Project Life: Ireland Edition

I've been trying to get to the mythical land of "caught up" on Project Life since we returned from Ireland.  I knew I'd get behind on vacation, but didn't anticipate the total lack of interest in the month before we left.

So each week since we returned, I've been doing one "old" week and the current week, so that I can eventually close the gap and just work on one week at a time.  This was hard to do with the vacation photos, because there were SO MANY to go through and then I had to narrow down which ones to use for the album.  I'll probably make a separate photo book with all of our trip pictures (add another thing to the list...).

But finally, last week, I finished the Ireland trip.  Woot!  I made the executive decision to use more than one 2 page spread for each week because even though I was sick, we ended up doing quite a bit of stuff.  So really, it was more work than I anticipated.

I started getting a little more adventurously crafty with the 2x3" spots when I didn't have photos, and for the last week I downloaded some designs for my cool Silhouette die cutting machine to fill in some of the slots.  That was pretty fun and there are a ton of Project Life compatible designs out there.

Click each photo to see a larger version.

In our first week, we settled nicely into our rental house in Kenmare, and wandered around the town.  We took an afternoon trip to Killarney.  Later that week, TJ and T went on a couple of excursions while I stayed home to sleep (thanks, virus).  TJ had his first Guinness on tap in Kenmare, and continued his comparison study whenever we found ourselves at a pub for a meal.

Week 1: airport, Kenmare, Killarney

Week 1: Killarney, Staigue Fort, daddy-daughter excursions

Week 1: more daddy-daughter fun, soy milk at Eask Tower

In our second week, I returned to the doctor, which didn't help much either.  I was able to make it to the playground in Kenmare (which TJ and T visited a lot) and an ancient stone circle, which T liked as much as the playground.  TJ also found The Vestry, an old church converted into a house, which he was all set to purchase until he realized the yard had a cemetary (creepy!).  We took a road trip out to Ballinskellig, an old priory built right by the water and had the worst meal of our trip on the way back.  Nice restaurant, horrible (and expensive!) food.  I wanted to visit a city so we went to Cork and wandered about aimlessly.  Next time we'll have a plan.  That weekend, T got to feed a baby lamb with a bottle at the Kissane Sheep Farm close to Kenmare.

I wish someone would invent some kind of tiny (cheap!) flexible screen with a memory chip so you could embed a little video in your scrapbooking pages.  I'm sure this is something that'll come out in the next 10 years, and of course if I did these pages digitally, I could do it now.  But I'm a tactile, pen and paper sort of girl...  Akso, the cute little hexagon card on the last page is from Smitha Katti's free printables on her blog - woot!

Week 2: Ballinskellig, awful meal at Dooleys, Kenmare stone circle and playground

Week 2: Cork, Kissane Sheep Farm

Week 3 was all about us wanting to go home (ie our Vacation Limit had been reached).  I was tired of being sick and not being in my own comfy house and bed.  But the high point was our all-too-short trip to Dublin.  We were there for about a day and a half and resolved to come back when the kids are older because there was so much to see and do and we barely scratched the surface.  I think it was one of my favorite parts of the trip, because I'm a city girl at heart. 

T loved the crowded but super fun playground in St Stephen's Green, TJ and I liked the Guiness Storehouse tour even though it was super-touristy, and we all enjoyed wandering around St. Patrick's Cathedral.  The Hop-on, Hop-off bus tour was an inspired suggestion of TJ's so that we could get a quick tour of the city and not have to deal much with traffic.

Week 3: Dublin - Guinness Storehouse, St Stephen's Green, St Patrick's Cathedral

Week 3: Dublin, funky diner in Farranfore and Heathrow Airport

I did a decent job of keeping ticket stubs and business cards to use for the scrapbook.  One of my favorite slots in Week 3 was the star cutouts from the Silhouette machine, which I backed with crinkled up shiny silver tissue paper.   I'm getting more adventurous about using papers from my stash and making *some* attempt to coordinate colors, or at least color families.  I'm sure I'll get better at it over time.  I'm also becoming ruthless at photo editing and throwing out duplicate photos or those that just aren't that good or interesting.

I  ordered some automatic Instagram prints from my Android phone with Piccaprint, and their quality is great, but they are just too expensive when you figure in shipping from Sweden.  And now that I have a fancy new printer, I can just print them at home.  In fact, most of the week 3 photos were printed at home, and the quality is as good as the ones I got from Target.  Hooray for that.

Now that the vacation pages are done, I can go back to my usual (easier!) 2 pages per week and hopefully crank through the rest of April and the beginning of May in short order.  That's the plan for the next few weeks...