What I Did At The Crop - Part 2 of 3

My apologies that this has been so long in coming, but you all know why. :(  Anyway! A little more about the crop...

The crop I attended was a full weekend retreat. Held at the Inn at Reading, it hosts about 200 croppers in the ballroom of the hotel from Friday noon to Sunday mid-afternoon.  If you buy the full package it includes two nights lodging and some of your meals.  So it is a fairly sizeable event. But so well run... by three sisters who do this twice a year - once in Reading, once in the Poconos. 

Back in the "biz" days, I was a vendor at this crop - first for Scrap in a Snap, then for Top Line Creations and my own line of scrapbooking clothing.  But after these start-up direct sales companies went belly up back to back, I called an end to my eight year scrapbook "career" and went back to scrapping for myself.  But I digress...

One of the major sellers of this event is that each cropper gets a full eight foot table all to herself!  Yes, room to create is important.  Some of the larger more commercial events around here cram you into a three foot space - which for me just doesn't work!  And it is one of the best priced crops around.  If you are ever interested in attending, you can check out the details HERE.

Still interested in what I accomplished during my mini-vacation?

My Reverb10 album!

Now, before you get all excited, please understand that I had done all the computer work BEFORE the crop.  I had copied and pasted all my Reverb10 posts into a word document, cleaned it up and printed out each entry.  I had also chosen a half dozen of my favorite photos from 2010 and printed them out at 7x7 on 8x10 photo paper.  The album itself is from a kit I had leftover from my Top Line Creations days.  So using only what I had on hand... 

My work at the crop was actually trimming down all the pages and assembling the whole thing.  And I won't reprint all the pages here... just enough to give you a flavor.

For the most part I tried to keep one prompt to a page.

And every four or five pages I would add a photo just to keep it interesting.

Some pages already had photos included from the post, or photos added from some 4x6 prints I had on hand.

And in some cases, where I was particularly verbose, a single prompt could go on for FOUR pages of the album! 

Overall, I was quite pleased with the finished product and glad to have this glimpse into my life in 2010. 

Next up - my new "Move More Eat Less" system. Again, I had printed off most of the content at home. So this work involved trimming down the papers, filling out the templates, and assembling the album. The album itself is a 5.5 x 8.5 WeR Memory Keepers Album.

For the cover of the album, I actually recreated Cathy Zielski's title block in Photoshop (from scratch) and printed it on a 4x6 photo paper.  I'm amazed at how vibrant it came out! The photos actually don't do the colors justice.

The "Move More Eat Less" journal templates are from Cathy Zielski and are available at Designer Digitals.  Of course, I recolored the entire thing... I can just never leave well enough alone!

These "numbers" are actually from April of 2010, but also roughly approximate where I was at the end of September 2010 when I started tracking on My Fitness Pal.

This template is designed to be used monthly and that is the way I intend to track from here out.  So my "Fitness Friday" posts will only occur once a month - on the first Friday of each month.  In between, I will continue to track daily exercise and calories and weekly weigh-ins at My Fitness Pal.

To keep the journal going, I will use this weekly template to summarize my daily logging in My Fitness Pal.  I need the daily logging on MFP to keep honest about my eating habits, but I like this weekly overview as a way to spot trends and keep an easy overview.  I actually think these will be more useful than the reports from MFP.

What you can't see here is that I added in my prior pages from when I took Lisa Cohen's Wellness Journey class back in 2009 and from when I was using CZ's 4x6 fitness journey templates in 2010.  So I actually have wellness inspiration and fitness documentation dating back to early 2009!  I want my "journey" all in one album... even if the pages don't all match! :)

The "bonus" to my new system is this mini-exercise album that I created.  The album itself is just a 3x5 index card thingy that I bought at Target with a totally different purpose in mind.  I took the exercises I was given in Physical Therapy, stretches given to us in Lisa Cohen's "Wellness Journey" class at BPC, and some yoga moves I had clipped from a magazine and cut them down and glued them into the album - one per page.  I can add to this when I get strength training exercises from my Personal Trainer at the gym (...if I ever get back to the gym...) or others as I come across them.  And keep this by my computer and when I need a break... just flip to a stretch and voila! I'm doing mini workouts all day! :)

I think one more thing my "system" might need is a healthy eating recipe album. So I'll have to start collecting for that one!