PL2016 - August Camping Trip

So, in my Project Life catch up for 2016, I knew I wanted to include a camping trip we did with friends.

At the end of August, we went camping to Kananaskis with another family. 

Our boys played hockey together for 3 years, and our girls became rink rat besties. We became quite close. In fact, it was the summer before that my girlfriend invited the kids and I to camp with them for a few days. It was thanks to this friend, that I realized, I actually enjoyed camping. 

[I remember our drive out to meet them, that summer, when Madelyn told me "Mummy, you're going to love this so much, you'll wish we camped all the time" To myself I thought, poor sweet girl... You couldn't be further from the truth.  Imagine my surprise, when I realized how much I enjoyed myself.]

I suddenly thought, Gosh, we're missing out. It's what got me on the band wagon, and searching Kijiji for a trailer of our own.

So thanks to Lise, we now have our own little trailer. It's perfect. 

Any way, back to the camping trip. We went to Elkwood in Kananaskis. The original forecast wasn't great, but we ended up having great weather. I neglected to pack shorts, I'd packed for the arctic, so that's another reason we ended up having great weather. When we got there, they had ONLY lifted the ban and opened bike paths, due to the grizzly bear activity. There were signs warming of bears, everywhere. Having said that, this scared of bear girl, had seen bears on every camping trip so far... Why would this be any different? 

We jam packed much into our camping trip. We all brought bikes, and biked from our campground down to the Lower Lake of Kananaskis.  We rewarded ourselves with ice cream of course, at the Bolton Creek campground. 

We hiked up to Rawson Lake, which was definitely on my bucket lists of hikes. The view was worth the entire uphill trek. 

We also rented a canoe on the Lower Lakes and the kids all took turns [boys and then girls of course] paddling around the lake. 

The most comedic thing we saw, was a group of tourists, get in the canoe and then promptly over turn it. It all happened in slow motion, Barry and Lise went to the rescue. We still tell that story, and can make tears stream down our cheeks. Note to self, make sure you know a thing or two about a canoe, before heading into a freezing body of water. 

For this layout, I wanted to include as many photos as possible. So I did a collage type page. There is one small section left to journal in. I knew that the photos would bring back the majority of the memories. We had a great camping trip, and look forward to doing it again.

The following Sahlin Studio Product was used:

Photo Rounds Days

Flashback Kit

Flashback Journal Cards 

PL2017 - Week 1

Here is my layout for week 1:

Starting off 2017 strong. 

We celebrated the ringing in of 2017 with friends. There were many laughs, and much wine consumed... 

The first week of 2017 was busy, we started off with a ringette tourney in Red Deer. It was also the same weekend that Esso Minor Hockey week officially started. Mason and Barry had to stay home for hockey, so Red Deer ended up being a girls weekend. My Mum joined Madelyn and I. [There's no reason she shouldn't experience first hand what getting to an 8:00 am game looks like] We left the hotel at 6:55 am, to be at the rink for 7:15. Fun times...

The drive to Red Deer was awful, done mostly in the dark with extremely poor visibility.   The couple of days in Red Deer were awful. Lots of snow, and it was so very cold there. We ended up leaving Red Deer to come home mid-afternoon. It was so much better to be driving when you could actually see. 

The following Sahlin Studio product was used:

Pure Happiness Elements

2017 Calendar Cards

Number Journal Cards

PL2017 - Title Page

I just went back and looked through my previous Project Life Albums. I started documenting project life, the same year I got my iPhone, it was 2013.

I still remember the MAIN reason for wanting an iPhone, was so I could have instagram. It was the very first app I downloaded. I've never looked back. I LOVE it still. In the past 5 years, I've posted over 2100+ photos. In the beginning, I used filters and frames. Too funny.  Now I just post the photo. If there's any editing to do, it's usually done in either PicTapGo or Snapseed. Two other apps I love. 

I love pictures. I always have.

I haven't yet decided exactly how I'm going to document project life this year. The weekly format, as I have in the past. Or a specific story that happened during a specific week. But I do know this, I'm going to keep on with it. I love it. My kids still love to sit and look through the albums. So I don't do it just for me. I do it for all of us. 

Here is the title page for 2017.

I'm looking forward to yet another year of our 'every day'. 

Thanks for joining us on this journey. 

The following Sahlin Studio products used: 

Drift Away Elements

Drift Away Papers 

January Template of the Month

Oh my goodness, it looks as though I forgot to post this! Eeks! For some reason this post was sitting in my drafts.

Better late than never!

Here is a layout using Sahlin Studio template freebie. This template is available to download for free, for the month of January only. Go and check it out here before it's gone!

I altered the layout slightly. Added a few more embellishments. Sometimes I like to use the template just as it is, and sometimes I just need something more. 

These photos were taken this past summer. We went camping with friends and hiked up to Rawson Lake in Kananaskis. The hike was listed as moderate. The first kilometre or so, was fairly flat. The remainder of the hike was pretty much an uphill steep climb.  As mentioned in my journaling, I have seen this place posted time and time again on Instagram, and I was was eager to see it for myself. We were rewarded indeed, with a spectacular view. We lucked out with the weather too.

The following Sahlin Studio product was used:

Shine Bright - Kit
Shine Bright - Journal Cards

PL2016 - July

Because of our computer kafuffle, my last project life layout was at the end of June.

This summer, I worked on a number of things, but didn't send them to be printed. They're are a number of layouts I worked on, in the wee hours of the night, that I don't know whether I'll ever get or not. Grrrr... 

Now that we're officially into 2017 [Happy New Year!] it seems daunting to 'catch  up' on 6 months worth of project life pages. 

At first I thought I might just forget it, and call 2016 a wrap. Just start with the new year. But the more I thought about it, the more convinced I was, that I couldn't just let it go. 

There were some things that happened, that I didn't want to forget. But I don't exactly have to document everything.  So I created a 2 page spread, for the month of July. 

I may just do this through to December. 

I know I'll continue on with project life. I love it too much not to. But I'm not exactly sure what format I'll use. 

I don't print very many scrapbook pages any more. It's just too expensive. I think I'll plan on documenting more the same pocket style that I do for project life. Perhaps some months will have more detail and some months less. I'm still not sure how I'll approach it.

Any way, here are my pages for July.

 

Sahlin Studio Product Used: 

All About This Digital Stamps 

West Coast - Mini Vaycay

I was hoping to get a post in, long before now, of our trip to the west coast.

We decided to take a mini family vaycay for several reasons. 

Reason one, we had air miles that needed used up before we lost them at the end of the year. [This has been a hot topic, because very recently, AirMiles announced that said miles won't expire after all] 

Reason two, with my recent job, I wasn't able to take much time off this summer, and therefore we didn't go away on our annual vacation. 

So, we booked a trip to the West Coast. 

The kids were thrilled. The last time we were at the ocean as a family was 2012. Madelyn has talked about going back ever since. 

We arrived in Victoria early. Very early. Like by 8:15 am, and had the whole day stretching out ahead of us. It was raining when we picked up our rental car, but as we made our way to the beach, it began to POUR. We had anticipated grey, rainy days, but I had not anticipated a monsoon. 

Lucky for us, when we got to the beach, the rain had stopped. At one point, the clouds even broke up, and we got to see blue sky. This ended up being the only time our entire trip, that we saw blue sky...

We brought rain 'resistant' clothes. But it took us mere minutes to realize that what we required was 'water proof'. [Mental note, if we were ever move to the west coast, we would most definitely need to invest in proper rain gear]

Here are a few images from our afternoon at French Beach. 

That was our driest day. From there, it only got wetter.

The next day, we decided to venture up to Botanical Beach. It's the farthest up the coast, at Port Renfrew. Madelyn was most excited about this trip, because she was ever so anxious to check out tidal pools. It's at least an hour drive away, on curvy roads, in nice weather. But the weather wasn't nice. It was absolutely pouring buckets of rain. We had the windshield wipers on high speed. It was so foggy, that we couldn't really see much. So we cautiously and slowly, headed in that direction. 

Let me just say, pictures do not do justice to what we saw. 

The intensity of the angry ocean took my breath away. The size of the waves... They were huge. It was so windy, and the waves were so angry, that it actually made me sick to my stomach to be standing so close to the water. [Though we were not close in that sense, we were up high and far away from it] But I wasn't comfortable until we got back on the trail again. We were all soaked. Madelyn was the only one who had a rain suit, but it just made her get all heated up and hot. 

On our way back from Botanical Beach, it was pretty obvious that the storm had intensified while we'd made the trek down to the beach. There was debris all over the highway. There were fallen trees all over. In fact, we had to make our way under one, in our vehicle... We carefully followed the guy ahead of us. By the time we got back to our hotel, we'd seen more than a dozen downed trees. Some had already been chainsawed so that vehicles could get through. 

Another mental note to self, if you move to the west coast, you require rain gear and a chain saw... 

We learned that evening, that the west coast was getting the remnants of former Super Typhoon Songda. We were driving along the coast highway, during the 2nd of 3 super storms. Like I mentioned, the photos don't do justice. We saw mother nature at her angriest, and she's more than impressive.

Next up, China Beach. This beach was/is my favourite. I have to say however, that high tide was noon-ish every day, so the water levels were always very high no matter which beach were were at. That meant, no exploring. Madelyn was devastated. We all were, because the tide was so high, and the water so stormy, we couldn't really do much but stand at the edge and look.

We ended up doing China Beach twice, the first day it rained so hard, we were absolutely soaked. Again, Miss Madelyn the only one in a rain suit. Of the 4 of us, she was the driest.

As soon as those boys left that rock they were standing on, and walked away, it was covered in water.. They were lucky not to be on it when that happened.

The second trip to China Beach, it actually stopped raining. Woot-woot! So we finally got to mooch around without getting soaked.

Even with the rain, we had a great time.

I think it's safe to say that the beach is our happy place. We didn't get to beach comb, scour and check out tide pools, like we'd have liked to. I guess the solution to that is to make a trip back next summer.

Gigi

I had planned to create a post about our recent trip to the west coast. We spent five rainy days in Sooke, just after thanksgiving. We saw more rain, that I ever could have imagined. We saw awesome stormy seas. We saw crazy heave fog and power outages. We were there, through the megastore [lucky us, without even planning]

But, that post will have to wait, because this post is about Gigi. 

My grandmother, my Dad's mum, passed away last weekend. She was 99 1/2 years old. She was the matriarch of the family, in every way, right until the end. 

I feel so fortunate, that I live close to my family. Both immediate, and extended. That allowed many, many visits over the years.

I can't believe that my kids got to know their Great Grandma [hence the Gigi] In fact, it was our own Mason who came up with the catchy nickname. She has been lovingly refereed to as such, for the last 14 years. 

Here are a few photos I have to share. 

She was a remarkable lady. She made the worlds best Gigi buns and Sour Cream Pie. She will be missed. 

  

This was taken in January 2016. Pretty great, for the being on the brink of 99 years young.

This one is blurry, but I love it. It's not always easy to be inconspicuous. 

Celebrating 96 in 2013. Grandkids [my brother and I] and great-grandkids. 

Christmas 2009 - look at how small the kids are. [Gigi alternated Christmas with us]