Project Life 2015: Week 1

Okay so in my previous post I promised I would share my Project Life pages for 2015.
I am glad to here I am not the only one sticking with 12 by 12 - clearly some of you take as many pictures a week as me. 
So here is week 1 and I am pleased to report that it features mostly big camera photos and you can really tell the difference. 
I also resolved to take better photos of New Years as we always spend it in Belgium and the in-laws are not as into taking pictures as my family are (in fact dad claims that it 'ruins his rep' when we document our whole stay in pics and get sneaky ones of him tucking into fish and chips or asleep on the sofa at 7pm!), but I resolved that this year I would not let it stop me and I would get the big camera out and get some group shots.
Bit of a fail that I didn't get a group shot of us and even forgot to get one of me all dressed up for our posh meal on New Year's Day. So I used the self timer when we got in and got this really goofy shot - but since its the only one I used it.
Perhaps I should have asked Santa for a selfie stick in my stocking...

The second part of the week focus' on some Belgian classics like waffles and go karts on the coast. These are things we do every visit and have photos capturing it every time - so they will form a cute little record of how he grows and perhaps next photo op the waffle won't look as big as his head! 
Don't you love the shot of the go kart about to go down the steps to the beach?
I've always been a fan of extreme photography - haha!

Supplies:
Heidi Swapp Dreamy edition Project Life kit
Studio Calico wood veneers
Heidi Swapp interchangeable stamp
Twenty fifteen free printable here

Me on a Monday

It's been a yay it's half term and its daddy's turn to get up with The Baby and so I will have a lie in, family trip to the media museum, The Baby sending morse code messages and checking out his reflection in several crazy mirrors, boys bonding over games consoles, cheeky lunch at Subways, clear out and clean the fridge, big food shop, meet daddy during his run for a walk around the yarn and lots of chilly fun at the park and running down muddy hills kind of a Monday!

Project Life Title Page 2015

So like a lot of Project Lifers I faced the great debate at the end of last year - should I switch up the size of my Project Life?

I only started a pocket scrapbooking approach to memory keeping last January, after really enjoying my first experience of putting together a December Daily album. I also realised I take sooo many pictures that I would never find enough time to scrap them all in 12 by 12 layouts.

So in my decision making process I was inspired by Allison Waken's 9 by 12 approach and that gorgeous coin protector front page, also Stephanie Makes' innovative and ambitious idea of a mini book a month and I love, love, love Tracy's 9 by 12 layouts this year too. 

However, in the end I concluded that I take far too many photos to fit into a smaller format and so I would stick with 12 by 12 - in fact my reasoning was very similar to Big City Quiet's here. 

Some changes that I have made to my process this year:

• I am going for the weekly approach. I took a monthly approach last year and would often mix weeks up and ended up including most of my pictures and my months would sprawl on for ages! So I am taking a more organised and concise approach and so far am finding this is really helping me to stay focused. 
• As a result of the weekly approach I am being more selective with photos and trying to use my big camera for at least a few of them - mainly at home shots as I am too lazy to lug it around with me. 
• I am planning my layouts out in a little book and keeping notes on the week as last year I often scrapped in retrospect and think I lost some of the little stories and details.
• Try to document all of our lives instead of just The Baby. I am trying to take more selfies and couple shots so our story it told too. For January I have taken some classroom shots and am trying to include the every day stuff that never makes it into my albums. (Look out for lots of arty laundry shots!)

So this is my title page for 2015. I wanted to document my layouts every week, but realistically that will never happen. I am using a mixture of Costco printing and online like Snapfish and freeprints and so I am not able to complete the layouts every week - although I am planning and note taking and post-it note sticking every week.

I have been mainly using my Heidi Swapp Dreamy edition Project Life cards and some free printables from pinterest. 

The bottom two photos were taken on New Year's Eve and the top one is from our day out in Whitby in October. I love the contrast of the pastel colours with the black and white photo and want to use more black and white in my album this year. 

What are your plans for 2015? 

I will be back soon to share some of the rest of January.

Here's to being a yes mum...

Do you find that when you are the mum of a lively and adventurous toddler you end up saying 'no' far too often?

Well today I decided to be a yes mum.

I let him drive the car.

Then we went to the park, even though it was freezing, and I let him go on all the dangerous, big kid climbing frames and slides (even though it involved me having to chase him, hoist him, have a panic attack every five minutes!) that I normally drag him away from. 

He loved it. I was exhausted.

I let him push his pram all the way back to town and linger for ages over the swans.

I let him walk through the muddy puddles and then splash in them and get his trainers and jeans covered in mud.

I took him to our old favourite cafe (where the waitress is his girlfriend - it was a happy reunion) and he got a fruit shoot (daddy bans them shhh) and a chocolate rolo brownie. 

And wear it all over! 

Ad snuggle on the sofa with mummy and watch Gilmour Girls on Netflix (he's a big fan!)

Okay so perhaps the last one was more for me. It's tiring work being a yes mummy!

Do you ever have days like these?

Me on a Monday

It's been a road tripping to Wales, first birthday celebrating, cake rejecting (from the birthday girl!), Hello Kitty photoboothing, dessert bar admiring, ice skating on frozen lakes, laughing nervously when the ice cracked, marveling at the scenery, photo overload, family gathering, feast partaking, Adam Sandler entertaining, sisters reunited, general tomfoolery, Sunday night soaking kind of a weekend.

And you?

Baby does Bruges...

The gorgeous and jet setting crafty blogger, Kelly Purkey, shared this link to a toddler's view of New York City and it reminded me of some photos we took in Bruges at New Years. I started putting the camera on the floor to get the toddlers perspective of Bruges.  
And the result? I kinda love it. They may be blurry, imperfect and unedited but I love them. 
We plan to get the top one made into a canvas for our wall - I just love his cheeky little grin as he balanced over one of Bruges many famous canals. 

He was particularly impressed to find a burger restaurant named after him too!

Our First Wacky Warehouse Party...

So a few weeks ago we received an invite to the Baby's first Wacky Warehouse birthday party. It's not the first birthday party that he's been invited to but this invite came from one of the little girl's who he is at the childminders with. A girl I have only met a few times and whose parents I have never met as we all pick up and drop off at different times.

I felt a bit anxious turning up to a party where I wouldn't know anyone. But I had to remind myself to get a grip as it wasn't even my party - and hopefully The Baby would recognise her and we wouldn't be gate crashing someone's party! Haha!

On the way to the party I realised I hadn't got the birthday girl a pressie. What does one even get a girl? Who may be turning two...or perhaps three? I quickly texted our lovely childminder asking for help. I should have guessed the reply really...Frozen! Or just generally Disney Princess'. So I got some tat at TKMaxx and brought a Frozen gift bag to 'wrap' it in. I avoided any of those number cards since we weren't too sure and when I asked the Baby he was very little help on the matter!  

I couldn't convince the Belgian to leave the sofa (and by extension his laptop and Championship Manager - 'you're not really a football manager dear!') and so we pulled up in the car park (next to an abandoned sofa - I kid you not!) flying solo. They took ages to buzz us in (as always) apparently having a child still makes you suspicious in these types of places. 

Once inside the Baby knows the drill and was straight into the ball pit and charging down the slide head first. I, luckily, recognised the birthday girl as she was in a flamboyant party dress. She also grabbed the present from me and had it open and was playing with it in about thirty seconds flat. (See picture above!) Perhaps this is the difference between girls and boys!

The babies were supposed to be playing in the under threes bit, but the Baby loves to break the rules. I had committed a mum fail as I wasn't wearing socks and so had to chase after him barefoot. We'd only been there ten minutes when he fell down a step and banged his head and was crying his eyes out. The other mum's were very sympathetic and perhaps were shocked by my blase he does it all the time attitude. But he really does. I was cursing the Belgian at this point. Clearly leading a third division team into victory was far more important. 

It was also apparent that most of the guests at the party were Polish and I felt silly for not realising that the names on the invite were Polish. Just as the tantruming tots and hollering hooligans reached a deafening pitch a siren sounded announcing "Will Anja's party please come to the party door?" It sounded very ominous. We were ushered upstairs and there was a huge horseshoe shaped table laid out with all the fried food a tot could dream of. The Baby was very close to meltdown and if it wasn't for that platter of lukewarm fries I doubt he would have stayed, quietly, in his seat.

The Baby was pretty shocked at the numbing vanilla ice-cream, but he came back for seconds only to go through the whole spectrum of emotions again. They were getting restless again - one of the tots shut his finger in the door, another was having a full on paddy as she wanted ketchup on her ice-cream and the birthday girl took a swat at the Baby. So he threw himself, rather dramatically, onto the floor. 

We were saved by the bell and they announced, "Anja's party back in the pool pond." Oh no! I'd had enough of chasing the Baby down rainbow slides and bumped heads and so we made our excuses and left with his first ever party bag and helium balloon. We were just out of the car park when I spotted this in my rear view mirror...

Clearly someone had had too much fun and he now has a bruise and a battered slice of birthday cake to show for it! 
Till next time hey...?

Me on a Monday

It's been a high energy fun at the play barn, breakfasting at Spoony's, entertaining a Luxembourger, wrestling with the Baby in a sea of cushions, paying a babysitter with brownies and cold pizza whilst we gorged on a curry buffet, weather trying to snow, sipping on cold root beer, chicken in the slow cooker, old roomie over for Sunday lunch, napping after a really busy weekend, rudely awoken by a coughing baby, co-sleeping elbows and duvet hogging disaster, Peppa Pig at the crack of dawn, trying to engage disengaged Year 11s into discussions of hopes for a new born baby in the poem Born Yesterday, sixth form writing their own poems about food, bonkers meeting after school, car journey home with a grizzly Baby, exhausted on the sofa only to be involved in a rare drive by incident in my own front room! 

Busy -but we wouldn't have it any other way! Big bubble bath and trashy mags in the bath to recover from it kind-of-a-weekend! 

(Linking up with the lovely Sian over here)

Boxing Day and beyond...

You've all heard of When Harry Met Sally well what about when Ella met Ellis?

These two cousins have only met a few times and she was a bit small so I think he thought she was a doll. This time, however, they were little besties.

They played so sweetly together, ate together, bathed together and giggled together.

His favourite game is being chased hands down - hope this is not a sign of a future player! 

So someone (one of the many doting relatives!) would pick her up and chase him with her in their arms and he would kill himself laughing as she was squealing with delight. It was so cute!

Below are my two attempts at getting everyone in a picture and lets just say the Belgian was clearly having a bad photo day! It was great to have everyone together - if only for a few short days! We watched films, played board games and ate and just hung out. 

We also had both of the baby's first snowfall and that was really exciting. I didn't get the best pictures on my camera, He was so excited and was staring out of the window going 'wow!' and anytime someone left the door open he was out there like a shot. 

We had our first snowball fights, which he found hilarious and we even built a mini snowman.

Then the car was packed ready for Belgium for New Years...

Let's talk about photography...

I read this post, a few weeks back, on the inspiring Jill Sprott's blog about how the way that we take photos has changed. I also love looking at old photos and that feeling of anticipation when getting photographs devloped and that sense of not knowing whether they would be good shots or not - and how that risk was all part of the suprprise. Often you were left with imperfect photos, but they told a story - instead of perfectly posed for instagram that has been shot ten times and edited with an app and then given a retro filter to make it look a bit more glam.

Jill linked to this amazing blog by Tara Whitney. She takes real photos and captures the essense of her subjects and her photos are authentic and they speak to the viewer. They are often unposed and natural shots, which made me think about how I take photos.

I am not a photographer in any sense of the world, but I am obsessed with taking photos, documenting and memories. A wallet of photos is like the results of a designer shopping spree or make-up haul for most ladies. I love to flick through them, to remember those precious moments and to plan how to use them and which products to co-ordinate them with.

In fact a lot of my Christmas presents this year were based on photos. I put together a photo album for the Belgian great-grandparents and for his Oma too. They had both been begging for copies of pictures for months and months, but I had an SLR cable issue. I also gave the Belgian's sister some instagram magnets of the Baby and her. They were very cute and I would definitely recommend the company - find them here.https://sticky9.com/ 

So whilst a lot of the time I feel like a fraud pulling out my ancient slr and using it on auto most of the time - I know that it takes better pictures than my iphone (which actually takes very poor photos, especially when you try to enlarge them!) 

What are your photography skills like? Are you a canon or Nikon girl? Or phone camera for the convenience?