All righty then! I took a bit of a break from my Project 365 scrapbooking, but I’m determined to get back at it and catch up again. I’ve been taking photos all along — I just haven’t been printing them and putting them in my book. I had a bit of free time this weekend though, so I printed most of the photos I have and now I’m in the process of putting them in my album and writing a bit about each of them. Shall we venture back in time?

Week 15 was spring break. Augie’s preschool syncs their schedule with Wyatt’s school district so both boys were home with me. I didn’t get very much work done that week, but we did have a good time. We kicked this week off with Easter. I had a lot of nice photos from the day and I probably could have done an additional layout insert with some of them, but I decided to focus on getting caught up on the basics so I chose a photo of the kids’ Easter baskets. Monday we went to the beach but the water was too rough for wading so the boys built a damn in a little stream instead. Tuesday Augie dropped his cereal bowl on his foot and hurt it pretty badly. I think this was the first time he really understood that it is possible for him to bleed and it freaked him out. Five weeks later, he still talks about this injury almost every day and how “blood comed out of his body.” Poor buddy.

On Wednesday, we went to the nearby Lindsay Wildlife Museum. The museum’s focus is on birds and a highlight for me was seeing this golden eagle up close. The highlight for Wyatt was visiting the gift shop and Augie most enjoyed riding the elevator to the basement. Sigh. Thursday was another really fun day that probably warrants its own separate page. We went over to San Francisco for the afternoon, had lunch with Zach, visited the Children’s Creativity Museum (where we made images like this one), played on a great playground and ran around in Yerba Buena Gardens. Thursday was an “at home” day, but I did take the boys out to lunch at our neighborhood hamburger joint which put them in moods good enough for them to treat each other very nicely. And Saturday we ate pizza and garlic bread and drank PBR’s at a nearby pizza place. Er…the kids didn’t drink the beers — just me and Zach.

More soon!

When I was a little girl there were very few things that frustrated me more than the racks of little license plates with names on them that are found in the gift shops of touristy destinations. I wanted an awesome license plate fastened to the back of my bike that told the world my name was Wendy more than just about anything. Were there any to be had?

No. No there were not.

Wendy was not a terribly weird name for a little girl in the 70′s, but apparently it was just  strange enough that it usually didn’t make the cut for personalized items. The harder it was to come by customized mugs, pencils and magnets, the more I wanted them. It became something of a family quest to find them but they were rare as hen’s teeth. My anguish was real.

So what did I do when I became a mother? I gave my children even rarer names than my own. While I sometimes came across a Wendy item at a truck stop in Georgia or Nebraska, my poor children — Wyatt and Augie — will likely never be able to buy something with their own name on it off the rack.

To assuage my guilt, I decided to make them their very own name stamps. They’re not terribly fancy, but they’re fun and the kids love them. Here’s how I did it:

I started by gathering my materials:

• a piece of paper
• a pencil — mine was sparkly!
• a small block o Speedy-Carve carving block– mine was about 1 x 1.5 inches
• Speedball linoleum cutter assortment — this comes with a knife and carving blades in five different sizes. The blades store in the handle.

Begin by cutting a piece of paper just slightly smaller than the width of your carving block.

Write the word you want to you on your piece of paper, centering it as well as you can. Go over the text with your pencil a couple times so that there’s a relatively thick layer of graphite on the paper.

Turn the paper over and put the word you’ve drawn face down on the carving block. You will probably be able to see your word through the back of the paper so you can put the image where you want it on the block. Rub your fingernail across the back of the paper a few times to transfer the image to the block.

When you pull up the paper you’ll be able to see your word written in reverse. This will be your carving guide.

Insert the smallest carving blade (pictured at the top) into the handle.

Use the blade to carve out the word you’ve drawn on the block. If you’ve never used a carving tool before, it’s crazy simple. Don’t be intimidated to try it at all. Basically, you put the pointed tip down parallel to the carving block and then gently push it away from you. The blades are sharp so you can use a light hand. They’ll easily glide through the block. Carve out the entire area covered by the pencil. I found it was sized perfectly so I only needed to do one pass with the small blade.

After you’ve carved your work, draw an oval around it. This will be the edge of the stamp.

Fit the deep V-shaped blade into the handle.

Carve a groove around your word following the line you just drew. As you go around the curves go slowly and turn the block so the tool follows the curve rather than rotating the carving tool itself. You’ll have a lot more control that way and your tool will move more smoothly.

Next, fit the wide square blade into the handle.

Use this tool to remove some of the extra block around the outside of the oval. This will give you a little breathing room when you cut the edges off the block in the next step.

Now cut all of the block that isn’t part of your image off. Be careful to cut straight down. Don’t cut any of the block under the image away or your stamp will be unstable.

Finally, ink up your stamp and test it out on a piece of paper. Often you’ll be able to see little imperfections that weren’t apparent just by looking at the block. Clean up your stamp by carving away any extra bits with the small blade. Be careful not to get too carried away though. I’ve ruined a few stamps by getting a little overzealous “cleaning” them.

If you look at the image above, you can see a few subtle corrections. The bottom stamp was my first test. I wasn’t happy with the “M” so I decided to clean it up a little. You can see in the middle stamp that I introduced a little line on the bottom left side of the letter. The top was my final version after I fixed that.

Have you ever carved your own stamps? Do you think you’d like to give it a try?

I’m still feeling a little behind on my Project 365 album, but I managed to knock out week 14 over the weekend, so I’m not doing too badly.  Here’s what I have:

I started off with a photo I took of myself looking super fashionable with a couple of tissue paper puffs in my hair. Monday’s photo was one I took of the boys snuggled up in bed together. Augie gets into bed with Wyatt just about every night at the moment. Things like this are so fleeting that I find they’re really easy to forget, but it’s a big part of life for my kids right now and it will be a nice memory some day. Tuesday’s photo is from a mom/son outing Augie and I took to Starbucks and Home Depot. That doesn’t sound like much to you and me, but it’s pretty much heaven for my three-year-old.

I had a bunch of extra slots to fill in the middle, so I slid in a decorative card, one of my Facebook status updates from the week and a card with produce labels stuck to it. I put this up on the fridge a few months ago and I’ve been adding the stickers from our fruits and veggies to it a little bit at a time. Idea was from here.

Wednesday’s photo was a perfect seven-year-old boy shot I got of Wyatt — all popsicle smears, lost teeth and half-grown permanent teeth. Thursday was a photo I took while working on an art project for the kids’ room (tutorial coming soon!). Friday night we had a glow-in-the-dark Easter egg hunt and Saturday you get to see a photo of my messy, messy desk.

I wrapped up my photos and journaling for week 13 of my Project 365 album last week and now I’m officially 25% of the way through this year. Woo hoo! Go Wendy! Yes, I’m a couple of weeks behind (last week was the fifteenth week of the year), but considering I’ve barely completed one third of the pages in my previous two Project 365 albums, this is quite an accomplishment for me.

I have a few thoughts on the album now that I’ve been working on it for awhile that I thought I’d share:

Putting Layouts Together

Though I’m consistently on top of the photography portion of this project, I’ve noticed that some weeks I’m really excited to put the album pages together and some weeks it feels like a slog. When I’m less enthused about working on the album I tend to let it slide for a week or so, but once I’m back in the groove I appreciate that the pocket pages I’m using (Becky Higgins’ Project Life photo pocket pages) make it pretty easy to pull each layout together quickly.

My least favorite part of putting the layouts together is picking which photos I’m going to use for the week. Sometimes I dislike it because I didn’t take many photos and the ones I do have are boring. Other weeks I’ve taken thousands of photos and the thought of choosing which ones to use, trying to squeeze extra pictures onto the layout and figuring out where everything goes is overwhelming. Once I have a plan and I print out the photos it comes together really quickly though.

I love the weeks when I have memorabilia and other stuff to stick in page protectors in the middle of the spread. The kids love looking at those layouts — particularly the ones that feature their art — and I think they will be really interesting to look back on years in the future.

Phone Photos

Having a camera phone with me at all times has made taking a daily photo about 1000% easier. I haven’t counted, but I think that more than half of the photos I’ve used in this year’s album are phone photos. Though I much prefer the quality of the the photos I take with my DSLR, I am so grateful to be able to pull out my iPhone and snap a photo whenever I see a story that I want to remember unfolding before me.

Helpers

Speaking of my iPhone, I use it to help with this project in a few other ways too. First, I’ve set up a reminder to take a photo at 2 pm every day. This has saved me from forgetting to take my daily photo many, many times. I chose 2 pm because the light is good, it doesn’t interrupt me when I’m working, and I’m usually out and about so I have my phone with me and I’m often doing something kind of interesting at that time.

I also rely heavily on an iPhone app called Momento. Momento pulls all my posts from Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Flickr into once central place. I can also use it to save notes about my day that I might not want to share on social media. Later, when I am putting my weekly layouts together I can go back, look at my week and remember events that I’d forgotten about or read the jokey little items I’ve posted online. I love it for remembering the funny little things my kids say. These are exactly the kind of memories I want to save in my Project Life album.

One Last Thing

Finally, there is one aspect of this project that I’m not particularly keen on. Since diving into this in January, I’ve abandoned all other forms of scrapbooking. I’m not making individual layouts. I’m not working on mini albums. And I haven’t done anything with my 40th Year Project since the beginning of the year. Part of me is very happy to have the last three months documented so thoroughly, but another part is also sad because I like doing those other projects too. Normally when something falls off my list, I don’t sweat it too much because I know I’ll get back to it eventually when inspiration strikes. But in this case I’m bothered because I feel like some of the bigger stories in our lives are being pushed aside because documenting all these little stories takes so much time and energy. I suppose this, like everything else in life, is a matter of priorities. Maybe if I stopped feeding the kids I’d have more free time?

Just kidding!

On to this week’s pages! Here, I express my love for the gardeners our landlord hired. I also took a picture of my Monday morning shopping cart and listed out all the stuff I bought. The final photo is one of me in my new glasses the day they arrived. I’m really hoping this will be the last glasses photo I take for a long, long while because I’m bored of them now. I had two extra slots to fill, so I added one of the filler cards from my Project Life core kit and had Augie draw me a picture. As usual, he drew a rocket ship.

The stories on the next page are about one of our Kiwi Crate activities, a laptop date with my friend Heather, Wyatt’s pinewood derby and a family trip to the California Academy of Sciences.

Here’s my wrap-up layout for week 12 of this year. I’m still managing to take photos almost every day, but I’m usually missing one day per week. I don’t seem to be having any problems filling all the slots in my pages though.

This week started off with:

• Wyatt’s best friend’s birthday party
• corned beef hash for breakfast
• a precocious 3-year-old’s insight about clowns
• totally cute try-on frames that I totally tried on

And then it continued with:

• another sick kid and a sick mom
• chili-cheese mac
• The Hunger Games trilogy in quick succession
• a craft project
• jammies and monopoly all day long

Augie and I are both sick right now, so we had a quiet day sitting on the couch together. I scrapbooked last week’s Project 365 stuff, he watched Phineas and Ferb on Netflix. Win-win! (Except for the feeling crappy part, of course.)

I did a pretty bad job taking photos every day last week, but somehow I still managed to fill all my little photo pockets. I had nothing at all for Sunday, so I just started with Monday. Wyatt was home sick from school and it was Augie’s regular day off preschool so it felt a lot like an extra weekend day in some respects. Practically the first thing I did in the morning was break my glasses in half while I was cleaning them. Oh no! I managed to get an emergency appointment with my eye doctor and walked over to her office for an eye exam. On the way back I was surprised to see a big honkin’ turkey standing in the middle of the sidewalk. As I approached she casually walked out into the middle of the very busy street, stopping traffic and causing all the people around to give each other “what the heck??” looks. Tuesday, the rain started and it didn’t stop at all (literally) for the next three and a half days. Friday, I included a photo I took when the boys and I were painting.

Friday continues on the next page. We had dinner out that night and on our way back to the car we passed a shop with crazy sunglasses out front so we stopped for a bit to try them on and giggle. Saturday we were super lazy all day and just hung around the house (that’s when I started feeling sick). The most notable things that happened were that I got a package with a ridiculous amount of craft supplies in it and I started playing Draw Something. (My user name is “wendolonia” if you want to play with me and see fabulous drawings like the one above.) Saturday was St. Patrick’s day, so I included photos of our corned beef cooking and of the boys dancing to Irish punk songs in our living room.

What did you week look like?

Week 10 of my Project 365 is in the album and now I’m officially all caught up! Yay!

We had a really quiet week last week — just normal every day stuff going on. I goofed around with the title card, for this page a bit but I’m not really that keen on how it looks. I’d messed the stamping on this card up beyond saving (there was even white-out involved) so my only hope was to cover it up and start fresh. What I ended up with is all right, but it needs something more. Maybe I’ll slap a big flower or something on it? Or maybe not — I don’t know.

Anyway, Sunday was gorgeous so the boys spent the morning outside playing with the hose. In the afternoon we ran some fun errands including snacks at a favorite but also ridiculously expensive taqueria. I tossed a Trader Joes receipt from my usual Monday shopping day in one of the pockets. And then I rounded out the week with some photos I took when I was playing with Augie on Monday and Tuesday. (We hosted play dates for a couple of Wyatt’s friends both days and they wouldn’t let poor Augie play with them.)

Tuesday I took a photo of my lunch. Wednesday I took a screen shot of my recent Google searches on my phone. I love, love, love this because it gives tiny little glimpses of  some of the things we talk about, questions we have, arguments settled, recipes made, etc. I also included a photo of Wyatt learning to make eggs, some awesome bed head and my poor sicky on Saturday.

Don’t forget I have a giveaway for some bento swag going on right now. Go enter if you haven’t already!

Oops! Yesterday I posted photos of one of my Project 365 spreads and I claimed that it was week 8. But I was a total liar — it was actually week 9. Internet, can you ever trust me again? Maybe with time….

Here are my actual week 8 pages:

Sunday we went to a family birthday party. Monday was President’s Day and Zach and Wyatt were off work/school, so we headed out on a mini road trip to Sutter’s Mill. The museum and the place where you can pan for gold were closed for the holiday but we still had fun running around and throwing rocks in the river. Wyatt was off school for the week, so Tuesday we went to lunch at the fancy restaurant where his Uncle Charlie cooks. I was proud of him for being on super polite behavior and for trying every single thing that was put in front of him — even collard greens! I didn’t take any pictures on Wednesday so I downloaded a picture of our new neighborhood pool where we went swimming for the first time.

Thursday I had a meeting about the upcoming Help a Mother Out fundraising tea. Once more I forgot to take any pictures, so I included a postcard that I got in my meeting materials. Thursday’s photo is of the boys watching the construction on our street. Friday, I included a picture of Zach out our neighborhood Vietnamese restaurant. And Saturday wraps up with the usual — a picture of a belly dancer balancing a sword on her head. Nobody can say I live a boring life!

Wyatt was sick all weekend so we spent most of Saturday and Sunday hanging around the house in our jammies. I grabbed my chance on these lazy days to catch up on my Project 365 album. I also got crazy and used one of the alternate types of page protectors so I could use a few more vertical photos. Woooo!

This page started off with a photo of Wyatt and a friend at a birthday party on Sunday, along with a photo of my beloved Girl Scout cookies. Yum! I also put in photos of Augie striking a cute senior portrait pose and one of me riding my bike.

The next page has a picture of rain on the windshield of my car to represent the crappy, crappy morning I had on Wednesday, Augie dressed as a pirate (kind of an unintentional pirate theme this week), and a photo I took of myself wearing my favorite scarf that I made last year. The Saturday photo involves something big that’s going on our house right now but that I’m not interested in sharing with the whole world so I blocked it out. No, it’s not bad. No, I’m not pregnant!

I’m still catching up on the Project 365 blog posts. Week 7 is a hefty entry in my album because Valentine’s Day was smack dab in the middle and I had a bunch of extra stuff I wanted to include.

The left side of the spread was pretty typical. I started off talking about making naan, then told a little story about the rainy walk Augie and I took Monday morning. Tuesday there was a funny quote from Augie about Curious George and picture of him working on an art project. I wrapped the page up with with Wednesday’s picture of the boys buying an ice cream after school. I typed the journaling for that right on the door to the cafeteria in Photoshop Elements and then printed the photo on our home printer. (Actually, I print everything at home.)

I included two additions inserts about Valentine’s day too. The first was a 6 x 12 scrapbook page with a collage of photos from our day. I ran out of room when I was making the title so it says “Valentine Day” which I admit is kind of silly looking, but I didn’t care enough to redo it all.

The back side of the insert had a piece of Augie’s art that I cut down to fit and the boys’ valentines from their Grandma and Grandpa.

For the second insert, I filled a baseball card sleeve with Augie’s valentines. Most of them were about the right size for the sleeves, but I cut them down to fit perfectly. I’ll put some of Wyatt’s valentines on the back side, but they are missing in his messy room at the moment so I’ll have to add them whenever they turn up.

The final page has photos of the boys eating their first ever Twinkies, a print-out of the photo I used to virtually try on some glasses, and another cute conversation I had with Augie. (He’s at a hilarious age right now.) I also showed our burned up chicken dinner and wrote a bit about Zach’s current obsession with cast iron skillets.

Are you documenting your year? Are you managing to keep up?