Project Life 2013

I read a lot of blogs.  Actually, I subscribe to a lot of blogs on a lot of different subjects (decorating, piano teaching, decorating, food, crafting, decorating...)  I read them when I can.  One blog I follow is a well-known person in the scrapbooking community who is also a St. Paul resident.  All through 2012 she worked on and completed weekly pages for her family album through Project Life.  I was super inspired each week. I love scrapbooking, but the whole "print the pictures...pick them up...design the pages...pick the accessories..."  -  I just don't have much time for it right now, despite my total enjoyment of those pages.

On January 1st during our celebratory lunch out, I told my family of my plans to try this scrapbook project.  They were SUPER supportive of me during my 365 project and constantly asked me questions about my picture of the day and helped hold me accountable.  The caveat with this project though: I wanted it to be a FAMILY project too.  I told everyone that I wanted pictures OF everyone, BY everyone.  We all have regular cameras or phones, or tablets or iPods.  I really didn't care about the quality - I wanted pictures of our everyday life each week.  And I wanted to be IN them too.  Mike and I have seen the effects of not having pictures from special people in our lives.  He was disappointed to realize he had very few pictures of his mom when he was growing up; I don't want my kids to know that feeling.  I want them to know I was/am involved in their lives. So, I made a general plea to get me in some of those pictures too.

What's been great?  I've seen the kids taking pictures of things.  Jake snuck a picture of me last night.  We are getting pictures of our regular lives.  The pictures aren't all stellar - many are grainy or badly colored.  But at the end of the last two weeks I've asked everyone to email their pics or I've downloaded them from cameras.  I've picked out the ones that tell the story for the week and drop them in the templates I've created.  I didn't buy the whole Project Life digital set because I'm cheap frugal.  The templates took me - maybe - 45 minutes to create.  The actual pages are taking me a bit longer than I expected before I started but that's because I've been creating the cards to use as I go.  Once I have a stockpile of designs to use, I think it will go faster.

The results?  Here's week one:

Page One:

Page Two:

Week 2 - Page One:

Page Two:

I'm loving my time editing the pictures - ESPECIALLY the crummy quality phone or tablet ones.  I'm super excited to be catching the little conversations and writing them down before I forget them.  I signed up to a website that emails me at the end of each day and I reply with our day's events.  It's Oh Life.  There is another one called Day One that I would probably prefer because it can be set up to prompt me for info whenever I want reminders.  However, it's only available for Apple stuff.  (Hello App creators??  Android stuff covers 47% of the market...).  My pages are all digital which is completely new to me so adds to the fun.  I literally just drop in my pictures after minor editing and the layout is practically completed.

Anyway - I'll try posting our weekly recaps - at least we know something will get on this blog then.  I'm just super excited about this project and LOVE the fact that we are ALL involved.