March is my favorite month of the year. To me, it means gorgeous Arizona weather, Nate's birthday, our anniversary, Cactus League Spring Training, family and visitors. It's always an activity filled month, packed full of fun! This year was no exception.

MARCH SPREAD NO. 1

Before we jump into March, I'll recap the last bit of February, which can be found on the left side of the spread.My favorite photo? The one on the top, with me sporting my new bangs! It's been nearly 20 years since I last had bangs of any sort, and back then, they were a LOT taller. The modern version much better. Just sayin...

On the right, you'll find the beginning of March. The large journaling card documents many of the events from a family visit, that included my Mom, Dad, Grandma (aka Nanny) and Aunt Kim. They all road tripped from Nebraska to see me, Nate and our new house. It was so wonderful to have them here. We ate out, had a housewarming party with my family and Nate's, attended a Spring Training game and spent lots of time hanging out on the patio.

MARCH SPREAD NO. 2

The left side of this spread shows more of the fun times we had during my family's visit. There are phtoos from a Spring Training game and lunch/happy hour at the Twisted Lizard. The photo of Nate and I was taken a few days later on his birthday.

The right side has quite a few snapshots from Nate's birthday, including lunch/happy hour at the Temple Bar, cupcakes from Gigi's and him opening his gifts from me (DC shoes and a flag and flag pole).

MARCH SPREAD NO. 3

The left side of the spread shows snapshots of a pretty average week. Lots of cute critter photos, my favorite of which being the photo of Shawna giving me sweet puppy kisses.

The right side has highlights of our anniversary, on St. Patrick's Day. We started early, with beer at Skeptical Chemyst. Later in the evening, we had dinner at Ruth's Chris, followed by more drinks at the Patio Bar, located at the Fairmont Princess. 

MARCH SPREAD NO. 4

On the right is a snapshot of my Chocolate Stout Cupcakes with Irish Cream infused frosting, made for St. Patrick's Day, photos from a Dbacks Spring Training game, and a screen shot of the weather forecast for the week, which was 82-degrees and sun for every single day of that particular week. Awesomeness. 

These final pages are filled with memories of another Spring Training game, a Ginger-Garlic Soba Noodle bowl I concocted that has become on of our favorite meals, photos of spring time blooms and a lot of Shawna, who was being particularly cute that week. My favorite is on the right side of the spread at the bottom. Here she is passed out, with her head on the ground after at day at the office. Work is hard :)

I'll share my final spread from March with my April update, which is complete and just needs to photographed.

I actually have a few fun posts planned in the near future that are NOT Project Life related. Can you believe it? I actually accomplished a little scrapping (digital and traditional) and an fun DIY project which will be coming your way soon. Thank you so much for stopping by!

See more of my Project Life album here or read more about my approach to the project here.

The month of February is a blur to me. I'm not sure why, but between the busyness of work and life, the month happened and I don't recall much about it. Thankfully, I was busy sticking photos and memorabilia into the pockets as the month passed and I can now look back and let Project Life jolt my memory as to what went on. I love Project Life for that!

The first spread of the month highlights a fun work outing to Olive & Ivy, followed by an afternoon spent painting and drinking at Dry Bar (I work for a pretty cool company!). It also documents more of Shawna's vet trips for ear flushing and treatment as we slowly combated her ear infection and a funny story my niece wrote.

Some of my favorite memories from my second spread include a trip to the theater to see Top Gun in 3-D IMAX, a college alumni event at the Commemorative Air Force Museum, and receiving my awesomely large order of washi tape. I also documented a "before and after" makeover I did, transforming an unflattering men's t-shirt into a girl cut t-shirt. 

The right side of the next spread is all about a work trip to Orlando to see five months of hard work, put into action. It was an amazing event, which ended with a private concert from Bret Michaels. It was pretty awesome :) My favorite photo on the left half just happens to be my newly purchased copper mugs I had ordered so I could mix Nate and myself proper Moscow Mules. 

The left-hand side of the last spread shows lots of randomness, including my truck being towed away when the electrical harness went bad. The photo is the bottom left is the best. It shows poor Shawna passed out after a hard day of work at the "Pawfice". The right-hand side documents an amazing day out on the town, spent with some of my favorite girls, celebrating Lisa's birthday. You can read more about that here. 

There is one more half spread of February that I'll share with my march pages. Thanks for stopping by!

See more of my Project Life album here or read more about my approach to the project here.

Who knew that on that random March day in 2012 when I hit the purchase button in Amazon, I would be totally overtaken by a single project. Two days later, my Becky Higgins Design G page protectors arrived, changing the way I approach memory keeping forever. Fast forward to nearly a year later and here I am, still loving Project Life more and more each month. 

I bet a few of you were wondering if I was keeping up on Project Life in 2013. The answer is a big, fat YES! What I haven't been keeping up on is photographing it and sharing it here. So, to get caught up, I'm going to throw a few photo heavy blog posts your way. One for January and another for February. Hopefully after that, I can get myself into a routine where I'm sharing on a more regular basis. 

Here it is...Project Life 2013 January! You can view a larger version of each image by clicking on it.

This first layout is a cover page I created for my 2013 album. I think this is something I'll continue in my albums in years to come. It will be fun to have a quick glance of our family and home at the beginning of each album. 

This spread consists of lots of cuddly critters and memories of multiple trips to the vet for poor Shawna. She had one heck of an ear infection that took the better part of the month to cure.

My favorite part of this spread is the "I love you" note with the rose that Nate drew for me one night. He left it on my work clothes so I'd find it the next morning as I got dressed for work. I have the best guy ever! You've got to love a sweet note and flower for no reason, except that he loves you :)

This was a crazy week. It included the cat falling in the pool, so much rain it turned the park across the street from us into a lake and a fun work adventure to the Arizona Biltmore. 

The last spread includes more fuzziness and the lone shot of Nate and I from the month. I think we need to work on getting a few more of those in the album.

With that, another year of Project Life is underway. Thanks for stopping by to take a look!

See more of my Project Life album here or read more about my approach to the project here.

To help get me started on the right foot creatively in 2013, I treated myself to an online class at Studio Calico called "Bright Ideas". In total, the class offers 20 challenge prompts, paired with sketches to help push your creative limits.

So far, I've completed around 8 challenges, resulting in some layouts I really love and some that I really don't. But do you know what the great things is? Not matter what the result, I pushed myself to try something new. Something different. I stepped outside my comfort zone, which in itself is a refreshing thing. While I'm not going to share all of my layouts here, I thought I'd highlight some of my favorites. 

THIS & THAT | The challenge for this layout involved grids. I created a grid, replacing some of the squared with circular photos. The photos are from last March when Nate's Dad and his wife visited us from Duluth. I love all the random snapshots and how they look so cohesive when placed together on the grid. Fun note, this layout was highlighted in a class video as a gallery pick!

SWEETHEART | For this prompt we were challenged to go big in some way. I chose to go big in both the photograph and title. I chose some lyrics from a Lumineers' song that I love and paired it with an everyday candid photo of Nate and I doing something we both love, watching baseball. The end result is a little "busy", but I discovered I love using large photos and large titles cut from my Silhouette. I can see using more of each in the near future.

BONDING | The challenge for this last layout was texture. I was surprised at how many different textures I could add without creating much bulk on my page. My textures are: washi tape, ribbon, hand stitching, confetti, paint splatters and dimensional lettering. This photo is of Nate, Baxter (stretched out on Nate's lap with his paws on the the dog bed) and Shawna all hanging out watching the Super Bowl. 

I have a lot of new projects to share, but between travel for work, preparing for visitors and a housewarming party, I haven't had time to photograph any of it! You can look forward to seeing my Holiday Memories 2012 album, Project Life 2013, more layouts and maybe even a few of the Christmas gifts I created. 

Thanks for stopping by!

It's time to share my first layouts of 2013!

A few weekends ago, some of my favorite crafty gals and I had a gathering at my new home. While the crafty hours didn’t produce a lot of crafting for any of us (we were distracted with lots of talking, interior design advice and Bloody Marys), it certainly got me in the mood to create. The result was two layouts, both made using leftover supplies from past Studio Calico kits. First up is a layout titled At the Lake.

The lovely feathered vellum and the wood veneer feathers from the SC Sock Hop kit were just asking to be made into an outdoorsy page. So that’s exactly what I did. I love this photo of Nate and me, taken during our summer vacation. I think I've used it before, but couldn’t resist using it again on this layout.

The next layout was based on the 1/20 Studio Sketch on the SC Blog, using the 34^th Street kit. The photos and journaling tell the tale of Bugsy’s first swimming experience, which happened last weekend. By accident.

Poor Bugsy somehow managed to fall into the pool (which had ice forming in it the week prior). A little known fact about cats is, although they HATE water, they're actually really good swimmers. Bugsy was no exception, for which I'm thankful. My first though when I heard the splash was not, "Oh no, the poor cat!" It was, "I'd better not have to jump into that freezing [insert explicit] water to get her!" Some "motherly" instinct, right? Fortunately, Bugsy gracefully swam her way to the edge and I plucked her out, towel dried her and placed her in her kitty hut with the heating pad to warm her up and dry her off. In the end, nothing was hurt, except her pride and her fluffy hairdo.

Although it's been a slow start to creating in 2013, I'm so happy I finished a few pages! Here's to (hopefully) many more :) 

For Project Life December, I tried something new...an all digital format! With packing, moving, unpacking, holiday traveling and more, I knew I'd never actually complete the month if I didn't go digital. It was an interesting process, and although I'm a lover of digital scrapbooking, I discovered I really did not like doing Project Life digitally.

Don't get me wrong, I'm happy digital was an option for me. I would have never finished the month otherwise. What I discovered while completing the month digitally is that the process of using my hands and playing with paper and glue is what I really love about Project Life. The basics. The good stuff :) 

In order to match the album format for the previous months of the year, I designed a template to match the sizes of the Design G pockets. I completed a spread at a time, saving the images out at 4x6 photos and printing them. Then, I simply slid them into the pockets. 

Let's take a look at December!

This first spread documents our days leading up to the move. Although we got the keys to the new house at the end of November, we had contractors come in to remove popcorn ceiling (disgusting), paint the walls (an amzing gray from Sherwin Williams called Alpaca) and patch up a dog door we didn't want (cats like to escape through dogs doors). During this week, we took Shawna to the new house for the first time, where she gave us her paw print of approval. We cleaned the new house and tried not to lose cats in boxes while we packed (Baxter will climb into any box, regardless if it's full or empty). Then the movers came and put our life into a big truck and drove it a mile north to our new neighborhood.

This spread highlights fun things, like our first fire in our new fireplace, a new haircut for me, the critters exploring our new home and us departing for Nebraska for an early Christmas. Yes, we're insane. We moved and then left town just a few days later. Let me tell you how hard it is to pack a bag when you're not even sure where your clothes are...

In the upper right, you'll see my mom's Christmas tree. My mom always has the prettiest tree. It's covered in lights and more lights, then topped with hundreds of ornaments. Literally. The best part is that it spins! So fun. 

The left half of the page includes many group shots from our celebration in NE. I wanted to make sure I captured the smiling faces of all my family that was there. The left side has lots of fun things, our airplane tree, our brand new appliances (we had been waiting on the range to arrive), and an awesome new rug I purchased from West Elm with money my grandma, Nanny, gave Nate and I to use for our new home. It's the perfect touch in our living room.

The left spread and part of the right are from our Christmas Eve celebration at our house with Nate's family and some photos from Chrismas Day. See that "cup of cheer" in the corner? That's my own special Holiday Sangria concoction. Amazing stuff. Plus, it looks deceptively healthy :)

The right spread includes shots from lots of yummy lunch/dinner dates and lunch with friends at places like True Foods, Grimaldi's, Nick's and Tommy Bahama's (thanks, Missy). My favorite photos are on the bottom left. My amazing new table from West Elm (can you tell it's my favorite store?) and beautiful avacado green chairs from Pier One. One day, when I'm finished with the decoration, I'll share photos of the setup.

The last spread includes bits of randomness and snapshots from our New Year's Eve celebration. Remember how I mentioned Baxter liked boxes? Well, there was a random Amazon box sitting on the bookshelf (shown in the lower left) and Baxter became obsessed with the box. I certainly wasn't leaving an Amazon box on permanant display, so I ended up buying a basket to replace the box. Now he and Bugsy take turns napping on the shelf. It's kind of fun having live cats as part of the decor :)

I didn't share a lot of detail about our holidy here in Project Life December because I created a Holdiay Memories album, which I'll be sharing next. I can't wait to show you!

See more of my Project Life album here or read more about my approach to the project here.

As I flipped through the pages of Project Life November to write this post, I was surprised at how distant the memories felt. It was if they were from years past, and not just two months ago. My, how things can change in such a short time! 

Like the previous few months of PL spreads, I used papers and embellishments from the current (at the time) Studio Calico kit, which just happened to be Sock Hop. 

Instead of a detailed breakdown of each spread, I'll just provide a short recap. If you want to read more, or see something a little larger, you can click on the spreads to enlarge the image and to read (most of) my journaling.

A few highlights from the first spread of the month include, the inspection and appraisal completed (without issue) on our soon to be new home, my iPhone 5 finally arriving (after waiting for a month) and a crafty girls night out. I'm in love with the photo of the cats, shown in the upper right. Baxter was sweetly giving Bugsy kisses. Cute, right? Well, about three seconds after I snapped the photo, Bugsy sat up and slapped him. Oh, cats... 

This next spread includes photos from many happy hours, memories of a fun trip to Sweet Salvage with my girlfriends and volunteering to fill bags of cat & dog food (donated by PetSmart) for the American Red Cross to distribute (along with people food) to Hurricane Sandy victims.

My favorite photo in this last spread is the keys. The keys to our new home, which we finally received after a grueling 6 month house hunt. So happy it's over!

Of course, the critters were their usual cute selves thoughout the month and made fare more appearances in Project Life than Nate & I did. Up next, Project Life December. See you soon! 

See more of my Project Life album here or read more about my approach to the project here.