Our Anniversary! The First!

As of last weekend, we've been married a year! A year, can you believe it? Well I know we have a hard time :D.

And so much has happened in that year. We went to Hong Kong for our honeymoon, I got my fiance visa (technically our wedding in the Philippines was only a religious ceremony), my whole family flew to the US, where Gerard and I got legally married, and we settled into our apartment. And I settled into life in Concord.

We went to L.A. for Thanksgiving and spent Christmas in Virginia. I got my driver's license, a total of two haircuts the whole year (they're expensive) and started taking graphic design classes. Gerard traveled a lot for work, L.A., Chicago, Vegas. And he's going to Germany sometime this year too.

We moved apartments, bought a washer/dryer, and settled into our current home. I work from home, cook dinner, and help Gerard catch up with his laundry. We go for long drives (usually in search of some craving I have, some random thing I want to see), movie dates, and walks in the park. Our place isn't always 100% neat but I've learned to live with that.

We watch TV, run errands, and we're starting to plan our meals too.

Sure, we fought. But I figured that's part of adjusting to living together, learning about each other, and being married!

For anniversary weekend, we did quite a lot.

We cooked a yummy dinner of Seared Scallops, Salmon Sashimi, Mussels and Pasta + BBQ Ribs on Friday night.

Saturday, we drove to Napa and had merienda at the Oxbow Public Market, a "Napa-fied" version of San Francisco's Ferry Building.

I really wanted to try the ice cream from Three Twins but their freezer was buggy so they were only selling by the pints and gallons that day.

So I got me some mini cupcakes instead from Kara's Cupcakes (I love the Fleur de Sal one! My new favorite!)

 

And we had the Cachapa or sweet corn pancake with meat and cheese filling from Pica Pica. 

It was really yummy!

Afterwards, we drove to a few Napa thrift stores where I scored some awesome books, especially a design book recommended by my illustrator teacher. It's price at $15 on Amazon but I got it for $1. Thrift store shopping rocks!

And stopped by the golf course on the way home to take some pictures. Good thing too! Cause when we actually went to play golf the next day (my awesome anniversary gift to Gerard) I had left the memory card at home! Rookie mistake.

But here are some shots of us at the golf course in Napa. (We didn't play here though, we played in Concord. This was just for a photo op.)

Our golf game was pretty awesome even though golf cart rentals were only for seniors and the disabled. So we walked, I dragged my bag along, played 9 holes and tied at that! Was a decent game with both of us scoring two over bogey.

Happy Anniversary to us! Here's to many more years of adventures ahead!

(Sappy sentiments not to be posted online, only written in cards.)

Enter Project Life

Whee! I'm super excited! I think that's probably why I couldn't sleep last night!

My Project Life Kit arrived yesterday! 

So um, what's Project Life?

It’s called a complete scrapbook system but that’s not how I like to think of it. (I really don’t like scrapbooking!) What it is, is a complete, easy to assemble album complete with journaling cards for you to jot down little notes about the photos. It comes with monthly dividers, title cards, journal cards, stickers, even a date stamp! There’s no need to cute anything, just choose where you want things to go, slip your photos and journal cards and you’re done!

There’s no need to cut anything, punch out anything, go back to the store for matching accents, everything you need is right in the awesome Becky Higgins box. (There are photo albums dedicated to this box alone!) And what kind of timeline you use, is up to you! There are 54 photo pages that come with this kit, including one page for a front, one for a back so it you can use it one page per week. Or day. Or month. Or however you like.

Here’s a better photo from Amazon. com, where Project Life kits are primarily sold.

I was so excited to start using Project Life I begged Gerard to let me open it already even if our anniversary isn’t for another two weeks. (Traditional gifts for anniversaries call for paper. I'm not complaining! )My excuse was that I wanted to document our whole first year of marriage first, starting with a few wedding photos, our honeymoon, our first apartment. I’m not following a specific time format, I just want to chronicle all the adventures we’ve had in the last 12 months. Maybe my next kit I’ll do weekly! Who knows 

What really appealed to me about this kit, were the journaling cards. I love to write, I love to jot down my thoughts and photo books don’t really give you that opportunity. With Project Life, I can take a journaling card and write a few sentences for every photo in the album. It’s like a photo album and journal in one! And if you like, you can insert a few mementos like ticket stubs, receipts, and other things too!

The only slight, slight downside is that the photo pages are only set for horizontal photos. But you can buy additional pages that feature vertical photos. I’m actually just buying more photo pockets, period!

So I’ve spent a good part of the day uploading photos to seehere.com, Fujifilm’s online print service. I’ve always preferred Fuji to Kodak but I’ll save my thoughts on seehere.com for another day.

Have I piqued your interest? For more about Project Life, check out beckhiggins.comwhere they’ve got all sorts of info, inspiration, and additional products for Project Life. There’s even a digital edition! And a whole community of Project Life users who share their ideas.

I’ll give you a peek at my first few pages as soon as I’m done.