Project Life- Week 22, The Baking Birthday Party

So today I’m sharing Week 22 from last year. I haven’t gotten in the groove of 2013 quite yet, but am trying to post on the blog more regularly, so here goes…
This week included my daughter’s 9th Birthday party, and although I did scrap a traditional 12x12 layout of the event, there was really a lot I wanted to include here. As it turns out, I probably included MORE in the Project Life album than I was able to in the traditional double-page spread… thanks to a few inserts!

Here is the overall spread as it looks in the book:

There are 3 inserts total, so you can see then stacked up on the right side here. I mostly used Echo Park’s “Sweet Day” collection. I just loved the colors and they matched perfectly with the party theme colors! There’s a bit of My Minds Eye Nostalgia and Basic Grey’s Life of the Party mixed in there.

A close-up of the left page:

This includes some non-party things from earlier in the week- a softball game, a book-club meeting and some swimming in the pool.

Here are the inserts:

For the 1st insert, I wanted to include a portrait-type photo of each girl that attended the party, so I used baseball-card page protector (trimmed to only 6 slots) to hold all the girls front and back, plus a few other shots of the cupcakes and aprons & hats, and a few embellished cards. I made the “Girls Only” digital card and printed it on cardstock. As always, I added tabs to the inserts.

The 2nd insert is a trimmed WRMK page protector, holding basic 4x6 photos from the party- making lasagna, salad, garlic bread, cupcakes and then a chocolate fountain for the evening. Not much embellishing here, just an Elle’s Studio tag and Basic Grey sticker.

I also wanted to include the invites we made for the party:

For now, this is just in a page protector “scrap”, stapled to create the margin. I finally ordered some of Becky Higgins 5x7 protectors, and some Simple Stories Snap 6x8 page protectors, so this will likely be replaced with one of those and get a tab. The invite itself is made using all Stampin Up products.

And finally, the full right side of the week:

This was just a few other non-party photos. A music festival at the school, a favorite crab legs dinner & the annual swimmers-ear-drops-soaking-in pose on the couch. More Echo park products here, a few Project Life Clementine cards, and bits and pieces of other things.

I love that I was able to keep the party contained to all the inserts… it allowed me to still showcase all the other non-party happenings of the week. And I feel like a got a pretty good summary of the party. I’ve come to realize that the majority of my journaling is just the who, when where and why kind of stuff and I really have set a personal goal for 2013 to do more emotional story-telling. Since the party was after her actual birthDAY, and I did do a personal note to her on the day she turned 9, I guess I’m ok with not having anything more “personal” in here for the party. But I’ll be making a conscious effort to do better in 2013.

I’ll do a separate post on the specific party details later. Not scrapbook-related, but more party-planning kinds of things. Decorations, activities, etc.