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Monthly Archives: January 2012

1/31/2012

Project Life : Week Four

Still loving Project Life!

This week started with a fun afternoon of sledding, and ended with a pretend sleepover playdate for Holly.  Another busy week in the life of a young family I guess! I ended up going with design A for both sides.  Super quick and easy, but I sure did miss vertical spots. Will be interesting to see if I choose to do it this way too often, I tend to take more vertical images than most I guess.

The left side showcases a lot of our sledding pictures, and perhaps one of my favorite photos of the girls this year. Holly was reading Marie a story on the IPAD–have you ever seen such an intent look on a baby’s face?!  She LOVES her big sister!

The right side is all about normal life. Lots of laundry, printing projects, and a cute quote. Holly asked her dad how his hamlet was at breakfast Saturday morning…it took us a few minutes to figure out what she was talking about, but then it hit us. Ham + omelette = hamlet!

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Cami - Beautiful photos! I think my favorite is the one on the top right on the first page, the one on the sidewalk with the snow… I love how you placed your journaling on the photo. Perfect placement, complements the photo. Beautiful layouts!

april - love the photo with you and your daughter and the writing in the snow…it looks so good!!! also the way you used more than one photo in a 4×6 insert is perfectness…

http://aprilbest1981.blogspot.com/2012/01/pl-week-4.html

sharon71 - Beautiful photos – really like the odd black and white one that you have put in.

Lovely colours.

Melissa - Love your pages. It’s great to see other digi projects. Love the 6X4 collages, a good way to show more of the story.

Jules - Wow! Lovely photos. I can’t get over how Marie is looking up at her big sister with such adoration – definitely a moment to remember!

Aggie - I love the food pic – I need to include more of that in my future PL layouts!

Julie - Love your pages…so colorful!! What a fabulous picture of your salad! You have beautiful girls, I have 2 girls as well.

stephanie - Pages look great. I love the 5 things on Tuesday and how it shows the simplicity of the day to day. I also love how you utilized your white space in your photos to journal. That is one of my favorite things to do.

angie blom - great week.. love how crisp your photo’s are.. so much fun. Great journaling!!

Kelli - your colors with the snow…love! that pink is hot girl! oh wow. i love love love avocados…..yummy salad! Be Calm and Project Life ON!

Theresa - Great photos! I love the ones in the snow and the avocadoes! I love that you made a special section for normal life, too.

Andrea - Love your pages. I need to try some of these digital templates–they turn out so great. Looks like fun times in the snow!

Conni - very nice, cute pictures looks like you had fun.

Nice to see a digi edition

Heather - Love your photos and layouts! I especially love the pictures of your big girl in the snow!! I am new to this so would you mind telling me where you get your kits? I am trying to get ideas so I can start scrapbooking my pictures :)

Lois H. - LOVE your pages! They are so colorful and happy! (I mis-typed colorful and it came out colorfun, but that is appropriate, too!)
Love that you captured everyday little things. That is the best part of Project Life, I think.

1/30/2012

Cooking with Parchment

At yesterday’s weigh-in (I am happy to report that although I am not at 199–yet–I did have a total loss this month of 10.5 pounds) meeting, we talked again about cooking with parchment paper. I had told the group about it early in the month and it has been SO wonderful to hear how many people have tried it over the past few weeks.  It’s such a great way to cook meat and veggies, and delicious too!  We were having tilapia for dinner last night so I had my husband take pictures of the prep work, step by step, so you too could get on the parchment band wagon!  We have used this method of cooking with salmon, chicken, and tilapia so far.  When using it with chicken I recommend pounding the chicken breast down with a meat hammer to tenderize it, and to get an even thickness throughout the whole breast.  (1/4 inch-1/2 inch is good)  This will make cooking time much quicker AND your chicken much more moist.

STEP ONE

Gather all of your ingredients. The most basic way to make your lean meats with parchment is to use a tsp of olive oil, a slice of lemon, and a sprinkling of salt and pepper.  Mrs Dash seasonings work well too, particularly the garlic and herb flavor.) Capers are also a “standard” around here, I just happened to be out yesterday when I took this picture!

STEP TWO

Cut a piece of parchment paper that is about 24-36 inches long, depending on how big your meat is.  (Once you see how we fold the parchment this will make much more sense, and it will be easy for you to estimate what works for you.)

STEP THREE

Once you have your piece of parchment cut, place your fish or chicken in the middle of it and drizzle with one tsp of olive oil. Last week I was out of olive oil, so a great substitution for us was Paul Newman’s Olive Oil and Vinegar dressing. That dressing is probably, hands down, the favorite at this house!)

STEP FOUR

Sprinkle your seasonings, and top with a slice of lemon. This is also a good point to mention that vegetables can be wrapped up right in the same packet if you wish.  Green beans work very well like this.

STEP FIVE

Now it is time to wrap it all up! Take the end pieces, and have them meet in the middle–over top of your meat.

STEP SIX

Roll/fold the parchment paper down until all the excess paper is within the fold.

 

It will look like this when you are finished.

STEP SEVEN

Fold the ends up under the meat to “seal” the packet.

Place your little packet of goodness on a cookie sheet and bake at 350 degrees for 20-45 minutes. Times will vary based on what you are cooking and its thickness (fish I start checking at the 20 minute mark). I ALWAYS use a meat thermometer to tell if something is done which is why I hardly can ever tell anyone how long something takes!

Based on the google searches I have done for tilapia and chicken, I cook the tilapia until it reaches 145 degrees, and my chicken until it reaches 165. I get moist and juicy meat every time!

I hope this encourages those of you who have been thinking about trying this method to try it out this week, and if you have never heard of it–well I hope it encourages you too!

From beginning to end, this is my favorite way to cook. I love anything that can be assembled in the morning (just put the packets in the fridge on a cookie sheet) and anything that can cleaned up in minutes. As long as the olive oil doesn’t dribble all over, clean up is as easy as throwing the parchment away!

A few members at my weight watchers meeting said that they have found parchment bags at the local supermarket. I have yet to try these, but can imagine it makes the process even easier. I am going to be experimenting with different flavors and oils over the next couple of weeks so that I can make available to you an easy reference guide of combinations. Would love to hear how your dinner turns out when you try this–be sure to leave a comment!

 

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1/28/2012

Project Life : Title Page 2.0

I am beginning to understand why Liz of Paislee Press said she does the title page last–a) it’s hard to know in January what pictures and story will best represent the year and b) discovering cute things along the way (particularly if you are digital) make it easy to tweak and tweak and tweak!

Discovering that your title page was 10×12 after you spent a few nights working on it doesn’t help either.  Because I am printing my book with Shutterfly into a photobook, versus putting printed 12x12s into page protectors like many others are doing, I am unable to have varying size pages.  (No matter what I was going to have to redo my page to be 12×12 since I wasn’t about to redo the whole title page!)

Anyhow–I resized the template by linking all of the layers and then using the free transform command in photoshop. I then downloaded Shutterfly templates from here which provide guides for knowing where the crops are when printing with Shutterfly.   Worked like a charm!  I also stumbled upon this blog that had a free download, which I thought ended up looking perfect in the bottom right hand corner. I would highly recommend clicking on that link above and downloading the graphic.  It would look cool on a journaling card, on a cover–you name it.  So great that so many people are willing to provide things for free!

I am not sure if this is going to be the cover of the book, or merely the inside cover/title page, but I am vowing NOT to change it again.  I love it!!

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1/26/2012

Project Life 2007-2011

Don’t let the title of this post fool you, I don’t have those years completed–I am mainly thinking about how to complete them.  Believe it or not I have the materials to do it, just not sure exactly how I am going to get it done!  I have kept a personal blog since 2006 and yesterday I spent hours cutting and pasting the entries into a word document.  I only got through three months!  It’s a lot of work, but I am so glad that I have that to go from.  Even though I would say I was a scrapbooker doing those years, I have very few pages done. That’s why I love Project Life–do you know I have done more memory keeping using that system in the last three weeks than I have in the last seven years combined?!

Once I get all of the “journaling” in one spot I will work through my THOUSANDS of pictures try to match them up to stories…and if that doesn’t go well I will break the pictures into the months they were taken.  WHEW!  It’s going to take a long time:)

On top of all of that, I am in the midst of making a quilt with my daughter (see the photo above!) and managing the day to day things like trying to keep the house clean and getting my baby to nap:)

We have a big night ahead of us, two of the elementary schools near our home have open houses so it’s time to check out pre-k programs.  I can’t believe my baby girl is going to be going to school next year.  (She’s been in preschool since she was 2, but this feels different somehow.)  I will be sure, of course, to take pictures!

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Stephanie - I just got tears in my eyes…….Holly needs to stop growing up so fast!!!!!!!!!!

1/24/2012

Project Life Idea – Child's Collection of Self Portraits and Signatures

Seems like a lot of us that are publishing Project Life pages around the internet post our prior week on Tuesdays, so it goes without saying that I logged quite a bit of computer time today checking blogs, facebook, and pinterest soaking up the inspiration.  One of my favorite places to check out each week is one-happy-mama.  She had one of her children draw on a journaling card, and that got me to thinking about how to get my daughter involved in the process. Holly was REALLY excited to do this, and we ended up deciding to draw a self-portrait each month.  As I talked to Holly about this more she decided that she would like to write her name on the picture too–which I loved!  (Is this not the coolest thing–collaborating with my four year old on my Project Life book!?)  It will be so great to see her handwriting evolve throughout the year.

So, I loaded up my kitchen table with my laptop, scanner, and color printer and set out to print out the journaling cards I would need for her to draw on.  (Remember I am all digital.  This will work much easier for those of you out there who are paper!) My daughter had definite likes and dislikes, so I let her pick out everything–from the background paper to the journaling cards for each month.  I printed out all the cards I would need all year, and put them in our creative cabinet in the kitchen.  (That way I won’t have to lug out all of this equipment again!)

I filled in a design F template to show you what it will look like, and I thought I would pass this idea along since we still have a week left of January for all of you to start your own portrait page for the year. I envision this being some sort of insert at the end of the year when it’s all said and done. If you end up starting one of these too, leave a comment below with a link to your page.  I would love to see it!

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kristina - Yay! I LOVE it and love her sweet drawing! Isn’t it such a fun way to incorporate our kids and cherish those little drawings they love to do? SO happy! LOVE how she included her name, too! Such a great idea and you are going to love seeing her drawings and signatures through the year! Thanks for sharing!! Hugs!