MAKING - NOVEMBER EDITION

We've had an amazing November here in Sweden. Just a couple of years ago we had a record breaking lack of sun. Only two hours of sunlight during the entire month of November! This year has seen many bright and beautiful days though, and as a scrapbooker I am thankful for that. I've made more pages this November than any other year of doing Project Life.

I love the color scheme of the November Studio Calico kits.It's so warm and has a vintage feel to it.


The kids each got to pick a book to read during Fall Break, which was week 44. Dante picked the second part of a ghost story series, and Nea picked Cinderella - in English. Dante plays lots of video games and his English is really good because of that,and she wants to catch up. We've been reading it together.

Us teachers worked an extra three days during week 44, but then we got the rest of the week off too. On the last day of work we had "After Work" outing at a super cool place called Pinchos, where you use an app to order food and drinks and then pick it up yourself from the bar. 

Below, I used the tag to journal about "Old Fashioned Week" at the kids' school. Their school celebrates a hundred years and there were dressup themes and lots of other activities. 

I loved the flannel shirt style pattern of the bottom card, but the center square felt kind of empty, so I stamped all the dates of the week inside to fill it up.

The same week Nea ended up with an ear infection that caused a burst eardrum. We had to go to the hospital to get her hearing tested. With a bit of luck she'll get tubes put in next year. She's had so many burst eardrums I've lost count. That NOPE card really came in handy!

In our Project Life album I mix in both ephemera and layouts. I like the chronology it gives, compared to keep seperate albums. I made a November favorites sort of layout for Catherine davis' Design School 2 "Working with a kit" challenge. The fall paper came from an October addon, and I found these veneer alphas in my stash. I considered painting the alphas gold, but decided against it and added some gold sequins instead.

This is my favorite page this month. I tend to like the pages with lots of journaling the most. It gives them a finished look. The d&n card is a design I totally stole from Catherine Davis!

That's all I've got so far. I have a few more photos to put in pockets before it's December.

/Magdalena

DAY IN THE LIFE

November 2nd was the last Day In The Life of 2017. I haven't observed any of the others this year, but this time we all had the day off so it was an easy day to document. When putting the pages together I used the digital kit Ali put together for this day. The cards had a fun new concept of counting during the day, which I enjoyed. The pages will go into our regular Project Life album.

Week 44 is Fall Break here in Sweden, which meant we could sleep in this morning. After breakfast Nea and I sat in the kitchen to do some crafting. She loves watching Kristina Werner's word art videos, so she tried her hand at one of her own. While I made lunch, she took a hot shower. Dante was playing Overwatch on the PS4.

I went on Ali's Craft the Story facebook page to ask if everyone counted breakfast as a meal. They did, but I decided against it. The reason is I journaled about being SO tired of cooking. I'm not a huge fan of eating cooked meals which makes me even less motivated to cook them. The kids on the other hand always want a cooked meal, which surprises me because I hated meal time as a kid. This day I decided to cook a big lunch, and then they could put the leftovers in the microwave for dinner.

The number stickers are from the October Studio Calico documenter kit, Gypsy Moon. They matched Ali's word strips nicely. For some reason my printer didn't print them all the same shade of blue, but that's ok. 

After making lunch, cleaning and doing laundry I deserved a reading break. My favorite tea mug is the size of a flower pot. I've had that brown wool blanket since I was two. It's huge and so warm and my favorite posession. It's what I'd bring to a deserted island, for sure.

The original card below had the dollar sign, but I cut the letters KR from another card and changed the colour to gray. Swedish money is called "kronor". The reason we spent so much without leaving the house is we had bills to pay. 

I propped my phone up on some books and used the self timer to take the nail polish photo. Nea has a pink night light in her room which gave the photo of her in bed a cool shade.

I didn't count the hugs during the day, but I used the eight as an infinite sign instead. We love hugs in our family!

I hope you've found some inspiration to document a Day In The Life of your own. Tomorrow I'm posting an update of how I'm doing with the 2017 Reading Challenge. See you then!

/Magdalena

TRICK OR TREAT!

I loooove Halloween! I always buy whatever addons Studio calico put out for the holiday. This year it was a mini card kit by Tina Aszmus which seems to have sold out unfortunately. You can find it digital form here, though.

I also bought the Paislee Press Fall Magic Elements pack, which really loved.

My favorite part of making a Jack o' lantern is I get to have roasted pumpkin seeds after. Some olive oil, rock salt, chili flakes and powdered cinnamon and you have the best snack ever. Yum!

Dante wanted to be "V for Vendetta" and Nea wanted to be a witch. We didn't have a wide brimmed hat, but Dante found my dad's old hat and used that. I think my dad wore in the late 60's! 

I found a pack of fun Halloween paper glasses at H&M, and did a family photo shoot. The kids picked their favorites, and us grownups took what was left. Super fun glasses! I sliced off a row of pockets to make an insert. On the pack I will document what movies we watched during Fall Break.

Also I'm mad jealous of my daughter's hair colour. Yes, it's real! 

I hope you all enjoyed Halloween, and have fun documenting it! Come back tomorrow for a look at my Day In The Life pages from November 2nd. I used Ali's kit for the day, and really like how it turned out.

/Magdalena

MY OCTOBER PAGES

I've decided to split up my October posts. Tomorrow I will post my Halloween pages, and today I'll be showing you the rest of my October pages plus a layout. I'll be making more layouts from my October photos, but I usually focus on documenting our everyday life first.

The gold and black October card is from Tina Aszmus' Halloween mini card kit. Love it! Everything else is from recent monthly Studio Calico kits. I've also used the Autumn Vibes templates from Paislee Press.

For some reason I took a ton of photos for the first week of October, but hardly any the next. The first week of October has my birthday and also the Swedish "Cinnabun Day" - a very important occasion to celebrate. The photo of my daughter has a quote. The first thing she said when waking up this morning was "Mommy, you are the world's best everything!", then she paused and added "Except the world's best turd.". Lucky me!

So I'll be honest here. I LOVE making my album pages but I HATE photographing them. Mainly because to prevent glare I need to remove every single card from the pockets and then put them back. For this blog post I couldn't be bothered (sorry, not sorry) so there is glare in these photos.

In our family you get to pick dinner on your birthday, so I picked pizza. Not because it's my favorite but because it's the only kind of restaurant nearby. I didn't want to cook, and I didn't want to have to go into the city on a school night, so pizza it was. I picked the Quattro Formaggi - four kinds of cheese including blue cheese. The kids were horrified that I picked moldy pizza for my birthday dinner, bwaha!

Also how happy are we that Supernatural, Stranger Things AND The Walking Dead are back on? 

I know you can't see it in this picture but the closeup of the kids' eyes shows off how different their eye colors are. Dante has blue eyes with lighter rays and Nea has green eyes. They asked me to take a photo so they could compare. 

Skipping week 41 because I didn't take any photos, here is week 42 on the left and week 43 on the right. I don't always record the weekly number. I know my photos are roughly in chronological order so not having a date on something doesn't bother me. 

I took an afternoon of from work and went to get a haircut. I had time for a stroll around the city before a friend met up for dinner. We ate at a super cool place called Pinchos, where you order through an app and pick up your own food and drinks from the counter. They serve delicious tapas and the decorations are circus themed. They even have entertainment through speakers in the bathrooms.

Fall is for reading! Refurnishing our bedroom meant I got to trade my nightstand for a bookshelf. Woohoo!

If you have visited my blog before you know that every year I do a birthday interview with the kids. This year I thought "Hey, why just the kids?!", so I made a birthday interview layout for myself. All products are from the Studio Calico October kit "Gypsy Moon". I hope you notice how I used both a border punch and a label maker for this layout. It's been years since they were brought out for scrapbooking. And yep, I'm 45. Imagine that!

Stay young at heart people! I hope to see you tomorrow for my Halloween pages.

/Magdalena