PROJECT LIFE!!!!!!

I know I’m one of those people that, when I get excited about something, I get REALLY excited. it is one of those things that dave and I like to tease each other about. he’s so even-keeled, that it drives me nuts when he’s not jumping up and down about stuff he’s supposedly excited about… and he thinks it’s odd that I have reactions of ecstasy over things like… really good strawberries, for instance, or when the daffodils push their little green heads up out of the ground (which they are doing right now, btw. **you can’t see it, but this is me jumping up and down**)

at any rate, I’m SUPER excited about something right now: project life! mary turned me on to this, and I was totally skeptical at first. I didn’t get it. she started this last year, and kept raving and raving about how wonderful it was and all that… so, of course, I was intrigued. I started following becky higgins’ blog, and I started to get excited about the prospect of doing this myself.

SO, what is it? well, it’s a photo album. it’s a scrapbook. it’s a year of your life.

I’ve always been a hardcore, traditionalist scrapbooker. I was even a creative memories consultant for like 2 years (before I accepted the fact that I SUCK at selling stuff and called it quits). I have hundreds of dollars of scrapbooking supplies that I never use. why? because I have young children. I’m busy. I have a small house with no place to spread all my junk out and be creative and LEAVE it there for the next time I feel like working on it. my kids like stickers and scissors and fancy paper, and all that, and would like nothing more than to destroy it! and so it sits. along with the thousands of pictures I have in a box, not to mention, the 6 years’ worth of digital ones I have on my computer. and the guilt meter is ringing up a very high number on this mom.

so here’s the deal with project life. there’s none of that. nothing to cut, nothing to stick, nothing to ‘create’. no sharp tools to cut off your children’s fingers, no stickers to find stuck on the doors or floor, no 14 million different designs of paper and die-cuts to coordinate. everything is there. everything you need, except your pictures and your words about them, to document a year of your family’s life. it allows you to focus on the every day, as well as the big events. the holidays, the birthdays, the vacations, the field trips. but it also encourages the date night, the first day of school, the funny outfit, the spilled milk, the encounter with the neighbor’s dog, and yes, even the little green heads of the daffodils poking up out of the ground…

so no, this is not solving my years’ worth of pictures and memories waiting to be dealt with, but is putting a stop to the build up of new guilt. AND, it’s so fun! I totally love it. WAY more than I thought I would. so THANK YOU, MARY! thank you for being so brilliant!

So here’s the story behind how I got mine. I had decided I wanted to do this, right at the beginning of january… a good time to start, right? so I was browsing this year’s product line, but they were all sold out, for the time being. mary mentioned that she just happened to have a spare of last year’s design, that she was looking to get rid of because she had received on of the new ones for christmas. so I thought about it, and figured I was impatient enough to go for it! after all, it was my first one, so it didn’t really matter if it was last year’s or not. and so she stuck it in the mail to me.

and I waited.

and waited.

and I got more excited and more impatient.

I was already busy selecting my photos and making plans.

I thought it might come on friday.

it didn’t.

and then on saturday, the mail man had a box for me!!!!!

of course, I tore it open right away! beautiful!

and I spent the afternoon getting it all put together. layla was super excited to help me. shane and I had even picked up my pictures at costco that morning.

I got this awesome feeling, as I was flipping the pages, putting in cards and monthly bookmarks, knowing that this was a physical representation of the year to come. blank. empty. I could see where birthdays would fall, holidays, vacations and such, but it was all there, just waiting for OUR LIFE to HAPPEN. whoa.

I’m a very visual person, so seeing that really kinda hit me as very awesome, indeed.

at any rate, I’ve been having loads of fun taking pictures, and choosing what will be our photo of the day. making sure I have my camera ready, and overcoming my feelings of stupidity and self-consciousness as I take pictures of the dog walking down the street… this is life. as it is RIGHT NOW, and I think it’s worth remembering.