Jennifer Woodbury

2012 Photos | Week 7 | Feb 12-18

My three little Valentines.

These are the Valentines Ella handed out to her class...

... and this is the pile of Valentines Ella got back at her class party. (Sadly, Claire's preschool doesn't do a Valentine's Day exchange. But she and Lucy got plenty of loving from Mom, Dad, and grandparents to make up for it.)

Ella lost her very first tooth before school on Thursday morning, and her excitement was contagious! She couldn't wait to tell everybody including the older boys walking past our house while she was waiting for the school bus (bless their hearts for acting genuinely excited for her), the bus driver, her teacher, and everybody else in between. It had been very loose for days and when she went to brush her teeth this morning it just fell right out. The Tooth Fairy paid her a visit Thursday night and left $5 and a teeny tiny note under her pillow. Ella even got to keep her tooth.

Ella wrote me this letter one morning before school utilizing the persuasive writing skills she learned at school:

"Mom, can I have a gold fish I will cack[take] care of it. I will fed it. I will make sure I do not put to muck fish fod. I will give it what ever it nes[needs]. I will do what every you wot[want] me to do. Love Ella"

I was a chaperone for Ella's class trip to the Nature Center this week to learn about maple sugaring. Here Ella is tasting maple sap right out of the tree (it's about 95% water). From there we went to the Maple Sugar House to see how the sap is evaporated into pure Connecticut maple syrup. I actually found it quite fascinating. Each child in the class got their very own spile to take home... maybe you will find me tapping the maple trees in our backyard and making my own syrup one of these days?

Claire and Lucy... bathtime buddies.

2012 Photos | Week 6 | Feb 5-11

We weren't planning to make the Super Bowl a big deal even though our team was playing. But when I printed out some Giants helmets for the girls to color in an attempt to keep them occupied on a Sunday afternoon, it led to me turning them into hats, which in turn led to huge excitement about the game, even though the girls didn't really know what they were excited about (at one point Claire put on her hat and yelled "Happy New Year!"). When it was all over the Giants managed to win the game, but we had to tell the girls the good news in the morning since we sent them to bed at halftime. We can be fun parents, but apparently not that fun.

Afternoon reading with Claire.

Building with blocks.

Lucy after a nap is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you're gonna get. Sometimes she wakes up singing to herself... and sometimes she wakes up like this.

I have joked in the past that Panera Bread is like my second home. Whenever I have a few moments to myself (which is not often), this is usually where you'll find me. If it's around lunchtime I will grab some soup or salad, but sometimes in a weak moment I'll just come for a chocolate croissant and a few moments in a quiet booth.

I love that when Ella goes to the library at school on Thursdays, she always brings home an extra bookmark for Claire. These sisters are always thinking about each other.

Lucy & Mom

Our First "Valentine's Day"

Friday, February 12th, 1999.

Matt and I had been dating for just a few weeks.

We were at Trolley Square in Salt Lake City, having just finished dinner at The Old Spaghetti Factory (one of life's great pleasures is spaghetti with mizithra cheese and browned butter, in case you didn't know) and we were standing outside waiting to go into the movie theater to watch You've Got Mail.

Matt leaned over to me and whispered, "Happy Valentine's Day."

"Happy Valentine's Day!" I replied. And then after a brief pause, "You know it's not until Sunday, right?"

No, he did not know that Valentine's Day was always on February 14th. He thought it was like Thanksgiving, always falling on the 2nd Friday in February.

I should have known then that this was an omen for Valentine's Days to come. It is sort of a running joke in our house that Matt is notoriously bad at Valentine's Day. I think my favorite memory is finding ourselves sitting at an In 'n Out Burger one fine Valentine's evening circa 2002. But when you're so good at everything else, you can afford to be bad at this one little thing. In fact, I actually find it rather endearing.

And when you stay up hand drawing these cards for your daughters on the night before Valentine's Day, you can be forgiven pretty much anything (even giving Lucy the wrong color hair).

Happy Valentine's Day!

My Project Life Identity Crisis

You have probably heard this story before. Way back when, I started out as a paper scrapbooker. Then when Ella was born in 2005, I discovered digital scrapbooking and swore I would never touch paper again. And then life got too busy and I stopped scrapbooking altogether.

Last year, I quietly tiptoed back into the scrapbooking world using Project Life. There was no digital option available at the time so I used the physical product and even went so far as to use my own handwriting (something I had never done before even in my paper days).

This year I thought I might type my journaling cards, but other than that I didn't expect much else to change when it came to Project Life. But then I decided to try the new digital products and was reminded of all the things I loved about digital scrapbooking.

Thus began my minor identity crisis. Was I a paper or a digital girl at heart? I spent the first few weeks of the year creating both digital and physical pages trying to figure things out and settle on one or the other. But the answer to my question, I realized, was that I am both. And so I decided to create my pages both digitally and with the paper product in 2012. This may seem like a lot of extra time and duplicate work, but surprisingly it really isn't. By the time I get the digital version for the week done, the majority of the work for the physical pages is already done. I mostly just have to print and slide everything into the page protectors. Project Life is all about simplicity for me, so I would never attempt this if I thought it was taking too much extra time.

I have been designing my pages in Photoshop using the Design A page template and the Clementine kit. I love doing it this way first because it allows me to see exactly which photos I need to print and what sizes I need them to be. Here is my Week 1 digital spread (click the photo to view larger):

Then I send my photos off to be printed and print out my journaling cards on my home printer and that digital spread turns into these physical pages:

As another example, here is the digital version of Week 2:

And the physical version of the same week:

My vision is to have the physical album be our family book, which I will still be able to fill with the "extras" of life (cards, school work, etc.), and then use the digital pages to create smaller photo books for each of my girls at the end of the year.

I am not sharing this with you because I think this is the best way to do things. In fact, I don't expect this approach to work for most people. Realistically, I know that the majority of you will prefer one method over another. The last thing I want to do is make things seem more complicated since that goes against the whole spirit of Project Life in the first place. What I am hoping is that seeing Project Life used in different ways gives you a good sense of the options available and hopefully helps you figure out the best way to document your own story.

Products used:

InLinkz.com

2012 Photos | Week 5 | Jan 29-Feb 4

Sunday afternoon.

Matt packs for a business trip to San Francisco. Ella gave him a very specific list of acceptable gifts he could bring home for her (in descending order of preference): 1) a sports hat, 2) a toy car, or 3) Pez.

Making Ella's lunch before putting her on the bus to school. She has only ordered lunch at school a handful of times this year, but her favorite hot lunch is Bosco Sticks with marinara sauce. I had never heard of them before but apparently they are pretty popular?

Ella's first grade class put on a Reader's Theater performance for the parents this week. Ella played the part of Middle Goat in The Three Billy Goats. She was so excited to perform and did a great job. "That hill is so green. It must be covered in tasty grass!"

Lucy has always had the most piercing gaze, even when she was just one day old.

Ella broke in a new pair of her favorite slip-on Converse this week. Her old blue ones were getting a bit small, not to mention they were practically falling apart.

This is what Matt brought me home from San Francisco. I e-mailed him a list of my favorites ahead of time (no nuts for me): buttercream, bordeaux, marzipan, and lemon truffles, among others.

Project Life: Thoughts on Staying "Caught Up" & Incorporating Blog Posts into Your Album

It's been a while since I shared anything Project Life related. I have been a bit preoccupied watching Downton Abbey the past couple of weeks, but I'm almost all caught up now so here I am!

Speaking of being caught up, have I mentioned that I am completely up to date on my 2012 Project Life album? It is such a great feeling, and I can't wait to share some of my thoughts on tackling this project for a second year. Look for a post about that next week.

But for now I want to talk about my 2011 Project Life albums. Last year I most decidedly did not stay caught up. By last October, I had only finished journaling through April... that's a good six months behind. However, by the end of the year (so in just a couple of months) I managed to get myself almost completely up to date. My saving grace was the fact that I had a place to record all my journaling and I kept pretty current with it. Without this, I would have been in big trouble.

I tell you this for two reasons:

1) If for some reason you are feeling behind and already want to throw in the proverbial Project Life towel, DON'T. Because I promise I was much more "behind" than you are right now. But that's the beauty of this project. It's simple and easy, so it is possible to catch up on a lot in a short amount of time. And the end result is so worth it.

2) If you do nothing else, make sure you have a place to write things down. Whether it's on a blog or in a notebook or by using an app on your phone, just make sure you are writing. Your journaling is one thing that's going to be really hard to recreate at a later date.

I am now almost completely done with 2011. I am in the process now of adding a few finishing touches to my albums when I have the time. One thing that I want to share with you is the way I incorporated my blog posts into Project Life. It was so fast and easy, and I absolutely love the way they turned out.

All I did was take the Words and Photos 6x12 Layered Templates by Ali Edwards, dropped in my photo(s), copied and pasted the text of my blog posts, and did a little bit of formatting. Then I flattened the files and put two of them side by side on a 12x12 canvas like this:

Then I had them printed, cut the prints in half using my paper trimmer, and slipped them into a 6x12 page protector. I probably only spent about five minutes per blog post doing this. Here's what they looked like once I had them printed, trimmed, and put into page protectors:

And here is what one looks like when it is put into an album:

This is such a fast & easy way to add some longer stories to your albums.

Products used:

InLinkz.com

2012 Photos | Week 4 | Jan 22-28

Who's who on Claire's bed: Girl Doll, Piglet, Hello Kitty, and her two blabla dolls (Bernice the Bear and Violet).

Peek-a-boo.

What I am reading to Ella every night before bed. We are making our way through the Henry Huggins series... this is book 4 of 6.

Saturday morning breakfast = Trader Joe's cinnamon rolls.

I can probably count on one hand the number of times we have turned on our Wii in the past two years, but it has enjoyed something of a renaissance in our house over the past month or so. The girls like to play a little Super Mario Kart on the weekends. Well, Ella likes to play. Lucy likes to watch. And Claire is interested for a few seconds, hands her controller to either me or Matt, and then takes all the credit when the race is over by shouting "I won!"

Ella & Claire's signatures at 6 yrs 9 mos old and 3 yrs 10 mos old, respectively.

Lucy & Matt.

2012 Photos | Week 3 | Jan 15-21

Ready for karate.

Lucy has had a hard time transitioning into her naps lately. She really hates to think she's missing out on something that Claire is doing downstairs, so I have started taking both her and Claire upstairs after lunch to read together before putting her to bed. It has become one of my favorite parts of the day, even if neither one of them ever actually lets me read to them (they are far too busy "reading" to themselves).

All of my errands seem to revolve around the locations of my children's activities. Claire's ballet studio this year is right around the corner from Trader Joe's, thus Trader Joe's Tuesdays were born. Claire dances while Lucy and I go grocery shopping.

I joined a gym in January... how cliché is that? It wasn't because of some grand New Year's resolution though. Basically I just needed access to a treadmill. It finally got too cold (by my own admittedly weak standards) for me to run outside.

Except for a fresh coat of paint and a new rug, Lucy has had a mostly hand-me-down room her entire life. But after a trip to IKEA for a new picture frame, it’s finally clear who this room really belongs to.

It's amazing how inspiring a cardboard box can be to kids. This one, which was by the door waiting for me to drop it off at the post office, was hijacked by the girls to make an imaginary lemonade stand on a snowy Saturday morning.

Finally, it snowed!

On Friday night, when the snow was supposed to start falling, Ella got out of bed and called down the stairs for Matt. I impatiently asked her what she needed, thinking it was just one of the usual bedtime stall tactics. "Never mind" she quietly replied and turned to get back into bed. I softened a bit and asked again what it was that she needed. "I just wanted to ask Dad if I could help him shovel tomorrow," she said. It was the sweetest thing. Ella has been Matt's shoveling buddy since she was two years old.

Of course, Ella did help shovel in the morning, as did Claire. We even gave Lucy a little plastic beach shovel to carry around. I didn't think Lucy would last long in the snow but she was one tough cookie, taking determined little robot steps in the snow with her clunky boots. She even went sledding with me in the backyard and didn't start crying to go inside until it looked like her nose was about to freeze off.

Momento

I have always struggled to find a good way to keep track of small moments, like those funny things the girls say or other little memories that I don't want to forget. Sometimes I use Twitter and Facebook for this, but I tend to only share things on social media that I think other people will relate to or also find humorous, so a lot of stuff ends up not getting recorded that way. I have also purchased books which inevitably ended up collecting dust in the back of a closet, and when all else failed I resorted to just keeping an e-mail in my Drafts folder that I accessed when I wanted to write something down. It was better than nothing, but not ideal by any means.

Then at the beginning of the year a few friends told me about the Momento app for iPhone. This app is exactly what I have been searching for. I always have my phone with me so it is easily accessible and I love how it keeps everything so organized. Here is a screen shot of what it looks like when I open the app with all my "moments" nicely arranged by date:

I also love how you can connect the Momento app with your Facebook and Twitter feeds so your status updates and tweets automatically show up in your calendar. I now have easy access to all of those posts going back several years. And if you include an Instagram or other photo when you post to Facebook & Twitter, a little thumbnail of the photo shows up in your entry as well. You can add photos to any of your own private moments too. Here's an example of how Momento displays my New Year's Eve post from Twitter:

Another feature I love is the search option. So for example, I can search for "Claire" and pull up everything that includes her name, thus remembering that at one point in time she was actually a rascally one-year-old:

Momento has been a great resource for recording things to include in my Project Life layouts, but I really think this app would be great for anybody who is interested in journal keeping. I initially balked at the $2.99 price tag (which seems fairly expensive in the app world, but is not a lot of money when you really think about it) but I think it was worth the small investment. Check it out! I'd also love to know: how do you record the small moments in your own life?

2012 Photos | Week 2 | Jan 8-14

Sisters on a Sunday morning. Claire saw this picture on my computer screen and declared, "Mom, I think you get the goodest pictures ever."

Lunch playdate with Claire's best preschool friend, Hope.

Artwork by Claire.

Lucy plays dress-up before bedtime. ("I want dess!")

Lucy was up first on this particular morning (usually she is the last one to wake up). I caught our reflection in the kitchen window as I was pouring her a cup of milk, just as the sun was starting to rise.

Waiting for the bus. This week Ella and I had a conversation about what she wants to be when she grows up. "I'm not sure, but I have a few ideas" she told me. Her current top career aspirations? Mechanic at the Costco tire center and elementary school teacher. Love this girl.

My dress and leggings loving girl has been asking for a pair of jeans for quite a while and this week I finally bought her a pair. She was so excited to wear them with her new purple top. She looks so different (and older) in pants, although of course she manages to be adorable in anything.