And yet more scrapbooking…

A few weeks ago, I read this blog post by Becky Higgins, in which she outlines how she documented 2015 and is planning to document 2016. As I read it, I thought, “I could DO this. It sounds manageable.”

You see, I’ve been feeling the urge to scrapbook again – to capture my family’s memories as I’m counting the days (and minutes) as they tick by and I know that my girls will soon be off on their own pursuits and not as interested in spending time with their mom and dad. I want to capture the days we’ve got together – what life is like, not just the special events – and record them for posterity.

But I have been overwhelmed at the thought of choosing pictures, printing them out, laying out paper and embellishments. And doing the same thing digitally seemed overwhelming, too.

I think it is because it’s been SO LONG since I’ve done any scrapbooking and the thought of the backlog of pictures seems overwhelming.

But, to overcome that I’ve decided to take Becky’s approach. I’m starting with CURRENT pictures and focusing on those only. Literally the last week’s worth of pictures. Each night I’ll glance at my phone and pick a picture or two from the day if I have any. Then, on Sunday night, I’ll add those all to a page – one page, that’s do-able, right? – and add some quick journaling about the week and the weekly card from the Project Life – Project 52 card set. I’m doing it all on the Project Life app on my phone.

What could be easier?

Honestly, I’m not sure anything could. I did my first week’s page in less than 10 minutes. And then, because I felt like I was on a roll, I did a few from December, just for fun. (somebody stop me, I’m going crazy here)

So we will see how this goes. But quite honestly, this seems so EASY. I’m not sure how I could NOT do it. And even if I missed a week it wouldn’t be that bad to catch up.

Project Life Tuesday 2.7.12

Hello and welcome to Project Life Tuesday!

If you are stopping by from The Mom Creative, welcome & thanks for clicking over! If you are not, you might want to click over there when you’re done here for some more great Project Life inspiration!

Here are the pages I have for last week. I ended up doing a 12×10 insert with some extra pictures from the week, including the Father-Daughter Dance pictures. I will probably end up going back and including a 5×7 of that one since SuperMan had a formal picture made of him with the girls at the dance. I can’t wait to see it.

I’m loving using some new things to me – like the Year-ography pages I got last week (the “FEB” insert above) and some SMASH washi tape (polka dots!) that I am now in love with.

I also played around with PSE and made some of my own journaling cards – I like to tell the details of the stories and handwriting them just doesn’t always give me enough room.

The journal card that is handwritten (below) was from Elle’s Studio. They are SO pretty – I will be ordering more for sure.

This is the right side page… more journaling in PSE plus an handwritten journal card. I also used some of the new Martha Stewart labels I picked up at Staples. (LOVE them!) You will be seeing a lot more of those in my books in the future.

My next project to work on this week is my Move More Eat Well page for February…

You can see my other Project Life posts here.

Project Life Tuesday: 1.10.12 (thoughtsalonglifeshighway.com)
Project Life Tuesday 1.17.12 (thoughtsalonglifeshighway.com)
Project Life Tuesday: 1.24.12 (thoughtsalonglifeshighway.com)

Scrapbook Tuesday

Well, I’m caught up on my Project Life album!

Mostly, anyway.

I went on a “retreat” this weekend with a girlfriend and spent about twelve hours on Saturday working on my album. I got May – November pictures in the pages (which included sorting through a TON of memorabilia, school papers, etc. and photos) and I’m now in the process of catching up on the journaling.

The pages are not fancy – but they are done. And right now, I’m happy with that. I’ll be supplementing with some digital pages I’ve done so the “fancy” will come with that.

I have to say, though, every time I do a Project Life/Project 365 album (this is my third year) I get discouraged about mid-year and slack off. Then I pick up steam again whenever I get a scrapbook weekend to catch up and I remember why I love this concept so much.

I love being able to snap those everyday, mundane things that make up our lives and that I wouldn’t necessarily dedicate an entire scrapbook page (and subsequent supplies) to but that really capture what our life is like right now… what is important to us, what captures our fancy, where we are spending our time.

I’m also planning to add in some printouts of my blog posts that correspond with some of the pictures – why re-write all of that? Why not just include it here? After all, I figure my blog is my online scrapbook!

I also really love how QUICKLY it comes together (once I sit down and actually DO it!) I remarked on Sunday morning that I wish I had the discipline to actually do the work on a weekly basis when the memories are fresh and stay caught up. Alas, that never seems to happen. But, my current method of using an iris project holder to keep my memorabilia and ephemera works pretty well.

Last weekend, I just dug around in that, put things in chronological order, slipped it into the appropriate page protectors or pockets and then filled in with photos and journal boxes after that was done. It works well for me.

It also frees me from feeling like I have to do my “normal” scrapbooking chronologically. Now that I do that mostly digitally, I like being able to bounce around where the inspiration strikes and having my PL album chronological frees me from feeling like I might miss something by jumping around with my other pages.