Project Life - Week 1

I love scrapbooking, and I've scrapbooked for many years.  I kept up pretty well with scrapbooking about the first five years of Drew's life, but since Maddie has come along, my scrapping time has been cut back, and my scrapping material has doubled!  As I've tried to rethink my scrapping, I've realized that scrapping every event for our family is impossible.  I want to keep a record of our lives, but I know that I need to simplify.  After seeing lots of blog posts and advertising about Project Life this past year, I decided that Project Life might be a good "main scrapbooking" method for our family memories and that traditional scrapbook pages can still be the way that I document the special events for Drew and Maddie.  

In order to keep up with Project Life, I've decided that for most weeks, one page will probably be enough.  If we ever have a really big or special week, I can always add a second page.  I normally take enough pictures each week to fill a page, and I can include extra pictures by making a photo collage on a 4x6 print for special events or by adding a small photo insert. 

This is my first Project Life page for the first week of January!  I used Picasa (the free photo editing program from Google) to help me add text to the pictures and to make photo collages.  I printed all of the 3x4 inch photos by twos on 4x6 inch prints, and I made a 4x6 inch photo collage with four photos from the birthday party at Pump It Up.  I took a couple of these pictures with the camera on my phone.  I e-mailed the pictures from my phone to my computer, and then I was able to print them.  I printed my pictures at Sam's Club, and I was able to print the whole week's worth of photos for less than a dollar.

 I decided not to order a Project Life core kit this year.  I thought that I might get tired of using the same color scheme each week, and I wanted to save a little money.  I have a huge bin of scraps that I've sorted by color, and I am planning to use them to make my own title and journaling cards each week.  I will die cut my titles using my Slice or my Cricut.

Jim ordered me the Project Life Big Pack of Pocket Pages (Design A) for Christmas, and that is what I am using so far.



I would also like to get the Design F Pocket Pages since I take a lot of vertical photos

and the Design H Pocket Pages so I can add extra photos on fuller weeks when I have a few more photos than a full page will hold.

I am enjoying Project Life so far, and I like that it is helping me take more day-to-day, real life photos.  I think it will be fun to look back through this album at the end of the year - if I can keep up with it all year!  I am trying to sit down each Sunday afternoon or evening to edit and order my photos from the previous week, and I hope to post my weekly page here on my blog each Tuesday.  We'll see how it goes!