Ta da! My Completed Christmas Journal

I actually had my Christmas Journal finished pretty soon after the 31st December but had 1 photo still to print and add in and then I had to find time and daylight to photograph the pages.
You can see the beginnings of my Christmas Journal for 2012 here.

And here are the rest of the pages...

These pages feature my Twitter Secret Santa gift (I'm reasonably certain the person I sent it to doesn't read my blog!), our painted pasta Christmas ornaments and a picnic at Waitangi Park under the Telecom Christmas Tree

Next up we have the Christmas Cracker I sent to Cat, popcorn and Christmas movies and the awesome Twitter Secret Santa gift I received

And then a family portrait in the water ball at te papa, a snapshot of the weather and a screenshot of the Icons game me and hubby were busy playing on the lead up to Christmas

Christmas cookies, the cracker Cat sent me and celebrating the boys last day at work/kindy

Visiting Santa's Grotto at Kirkcaldie & Staines, a misty festive feeling view one evening (this was the 23rd when the weather caused problems at the airport) and leaving a beer and biscuits out for Santa

For Christmas Day I featured 5 photos to document the day

Another trip to Te Papa, Hobbit Day! and a visit to Wellington Zoo

And then a visit to the park at the beach, our Christmas Thank you card photo and a festively kiwi photo to finish on 31st December.

In some years I've taken my journal right through to 6th January but I was ready to get it finished by the end of December this year.

And here's a few extras tucked at the back...

I had a couple of photos that hadn't made it in elsewhere so added those - Mr Mischief took the top photo of me and hubby dancing - it's blurry but quite possibly my favourite photo. And we got some Christmas cupcakes from Tempt so I added a photo of those too.

The bottom square is patterned paper and it says Goodbye 2012.

The 3x4 pockets contain our Advent Activities List, our Christmas Card list and Presents Given list.

And overleaf I printed my 2012 Ta Da List and trimmed it to fit the 3 4x4 pockets and more lists: Mr Mischief's gifts, Hubby and my gifts plus Christmas Cards Received

And I also added a 6x12 envelope page at the back and added a copy of the Christmas Card we sent out, Mr Mischief's letter to Santa and a few other special bits and pieces.

Here it is all finished - because it's long it didn't end up being too fat!

I'd definitely consider doing something similar in the future. It's so easy to take a photo and write a journalling card each day - even during the crazy, busy season!

I'm really pleased with it and look forward to pulling it out again later this year and looking at it with Mr Mischief!

Today I'm linking up with Show and Tell. Why not head over and see what everyone else is showing off :-)

Giveaway :: Emma Makes

I've been a fan of Emma Makes for a while now. I may have mentioned this a few times already (here, here and here!) so I was super excited when I received an email from the lovely Emma herself asking if I would be willing to host a giveaway here on my blog :-)

Emma has kindly offered a lovely collection of goodies for one lucky reader of my blog!
Her store has lots of fantastic products including bags, purses and cushions but seeing as I'm a self confessed Queen of Stationery (my husband despairs when I bring a new notepad home and can't understand why I need a gazillion of them!) it seemed to be a great idea to offer up some of her lovely stationery goodies as a prize.

My personal favourites from the store are the "Crafty" and "Get Excited and Make Things" pencils and the "Hopes and Dreams" journal but really I would be happy with one of everything (imagine how despairing my husband would be then?!)
I've found the notebooks to be great quality with nice thick paper (great for people like me who love writing with ink (rather than ball-point) pens. The pencils are fab because let's face it - pencils can be a little boring but add a witty saying as Emma has done and suddenly they become fun to use :-)
Why not head over to the online store and see what your favourites are?

Here are the details of the giveaway...

Emma Makes has a stationery pack to give away to one lucky reader. You'll get to pick two notebooks, five pencils, and a fabric pencil case from her range at www.emmamakes.com

To be in to win leave a comment below telling me what you'd like to see on a notebook.

Entries close on 15th February and this giveaway is open to everyone (international postage is fine). Please make sure I have some way to contact you if you are the winner. Once the winner is chosen and I have your contact details I will pass those along to Emma who will be in touch to arrange delivery of your prize.

Emma also sent me some of her fantastic products as a thank you for hosting this giveaway - thanks Emma :-) I love them!

Life is speeding by

Everything seems to be happening so fast lately. After the lazy days of the Christmas break we seem to have entered the work/daycare/daily life routine at a high speed.

We switched our old car for a newer one and have had fun exploring all the gadgets and buttons!

We have begun searching for a home to call our own in Wellington. (Wow, the Wellington property market seems to be a crazy, high-speed chase all in itself).

So a lot of our time has been spent trawling property listings and visiting open homes as well as seeing mortgage brokers and engaging lawyers.

Just over 2 weeks ago I had surgery to have my 3 remaining wisdom teeth removed. It's taken me until this week just passed to feel normal again. But thank goodness for no more wisdom teeth grief!

I registered for the Around the Table - Bloggers Connecting event to be held in Christchurch in April. I am both excited and nervous (I'm not great in big crowds of people!)

I'm counting down to a visit from my Mum - she is desperate to get her hands back on Mr Mischief and I can't wait to see her.

Mr Mischief is trying to quit his afternoon naps but he still needs them. He is also particularly challenging at the moment and trying to assert himself (which as a 2 year old results in a lot of tantrums!)

But even though it's crazy busy I'm so glad this is where we are right now. Wellington was the right move for us. A change is as good as a rest...isn't that what they say?!

Hopefully normal blogging will resume soon.

Project Life :: 2013 (Weeks 1 and 2)

In the past I've said I didn't think I could commit to Project Life.

If you don't know what Project Life is click here and read all about it. It's such a simple system and you don't have to have a roomful of scrapbook supplies to do it (just don't tell my husband that!). It's a great way to document life.

I've enjoyed documenting our lives on a monthly basis over the last 2 years (completed Document 2012 album to be posted soon!) but I fancied a change for 2013 and when I found out that one of my favourite bloggers - Elise Blaha Cripe - had designed the Seafoam edition for 2013 my decision was made!

I pre-ordered the binder and core kit with birthday money back in October and ordered my pocket pages with Christmas money.

I was champing at the bit to collect my core kit and pocket pages on 7th January when Craft House opened! (The binder is on it's way and will hopefully be here in a couple of weeks).

I've not decided if I'll be sharing each week's spread here or not. Quite possibly if I don't have much else to blog about!

But here's a look at how the 1st two weeks have come together...

Week 1 double spread

A closer look at Week 1 left side

The Move More Eat Well cards are printables from this online class I'm taking. They will probably pop up every week or every couple of weeks.

I saved my movie ticket from Breaking Dawn Part 2 and stapled that onto a seafoam card.

The bottom right background paper is from my stash but everything else is Seafoam.

Week 2 double spread

Including an inception moment with a photo of Seafoam making it in to my weekly spread!

I was very pleased with myself for making my own printables (top, left). I realised I would miss the monthly Mr Mischief feature page that I was making each month in my Document 2012 album so I decided to print up some 6x4 cards. They list Mr Mischief's age and then there's journalling space for "Loving:", "Doing:" and "Saying:". The plan is to journal these prompts on the 10th of each month as Mr Mischief's birthday is on the 10th. I have no doubt his picture will feature enough in the album but it'll be nice to note down what he's doing each month.

Also on this page is my hospital tag from having my wisdom teeth removed. It's stapled to one of the foldable cards. The Recorded card journals how I felt the day before the operation, the foldable card has an email I sent to family after the operation and I also mention how I was feeling a couple days on on the last journalling card of the week.

We also got a new car at the weekend so that's featured too!

So far I am loving this! I have been occassionally journalling during the course of the week and I've made myself a sheet to fill in each week with a page plan and a little note of what we did each day and what photo I want to use.

My plan is to get photos picked and loaded on my flashdrive each Sunday evening, get them printed on Monday and hopefully get the pages completed the same day. We will see how long that plan lasts :-)

I'm finding it much less time consuming than Documenting on a monthly basis because I'm doing it as it happens rather than trying to review the month in 1 go.

I've not finished my cover page yet - hoping to get onto that once I have my Document 2012 album finished.

I'm also happy to offer the Mr Mischief monthly update printable card and my planning pages if anyone is keen to use them? Just leave me a comment and I can email them through. And I may look into adding them here as a Freebie.

Calling all Wellington Bloggers!

I've been busy here and there over the last month creating a new page on my blog. 

I'm creating a list of Wellington bloggers. If you or someone you know is a Wellington based blogger and you can't see the link on the list please contact me (katie at mummy-adventures dot com) and I can get it added!

Please feel free to use the badge/button on your blog and link back to the list page.

And then next on the agenda is possibly arranging a meet-up. Let me know if you'd be keen :-)

Document 2012: September

The race is on to get my Document 2012 album completed. My goal is to have it finished by the end of January. Here's hoping! 

The October photos are all printed but I've misplaced my little hand-drawn plan so may need to do another. And I still need to choose photos and plan pages for both November and December. Then make all the pages. And finish the album with a front window "mini page", front page and back page. It sounds like a big job writing it all down so I think I'll break it into baby steps!

Here's how September looks:

This was the month our wee family was split between Palmy and Wellington so there's a real mix of photos including my last day at my previous job and a poorly Mr Mischief right before moving day!

My feature page shows some photos from leaving our house and I printed this blog post out to add there as well. A simple page but really it's the story that matters here.

Mr Mischief's feature page - lots of great photos of him in September and it was hard to choose so I printed lots and cut them small! The big white box covers him showing off his belly (I figured he wouldn't thank me for that when he's older if I left it there!)

And more farewells to Palmy and hello's to Wellington. The middle photo is the keys left on the counter at our old house. It was such a strange feeling leaving them there, walking out and shutting the door behind us!

And that's September done. 75% of the album complete!

You can see how I've documented 2012 here including more pages from this album as well as my Christmas album (which I must take photos of and blog about!)

Christmas Thank You's

It's fair to say I am a fan of sending Thank You cards. If someone has gone to the trouble of sending a present I like to acknowledge that. 

Since Mr Mischief has come on the scene (how is that 2 1/2 years ago already?!) I have tried to send Thank You's for his baby gifts, birthdays and Christmas gifts.

For Christmas 2012 I decided to embrace the fact that it's our summer holidays here in New Zealand and make the postcards.

I found a recent photo of Mr Mischief with a big chunk of "white space". (He's on one of those roundabout type things at the playpark where you use the top disc to spin yourself around. The disc gave me lots of room for "writing"). Then I opened the photo in Paint and added the Thank You text and a wee smiley face in the corner. 

I got them printed 6x4 at the photo printers and then stuck white card (cut to 6x4) on the back. Then drew a line down the middle, some address lines and a box for the stamp to make it look like a postcard!

They've all been written and posted off and hopefully will make the recipients smile as they arrive in the mail!

You can see other Thank You cards I've made here and here.

This week I'm linking up with Show and Tell hosted by Leonie. Why not pop over and see what everyone else has been busy with?