Project Life 2015: Lilacs Blooming

The lilacs in our backyard are almost ready to bloom again!  I look forward to it every year and it's a tradition to take the kids' photos by the bush every spring.  Here's how I documented this very day, one year ago.

My daughter had a half day so we met my husband for lunch.  We came home to take pictures in the backyard and then went to the park for a quick walk and some swinging.

Cards are from the Seasons Snap Set (3X4 & 4X6) by Simple Stories.

***Notes: I photographed this page before journaling or as they say, "Before the pen" so to speak.  I think I will be doing this whenever possible, since it saves me from having to digitally edit out names and personal details, which my husband prefers I not share.  It really cuts down on the time needed to get a blog post up.  I hope this does not detract from your enjoyment of my pages.***

Disney•Pixar's Finding Dory FREE Printable Activities

*PR Materials Provided

Are your kids as excited as mine for the new Disney•Pixar movie?  Finding Nemo is already one of our favorite family movies, so we already know we're going love this one too.  We're less than a month away from it's release and I have some really fun downloadable activities to share.

One reason we're especially looking forward to this movie is because we went to Disney World over spring break in April.  We didn't tell the kids about the trip until Easter morning, so they only had a week to wait until they were checking into our All Star Resort.  As you can imagine, it was a magical trip!

One of the most anticipated rides for the whole family is The Seas with Nemo & Friends.  I definitely recommend using a FastPass+ for this popular attraction as the wait time can be quite long.  Don't forget to stop by the really fun photo spot my kids are at in the photo above, and get a picture with your favorite underwater friends!

This trip my little guy selected a Squirt plush as one of his souvenirs because turtles are his favorite animal.  He had a really amazing experience with some sea turtles at The Seas with Nemo & Friends Pavilion at Epcot after the ride.  Three swam by right on the other side of the glass and the look of amazement and joy on his face was priceless.  He was so in awe that he sat watching them for almost ten minutes.  Anyone with an active four year old boy knows that's really something!

After such a memorable experience, we can't wait to see our favorite forgetful blue tang again as she goes on a search for answers about her past in Disney•Pixar's “Finding Dory”.  Joined by her friends Nemo and Marlin, Dory will be looking for the answers to: What can she remember? Who are her parents? And where did she learn to speak Whale?

I can't wait to see the film!  Here is the official trailer, followed by the FREE"Finding Dory" activities.  I hope your kids have as much fun doing them as mine!  Click on each link to download the PDF and print!  (Let me know if you have any problems accessing the PDFs.)



Finding Dory - Memory Match Game

Finding Dory - Coloring Pages

Finding Dory - Connect the Dot Pages

Finding Dory - Maze

Finding Dory - Weekly Calendar

Finding Dory - Character Mobile

Don't forget to mark your calendars!  “Finding Dory” swims into theaters June 17, 2016

Project Life 2015: Bloom & Grow

Last week we picked out the flowers for our front planters, I was inspired by this display at a local garden center.  Getting our front walk ready for the season reminded me of this Project Life Spread from last spring.  My little guy got really into gardening, even if he wasn't completely on board with the all pink color scheme his older sister had selected.

I'm notorious for having a black thumb so my daughter's Godmother came over to help me set everything up.  Then after an afternoon of outdoor work we all took a break at the neighborhood park.  It was a fine day indeed!

Do you remember the magazine Creating Keepsakes?  I remember the founding editor Lisa Bearnson writing something along the lines of scrapbooking a memory doesn't have to take longer than creating the actual memory.  That really stuck with me.  It's one of the reasons why I like Project Life so much.  This was another quick page, even with a little bit of embellishing, and features the Garden Party collection from Pebbles.

Have you gotten started on your garden yet?  Do you plant flowers, or do you have do vegetables too?

Project Life: Spring Break 2015

I'm hopelessly behind in sharing my Project Life pages, an entire year in fact!  Happily, I am not that far behind in actually getting the pages done and in my album.  I'm actually relatively "caught up".  I've decided to share a few of my favorite pages in between where I left off blogging them and where I currently am to date in 2015,

Back in April my family went to Chicago for an overnight visit.  We still managed to pack quite a lot into our time.  Like always, my husband gets us up and out the door so early that we arrived before the Museum of Science and Industry even opened.  This is quite a feat when you consider we still travel with my son's co-sleeper, eat breakfast on the road, and since we have kids - inevitably end up making more bathroom stops than he deems acceptable.

To make this mini trip within my album, I simply placed the museum map inside of a standard office supply sleeve.  Did you know these are usually also acid free and safe for memory keeping + so much more inexpensive than page protectors made by scrapbook companies?  Check the label just in case.

Then I added a bit of an info brochure we picked up at our hotel, that gives a little background about the MSI.  A few embellishments and now I have a easy peasy intro page to this section.  I like how the first page on the trip is peaking out underneath.

My son loves big trucks, vehicles, and especially tractors.  John Deere is well known in our house!  He was super excited, as in almost couldn't contain his happiness, at seeing this one set up for easy access to climb up and into.  There's also a combine that's pretty neat because you can see how the inner parts work.  He liked the Farm Tech exhibit so much we had to visit it twice.

You can see a bit more of the combine on the above left.  On the backside of the 6X8 slot I took advantage of the b side of the farm themed paper and just made a pocket to add our tickets in.  It takes up more room on the spread than I'd like but I didn't have any other focal point pictures I wanted to add there.

I used a post card from the gift shop in the right side.  It provides a nice overview of all the exhibits and I love to incorporate things like this to help document a trip with professional level photography, empty exhibits, and better images than I can get myself.

The next spread is about the Idea Factory, try to go early as they control the number of people allowed in and out.  My kids had a blast.  More of the brochure I cut apart for the map insert is on a filler card.

The right side is about the U-505 Submarine, Henry Crown Space Center, and You! The Experience.  I tried to really focus on just the highlights .

Project Life: A Day Out with Thomas, 2015

Hi Friends!

Oh my, has it been a LOOOOONG time since I've blogged!  I would think about getting on and sharing my latest projects but then it would seem like there had been such a long break...where to pick up the conversation.

Where to begin?

I guess by going back to where we stopped?  That was the end of last summer when I hurt my calf muscle, by tearing it three inches.  That was quite the pickle I got myself into!  It seems like a long time ago, and yet recently enough where the time between seems to have gone by in the blink of an eye.

I've been told that time flies as you get older and I have to say, I'm finding that quite true.  While not blogging, I've managed to get a lot done.  I'm actually current in my Project Life/Scrapbooking. That's in large part, because I got hurt and couldn't do very much of anything but sit around.

Then once I was better, any extra time was spent playing catch up with all the tasks, projects, and work around the house that had gotten neglected while doing physical therapy and recovering.

So without dragging this out too much, I decided to come back into blogging by sharing what I love most...memory keeping.

Last weekend, we took our little guy to see Thomas the Train, he's now four and I was hoping we could get away without going but no.  He definitely want to go see his favorite pal from the island of Sodor again.

Page Details:

I'm so far behind in sharing my Project Life pages that this is actually the page from LAST year's visit, when my little nugget was three.  His sister was sick so she she stayed with a sitter at home while he got to experience a little only child outing.  Needless to say, he loved it and documented it with some Slate Core Kit (printed kit discontinued, digital version available here) and fancied up a couple pictures with Just Add Color Overlays (digital version available here) and a few stickers.  It was an easy peasy page.

Hope you've all been able to make time for creativity and indulging in some me time:)  If not, hopefully soon!  {{Hugs}}