hanging with my peeps: April 2011

I'm ending my blog vacay with a blog hop sponsored by one of my newest favorite sites, Capture your 365.
You should have just come from Kathleen's site at jkplusthree.
With a really rough start to this year, my project 365 is the one thing that I have maintained & I am loving it.
So much that I am doing 2 versions of it.
I started mine January 1st, so I am now into my 4th month of scrapbooking my daily photos. There are so many reasons why I love this project so much. Probably the biggest is that it has shifted my focus. Instead of just photographing big moments or events, I am trying to capture those little bits that belong to my family. Our day to day activities that sometimes get lost in the shuffle.
The other is that I have to write something down everyday. This is one of my biggest struggles. I have so many layouts that I set aside to journal on later & now those stories are gone *sigh* Watching the girls look through our album & seeing how much they enjoy reading what I have written helps keep me on track though.
Finally because I am taking so many photos & playing with them in Elements I am improving both my photography & editing skills. I still have a long way to go, but I get so excited when for example I figured out how to fix the white balance.

Here are some of my favorite photos taken so far this year that I doubt I would have taken if I wasn't doing this project.

I have gotten much better about handing the camera over, but this photo was all about how we celebrated Read Across America. Just me & my girls doing two of my favorite things, cuddling with my girls & reading.

This is probably my favorite so far this year. I can't really explain why except this is one of those things the girls do with their dad & they have so much fun doing it. Go figure, I thought washing the car was a chore, silly me. When I see this I remember how much fun they had & how much they laughed.

Just a few more photos. Again just random moments. Chores, Matt's involvement with the Navy, visiting with the grandparents ~ which for some reason I haven't taken very many photos of in the past, getting ready for school and my silly girls with their stuffed animal obsessions.

The easiest & probably my favorite 365 album is Becky Higgins project life, especially her kit that you can buy on Amazon. Some of my pages in that look like this

It is just so easy to drop the photos into their spot & write up my journaling cards. I love having a spot to put extras like certificates & such. Probably one of my favorite sources of inspiration is Ali Edwards, for example this week she included an interview with her son. Love that & will be including those in the near future.

I am also doing a 12x12 digi album mostly thanks to Red Genius Enterprises. Every week Jewel posts a free (love that!) template for the week & if you complete & share your layout you receive digi goodies. Since I am a template junkie & love challenges this is motivation x2 for me.
Here are 2 of those pages

Used week 8 Mad Genius Designs template & Trixie Scraps Owl Always Love You kit

Used Week 6 Mad Genius Designs template & Angel Hartline Love Collection kit

The week day border that I use on my photos is from Spinky Dink Scraps & was a freebie from the Gotta Pixel Club
The dates on each photo are from Carina Gardner's A Year of Photos rubons available at http://www.jessicasprague.com/

Your next stop on the blog train is Gabi at gabirytirova