Project Life: August 2012, now with less stress!

As I mentioned in my last Project Life post, I've switched to doing 2 weeks at a time since the beginning of August.  And it is a glorious thing.  I don't feel the same "pressure" to get it done as I did weekly, but I still get the enjoyment of planning the layout.

However, mama-brain seems to be taking over (thanks pregnancy hormones) and I've had some odd photo-editing and organizing mishaps: moving photos over to my "Processed" folder when I hadn't done it, forgetting where I downloaded a whole set of photos, and ending up in a weird state where some were uploaded to our online site and others weren't.  I'm usually meticulous about these things, but apparently not this month.

But I have been using my fabulous scrapbooking kits from Studio Calico to complete my layouts, and I'm loving the automagic coordination I get, though I am still working on restraining myself from picking too many colors and doo-dads at once.  (Click to see a larger version of the photos.)

The first 2 weeks of August were pretty low-key.  Hot weather, T passed her allergy skin test for dairy and we got the OK to try small amounts of dairy in her diet, and then she contracted Hand, Food and Mouth Disease which sounds grosser than it actually is.  Mostly just a couple of days of fever, listless toddler, and then a rash that takes about a week to go away.  Yay preschool.

We did our first Kiwi Crate project, thanks to the birthday present from our friends the C family.  It's a monthly kit of a crafty kid activity with a different theme.  This one was 'safari' so we made and decorated a bunch of cardboard animals.  There was a hide and seek game to go with it, but T just likes having the animals around.

I had some typical pregnancy paranoia that suddenly Baby X' was "too quiet" in there, so I got a non-stress test and an extra ultrasound that week.  Turns out she's just fine, and I can't feel most of her movements that were visible on the ultrasound.  Perhaps I have too much "padding".

We also went to Marymoor Park on one of the nice days, and it's pretty great to do that in the middle of the day on a weekday with almost no one else there. 

For the second half of August, the big excitement was that we celebrated my dad's 70th birthday on August 18.  T and I got dressed up for the party at a local Thai restaurant.  Both of my dad's siblings were there for the event (from New Jersey and India!) so that was cool to see everyone together, too.  My mom had nicely scheduled it at 5:30 to accommodate T's ridiculously early bedtime.

TJ's Uncle Rick and Aunt Jane were in town for an academic conference, so we met them for breakfast one Saturday morning at my favorite breakfast place ever, Portage Bay Cafe.

We also had the ridiculously long (3 hours!) eye doctor appointment, after which I got T a Starbucks cake pop for her good humor.  I had to resort to some bribery by the end of the appointment because she was *so* done.  The cake pop perked her right up, as did the sushi dinner we had right afterwards!

She got a new prescription for her glasses and it was amazing how quickly she acclimated to a 3x increase in power.  Like, immediately.  No headache, no complaints of weird vision, nothing.  And now her eye crossing almost never appears while she's wearing her glasses.  

I like including small examples of her artwork, and was thrilled to include a "mixed media" project of hers.  She's got her own space in my craft room, and I give her stickers, paper scraps, washi tape, and other bits of things to create with while I work on my own projects.  Totally on her own, she created an amazing collage (bottom right).  I love it. 

And of course, I think of more things I want to capture after I've finished the layouts, but I jot them down and can include them in subsequent weeks.  There are no "rules" here, even though I'd love to  be completely chronologically accurate.  I can't believe I've kept this up for more than half the year!! 

I'm also WAY excited about a new project I'm planning to take on called December Daily,which has a nifty mini-album kit released by Studio Calico.  It's similar to Project Life, but is only for the month of December and is designed for quick daily documentation of the holiday season.  With 2 kids this Christmas, and me on maternity leave, that should be fun, right?  I figure I'll rely on Instagram photos a lot since they're easier to use - no post-processing, and they're automatically uploaded to my online site. 

Let me know if you're interested in December Daily and we can work on it together!