Project Life 2013....Winter Ball

Edited to answer Tracy's question....

Tracy said...

Why in the world would you force her to stay somewhere she didn't want to be?! If one of my girls wrote and asked if they could come home, no way would we tell them "no." Poor girl.

My answer:  It's not often that I reply to negative comments on my blog but since this comment is directed to me as a parent and not my projects, I feel compelled to answer.  Tracy, the reason we "forced" Jordan to stay at the dance is all about taking responsibility for oneself.  First, it costs a lot of money to send a girl to a dance.  We forked out cash for a dress, shoes, jewelry, a hair do, a pedicure, flowers, the cost to get into the dance and photos.  Secondly, Jordan was escorted to the dance by a nice young man whose parents forked out money for a brand new suit, half of the cost of flowers and photos, and paid for Jordan's dinner like a gentleman.  We didn't feel it would be polite for her to leave her date stranded at the dance by himself, looking like his date dumped him.  In our family we teach our kids to finish what you start and do the right thing.  As you can see, Jordan is smiling in all of her photos and survived the dance just fine.

Today I'm sharing some pages from my Project Life 2013 album that are totally dedicated to the girls' Winter Ball photos.  I thought about how I would add these as inserts to a regular week and I just had too many photos.  So I just slipped these photos in between 2 regular weekly spreads.  It was so easy to do it this way because it's a format I was used to working with.  

Here you can see the 2 page spread with an 8.5 x 11 insert.  

Here's the 2 page spread without the insert.  I dedicated the left page to Jordan's photos and the right page to Josey's photos.  I tend to like the photos I take pre-dance to the cheesy formal photos they take at the dance.  I captured the girls getting ready with their girlfriends and then a few formal ones with their dates.  

I used a 4 x 6 slot on each of the girls' page to write a little journaling about the memory that stood out the most for this dance.  Below is Jordan's insert.  It contains a series of text messages she sent me, begging to come home early from the dance.  Dances are not her thing.  She would rather be in camo, sitting out in the timber with her bow.  We made her stay for the dance and indeed she suffered through it.  

For Josey, her biggest happening was that she got to have TWO hair do's for the dance.  The first up do she got was just terrible.  It was messy and frizzy and started falling out.  Josey's grandpa called up his stylist and she was nice enough to work us in.  She took one look and just said she wanted to start all over.  The photo below shows the magic she performed on Josey.  It was a stressful day for Josey but it ended up very well.  

I took the 5 x 7's that were taken at the dance and created traditional scrapbook layouts for them.  Don't critique too harshly as traditional layouts are hard for me.  The red backgrounds of the photos don't help at all.  

 For Jordan's page I added a vellum envelope with sequins from her dress.  We got a discount on her dress because many of the sequins were falling off.  I spent two hours one day stitching on new sequins.

This is Josey's page.  I used some of my  new papers that coordinated with the color of her dress.  

I loved adding the fun clip to this page along with some typed tags and embellishments.  

I think I'll definitely incorporate more of these types of pages in my Project Life album.  I've done something similar for sports pages too.  

My Project Life status:  I can feel it coming....Spring is in the air, the temperatures are warming up, my garden is calling me, the girls have 2-3 sporting events a week.....and I'm a few weeks behind.  It happens every year about this time. Two years ago,  I got 17 weeks behind. I can't let that happen again. I'm hoping to carve out some time this weekend to print photos, use simple journaling cards and make quick work of my pages. Photos + stories....that is the goal.  

Thanks for stopping by.  Jordan had her first softball games last night and Josey's first track meet is this afternoon.  I'm taking the long away around and heading to the city first to do a little junkin'.  I'll be back soon with a post featuring the Cottage Card Kit items.  Have a great weekend everyone!