Project Life

I love to scrapbook.  It has always been a very relaxing activity for me, but after having my daughter I just didn't have the time anymore. My good friend Sarah, from The Arena Update, introduced me to Project Life and it changed the way I view scrapbooking.

Project Life is a very organized quick way to keep track of your memories.  Becky Higgins has all the hard work already done for you.  Project Life comes in a variety of binders, core kits that contain journaling cards and filler cards, and scrapbook pages.  The hardest part is deciding on what design theme to choose.  After you choose your materials, all you have to do is take your pictures, jot down a few words about the picture or a memory from a specific day, and put in the plastic scrapbook page.  Becky Higgins has some great videos to explain the whole process of Project Life.

My first Project Life album was one that I created for the first year of my daughter's life. Every day I took a picture of her and wrote down a memory from that day.  Now that she is two, she loves to look through the the pictures and point out everyone she knows in them.  Her dad and I look through them and can't believe how much she has grown.

It got harder and harder to take pictures everyday, so for my 2012 Project Life album, I decided to do a week a layout.  Some weeks had a lot going on in it so I covered more than one layout for those weeks.

The system that seemed to work the best for me was to keep a monthly calendar on my desk and if I took a picture of something or wanted to remember something that happened to include in my Project Life album, I would write it on that date on my calendar.  Then, I try every Sunday to sit down and complete a planning page for that week.  I jot down what picture goes where, where my journal cards will go, and then if I am adding in anything else such as a newspaper article, art that my daughter created, movie stubs, etc.

Project Life Planning Page

If I had time at the moment, I would then complete my journaling cards and put them in the binder.  I try to wait to print my pictures until I can get a good deal at Walgreen's   Usually this means I am printing 75 or more of them at a time, but it is very easy to slide them into the scrapbook page in my binder because my planning pages tell me exactly where to put them.

For my Project 2013 album, I am not planning on covering a week in a layout.  I am just taking pictures as the days go by and each Sunday sitting down to determine what is going to go in the album.  I love Project Life and the freedom it has given me to do something that I love, but is not such a time commitment that I have to choose between it and my family.

Weekly To-Do List

I have found that I enjoy my weekends a lot more if I am spending them playing with my daughter or having a date night with my husband instead of checking things off my to-do-list.  To help free up my weekends, I created a weekly to-do-list that I keep in a frame on my desk. As I complete that item, I cross it off with a dry erase marker. When the weekend comes, I finish up anything that hasn't been crossed off.  Hopefully there is nothing and then I get to do whatever I want :)

Here is what my weekly to-do-list looks like.  I printed it on some scrapbook paper I had to make it look a little more elegant.

It took me a while to figure out what I could feasibly get done each day after work, cooking dinner, and spending time with my family.  I don't get everything done each day, all the time, but it has helped me to enjoy the weekend instead of dreading it because of all the stuff I had to get done. It has also helped my house to look some what clean all the time, instead of just on Sunday after I cleaned it :)