Week 36 (September 2 – September 8)

First off, I have to apologize for how awful these pictures are. Things (i.e. work for both Greg and me) have been crazy so getting the pages done and getting any pictures of them feels like a win. I’m sorry you can see my feet. Editing isn’t a high priority this afternoon.

Mini vacation week! The week started with Labor Day and a BBQ with Don and Roberta. We made strawberry shortcake cupcakes to celebrate Becky’s 25th birthday. The Maciol family left bright and early Wednesday morning and Greg and I followed them a few hours later. We were off to SeaTac for a mini vacation in SF.

We were in SF for the primary reason of attending our friends Ryan and Vanessa’s wedding. Our secondary reason was to eat ALL THE FOOD we missed. It was exactly two years and one day since I had last stepped food in that blessed city (yes, I realize I have rose-colored glasses about SF, but the place you spent your twenties is pretty damn fun). I really had not been back since the day Greg and I packed up the Civic (R.I.P.) and headed north. There was a lot of food to eat.

The wedding was lovely and spending two nights (bachelorette party & wedding) with all my girlfriends was wonderful. We also got in a nice double date with the newly engaged KK and Andrew that was much needed. Kathy and I are coming up on our ten year friendiversary in 2014 and while I’m super happy we both (finally) met great guys, it makes me a little sad that we met them just before I moved. The four of us have so much fun together and it would be awesome to live in the same city and spend more time together.

As much as I miss the girls, given all the life changes everyone has had in the last two years I know it’s not the same. I can look back on our fun few years of running around the city with pretty much no cares in the world as a really good time. In some ways this trip brought closure I didn’t realize I was looking for.

So you might have noticed there are very few pictures of our trip in my weekly spread and definitely not an insert. I only picked a handful that showed what the trip was about (friends + food) and left it simple. There’s no way I could do justice to a full vacation, so I used an idea I saw on Elise’s blog: a photo book with hand written notes. 

When we got home from the trip I spent about 30 minutes uploading my favorite photos to Blub. (I think about 40, it’s a pretty slim book.) I did a 7×7 book so it would be nice and compact and phone photos wouldn’t look too distorted. Instead of fancy collages and spending any time thinking about it, I uploaded all the pictures as full pages. I just moved them around a bit to get the best part of the picture in the square.

I got out my date stamp and my black pen and wrote notes on what we did each day. This part should have been super simple but took a little bit of time because my pen didn’t dry very fast. I’ll have to reread Elise’s post to see what kind of pen she uses. 

I used any white space I found on a few pictures to write about the day. Maybe six or seven of the photos have writing. Super simple. 

I had hoped to get an iconic picture of the city to wrap around the front and back cover, but that didn’t happen. Instead I picked two photos of the view from our hotel room, one during the day and one at night. Good enough!

Sadly I forgot to include anything for the spine of the book! I will wait until I make a book of our upcoming Maui trip and then copy the spine of that one as best I can with a Sharpie.

So for about an hour of time and $35 (more expensive than I thought it would be, but I’m not a souvenir person, so this is mine), I have a cute little book with our memories of a five day vacation. I’m thinking over time these will look super cute all next to each other on a bookshelf. It’s a great idea for anything – a big party, baby’s first year, anything you have a ton of pictures of and want to get them in front of you instead of living on the computer.

And, as usual, a very big THANK YOU to Roberta and Don who keep the doodle happy and safe so we can galavant around. We appreciate it more than we can say!

Supplies used: Seafoam project life kit; Studio Calico Double Scoop and Mint Chip kits and “San Francisco” wood chip. I also included the tag from new jeans I got at Nordstrom and cut down the wedding invite to 6×4 to fit in two 3×4 pockets.