The first week in July was jam packed with fun stuff that I absolutely wanted to document (or, I wanted to save at least a full page to devote to the Mets game so I adjusted accordingly), so I included a full 12×12 insert to have four pages for this week’s spread, and I’m so glad I did: this is one of my favorite weeks in Project Life so far.

The left side includes one of the busiest weeks I’ve ever seen at work, made even crazier thanks to the short week, as well as a super fun and low key barbecue at Dan’s sister’s on the 4th of July.

Here I’m using an Ormolu flair button along with my absolute favorite Martha Stewart/Avery labels.

Dan’s nephew is getting so big and he’s so happy all the time. The bbq we went to was full of amazing meats (ribs! chicken! steak!) grilled by Dan’s brother in law, and easy funtimes with Dan’s sister and brother and their significant others. This was my first foray into using Photoshop Elements to cut out and combine two photos (the colors were off thanks to the warm indoor light + backlit sliding door so I’m glad I was able to salvage them to include them in my book after all).

This is the front side of the insert, which is a Design D page (which I incidentally thought I’d use SO often because I like taking vertically oriented photos, but it’s so easy and straightforward to just keep using Design A all the time, plus I love the consistency). This covers Thursday and Friday, in which we met up with our former-NJ friends who were visiting from PA, I got some pizza lunch, and then hung out with Amy and Emily while the boys were at their nerd weekend.

I’m really happy with how the scalloped card looks, and I had to include the logo for Dan’s nerd conference.

The back of the insert, full of photos and journaling from the Mets/Cubs game I went to on the 7th at Citi Field with Kelly, Jodi, and my brother.

Favorite use of Elise‘s “you are here” stamp to point out our seats on the Citi Field map that came in the mail with the tickets. And the screenshot of us on the replay of the game, of course.

I had the hardest time getting these photos to work with Design D. I kept coming up with ideas that worked with Design A and had to keep messing with them and reprinting. I’m so happy with the result – because I love both shots (that came out cute despite how insanely hot and sweaty we all were!) and really wanted to include them. I ended up fading a corner of the shot of Kelly, Jodi and me and typing some journaling right on the photo using Photoshop. Plus, I couldn’t handwrite that much in that space, so getting to adjust the size until it fit perfectly was definitely the way to go.

And the coup de grace, of course: a full page photo of Citi Field, which I’m SO JAZZED about. I attached my ticket stub, too, of course. I ordered a 12×18 poster print from snapfish and then cut it down to fit into the slots. The price and quality of the print were perfect, and I was almost sad to cut it up into pieces, except that I knew how worth it would be.

Another very big week – this week had all sorts of random things, including a minor league baseball game, a new windshield, a movie, and most importantly, my sister’s bachelorette party. I had too much to include, so I cut down a standard page for an insert, and then was able to devote a whole page to photos from my sister’s bachelorette party.

The left side; again I am happy with the cohesion of the colors (even though it’s kind of unintentional as I’m randomly pulling papers from my pile).

Getting my windshield replaced totally stressed me out. I’m glad it’s done but I’m also nerdy-happy that I managed to get a photo of my car sans windshield, too.

That thunderstorm commute made an impact, and the photo I took while I was pulled over conveyed the freakiness fairly well. The Today stamp is from Elise‘s stamp shop, and the Monday journaling card is from Ormolu.

The front side of the insert: a photo of Dan I totally love, my baseball game ticket (and an extra beer coupon), and beer, of course.

The back of the insert: love the orange/yellow! I printed a photo from the dressing room, cut out a bit of the paper bag from American Eagle, and printed the movie poster for Ted, which I saw on Friday which a bunch of my friends.

When my office barbecues, we mean business, that’s for sure.

A full page dedicated to my sister’s bachelorette: overly pink, of course. Our limo driver took the photo of all the girls on the party bus, and I took the photo of the bachelorette banner we taped to my sister’s back deck the next morning.

An Of Monsters and Men song that’s been stuck in my head lyric, and a more detailed description of the night inside the chevron pocket. I also printed the image from the evite we sent out, and I’m glad I thought to stick the bridal party bracelet I wore. This is the part of Project Life that appeals to me so much: I loved the design of the invite, and I’d want to keep the bracelet but why would you keep something like that? To put it in a Project Life pocket, that’s why.

And I’m sure in ten years I’ll find the blurry photo of me drinking out of a tequila bottle in a moving vehicle hilarious (hell, I find it hilarious even a week later, just because it’s so out of character). So, you know.

I got a bit behind with the craziness of the last few weeks, but the day off for the Fourth of July helped me catch up. Week Four was a week with a lot of really fun stuff, most importantly: Renegade Craft Fair. I can’t tell you how much I enjoy putting this together each week. (It’s a lot.)

I love the unintentionally very orange theme this week.

Ordering my wedding dress is super noteworthy, obviously, especially after all the stress/not-fun times in trying to find it. But it absolutely needed to be documented. (And even more fun: I ordered it almost exactly seven months before my wedding day.)

The heat wave this week was big news, and I’m glad I thought to print screen the NJ high temperature map and the radar from the worst of it.

The right side, including the insert that was absolutely necessary. Way too many photos to NOT do an insert.

The opposite side of the insert featuring some of the booths I liked best.

Lots of journaling about our day at Renegade, and the middle pockets are some of the business cards I collected. Included more for pretty factor; even now I’m not sure I could tell you what each one sold.

Week Three and I’m loving it. I especially love how much stripey goodness I was able to incorporate this week, between the photos and the papers (many of which are the backs of cards/paper used last week). It’s colorful and just so fun to put together.

I sure do love those Martha Stewart+Avery labels.

This conversation between me and Dan as I flipped through my giant stack of wedding magazines had to be recorded for posterity. I surely won’t be letting him forget it, and as far as he knows, the dress I want most is the size of our coffee table in diameter, so…

The left striped card is an index card I’ve had forever, and the orange stripes were part of the Summer Kit I got from Elise’s shop. The envelope contains the story of my second wedding dress shopping trip, which was amazing and so much more happy… and it’s strange that I can’t really share if I want to keep my future dress a secret from Dan.

The right side is Friday and Saturday, which were both very busy, first with makeup trials for my sister’s upcoming wedding, then with ceremony-venue hunting with Dan and my parents. Both things needed to be documented.

I printed a song lyric that I’ve got stuck in my head instead of my usual reading/watching/listening card, and I foresee doing this again quite a lot as the weeks go by. The chevron envelope contains some before stats, since this week marks the beginning of what I hope is some serious weight loss.

I’m most excited about this card, I have to admit. I saved bottle caps from every type I drank on Saturday night, and hot glued cardboard to the back so I could mount them on an old Paper Source bag (more stripes). Bottle caps are hard to resist, but it’s hard to figure out what to do with them that doesn’t involve a ton of work. I’m so jazzed about how this turned out.

And a photo from late Saturday night, probably the only one we’ve taken when hanging out with Dan’s siblings, so I’m even more glad both to have it and to have a place to keep it.

Week two of Project Life and it’s just so fun. And I didn’t realize how much I was missing crafty endeavors until I started something like this again. (I guess for me, crafts go a long way toward stress relief.) This week was pretty ho-hum Monday through Friday, which made it harder to come up with things to document, so I tried to focus on the bigger things (wedding dress shopping, all the beer I consumed…) and then leave lots of space for the weekend stuff. I’m pretty happy with the colors and how I was able to integrate some of this pretty paper I’ve been hoarding with the almost entirely cell phone photos.

This page covers Sunday through Wednesday, and I like how I got a bunch of sky shots to show how insane the weather was this week. The little teardrop stickers are from the Martha Stewart Avery line, and the THIS stamp is from Elise’s stamp shop, of course.

Wedding dress shopping was a pretty big step, so it seemed important to document it. The full story (of how much it really wasn’t so fun and prompted a whole lot of insecurities) is in the envelope… I made a collage of photos of dresses from the towering stack of bridal magazines in my living room.

The right side covers Thursday through the weekend, and I love the bright colors and stripes here. The usual suspects are here again, with what I’m reading/listening to/watching, as well as a brief list of what went on during the week.

Because it was such an insanely busy week at work, I included some of my everyday views: the giant and impressive company logo sign outside of our office building, and a view of my desk on a normal (busy) day, as well as some stats from the accounting department that I’m sure will be fun to see in a year or two. The chevron pocket has some more private journaling, and I love how cute it looks in the page protector.

I first heard about this whole Project Life business back in December, and the idea of simplifying the scrapbooking process sounded fun but I didn’t think it was super necessary for me. The minibooks have been working so well for the past few years; 12×12 binders always seemed like overkill to me anyway. And then a few months went by and I still wasn’t crafting…. but I was reading posts written by awesome people like Jodi and Kelly and Elise, all who had jumped whole-hog into Project Life (and who are craft superstars I’d like to grow up to be one day), and I couldn’t get it out of my head. I figured I would start on my birthday, or maybe wait until January 2013 and document our first year of marriage… or something. When I hung out with Jodi and Kelly in Brooklyn they completely, 100% sold me on how fun, addictive and doable Project Life was, and the rest is history. Seeing Jodi’s book in person really sealed the deal; it was so cool seeing the weeks documented in such a tangible way, and the idea of filling in some of the pockets with pretty paper, or book covers really appealed to me. (And made it seem like less pressure.) Jodi convinced me that I wouldn’t fall apart if I started, say, in June. “Just pick a Sunday and start!!” she kept telling me. I knew I had a lot of fun stuff booked for Memorial Day weekend, and since I’ve always loved summer books (2009, 2010), I had my perfect solution. So here it is, my first week of Project Life: Summer.

My cover page isn’t anywhere close to finished (I figure I’ll add photos and paper as the summer goes on), but I am pretty jazzed about the banner I made. (Even more that I’m still new to Photoshop Elements.)

I made weekly date cards, inspired by Jodi’s (but a little stripier); I figure I will change the color each month. I printed a copy of the Long Branch postcard that Mike and Ellyn used for their save the date, and the bicycle built for two is from their wedding ceremony program, which I loved; the beach photo and drink photo were instagrammed (and the “you’re my favorite” stamp is from Elise’s awesome stamp shop)

I had way more Cape Cod photos than slots left (the problem with squishing a holiday weekend in with my first week, I suppose), so I used a 6×12 insert and printed 3 photos for each side… except I didn’t realize I’d printed them 4″ wide instead of 6″, so I just trimmed the divider down to size.

I like the idea of having weekly space to jot things down, especially if some weeks become more photo-heavy (which I fully expect; I had a lot to say this week, as it seems); I also like being able to have a list of what I’m reading and watching each week.

And even funnier about including this awesome drawing from My Mets Journal is that I’d spent a looooong time on Friday night while Dan was stuck at work putting this together. Just when I’d finished for the night, with some spots left for Saturday’s funtimes, I happened to check twitter to learn that it was ABSOLUTELY time to turn the Mets game on, because Johan had a no hitter going into the 7th. After texting my brother and parents to make sure they were watching, I then got to enjoy the first no hitter in Mets history, and it was AMAZING and seriously the best ever. And it couldn’t have happened to a better guy, that’s for sure. So I had to include this to commemorate a night in baseball history that I certainly won’t forget, but also as a nod to the fact that I almost missed it…because of Project Life. 🙂

All in all, this project is exactly as fun as everyone said it would be… and I can’t wait to start working on week two.