Monday, October 31, 2011

Project Life Love

So I know .... blog? You blog? Well for the most part facebook, google+ and very occassionally twitter fill most of the need I have to post. But this ones been festering for a while and I don't think 120 charecters (or whatever it is now) really could cut it.

Most people know that I love to scrapbook... the irony of my life is that I used to do much much more scrapbooking before I had kids. For many people their inspiration to scrapbook comes from the birth of their first child. For me it was a release of I don't know I guess you could say energy... it reminded me to focus my energy on the positive not the negative stuff like the fact that back then I worked too much, my DH always was traveling, etc etc etc.

As I had kids I was grateful that I started scrapbooking before the kids came along... I had my style and I could be pretty efficient at scrapbooking. I actually did pretty well that first year after the birth of my first child (my DD) I kept up fairly well and found a groove that worked. All that went down the tube though when my second child was born (my DS) and I continued to work full time. (Really having one child is a very different experience than having two... I learned that the hard way) I have a cute digital album that I think really highlights our family the first three months after my DS was born... but was this what I was going to have to resort to... "shutterfly albums" or digital albums... I have to admit that shutterfly has come a long way in the past two and ahalf years... back then I'd make my albums with ritz photo because it gave me the flexibility that frankly shutterfly didn't. But Ritz photo has all but closed in the state of NJ and shutterfly has truly evolved... I mean custom path has really put a bandaid over my deep need to learn photoshop. (I know I am speaking evil to those with true graphic design skills.. I don't deny that I need to learn photoshop... I will someday... I guess its one of those bucket list things for me right now).... anyway I digress.

As the holiday season approached that first year after the birth of my DS I noticed that Becky Higgins broke off from Creating Keepsakes and started this new company and her first product was Project life kit. (considering I really didn't keep in touch with the scrapbooking world like I used to it surprises me even now that I realized this) I bought one of these Project life kits that holiday season 2 years ago. I have to admit even that overwhelmed me.. I had two children under two a full time job and all my energy was going into those two items. A picture a day... seriously are you kidding me... I couldn't do it. So I started out slow... I did one page on my DD, one on my DS and one family page which could be about family stuff or stuff that my husband and I did (I always loved documenting stuff about my DH.. not sure if he loves that I document stuff about him.. I don't do as much of it as I used to.. hmmm maybe I should change that). I wondered if I wasted money on this kit but lets see where it goes b/c something is better than the no scrapbooking that was happening and my DS's album was fairly bare of the little stuff I was able to stick in my DD's first year album. I started that January 2010 that summer was tough... if you look through the album in those summer months it is filled with empty spaces. I don't sweat it... in my own head I know I was focusing extra attention on the kids and its fine that those pages don't look so full or nice. Maybe oneday I'll go back and fill in the blanks with fillercards. I finished my first full year of project life and was pretty satisfied... of course I still hadn't finished that first kit but thats fine... I had a groove.

As I got past February an interesting thing started to happen... maybe it was b/c my kids were getting bigger and the fog in my brain that came with trying to manage two kids and a job was slowly lifting. But I found that each month I'd end up adding one more page... to the three that had been a standard up to that point. I'd always followed Ali Edwards but I was totally inspired by her project life album. As I started this past summer I found myself just naturally moving towards a page a week... not exactly a picture a day but a page a week. This summer was filled with so much for me..... both ups and downs. The fact that both of my kids were now coming into their own (well the older one was already in her own but the younger one was really coming out) while the world was throwing things at us... some really good and some not really good. Somehow by the end of the summer when everything had settled back down and our lives were "coming back to normal" I was still taking 7 pictures a week (at least... often time I was taking more ) and finishing a page a week.. now the months were filled with various artwork (my DD's "rainbow period" or now her "smiley face period") and other random things that I was mindful to hold onto. I had completely used up my first kit by the time October started (certain things had finished earlier and I had to supplement them to this point).

I'm so excited to buy a new kit... its mind boggling for me to imagine that I've documented the last 1.75 years of our family... its mind boggling that in December I'll have finished 2 years of Project life.

Its allowed me to document the big things like potty training both kids, my DS learning to walk, my DD learning to write her name but it just as easily allows me to document the little things that sometimes are just as important as the big things like my DD's favorite princess shoes, my DS's favorite toy drill, the cute things they say, picking tomatoes from my parents garden, the first time DS put on his shoes by himself (actually even the first time DD put on her shoes by herself), my DH jumping out of a airplane. Its funny now going back through my first year of Project life with my DD she refers to herself as a baby in these pictures... and says how when I was a baby I used to do this or that.

I have told a handful of my non-scrapping friends about Project life... b/c they are too busy to scrapbook or don't scrapbook for other reasons. But I really wish people could just see how easy it is. In my mind there is no reason not to do it. And for those that don't have time to be creative... with this you don't have to be. Even if I was able to scrapbook everything I wanted to I still wouldn't have as much documented as I do in these albums. And now since all you need is

And you know what though.. I still scrapbook... my project life album is sometimes where I store pictures till I can sit and scrapbook them... it frees me up to scrapbook the stuff I want to instead of the stuff I feel that I need to scrap. Each of my kids has two albums the first documents a lot of their firsts, birthday parties and other specific full layouts about them...the second album is about school/daycare... I do about 2 (or 3) layouts per school year with a fairly standard format (inspired of course by Stacy Julian and Cathy Z ). I'll do full page layouts and stick it in project life as well. Maybe oneday I'll pull all the Halloween layouts into a separate album but for now it is all in here included in the Project life pages about October.

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