This Is Our Happy Place

Hey all. I created this two page spread in my 6x8" personal album a few weeks ago, and I honestly have no clue why it's taken me so long to share it. There's kind of a funny story on how it even came about. 

Long story short. The house that we originally wanted and fell in love with last year, when we first decided to downsize, ended up back on the market a few weeks ago. I very randomly came across it just 2 days after it was listed. It's only about a mile from the house we ended up buying, and I think about it quite often. It's the one house that I have some regret over not getting (it was the one we put our first offer on, but we didn't get it), out of the main houses we were considering. And for a very hot minute, I was ready to put this house on the market and go after that first house. Lol. I know. It was crazy thinking on my part. 

I don't always create layouts about things like that, especially in that moment. But it crossed my mind that I should get that crazy story down, and that's how this layout came to be. I included the story about that other house, but I also focused on documenting the things that we truly love about this house. 

I dug through my files to find photos that I've taken around the house over the last year or so. I printed them as 2x2" photos and slipped them into a 6x8" divided page protector. 

I left three empty pockets on each side of the page protector, with plans to add small embellishments. I cut scraps of white cardstock to 2x2" and adhered an embellishment to each - using chipboard pieces and plastic houses, both from the Ali Edwards "Home" Story Kit. 

After picking out a coordinating house and chipboard piece for each side of the page, I was left with two more white 2x2" squares (1 for each side of the page) that needed a little something. I used the "Home" Story Stamp set to quickly add a stamped phrase to those two squares.

I used a digital journaling card from the Recorded Journaling Cards No. 3 kit, from In A Creative Bubble, to hold my journaling. The black filler card next to it is from the Home Story Kit. 

I used this fun "Happy Home" card, from In A Creative Bubble's Indoorsy Journaling Card kit, as my title card. While I print most of my journaling cards on matte presentation paper, I go back and forth between printing filler cards like this on that same paper - or on soft gloss photo paper. It usually just depends what else I'm printing, as I'll just add cards to the same page. 

I see lots of my favorite designers adding vellum into their album projects, and thought it would be fun to try it on this project. I used Kerri Bradford's This Is Our Happy Place kit to print the phrase on a piece of vellum, trimming it to the same size as my page protectors. I ended up using two black and white Project Life filler cards to create tabs, which I adhered to the vellum where the album rings fall. 

I was actually short a few photos, as I was aiming to get 9 photos on each side of the page protector. And I had a few parts of the house that I wanted to be sure to include. So I snapped a few quick photos to add to the ones that I had already printed. 

I created a large journaling card of sorts, sized to 6x8", adding a digital stamp to the top using Ali Edward's What Today Looked Like kit. I typed up my crazy story, editing it quite a bit as I went, because I can get very long-winded in my story telling ;)

I originally printed this page with just the journaling and title, but I felt like it needed something else. I was scrolling Instagram, and I saw someone had added a faint digital image behind their journaling, and it gave me the idea to add a house behind mine. I used a digital house from the Digital Home Story Kit, changing the opacity to make it a little lighter and let the journaling stand out. 

And there it is. I can look back on this crazy story now and laugh about it. And years from now, I'll have proof of how crazy my mind works sometimes - just by looking back at this layout.

Comments

[Deneen Cook]

Love that you chose to document this funny story :) Love your mini albums too! I should take picures of the things I love about our home and make a little album about it but alas I don't think I have time for it at this point but I can add it to my ever growing list of things I want to document LOL!!!!