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linked 52 | anger

May 18, 2012

sometimes i have to remind myself that he is only four years old. learning to deal with his feelings. today it was frustration + anger. he ended up in time out for something. and when he looked up to see that i was taking his picture, he was not a happy camper. but oh how i still love that face!

see what anger looks like to these girls also participating in linked 52: Stacey, Michelle, Tracey, Heather, Andrea, Jenn, Jessica, Amanda, Amanda, Sara, Lesli, Janet, Naomi, Rhonda, Rose, Carla, Heidi, Kristin, Heather, Amy, Liza, Veronica, Jean and Kristi.

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project life | march 2012

May 14, 2012

i have been keeping up with my weekly project life journal pages. and i am so happy with this project! i love it to pieces. i keep looking back over the past few months to see what we did and how life is flowing and moving forward.

so i was thinking about why i am sharing my project life pages here on my blog. and the thing that i kept coming back to was paying it forward. i found out about becky higgins’ project life because other people shared about it on their blogs. and i was inspired to document our everyday story because other people shared their lives through their project life pages.

i am doing project life my way – simple stories, simple design and lots of photos. but there are so many creative and talented people out there doing project life their own way. and i love to see how they put their project life pages together. i gather inspiration from them. (check out the project life creative team for some amazing inspiration.) so perhaps sharing my project life journal will inspire someone else to document their very own life. in whatever way works for them. i want to pay it forward. pass it on. spread the love of project life. as becky higgins says, cultivate a good life and record it!

in my pages from march, i’m seeing a pattern with a few things. i like the week in review card placed in the first pocket on the top left each week. it tells me the week and the date. i need that for my chronological order obsession. i am also keeping up with always including a 4×6 collage of six instagram photos each week. just random favorites i want to include from the week. the rest is just words + photos with a few fun things sprinkled in here and there – like quinn’s writing or drawings.

week 9 was spent outside playing in the nice weather.

i asked quinn to write his name on a blank journaling card. he also wrote tate’s name and drew a picture of his little brother. i love that quinn is getting involved in this project already.

i also noticed something interesting. as quinn is just learning how to draw stick figures, this is where he started out with the legs coming down from the head (so cute!). when i jump to week 13 (at the end of this post) i noticed how different the stick figures look because they include a body too. a tiny little change that happened in just a few weeks. something i wouldn’t have noticed if i was not documenting these things with project life!

quinn started soccer at the ymca this week and i worked on editing photos. tate rode his green scooter bike and quinn played light sabers with daddy outside. an instagram photo and a little story from a grocery shopping trip with the boys.week 10 had the boys splashing in some puddles left by all the rain. i also included a few things going on with me.

we love to have dance parties in the office. i turn on itunes on the computer really loud and we all dance and sing together. i thought it would be fun to write down the names of the songs we danced to.mark got a photos of himself, quinn and my dad at the doral golf tournament they went to. it is only an iphone photo, but i’m happy that i can include it in this week. there is also a quote from quinn about what he wants to be when he grows up (darth vader’s clone trooper) and a card with our weekly routine. playing sports and a sick quinn too.week 11 included a visit from some family with photos and stories. and i love the photo of tate’s hair after he woke up from a nap.

i added a 6×12 pocket page to hold extra pictures from the st. patrick’s day parade we went to this week with my sister and her kids.

here is the back side of the 6×12 pocket page and the rest of the right side of the weekly pages. more everyday things like dinner, bike riding, going for a walk with tate in the red car, tate painting with watercolors, green ketchup for st. patrick’s day and our weekly instagram collage.

quinn’s funny quote this week. i believe he got it from peppa pig (a cartoon). a photo i took of spring flowers in bloom and the boys sharing some popcorn.

week 12 included quite a few instagram photos including the fridge magnets on the side of my car, quinn’s artwork, my newly organized pantry and tate’s first hockey game. i also included the lego x-wing star fighter that daddy built for quinn to take to show and tell this week, a photo of quinn’s organized legos on his bedroom shelf, some food photography i’m working on and what is inside of our kitchen cabinets today – because those colorful sippy cups and little plastic bowls and plates will not be there forever. but they are there now.week 13 included a cute story about tate and the blue puppet, my weekly six instagram photo collage, quinn’s and his friend coloring, some yellow tulips and tate working on his computer.

a silly quinn quote and my old dallas mavericks business card that quinn found this week. he wanted his name on the card, so he wrote it. funny that he found this card the same week i went to dinner with an old friend from the mavs while she was in town with the team for a game against the heat.

i used a lot of pictures that i customized to fit in the smaller pockets. some photos are instagram photos (like the miami skyline, the boys eating spaghetti and the cards with the two photos placed vertically) and some are from my big camera. i also included a photo of all the things that tate sleeps with in his crib each night.

quinn drew quite a few star wars pictures so we hung them in the playroom. i love all the little stick figures with light sabers! so i took a photo of the wall of art and added some text on the photo. so different from the stick figure of tate from week 9 above.

how are you documenting your life? i’d love to see it. leave a comment and share a link.

posted in: memory keeping, project life

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linked 52 | up

May 11, 2012

things really are looking up around here. lots of good things happening. life unfolding. teaching us things. showing us new ways. positive energy happening all around us.

i am taking the time to enjoy the everyday moments. like this windy day with a kite…

it was so windy that it was actually pretty hard to get the kite to stay in the air. it kept nose diving back to the ground. we had to be careful because the kite would go down really fast. as quinn ran to try to get the kite to stay in the air, mark was trying not to get hit with the falling kite. i just can’t help but giggle every time i see this photo…

see what up looks like to these girls also participating in linked 52: Stacey, Michelle, Tracey, Heather, Andrea, Jenn, Jessica, Amanda, Amanda, Sara, Lesli, Janet, Naomi, Rhonda, Rose, Carla, Heidi, Kristin, Heather, Amy, Liza, Veronica, Jean and Kristi.

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linked 52 | mother

May 4, 2012

simply the best thing i’ve ever done in my whole entire life…

i get to be their mother.

what a gift.

i am lucky.

i am blessed.

i am grateful.

see what mother looks like to these girls also participating in this linked 52: Stacey, Michelle, Tracey, Heather, Andrea, Jenn, Jessica, Amanda, Amanda, Sara, Lesli, Janet, Naomi, Rhonda, Rose, Carla, Heidi, Kristin, Heather, Amy, Liza, Veronica, Jean and Kristi.

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week in the life 2012 | documenting

May 1, 2012

i spent the past seven days documenting our everyday life. from the time i woke up until the time i went to sleep (way too late every night as usual), i snapped photos + wrote down what we were doing. why? because i took part in ali edward’s week in the life 2012. it is all about recording your life in photos + words for an entire week. in detail.

i wanted to participate in this project last year because i knew my life would be so much different 12 months later. but i didn’t do it. not enough time. not sure where to begin. filled with desire but no time for action. whatever the long list of reasons why i didn’t do it, the bottom line is that i didn’t do it. and i regret it. but i’m not going to dwell on it. instead i made the choice to begin this year.

i used both my big camera and my iphone to document. i made a conscious effort to really use the big camera as much as possible. i had it slung over my shoulder and across my chest most days. it just became a natural extension of me. the more i had it with me, the less conscious i was about it being there – at target, at preschool, at cracker barrel. i tend to get a bit self-conscious when i pull out my camera in public places that are not deemed a “kodak picture place”. but i did it. and ended up with some moments of real life that i wouldn’t normally have shot. and of course i have lots + lots of iphone photos too.

as my seven days of documenting with words + photos comes to an end, i want to remember all the thoughts that are bubbling up in my head about this week…

i was able to take just a few photos of little moments and feel like i got it. i didn’t need to take a million frames of the same thing. more confidence in my view from behind the camera and less work editing later. a very happy lesson.
there really are so many little things that go on in a single day. on a regular basis. part of our daily routine. and it is so easy for those things to go unnoticed. it felt so good to really take the time to notice them. and then document them.
i want this week in the life project to be a time capsule for our family. a way to hold onto this time when i am in my last year of my 30′s and my boys are still little. the beginning of mark’s new venture into real estate. a fresh start that spring always brings. this is a time in our lives that will never happen again. it will never be repeated just like it was this week. and now we can keep these memories for always. things to look back on and smile.
even the ordinary is worth remembering. the messes. the temper tantrums of a little boy just starting the terrible twos. the four year old who changes his clothes about five times a day depending on which sport he is playing. the meals. the drive to preschool. family dinner at the table each night. because these ordinary things are what makes up our extraordinary lives.
this project was a week in the life of our whole family, so mark took photos of his day away from us and sent them to me.
this week went by way too fast! looking back now, i could have taken even more photos than i did, but then this brings me to the next thing i learned…
i have officially filled up my imac hard drive with photos! completely full. it is time to finally finish burning all of my photo files onto dvd and get them off of my imac. right now a copy of every photo i have taken from 2010, 2011 + 2012 is on my imac hard drive. i also have a copy of all of these files on an external hard drive. but i fear deleting these files from my imac hard drive until i know that i have double back up files (external hard drive and dvd) – just to be safe. looks like i’ll be spending lots of time burning dvds.
it is easy to forget to be in photos. i had to keep reminding myself. my wireless remote and self timer switch were my friends this week. and mark even snapped a few photos of me with his iphone too.
carrying my big camera around with me easily became a habit. putting it on my nightstand before going to bed so that i could take photos before my feet hit the ground in the morning (like the first image below). stashing it in my bag before leaving for preschool. carrying it around my shoulder in the grocery store. having it with me all the time gave me a new perspective on documenting all of those little moments. there was so much to notice in one regular, ordinary week in our lives. and this has opened up even more for what i want to include in our yearly project life journal.
and one more thing that i learned this week… tate started saying cheese every time he saw or heard my camera. even when it was on the shelf in our bedroom as i used the wireless remote to take a few photos of all of us on the bed watching the muppet movie. as soon as tate heard the click of the shutter, he said cheese! i’m not quite sure where he learned that.

next step? putting all of these photo together into a photo book to tell the story of our week in the life 2012. i have found some creative inspiration on pinterest. it will take me some time to go through all of the photos and words that i recorded this week. but i will come out of it with what i hope to be the first of our annual week in the life books.

here are a few of the everyday moments from our week in the life 2012:

early morning

grocery shopping

mama hugs needed

a clean frog + lion

bedtime story

breakfast

shopping with mommy

letters

daddy’s home

lego aisle

s’mores

bath time

after basketball nap in the car

technology

papa’s phone

playing hide + seek

water squirter

shopping in the rain

getting organized

sunday family dinner (notice tate looking at the camera? he heard the click.)

everyday routine

laundry helper

basketball

hiding

washing dishes

my little

for mommy

cinnabun morning

boo-boo

rainy drive

i have so many more photos to go through. deciding what to include in the story of our week in the life will be hard. but i am excited to get it all put together and hold the photo book in my hands.