames and a couple baskets, there is  so much cheap, fun stuff there! We came out of there around 4:30 and I was starving, so we went over to PF Chang's which I'd heard tons of good things about. Well I'd give it a pretty good. It probably would have been better if I didn't hear such awesome reviews beforehand.  I have definitely had better Chinese food in my life, but it's pretty good food.  And their passion fruit ice tea was wonderful!

So now I'm back home, very tired, well fed and watching Far and Away for the at least 20th time. I'm not sure why I'm watching it again or for the past 19 times, since I didn't love it the first time!  

Here are my downloaded photos from my day.

Week in the Life: Friday

I'm glad it's Friday. I had a rough day at work today, lots of stress, following my sick day yesterday, and I'm still not feeling well. Ana texted me this afternoon to see if I wanted to meet her at Jose Tejas (which is one of my favorite restaurants in the world) and I said no. I figured I probably can't taste the food anyway and I'd rather stay home and be a bum. So that is what I'm doing now, being lazy, and using up lots of tissues. 

 

So I am at the end of the work week portion of my Week in the Life project. I went to Bed Bath and Beyond this afternoon, and Staples, and I brought my camera into both stores! I think I might have seen a few stares, but maybe they were just envious! I got a few cute pictures in there.  I wish that my Scrapworks album that I ordered for this project came today, but no such luck. (My Design Your Life class album is coming at the same time, so I don't have either one.)  I guess I won't get to start the scrapping portion of the project next week but I still have lots of pictures to take over the next couple days! 

At Bed Bath & Beyond today I bought a shoe organizer, for punches! This is such a great idea! I read about it on the Two Peas message boards.  I bought an over the door hanging shoe organizer, with mesh pockets, and filled the pockets with lots of punches! Not only did this free up the top surface of one of my drawer organizers, but it also freed up a whole drawer! I LOVE having an empty drawer! It means I can fill it! But it's really such an easy way to keep all your punches organized! I love it! I was able to forget about my stressful work day and it made me very happy! I also picked up some paper trays to organize my photo paper/ cardstock/ and regular printer paper, since it usually all ends up in one pile and I have to analyze it to see which is which.  The trays should be a big help. 

That's about it for today.  Here are my other pictures from my daily adventures!