the simple things

what to do with all those photos?

Hey there! I've gotten a lot of questions about what I'm doing with all the photos I'm taking this year. Well the answer for that is a little long so let's get right to it!

First, for my 52 challenge and my 10 on 10 I'm having all the photos printed and put into my invite.L albums.

In the 52 week challenge album I'm leaving the first page blank so I can add the list of themes and dates at the end of the year and then the photos will follow in theme order. Pretty simple.

For my 10 on 10 photos they too are going in an album, but at the start of each month I am doing a little story write up for the series of photos. The story will give a some background around what happened that day. I can't wait to look back on this album and see the different stories and photos for each month!

I've also decided to scrapbook some of the photos as well for two reasons, 1. because I had this growing collection of great photos which I wanted to do more with, and 2. because some of these photos needed to have more of a story told with them. Here's a peek at a couple of my recent pages.

I decided to only digitally scrap right now because it's the easiest thing for me to do. I'm at the computer editing the photos I'm taking, preparing some for print and it just made sense to digitally scrap a few too.

I've also decided to do one more photo project this year seeing how I was taking so many pictures these days. This project is my take on Project Life. I'm using the same idea of how Project Life is all about documenting those everyday moments, but instead of doing a weekly documentation I've decided to just document events and moments as I can. I thought if I did it this way I wouldn't feel the pressure of a weekly commitment, but still get the benefits of capturing those special everyday memories and moments from 2012.

For this project I'm using an American Crafts 12x12 binder and the Project Life photo pocket pages. The photo above shows my inside title page.

This binder is all about documenting my two little munchkins so I decided to start things off with an intro page on each girl using some of my most favourite photos of them and noting personality traits on each.

In my Project Life binder I will also be including little mementos like stuff the girls make and other little items I want to save. I'm also including some scrapbooking pages to tell more of a story around a photo and just overall dress up the binder a little more. Here's one of the pages I just added.

So there you have it, all the things I'm doing to preserve my photos and tell their stories. How about you, what kinds of things do you do with your photos?

Oh, and before I go I should also mention that most of the digital elements I used in the pages above are from Paislee Press and Three Paper Peonies. I love these girls stuff!

Have a great day everyone!

home tour: the dining room {revisited}

The other day I was at one of my favourite housewares stores and picked up this little runner for my duck to sit on and it got me thinking about changing up our dining room again.

Not too long ago I recovered my dining room chairs with an Ikea curtain that used to be hanging in our living room.

Now don't get me wrong, I still love how the chairs look, but when I picked up that french linen red ticking runner for my duck I felt the chairs are not quite my style...maybe a little too fancy? I love the more casual vintage farmhouse look so I'm thinking of changing them to either a straight linen or maybe country-them-up with red ticking fabric like the runner. What do you think?

Ideally I'd love to get an entirely new dining room set, something truly more rustic looking and farmhouse inspired, but it's just not in the cards at this time. I'm trying to talk my talented woodworking hubby into making it for me, but it's all just a matter of finding the time.

Here's one more picture I just had to share. This was the first picture I snapped of my dining room for this post when I realized there peeking out from the side of my china cabinet was my ever so faithful Dyson. If I wore a cleaning holster around the house this little guy would be in it. LOL! I can't live without this vacuum. I swear I must use it a million times a day picking up crumbs, cat hair and anything else I can find. I love, LOVE my Dyson!

Happy Wednesday everyone!

photo friday challenge {night}

Hello lovely blogger friends! First, before I get to Friday's photo challenge I want to say to anyone out there reading my blog for crafty things, home decor and organizing stuff, I have so much to blog about on that front, but life has been just so crazy busy and haven't had much time. So sorry about that, but once things get a little more settled on the home front I'll have lots of good stuff to share. :-)

Now onto Friday's photo challenge theme...night. Here's my photo and I can't wait to see yours!

Have a great weekend everyone!

Oh wait, one more thing, I've received a lot of questions about sharing what I'm doing with all the photos I'm taking and how I'm storing them. That's the next post I'm working on, so please stay tuned! 

happy valentine's day

My favourite digital designer, Liz from Paislee Press, offers the cutest Valentine's Day template for a free download here and I just had to make one of my own for my little munchkins to give to their Daddy. You get a photobooth "like" template for inserting your pictures into and the super cute grey and white striped card.

This was such a quick and simple way to make a really special Valentine's Day card, especially such a cute one don't ya think?! I also added the two Be Mine tickets from Jenni Bowlin for just a little more interest and sweetness. :-)

Here's to everyone having a really great Valentine's Day tomorrow!

{February} 10 on 10

ETA: Dont' forget to play along in Friday's Photo Challenge below! This week's theme is Love.

For February's 10 on 10 I decided to take my 10 pictures from my girls first trip to the bowling lanes. Boy did they have fun and we are totally going to make bowling a regular outing going forward. Maybe I should even make up some matching bowling shirts. LOL! :-)

I have to say that shooting here was really challenging. I had my ISO up really high because of the poor lighting and my shutter speed was a little low for all the action. Even though the pictures aren't as crisp as I would like, making them black and white really helped to hide some of those issues...got to love b/w!

So how about you, what's a typical February day looking like for you? Share your 10 on 10 with us!