These past couple of days I made some progress with my December Daily album. Today, I'm sharing day 02, 03 and 04.

The story of day 02 was about a family get together at my parent's house:


It involved racelette, music and Crémant and the photos told the story, so I didn't do much journaling for that day.



The story of day 03 was about baking cookies with my mum, my sister and my nephew.



The story got told via the recipe of the cookies we bake every year.

 Love those grid layouts!


On the 4th of December I took a cooking class with two friends. I included the menu (inside the black cardstock) and a longer story about our friendship that I put inside of a vellum envelope.

...and here it starts:

December Daily is on!

I'm so very excited to participate in this project again this year.

During the Storytelling with December Daily class I planned out a routine for me to look for, capture and document (=write) my story each day in Evernote - and so far it's going really well. As soon as I have some time to actually sit down and work on my album, all I need to do is copy the stories from Evernote, print them, edit my photos (with A Color Story), print them at home and put everything into my album.

I won't be sharing finished pages here every day, but I'll update the blog every now and then, once I have some new pages in my album.


And this is December 1st. My story for this day is about entering the season, finding the Christmas spirit and starting to decorate at home. I tried to include both facts and feelings (as suggested in Ali's class) and I'm happy to see that "longer" stories find their way into my album.




If you've got any questions about products or processes - don't hesitate to ask in the comments.

I wish everyone a wonderful December with many stories to tell, share and document!

- Kathi

It's December and I finally get around to show you some of my project life catch up!

In 2016, life was busy and I spent most of my creative time on travel albums (my favourite), on "special" projects (like Week in the Life and Day in the Life) and on watercolours. Thus, I sometimes neglected my regular Project Life album. Long story short, I'm still in Project Life catch up mode.


For April, I gathered my favourite pictures of the month (mostly friends & family, dinners, home photos, flowers...) and looked for some light coloured filler cards.





April was also the month in which my blog launched! For that purpose I had made an introduction spread about me in 6x8 that I included in my regular Project Life album:



And that's it! Another month in the books. Yay for progress and thanks for reading!

- Kathi

Inspired by the American tradition of celebrating the joys of giving thanks, sharing, eating and drinking among loved ones, we celebrated our own little Friendsgiving this past Saturday.

Well "little" isn't actually accurate, because unlike last year when we send out invitations early and only six people came, this year we ended up being 16 people around the table, even if we were quite spontaneous with our invitations. So we had to be creative with tables and chairs considered our dining room table normally sits four.

Nevertheless - or maybe exactly thanks to this - we celebrated a wonderful, joyful, delicious and cosy dinner. Chris took care of the turkey, stuffing and gravy, our friends brought appetisers, sides, and dessert. Perfect, because all that was left to do for me was choosing the right Crémant and wine, designing invitations, take care of the tablescape, and create flower arrangements. My favourites...

What I want to show you today is how I used the current Friendsgiving/Thanksgiving collection by Paislee Press to give our dinner the final touch.

First, the invitations:


I kept them pretty simple. However, it was hard to choose only a few elements because all of the papers and embellishments are so beautiful. As I mentioned, we were rather late with our invitations, so we only sent out digital ones.

Next, place cards:


The font is courier new.

Menu cards:


I love these. Once I saw them in Liz's post announcing the Friendsgiving collection, I knew it needed them! Apart from their design, I really liked using menu cards because they emphasise and value the dinner - plus, in our case, all the different contributions by our guests.


Napkins


Again, I kept it simple with regular white napkins. I placed a small branch of eucalyptus on top and tied a satin ribbon with a small "give thanks" tag. I got several compliments on the napkins!

Flowers



Blame it on Pinterest, but I totally wanted eucalyptus for the flower arrangements. Our local flower shop didn't have any but the florist was so kind to order some for me (the seeded one). I paired the eucalyptus with small white flowers ("Wicken" in German) and placed several small bouquets on the tables.




It was a magical night and I can't wait to celebrate Friendsgiving again next year.

- Kathi


Please note: This is not a sponsored post. I just really like the products.

In March 2016 I made my first Day In The Life album, following Ali Edwards' initiative to document one single day with photos and stories. The idea behind DITL is to capture daily routines and all the little things in life that often don't find their way into my regular project life albums.

Last time I documented a regular working Tuesday, so this time I was very excited that Ali chose a Saturday for a second take on DITL this year. I ended up doing it on Sunday because it was just a better fit for me.

So today, more than two months later, I'll share the album I made about my DITL, 31st of July.




I knew I wanted to make a mini album again (just because I'm really into mini books lately), however I wanted to change things up a little compared to my March album, in which I used a 4x4 WRMK album with regular page protectors. I kept the format but decided to go with loose and assembled pages using binder rings. Also, I tried to challenge myself not to use the same products and the same overall style as in my other recent projects.
That meant: no watercolours, not only blue, black and white, no alpha stickers, no gold foil all the time and no page protectors.



When I look at it now, the style is still very familiar, even if the process felt different. Sometimes, it's just nice to deliberately not use your go to items and to step out of your comfort zone for a little while.



























Another project in the books, so onto the next adventure! See you soon and thanks for reading,

- Kathi