Rye Designs

project life 2012: ending + beginning

Thu, 27 Sep 2012 13:55:00 -0600

(I had this post written in August, but forgot about it until now. Oops!)

At the end of June, I looked at the Project Life album I had been working on since January and realized that the first half of the year had taken up 3/4 of the album. There was no way I could fit six more months into the same album, so I decided to divide 2012 into two volumes. I mentioned in a previous post—I think week 27—that starting a new album meant I needed to make a closing page for the first one and an intro for the second one.

I took a couple weeks to think about the closing of my first album, and decided to use cards from my Clementine Kit that are meant for the first and last pages of an album. If the right journaling ever comes to me for this page, I can add it then. For now, the stock cards were a no-brainer.

I really liked the cover page of my first album, so I didn't want to come up with something totally new for the second. I took the basic design of my first album and copied it to the second one, changing the main color to make it look fresh. I chose patterned papers to match, and found a different picture of Dan and I for the top right pocket. I even updated our silhouettes. Here's the patterned paper and color scheme from volume 1, and then volume 2.

(In case you get confused: I used older overview shots of the first album, so they don't say VOLUME 1.)

project life 2012: week 33 + 34

Tue, 28 Aug 2012 23:40:00 -0600

Welcome to week 33 (Aug 12–18) and 34 (Aug 19–25). I worked a ridiculous amount of hours last week, so Project Life had to take a backseat. Luckily, it didn't take very long to catch up on the last two weeks. When I posted week 32, I mentioned that I hadn't taken many photos for week 33. Much to my surprise, I had enough to do the week's spread plus a 6x12 insert! Let's get to a quick overview.

Week 33 highlights:

– We attended the "soft open" service at Crossroads Florence, and then went to our new Orange Leaf for frozen yogurt.

– I started using our new pans, and they are amazing. I definitely recommend them if you want stainless cookware.

– We went to Louisville to see MUMFORD & SONS! It was a great show, and a packed one!

– Date night included some well-deserved wine and homemade pizza. It was perfect.

– On Saturday, we made dinner for friends and did some newborn photos with them (photo with the shoes).

Week 34 highlights:

– I didn't get any pictures, but the first official Crossroads Florence service was a hit. Both services were packed.

– I went to Wisconsin for a couple days with work. I always enjoy driving past the wind farm in Illinois (or is it Indiana?).

– It was a busy week seeing parts of our show booth, and collecting everything to ship to the show.

– We had friends over for dinner and a movie on Friday night. Thanks to Dan for cooking a delicious dinner.

– I checked on our garden Saturday, and we finally have some bell peppers growing! We thought they would never grow.

– Somehow our tomato plants have about 30 tomatoes of varying sizes. It's crazy!

project life 2012: week 32

Fri, 17 Aug 2012 13:15:00 -0600

Welcome to week 32 (Aug 5–11). This post will be quick because this week is super busy. I'm not sure what kind of pictures I'll have for week 33 because I haven't taken many.

Highlights of the week:

– Dan hung our new pot rack!

– We had the Crossroads Florence (Y'all) dedication, and got to see the new, AWESOME building.

– For date night we watched a movie and worked on our LEGO Eiffel Tower. We have a long way to go.

– We have a total of four tomatoes growing now!

sneak peek: kelly + mike

Thu, 16 Aug 2012 21:24:00 -0600

We recently hung out with our friends Mike and Kelly and took some maternity photos for them. These two sure know how to have a good time in the city they live and love. We started out with some shots around their home, which is full of character and color, and then headed to a Reds game. We wandered around the stadium scoping out textures and fun spots, and I was surprised how much of the stadium I've never seen. No Reds game would be complete without beer or stadium food—in this case, UDF ice cream.

Here's the sneak peek of Mike and Kelly awaiting their little one and enjoying life.

project life 2012: week 31

Tue, 07 Aug 2012 22:49:00 -0600

Welcome to week 31 (Jul 29 – Aug 04). The photos that I chose this week made my journaling organized and easy. I like when that happens. I ended up with photos from four days this week—Sunday, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday—and it turned out I had four vertical spots open for journaling cards.

Sunday included the garden photos, visiting our local farmer's market for the first time, and spraying our cabbages with some (non-chemical) worm killer. You wouldn't believe how the cabbages have turned around since week 30. I should have included photos from the end of this week instead of the beginning, but I had already printed these. Thursday included Dan's sinus surgery, hence the photo of him with gauze on his nose. He did really well through the surgery.

Friday included a fun maternity session for friends. We took some images at their adorable home, and then headed to the Red's game for more shots. I'm still sorting through those and having a hard time narrowing them! Friday's journaling card is a folded 4x6 card with an index tab to show that there are notes inside.

Saturday was another craft day with my friend, Nicole, while Dan and his friend, Tim, went out to the family farm. Instead of working on the painted canvas I showed a couple weeks ago, I decided to frame a few things. I took pictures of the framed art and combined them in Photoshop. Nicole and I made a pizza with homemade whole wheat pizza dough, sun-dried tomato pesto, onions, tomatoes, kalamata olives, chicken sausage, ricotta and mozzarella cheeses. It was the best homemade pizza I've had so far.

That's it! I'm glad I was able to include a little more journaling on paper and keep the photos clean. On to week 32!

project life 2012: week 30

Tue, 31 Jul 2012 22:31:00 -0600

Week 30 (Jul 22–28) is in the books, and I went a little overboard on the photos. Unlike last week, I had a lot of things I wanted to include so I ended up using two 6x12 inserts. It would've been helpful to add little title tabs on the inserts before I took these pictures, but I didn't remember them until afterwards.

The Green Bean Delivery bin is nothing new around here, but I wanted to document that we're still getting deliveries every other week. If you're in the tri-state area (Indiana, Kentucky, Ohio) I highly recommend this service for getting local and organic groceries.

Insert #1 covered the Olympic Opening Ceremonies. I grabbed a 2012 London logo from the internet, and used that as an intro.

Insert #2 was a garden update. I designed and used the "GARDEN PARTY UPDATE" card at the end of June, so I figured I'd do it again for the end of July. It's crazy to think how I planted the tomatoes and basil at the end of June and they've grown so much since then. On the back of the garden insert (below, top left), you can see how pitiful our cabbages look. We've had cabbage worms eating up the leaves, so I won't be surprised if we don't have any cabbages when the growing season is complete. We just tried a caterpillar killer formula that's safe and chemical-free, so we'll see how that works.

Our friends, Sheri and Adam, were on their way South and stayed with us for a night. After dinner and dessert, we made popcorn and watched a 3D movie together, hence the glasses in the bottom right. They need to come and visit more often! Hear that, Sheri?

YAY for new cookware! Our old pots and pans are just that—OLD. They're all scratched or seeping their nasty nonstick chemicals into our food. On our journey to rid our house and bodies of dirty things—chemicals, processed foods and such—cookware was next on the list. The set we got is really too pretty to use, so that presents a problem. Now we need to hang the pot rack we bought and start using everything. Next on the list: new cutting boards!

If you're curious about Project Life, it's a simple scrapbooking system created by Becky Higgins. You can learn more here.

project life 2012: week twenty-nine

Tue, 24 Jul 2012 20:44:00 -0600

Welcome to week 29 (Jul 15–21)! Even though I took plenty of pictures this week, the favorites list was slim. That's the way it goes some weeks. I'm still happy with the spread, though.

We moved date night to Wednesday this week, and went to a Blind Pilot concert in Cincinnati. What a great show. The best part was the end—the band came down to the floor level and performed an acoustic version of their final song. I included pictures of the venue and their merch table, which had a pretty cool setup. Unfortunately, I forgot to take a big camera with me so the iPhone shots are all I have, but they're better than nothing.

Dan and I are addicted to the Song Pop game lately, so I took a screenshot of one of our games. I did this with other games and things throughout the year, too, just to document the stuff that we're into right now.

You'll see the usual garden growth photos, and our first harvested jalapeño! We got a lot of rain this week, so everything shot up in the garden. I'm thinking of harvesting our basil this weekend and making homemade pizza with pesto sauce.

Saturday was craft day and I took a few photos to record that. While Dan was out to see a movie, a friend and I got together for crafting, wine, and cooking. I started painting a new canvas—picture above in orange and gray—but it will look much different when it's finished. Saturday was such a nice change of pace and I'm glad to get a new painting started. Maybe I'll get some other projects completed this year! There are so many things I want to do.

As you can see, my go-to technique this week was writing on photos with my white Sharpie again. That's about it for the week!

If you're curious about Project Life, it's a scrapbooking system created by Becky Higgins. You can learn more here.

project life 2012: week twenty-eight

Tue, 17 Jul 2012 23:09:00 -0600

Welcome to week 28 (Jul 08–14).

This week I realized that the first six months of my Project Life were taking up 3/4 of my album. I wasn't sure if I could fit the remaining six months in the same album, so I went ahead and bought another one—and some for 2013 while I was at it. This means I'll still have the freedom to add inserts when I have extra content, and my first album is filled nicely without being too stuffed or heavy. Starting a new album also means I get to make an ending page for my first album and a new title page for my second. I'm still working on those, so I'll post them later.

There were some fun additions this week—like a new pair of glasses and a quick snap from visiting the dentist. I'm curious to see how the dental technology changes in the future. Big Brother 14 premiered this week, which is a guilty summer pleasure of ours. The recycling dumpster might seem odd, but we've been looking for a place to recycle. We were surprised to see this new one near our house.

We had two parties on Saturday, a baby "sprinkle" and a birthday party, so I included a little bit from each of those.

That's about it for week 28... some random things and a lot of sticky labels for my journaling.

project life 2012: week twenty-seven

Tue, 10 Jul 2012 10:16:00 -0600

Week 27 (Jul 01–07) is in the books, and there's not much to explain here.

This spread mainly consists of two days—the fourth and seventh of July. I let the holiday take up the whole left side, and let Saturday (minus the chocolate pie and a little journaling for Friday) take up the right side. The raspberry pie came from a Clean Eating magazine issue, but the chocolate-strawberry pie came from my favorite dessert blog.

My new favorite technique is writing on photos with a white Sharpie. I also printed blue lines on white labels to make them look like index card pieces without all the cutting.

I noticed some little flowers blooming on one of our tomato plants, and one of our jalapeno plants magically grew five more peppers since the last time I looked at it! Instead of using stickers, I wrote little numbers directly on the photo this time. I wasn't able to get a group shot for girls' night out, but I got our feet standing in line and wrote names on it. That's about it—just a simple week and a simple spread to go with it.

If you're curious about Project Life, it's a scrapbooking system created by Becky Higgins. You can learn more here.

project life 2012: week twenty-six

Sun, 08 Jul 2012 20:09:00 -0600

I've made it to week 26 (Jun 24–30) and I am still in love with this project.

We've hit the halfway mark on 2012 and I thought it would be a good time to post an update. I've had several friends ask me about this project and whether I'm still keeping up with it. Blogging failure aside, once I set my intentions for the direction of the album and the time I wanted to commit (and stuck to them) things went pretty smoothly. Even if I got behind from traveling, it didn't take too long for me to catch up again.

In the beginning, I decided that the style of my album would have to be super simple if I wanted to keep up with it and stay interested. This meant printing photos with little editing, journaling with my own handwriting, and using my core kit as much as possible—just photos + handwriting + occasional flair. And I was fine if a majority of those photos came from my iPhone. I try to use the same techniques over and over to keep things consistent and easy.

I still have 26 weeks to go so my album is nowhere near complete, but so far I'm happy with my approach and the collection of memories I have in one place. I decided to take a picture a day this year to help fill the album, and I find myself wanting to take even more to document the everyday things. I am already thinking about my album for 2013, and was happy to read an update on the products coming soon. Here's a quick overview of week twenty-six...

I found a couple dough recipes recently that we really like. One is for honey whole wheat bread and the other is a whole wheat pizza dough altered to make it clean.

The fence photo on the bottom actually has a woodpecker in it, but I couldn't get close enough to him. I went out one morning to check on our garden and saw this guy chomping on a neighbor's fence!

Back in May, we got to meet the awesome Jess & Brett from Life in Balance Photography and have a photo session for our fifth anniversary. We got to see all of the images and a blog post about the session, so I included one in the album.

I added a 6x12, 3-slot insert for some extra garden pictures I took during the week. We recently added tomato and basil starter plants to the garden, so our space is filled. We have three jalapenos growing so far, and I numbered those with stickers. I just planted more white and green onions because the first round didn't really sprout, so I hope to see those growing soon.

Here you can see the back of the garden insert and two photos of the Anderson Ferry that goes from N. Kentucky to Cincinnati. Friday night's storm took our neighbor's trampoline and threw it over a fence—it was crazy! Thankfully, we didn't lose power. Friday nights have become date nights, and usually involve watching a movie in the basement. This week we moved date night to Saturday, but the result was the same.

If you're curious about Project Life, it's a scrapbooking system created by Becky Higgins. You can learn more here.

sneak peek: meet jackson

Wed, 09 May 2012 21:45:00 -0600

Little Jackson was such a joy to photograph. We got to watch him play and discover the world around him, and he was such a happy baby. I wanted to quickly share a few sweet images of five-month-old Jackson, and I hope you enjoy them.

sonya & eddie's custom wedding invitations

Mon, 07 May 2012 21:54:00 -0600

To celebrate Sonya and Eddie's anniversary today, I thought it would be fun to post a project so dear to my heart that I couldn't let it go unshared. Dan and I started working on this wedding suite in 2009 with Sonya and Eddie's Save the Date cards. From there, we all worked closely to create a number of coordinated pieces to tie their wedding together. Even now, over two years later, it's still one of my favorite projects. I had so much fun working with them and seeing each piece come to life. Sonya and Eddie were married two years ago today and Dan and I were lucky enough to attend their amazing wedding in New York. Seeing everything before and throughout the wedding made it even more special.

Project included:

– Hand-drawn cherry blossoms and branches

– Save the Date cards and magnets

– Pocketfold invitations with monogram tag closure

– Invitation inserts with directions, a custom map, wedding information and RSVP postcard

– Rehearsal invitation postcards

– Folded wedding programs with monogram cover tag and custom map carried over from the main invitation

– Escort card luggage tags placed at the reception entrance—double duty as an escort card and wedding favor

– Table name cards using pictures to highlight all the places Sonya and Eddie have lived (separately and together)

– Coordinating dinner menus

– Thank you cards with Vietnamese translation for the groom's family

We wish Sonya and Eddie a very happy anniversary, and many more wonderful years together!

sneak peek: mike + erin = chelsea

Sat, 14 Apr 2012 15:57:00 -0600

Chelsea made her grand entrance a couple weeks earlier than expected—right as we were going out of town—and we finally got to meet her last weekend. What a precious, little thing she is. Here are a few of our favorite images from her session.

project life 2012: week three

Thu, 22 Mar 2012 21:05:00 -0600

Here we are at week three—still working on new habits, like meal planning, and still getting back into the groove of life after the holidays. This week I was able to include some fun things around work and home. Early in the week I made our own whole wheat bread with sundried tomatoes and parmesan cheese. It was surprisingly easy and really good. At work, my show season is in full swing, and things are BUSY! An image and a quote were chosen for a feature story in an industry magazine, so that was exciting. Not so exciting? The weather. It was dreary and disgusting.

I guess this page is out of order because the wall wasn't torn down in the bottom pictures, but during the week we watched a couple movies on the big screen—Forks Over Knives (documentary) and Toy Story in 3D (hence the 3D glasses). I still can't believe that I can watch 3D movies in my own basement, let alone movies that are projected at 120 inches wide. In the top right picture, we started building a LEGO Eiffel Tower.

Dan worked on the basement and knocked out more of the wall. On Saturday morning, we went to the hardware store to buy all the lumber and supplies for the wall structure. The basement looks so different every time I see it. It's really cool to see the transformation and the work that Dan is putting into it.

Not much to explain this week, and still loving this project.

project life 2012: week two

Tue, 20 Mar 2012 21:00:00 -0600

Week two, still loving this project, and feeling a lot less pressure. Getting things figured out during week one was the hard part, so now it's smooth sailing. Week two was when I discovered clean eating. Actually, I should say that week one was when I discovered it and bought a related magazine, but week two was where I actually took action and pictures. I used the magazine to plan our meals for the week, and during my grocery trip I bought a lot of ingredients to replace the "dirty" ones in our house. I included a couple pictures of the pantry organiztion. Last year, Dan and I made a huge change to our diets and started buying better foods so our pantry wasn't horrible when it came to certain things, but others changed a lot—like replacing sugar with agave, raw honey, and evaporated cane juice. I also made a batch of clean-eating almond flour chocolate chip cookies with my new mixer, and they were delicious!

So far it's been a mild winter, but we finally saw some winter temperatures, ice, and a tiny bit of snow. I took a screenshot of the weather forecast with my iPhone, and printed it to fit. When Dan and I weren't trying out new recipes, we were keeping warm and snuggling with the cats. In the upper right corner, I included a screenshot from a funny video I took of Merry and a train car. The orange "LAUGH, LOVE..." card came from my clementine kit.

I'm sure it doesn't seem that interesting now, but I decided to include a song verse from a current favorite—Head Full of Doubt / Road Full of Promise by The Avett Brothers. I know it will be fun to look back and see what songs I liked during the year.

Overall, I just documented a bunch of mundane life during week two, but that's what this project is for me. I enjoy including the boring bits of the week because I know they'll be cool someday—whether that someday is months from now or years from now.

If you're curious what Project Life is, it's a scrapbooking system created by Becky Higgins. You can learn more here.

project life 2012: week one

Wed, 14 Mar 2012 22:20:00 -0600

Here we go—week one. I felt a lot of pressure this week to start everything a certain way and keep it consistent throughout the year. The top left pocket, for example, could either have a title card from the clementine paper kit or a printed card with a typed week-in-review. After I reminded myself that this project can be whatever I want from week to week, and that I bought the clementine kit to make this thing easy, almost all of my decisions were made for me. So, I'm using the clementine title cards with a stamped date range on each week, and that's the extent of my rules.

The first week of the year was pretty laid back for us. Even though I took a picture each day during the week, there were some that I didn't care to include and some that had the wrong orientation for the remaining pockets. So, I included what I wanted and even included the Lego London Tower Bridge twice because I liked two different images of it.

On New Year's, Dan and I worked on Legos and made our traditional cabbage soup. Also, Merry loves to lay on my office chair lately, so I wanted to capture that. To show the work Dan had done on a basement project up until this point, I included a 6x12 page protector as an insert with progress shots of the corner Dan demoed. The description (MISSION card) includes Dan's basement task list that I pulled from Google Docs. I printed the images separately, lined them up in the page protector, and then used my sewing machine to sew in the gaps so the photos would stay in place. Here you can see the front of the insert.

Here, you can see the back of the insert. (Yes, that's our sump pump in the corner and it really was enclosed by a structure that the previous owner built.) Otherwise, the first week's spread included a couple work-related pictures of things I see on a daily basis (my desk, notebook, and a plane landing over the highway), and a picture that I took of a friend and I at our first ballet class. At the bottom is a photo of our kitties eating their usual Saturday morning wet food, which is a weekly treat for them, and a punch bowl picture from a friend's baby shower. I cut down a half-sized index card and rounded two of the corners to have a photo description.

Overall, the first week went well and I love how easily everything came together—just print and slide into the pockets, adding some journaling here and there. Voilà!

If you're curious what Project Life is, it's a scrapbooking system created by Becky Higgins. You can learn more here.

sneak peek: mike + erin = baby girl

Sat, 10 Mar 2012 17:45:00 -0700

Just a quick show and tell—the first weekend in March found us exploring a couple different locations with our friends, Mike and Erin. Their little girl is due at the beginning of April, and Erin is looking fabulous. Here's a little sneak peek for them to enjoy this weekend.

project life 2012: introduction

Thu, 08 Mar 2012 22:54:00 -0700

I was convinced that 2012 was going to be just another year in the memory-keeping department. I always have the greatest intentions to take more pictures, remember our everyday lives, and document more. Then, when the holidays are over, I go back to work and those good intentions disappear. The days turn into weeks. The weeks turn into months. Before I know it, half the year has gone by and I have nothing to show for it. At the end of the year I'm left thinking we have no pictures of ourselves, and not much from the things we did this year either. What did we do this year?

Enter Project Life—a way of scrapbooking that I read about at the very end of 2011. It called out to my passions of memory keeping, picture making, and story telling. Unfortunately, since I was late to the game most of the products I wanted were unavailable. I had to wait over six weeks for the products to become available again. During that time I questioned whether I really wanted to go through with this project, but I had already invested some time and money preparing for it. After I returned from a work trip late-February, the products were at home waiting for me and I was more excited than ever. I am going to do this. I am going to document our 2012 and it is going to be a fantastic year.

I've spent the last two weeks catching up on the last nine, and now it's week 10. I'm fascinated by this format and the process. Unlike traditional scrapbooking, I totally enjoy the process and look forward to sorting through the week's photos and seeing which ones make the cut. Some weeks I'll only have a handful of photos and other weeks I'll have dozens. [By the way, I've also decided to take at least one photo a day this year, which has helped tremendously.] I like that I can do as little or as much work as I want each week, and I don't have to wait for the year to be over to fully appreciate the project. I already enjoy looking back through the weeks I've done.

Now that I'm caught up, I'll be posting weeks 1-9 first to keep things in order. Here is the title page I created. I took inspiration from Cathy Zielske's title pages, and the 6x12 insert design came from her here. I replaced the patterned paper with one from the Clementine digital paper pack.

The "living life one day at a time" card is from the clementine paper kit (see link below). I created the silhouettes last year with the intention of hanging them somewhere in the house. I'm glad I was able to use them for this project. I also created the map of Cincinnati / Northern Kentucky last year by digitally hand-tracing a Google map (seriously). I placed a star where we currently live. I may add monograms to the silhouettes later, but for now I'm happy with the title pages.

Have I mentioned how excited I am about this project?

If you're curious what Project Life is, it's a scrapbooking system created by Becky Higgins. You can learn more here. I have the Clementine kit, Design A page protectors, and 6x12 page protectors. I also have the black classic album from We R Memory Keepers. I'm printing everything at home on my Epson R2880 wide-format printer.

twelve days of christmas

Wed, 14 Dec 2011 15:10:00 -0700

Every year around October, while we're in the thick of creating holiday cards for others, I realize that I'll need to order our own cards soon... and that I have no design ideas whatsoever. Then, I wonder why it's fairly easy to make things for others, but so incredibly hard to make things for myself. The process repeats until mid-November when I know that I'm almost out of time and I'm still searching for that perfect idea.

This year, we had a few different ideas and one kept taking the lead. It took some extra steps to plan and implement, but once we ironed out the details and knew we could do it, we just had to. I was so excited to assemble the cards with Dan and get them ready to mail. Also, since I've wanted to make an advent calendar for a while, this card was a great compromise and a fabulous way to share the daily activiites with others. Check out the makings of our card with our version of the 12 Days of Christmas.

Our first day of Christmas was yesterday, December 13th, and the activities will go through Christmas Eve. If you didn't get a card and would like to play along, here are the activities:

12/13: Make paper snowflakes and decorate with them.
12/14: Make breakfast for dinner and eat in your pajamas.
12/15: Take food to a local food pantry.
12/16: Have a holiday movie night.
12/17: While shopping, buy something extra and donate it to charity.
12/18: Buy a new ornament to place on the tree.
12/19: Write 10 things you are thankful for this year. Tape it to your mirror.
12/20: Make a special treat and deliver it to a neighbor.
12/21: Drink hot chocolate.
12/22: Take a drive to look at Christmas lights.
12/23: Have a game night.
12/24: Fill a small stocking. Drop it off on someone's door as a surprise.

Tailor these activities to your own home. If you don't want to buy something on the list, then do something handmade. If you don't like hot chocolate, then have hot cider. Live in a cozy, little neighborhood? Instead of driving, bundle up and walk around to look at Christmas lights. Everyone's results are going to look different, and that's what I love most. To start us out, here are the paper snowflakes Dan and I made last night. We haven't decorated with them yet, but we will. Let's see your snowflakes.

sneak peek: [r] family session

Mon, 07 Nov 2011 22:27:00 -0700

I can't believe it's November already, but I have to say that October went out with a bang! Not only did we get to meet a cute family with two little girls, but the weather was wonderful and the maple trees along their street were at their peak. The images below only give you a glimpse of the amazing colors. Check out the sneak peek and say hello to the [R] family...