recording our everyday life

When I've started reading Gretchen Rubin's book The Happiness project I decided to buy this "one-sentence" journal from her (I've borrowed the book from a library, don't own it, yet).  We've started recording our life through short sentences the same day. I wanted to include the whole family so Patrik made the first post on Jan 11th. Today it's going to be Katrin's turn. It is so fun to see their handwriting in the book and I know we are going to treasure those short sentences with years to come.

I'm still thinking of doing a Project life once again but this time I would just  probably do a collection of weekly photos, not exactly taking photos every day, it's too stressful. Even though I've started my Bits of life blog, which suppose to be capturing daily life in photos, I'm totally okay with missing photos or skipping days.  But I told myself, first I have to finish the whole album from 2010 and then I can jump into another project. Time will show.
How do you (if you do) record your life? I used to do it through scrapbook but lately I've been so short of time that I haven't scrapped for months...

hello 2012

It's here. The year of 2012. A new beginning. A fresh start. The year of now.

Hello 2012, we are all ready for you!

We celebrated a New Year with our friends and couldn't ask for a better start of the new year. It was awesome to have them over at our place, playing games and just having good time together!

After lunch we did a family hike in a local forest. We love it there. I'm really happy that we have such a beautiful place almost behind our house. Ivo goes there for his regular runs and we do a lot of hikes there as a family.

 

I've decided to go back to capturing our everyday life through photos and join the Project 365 train once again. I've created a new blog just for sharing these photos - bits of life. You can get there through the THIS IS LIFE banner on the right side of this blog. I done this project in 2009 and 2010 and I love to look back at all those photos. I hope I will be strong enough to finish this year as well, with a little help of the awesome community over at capture your 365 I should be able to make it.

Happy New Year to all of you!

the story of my life | capture your 365 | blog hop

I've always loved to look at our family photos. As a kid I remember my parents having a drawer full of envelopes filled up with photos from family vacations and other events. Later my mom's started to organize most of our photos and putting them into photo albums. I always loved going through the older photos and bringing back all the memories from my childhood, telling the stories behind those photos and sharing the joy and laughter with other family members.

Now I have a family on my own and it is me who tells the story of our everyday life, I'm the family storyteller. In 2009 I've started doing my project 365 - photo-a-day. I really loved the idea of capturing the little moments in everyday life. For putting the photos together I used a template by Ali Edwards and printed out the monthly reviews. Here is an example of the month of May.

My kids love to look at the album at all those photos and we always share some good laughs after bringing some of the situations and memories up.

For 2010 I've decided to go with a Project Life kit by Becky Higgings. I absolutely love the idea of this kit. The little pockets are perfect not just for the journal cards which are included in the kit but also for keeping small items like drawings, tickets etc stuff. Unfortunately life got quite busy last year with selling our house, moving across the country so I've not been able to put the album together yet. But I went strong with taking photos and didn't miss a day so now it is just a matter of time to finish this album. Hopefully I'll get to it soon.

For this year I originally decided not to continue with this project but soon I've started to miss capturing the little everyday things so I'm trying to get back on track with taking everyday photos. But this time I'm taking it easy. If I miss a day, it's no big deal for me. I don't stress if I don't take a photo on a certain day. I try to enjoy this process as much as I can and at the same time I'm also learning how my camera works so I can improve my photography skills.

I came across Capture your 365 site the other day and I immediately knew that's the right place to be. I love the supportive community there, all the ideas and advices people share there. Thanks to Katrina Kennedy I'm finally pushing myself to get better in taking photos and enjoying again this long time project.

 

Jill came with a great idea to do a blog hop about our projects to showcase all the possibilities about how this project can be done. And also to give some inspiration to others (sometimes the inspiration is so needed!). I still don't know how I will showcase/collect my photos for this year but for now I just made a little review of some of my favorite photos I took this year so far.

Here is a list of other participants of this blog hop so if you have time, you can take a little peek into their everyday lives as well.

 1. Jill http://jillconyers.typepad.com/

2. Gayle 

http://lifeonlilypadlane.blogspot.com/

3. Tracy 

http://www.tracyannelittle.com/

4. Anne 

http://limeblog.net

5. Sarah 

blog.three8sphotography.com

6. Sharon 

http://sharonlinnefaulk.com/photo

7. Michelle www.ourhereandnow.blogspot.com

8. Katrina http://captureyour365.com/category/blog/

9. Kathleen 

http://jkplusthree.blogspot.com/

10. Erika www.imhangingwithmypeeps.blogspot.com

11. Gabi http://gabirytirova.typepad.com  - YOU ARE HERE

12. Christi http://randomactsofchristi.blogspot.com/

13. Joey http://everydayimagination.blogspot.com/

All the blog posts should be available at 8am EST so if you are not able to get to someones blog, please try later.

Enjoy and thank you for stopping by!

catching up on projects

I've decided to finally finish some older projects and take them off from my neverending to-do list. I've been doing project 365 for a second year but I still haven't finished the months in review from last year. My computer died last summer and I lost all the files I had there so now I have to go day by day and look for the certain photo I posted here. Today I finished May 2009 and there are only 4 more months left - January - April 2009. I hope to have them done within next few days and finally have them printed. Then I have to catch up on this year...Yup, always behind..

I'm using Ali Edwards' 2009 Photo Calendar layered templates.

Project life - the album

As I promised to some of you, I will show you how our Project life album looks like.
The first pages in the album contain my monthly reviews from last year + 2009 in review and then year 2010 is following.
For the first week of 2010 I still need to print and insert my post from January 1st and a definition of my little word for this year.
(sorry about the quality of photos, I was taking them in the evening)
week 1



The word life is from the original box which the kit arrived in.
week 2




I'm using the little pockets also for my photos not just the journals. I journaled directly on the photo as well (done in photoshop). I used some of Paislee Press' wordarts on the top left photo (her work is available @ oscraps.com). And I journaled the story direcly on the bottom photo as well.

week 3






In the right top corner is a drawing from Katrin she made that week. I skipped few days of photos (I took photos every day, just didn't include them in the album) in this week and instead of them I put more photos from Patrik's exciting day - choosing his new bike.
week 4






In this week I included some of the B-day cards Ivo and Patrik got from our family and friends.
week 5



So this is our January in a real version! Kids LOVE it as much as I do :)
If you have done yours, please don't hesitate to link me to your album, I would like to see it as well.

day by day

I don't like winter. I really don't. Especially this year. Kids are going from one cold/virus into another. Patrik got antibiotics yesterday for a heavy bronchitis, his cough really scares me. Today Katrin's started sneezing and just few minutes ago I went to check on her and she is having a fever. So she is getting it as well. Sigh. They are sick almost every second/third week. I can't wait for spring to come.

We are going to paint all three bedrooms and bathrooms on the first floor this weekend, I'm really excited how the rooms will look like. We are going to switch bedrooms as well so it will be definitely a huge change.

Today the Project life kit finally arrived!! I knew that it should be delivered by UPS so I was eagerly waiting for a UPS truck to stop in front of our house. And it did today!! When I saw the guy coming to our doors, I was jumping by joy. Really. No kidding. Kids when saw me being excited, they started to cheer as well. And then they helped me to open the box.

 

I can't wait to fill it up with my daily photos from Project 365 and document our life in a real version. Huge thanks to my friend Kathy who was so kind and sent it to me. Kathy, you are the best!!!

week four

It's almost February, can you believe it? Here is our week four.

project life

I've been in love with all the little hybrid project I saw in Ali Edwards' book - Sharing your story and all over on the internet. I would love to make some projects but unfortunately I don't have a good printer so even if I would like to, I can't use for example digital scrapbook stuff and print it at home. So I thought I will buy a classic photo album with a journaling space and will print my photos for project 365 and add just a little note here and there. BUT I read Ali's blog and she mentioned Becky Higgins' Project life. At the very second I KNEW that this is what I want to do.

The kit was temporarily unavailable for sale but since today it is alive again!!! Unfortunately amazon.com doesn't ship to Canada but my dear friend Kathy was so kind and ordered it for me and will ship it to me. I can't thank her enough. Sweetie, you are the best!! THANK YOU SO MUCH!!! So now I will be patiently waiting for a big box to come  :) I so can't wait!!!

week three

Another week in review is done. Thank you so much, Agnes for this template! It's awesome!

 

project 365

I was so mad and sad when my laptop came from service totally empty last year. They cleaned/erased my HD with all my stuff on there. I lost all my photos from project 365 I had on my laptop because I didn't have the originals saved, only the smaller photos which I put on my blog. So I have to go through all those thousands+ photos on our main computer now and look for the one certain photo which I posted on the blog. I've finished another month today - June. So only 5 more to go!!

And this is a photo from today - Patrik testing his new bike which we've bought today for his Birthday. He is so happy and excited! He's outgrown from his old one so it was time for an update.

by Wednesday

Have you ever had a photo which you wanted to scrap but didn't know how? I love this photo of Katrin but I wasn't sure how to scrap it. I knew I wanted to keep it simple so the main focus would be on the photo. I was sorting my scrapbook stuff on my computer today and found this quickpage from Paislee press. I'm so in love with her minimalistic designs! And I knew immediately that it is the way to go for.

(full credits can be seen in my Life art 2010 album)

Patrik didn't go to kindergarten today because of a cold he's got yesterday. But luckily he is feeling better now. They have been playing so nicely with Katrin today.

I'm getting back to reading after Christmas again. I'm reading The Pact by Jodi Picoult right now, so far I like it. My next book to read is The Lovely bones by Alice Sebold which I brought from our library two days ago. I know the movie will come to theaters this week, I saw few trailers on TV so I'm excited about this book.

The next one I want to read after I finish those above is a manual to my camera. I've been postponing this for SO long and I think it's finally time to read it and understand how my camera works. I was playing with it today and got this photo of my decoration, I really love how this turned out.

 

This photo is a part of my project 365. How is yours going?

week two

Another week of 2010 is almost over. It has been a busy one.

A lot of playing, fun outside, activities together. Joy. Laughter. Good times.

Katrin has started taking her gymnastic class again today so our Saturday's mornings are very busy - two kids with different programs, two different places,  the same time, one car. You get the point.

happy

Today is one of the days when I can't stop smiling.  I feel really happy today. In the morning Katrin and I had such a great time together, we were home alone and spent the time together by playing, snuggling and laughing. She is such a doll. She gives me the best little kisses ever!

She wanted to play school. I printed few pages with her name and she was tracing it, she really did a great job with this! Then we learned her name using magnets on the board.

 

When she is laughing, I have to laugh too. Her laughter is so infectious.

 

This is her typical way of sitting. She even crosses her legs like this when she is sleeping. It always makes me and Ivo laugh when we go to check on kids before we go to bed.

 

She made this sign and put it on the door to her room. It is her and me jumping and playing :). So sweet!

Another thing which put a big smile on my face was today's chat with my old friend. I didn't hear from him for so long, it was so nice to get back together after so many years.

We have started to make more certain plans about our moving. It makes me so excited!

And of course music makes me happy. Yup, another one from Cold play ;) This song has a little bit morbid name but I LOVE it. I couldn't find a video, so you can just listen to this song - The cemeteries of London. (don't forget to turn off the playlist on the bottom of the page).

Thank you for stopping by!

by Monday

As every Monday I went to Patrik's school to volunteer in his class
today. I took my camera to record his show & tell. He was so shy! I'm happy that I've captured this moment, in few years he wouldn't believe me if I'd tell him how shy he was.

I also took a few photos of him and Katrin. Here he is in
the morning counting days until his Birthday.

And Katrin "writing" on her school sheet. She always wants to do the same work as other children.

(I forgot to take her hair pins in the morning, her hair was such a mess today.)

week one - project 365

I've decided to make weekly reviews of our everyday life for project 365 this year. I wanted to make it as simple as possible with focusing on the photos. I will be using Leora's A Year to Remember :: Project 365 :: kit.

Here is our week one.

saturday

We woke up to a such cold weather this morning. During night  there was -20 deg of Celsius outside, in the morning -15 but on the windchill if felt like -25. It seems winter is finally here. We are still waiting for more snow though so we can finally go for sliding.

We went to Costco at noon and I printed my monthly reviews from the last year.  These layouts are my first ones I've ever printed, they turned out perfectly. The quality is amazing and I can't wait to have a full year done (still haven't finished few months). I put the prints into 12x12 album, kids immediately started looking at the pictures and a lot of memories came up. It was so nice.

 

Right now kids are having fun playing Mario cars on Wii. I love to watch them, they are always so focused on the game, especially Patrik.

Here is my photo of a second day for my project 365. Katrin loves to play in our bed. She jumped in and was hiding under the cover but she was making sure I'm looking for her. She is so funny.

photo a day - year two

I'm really excited to start a second year of taking photo a day. I
love to look at all those photos from the last year, I've captures a
lot of priceless moments and memories. You can see all my photos in my Life in pictures photo album.

Today's photo and this year's first is about my love, my best friend, my soulmate - my dear husband Ivo.

(photo template is by Emily Merritt from her Project memories kit available @ the-lilypad.com)

I plan to do weekly pages, hopefully I will be able to keep up with it. I want to keep it simple, focus on photos and put some little journaling about the photo/event. If you have decided to go for this project too, good luck!

Another month in review from 2009 is done! Only 6 more to go...