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Here's the final piece of the kit, the solids I consider essential to any kit:
Download this piece of the kit here.
That completes the Continue to Grow kit. For those who would like a full kit preview for organizational purposes, here's what the whole thing looks like:
I do have my traditional first of the month kit ready to go, but I think I'll wait to post it until I come back from my blog-cation on Monday. So check back on Monday to see what the new full kit is!
Here's today's piece:
Download this piece of the kit here.
Enjoy! Scrap those stories! See you tomorrow for the last piece of this kit!
Here's your preview of today's piece:
Download this piece of the kit here.
Enjoy! Scrap those stories! See you tomorrow for another fun piece!
Here's your preview:
Download this piece of the kit here.
Enjoy! Scrap those stories! See you tomorrow for another fun piece of this kit!
P.S. Leave me a comment (with a valid email) this week and you may get another coordinating piece when my blogcation is over!
Happy Monday! Here's today's pieces:
Download this piece of the kit here.
Enjoy! Scrap those stories! See you tomorrow for more goodies!!
Yes, that's right. I'm taking a little week long bloggie vacation. During this time, I'll be reconnecting with my family and friends, and come back ready to start a new school year. I am super excited about a new school year! I know it's crazy because who wants to go back to work, but I do. I love kids, and I'm so ready to get back to them.
While pondering what I could do with this blog while I'm taking my break, I thought about a kit I did a long, long time ago. In fact, it may have been the 3rd kit I ever created. It's just never been my favorite, so it's sat on my hard drive, just turning stale. A week ago, I thought to myself, "Hey Kim, you should probably do something with that kit."
So I sat there, watching the 2nd season of Dexter, and whipped up some new previews. Broke the kit into smaller pieces, and thought I'd start out today by offering up the pieces. Come back every weekday for the next week, and you'll have the full kit put together.
My kit is called "Continue to Grow" and it's another birthday themed kit. The colors are based on Fantasyland at Disneyland, and they tend more towards the pastel. Maybe that's the problem. I just don't tend towards the pastels. Look in my closet and you'll agree.
Anyway, let's start today with the backgrounds.
Last Saturday, my mom called and said she thought we should go visit a new wild animal park in our area. So Sunday, I woke up from dreaming about crawling through sewers with Branson performers, got dressed, and my entire family, plus my parents, piled into my mom's Honda Pilot. That was some fun right there. I really don't believe that anything that is smaller than a minivan should hold more people than my minivan.
Anyway, we took the drive to the park and had a good time. It's not got a ton of animals, but it's OK. My favorite was the lemurs. Chesney and Brady each paid a dollar to feed a lemur a cranberry.
We also had fun with some of the other animals...
The penguins refused to come out of the shade and swim. Drove Dan crazy.
Chesney enjoyed the park:
And I managed to capture a photo of the rare teenage girl in her natural state:
Lunch was Chili's, where we all had the 2 for $20 deal. I could have made a meal out of my appetizer and dessert. Love those Kickin' Jack Nachos. I also tried the new Chicken Bacon Ranch Quesadillas. Not my favorite, but not bad either. Easy to bring home the leftovers, too, which I did so I had room for the aforementioned (and very yummy) dessert.
We love spending time with my parents, and this was a fun way to do it!
Thought it was time for more Disneyland trip Food Porn.
How sad is it that one of our best meals was Papa John's pizza, delivered to our room? That's what you see in #1. We ordered it after an afternoon spent at the pool and not only was it one of the best, it was one of the cheapest.
Numbers 2 and 3 were from Ralph Brennan's Jazz Kitchen Express. When I went to DL on business in 2001, I had a meal here and thought it was delicious.
I must have been starved. This food was not good. Not good at all, and expensive, too. Then again, we got to eat sitting outdoors in the California sun, so it couldn't have been that bad. I'd put it above Rainforest Cafe, but below everything else, if you're making a list.
Photo 4 is the impressive grocery delivery from Vons that I placed. I went a bit crazy, knowing that we wouldn't have a car. However, we ate/drank most of it. My order was: bagels, chocolate chip mini muffins, doughnuts, granola bars, M&Ms (huge bag, and they ate it all!), sunflower seeds, dry roasted peanuts, fun pack cereal, water, lemonade, capri sun, pepsi one, diet rite, cranergy pomegrante lift, cactus cooler drink, dr pepper, gatorade and pop tarts. The main thing we had left was the cereal and pop tarts. We brought those home in our carry-ons and they were gone within a fewdays. This is my new plan for vacations where we need to eat breakfast in the room. I usually don't buy much and I'll only buy one thing (like pop-tarts). Then we get bored with the pop-tarts and end up going out for breakfast, which costs us more money. Having a variety meant that we were never bored, and we always had something fun for breakfast.
Hey, anything's more fun than my usual Slimfast bar.
Numbers 5, 6 and 7 was from one of our favorite meals. For Brady's birthday, we went to the ESPN Club at Downtown Disney. In addition to the huge wall of TVs, the food was very good. We started out with the cheese/bacon fries appetizer. It was way good. Mykiah mentioned that we should make them at home. It would be easy, but it's so much better to have them when you're sitting at Disneyland. Due to the appetizer, Mykiah and I decided we'd share a chicken wrap. It was good. Ches had the mini-burgers. I assume they were good. I can't remember what Dan had, but I know Brady had the messiest thing on the menu. He has a habit for doing that. Usually some sort of burger with sauce oozing out of it.
On the way back from this meal, we stopped to spend Brady's birthday fun card. We were in the middle of the NBA finals, and Brady got a very cool Lakers/Disney shirt. This was a good thing, because he had sauce all over the one he had been wearing...
We arrived home from Disneyland on June 14, and on July 14, I finished digitally scrapbooking all those photos. My next step was to try to decide where to get my layouts printed into book form.
I usually go with Shutterfly, and I'm fairly loyal to Winkflash for prints, but for some reason, I decided I'd try a company that specializes in printing bound books. I went with Inkubook and I have been so pleased with the entire process.
Let me walk you through the process. First I sat down with all my photos and divided them into folders with page numbers (for example, all my photos of the parade at Disneyland went into a folder marked page 39 40 dps, which told me to use those photos for page 39 and 40 and that it was a double page spread -- or a 2 page layout). Then I'd open up the photos, and choose a template to use with that number of photos. This was pretty easy because in my template folder, I have them ordered according to number of photos. For the base of every page, I used Janet Phillip's "The Album" template set. I don't think it's available any more, but if you're considering doing an album, you should talk to Janet about it. It's a full album template set, but I found that it was very easy to just open a left or right page, delete the existing photo template, and then add my chosen template to the page. It makes my book really flow well. The best thing about Janet's templates was that it kept everything away from the "bleed" space on my layouts. I didn't have to worry about anything being cut off in printing. I did check every page with Wendyzine's book sizing actions. I did end up having to nudge a few things into the live area, but most of it was great without any changes.
I also tried, in most cases, to use the same kit on both pages, even if the subject matter was different. Again, trying to keep it flowing. Some of the Disney themed kits I used were by Melissa Bennett and Libby Weifenbach. I actually found myself reaching for kits from Sweet Shoppe more often than not. In addition to those 2 designers, I used lots of Eva Kipler and Lauren Grier stuff.
If you'd like to take a look at the layouts, you can view my album widget here. I'm also hoping to get them all on Facebook today. If you have any specific questions about anything, feel free to email me. I'd be happy to help you out.
The book itself is amazing. It's soft bound, and I just love the thick paper and the wonderful colors. It was only $30 and it's 100 pages plus the 2 covers. It's the best bound book I've ever ordered.
I took some photos of my book that I thought I'd share to help you visualize it better. This is my 4th bound book, and by far my favorite. Highly recommend Inkubook (and I ordered it Wednesday, and it was here Saturday!).
I started doing Life 365 back in February, and I think I've only missed 1 day in all that time, and it was just after we got back from California and I was overwhelmed. I've also mostly kept up with doing my weekly review layout on Saturdays, again only missing them when we were on vacation this summer.
About a month ago, I was reading a message board and found a really fun twist on Project 365.
I'm starting a new book of layouts that I will have printed a year from now, on my 40th birthday. That means all the photos I've taken up to this point (and all the layouts I've done using them) will just be considered practice, but I'm really excited about this idea. A photo a day for each day of my 39th year. I've decided that the photos in this book will be more about the stuff that makes my life *mine.* I may have photos of family and friends here and there, but the journaling is going to be about what makes them special to me this year. A year from now, I want a book that I can someday hand to my grandchildren, and by reading it and looking at the pictures, they'll get to know the person I was.
Dan's grandmother died unexpectedly a few weeks ago, and what a treasure something like this would have been. It's made me think about the legacy I want to leave, and I hope this book will be a step in that direction.
Here's the first layout in the book. Just 3 days of photos so I can get back in my Saturday to Saturday routine (which works really well because I do 90% of my layout creation on the weekends).
