2021 PL week 4

Week 4 had lots of good things. The lunch at the Seafood Palace, the way the cat loves to sleep here, there and most anywhere, the art finished, and of course the Inauguration of President Joe Biden. Unfortunately, this was not a year to take Lotus to Washington DC to actually see it. What havoc his predecessor has left us. Looking forward to weeks getting calmer and calmer, day by day.

 

2021 PL weeks 2 and 3

 Our life changed a good deal in early January so my time became very busy. These two weeks tell that story in a very abbreviated fashion. I am still learning how to use Travelers Notebooks and making them all a 4x8 size is a work in progress. I do like the look and hope I'll keep it up this year. I may start making some of my own templates. We'll see how my time looks in the coming weeks. Some days buying a product is easier and cheaper time wise.

Thanks for looking and I'll see you later this week I hope!

Back to Project Life With a Twist

I thought about trying out Travelers' Notebooks last year and went ahead to buy an album in December. That's a good sign I'm actually going to do it rather than just think about it.

So here's the first week. While there are two pages I put them on one layout so you could see them side by side. The left was made in PSCC and the right in PSE2019. The hardest thing for me in PSCC is getting an element or a photo onto and in a layer. I'm sure there will come a moment when I go Aha! that's so easy. It just hasn't come yet. But I am liking the simplicity here esp with life still affected by Covid19. The simpler the better. I definitely enjoyed this and am learning PSCC bit by bit.

 

Project Life weeks 27 & 28

It's been harder and harder to commit to doing even one more thing. I know I've a big dose of Covid-19 depression one day seeming very much like the next. I finally recognized my lack of incentive to do much of any thing and did stick to my scrapping. Poor old Project life fell by the wayside.

Not much exciting though I did make my first foray to another country for library books and did a bit of shopping there. But darn if the weather was getting so so hot. And it was goodbye June...

The summer months are always the hardest for me as I really dislike the heat and humidity. You'll never find me pining for life in Florida or most any of the southern states. I've had my time in the tropics and god willing never again.

That week had my dh thinking he might have the virus so we started his week of quarantine. However he felt no qualms about asking me to go out and get things he felt he needed. 

See you next week, I hope!

Covid19 March & April Streaming

Slowly getting these done. There's always good escapes from reality. 2 hours most nights...

Close to Caught Up - Project Life weeks 25 & 26

Caught up is a fleeting moment...and really is not a big goal of mine but the longer I wait for a Project Life to be done, the more I forget. I say it's Covid-Brain! But let's get on with it.

Weeks 25 and 26 - seriously, without these pages I would willingly forget a lot. There were moments when I was just plain tired of the pandemic effects on life. I thought...Is this how the rest of my life will be? Then I decided, like all of us, I have no idea how long the rest of my life will be! Cherish the moment no matter what! It's not always an automatic thought or easy but it works.

Gratitude smooths out a lot of life's wrinkles.

Week 25 was a haircut week!  woohoo!!!

Week 26 had a lot of gifts, a food delivery, bread from a friend,

 and my Liverpool were league Champions.

Project Life Weeks 23 & 24

Life was getting to be quite exhausting by this point and darn if bad hair wasn't depressing all the time. It was getting hot and my hair was in that horrible growing out stage. I didn't think I had it in me to let it grow long.  And then there was the news...





There is a whole layout below about the arguments & angst involved in the actual start to go process of the new grill. It was not a good day chez nous...

Covid19 February & March

These charts from Persnickety Prints have given me a way to note many of the factual bits of these months. Rather than making a two page spread for each week, as I seriously don't have that much going on these days, I decided to add a TN part for each months reads or tv. Works for me! They'll get added at the end of the Month's weeks.



Amidst all the ever increasing strain of the news, tv and books gave me some escape time.

Back Again... Project Life Weeks 21 & 22

Somehow time has had a way of its own during Corona Time. Days just seem to evaporate and time passes without my knowledge. But I have continued with these pages just to remind myself that life goes on somehow some way.

Week 21 was another endoscopy for Dick and the first when I did not have to or could even go in. He got the wheel chair treatment though he could walk just fine.



Our anniversary dinner with unexpected similar shirts! It was a chilly day. Now I notice the dates are wrong on some of these pages.  Fortunately I have my .psd files so I can go back and correct. In looking at prior ones I seem to have really messed dates up in May. Blame it on Covid19.

Project Life Weeks 19 & 20

Life went on back in May but the days really did start blurring in one another. Even though our days were not that different than in the Before Time, I started to have a hard time remembering which day of the week it was. But things did happen, including the installation of a couple of window a/c units that come out during the cold weather and my office got a new ceiling fan! Yay to all the help we had from good friend Tom. Life is still good.

PL Weeks 17 and 18

Despite my  absences here, I have 'mushed on' with PL. It's a bit harder to do in CoronaTime but life goes on and it's a challenge to notice things.  But I try and some days I realize I never took one photo.  Shame on me. I can always find something to look at and appreciate when I try. 

Besides Homeland...oh I'll miss you! We had a bagpiper come and serenade our street! Random acts of kindness abound.

Spring really did come and the Easter things went back in their bin until next year.  I still really enjoy having some kind of background behind all the images. This week it was the newspapers with a bit of an overlay to keep with nature's lavender theme!

COVOD19 by Month

Persnickety Prints started making these charts at the beginning of the year. Who would know we'd have them for so long. I had decided to use them for insert pages to my Project Life but only this past week got around do doing one. You know how it is in CoronaTime...



Now that I have one done, I have the basic template made. Not sure what I'll do for the other months. Books? videos? food? Doesn't matter, it will be an objective list of how life moved on.

Where Did the Week Go?

So much for my thinking I will be writing here more often. My intentions are good but my follow up is not. So with no more explaining, here are two more weeks.

The week spring showed herself, the week that the cherry tree was in full blossom, the week of a full grocery shopping via Wegmans curbside pickup and the week we got our masks!

The week that I Zoomed a lot, the week that I felt like cooking again (all that Wegmans food was inspiring) and the week it rained and rained so I ordered Ledo pizza for pickup.

See you again, some time...

Weeks 13 and 14

I got my life a bit more organized recently as I felt I was all over the place with it. Sometimes I don't think I am as affected by outside events - such as the Covid virus - as everyone else but then it hits me, I'm not thinking clearly, I can't prioritize etc etc. Yep, I'm just an ordinary human being. I got my trusty old paper Things to Do papers and wrote down some of the things I was procrastinating on. One I realized I really didn't want to do but had made a commitment. I did something really fun first then Just Did It.  Of course it was easier than I thought it would be... So much for wasting so much time and energy avoiding the doing. Aren't we humans such foolish creatures!

and look..my cherry blossom tree went from buds to blossoms!

See you again soon.

Here Again

I  think I got more overwhelmed when I dropped off the radar with Week 10 of my Project Life layouts. How to get food, what to eat, who was going to clean the house, what about the garden... while they have never all been my jobs, if no one else is doing them I feel put upon. But if I want something done that I don't feel I can do just now, I must ask for help. Sometimes, and these are Those Times, I must accept that a half assed job is better than no job. That's a hard thing for me to accept. But moving on... here  is Week 11. I must say I really like that cool blue background border with the textured overlay.

Then there is week 12. March seems like it was last year at times. The truth of Covid 19 was really hitting me/us and it was depressing. I've only cleaned one more drawer since that first one. Sigh.

And I decided to get some more color into my backgrounds which also helped what I was doing for the CT I'm on, Lynn Grieveson's at The Lilypad.  Plus the spring flowers started to bloom reminding me that life is strong. Mood elevator to be sure! 

A bit of funny stuff

This was the last of the challenge pages I made for March 2020 at the TheLilypad.

I really don't like a huge 'sunburst' of papers but this was the template given, so I had to think a good bit more on this one. Finally an idea came to me and the British Royal Family helped out. It also made me laugh that these tabloids still exist.

I hope this gives you a smile or a laugh to start the weekend. See you back on Monday!

 

2020 week 10

A new month but the time that the understanding of the seriousness of coronavirus was getting shockingly clear. It was one week where we were still going out and visiting other people. Little did we know how fast this would end. But we did have some welcome sunny weather!

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Back to the weeks - 8 and 9

The weeks are getting simpler, as we are not going out much at all and it seems that every time I plan to walk, it rains. I am hesitant about going to the Mall even with their limited hours. I've never been a germaphobe but I am increasingly more cautious.

So here's to week 8

Such a good time we had - just going to lunch and a huge Hispanic grocery store. A total spur of the moment trip. Not much of that lately.

Some parts of life were starting to go downhill in this week. If only we knew what was to come but that's the best part of life. We don't know what's next! It was cold this week and there was good news. I had help getting my black Kona out of that parking spot. DH and I got the Cuisinart lids back in place as they should be. Neither of us remembered but we worked it out. I got  some of the work of shifting the family of EHDs  I have. The new 5T is on the job backing up. DD is finally dealing with a big issue and that's the hidden bit. Fiction is still my escape into other lives. It reminds me that my life is good.

I also decided I needed more color on the page. Maybe not always but some times. Keep hope in your hearts. 

The weeks move on bit by bit

This easy going days of just a few short weeks ago seem so so long ago. A different world. I wish I had gone south to visit my three grands but that boat has sailed so no point is wishing it were different. This is the week I would have gone but with three young adults, their lives are in upheaval
with classes being switched to on line or...who knows what. All 3 are/were? set to graduate in May or June. One high school, one for her B.A. and on to a job, and the eldest is finishing up a graduate degree.  Who knows how their lives will go now.

But on to one of my old February weeks. We went to WVA to have lunch with Dick's cousin and her son. An amazingly good Mediterranean/Middle eastern meal. I was really surprised!  We also visited the Animal Shelter that cousin Ginger's mother founded. It's now in a very modern and spotless building.  Just as well, but no Siamese cats for adoption.  The drive to and fro WVA filled up the rest of our day , a dismal rainy one.

We also had a Mexican meal that week and Friday was another trip to Westminster for more pre-braces work. I came home feeling really rough and went to the Doctor. I had a fever, sinus issues, and an upper respiratory bug. She said I had a virus but not bacterial and I would probably get better in two days. I slept most of those days and yes I did feel better. The corona virus signs were there but I'm glad I wasn't hospitalized. I did get the mask which I wish I had kept.  No tests even given then.

This is as far as I've scrapped now. Looks like I've got to get busy as being so far behind is not a feeling I like. I certainly do have time at home now! No excuses!

moving on with the weeks

So I continued. By week 4 I had added the stroke, I reduced the size of the border and felt better about the Project Life issues. Well most of them. I wanted more color, more journaling and more. The  answer I finally realized was to get off my photographic butt and take more photos. Do the pages closer to the timeline so I could remember the little things that really do make up life. I needed to do more leg work so I had material for a project I did want to do.

That stroke really helps, doesn't it but in the printing it doesn't even show. And just fyi, that white border is down to 1inch. The base here is from Cathy Zielske and while her pages/books look gorgeous, I have realized I'm not quite that clean and simple most of the time. As the same time, I want the focus to be on the story whether or not I have photos. Product is truly secondary.

What I need to do now, is do more weeks!