Project Life...Cover and Week 1

Hello everyone!  I am finally posting my Project Life cover and Week One layout.  I've actually had it done for a few weeks now, but haven't had time to post it. The photos are not too great as the weather has been really cloudy, or windy, or not conducive to photos.  So here you go.

You can see my phone's shadow on the "smile" card :(

It took me quite a few days to finally come up with a title for my album.  I was actually stuck.  I knew I wanted gold.  I knew I wanted script font but nothing seemed to work.  I sifted through ALL of my kits that's a lot since I have a problem  which wasn't very many because I only have a few.  (Wink, Wink)  I used a combination of Studio Calico Kits and Clique Kits Kits.  Say that five times.  I like how it turned out, but I did have a little fight with my Mister Huey.  Most of the contents of the bottle may have been spilled in the scuffle.

This is my Week One spread.  It's only one page.  Remember in this post, I told you I wasn't going to be so strict with myself filling up two page spreads?  Well I took complete advantage of that for this week.  I didn't take that many photos so I really couldn't fill up the spread.  I like how both pages turned out.  I also like how I decided to title each spread with Week 1, Week 2, etc.  

My goal for this year is to continue posting Project Life on Wednesdays.  I know last year I said I would post every Wednesday but that didn't pan out.  This year I can't and won't promise that, even though I did complete the entire year!!!!!  The reason for that is I am having trouble with my Canon Selphy printing photos.  So, I'm ordering them from Walgreens, or Persnickety Prints.  Most of them are going through Persnickety Prints so I don't want to order photos weekly.  I would rather bundle them into a few weeks so I can save money on shipping.  I really like the versatility in sizes from Persnickety Prints.  I'll post a review in the coming weeks.

I also know I promised you the last twenty weeks of 2014, and I will deliver on that promise.  It's just that I have been so busy and the weather has been so crappy.  I will get the photos done and post them as soon as I can.  I hope you enjoyed these pages, and I can't wait to share more!!

Snow Day Photos

Well we should have had a snow day before school even began, but school was never delayed or canceled.  It's been a huge uproar in our town with the superintendent of school being called out on the carpet for lying about the whole situation.  Bottom line, the state wanted to do a test run of the testing system statewide.  Therefore, school was not canceled even though the weather was really bad and the roads were very dangerous.  I ended up having to take a half day off from school so I could pick Wolfie up from school as they released school early due to the weather.  I'm glad we at least got half a day so the kids could have some time to play in the snow.

This was at 5:30 in the morning.  The snow was coming down like crazy and only got worse.

This was at 6:40 in the morning.  We were on our way to school.  I don't know where this guy was going but his entire face was covered in snow.  I think he had a Duck Dynasty beard.  Whatever it was it was snow covered.  I got a kick out of it but couldn't get a good picture of him until I was stopped.

The boys playing in the yard.

JoJo brought this snowball in and put it in the freezer.

Erik came home during his lunch hour and started to help the boys build an igloo.

Warming their hands by the fire.

The finished igloo.

That one time I liked my Camera

***A Photoless Post... I'm sorry for that...****

There was a time that I loved my camera...my DSLR that is.  I'm just at a point right now with photography that I just can't bear to use it.  I know that's a horrible revelation, but it's true.  I'm just at the point where I feel I can't edit one more photo.  I can't even take a picture with it.  It's just so tedious at this point.  I shoot RAW when I use my camera, and maybe that's a problem because I have to convert everything to JPEG.  I also have to upload all of the photos before I can share or edit them.   I also blame this on taking up one of my passions and making it into a job.  It was a lot of fun to take pictures and give people beautiful things to hang on their walls.  Then it became disheartening when people started looking elsewhere for photos because they were cheaper.  Cheaper but so low in quality it was unbelievable (Not my customers, but potential customers).  Not to mention the huge amount of time editing photos takes from my family.  At this point, I've decided to stop.  Stop taking photos of other people until I can get my head in the right space.  I don't know how long this is going to take.  I might not ever take a photo of someone else again.  That's probably far fetched but that's where I'm at.  I also feel so bad for people settling for photos that are subpar.  I just can't help you now if that's the choice you want to make.  I have to get to a place where I can and want to take photos of my family with my camera.  I'm going to take active steps to get back, not necessarily professionally, but for my family.  My family deserves that personal touch and the beautiful photos that I know I can take.  At this point it needs to be just for them not for anyone else.

I promise to be honest and open in this endeavor.  I have a few ideas that I'm mulling over to get back to where I want to be, and I promise to share that along the way.

Clique Kits January Pep Rally

Hello there everyone and welcome to my blog.  I am excited to have you join us for the pep rally today!  You should be arriving here from Kim's blog.  I absolutely loved the January Tailor Made Kit.  I used the entire thing and have a few scraps leftover.  Here is the layout I made for todays Pep Rally.  My husband grew a mustache for Movember.  It was a lot of fun, and it fit perfectly with our German Christmas so he kept it for December too.  We had to have a layout dedicated to the Magnificent Mustache ha!  I used the sketch I created for the Clique Kits Blog as a starting point for this layout.

My goals for this year are to keep up with Project Life 2015.  I want to get my house organized.  We are going on year 12 here at our home, and that's a lot of stuff.  I also want to expand my garden this year and hopefully find a way to get rid of ants without poison.  They made working in the garden last summer unbearable.  We will continue our Real Food diet.  I would also really like to finish the decor in my craftroom.

I'm going to share the other projects I made with the Tailor Made kit incase you missed them on the Clique Kits Blog.  Don't forget to check the blog out daily for awesome inspiration!

No too shabby for a month!  Well you are off to Alisha's blog!

Here is the entire blog list in case you get lost along the way.

Clique Kits https://cliquekits.wordpress.com/

Jody http://spiegelmomscraps.com/
Lacey http://laceybugcreations.blogspot.com/
Sarah M. http://sarahmoore4.blogspot.ca/
Bonita Rose http://www.bonitarose.com/?view=classic
Nicole M http://www.nicolemartel.blogspot.com/
Cari O. http://cariilup.blogspot.com/
Carolina S http://www.carolinaschulz.com/
Sandy http://www.thepinkcamera.com/
Charity http://www.scrapfaire.blogspot.com/
Kat http://kraftykat9.blogspot.com/
Kim http://kimsscrappyblog.blogspot.com/----You came from here.
Mariah http://www.fun2scrap.blogspot.com/---You are here.
Alisha Www.alishabuggins.blogspot.com---Go here next.
Danielle http://picsandcheesecake.blogspot.nl/
Aliza http://peopleofthescrapbook.blogspot.com/

She's Back!!!!! Mariphone is Bigger and Better

That's right people, Mariphone is back.  I am so excited to have her back in my nimble fingers.  I actually got her before the new year, but things have been super crazy around here so I couldn't share the good news.  I just couldn't take my Samsung Galaxy S5 anymore.  I missed iTunes.  I missed the iCloud.  I missed the simplicity of an iPhone.

Erik got me the iPhone 6 plus before Christmas.  We actually went to the Verizon Store to get Wolfgang a cell phone.  That's another story.  Anyhow, Erik said I could get her back.  Over the last few months, I grew to hate my Samsung Galaxy.

Here are my thoughts on the age old question: Which is better?  An iPhone or a Samsung Galaxy S5.

I'm going to start by saying I switched over to the Samsung because it was bigger than an iPhone.  I read books on my phone, and overall I just like a bigger screen.  The 6 plus is bigger than an S5.  I also want to be fair in my comparison.  I know Verizon has the Verizon Cloud and Music, etc.  To be honest, I always saw myself going back to Apple.  I never signed up for the Cloud.  I never purchased music from the Playstore.  I really like iTunes, and I like that all of us can share our music because the boys have iPods.

After time, I found that the S5 slowed down.  I had to restart it all of the time.  My husband also has this issue with his.  He had to do a hard reset a couple of weeks ago.  I don't think it's acceptable to do a hard reset every four or five months.  Your phone should work, period.  We pay a lot of money for our phones.  I also didn't like that I couldn't delete apps.  Some of them come preprogrammed on the phone and when I deleted some or turned them off to save memory, it completely messed up my phone.  I had to go back and add them back to make my phone work properly.  These are apps I NEVER EVER used.  I also didn't like that there were multiple copies of apps.  I would have three or four copies of the app on the pages of my screen.  I don't need three short cuts to my Kindle app, thank you.  Another big problem was battery life.  My S5 battery just did not compare at all with an iPhone battery.  Even on days that I didn't use my phone very much and made sure all of the apps were closed I would be on low battery by the end of the day.  My iPhone batter is awesome.  I have to really use my phone all day for the battery to be low.  The S5 is so much slower.  There seems to be a lag time when I would "swipe the screen" to open my S5.  When I opened apps, there was a wait.  That's not the case with my iPhone.  The apps work exceptionally well.  There are also more scrapbooking apps with the iPhone.  Something that is important to me.  One other thing I noticed is that the Galaxy S5 allows you to use your thumbprint to unlock the phone.  That was a big joke, I could never get it to unlock my phone.  I ended up just using a swipe.  With my new iPhone, that is not the case.  It works perfectly and I can even use my thumbprint to approve app and iTune purchases.

To the credit of Samsung Galaxy S5, I will say that the pulldown menu is very convenient to use.  It also allowed me to make purchases directly from my Kindle App which was nice.  The iPhone does not.  It also updated a lot of apps and things automatically.  That was a nice feature.  The camera is also very versatile.  I liked the camera a lot, but I just couldn't take the rest of the issues that went with the phone.  Samsung also made it very easy to switch from iPhone to their phones with Samsung Smart Switch.  That was really nice because I got to keep all of my music.  Apple does not.

I am so happy to have my phone back.  Here is a picture of the case I made on Vista Print for Mariphone.  I love it!

And here is how it looks on my Mariphone.  Picture taken with S5 ha.  Erik hasn't switched over yet.

I'll try to get a better picture.  It was dark when we took this.  If you have any questions, please let me know in the comments.  I will be honest and fair.  I know this is such a debate.  Everyone loves their phone and wants to be happy with theirs.  I want you to be happy too, whether its an iPhone or Samsung, or Droid phone.

Have a great day!

Project Life Week 33

Here is Week 33.  This week, my very dear friend came to visit.  We spent time crafting and hanging out.  It was a lot of fun.  Later in the week, Erik and his mom surprised me with a Crab boil for my birthday.  

Left side

Right Side...with a birthday selfie.  

Project Life Week 32

Today, I wanted to share with you my Project Life Spread for Week 32.  The photos are a little better this week than last.  I used the Clique Kits November Kit,  Homecoming Kit for this Spread as well.  I went through and added some typewriter text to all of the photos.  This week chronicles Wolfie's last few days of summer and first day of school.  He and Erik went hiking and ran across some rattle snakes during their hike.  Yikes.

Clique Kits January Challenge featuring Creative Embellishments

Clique Kits January Challenge is live!  This month they are featuring Creative Embellishments.

Here is a little bio about Creative Embellishments

Creative Embellishments is a new family owned company that was created by Michael and Nicolle Kramer. We are a husband and wife team who design and manufacture unique, high quality chipboard, rubber stamps, flair and wood products. It is our mission is to offer fun and inspiring products to bring out your inner creativity that you can add to any project. In the near future we will be expanding into other mediums such as stencils.

Creative Embellishments Website - http://creativeembellishments.com/

Creative Embellishments Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/CreativeEmbellishment

Creative Embellishments Blog – http://creativeembellishments.com/blog/

Here are a few details to go along with this months challenge!

• You may combine our challenge with other challenges
• You may enter our challenge up to 3 times
• Link up your projects by January 31st, 11:55 pm CST
• You are not required to use a Clique Kit to link up
• You are not required to use Creative Embellishments products to link up but doing so does give you an extra entry
• Create any type of project
• Link directly to your challenge project entry post

Here is my layout for the January Challenge.  I used the Clique Kits January Kit, Tailor Made.  

Those cool chipboard triangles are from Creative Embellishments.

Happy New Year! Some thoughts on Project Life

Happy New Year Everyone!!

I just wanted to share some thoughts on Project Life today.  I'm going to continue this project in 2015.  I am a few weeks behind with 2014 due to life getting in the way of things.  My hopes are to get it finished up very quickly, even if it's not the most beautiful work of art.

I posted on the Clique Kits blog the other day with some tips for Project Life.  You can read them here.  I thought today, I would share with you my plans for 2015 Project Life.

This year, I have decided to go ahead and start 2015 along with finishing up 2014.  That's not usually how my mind works, but it's going to have to happen.  I printed out tons of photos at Walgreens (yikes) to get it done in the next few days.  I'm having issues with my Selphy, and I didn't want to wait for my pictures from Persnickety Prints to come in the mail.  I haven't decided how I'm going to be posting these final pages on my blog.  I have some spreads scheduled, but I don't want to do anymore until I see where I am and if I've finished up 2014.  I promise though, you will get to see them.

How I will be organizing in 2015:

*This year, I will continue posting Friday to Thursday.  So this week's 2015 Project Life Spread should actually start today, Friday, January 2 through Thursday, January 8.  The second week will begin January 9th.  I haven't decided how I will incorporate New Years Day.  If it will just jump in with this week, or be part of my cover page for the year.

*For 2014 I did two page spreads.  I think for the most part this year, I will continue.  However, if there is a week that I only have enough photos for one page, then it will be one page.  If I have so many photos it makes three pages, then it will be three pages.  I'm not going to chain myself to the two page spread this year.  I'm going to see if doing this works because I am so anal about some things so it's going to take letting go a little bit.

*Each week will have a title for example, Week 1, Week 2, etc.  Very original and clever.  The reason for that is I think that it will help bring organization to the spreads especially if they aren't on two continuous pages.  I also just think it's cute.

*Photo management:  This year, printing photos weekly worked really well for me.  However, with the issues with my Selphy, and my credit at Persnickety Prints I might have to change that.  Right now, I have 2014 to work on so it might not be too bad to order some prints from Persnickety Prints.

*I'm mixing up the page protectors this year.  I used Designs A, D, and K from Becky Higgins.  I want to add a little more variety to that this year.