Project Life: November 21-27, 2011

Project Life for Thanksgiving week!

Most of my pictures this week are from our Thanksgiving(s); we celebrated on Thursday and Saturday this year, since Robbie had to work Thursday night.  This week I also have a couple of inserts; the first is about a 6x12 that I cut down from a regular 12x12 scrapbook page protector, and then stitched up the side.  It has a picture of the house we had Thursday Thanksgiving at, and an e-mail from one of my aunts commenting on how well-behaved my boys were...something that definitely needed documentation.

A sort-of close up of the stitching on the cut-down 12x12 page protector, to make it a 6x12.

The back of the 6x12 insert is the book cover that the boys got when they went to visit Santa on Sunday-not a successful trip since Liam wouldn't get close to Santa and Jacob started crying when he sat on Santa's lap.  Maybe next year?  The other page is a Thanksgiving placemat that Liam made at daycare.  I try to be really selective with what artwork to keep, since it's so easy to keep everything, but if it has a hand or footprint on it, it stays.  I mean, it's just too cute!  Since it was already laminated, I just cut it to fit in the book and hole-punched it.

More Thanksgiving pictures and a bunch of journaling about our 2 Thanksgivings this year.  And a picture of the not-so-jolly Santa Claus visit.

Project Life is a Becky Higgins' project for documenting your Everyday.  Find out more information here.

Project Life: November 7-13, 2011

Welcome to the week before Thanksgiving!  Lots of cool stuff this week; there's an 8.5" x 11" insert with the letter for Jury Duty for Robbie.

On the other side of the insert, an e-mail from my mother-in-law from Kenya with a picture of a lion she saw during a safari, and my e-mail confirmation of the Twilight: Breaking Dawn movie tickets from Fandango.

The pictures and stories from this week were just everyday things: Molly driving; my manly men searching for a spider under the TV stand with their flashlights; and experiment close-up shots with my new camera (a Christmas present I get to use early).  :-)

More everyday pictures: me, my sister and friend at the movies, waffles on Saturday morning, Liam's new shoes that I LOVE. I like this process because it gives you the chance to record everyday things that wouldn't necessarily get captured in a traditional scrapbook.

Ticket stub from Breaking Dawn on Friday night, and a little bit about our night out.

I'm also using Project Life to chronicle each month until Jacob gets to be 1 year old.  I'll eventually do a scrapbook page for each month until he's 1, but there's no telling how long it will be before I can do that, and this is an easy way to mark that date each month of this year.  (Plus it's neat to look back and see how much he's changed each month)

Project Life is a Becky Higgins' project for documenting your Everyday.  FInd out more information here.

Crock Pot Chicken N Dumplings

The weather outside is pretty gloomy: cold, cloudy, dizzley...so I made Chicken N Dumplings for dinner last night.  Here's my recipe:
(I took the original from The Crockin' Girls, but made some changes so it would work for my family.)

Rotisserie Chicken (one of those ready-to-serve ones from the grocery store)
2 Chicken bullion cubes (low Sodium)
4 cups Chicken Broth (low Sodium)
1 can Cream of Chicken soup
1 large can of Grands biscuits (I've had good results with the Southern Style and Flaky biscuits)

'Pull' the chicken (white & dark meat) from the bones and remove the skin, and add it to the crock pot.
Pour in the chicken broth, cream of chicken soup and add both bullion cubes to the crock pot as well.  Mix.
Cut the biscuits into quarters and add to the top of the mixture.
Cover and cook on High for about 4 hours.
Press the biscuits into the liquid before serving.
(You can add vegetables to this if you wanted, just put a bag of frozen mixed vegetables (or any frozen veggies you want) in with the liquids.)

This is perfect for the Fall/Winter months!  ENJOY!

Project Life: November 6-13, 2011

This was a pretty typical week.  There is an 8.5" x 11" insert between these 2 pages with my mother-in-law's flight itinerary to and from Kenya on it (I removed it for this picture because of all of the personal information it contained).

Picture Day pictures at home and a close-up of the damage to my Jeep from Robbie hitting a deer on the way home from work.  There were no injuries, thank goodness, not even to the deer.

Pictures of Molly and Liam playing a toddler game and an inpromptu family portrait.  Also a screen shot of Skyping with my mother-in-law, bedtime reading and the tag from a new hat/mittens set for Liam that we got this weekend.

Project Life is a Becky Higgins' project for documenting your Everyday.  Find out more information here.

Mission Work

My mother-in-law is in Kenya, Africa working with a local church to teach locals how to purify their water to make it safe to drink.  It was her first trip overseas, and the trip will last 10 days.
This is a picture of her at one of the local villages, with school children that her group delivered pen-pal letters to.  The pen-pal program is set-up through the school of the church who organized the trip, and letters are exchanged with each Mission trip.  She said the conditions were just awful, but the children were her bright spot; they're so loving and excited to meet new people.  The children speak English, but some of the things in the pen-pal letters had to be explained, like 'I like to eat hot dogs' does not mean real dogs.
I'm so proud of my mother-in-law, and I hope you will keep her in your prayers.
If you're interested in going on a Mission trip, local churches in your area are the best place to start inquiring.  You don't necessarily have to be a member of that church to participate, but the church will have more information for you.

Welcome to my blog!

Thank you for taking the time to visit my blog!  For my very first post, I thought I’d tell you a little about myself and why I wanted to start a blog.

I’m a married mommy of 2 boys, Liam and Jacob, and I work full-time as an Administrative Assistant.  I love everything about being married and being a mommy, and therefore everything that goes with those 2 roles.

I really, really love memory keeping!  I participate in Project Life, an idea by Becky Higgins (http://www.beckyhiggins.com/blog/) which chronicles your life week-by-week.  I also  scrapbook special and everyday photos.  I’ll share Project Life in the hopes that it inspires you to document your life a little more closely, even if it’s just day-to-day things that may not seem important at the time.  I think it’s important to document what goes on in a regular day or week, and not just the holidays and birthdays of life.  I’ll also share my traditional scrapbook pages, and processes that get me from an idea to the final design.

Cooking is an important part of my life; I’m coming to find out that it’s a good thing I enjoy it, because I have a hungry husband and almost-2 year old, with my little Jacob coming up fast behind them.  My recipes are not gourmet, by any means, but they’re filling comfort food that I find the inspiration from in all sorts of places, and add my tweaks, based on what my family likes (and needs) to eat.

So thank you again for reading about me and my family, and I hope you’ll visit back often to see what’s going on in my life, and hopefully get some ideas and inspiration for yours!