My glamorous life. // How do you do it all?

I did a lot of day in the life posts last year, recording a single day every month or so in photos + words.  Those days were, at worst, average, but always made me smile to look back on.  Today was one of those days that was so awesomely bad I had to share for the sake of balance and honesty on my blog.

Nandini had school this morning so Ryan left early to drop her off.  The baby woke up and wanted to stay up right after they left and I really missed him not being around in the morning.  Avinash watched TV while I got the baby and myself ready.  He watched a little more while I nursed the baby.  I decided to set out a little early so I could grab a coffee.  My friend offered to watch Avi and take him to school while I picked up Nandini and her house is near a Starbucks I like.

The three of us make it out of the house.  I actually put on something other than yoga pants and  t-shirt.  Partially because I want to start trying a little more, but also because I have no clue where half of my laundry is right now.  I order my reserve coffee and a cake pop for Avi.  He quietly eats and then we start cooing at the baby.  It really is fun to see him more alert, even when he is in his sling (he usually just sleeps in there).  Then I feel his stomach rumble and see his expression change.  I figure I will just change him in the car when I feel wetness spreading all over me.  His diaper has exploded all over the sling, my shirt and is now, to my horror, dripping down his leg on to the floor of Starbucks.  Avinash screamed.  So much for staying low key.  I rush into the bathroom with the baby to stem the tide and realize I am out of diapers.  Wonderful.  I wipe up what I can on him and myself, cover him in paper towels and race over to my friends place.

Luckily, instead of just giving me a spare diaper she offers fresh clothes for the baby and me.  Crisis averted.  Of course, I don't know if I can ever go back to that Starbucks.  This is probably why I should stick to the drive-thru ones.

I leave Avi there and go to get Nandini.  .  Nandini eats leftover goldfish the whole way home.  The rest of the afternoon is pretty uneventful until it is time to leave again to pick up Avinash after school. 

I get all three kids restrained and back in the car and we start heading back home.  I am pulling on to the highway when Nandini exclaims, "The baby likes goldfish!"

WHAAAAA??????????

I reach back and snatch the sippy cup filled with goldfish out of her hands before she gives him another one and she starts shrieking at the top of her lungs.  She knows that she did something really wrong and does not want to hear about it.  I do a quick finger sweep of the baby's mouth and realize he has already spit out most of it.

At least those things dissolve easily.

Then, while she is still crying hysterically I think back to how carefully we selected the first food gave her.  Over processed cheese cracker shaped inexplicably like a fish is probably not my first choice for the baby, but at least she didn't have a sippy cup full of peanuts or something. 

So, in answer to your question random grocery store lady, I have no idea what I am doing, let alone how.  Though coffee helps, usually.

Project Life | Hello Spring.

This week: We celebrated St. Patrick's Day (well, not really celebrated, but I did find a four-leaf clover, which I still find exciting) and the beginning of spring.  I bought tulips, we went to the flower center and someone turned six weeks old. 

First Side: Really embracing the white space again with this spread.  I just enjoy it so much. I did a little watercoloring to make a flower trellis and stamped a sentiment in the middle.  I made a collage of the tulips I bought and just printed it out as is. 

My "extra-creative" card for the week.

Second side: I embraced the plus sign trend and scattered some die cuts across a photo of Nandini. I lightly glued my dried four leaf clover into the pocket and then stapled it shut with a cork star.  I used a few different SC stamp sets here too. 

You can see all of my Project Life pages here.  This is my third year of doing Project Life and I love this method of memory keeping for our family.  The PL kits I am using generally are the Studio Calico kit, and Midnight kit, with mostly Design A pages this year. I am linked up with the Mom Creative this week.

Now it is your turn!  Add your link back to your Project Life pages here and try to visit and leave comments for each other as well.  Grab a button if you'd like, or just pin it to your favorite scrappy pinterest board, anything works!  Thanks to everyone who linked up last time!  I will be holding a regular weekly link up from now on.

#100happydays

Have you guys seen the hashtag #100happydays floating around. I don't know how long this has been around, but when I saw it I jumped on board. There is an official website, but there is no reason to sign up for it at all.

I have been pretty busy lately for obvious reasons with one small thing that is really quite a big thing.  Of course I still have my other two not-quite-so small things to worry about.  My days seem to be a revolving door of nursing sessions and car pool.  Just for fun outings are at a minimum and it is easy for me to fall into the trap of greeting the day with a grimace instead of a smile.  This is not good for anyone in my family, especially me.

Just deciding to take on this project was uplifting.  I have a simple goal each day, to be happy.  When I feel my mind begin to fill with irritations (traffic, lack of sleep, etc) I try to take a step back and re-focus on being happy.  It's not foolproof.  I still have my bad moments, but it has helped.  A lot.

Some of the moments are photographable, some are not.  I do share a photo almost daily on instagram.   My username is Nirupama01, and you can follow along with my little journey here if you are interested (and yes, I follow back!) I edit my photos directly on my phone and am working on a post about my favorite iphone apps for photography and project life as well.

I like the themes that keep coming up.  My babies. Springtime. Cupcakes. Coffee. There was even a night out in there.

Our evening walks. Yoga.  Flowers. Crafts. Talks with friends. More coffee.

What is making you happy these days?

Project Life | Puppet Show

This Week: Lakshman had his 4 week check up and was growing famously.  We went to a free SXSW show at Anthropologie.  Avinash got to be in a pinewood derby for Maker's Faire at SXSW. The kids had a birthday party at an old amusement park.   I also documented some random stuff around the house.  A puppet show, a box turned into a rocketship, Nandini's yellow cake song and her bedtime ritual.

First Side: I really had fun with color on this spread.  There is definitely less white this week.  Most of photos are full bleed with no white borders.  I used a lot of soft pinks and blues, with some pops of deep orange from my photos.  I like the sort of unexpected juxtaposition.   I had a lot of photos from our night out at Anthropologie, so I converted one to black&white for interest.  Most cards are Studio Calico Office Hours and Midnight kit.

Second side: These cards are all Studio Calico.  I made the Bedtime one myself with that month's stamps.  I used thickers numbers to document L's 4 week check up stats.  The orangey flair is from Kelly Purkey.

You can see all of my Project Life pages here.  This is my third year of doing Project Life and I love this method of memory keeping for our family.  The PL kits I am using generally are the Studio Calico kit, and Midnight kit, with mostly Design A pages this year. I am linked up with the Mom Creative this week.

Now it is your turn!  Add your link back to your Project Life pages here and try to visit and leave comments for each other as well.  Grab a button if you'd like, or just pin it to your favorite scrappy pinterest board, anything works!  Thanks to everyone who linked up last time!  I will be holding a regular weekly link up from now on.

Jenni Bowlin Studios | Swing.

I got to work with the new collection Bright Travels by Lisa Dickinson for Jenni Bowlin.  I just love the vintage stamps and star motifs with the aqua and red color scheme.  I have been thinking about color a lot more since I took the Color Studio class and I had a lot of fun playing around with it here.

I started with the blues in the collection and decided to pair them with a photo of Avinash on his favorite tree swing at the Wildflower Center.  I added in some reds from the collection as well in strips under my photo.  To bring this out more I added a striped label sticker and a milkcap button, creating a visual triangle with the color.  To highlight the colors more I added in some watercolor.  Lots of blues, with just a hint of golden yellow.  Almost a split complementary though technically I should have used more of an orange.  I'm thinking the gold makes up for that.  I wanted something to contrast all the dreamy blues on the page and added some India ink to the chipboard letters in the title.  I love the way India ink looks on a page.  So opaque and, well, inky. I splattered a little into my watercolor for good measure.

Project Life: So big now.

This week: Lakshman turned one month old.  Avinash had watch day at dance class.  Nandini and I played "Hi Gudiya" a lot, a little game we made up about how we have the same family nickname.  Most of these pictures were taken with iPhone and edited with the vscocam app, except for the large photo which was part of a mini one-month photo shoot I did for Lucky.
First Page: I used a few cards from the SC Office Hours kit.  I love the Navy thickers that came with it too.  The die cut card is from a dear Lizzy pack and I added some Rifle Co. stickers from my stationery stash. 

Second page: Lots more navy and just a touch of pink to tie in to the previous page.  The enlarged photo was totally inspired by this spread from Ali Edwards. I do have a large format printer but I just printed this photo in sections on to 4x6 photo paper to make things easier.  This was totally my statement pocket for the week. I raised the label up on pop dots and scattered a bit of confetti. My see through card here is the pocket with two cork stickers.  I just repeated the same sticker set on the opposite side.

You can see all of my Project Life pages here.  This is my third year of doing Project Life and I love this method of memory keeping for our family.  The PL kits I am using generally are the Studio Calico kit, and Midnight kit, with mostly Design A pages this year. I am linked up with the Mom Creative this week.

Now it is your turn!  Add your link back to your Project Life pages here and try to visit and leave comments for each other as well.  Grab a button if you'd like, or just pin it to your favorite scrappy pinterest board, anything works!  Thanks to everyone who linked up last time!  I will be holding a regular weekly link up from now on.

Pin to Page: You're a Good Egg Layout

Welcome to the another installment of from Pin to Page on my blog.  I intended to make this a regular feature on my blog, so get ready for the third post in only eight months.  I know, I'm like a machine.

Seriously though, I do spend way too much time browsing Pinterest and shockingly little time doing anything at all with said pins.

I keep looking at this pin.  So I decided to do something with it.  I love the idea of decorating wooden eggs, but my god, have you seen the cost?  No way I am paying $5 per egg.  Playing with paper it is!

This is what I did with it.  I got my Studio Calico kit super early this month so I pulled all of my papers and elements from that.  I choose a neutral background patterned paper but added a little more depth to it with watercolor.  Then I couldn't stop myself and I watercolored the other patterned paper I used here.  For the eggs I used a mix of patterned paper, washi tape, watercolor, colored vellum and stamps. 

I wanted to share the cut file I made with you as well.  If you like it, I'd love it if you would share it with your friends on pinterest, twitter, etc. 

Download the free cutting file here.

You can find my other Pin to Page posts here, and my other Freebie posts here.