Smoky Mtns 2015 - A Mini

One of my goals this year on the memory-keeping front was to make mini albums and I gave myself a count of 3 albums considering that I also document Project Life for the whole year that captured the everyday mundane, special, fun and loving moments of our life.  Some moments/events in life call for a book on their own and there begins my path to making minis! There are numerous photos in my laptop waiting to adorn multiple albums that I hope to get done sometime in the future, but I can happily say that I met my goal of 3 albums, each special in its own way!.

You can see more of my first two albums Megha Bytes and Anniversary Mini from the album links. Mini albums are cute, easy and fun to make, especially when it comes to using pocket scrapbooking to document your travel photos. I am so excited to share a travel mini of our road trip this year to the Smokies.

I used the 6x8 Cinnamon Faux Leather album from Becky Higgins with co-ordinating pocket pages. The Road Trip and Outdoor themed cards from Becky Higgins were perfect for this travel mini.

 I love to journal a lot and cannot make do without my travel notes. I dutifully take notes during the initial phase of the trip, but as time flies in fun and frolic, I miss noting down the details and that's where the pictures help out!

I enjoy stamping and most of the stamped phrases are from the story kit by Ali Edwards. I used her 'GO' themed stamp kit which is perfect for travel and adventure!

 I tend to collect ephemera (maps, tickets, etc) during my trip and love to include them in my album. Above I included the race track points card that we used for our rides.

How cute is that hot air balloon transparency from Studio Calico's FairGround Kit!

I went minimal with embellishing my photos and here I just used some mint thickers and a chipboard piece on the 4x6 photos. The photo of the girls on the top right is a retake of a similar pose taken 5 years back! It is a sweet memory of how they have grown and in friendship over the years!

There were so many photos that were little glimpses of a hike we took and the 2x2 pocket pages from Simple Stories were ideal and fun to fill with photos, pattern papers and embellishments!  

I love how the page colors above worked out so well, relevant to the picturesque place and I kept it simple with just the journaling. Sometimes I wish I digitized my journaling so I could fit more story in detail but I would then worry about losing the uniformity in the album!. I need to overlook such differences and focus only on getting the stories down.

 One of my favorite page from the album and I love how the stamping on the photo turned out. The story kit stamps from Ali Edwards are too awesome for words!

Putting down the trip stats as part of the journaling is a fun way to document some facts and figures about the trip. I kept embellishments at a minimal for I wanted the photos to be the highlight, but looking back I feel I could have added in a few more. One take away from this album is that I need to stop hoarding my embellishments and learn the knack of using them well thro' out my album.

It was fun to put the album together and more so to see the completed mini that I find myself wanting to make more of such travel minis! Glad to have added one more book  to my ever growing collection of memory-keeping treasures!

Anniversary Mini

Its good to be back, this time to share a favorite project I completed months back but couldn't get around to post here.

I love making mini albums and one of my goals this year was to scrapbook at least 2 mini albums. I list goals every year, which eventually get carried over to the next year!! :)  But this time I actually worked towards making it happen!! Mini albums are adorable and provide a great way to get creative with photos, words and embellishments. Throw in some mixed media and you are on game! Totally enjoyed playing around, starting simple before digging deeper into the game and it was fun indeed.

Mixed media has always amazed me. The fact that there is no limit to the art medium and stuff you can use makes it all the more inviting, doable and fun. So excited to share the album I made as an anniversary gift to my husband.

The title page was inspired by Paige Evan 's layout and I finally put my Tim Holtz alphabets mask to use, did some watercoloring and handstitched the alphas. The hearts on the arrow is a free cut file from The Cut Shoppe

I started off simple experimenting with colors and medium as I went over each page. While some pages came out good beyond my expectations, few were okay and could have been done better. Its all about learning and not fretting much, reminding myself to have fun playing with watercolors, embossing, stamping and embellishing.

The inside pages of the album. The idea was to do two photos for every year leading to our 9th year. 

The right hand hearts page below was inspired by Geralyn's  layout from the Studio Calico gallery. I love love her layouts and project life but her travel mini albums are my favorite!

Sometimes the mojo would be missing as is visible (to me) on the left hand page below. But the creative mind gets back to you good enough and the results are beyond what you seem to expect. The right hand page is one of my favorite from the lot though the picture below doesn't do justice to it. I seriously need to learn to take better pictures. Any tips for that??

At the time of working on this mini, I didn't have much pictures for the current year with just the two of us and hence used a favorite from the previous year. It's okay to change rules for the better, right;)

I had a fabulous time making this mini album and feeling good with myself for coming out of my comfort zone and trying out new possibilities.

Thanks for stopping by and hope you enjoyed looking through it!

My Week In the Life 2015

This is my first year documenting Week In the Life (WITL) and I am very happy that I committed. Week In The Life is a wonderful memory keeping project by Ali Edwards with the idea to record the everyday life and routines for a week. I had wanted to do it last year but my plan didn't pan out and I was little disappointed with myself. However I committed myself to giving it a shot this time around and recorded stories for the week of Aug 17 - Aug 24, 2015

With kids growing up and our lives changing year after year, I want to document our current life, our stories, our moments, likes and dislikes.  I want to capture the everyday, simple, mundane, messy, fun, sweet and real details of our life. This will be a gift that I give myself and my family to look back on and cherish the little details of a different time of the year. I was beyond excited the entire week and my heart raced looking forward to what's in store everyday in terms of photo and stories.

Today I want to share a few favorites from the week that went by and the stories behind them.  Please be warned that this is a photo heavy post!

Three things that help me get thro' the day. Coffee, iPhone and Books. I refuse to start the day without coffee and the phone has been tagging along too much recently. Thankfully I have got into the habit of reading again and one of my goals this year is to read at least two books a month and I am glad to have been able to start and finish a book this week.

This little guy is in a stage where he enjoys playing with his sister, doing what she does. He loves to get hold of his sister's things and here he wanted to dress himself as a ghost with her Elsa blanket.   

I want to remember the moments when we could spare time out of our busy life and spend time with each other and have lots of fun, laughs and giggles. We were even excited that the little one joined in the fun and actually won fair and square!! Hooray for family games! 

I didn't use my DSLR as much as I wanted to and most of my pictures were from my iPhone. Too many pictures is never enough and my family must think I went crazy taking pictures! 

I also reminded myself at times to leave the camera and get involved in the actual moment! 

I want to remember the days it rained during this week and how the weather got cooler helping us relax from the summer heat. I love watching the raindrops and the droplets on the leaves reminded of the simple things that give joy.

The kids enjoy the outdoors and I want to remember that Arul takes them outside, more often than me and involves them in outdoor play. The kids always look forward to the swings and slides at the park and get excited to show us their skills. Yuvan had brought along his water gun and had fun running behind the birds

My heart brims with joy and pride because of this avid reader. She is crazy about books and can go about reading the whole day which to be honest, gets on me sometimes:) The library is our happy place and we dropped in this week to pick books for all of us. It is convenient for me to hold my books online and pick them up later.

I loved taking this shot at the library. While I felt a little silly I went ahead nevertheless and I am glad I did:) Next time I need to try at a shot from the opposite shelf!:) 

I am always looking for proper lighting to take pictures and love it when natural light gets in to our home. My heart warms at how the evening sun rays brighten up our plants here. 

I do not have a green thumb but I like Arul's love and care for plants. Every other night he checks on the plants watering them as needed. The kids love to help him with the watering and share the same care as their dad.

These two are such fun kids each with their own amazing personality. I tried to wind them down to bed on Friday, but the little one promptly handed out a glow wand to his sister and they became rock stars of the night!  

I am a night owl and usually stay up later than I should. I enjoy this quiet time to read blogs, get inspired, lookup ideas and tips and basically browse the internet. On this particular day it was hours past midnight after our Saturday game night with friends!

I want to remember this moment when she sat down to send an email to her Dad in India. She wrote down what she wanted to tell him, on a paper and then began typing away the message, stopping in between, asking me help with the keys:)  

.

Saturdays are for hair wash (which I generally hate due to my struggle with my curls) and this girl so wishes for long hair ( and like Rapunzel too! ). This after wash knot and the drying process reminded me of these moments with my mother as she towel dried our hair. Megha was only too glad to hear my story which kindled many such stories from the past that she wanted me to share! 

I want to remember his bath times at this age. Before he gets into bath, he would say, "No head, only shoulders, knees and toes"! He hates getting water on his head or face but slowly he is getting over it. He loves squirting water with his bath toys and always has several "one last time" squirt moments before getting out!

I love the smile, innocence and warmth of my girl in this picture. A ready-to-dare person I can always count on, she is caring and kind in her own way. On normal days, they watch cartoons and play together and she loves to tease/annoy Yuvan. But when Yuvan was sad that Arul will not be home, she cuddled and consoled him telling him where Dad has gone and what they can do to meet him soon. 

I could't stop myself from adding this because I am that biased!! Ha!

I wanted to get one picture of us together during the week and am glad I remembered before he left to India. It is not quite easy to get us all to look at the camera but this came out good.

The nitty gritty details I caught both on camera and thro' words is what I love so much about this project!. I must confess that not all days were sweet and smooth. We did have our meltdowns, frustrations and arguments and of course I recorded these details too including how the day started, what we ate, how we spent the day, what we watched on TV, our morning and evening routines, etal. And I hope to get these recorded into a separate album because of the notes I kept daily through out the week.

If you have come this far, I am happy and thankful for your visit into my week. I totally enjoyed this project and hope to get back with a post after I complete my album.