September Blue

PROJECT LIFE | WEEK TWENTY + A FEW PARIS PICS

It's big.

It's bold.

It's different than my other layouts.

It's Week 20.

Chris and I were in France during Week 20 (May 13-19). In my last Project Life post I mentioned I was not going to put all of my photos from this trip into my Project Life album. There are just too many of them. My intention was to do a digital album documenting this trip through Shutterfly. But then I realized that isn't going to allow me to include memoriabilia like museum passes & restaurant business cards. I don't want a 12x12 album–I think it will be too big. So I decided I will create a smaller book using one from from Simple Stories. I'm not sure what size yet–8.5x11 or 6x8. Has anyone used thier products before? I would love to hear what you think! However, I won't create this album until we move back to the States. There is not enough time for me to order, have the items delivered and put it together before we move. That little project will just have to be on the back burner for a while! But enough rambling, this is what I did to document this trip, just so I don't have Week 20 missing from my 2013 PL album:

How cool is that? I love looking at it. It is still hanging on the closet doors in my laundry room (that is where I photograph my layouts). It gives me something pretty to look at other than dirty laundry!

So to answer a few questions that you may already have:

1) I printed this at home.

2) The original size of the photo was a little larger than 8x12 (landscape oriented).

3) I enlarged it in Photoshop to 12x24 without losing any detail!!!!

4) The name of the font I wrote "Paris" in is called Columbus. It was a free download from FontSpace.

Question for you: Do you want to learn how to enlarge your photos in Photoshop like I did here??? Would you like to see a tutorial on how to do it??? I'm thinking about putting one together!

No journaling, just the photo and title. I will save the journaling for the album I will create later. Actually, I have most of the journaling done already! I used the Day One App on my iPad while we were in Paris. It was a GREAT way to keep track of the events during the day!

Since it will be a while before I get the Paris album done, I do want to share just a few photos of our trip with you:

We ate at this restaurant our first night in Paris. What so special about it? Are you familiar with the movie "Something's Got to Give," starring Diane Keaton and Jack Nicholson? The dinner scene toward the end of the movie was filmed here!!!

Couldn't get enough of the Eiffel Tower.

We made it to the top of the Tower! We even had champagne up there!

The Louvre.

Love, love, love Parisian breakfasts.

Notre Dame.

Me & Debbie having lunch at a cafe that is well-removed from all the tourists! So, so good! 

Probably one of my favorite moments of the whole trip. It was pouring rain outside and we took a wrong set of stairs to the metro. We ended up underneath the metro bridge along the water. One of us mentioned how awesome it would be if we had a bottle of wine to drink while we waited for the rain to stop. Leave it to Andrew to pull out a bottle from his backpack!!! He slipped inside a wine shop earlier in the day while the Debbie, Chris and I were checking out an ice cream shop. 

Drinking wine with friends, straight from a bottle, in Paris, under a bridge, along the Seine. 

It was awesome.

This post is also linked at The Mom Creative. Thanks Jessica for providing a space for Project Lifers to share their pages! 

 

 

AN ENGAGING ANNOUNCEMENT

There is going to be a wedding!

Our oldest son Dustin & his beautiful girlfriend, Becca are engaged and we couldn't be happier. This news is about 10 days old and although I have already shared it on my personal Facebook page, I wanted to share the happy news with my blog readers as well!

Dustin and Becca have been together for almost 5 years. They met when he was a sophomore in college and she was a freshman. During this time she has celebrated birthdays with us, visited our extended family in Ohio, gone on family vacations with us and traveled to Europe to visit us here in Riga. I guess you could say Becca is already part of our family! But now it is going to be official and I am ecstatic that I am finally going to have a daughter!

These two really do have it together. I think it is rare to see young twenty-somethings like Dustin & Becca who are as grounded as they are. They both landed stable jobs right out of college–and in their fields for that matter (Dustin is a biologist and Becca is an electrical engineer). They have no student loan debt, are extremely money-concious and not into heavy drinking or partying. And unlike many young adults these days, they don't feel they are entitled to anything. They are extremely appreciative of foundation their parents have given them to start their lives out on the right foot. They have a bright, bright future.

They are awesome and they are so loved.

No date has been set yet, but they did say the wedding will take place some time next year.  Although I am the mother of the groom, you can count on me blogging about the entire wedding planning process! 

(The photo above is the only recent picture I have of them. Chris was in Virginia last week on business and was able to stay with them for a few days. He snapped this photo of them on Memorial Day. I will be taken engagment pictures when we move back to the States in July!)

ONE LITTLE WORD | MONTHLY BLOG HOP | JUNE 1

How fitting is that piece of paper for this workshop??? While working on this month's prompt I found this on a patterned piece of paper by My Mind's Eye. Just had to share!

By the way, welcome to this month's hop! You've arrived at the last stop and I hope you have been enjoying all of the inspiration and creativity that everyone has shared. If you arrived at September Blue through a blog reader and want to start back at the beginning of the hop go to Lee's site The Linar Studio. Lee is awesome and is our organizer for the hop. Thanks Lee! On to what I did in May:

If you recall last month I wasn't able to complete the prompt that Ali gave us because my computer crashed (the prompt was to use photos to define our word). For May, Ali wanted us to focus on listening–what people are saying to you, what words or phrases are going over and over in our heads, and document them in our albums. Now that I have my computer back, I thought I would combine the two months into a two-page spread as seen above.

Close up of left side.

Close up of right side.

I really didn't have any words or phrases that were enlightening or gave me an "ah-ha epiphany" moment in May. But I do have several quotes and phrases that do go through my head almost on a daily basis. And after printing them out and combining them with the photos from April's prompt, I found it to be a pretty powerful spread!

One of my favorite quotes in the layout is the one above by Ali herself. I think I read it on her blog a year or two ago and honestly, repeat it to myself on a daily basis. I love it. It's like my mantra. 

Another one of my absolute favorite quotes of all time is the one above–"You can have it all. Just not all at once." There are some variations of that quote and I'm not exactly sure who said it, but think about it. It's so true, isn't it? I tell that to myself whenever things aren't going my way or feel I "need to have this, this and this right now." It's an awesome quote and it keeps me grounded. Things are going to start to get crazy here in the next few weeks with our time winding down here in Europe. Moving overseas isn't easy and I know I'm going to want things done and fall into place perfectly. But I know that is not going to happen. You can count on this quote to help me get through this transition.

One of the things that I love about this layout is that I didn't plan for the photos to coordinate with the quotes/phrases.  When I put everything together I thought it was awesome how the many of the photos enhanced the meanings of the words.

I am loving this journey into "word studies."

PROJECT LIFE | WEEK NINETEEN

Week Nineteen–it's a bit of a milestone for me. Why? Because my Project Life album for 2012 never made it past Week Eighteen! So I am super happy that I have made it past the point I left off from last year. I just love this project.

"Easy-peasy-lemon-squeezy."

I stole that phrase from my friend Debbie because that describes my layout for this particular week. I love that about documenting our lives the Project Life way. You can bling-up your pages when you feel like it or keep it super simple like I did for this week. Just used the standard Design A pocket pages and journal cards from the Seafoam Edition.

The photos were pretty neutral in color, so I kept things in a khaki and gray color scheme.

I thought I was seeing double on Saturday this week. My double vision started off at breakfast when I cracked an egg and there was a double yolk inside. Later that day I had to run a few errands and was out of the house for about an hour and a half. During that time I saw 3 sets of identical twins! All in different locations. Weird, huh???

Photos on the left side of the page were mostly from Mother's Day. Chris took me to my favorite restaurant in Jurmala-Line 36. We enjoyed wonderful shrimp and scallops appetizers and a Thai Beef Salad for dinner. For dessert we shared five scoops of homemade ice cream served in a coconut shell. Yum! The sticker letters are from Basic Grey. The little "love, love, love" tab shown on the photo to the left came in a Studio Calico Project Life kit.

Paris Update: We had a wonderful time in France during Week 20. I took over 1100 photos and I am still going through them, editing some and deleting others. There are way too many to put into a two-page spread. Even if I added inserts, there would still be too many photos. So what I think I am going to do is make a book about our week in France on Shutterfly. I will have some sort of documentation about the trip in my PL album, but I am still trying to figure out how to go about doing it! I'll keep you posted!

ALWAYS REMEMBER

Being a Marine Corps family, Memorial Day has always been a day of remembrance and reflection for us. Recently our European travels took us to Normandy, France. This Memorial Day I thought it would be appropriate to share with you some of the photos I took at the Normandy American Cemetery and Memorial:

The Memorial features a 22-foot statue, "The Spirit of American Youth Rising from the Waves." It faces west, toward the headstones.

View from The Memorial, facing The Chapel.

Omaha Beach in the background.

There are a little over 300 Unknown Soldiers buried at the American Cemetery in Normandy.

View standing Omaha Beach looking towards the Cemetery.

Omaha Beach.

Chris on Omaha Beach.

I wish I could describe the feeling I got while watching Chris standing there on Omaha Beach and walking through the American Cemetery. Visiting Normandy with him was like having a walking encyclopedia right there beside me. His knowledge about WWII–and history in general–never ceases to amaze me. He has studied it in depth and has a library of books about the subject. I was so, so happy to be there with him while he walked on the sands where so many Americans gave their all.

This Memorial Day remember all those men and women who have sacrificed their lives for the freedom you enjoy today. Continue to honor those veterans who have served in our Armed Forces and give thanks to those who are currently serving our country.

God Bless them all.

 

 

 

PROJECT LIFE | WEEK EIGHTEEN

Since Week Nineteen is still has a day and a half left in it, I guess you can say I am officially caught up with Project Life! Whoop! Whoop! 

Goal achieved.

Again, no insert needed. Just Design A pocket pages.

This week was an awesome week! Why? Because our baby turned 20! Sure it was hard to be so far away, but the power of technology (Skype and messaging on our iPads) really help to close the miles between us. I didn't worry about him celebrating too much with friends because it just so happened finals were going on at USF! My "baby" was studying like a good boy! :) I can't believe we don't have teenagers any more! Where has the time gone? 

I changed things up a bit this week in two ways.

One: With the exception of the title card and the "Today is Good" filler card, the journal and remaining filler card came from the digital version of the Midnight Project Life Edition. I keep forgetting I have it! 

Two: I did a lot of recoloring of the Midnight Edition pieces to match the color scheme of the Seafoam Edition. I really like the versatility of having the digital versions of the kits! I think you get more bang for you buck! The "Today is Good" (Seafoam Edition) was changed to a different color as well.

The sticker letters by Ryley's photo are from Thickers, but made for Studio Calico. I really, really like the size and feel of these letters. I need to see if they make this particular style in other colors. Does anybody know off hand if they do?

I couldn't resist including photos my new Epiphanie bag in my layout this week (you can read my review of this awesome camera bag here). 

So that is it! I leave for France on Monday and will try to get Week Nineteen up before I go! If not, follow me while I'm in Paris! I will be posting photos to Instagram & FaceBook!

 

PROJECT LIFE | WEEK SEVENTEEN + FREEBIE!

Project Life rocks! Just thought I'd put that out there in case you didn't already know that! Take a peek at Week Seventeen:

Again, no insert this week! Just a traditional two-page layout using the Design A page protectors.

So this week my main source of embellishments came from, well, ME! I'll show you:

Remember that list I had going on of things to get done when my computer was in the shop? One of those items on the list was to clean out my closet. I'm happy to say that is one thing which got a check in the box. The few empty hangers that I found inspired me to create a fun word art filler card. Chris said after I was finished the closet looked like a store because everything was so neat and in its place.

I made the "Best Burgers in Riga" badge, too! Yummy, yummy burgers and fries. This is the only place in town where they give you free refills on your drinks!!! 

The fork, knife and spoon filler card is one that I made for the {love} my organized recipes digital kit. I thought it was perfect for this area of the page. Our downstairs neighbors had a Murder Mystery party on Saturday of this week and we had a blast! The character I played was a lawyer, Ada Turney. Chris played Lt. Ben Padlock. There were three "rounds" in the game where we had specific clues to make public and dialogue between characters exchanged in order to solve the "Murder at the Isle Royal Lodge." So fun. I would love to host one of these!

So there you have it–Week Seventeen. Let's back up to Week Fourteen for a moment. Reader Christi in MA asked if I would put the "Mother Nature" brush in my store because they had a similar winter in MA as we did in Latvia. I know it has only been a few days since I posted Week 14, but I had to go back and look at what she was talking about! I really have to do something about this short-term memory I've had lately! Anyways, I'll do one better and give the PNG away for free for a limited time (it will become part of a collection in the near future)! It may not be socially acceptable within the scrapbooking world to have that "p" word as part of layout. But you know what? Life isn't always sunshine and rainbows. We need to document the good with the bad–in a "real" way where we don't mince words and say what we mean or feel, and that is exactly how I was feeling when I snapped this photo:

So here you are Christi! I hope you and anyone else that downloads the png will make use of it! (Note: The word art is in black lettering. you can use a color overlay effect to change it to the color of your choice!)

Download SeptBlue_MotherNature.png

Thanks for reading! Weeks 18 and 19 will be posted this weekend. I usually do not blog on the weekends, for fear that people are too busy to be keeping up with the blogs they follow, but I am determined to be all caught up before my trip on Monday!

 

 

PROJECT LIFE | WEEK SIXTEEN

Hello Week Sixteen! I had so much fun putting you together!

Putting together Week 16 was a nice change of pace! It was the first week in a long time that I didn't need to add an insert and just kept things to the two page spread using the Design A pocket pages.

I really, really like this area of the left hand side of the layout (photo below). The journal card is numbered so it coordinates with the numbered photos on the page. The larger gray number stickers are by Thickers and the small blue numbers on the journal card are by Jillibean Soup. The white "good eats" letters are by Studio Calico (I think).

While our Saturday walk, Chris and I ducked into this old music shop where they had TONS of vinyl albums. That photo of the Osmonds Greatest Hits brought back some memories that I wish would have stayed buried! 

We took a day trip up to Kolka, Lativa. It is the northern most tip of the country and it is where the Baltic Sea and Gulf of Riga meet. I am always amazed at how blue the water has looked on our past few trips to the coast. It's so uncharacteristic, but I love it! Those pics are straight out of the camera-no editing!

The 3x4 photo below flips up to reveal a journal card underneath.

Read to understand why that little glove on a stick makes me smile.

Isn't that sweet? I love the thoughtfulness of the gesture. Makes me feel good that there are people in this world that are respectful of other's property. It lightens my heart.

Have a great day everyone! Thank you for reading! Week 17 will be up tomorrow!

 

 

 

 

 

 

PROJECT LIFE | WEEK FIFTEEN

I'm lovin' getting caught up with Project Life!

Let me show you around Week Fifteen:

In addition to the Design A page protectors, I used the 6x12 insert that has three 4x6 pockets. I also pulled journal and filler cards from my Clementine and Cobalt kits. There are some colors in those original kits that work nicely with the colors in the Seafoam Edition.

The photo below is a close-up of the left-hand side of the spread. I am so grateful for today's technology. It helps close the miles between me and my kids. Ryley was asked to go to Alpha Delta Pi's Diamond Ball. It was a 007 James Bond theme and he needed a suit. He knows his mom well and snapped a picture of himself in his new threads. I immediately thought of Justin Timberlake's song "Suit & Tie" and just had to add the song lyric to the photo! 

We were still getting snow this week and I have had enough! To improve my mood, I went back and looked at some photos I took from our 20th wedding anniversary cruise in 2008. The photo inspired me to add the chorus from the Zac Brown Band's "Island Song." The image is now my home screen wallpaper on my iPad.

Chris hosted a 2-day conference here in Latvia with the other American attache offices from Estonia & Lithuania. One of the spouses from Estonia tagged along with her husband, so it was time to play tour guide! Keri, Debbie and I took Natasha to the top of St. Pete's Cathedral for goregous views of the city. The photo below shows five pictures in one 4x6 photo. I love this technique and plan to do a lot more of it in the future (especially with my photos from Paris!).

Not only is the front of wooden alter in the Cathedral gorgeous, the back of it is just as impressive. I used two of the 4x6 pockets in the insert page to show a small part of the structure.

"Where'd You Go???" This photo (below) and the story behind it is my absolute favorite part of this week's layout. It clearly demonstrates that both Chris and I are losing it. For weeks now I have been driving with Chris to the embassy in the mornings so I can get my workout over and done with. We took the elevator down to the parking lot and as we were getting into the car I realized I forgot my embassy ID (this is becoming a habit for me to the point of it being comical). So he told me to go back up and get it while he pulls the car around front. Ok–not a problem–it will take two minutes, tops. Remember, two minutes. I come out the front of the building thinking he was going to be there, but I didn't see the car. I walk back around to the parking lot to see if he was there. Nope. 

HE FORGOT ME! It was only two minutes. Two minutes. I had my phone with me, called him and as soon as he picked up he says with a slight chuckle, "I'm turning around." I get in the car and we both just cracked up. We are only 44 & 48 years old. It is way too early for us to be having, what my mother-in-law calls, "senior moments!"

Thanks for reading my friends! Same time, same little corner of cyber-space tomorrow!

 

PROJECT LIFE | WEEK FOURTEEN

Wow! Two posts in one day! I am a woman on a mission! My goal to be caught up with my PL pages before we leave for Paris is right on track! On to Week Fourteen:

For someone who was worried about not having enough photos to put in my pockets because we are empty nesters, I sure seem to be using a lot of inserts lately! I didn't have a Design H protector so I ended up trimming down a Design A protector and inserting it into this week's layout to hold the photos I needed (it is where the "urban yoga" photo is).

Orange, black and gray seemed to be the dominate colors in my photos this week. I was happy to be able to pull the same colors from the Seafoam Edition to coordinate everything nicely!

By the text I placed on the photo, you can tell I was getting a little bit tired of all the snow. We had snow here in Latvia beginning last October. Seven months of the white stuff and cold temps was my limit.

This is my favorite part of this week's layout. Why? Because it's all about Chris (love him). I love the bottom photo. When he came into the room with his arms full of military retirement papers/brochures and sailing books/magazines, I cracked up. He did not know which pile of information to go through first. I think he went for the sailing option.

Sunday morning we went for a walk to the War Museum in Old Town and then to the Riga Central Market. While we were out and about we came across some locals on the "Alusipeds" or beer bike. Doesn't that look like fun? Chris and I want to gather a group of people who want to pedal around town on this while enjoying our favorite local beer! The company provides the driver, while guests provide the foot power to move the bike!

I've become a huge fan of the little wooden veneer shapes you see everywhere in scrapbooking now. These little guys were perfect for this spread. I love us.

Besides the Seafoam Edition of Project Life, other products used include: sticker letters and question marks by JilliBean Soup and Thickers, veneer people were in a kit from Cocoa Daisy, heart stickers by Amy Tangerine.

Thanks for stopping by and reading! I'll be back tomorrow with Week 15!