Ali Edwards's Blog, page 198
June 10, 2015
Five Inspiring Blogs That Fill Me Up
Today I wanted to talk a bit about blog reading and what I've been reading lately that's been filling my mind and heart with good stuff.
These days I'm using Bloglovin as my blog-reader and I've been really happy with it overall. I don't spend as much time as I used to reading blogs, for a variety of reasons including time and my general desire to read more books. It's an ebb and a flow as always. When I do have time I like to scroll through the Bloglovin app on my phone or at my desktop computer and then click on the topics that are of interest to me. You can also follow my blog via Bloglovin here.
Top of mind for me recently is really considering what I'm feeding myself (literally as well as metaphorically). My question to myself is this:
What words and images am I'm choosing to let into my life? It's a choice every day to read stuff that fills me up vs. focusing on negativity or stuff that's really just basically garbage (total personal judgement and opinion, obviously, on what constitutes garbage). I want to read blogs that build rather than break-down. I want to read blogs that contain authentic stories of figuring it out as we go along - because it's what we are all doing. I want to read blogs that inspire me to make the changes I want to make in my own life, at my own pace.
With those things in mind, here are five of my current favorites that you might already be reading or might be new to you:
Design For Mankind | Erin Lochner's posts about motherhood and how we spend our time have been really inspiring me.
INTO MIND | This is just a really lovely, clean, interesting site. Love the 30-day Minimalism Challenge and the Practical Minimalism 101.
Elise Blaha Cripe | Elise continues to inspire me - especially in the areas of time management and focusing on what's most important. Loved her post yesterday about how she finds time for reading.
Be More With Less | Courtney consistently produces interesting content about simplifying life and getting to the heart of the matter.
Hands Free Mama | A longtime favorite, Rachel has a new book coming out later this year (a follow up to Hands Free Mama) called Hands Free Life (preorder now available - publishing in September). I had the privilege of reading an advance copy of Hands Free Life and it was super, super inspiring. I can't wait to read it again and mark it all up when the actual book is out and I'll probably write more about it in the Fall.
Here's to lifting each other up through the process of sharing our own stories.
June 8, 2015
Summer Manifesto 2015
For the last few years I've put together a Summer Manifesto (2014, 2012 finished album & 2012 list). It's a nice way to set some specific intentions for the summer months that help guide our activity and leisure choices.
Some years I've made a mini-book or created something to go along with it - documenting the process or telling the story after the fact. This year my creative plate is already pretty full and I'd like to work on Project Life® if/when I have extra time so I'm not planning on adding any other memory keeping projects besides Week In The Life™ in August.
And the truth is there is really just one thing I want to focus on this summer. One simple thing. It's a gift I want to give to my kids and to myself:
I want to get in the pool with my kids.
Now I know some people out there have body issues that keep them out of swimsuits and out of the water - that's not really my issue. If that's your issue there's a great article that Jessica Turner wrote about that last summer that is so worth your time: Put On That Swimsuit.
Is it fear of the water? Nope. Swimming has been a huge part of my life and I actually love being in the water.
So what keeps me out of the pool?
Sometimes I want to read (Dear Kindle, I love you). Sometimes it's just too cold (dude, I'm getting old). Sometimes I just want some time by myself to chat with my friends who are often at the pool at the same times we go. Sometimes I just don't feel like it. All generally valid reasons for not getting in the pool, but this summer I want to make a different choice. I want to do those other things I just listed AND I want to play with my kids in the pool.
My kids regularly ask me to get in the pool with them and I regularly say "just a minute" or "not today" or "no thank you."
This summer I want to say yes.
Yes to being with them in a playful, fun environment. Yes to diving down to the bottom to retrieve toys. Yes to throwing Anna up in the air. Yes to letting Simon tickle my feet under the water.
It's time for me to get back in the pool and that's exactly what I plan to manifest in my life this summer.
If you were to have just one thing on your Summer Manifesto what would it be?
Just an update on Week In The Life™ Kit pre-orders. If you pre-order before 6/15/15 you'll receive the digital/printable cards and digital stamps (shown above) for free. Already pre-ordered? You are awesome. These files will appear in your Ali Edwards account under "My Digital Files" when your order ships. Full details on the kit can be found here.
June 7, 2015
Give Sunday | 22
This year, in honor of my 2015
One Little Word® "give," I'm sharing a hand-drawn quote each Sunday here on my blog.
I found the words for this week's quote on Amy Poehler's Smart Girls instagram account. Amy Poehler and her best friend Meredith Walked created Smart Girls to help people celebrate their truest self - which is rad - their motto is "Change the World by Being Yourself." I love following them. From their About Page, "We emphasize intelligence and imagination over “fitting in.” We celebrate curiosity over gossip. We are a place where people can truly be their weird and wonderful selves."
And one of the reasons I love quotes is that they often introduce me to people I might not have otherwise encountered - like Pema Chödrön who wrote the words above. She's a Buddhist teacher, author, nun and mother.
Click here to read my initial post and download the #givesunday word art title and checklist for helping you to give a little something today. You can also view all the past #givesunday quotes via the archives.
Click here to download the #givesunday 22 quote. Please note: If you are reading this post via email you need to click through to the actual blog post to download the file.
You're invited to join me. What will you
give today?
Have a wonderful Sunday.
June 4, 2015
The Working Life | In Progress
Happy June! JUNE.
Today I wanted to give you some updates of what we've got going on in and around the office. As you might have noticed it's been quieter here on the blog recently. I've been doing a lot of work behind the scenes that doesn't always show up here on the blog until it's in it's finished form
and I've been working hard to establish more consistent work/life boundaries. Story Subscription monthly content (a couple layouts per month + videos + handouts), Type workshop content (a couple layouts a week + videos + handouts - this workshop will run again next year for any of you who missed it this time around), new product design (for general upcoming releases as well as December Daily®, Week In The Life™, etc), and One Little Word® monthly content are all among the things happening around here at any given time. It's a full plate of memory keeping goodness.
Here's a few other things from around the office:
Loving Elise's new Get To Work Book | Planners are all the rage - but this one is different. It's not really a planner in the traditional sense of a place to write down your dentist appointment on Tuesday or your dinner date on Friday - it's a more project-based approach which is perfect for tracking my working life. Rather than times of the day there are simply columns for each day of the week - that works the best for me as I use iCal for my regular calendar of kids stuff and appointments. For me those columns will be home to the tasks that need to be completed each day and there's plenty of room for holding ideas and such as they come up through the month. I love the idea that it will work as a central home for all my work-related notes, tasks, etc. I'll keep you posted on the reality of how it works once I begin using it regularly in July (it's a July through June calendar - she will also be releasing a January - December calendar later this year for those of you who prefer a calendar year set-up). Click on over to her site to see all about the insides and her intentions/reasons why for creating this work book. And a disclaimer for anyone wondering - I purchased this on my own and am genuinely excited to share it with you.
Listening | To Top-40 (all Katie's fault) and The Grand Budapest Hotel Soundtrack which is awesome mainly instrumental background music great for working and writing.
Speaking of Katie | Congratulations are in order because she is expecting her first child in the Fall. Recently people have been asking if she still works for me since you might not see her as publicly as in the past - she sure does. She's instrumental in helping me get the things done I need to get done by keeping track of all the projects and deadlines we have happening behind the scenes. We're experimenting with some flexible working situations for when she has her baby later this year. We're also working on getting back into something similar to the Block Schedule that we had previously implemented before some of my big business transitions to the new site and new design/content creation responsibilities. All those changes (many you didn't really see here on the surface necessarily) have resulted in some major schedule change-ups from the way we were working previously. In the past many of the things we did were weekly whereas now many of our deadlines are monthly - it's been quite a shift but one I welcomed in terms of shaking things up.
Preparing to shift to a summer schedule | My kids have one and two weeks of school left respectively, which means a transition to a different set-up for all of us for the summer months. They each have a couple camps lined up plus the usual family camping adventures. I never really know exactly how the summer will play out. I'm hoping to do another summer manifesto just to keep my eye on what's most important over the next few months. Summers usually either end up being awesome or challenging from a childcare standpoint - my kids are getting older which I want to think gives us all more flexibility, but sometimes I over-estimate those things and end up going a little crazy on those summer days when I need to work and they are bored. I have no problem with them learning to be bored but I also want them to have "fun" - most likely this means an menu of choices for them during the days when they are here so they don't end up on the couch in front of the TV for most of the day - Simon would love that and Anna would like it for about 30 minutes.
Working on Day In The Life™ | I've got all my photos printed (going with a 4x6 format this time) and I cut out a bunch of words with the Silhouette and now I just need to get my words added in before finishing it up. Hoping to share my completed project next week.
Differentiating | We're getting the @aliedwardsdesign instagram account up and running and working on differentiating it from my personal @aliedwards account. We just started a new campaign called #WITLmemories (for Week In The Life™ memories) and have invited several guests to share images and thoughts and reflections from their past Week In The Life™ projects. We'd love to invite you to share some of your past albums and why they are important to you as well. Use the hashtag #WITLmemories and we may share some of those over there or here in the coming months leading up to Week In The Life™ in mid-to-late August. 2015 kits are available for pre-order here.
Thinking about, but not totally acting on, Project Life® | It's here in my office on my shelf and it's collecting bits of life and photos but I haven't completed a spread in quite awhile. Right now I'm totally okay with it and I know I'll make time for it soon - my main focus has been on making more traditional layouts for the Type workshop and Story Subscription. It's all a balancing act as you guys know. I'm still going with the weekly format and have been sticking things in here and there as time slips by. I'm hoping that getting back to a Block Schedule will also help make time for this specifically - right now PL gets done in my free time and to be honest I don't always want to do memory keeping in my free time since it's all part of what I do in my working hours as well.
Shipping Kits | Katie is packing up kits to ship to She Scrapbooks in Florida for my last in-person event of the year. We've added another Day In The Life™ workshop on Friday, June 26th from 1-4pm and we'd love to see you there. Click here for more information: http://bit.ly/1HHoUY3 and to sign up for the class, contact She Scrapbooks via phone at 352-259-6226. After we finish up we will be releasing some of those classes here over the next 6-months as self-paced workshops.
Here's to being "in-progress"!
May 31, 2015
Give Sunday | 21
This year, in honor of my 2015
One Little Word® "give," I'm sharing a hand-drawn quote each Sunday here on my blog.
Click here to read my initial post and download the #givesunday word art title and checklist for helping you to give a little something today. You can also view all the past #givesunday quotes via the archives.
Click here to download the #givesunday 21 quote. Please note: If you are reading this post via email you need to click through to the actual blog post to download the file.
You're invited to join me. What will you
give today?
Have a wonderful Sunday.
May 28, 2015
AE Digital Creative Team | Little Things
Hey friends! Today I wanted to share some Creative Team inspiration using the "Little Things" Digital Story Kit™.
Each month we take the designs from the Story Kit™ and Story Stamp™ and turn those into a digital kit (not all products translate but most do). The Digital Story Kit™ is only available during the month that the story theme is live (until the14th of the month). The best part of the digital kit is that you can use the designs again and again vs. a physical product that is a one-time-use. You can also adjust the sizes of the elements to fit your own specific design.
You can subscribe to just the Digital Story Kit™ - or if you subscribe to both the Story Kit™ and Story Stamp™ you receive this kit for free.
All Digital Story Kit™ subscribers also receive access to the Story classroom that includes educational content to go along with the monthly theme (PDF, videos, etc).
Here's a look at what the team made with the kit this month (a combination of digital and hybrid projects):
Cristina C. (linked to layout)
Paige Evans (linked to layout)
May 25, 2015
Remembering
Simon and I work up crazy early on Saturday morning to make the 4-5 hour drive from our house in Eugene up to Tacoma for my Great Aunt Setsuyo Mulcahey's funeral.
Setsuyo and my Great Uncle (my Dad's Mom's brother) John Thomas Mulcahey (who went by the name "Happy") met in Japan when he was serving in the US Army during WWII. She was working at an Officer's home and he helped her do the dishes after dinner one evening. She spoke no English at the time. They began a friendship that turned into a marriage, a move to the United States, and three sons (John, Jimmy and Larry).
She taught herself English and how to drive and my Dad's family dearly loved her.
Happy died from cancer in 1975 (the year I was born) and Setsuyo went on to live for 40 more years - raising her sons, working for a bank, building her own home on land they had picked out (that included a special room for Japanese tea ceremonies), canning her own produce until she was 85, and tending to her amazing garden. Her garden was featured in the Sunday Seattle Times magazine in 2002 and was a destination for various garden tour groups.
Her favorites? Rhododendron's and peonies.
While attending the funeral mass, burial at the cemetery and reception, I thought a lot about the pieces of remembering.
It's an interesting thing to find yourself learning about your relatives at their funeral. There were so many things I didn't know about Setsuyo (peonies!) and so many questions I had now that I learned a bit more about her life. My over-arching memories of her during the times we were together at family gatherings was always that she had a lovely smile on her face, kind words and a gentle spirit.
I had a lot of feelings of wanting to know more about her story. More about her and her journey - especially as a widow/single-parent raising her three sons. I wish that I had reached out or cultivated more of a relationship with her over the years. As an adult now, there's so much I'd like to know.
My sister-in-law Liz put together the lovely photo display above. Photos. My heart.
Setsuyo was buried at a cemetery where many of my Dad's family have been laid to rest (and where my parents will be when their time comes), including my Grandparents above. I left the peonies from my house for them.
One of the reasons I wanted to bring Simon with me is that he's really interested in family history and spending time with family. He wants to know who and where and when and what happened and why. He asked a lot of questions and my parents lovingly answered as many as they could and shared stories along the way.
The flowers sent from Setsuyo's family in Japan and local friends were amazingly beautiful.
I also had many thoughts about the cycle of life and the passage of time. Deaths have a way of bringing everything front and center - perspective and priority.
Simon and I got to meet the newest member of our family - my niece/his cousin Olive Jean McDougall (John and Liz's new daughter). If you didn't know this already, Simon is a baby-whisperer. He has a special connection with those little ones and he was over the moon to get to meet and hold her.
After the larger family festivities, my parents, my Aunt & Uncle (Bill and Gaye), Simon and I headed back to the house I grew up in for cocktails and conversation before dinner.
At dinner Simon made a toast to Setsuyo totally on his own accord. It was thoughtful and out of the blue and showed just how much he was actually paying attention to the day and the reason why.
After dinner, back at my parents house, we sat around the kitchen table and talked about family stories and all the questions I had come up with about Setsuyo and her life throughout the day. There were many pieces they knew about and others they didn't simply because stories are not always shared.
The sharing and the remembering and the not-remembering and the laughing and the grief and the new life - I'm thankful for it all.
May all of you remember someone special who has passed on in your own life today. May all of you also have the courage and heart to reach out to those in your family you may have lost touch with or never really had the opportunity to connect with over the years. Life is precious and quick and our stories are worth sharing.
May 24, 2015
Give Sunday | 20
This year, in honor of my 2015
One Little Word® "give," I'm sharing a hand-drawn quote each Sunday here on my blog.
Click here to read my initial post and download the #givesunday word art title and checklist for helping you to give a little something today. You can also view all the past #givesunday quotes via the archives.
Click here to download the #givesunday 20 quote. Please note: If you are reading this post via email you need to click through to the actual blog post to download the file.
You're invited to join me. What will you
give today?
Have a wonderful Sunday.
May 22, 2015
Week In The Life™ 2015 Kit Available For Pre-order
I'm excited to let you guys know that the 2015 Week In The Life™ kit is now available for pre-order.
Can you guys believe this project has been happening for ten years? I looked back through my albums the other day and saw that the first one I did was actually in 2004 for a class I taught in 2005 at Creating Keepsakes University. I've done it every year since, with the exception of 2009 when Anna was born.
It is a project that completely has my heart.
If this is your first time hearing about Week In The Life™ you should check out my video that speaks to the reasons why this is worth your time:
For 2015 be documenting my week in mid-to-late August and will announce specific dates as we get closer. Be sure to sign up for my newsletter to stay up to date with the latest.
For the 2015 kit you've got a choice of two albums: a grey "Stories" album or a black & white days of the week album. I'm pretty sure I'll be using the days of the week album. Choose your album from the drop-down menu on the pre-order page.
All domestic pre-orders will ship for free. International shipping for pre-orders is just $8. Regular shipping rates will apply after the pre-order period ends (when the kits ship).
We'll be adding more detail images of the contents of the kit to the preview slider on the pre-order page as product comes in to the warehouse. Above is a look at some of the 3x4 cards cut from the 3x8 pad of papers. You can also glimpse wood veneer days of the week, a geotag chipboard piece, and some white transparent numbers. Also included but not shown are page protectors (similar to the 2014 kit), perforated sentiment strips, alpha stickers, labels and more.
A 3x4 stamp set is included that will be perfect for sparking and documenting your stories.
As a bonus for pre-ordering before 5/31/15 you'll receive this awesome set of transparent day of the week dividers.
Thanks for all the excitement surrounding the launch of the kit pre-order yesterday. I'm so excited that so many of you are ready and willing and looking forward to documenting your week along with me again.
Check out my Week In The Life™ Projects Page to learn more details about embarking on this project.
May 18, 2015
The Weekend Lens
Our weekend looked a little like this:
Simon's classroom had a reunion picnic on Saturday morning. His placement is in a Comprehensive Learning Center at his middle school where he receives extra supports in social skills and academics. His main teacher has been at his school for the past 15 years and she is nothing short of exceptional. She's had a major impact on so many of the kids who have made their way through her program during their middle school years because of her tireless dedication and love for her students. It was fun to meet some of the kids that are now in high school and beyond and chat with their parents about that paths they've walked.
Simon loved seeing his friends outside of normal school hours and they had fun playing catch with a beachball in the courtyard. I loved watching Anna play with all the kids and the other siblings.
New stamps arrived in my mailbox that are now available in my shop. I was so excited for these to be made - they include two enlarged alphabets on 6x8 sheets (one a very classic sans serif and the other a fun mixed alphabet) and one set of 18 of my favorite sentiments. You can check them out here. You can see how I've used the digital set of some of these sentiments right on photos in a past Weekend Lens post. Digital sentiment sets available here: Glorious Moments and Glorious Travel Moments.
On Saturday afternoon Anna and her friend Scout celebrated their 6th birthdays together. Anna's actual birthday was back in February but because of a bunch of different reasons we never scheduled a friend/kid party for her until now.
It was super fun to have a double-party with 30 kindergartners at a local gymnastics place. We ended up over at Scout's house after the party and the girls opened their presents together which was even more fun. Good people.
Anna is definitely a helper. She helped me stamp small manilla tags and pack up fun little paint cans for the goody-bags. We used my Thanks stamp set and Anna kept saying, "Mom, this looks like you wrote it!"
I ordered small little paint cans and sunglasses and some candy from Oriental Trading Company to use as the goody-bags.
I asked Anna to write up a list of the five things she loves most right now. I'm planning to add it to a layout here in the next week or so. Her answers? Swimming, drawing, ABC's, jump on the trampoline, and counting.
We spent Sunday late afternoon at the pool with Aaron and the kids and some other friends. It was in the high 60's (maybe low 70's) which isn't warm enough for me to get in but they enjoyed it. I've written before about how much I love being able to give my kids the gift of swimming outdoors in the summer. When we walked in today Anna said again, "It's so good to be back. This is a special place."
It will likely rain in the first part of this week so we won't be back again until the sun comes out.
And guess what? This will probably be the week that my peonies bloom. Definitely something to celebrate as we head into a new week.
