InstaFriday {December recap}

 

It feels like I just turned the calendar to December.  And now it's already a few days into January.

I've had the laziest, yuckiest start to the new year that I can ever remember. We got hit by sickness, the Christmas decorations are still up  (usually they go down the day after Christmas). I have work I've put off for weeks that I need to get to now.  And we are having a super hard time getting back into routine.  Can.not.get.out.of.bed.  No one. Maybe that's our fault for not staying on a good routine over the break. 

But the calendar is forcing us to get back to our normal.  The kids are back in school.  I start jewelry shows again soon.  And next week all of our activities start back again too.

I haven't thought one minute about goals or resolutions or desires for the year. Usually I am very reflective at the new year.

It is what it is though.

2013 is here whether I am ready or not.

 

So even though the calendar has flipped, here's a little of what our December looked like via Instagram.

 

 1. cutting down our tree  2. yummy pepper steak  3. christmas craft

4. mason rides the bus  5. school christmas program  6. best mail ever

7. light 'em up project  8. late night walmart escape in my slippers  9.  my morning buddy

 1. taylor washes the dishes   2. christmas bunting   3. love my kitchen with no walls

4.  my boys   5.  winter baby  6.  christmas card helpers

7.  more christmas bunting  8. chillin on mom's bed  9. family date night to sumo

 



 1. prayer partner gift exchange  2. caroling at the nursing home  3.  our caroling team

4. blessing bags for the homeless shelter  5.  kindergarten party treats  6.  polar express night with cousins

7.  rock paper scissors tournament  8.  sleeping under the christmas tree  9.  christmas day nap by the fire



1. christmas morning joys  2. legos and worship music  3. first time with a spoon

4. hours of hockey in the hall  5. their first OU shirts  6.  sweet airport homecoming

7.  new years eve buffet  8. celebratory drinks  9. happy new year

 

 

 

 

Hope you have a great weekend!  Mine will be GREAT - I'm off for a night away with a handsome man to celebrate 8 years together!  (I think this is our first night away together with no kids since Gavin was born!)

 



a year of instagrams {instagram book}

I hope you are having a great start to 2013. 

Our last week was spent with family, nearly every day.  I love being able to shut off nearly every other aspect of my life, and just spend a week doing nothing but hanging out.

The busiest thing for me is the food.  I'm in the kitchen a lot during the holidays, mostly by choice, so I'm not complaining at all. It can be a lot of work, and I really do enjoy it at the time.  But then it gets to be Jan. 2, our first day back into a normal routine, and I want nothing to do with the kitchen.  So Pizza Hut will be delivering our dinner tonight.

 

 

I started my first project of the year on New Year's Day.

I spent a lot of the day organizing 2012 pictures and creating a Blurb book of our Instagram pictures.

I think I'll wait to see if a good deal comes along from Blurb.com before I order it.  But it's done at least.

 

 

My goal is to keep my Instagram pictures organized in their own file, instead of mixed in with all my other phone pics.  So I now will have a folder each month for IG pictures only.  Then next year's book will go much faster!  And maybe, just maybe, I'll do the collages throughout the year.

 

I realize that Blurb offers an Instagram book. It connects to your IG account and brings your photos in for you.  It sounded pefect! So I tried it.  There were a few things I didn't like, but maybe I just didn't know how to figure it all out.  #1 - there weren't many layout options, either one large picture on each page - which means my book would be well over 300 pages long, or there was a 2x2 grid.  I really wanted a bigger grid than that, and didn't want this book to be super long like my blog books.  #2.  No matter how I tried to get it to arrange the pictures, my pages started with the end of 2012 and worked backwards.  This annoyed me too. I wanted to look at my book in chronolocial order.  You would think that the "arrange by date, oldest pictures first" would have done the trick, but it didn't. The only option that I could find to fix this was to arrange the pages myself.  But that was going to take forever.

I also started to create my own grids with Photoshop Elements.  I got the grid built, but because I don't have the "convert to frame" tool, my pictures wouldn't just snap into place already sized for each square.  I had to drag each picture down to the size of the square. Again, this was taking forever.

Can someone tell me if a new version of PSE has the "convert to frame" tool, or if my understanding that it only comes with some "designer toolkit" add-on is correct?

Or is there another way to get your photos to snap into place quickly?

 

So I ended up going to PicMonkey.  I created 1 or 2 grids for each month. It went MUCH faster.  The Auto-Fill button was wonderful!

Then I was able to just upload these collages into the BookSmart software where I created my Blurb book.

 There are things that I would change.  I didn't plan out titles for each month.  I couldn't really get each month to have an even number of pictures to fill the grids evenly.  But I got to a point I just wanted to be done with it.  I spent so much time figuring out that best way to even do the book, that I didn't want to go back and re-do all the PicMonkey collages after I realized I would have done them a bit different. 

 

There are so many fun things you can do with your Instagram pictures.  Magnets, stickers, memory boxes - so fun!  This link has a good list of them.

 

Are you on IG?  It's my favorite iPhone app! (I'm abalzer).  And now I'm super excited to have a whole year's worth printed into a book!