Project Life in one word : awesome.

Seriously.

I love it. It is so cool to see Samuel’s growth over the past year.

So many people are doing it.  (Are you?)  It’s all over Facebook.  And Pinterest.  And on everybody’s blog — including mine.  It has taken over the internet in the scrapbooking world.  It has changed how many of us scrapbook — including me!

I have three volumes for Project Life in 2011.

I still have holes to complete in 2011.  I am working on it slowly.  The photos are all there … along with bits and pieces of stuff and journaling.  I hope to fill in the holes in the next couple of months.

The first two weeks of 2011 were very different than 2012.  Take a look …

Week 01 2011 ::  I was 34 weeks pregnant.  I took a great fall (on a glue stick) and ended up in the ER for four hours — scared me half to death and made me realize that Samuel would soon be on his way.  We were also in the process of selling our Fallon home.

Week 01 2012 :: Samuel is 11 months old.  He babbles, cruises along furniture, explores the entire house — wants to be a part of everything — giggles, snorts, laughs, shrieks, and wants to walk.  Life is so different this January and we love it.  Already in the first week, we attended two birthday parties.  We have many more in January and February.

I love the journaling cards for this year’s kit.  Love that there are lines on the back so it is easier to continue the story.

Week 02 2011 :: 35 weeks pregnant.  Baby shower #1.  Drank lots of orange juice.  Made lots of lemon sorbet.  Prepped milk bags for ice cream lab.

Week 02 2012 :: Playdates.  Watching Samuel get excited over a pair of socks he found while crawling around the house.  No more school/work related stuff in my Project Life — the focus is on me, Jim and the little man.

I find myself writing more because I don’t want to miss a thing!  He’s growing and learning so much at this age.  And he’s so fun.  It is awesome to watch him learn.

When I started Project Life 3 years ago, I thought I’d do it for one year and that would be it.  Boy, was I wrong.

Project Life.  Love it.  Crave it.  Need it.

It all began with a move back to Northern California and a hat from REI years ago.

In 2010, I had enough hats to make a layout for a Scrapbook Challenge I hosted on my blog.

Where are the hats from?
FIRST ROW: Delux Koala, Delux Owl (I actually picked this one up in a small coastal town in Oregon), Icelandic Designs (purchased at REI)
SECOND ROW: Icelandic Designs (purchased at REI), Delux Zebra, Delux Cow
THIRD ROW:  Delux Rabbit, Delux Penguin (Given to me by my dear friend Kelly from Green Tangerines.  She picked it up for me in Colorado.), Icelandic Designs (Christmas gift 2009)
FOURTH ROW: Newsboy Hat (Hat People), Where the Wild Things Are (Purchased in Pike’s Place in Seattle – handmade there.  I refer to this one as the “Where the Wild Things Are” hat but my friends refer to this one as the “Pillow Cushion” hat.), Delux Ladybug.

I stopped buying hats for a while — cause I felt that it was getting out of control.  And when I became a mama, I wasn’t sure if I should continue collecting and wearing such strange looking hats.  That moment passed quickly as I continued to sport my animal hats to my Mommy & Me gatherings and errands around town with my baby boy.

I picked up a few hats along the way in 2011 but most were made for me or given as gifts.

In December of 2011, I decided that I would only add one hat to my collection per year.  So I asked for the Delux Giraffe hat.  One evening, we made a stop at Urban Outfitters and that idea was tossed out the window.  That evening, Jim purchased FOUR hats for me for Hanukkah and Christmas.  They were on clearance for $10 — unheard of for Delux Knitwits!

This morning, Good Day Sacramento (a local news program) celebrated National Hat Day by asking their viewers to submit hat photos.  I submitted the photo of Samuel and me wearing the giraffe hat followed by  the photo collage of my hat collection (from 2010).  Cody, one of their anchors, commented that I have a hat problem.  I beg to differ.

And in honor of National Hat Day, I decided to create a new collage to show you a bit more of my collection …

Where are the hats from?
FIRST ROW: Delux Yeti, Hand Knit Dolphin Hat (made for me by my sister), Delux Bear (from Urban Outfitters)
SECOND ROW: Hand Knit by my mother in 2008, Ram (Christmas gift 2010), Elmo (Hand crochet by local artist)
THIRD ROW:  Hand Knit Purple/Pink Hat (made for me by my sister), Delux Cookie Monster (purchased at Urban Outfitters), Hat with Big Brim (hand felted by Nana Campini)
FOURTH ROW: Green Hat with Ear Flaps (made by Karen, given to me at my baby shower — she made a matching one for Samuel), Bear Hat (given to me by my friend Damiane), and Pink/Beige Hat with Flower (hand crocheted by Nana Campini).

At 11 months, Samuel has a pretty good sized collection as well.  I did not have time today to put together a collage of his hats, but I will leave you with this photo of him in a hand knit hat (with matching mittens) made by my sister.

is always on the move.  And he moves fast.

is almost 11 months old.

wants to open every single cabinet in the house.

loves to take things out.  And then put them back in — well, just what he wants to put back in.

is trying to figure out how to open the cabinet underneath the kitchen sink.  He is determined to break through the child safety locks.

loves hanging out at home with us.

refuses to nap.  Wants to play and be part of all the action.

is getting his appetite back.  He’s been sick for a few days.

loves to play his version of peek-a-boo called Where is Samuel?

is seriously teething.  Number 4 is coming in!

shrieks and squeals all the time.

claps at everything.

is a drool and snot machine.

pulls himself up to standing position readily – with no effort at all.

is cruising along the furniture.

stand by himself for two-alligator seconds.

periodically crawls to his daddy’s office looking for him.

is the sweetest thing on the planet.  Speaking of the sweetest thing, my photographer friend, Kira (of Kira Lauren Photography) came over in November for a play date and photo session.  She has a eye for capturing life — unscripted, raw images of people in their element, doing their thang.  She’s good.  She’s really good.  She is a major source of inspiration for me.  Check out the photos of me and Samuel doing our thang here.  Thanks, Kira.

On February 7, 2011 we welcomed our son, Samuel, and have been captivated by his huge brown eyes and gorgeous smile ever since.  We celebrated many firsts – first successful diaper change (where we didn’t end up getting sprayed), first bath, first smile, first laugh, first roll, first time eating solids, and first clap.  We clap at everything – who knew that even the littlest things deserve a clap!  Samuel is almost eleven months old and is pulling himself up, cruising along the furniture, and loves to get into Autumn’s scrapbooking stuff. Samuel is an energetic, spunky, cute, adorable, strong, happy, funny little man – we love seeing his personality emerging.  He is also very observant – studies everything with intense curiosity before taking any action.  We think we may have a scientist or mathematician in the making!

We are excited for 2012!  We are excited to celebrate more firsts — first steps, first birthday, first ice cream sundae at Leatherby’s, first taste of whole milk — and have more family adventures.

Hello Project Life 2012.  I am excited to continue documenting our daily lives and celebrate the small (normal, and mundane) moments that will be awesome to look back on years from now.

Project Life 2011 continues to be a work in progress for me — I have three volumes.  Yes, that’s correct.  THREE We R Memory Keepers binder albums worth of photos, notes, and tidbits of our everyday lives.  I have some holes to fill in but am so glad I took a year worth of photos of our little family.

Project Life has been a great place to store bits of papers that would otherwise go into a file folder and drawer.

Project Life has been a great place to store gas receipts (for the entire year — so cool to see it fluctuate over the course of the year), student artwork, and party invites.

Project Life has been a great way to document Samuel’s first year of life.

I am thrilled to be doing Project Life again this year.

Hello 2012 resolutions.

I am keeping the list short this year.  Sticking with five main goals.

1. Simplify.  Reduce the clutter.  Seriously.
2. Read more.  (Started Hunger Games last night.)
3. Move more.  Eat less.  (This includes signing up for Sac Fit, running a marathon and completing a triathlon).
4. Learn the ins and outs of my camera.  Play with light.
5. Be the best mom and partner that I can be (and still do the things I love).

December Daily 16 :: Our last day of school for the year!  We were given permission to leave campus at 12:45 pm so we left as soon as we could to pick up our little munchkin and enjoy some much needed sunshine.  I created another 3×3 grid using my sewing machine and added photos to document the course of the day.

December Daily 17 :: Samuel’s first visit with Santa was traumatic.  We went at a good time — we were the only people there so we were able to give Samuel some getting to know Santa time.  Unfortunately, that didn’t help.  He wailed and screamed as soon as I left him in Santa’s arms.  It must have been really traumatic for him because he woke up 3 times that night screaming.  Ha!

December Daily 18 :: Had an early Christmas dinner and gift exchange with some dear friends.  K and J both gave Samuel some awesome books to add to his growing library.  I love the sparkle in his eyes and joy in his face when he looks at books.  I hope he continues to be fascinated with books as he grows up.

December Daily 19 :: Our friend Mee Cha and Alfred came to visit with their 6 weeks old bundle of joy, Benji.  Love the two boys in their matching hats!

December Daily 20 :: Celebrated the first night of Hanukkah with latkes and good friends.  Samuel had a great time playing with his buddy Simon.

December Daily 21 :: For each night of Hanukkah, we gave Samuel a new book.  I was thrilled to capture these two photos of Samuel before and after opening the book.  He’s such a character.

December Daily 22 :: Although he can’t spin it yet, Samuel loves watching the dreidel spin.  It will be fun next year when we can actually play dreidel.  (I used washi tape at the bottom of the right page.  I am really diggin’ the washi tape and would love to play with it more in 2012!)

December Daily 23 :: Annual Hanukkah dinner with family and friends.  This year, there were 13 of us at the table!  There were plenty of latkes and cannoli to go around.

December Daily 24 :: Around here, we had a sick boy on Christmas eve.

December Daily 25 :: Busy Christmas day for us.  We slept in, had breakfast and opened a couple of presents at our house.  I baked a cobbler and we were off to my mom’s.

This layout took me a long time to put together because I wanted to incorporate as many photos as possible along with a story (in the form of a letter to Samuel) for the day.  The letter to Samuel is behind the photo collage on the left — you actually have to pull out the page and it fold out to reveal the story of the day.

The circle above is a mini album I found in my stash.  It opens up to reveal more photos from the day (see below).

My sister — the amazing knitter — made each of us a hand knit item for Christmas.  The other side of the circle mini-album shows some of the items she gave us.

For Christmas, everyone in my family got an “I heart Samuel” shirt from Samuel.  To make sure that everyone knows who Samuel is, we ordered Samuel an “I am Samuel” shirt.  There were plenty of laughs from all of my siblings.

That wraps up December Daily 2011.

Some thoughts …

1. I love this project and want to do it every year.  I spent some time this December going through my albums before Samuel and love seeing all the stuff I documented before becoming a mom.  Samuel makes this December a bit different and awesome and special.
2. Having the foundation pages done ahead of time is key.  It serves as a motivation because I don’t want to see any blank pages in my book.
3. I love the size (6″ x 8.5″) of this album.  I wonder if American Crafts will make more albums this size in the future.  I would love to get another and transfer last year’s DD into it.
4. I spent way more time on this book than in years past.  Because it was Samuel’s first holiday season, I didn’t want to miss a thing.
5. I did not document anything about school or grading papers this December.  Yay, for me!
6. Photo collages and grids are awesome.  I was able to incorporate more photos into my album this way.
7. I love that all of the pages are protected in sheet protectors.
8. Some days were chalked full of events I did not have time to complete a layout.  For those days, I jotted notes and sketched a layout to help jog my memory when I did get to it.
9. I switched over to Aperture and love it as a photo organization tool! It makes selecting photos a breeze.
10. Keeping up with Project Life and completing December Daily was a bit challenging.  I had some late nights (stayed up til 2 am once) but I ended up with an awesome project that I can share with Samuel in the years to come.

I have been on winter break for almost two weeks and I have not posted anything on this blog. Some of you probably visited my site daily for December Daily updates and are probably tired of seeing the Rock Band video. I promise that my intentions were good — but the reality is — a little mobile person can suck the life and energy out of you and all of your good intentions just get tossed out the window. I had no idea what having a mobile ten and a half month old is like. Absolutely clueless … until it happened to me.

Determined to finish my December Daily (and get through a long list of other scrapbooking related projects), I have stayed up into the wee hours of the morning printing photos and working on layouts. I am happy to report that December Daily 2011 is finished. Something else to check off my list.

Because my last December Daily update was back on the 7th of December, I am going to post my entire album in two posts. Here is a look at the cover of the album and days 08 – 15.

December Daily Cover :: Because I love the outdoors, I wanted to incorporate that into the cover of my album for this December.  I chose the wood grain paper from Jillibean Soup and added red/white/green accents to give it a festive touch.  I wanted the spine to be completely red but I ran out of fabric tape so I used washi tape I picked up at West Elm sometime last year.

December Daily 08 :: My mother is a knitter and specializes in hand knit vests.  When we were kids, she would knit each of us a vest for the winter.  When we got to be teenagers, we told her that hand knit sweaters were so uncool, she stopped making them for us.  She now knits for herself — until I asked her to make a keepsake vest for Samuel.  One vest turned into two … which then turned into three … and now, Samuel has half a dozen hand knit vests from my mom.  On this day, she sent two vests — made with such attention to detail and love.

December Daily 09 ::  For this layout, I wanted to showcase a series of photos of Samuel “helping” Jim build his early Hanukkah/Christmas gift and of him playing with it.  I love the look of photo strips taken at photo booths so I created that look in Photoshop.  I really like the way it turned out.

December Daily 10 :: Inspired by Ali’s page from Day 8 that shows a grouping of holiday stuff , I created the grid below on my sewing machine and included photos from the day’s events.

December Daily 11 :: Our holiday card — I did not make any handmade cards this year!  The cute gal on the right came over for a holiday photo play date.  Her mama loved Samuel’s pajamas so much we let her slip it on for photos.

December Daily 12 :: Time to trim the tree!  We got a little tree this year and put it on top of a little side table.  Surprisingly, Samuel was not all over the tree like we originally thought.  It is in his play area but he was only over there half a dozen times — most of which was to get his new rocket pillow.  The page on the left showcases our new ornaments.

December Daily 13 :: Documented a mobile and happy ten month old here.

December Daily 14 :: Wrapping gifts this year was more challenging with a little guy to help you tear paper and unravel tape and ribbon.  He was everywhere — getting into everything and opening gifts that were wrapped.  I wasted so much wrapping paper this year … had to buy more wrapping paper (unheard of for me since I always buy it on clearance after Christmas).

December Daily 15 ::  Journaling here done in Samuel’s voice — we were out buying Christmas gifts and we found some gifts for me!  This winter, we added four new hats to my collection: brown bear, giraffe, Cookie Monster, and Yeti the Abominable Snowman!

This project was definitely a labor of love.  I am so glad that I took the time to document our stories this December.  What a treasure it will be for Samuel in years to come.

Thank you for visiting.  Leave a comment with a link to your project.  I’d love to see your December Daily too.

My mom and sister are hilarious together.

Untitled from Autumn Nguyen on Vimeo.

1) Winter break officially started at 12:45 pm on Friday.  Yay.

2) I am a bit behind in documenting December Daily.  I am having to make a few last minute gifts so there isn’t much time to update December Daily.

3) I am doing my best to get caught up.  Here’s a peek at what I’ve been working on …

I actually took pictures for days 08-11 but they didn’t turn out very well — I was balancing my little guy in one arm and trying to snap photos with my 5+ pound camera in the other.  Look for an update later this week.

4) I asked for more animal hats for Christmas and several of them are here.

5) Lots of firsts for Samuel this week –  sitting up and holding his bottle by himself, crawling on his knees and feet (he has somewhat of a Gollum crawl — i really need to get it on tape), pulling himself up to a standing position and cruising along furniture (and toys), eating cauliflower (and loving it), visiting Santa (somewhat traumatic experience) and getting a kick out of watching + helping me wrap presents.

Samuel turned 10 months today — that’s two months away from being a year!!  Oh, my!  Where did the time go?

Because it is my little man’s 10-month birthday (and since it is his first holiday season), I thought it was appropriate to devote a page to him.  Here’s a look at Day 7.

Journaling :: 10 at Ten Months — Samuel, at ten months, you …

1.     Love to climb all over us.  And pull yourself into a standing position.  You love viewing things from this new vantage point.

2.     Rock on your knees more and more every day – getting ready to crawl on all fours.  You army crawl like nobody’s business – especially when you spot something you want.

3.     Clap your hands in excitement.

4.     Fight sleep.  Everyday.  Would rather play than sleep – that’s why naps at school are only about 30 minutes per day.  You are so interested in other things; you can’t lie still while we change your diapers or clothes.

5.     Reach for us all of the time.  You love to be held most of the time.  Occasionally, you wiggle your way down to stand.  And when you want to stand, you won’t bend your legs to sit.

6.     Love your toys.  You especially love to knock down blocks.

7.     Whine and kick your legs when you see a bottle.

8.     Are a scientist in the making.  You like to pick little things up with your thumb and pointer finger, hold it out in front of your face, and examines it fully by moving your little hands around.

9.     Adore your dad.  You like to visit him in his office.  When you see him, your eyes light up, you squeal in excitement and flash the biggest smile ever – a smile that shows off your two adorable little teeth!

10.   Love to snuggle and rest your head on our shoulder.  We must admit – we love it too!

Tucked in this envelope is the story of Sarah’s quilt.  I helped my friend, Jeanne, turn an idea of a photo blanket into a cherished heirloom.  I designed the quilt and  Debbie from the Creative Needle meticulously pieced everything together and quilted it with love.  Debbie, your work is absolutely amazing.

Samuel loves to take the books out of the basket and look through them.  Tonight, he did just that.  He took them out one by one — touching and examining each with eyes of wonder and delight.

Happy 10 months, my boy!

Energetic.  Funny.  Spunky.  Adorable.  Cute.  Happy.  Curious.  Lean.  Long.  Strong.  Impatient (when it comes to food).  Sweet.  Loving.

My life is richer, busier, messier, funner, and fuller with you.

Thank you for reminding me to slow down and enjoy the little things.  For reminding me of things that I take for granted — like the ability to pull yourself up in a sitting position and pushing yourself up to a standing position to experience a new level of freedom — call for big celebrations.  For being so loving and letting me hold you like a baby — even if it is only for a few seconds.

Thank you for being you.  You are amazing, just the way you are.

Love you.