Project Life | April Pt. 2

I am rapidly getting "caught up" on Owen's baby album, even though I'm just now getting around to sharing the rest of April on the blog. If you missed the first couple of posts on this album, you can view the intro post HERE and the first part of April HERE.

So! Picking up where we left on in April. I'd shared the left side of the layout below, detailing Owen's first road trip up to the bay area. It was quick, to say the least. We were supposed to be at my sister's for Easter, but we had to turn around and head home after about 15 hours at her house because I got sick (again). Owen was just three weeks old here, and the pics on the left page (design A) are from my sister's and then from the hospital Easter weekend.

The insert on the right is an 8.5 x 11 inch page protector with several photos of Owen and Ben hanging out one afternoon at the end of the month. It's out of chronological order, but this is where it fit space-wise. I'm less concerned about this since I'm doing a monthly format this time. I love these photos and couldn't decide on just one to include, so I put them in a Paislee Press template (press plate no. 39) to keep the look clean and simple. Love the hairlines, the italicized captions, the whole thing. I added a woodgrain background with the "Brothers" title on one of the squares to ground it a bit.

Below is the next layout. I was discharged from the hospital late on Easter morning. I'm fairly certain it's because I was sitting in my hospital room, having a complete meltdown when the nurses came to do my vitals. My blood pressure was so high they had to come back in thirty minutes to give me a chance to calm down. Lo and behold! My doctor arrived within an hour and said I could get out of there before noon. So I arrived at our friends' house in time to have some brunch and see Ben participate in the big egg hunt.

I created a photo template with a title bar so I could use a bunch of egg hunt photos of Ben. This is the first Easter he's actually walking, so it was kind of a big deal to me to document it. The grey I used on the title printed way too light, so I'll have to re-do that; for now, it's fine (progress, not perfection, friends!).

The right side is a design A pocket page. I'm still experimenting with some handwritten journaling cards. Still not sure I love them, but I'm getting over it. It's easy, and as I've said before, I love seeing my Mom's handwritten words in our family albums, so I want to include some of my handwriting in our own family story. It feels organic, simple and personal, which I love.

The flip side of that page protector marks the end of the month. I included a few, favorite, random shots of Owen doing all sorts of one-month-old baby things. 

This journaling card (from the Midnight Edition) provided a great prompt for wrapping up things we're loving this month. It also gave me a way to connect an otherwise random series of photos on this page.

Below is a close-up of one of my favorite photos from the whole month: Ben holding Owen for the first time. Actually, I'm not sure he's held him since! It took Ben a little while to warm up to Owen, but when he finally did, I was just over the moon. The first week we brought Owen home, I was sort of convinced we'd ruined Ben's life :) But all is right again with the world, and at 2+ years old, I'm fairly certain Ben won't remember life without his brother.

I have a series of these but decided to keep it simple and just print one. A little design note: I'm a huge fan of mixing color and black and white photographs on the same layout or template. I use black and white when a colored version of a photo isn't exactly meshing with the other photos on the page or when I want to create some space for certain photos to pop.

And finally, I included a screen shot of a (very brief!) email Nick received on the last day of the month. They're his verbal orders, or unofficial notification of our next move. He's since received his actual orders, so I can officially announce that we are headed across the country to Newport, Rhode Island in October! Also, It's an example of my version of "embellishment"! Ha! A little, lone piece of dotted washi tape.

Veeeeeeery fancy!

This album definitely feels more like a family album than Ben's baby album did. I'm not sure how I feel about that, but I'm certainly not sweating it! This is life right now! I'm mostly just excited that by the end of this week I'll be done documenting May (which I'll be sharing over the next couple of weeks), and then at the end of June I'll work on the June layouts.

I'm loving (like, seriously LOVING) doing Project Life on a monthly basis. It's given me the freedom to document everyday stuff, special events and as much or as little as I have time to do. It's made it more enjoyable for me, and it's just working a lot better for me at this point than a daily or weekly format.

You can see all of my favorite Project Life supplies HERE, and as always, please feel free to leave any questions in the comments and I'll get back to you!

How are you doing Project Life this year? Have you made any changes?