project life–january 2012

last year, I started out the year (and really for about the first 6 months) with weekly posts of actual pictures of the book, put together. then I started doing just the pictures, and highlighting each day. that’s what I continued doing this year, but I kind of have wanted to go back to the old way as well, because I think it’s good to show the ‘finished’ product. it’s hard to get a good idea of how project life works when you’re not seeing it, all together. and I am EVER evangelizing about this! no, I don’t sell it! no, I don’t get any commission. I just love it. it has saved me SO MUCH mom guilt, and has allowed me to get creative with my pictures in a time-saving, sanity-saving way. so anyway. here you go…

I opted for the cobalt edition this year… it was a tough choice, and I’m still looking for an excuse to get the clementine, too!

btw, I LOVE LOVE LOVE the new binders! I’m super-excited to learn that she’s going to be re-releasing the red edition (from 2010), which I used for last year. that means I can get the spiffy new binder to put last year’s stuff in… actually, 2 binders, since the main reason I need a new one in the first place is that the current one is SO STUFFED that the rings will hardly stay closed! I put way too much extra stuff in… I’ll probably need to get a second binder this year as well.

front page… if I had been on top of things, I probably would have taken a family picture and put it in that top right slot… but oh well. there’s always next year!

week 1: I am still doing the big 8x10 collages of the ‘extra’ pictures from each week, and mounting them on the matching cardstock. I then crop it down to fit in a regular 8.5x11 page protector. I had thought of doing 12x12 this year, but I like the added dimension of the different sized pages. new for me this year is the arrow stickers. on all of the journaling cards, I put an arrow, pointing in the direction of the picture it corresponds with. I’m compulsive like that. when I have a vertically oriented picture, sometimes I put it in one of the smaller middle slots, but usually, I mount it on half of one of the full-size foldable journaling cards, and then do the writing on the other half. then I just stick a filler card in the slot that the corresponding journaling card would usually go. I kind of like how it breaks up the line of journaling cards in the middle.

week 2: notice the little blue dot in the middle of the far left filler card? this is something I started doing halfway through last year. this is a number sticker, and I put the week number on there. the top filler card has the dates on it, but I like keeping track of what number week it is out of the 52 in the year.

week 3:

week 4: this week I included a drawing of layla’s on the front side of a collage I had for a day in the latter half of the week. most of the kids’ drawings and school papers will go in their own albums (eventually), but I like to include a few here and there… mostly when I need to fill a back side of something! the picture for saturday in this week (lower right) is another way I have handled vertical pictures, especially if I have more to write about it than will fit on a card. in picassa, I make the picture into a collage using the ‘picture pile’ option, and then make the picture fit in half of the space. I turn the other half whatever color I think looks good with it and type my journaling in there. then I just print it as a 4x6 with my other pics.

week 5 (part 1): this takes us through the month of january.