this or that thursday: grace episcopal church

St. Francisville is a beautiful small town north of Baton Rouge with many interesting, historic homes and buildings. My favorite is Grace Episcopal Church. The grounds and cemetery are nestled amongst many moss-covered live oaks. Last weekend, we enjoyed walking around for a bit and I, of course, enjoyed taking some photos.

This first one was with my iphone. You can't beat it for a wide view.

The rest were taken with my dslr.

<a href="http://www.debduty.com/" target="_blank"><img src="http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g404/dkaym/thisorthat200.jpg" width="200" height="200" /></a>

It's time to show us what you've been shooting! There are just a few rules.

• submit the url of your blog post, not your home page
• link up a photo that was taken by you
• include a link back to my blog in your post (you can use the button or a text link if you prefer)
• visit a few other blogs and leave some comment love 

Okay, just link up below!

template for project life planning

A while back I shared some random project life tips that included a template I use for planning my pages. It helps to know what size to print each photo. Well, I found that I was using the back of the template to first make a list of all the possible photos I might use and then I'd be flipping back and forth as I filled up the squares with notes.

So I made a new template that includes a section at the bottom for listing photos that I took for the week. I divided it into three sections because I separate my list by dslr, instagram and iphone. Sometimes I decide to use an iphone photo that wasn't shared on instagram, but would benefit from a filter so I run it through as I'm planning or sometimes I just crop the iphone pic and print it as a 4 x 6. (The iphone creates photos whose ratio is 6 x 4.5 so a little cropping is required if you want to print them to fill up the 4 x 6 slots in your album.)

You can download the template here if you think it would be helpful in your planning.

Here's an example of one filled out. In this case I was getting ready to put together two weeks, but I didn't really have a ton of photos for either week so I decided to combine the two weeks into one layout in my album. I'd rather have less photos that mean more to me so when I feel like I'm including photos just as filler that I really don't care about I combine the weeks.

So these two pages ended up being the layout for weeks 31 and 32 that I shared here.

Hope this helps your Project Life planning go a little smoother!

a few more layouts

Just catching up on sharing some scrapbook layouts. I had such a wonderful time last weekend at the crop! I met some great new friends who love scrapbooking like me, and I made lots of layouts, but I haven't even photographed any of those yet so here are some from the past couple months. They were all made with various Studio Calico kits (noted below each layout).

A favorite photo of Mason with his little cousin...

Summer of 69

This yellow snowball was perfect for a quick layout with my remaining scraps from the Summer of 69 kit.

A photo from a really long time ago...

35mm

and even longer (1961).

so cal

My favorite photo from Cousins Camp 2004... the look on Alec's face makes me laugh. :)

elmwood park

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this or that thursday: leaves

Most of our leaves are still green...

But if you look closely, you can find some colorful ones too.

Every now and then I hear someone new to photography ask how to find the good light. In my opinion, the best place to see it is on the leaves. See how they are glowing? That's how you know it's the good light.


<a href="http://www.debduty.com/" target="_blank"><img src="http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g404/dkaym/thisorthat200.jpg" width="200" height="200" /></a>

It's time to link up again, but there are just a few rules to go over first.

• submit the url of your blog post, not your home page
• link up a photo that was taken by you
• include a link back to my blog in your post (you can use the button or a text link if you prefer)
• visit a few other blogs and leave some comment love 

Okay, now let's see what you've been shooting!

giveaway: project real life

Good news today! I'm so happy to be giving away a spot in Becky Higgins' class, Project Real Life at Big Picture Classes! This is a four expert class and I know it's going to be amazing. Becky will be sharing her philosophy behind Project Life which is all about cultivating a better life with a practical approach to documenting the everyday. The class starts October 4th and lasts 12 weeks. The last day to register will be October 10.

To find out more about the class or to sign up click here:

Here's a more detailed description of what Project Real Life is all about...

Class Description

Come join Becky Higgins for a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to spend some time with her during the last quarter of 2012. As Becky goes about preparing for the holidays, organizing around her home and documenting her family's story along the way, she'll be sharing ideas to inspire you, tips to motivate you, and real-life suggestions on how to cultivate the life you want.
Whether you're a long-time Project Lifer or you're just now hearing about Project Life, you will love learning about the guilt-free philosophy behind this system of memory-keeping. While Becky will give you plenty to think about and do during the 12 weeks of this workshop, she firmly believes that there isn't a person that exists who "does it all" - and it should be the last thing we expect from ourselves.

Becky's class includes:

• An exclusively-designed set of Project Life cards (3" x 4" and 4" x 6") that will not be available anywhere else!
• Access to a pre-classroom with a presentation from Becky upon registration for class
• Colorful instructional handouts with step-by-step instructions for each lesson/project
• Voice messages, slideshows and videos throughout class
• Three live chats with Becky
• Welcome notes from Becky in the classroom
• Reminder emails when the classroom is updated with new materials
• Message board to share your thoughts with your classmates
• Private posting gallery to share your work and view the work of your classmates
• Supply list with live links to product resources

You have until this Thursday morning to enter by leaving a comment. I'll come back and update this post with the lucky person's name at that time. Good luck!

**The winner is Lindsey Marie! Congrats to you! Please email me so I can tell you how to claim your prize.

this or that thursday: green

This is an extra busy week so I'm going to be really quick. I've been getting ready all week to go to a three-day scrapbooking crop. I haven't been to one in 15 years so I'm really excited!

For these first two I used my 200mm lens. As you can see it creates such nice bokeh. I did a comparison between a 200, 100 and 50mm lens here last year and the difference in bokeh was very noticeable. I was actually waiting for the hummingbird to show up when I took this shot. He loves this flower.

I didn't have any luck with him returning so I had to resort to taking a photo of the grass. At least the light was pretty. :)

Here's just one more because I'm feeling a little festive. As I'm writing we're about to go out to eat to celebrate Gary's birthday which reminded me of this shot from last year...

<a href="http://www.debduty.com/" target="_blank"><img src="http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g404/dkaym/thisorthat200.jpg" width="200" height="200" /></a> I hope you had better luck with your shooting this week and I hope you'll share with us today. There are just a few rules.

• submit the url of your blog post, not your home page
• link up a photo that was taken by you
• include a link back to my blog in your post (you can use the button or a text link if you prefer)
• visit a few other blogs and leave some comment love 

Okay, just link up below!

summer of 69 layouts: the rest

First, I wanted to let you know I'm guest posting at Scrap Rendezvous today about my Project Life process. You can even read it in French if you'd like!

Here on my blog I'm sharing some layouts from my August Studio Calico kit. I was finally able to use up an entire kit except for a few scraps and embellishments by making 13 layouts! This kit was absolutely beautiful with the most lovely colors. They were almost a little too lovely for a mom of two boys, but I ended up making some layouts about my own childhood, my niece, and even a butterfly with all the girlyness of this kit. :)

I did make a few boy layouts. For this one about basketball, I cut out the chevron from a paper in the Simple Stories Summer Fresh collection. You can see some other boyish layouts in this post. 

I love this porch where the cousins frequently hang out at their grandparents' house.

I used this border punchto create the orange scallops at the bottom of the porch layout and the yellow scalloped layer at the top of this next one about my niece.

These two are from my childhood... one from a birthday party and one with a photo of me and my dog.

And lastly, a layout about a butterfly I captured this summer. The colors of the kit perfectly complemented the photo.

Now I'm ready to get started on the September kit that just arrived. Lucky for me, I'm going to a crop this weekend so I should have plenty of time to put it to good use. :)

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