March Istagram Photo A Day Challenge

Last month I decided to take part in the Instagram Photo A day Challenge.  It was definitely a lot of work but SO much fun !!  So I want to share with you the images that I had captured over the month. I have to say that I didn't spend a lot of time, or even a little time thinking and pondering about what to take a picture of. I just took it !!

If you want to check out the post about the challenge and the list of challenges click here .



Day 1 | UP - We were in Disneyland and so I got one of Noah up in the tree house on Pirate Island.

Day 2 | Fruit - Went to McDonald's for lunch while driving to Arizona. This was the closest thing to fruit that I could find for the day !!

Day 3 | Your neighborhood - Was not home so I took a picture of Downtown Phoenix.

Day 4 | Bedside - My side of the bed as it was that day

Day 5 | Smile  - My two girls were so happy to run through the sprinklers in their swimsuits

Day 6 | 5 pm - Me and Maddie

Day 7 | Something you wore | This was my favorite one. My parents were in town and we went to celebrate Grandma's birthday at Olive Garden(it was really her birthday. We were also celebrating Katelyn and Maddie's birthday since my parents were not able to be there for the girls birthdays. My mom bought all three of them birthday hats !! 

Day 8 | Window - My view out the office/scrap room window. Our tree in bloom.

Day 9 | Red - Patrick went out to work in Ventura today and picked these beauties while he was there.

Day 10 | Loud - The kids were making a pile of pillows to jump in. The laughter was very loud.

Day 11 | Someone you talked to - Me and Katelyn had a long chat about stuff.

Day 12 | Fork - Patrick and I went out on a date night. We went to RJ's for dinner and had chocolate cake for dinner.

Day 13 | A Sign - Patrick was working on location today and I asked him to get a picture of a sign

Day 14 | Clouds - Clouds at the park

Day 15 | Car - I substituted car for truck. Patrick was still on location so I asked him to get a picture of the BIG trucks

Day 16 - Sunglasses - Patrick on location in his sunglasses

Day 17 | Green - Me and Patrick in our St. Patrick's day green. After the kids were in bed we ate some chips and guacamole and watched a movie.

Day 18 | A corner of your home - my favorite corner, my scrap corner. Not much right now but I have big plans in the future.

Day 19 | Funny - Noah loves to "help" me when I am mopping the floor.  He is so funny when he tries to help.

Day 20 - Before and After -

Before (my lunch of a bagel with egg salad on it)

After

Day 21 | Delicious - We love fruit

Day 22 | Kitchen Sink - Just made a salad

Day 23 | Moon - A little confession. I forgot to take one of the moon the night of the 23 rd so I got one of it up in the sky the next day.

Day 24 | An animal - The newest members of the family. Maggie(the chesnut) and Crystal (the gray) mares (female horses).

Day 25 | Breakfast - All these cereals mixed together is the kids's favorite.

Day 26 | Keys - Our key ring

Day 27 | Your name - I chose Katelyn's name that she spelled out in beans at school that week

Day 28 | Trash - Since I didn't want to photograph the trash can I choose the big trash can outside on the side of the house

Day 29 | Feet - I chose the kids's feet while they waited for Patrick's plane to come in

Day 30 | Toy - The beloved Rocket

Day 31 | Where you relex - Since we were in Ventura I took one of the girls on the beach. It was very relaxing there.

That concludes my March according to Instagram. It was so much fun, I just might join in again sometime soon. She has photo prompts for every month so if you think you might want to play along check out her site. ( in the above link ).

I plan on adding them in all together in an insert into my PL album. 

P.S. So I was planning on finishing my week 9 of PL but I ran out of ink and big paper faster than I ordered it. It is coming tomorrow but I am leaving on Friday(no time to finish it tomorrow) for a road trip back to Utah. I was really hoping to get it done so that I could share with you all.  I guess it will have to wait until I get back, so please be patient with me.  I will be back next week. Take care until then.

Page Protector Tip

Today I want to take a little time to talk to you about page protectors. Yes, page protectors. I am sure most of you, at some point or another, have thought about them and asked "How do I store these?" I've been there people.

I want to share my preferred method of storing my page protectors. For years and years now I have stored them in a empty 12 X 12 Album. It works great. They stay up straight, they don't fall of the shelf, they don't get all bent up.

 The page protector is growing in popularity now a days with PL and other like projects on the market. They come in a million different shapes and  sizes. I started this year with all my page protectors all together in my empty 12 X 12 album.  It seemed fine but I had one problem. When I wanted a certain page protector I would have to go hunt, and flip through the whole album to find it. Because they are all clear and see through, I had to go through each one to find the one I wanted.  This past week I sat down and made some dividers for my album. Now everything is all sorted and in it's proper place. And best of all I can find the certain page protector in no time.

I cut up strips of cardstock to make my dividers. I cut them 2 1/2 X 12. Then I punched three holes using one of the page protectors as a guide.

The next step was to add some clear tabs. I picked some up at Home Depot.

I hand wrote the different page protectors names/size.  When writing the Becky Higgins page protectors tabs I wrote the name of the design on the tab.

Now I was ready to add them to my album. For those smaller page protectors (the 6X6 ect.) I put them in the front without a divider. I started using my dividers with my 6X12 page protectors.

Here is a look at the completed album. All my lovely page protectors sorted and divided.  Ahhh !! I feel so much better.

I hope this post has helped or inspired you in one way or another. If any of you have any other great ways to store your page protectors please let me know and be sure to leave a comment. I would love to hear from you !! 

**Album is American Crafts 12 X 12 in Brown 

P.S. The Becky Higgins Plain Scrapbook Dividers would be great for this project.

P.P.S. I am slowly working on my next PL week. It was the week we went to Disneyland, so I have SO many photos !! Thanks for being patient with me. Life has been SOOOO busy around here.  I will hopefully be able to share sometime soon !!

Life's a Beach

I'm back !! I really did have some posts planned so I apologize for being MIA lately.

Life surprised us with an early spring break present. Patrick was called to a job in Ventura, California. It is about 2 hours from our home and right on the coast. The job was only supposed to be a day long job, but stretched out over 4 days !!

On Saturday we went and stayed with Patrick at the hotel. Right on the water, great balcony view of the beach, playground on the beach right nearby. Although the beach was really rocky and no sand at that spot.

    View for the balcony

We spent the next morning poolside, with a great view of the HUGE waves that were forming that morning.

Spent a little time at the playground before we had a Noah related breakdown that ended our stay at the beach. Lunch was in order.

We decided that we wanted to upgrade hotels and booked an awesome room at the Mandalay Bay Hotel and Resort. WOW !! Is all I have to say about that hotel. More to come on that. Before we could check in at our new hotel we had a few hours to kill. I found this wonderful HUGE park right next to our new hotel, thanks to my iphone (LOVE my phone).

The kids played for a few hours on the playground, which just happened to be pirate themed. The kids are huge into pirates right now. They also had a treat from the Ice Cream man, which they never get to do at home !! He always comes around but I never have cash on me. So they were super excited.

Patrick was done for the day and met us at the park so we could check into the hotel. Our room was the closest one to the water and had a HUGE balcony with a great view of the ocean. We will be staying there again for sure.

Our view from the balcony.

After we got settled in to our room we walked down the stairs and onto the beach. The weather was a little coldish for my taste. And the first day it was SUPER windy. But that didn't stop us. When the kids first saw the sand hills right outside our room there were filled with  joyful laughter as they ran towards the sand. They parked themselves right there on the first available sand spot and it took about 15 minutes and a lot of coaxing to get them to move towards the water. They were so excited.

They played in the sand

Checked out the waves

Day 2 at the beach

Much warmer and not so windy. The kids played on the sand dunes some more. They hardly stood still long enough for me to get any good shots of them. Oh well.

Playing their little game of tag with the waves. Getting ready to run.

Maddie was so funny on the beach. She was always doing this hilarious happy dance of sorts. It was so cute to watch.

We made it a habit of swimming in the pool every morning. Noah would sit on the steps of the pool and then he would come and sit with me on the pool chairs. He loved to play Angry birds on my phone while the girls swam.

The girls have not yet had swim lessons (I'm looking into lessons right now) and so they like to use their life jackets so that they can swim by themselves. Katelyn loves to jump in the pool. She calls her jumps, her tricks. She is always yelling for me to watch !!

The last day we were there (yesterday) I wanted to visit another park that I had heard of from my phone. It was a wonderful find. They had a sunken ship, with a zip line. A playground and it was right on the water.

The weather was great yesterday. It wasn't windy and it was a little bit warmer that before. The kids got in the water again.

The girls jumping over the waves

We were all wet after playing in the water again, Noah finally decided to get in the water and no more than 30 seconds later he went too far into the water and a huge wave came and knocked him over !! He was wet from head to toe. That was our cue to be done for the day.

So by this time in our trip none of us had any remotely clean clothes. I had originally only packed clothes for a 1 nighter. And the hotels laundry room was not in service !! We headed back to car all wet to find something clean. In the end the kids ended up in their jammies for the drive home. It wouldn't have been so bad but we had to stop for dinner and boy were we a sight !! The hair was all of a mess, pj's on the kids (it was about 4:30 when we ate), and red faces to boot. Oh well. We ended our trip at one of the local fruit stands to pick up a box of strawberries, oranges, grapefruit, and avocados. All of which were grown on the side of the road of where we were at !! YUMM !!

That concludes our beach trip everyone. If you are still with me, Thank you. I know it was a long post. We really had a great time.

Now it is time to play catch up. Laundry, un-pack, and I still want to try to do some of the things that we had planned to do for Spring Break.

Have a great rest of your Spring Break everyone, if it is your spring break.

Until next time.