Scrap Challenge Day 7--Completing the Layout for "Day in the Life of Mom"

If you've stuck with me, you already have a gorgeous two-page layout featuring YOU, the Mom, on Mother's Day. Finally, you've made a guest appearance in the scrapbooks you create!

Today's double-page layout is about a day in your life--just an average, everyday, day. As much as you think, "Oh, I'll remember my schedule," five years from now, you won't. It'll be different. And when you flip through the scrapbook containing this layout, feel free to email me and tell me how much you appreciate the challenge this week!

This may take a bit longer than the other challenges, depending on how fancy you want to get with it.

Supplies:

• Pictures printed from Day 4 of the challenge
• Ephemera gathered
• Journaling pen
• Adhesive
• Trimmer
• White gel pen, if desired
• Pictures of a clock--this can be stamped, a big clock chipboard (like the one I used), or go to Google images, type in "clock face" and print one of the hundred or so there. I used a cut piece from a piece of patterned paper for the one on the right side of the layout.
• Stickers, frames, clock hands, rub-ons, bling, etc.--amazingly, I didn't use any flowers on this one, but you could easily incorporate that.

Directions:
1.   I printed most of my pictures in wallet, which allowed me to fit more onto the page. But I did print two in 4x6 (punching bag pictures, and the one with my girls playing outside that I ended up trimming slightly to fit).
2.   Lay out your pictures and memorabilia in a ray pattern from the clock at the center. If you want to split the clock in two (half on the left side of the layout, and half on the right), that would work, as well. Basically, this will depend on how many pictures/ephemera you are including on the layout. Here is my layout before embellishments:
3.   I used number and letter stickers in each photo, and then journaled the rest of what was happening at that time of the day by hand. I hate my handwriting, but is is mine. And the layout is all about me, so I figured it was appropriate for once for me to write longhand.
4.   Find a title that works for your day. Since my layout is all about my favorite day of the week (Tuesday--the only day I don't have to take kids into school and have more time to write), my title was "I (heart) My Tuesdays."
5.   I tried to go through my stash of mismatched things to use on the layout. So I have a felt scroll-work embellishment that was a leftover from a past layout, clock hands from a broken clock, and miscellaneous bits and pieces I've held onto when the rest of the pack was gone. Use a mixture of number and letter sticker fonts--great way to use up letters and numbers you have leftover from previous layouts.

That's it! My only other advice is to tell it like it is. One of my favorite parts of the day is when the kids go to bed, and my husband and I have time together. Not a great "Mommy" thing of me to say, but true nonetheless. We have so little time alone together that these few minutes are precious.

Good luck and thanks for sticking with me during this week of scrapping YOUR life as a Mom...

Happily Ever After,
Dylan

Are you just joining in? Here are the links to the previous Mother's Day challenges--you're not behind! We'll wait for you to catch up.

Day 6: Completing the Mother's Day Card Layout
Day 5: Journaling about YOU from Your Kids

Day 4: Capturing a Day in the Life of Mom

Day 3: First Page of Mother's Day Card Layout

Day 2: Journaling Pros and Cons of Motherhood
Day 1: Mother's Day Challenge

Scrap Challenge Day 6: Finish Mother's Day Card Layout

In Day 5 of our challenge to incorporate more of YOU into your own scrapbook, you had your children answer some questions about you as a mom. (Aren't the answers precious?!?)

Today, we're going to incorporate that into the second half of our Mother's Day Card layout we started on Day 3.

Here's what you'll need:

• Cardstock and scrap of patterned paper you set aside from Day 3.
• Corner rounder
• Trimmer
• Adhesive
• Questions from your children (mounted on color cardstock if you prefer)
• 2 or 3 photos of your children/you, if you prefer (otherwise, you can mount your kids' answers instead)
• Embellishments (flowers, ribbons, brads, tags, bling), if desired

Directions:

1. Using the large patterned piece leftover from the other half of the layout (@11"x9"), round all four corners with your corner rounder or scissors.
2. Take the questions your children answered in Day 5. If they are small enough, adhere them in an artful way on top of the patterned paper.
3. But, if they are too big (like mine), then find two or three photos of your kids and/or you, and arrange them on top of the patterned paper. If you use photos on top, simply make a pocket of the patterned paper by laying down a strip of adhesive on three sides, leaving the fourth open so that you can remove the best part of the layout--what your biggest fans have to say about you!
4. That's it! I embellished with flowers in the corner, some ribbon, a bit of that accent paper leftover from the first layout, and some bling (gotta have bling!!), and voila!!

You now have a 2-page layout, all pretty and color-coordinated...and best of all, it features YOU! :)

Tomorrow, we're going to work with those pictures and memorabilia from the "Day in the Life of Mom"...
Thanks for joining me, as I scrap...

Happily My Ever After,
Dylan

Are you just joining in? Here are the links to the previous Mother's Day challenges--you're not behind! We'll wait for you to catch up.

Day 5: Journaling about YOU from Your Kids

Day 4: Capturing a Day in the Life of Mom

Day 3: First Page of Mother's Day Card Layout

Day 2: Journaling Pros and Cons of Motherhood

Day 1: Mother's Day Challenge

Mom's Life Scrap Challenge: Day 5--Homework for your Kids

If you've followed all of my scrap challenges from Day 1, you've got one side of a two-page layout done, pictures taken for another two-page layout, and ephemera saved from your "Day in the Life of Mom" challenge on Day 4.

Yay, you!

So today, it's time to assign work to someone else for a change. Namely, your kids. Today, you're going to get your children to answer some easy questions about you. If they are old enough, have them write the answers themselves (no coaching--they should be from your kids). If you have little ones, you have license to make up their answers yourself! :)

This one came from my youngest daughter's preschool. (And for the record, I'm not 10, and I rarely make soup. But she was right. I do look the best with my hair done, and I'm always harping about cleaning up your own mess. Out of the mouth of babes, eh?)

Feel free to copy these questions, and ask your kids, or come up with four or five of your own. Here are some ideas:

• What are four words you would use to describe me?
• What's your favorite thing we do together?
• You're the best Mom because....?

That's it! Make sure you print your pictures from yesterday. We'll be making our second page to the Mother's Day card layout tomorrow, and this weekend, we'll be doing the "Day in the Life of Mom" double page layout.

Thanks for joining me as I scrap...

Happily My Ever After,

Dylan

Are you just joining in? Here are the links to the previous Mother's Day challenges--you're not behind! We'll wait for you to catch up.

Day 4: Capturing a Day in the Life of Mom

Day 3: First Page of Mother's Day Card Layout

Day 2: Journaling Pros and Cons of Motherhood

Day 1: Mother's Day Challenge

Scrap Challenge Day 4: Document one Day in Your Life

Of all of the photo albums I've seen over the years, the one most precious to me was done by my mother when she was 16 and hospitalized after a car accident. Some relative gave her a scrapbook to help ease the tedium of 33 days in the hospital, and she recently gave it to me to act as caretaker to the now-disintegrating book.  When I opened the front cover, I was transported back to 1966.

Recovering from two surgeries, the teen version of my Mom used her scrapbook to chronicle her experience. She taped up remembrances of the good days, like when a boy from school brought a flower when he visited her in the hospital. And she taped up the bad, like Christmas cards from relatives she wouldn't see that holiday, because she wasn't yet released. In between the good and the bad are remembrances of her life--hall passes from school, her hospital wrist band, the front cover of the TV guide (featuring her teen crush, Ben Gazzara).
Paging through my mom's scrapbook from those harrowing weeks, you see the optimistic, vivacious, sometimes introspective teen--the girl she was before. Before children, before marriage, before she began the 'work-make dinner-work-drive kids-work' cycle that would define the next four decades of her life. I never knew that 'before' girl...but in paging through that scrapbook, I feel like I do.

That's my challenge for you: Document your day--the good, the bad, the ugly. Years from now, your kids will page through and laugh, or grimace, or just think, "How in the hell did she do all that?"

(Or maybe they'll say, "Oh, no wonder she was such a crabby-*ss *itch all the time.")

Either way, it'll be your moment in time, in all it's multi-faceted glory.


It's easy. Here's what you need to do:

• Take pictures of your day. From when you get up to when you go to bed, document the high and low-lights of a typical day in the life of YOU. We'll be scrapping many of them, so take enough pictures that you can pick and choose what you want to represent. Try to include at least one of yourself! This page is about YOU, after all!
• Grab the ephemera of this one day--receipts, labels, the tiny flower your daughter picked for you--the flotsam of your everyday that might normally be trashed. We will scrap these, as well.
• Finally, document your day. What time did you wake up? What did you make for dinner, or did you order out? What's something funny your kids or husband said when you told them what you were doing today? Songs on the radio? What book are you reading? You get the drift.

At the end of the day, gather it all into a pile. Print your pictures, or send them out for next-day printing. We're going to use it all when we begin our next 2-page layout.

Thanks for joining me as I scrap...

Happily My Ever After,
Dylan