[DOCUMENT] 2015 Family Album

Remember I said I was going to tackle our family albums this year?? Well, I'm back at it and (fingers crossed) I have finally worked out a good template to easily organize my photos and have the design flow from page to page. I laid out a basic grid, and am creating my photo boxes within these guidelines.

I have also found some great Photoshop Actions that mimick my favourite filters from Instagram, which I can apply to all my full size photos, so all the colours flow together. I also came across a free on-line photo editing site that has some fun retro filters that also work well with my colour scheme.

Journalling has been kept very simple, and works well within my grid. I am keeping all my fonts to a minimum and keeping all journal entries consistant.

The introduction pages are super fun with a big bold number indicating the month and a filtered image inbehind. The colour of the number is pulled from the image...love it!

Another fun element I've been using is a wood texture background combined with imagery. It's a nice break for the eye, when there's been several pages in a row with a lot going on. So far this layout is working really well...what do you think?

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I should add that the book I'm designing is 8" x 10" portrait layout. The above images are a double page spread (10" x 16") and all photos are from my iPhone.

[EXPLORE] Spring Tides

Spring has sprung on our beaches! Today's beach exploration revealed all kinds of babies under the rocks and in the pools. Baby starfish, sea urchins, crabs and even a mama crab protecting her eggs on her belly. We've found baby jellyfish on other excursions and teensy sea anemones too.

I thought it would be fun to 'classify' our findings in a muffin tin which I brought from home...but Miss Chloe had a different idea - BABY TIDEPOOLS or as she called them 'baby habitats'! That's my smarty pants.

Besides the babies, we also found hermit crabs, a bright orange sea slug, crabs, fish and quite large blennys.

To top it off, I think I got a sunburn...in May!!! Racing towards summer on this little isle.

[FAMILY] Monster Party

Logan's EIGHTH (how did this happen) birthday party theme was a little out of my element this year - MONSTERS. I was finding it hard to switch gears from Chloe's beautiful Under The Sea soiree (pictures to come soon) to zombies, skeletons and gravestones. Once I started collecting bits and pieces, (and my Mom had already scooped up a ton of stuff after Hallowe'en...thanks Mom) it was really fun. We hosted this shin dig at Collins Hall - A beautiful little hall and church with a fenced in yard and small playground that was absolutely perfect and saved my house from a dozen hyper, crazy kids. Phew. And we totally scored with all the creepy decorations from a total stranger that offered up their very extensive Hallowe'en collection - gotta love Bowen for the absolute trusting kindness of strangers!

First up, the food. We had Monster Boogers (popcorn), Potato Chips (cartiledge), Ghouls (chocolate pudding and cookie crumb cups with body parts candy coming out of the dirt), Monster Blood (fruit punch), Monster Eyeballs (Oreo cookies with the top off and fuzzy peach candies with a raspberry wine gum in centre), Bag O' Bones (veggies and dip) and of course creepy zombie cupcakes.

The craft was MY FAVOURITE. And the best part...it was my own idea not Pinterest (unlike everything else). I spray painted a dozen terrecotta pots flat white so it would be easy to colour on, purchased beautiful and interesting tropical plants and a ton of fun googly eyes, monster mouth stickers, pom poms, etc. to decorate.

Once the pots were turned into MONSTER HEADS, we headed outside to the planting station and placed gravel in the bottom, followed by potting soil and then a lovely plant. They turned out AMAZING!! SO MUCH FUN!!

The party finale was a piniata filled with candy - I left this event for when the parents arrived so I would not be responsible for the hopped up candy filled children for longer than I had too!! I could not find a monster piniata, so settled for a Tiki Head - it's monstery right??