Goodbye 2012 school year.  Hello sunshine.  Hello summer.  Hello play dates + road trips + hikes + bike riding.  Hello outside.  Hello fresh air.  Hello Sacramento heat.  Hello friends we haven’t seen in a long time.  Hello house reorganization + garage cleaning.  Hello summer projects.

We are officially on summer vacation (as of May 22)!  We have been cleaning out the garage (and getting rid of stuff on Craigslist + Goodwill).  I’ve also been reorganizing my space to make it more functional.  I am back on the Green Tangerines Kit Club and look forward to documenting lots of stories this summer (including Week in the Life Projects from summer 2011 and spring 2012).

I learned something yesterday that will increase my productivity with layered templates — especially for the Week in the Life Projects that are on my summer list.  I bought several of Ali Edward’s digital templates, but the resizing of photos to make it fit in the layers has been holding me back.  I am using Photoshop CS5 and have watched many tutorials — and have been frustrated with all of them because they do not address how to resize photos.  Clicking the corner with the move tool does not resize anything!  After much frustration, I asked my computer geek (should have asked him months ago) and he figured it out!  Before a photo can be resized once it is moved to your layered templates, you need to hit Command-T on the Mac!  What the heck?  None of the tutorials I watched clued me into that simple command.  Was I supposed to know that already?

Once I figured how to use the digital templates, I used Ali’s 2012 Calendar template to make this:

I plan to create photo calendars for previous months and insert them into my Project Life albums and Samuel’s baby books.  So excited for summer projects!