Project Life - a sampling

I have been a "scrapbooker" for as long as I can remember. I have several yellowing, magnetic page albums filled with newspaper articles, class pictures, notes from friends, and magazine clippings from my childhood. I also vividly remember covering entire walls of my bedroom as a teenager with pages from teen magazines. I've filled numerous sketch books with collages, I have more journals than I can count, and I even have a scrapbook that my sweet friends put together for one of my bridal showers.

When my daughter was born, I would spend hours making layouts while she napped or played next to me in my "studio." I loved the entire process (the shopping, the stamping, the creating), and I loved that I was able to spend time documenting our memories. By the time our son was born; however, my excitement had begun to wane. Instead of feeling inspired, I felt overwhelmed, inadequate, and a nagging sense of guilt about the lack of layouts for my little boy. I had a closet full of scrapbook supplies that sat virtually unused for over a year.

Enter Project Life.

This project has re-energized me, and given me a renewed excitement for documenting our memories. It's simple. It's do-able. It's fun. And it's a great way to document an entire year's worth of memories with a very minimal time commitment.

As promised, here are a few shots of my "Project Life 2011" album so far. These aren't necessarily in chronological order, just a sampling of how my pages are coming together throughout the album.

I've included 12 x 12 photos throughout the album

 a layout with Instagram photos

 81/2 x 11 page protectors with digital layouts fit right in

I also included an envelope filled with birthday blessings for Grant on his birthday

a 12 x 12 Birthday layout

and a few pages I printed out from blog entries and placed in 81/2 x 11 page protectors

I love having one central place to collect and store our family's memories. Along the way, I've included special school work, certificates, receipts, movie tickets, programs, etc... little bits of life that help to tell a more complete story of our year.
This is my second year doing some version of Project Life, and I have to say it is my favorite project to date!!

Week In the Life - my process

Today, I am spending a little time putting together my Week in the Life project for 2011. I decided this year that rather than creating an entirely separate album for this project, I am simply going to create a digital page for each day of the week, put the page into a page protector along with the corresponding daily sheet, and add those pages to my ongoing Project Life album.

I will take photos today of my album in progress, but for now, here is my layout for Monday, July 25, 2011:

i used Cathy Zielske's template from here

Week in the Life - Wed. & Thurs.

Wednesday was all about work, running errands & crossing things off my list. But there were also some wonderful moments along the way.....an impromptu lunch with my hubby at a new restaurant, sitting on our bed with the kiddos and giving each other "makeovers," finishing a great book ("What Alice Forgot").

On Thursday, I fell off the bandwagon a bit & only took about 6 photos for the day. One thing I have noticed is that if I don't start strong in the mornings (taking photos before I leave for work), I usually end up with very few photos for the day.

I am still so very grateful for this process. It forces me to find beauty in the mundane, to celebrate our life even when I feel like pulling my hair out, to capture what our life really looks like & to be grateful for every single minute.

* lots of performing in front of the big mirror
* a clean room
* trip to the vet
* a new haircut (so very handsome)

Scrapbooking Christmas Cards

Just wanted to let you know that I did a guest post over at the Come Together Cards blog all about scrapbooking those beautiful Christmas cards you receive each year. Click on over and check it out....and tell Courtney hello while you are there!! Here's a sneak peak:

Halloween mini book

I just finished a Halloween mini book with photos from 2009......better late than never, right? I kept it super duper simple by using a pre-made book, a little patterned paper and some cute velvet stickers,

making super fast, super easy pages (and digging into the Halloween sticker stash),

adding in a few pocket pages to hold the "extra" photos,

and finishing it off with a little ribbon and some bling!!

It was fast, it was easy, and it turned out pretty cute.......which just happens to be my new criteria for all things crafty :) Now it sits in our living room where little hands can look through it as many times as they wish during the month of October!!

back to life, back to reality

This past weekend, my mom and I spent 3 days in sunny Arizona for Creative Escape.......a weekend filled with creating, crafting and consuming (food not alcohol)!! We laughed a lot, made a few projects, and met some amazing women along the way. But the best part for me, was that my passion was scrapbooking was reignited.

I'm not exactly sure why, but over the past year, my desire to scrapbook has all but disappeared. Because I am working more? Because I have a 2 and 4 year old? Because it's not convenient? Because I wasn't inspired? Because I was in a rut? Because I was overwhelmed?

It was probably a combination of all of those things. But after this weekend, I am ready to jump back on the scrapbooking bandwagon. I am ready to document our memories again. I am ready to create magical moments, and then record them for eternity. I am ready to pair photos and words to tell our story. I am ready to "taste life twice."

I was reminded this weekend that despite scrabooking's somewhat corny reputation, there is nothing corny or frivolous about being the family historian. Every time I make a scrapbook layout, or a mini-book, or take the time to write down something silly my children said, I am showing them that they are important, that they matter, that they are loved. I am leaving our mark on history. I am elevating the "ordinary."

So it's time to bust out the supplies again and get crackin.' Thank you Creative Escape for reminding me.

p.s. I decided to leave my big SLR at home this weekend, and only brought the point-n-shoot = huge mistake!! The above photo is the only (and I mean ONLY) photo that I can even stand of myself. I couldn't figure out how to turn off my flash (no one at the event could figure it out either), so every single photo looks blown out, blurry and ridiculously unflattering = another lesson I learned this weekend......just bring the darn SLR!!!

photo album scrapbooking

It's been awhile since I have done any sort of "real" scrapbooking. In fact, I haven't done a traditional layout that you slip inside a 12 x 12 album in months. For whatever reason (or reasons), I just haven't made the time. But I still love taking pictures, and I still love documenting our lives and recording our memories, so I have become a huge fan of Photo Album Scrapbooking = a mixture of traditional scrapbooking (on a much smaller scale) and simply sliding photos into 4x6 slots = easy peasy.

In May, our family took a trip to Seaside, Florida, and when we returned, I realized I had taken over 500 photos!! There is NO way I would be able to scrapbook all those photos in a traditional album (nor would I have any desire to do so), so instead I put together this Vacation album in about 2 hours total.

The Cover

The Title Page

Photos + Journaling + Leftover letter stickers

I threw in a few vacation themed stickers on a few of the photos

More photos + journaling

Still have some journaling to add in a few places

I used some of the 4x6 openings to "scrapbook"

Photos + Journaling

Entire photo spread

Another photo spread

This was so fun and so easy to put together, but it still documents and records our memories from the trip, and it's all contained in one neat little album. Love this method!!!

a week in the life

Last week, I participated in Ali Edward's "A Week in the Life" project. Basically, I took lots of photos for seven straight days and kept a running list of what we did during each of those days. And because life is nothing if not unpredictable, there were a few bumps along the way that made documenting our week a bit challenging.......but I have decided to put my album together this week anyway, and to tell our story exactly as it happened (including the part about the "particles embedded deep in my cornea" that had to be removed on Friday!!). Here are a few favorite photos from Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. I will post progress on my album along the way.....

Sweet siblings (I catch these moments when I can)

Our roses are starting to bloom

Backyard renovation = huge sand pile to play on

Pancakes for breakfast

I started walking/exercising this week

Grant in front of our new playhouse door

Sienna found a lady bug in the sand and was mesmerized

I tried to make sure I was present in a few photos :)