Day in the Life- The Photos & A Few Words

This past Friday, October 15th was the second documenting day of 2021 for  Ali Edwards Day in the Life Project. Today I am sharing my favorite photos and just a few words about Friday. I will be back later in the week to share my completed project.

6:48 am // All three boys headed out for Friday breakfast and devotional time at Pop Pops.

10:31 am // My workspace in my office. 

12:11pm  // A little Friday fun. Had to evacuate the building because dust on a heat sensor in the kitchen triggered the fire alarm. It was good for all of us to have a "real world" drill. Now everyone knows exactly what the real fire alarm sounds like.

5:03pm // Somedays with little boys are tough. Hard headedness & a willingness to argue with the Mama are family traits shared by all three brothers. Today's issues had to do with a Jude who was unhappy with a grade on a paper, but who was unwilling to see how/why he made the mistakes he made. Which made the teacher/Mama very frustrated. He also did not see the need to change into pants or carry a jacket to the game, even though I told him that it was going to cool off. Sometimes we have to learn by making a mistake. He learned. Also, had to tell him not to slam my car door when he got in. He told me he didn't. I then had to explain that I would not have told him not to slam it, if he hadn't slammed it. Good grief. 

 5:50 pm  // Pre-game warmup. Love sitting the empty stands watching my boys get ready to play. Love that Jude has the maturity, patience, and interest to take it all in as well. 

6:41 // Carter was a captain for tonight's game. Learning to accept this Senior business and not let it hurt my heart every time I think of it being the "last time" for this or that is HARD. Just trying to take each day of this Senior year, live it fully, and to record the memories on my heart.

6:57 pm // Got to watch all three boys run out of the helmet because the elementary players were announced and ran out before the big boys. Watched Jude smile the entire time he was running. Such a big and fun opportunity for him. Also, he lacks full control of his legs as he runs. He looked a little like me when I run. We won't tell him that though.

7:00 pm // A rare selfie of the two of us. We don't normally think to take photos of us together, so capturing this today for this project was nice. 

9:10 pm // These were actually taken Saturday morning off our schools replay of the game, because I did not have my big camera at the game and I was too busy enjoying the game to snap a lot of photos. Not sure how I will put these together in the album and I fully expect them to be blurry, but I wanted to make sure and capture this memory. 

As a Sophomore Ethan doesn't get in often. He got in towards the end of fourth quarter, got a pass thrown to him, and gained a few yards. On the next play the ball was thrown to Carter, who is our main wide receiver, and he scored his first touchdown of this season. Because Ethan was still on the field, they met up in the end zone to celebrate. It was a moment that was so much fun to watch and will make for an amazing memory for both of them. 

Not sure how I will complete my album or if all the photos (and some I didn't share) will make the final cut, but I wanted to share a few favorites and start getting my brain in a space to create.

Thanks for stopping by!

Another Non-Traditional Christmas Card Color Scheme

 I used the current Color Throwdown #664 color scheme to create another Christmas card. Love pushing myself to create without adhering to a traditional Christmas color scheme.

I got frustrated while making this one & I still see mistakes that kind of bug me, but after putting it down and walking away, I was able to come back to it and finish. Sometimes walking away for 24 hours helps. 

I had never created a card with a floating element before and I actually like how that turned out. The woodgrain background stamp is an older one that I always gravitate to when I need a woodgrain. The eucalyptus leaves & the snowflake are dies from Simon Says Stamp & the sentiment is from there as well. I do love adding sequins to most of my cards, this time it was actually a necessity to cover some splatters that actually ended up on the white background. I also added a few small pearls to help disguise some of the splatters that had run amok. 

Happy with how this one turned out and I learned a lot in the process. Definitely things I would do a little differently design-wise and time-wise, but I'm proud of myself for powering through and not scrapping the whole thing. 

Fall Card

 Made a card today that is larger than my normal A2 size. This one is 5x7 and is landscape. Years ago I bought a large Memory Box wood-mounted pumpkin stamp and matching die. I have used it for all kinds of projects. Today I used it along with The Color Throwdown #662 color scheme of purple, orange, green, and kraft to create a fall card.

I used Carved Pumpkin, Tea Dye, Crushed Olive, Dusty Concord, Victorian Velvet, Seedless Preserves, Peeled Paint, & Rustic Wilderness Distress Inks to blend and watercolor my stamped images. 

I covered a piece of scrap cardstock with pieces of old dictionary paper, inked over it, and then die cut it using the matching die. After stamping, watercoloring, and fussy cutting the images from the Simon Says Stamp Delicate Flowers stamp set, I adhered them & popped them up on top of the pumpkin. I finished the card with a sentiment from the Simon Says Stamp Thanks and Leaves stamp set, some splatters of Perfect Pearls Mist in Heirloom Gold, and a few iridescent sequins.

Christmas Cards 2021

I handmake around 50 Christmas cards each year with our boy's pictures on them to send out to friends and family. Besides those cards, I always end up needing additional Christmas cards to send, so I am trying to get a head start on those. Today I used Freshly Made Sketches #505 sketch to create my first Christmas card of the 2021 holiday season.

For my card, I wanted to go with a less traditional color scheme and ended up with Distress Inks in Evergreen Bough, Speckled Egg, and Iced Spruce. I used water on a large flat paintbrush to wet the entire piece of watercolor cardstock, then I brushed and dabbed each Distress Ink on using a round paintbrush. I made sure to blend the colors where they met. 

Once dry, I edged the watercolor piece with the same Distress Inks & then mounted it on a dark grey sparkly cardstock. The greeting is from a set I picked up at Michael's a few years ago. The large snowflakes were die cut from white cardstock and vellum. There are additional smaller snowflakes that were die cut from vellum as well. It felt a little flat and I wanted to add a little bit of color, so I added a little more texture with Tim Holtz Greens Mini pieces.

I finished the card with some Perfect Pearls mist, Stickles, and a few sequins.

Because I tend to reach for the more traditional reds, greens, and golds when it comes to Christmas cards, it was a lot of fun to step out of that mindset and try something different. I'm going to challenge myself to find other non-traditional color schemes and make cards with those as well.

Simon Says Stamp September Kit on the Month

 I made a few more cards using the SSS September card kit of the month. My goal is to use up most of the consumable products and then move the remains into my card-making/stamp stash.

For this card, I am playing along with The Color Throwdown #660 color challenge. I love the dark, rich colors on the inspiration piece. 

The blues of the background really drew me in, so I decided to stay with a blue & used an old piece of patterned paper in my stash for the background. I stamped and embossed the jar of flowers from the SSS Sunshine Flowers stamp set. Using a wide variety of Distress inks in blues, greens, and oranges, I watercolored the image and then stamped the "Thank You" sentiment from the stamp set. Since I did not get the matching dies in the kit, I fussy cut the image and popped it up onto the navy patterned paper, and adhered it to a gold piece of paper from my stash, then I adhered the whole card front to the green card base. I finished the card with a scattering of small sequins. 

Simon Says Stamp September Kit of the Month

 I have a deep love of sunflowers, so this Sunshine Flowers Simon Says Stamp card kit of the month was perfect. I spent this weekend using the card kit to create some much-needed thank you cards.

For this first card, I used the Freshly Made Sketches #503 sketch.

Using an older square punch I punched out three small squares out of Tim Holtz watercolor cardstock. I used Distress inks and water to loosely watercolor the background and then I spritzed the wet watercolor with Perfect Pearls water. Once dry each square was machine stitched with white thread.

I then stamped the single sunflower image from the SSS Sunshine Flowers stamp set in black ink. Once embossed in clear embossing powder, I then watercolored the image using Distress Inks. The center of the flower was then coated with Walnut Stain Distress Stickles which are sadly a discontinued product from Ranger and Tim Holtz. After fussy-cutting the image, I popped it up on the watercolored squares & added the Tim Holtz Ideology "Thank You" label sticker, and finished the card with a scattering of sequins.