how I scrapbook, part two

Project Life. Ahhhhh. There is a tiny explosion inside my heart every time I think about my Project Life albums. I just started my second year of doing this project and I must say, I LOVE it. Its so simple. So clean. So easy to keep up with. And, as an added little bounus for this year, I have about a dozen of my friends doing their own Project Life albums at the same time. We'll be getting together on a monthly basis and sharing our albums and getting inspiration from each other. I know I will treasure this little community of Project Lifers.

Project Life is all about capturing the everyday lives of my entire family. I sincerely wish I had a place in my house where I could keep my PL album out and in view so my family could help participate in the making of it. The fabulous Ali Edwards has her album smack on the counter in her kitchen (she's a brave woman...) so its always at her fingertips. Our kitchen has waaaay too many little grimey hands for me to pull this off, but I do love the concept!

The way I'm tackling Project Life is to do a "photo per day" approach. I'm taking at least one photo per day, for the most part. For me the concept of PL is to catch a glimpse of our daily lives when looking through this album, so I want to add everyday photos that are significant to me and my family. If that means using two photos from one day and no photos from another day, then that is fine. Everyday significance. Telling our story. Including the details. (Not just taking photos of people!) I haven't printed any photos out from this year to add to my album, but once I do, I will be sure to upload what a weekly layout looks like.

Here are a few examples of my daily photos I'll be using from the past two weeks:

My husbands Nerf collection. He's slightly obsessed....

 A stack of some of Jack's favorite books:

 iPod Touch (looooove):

 Zoe coloring with Daddy:

 Ingredients for my homemade laundry detergent:

 Macy and Jackson sledding:

Along side my Project Life album, I will also do my "regular" scrapbooking. On these layouts I'll delve a little deeper into each of our lives. This is also where my more creative side busts out as well. Some recent favorite layouts:

Me and Macy and a little note I wrote to her about how much I love her age right now.

Layout about Matt and I's favorite things to do on date nights. Don't forget to include yourself and your likes/dislikes on your pages! And be sure to utilize your camera's self-timer.

Here is an example of my method for scrapbooking school memorabilia and such. Let me explain. I mostly do 12 x 12 inch layouts. But I also love mixing and matching differnet types of page protectors (notice the baseball card page protector below) and different page sizes as well. I scrapbook school stuff (report cards, examples of homework, artwork, teacher newsletters, backpack "gems", etc) right along with my kids' other scrapbook pages. That way, down the road, everything is all together. I put all the kids' paper school memorabilia (report cards, homework, flat artwork, etc) in 8.5 x 11 page protectors and put them right in between the other scrapbook pages, chronologically. For large artwork that I want to keep but is too large for the scrapbook, I will scan it and include it in their albums. Of course there are some things I will keep the originals of, but mostly I like things neat and simple and I don't want a lot of extra stuff around. At the end of each school day, I empty out Jack's back pack and decide what to keep and what to recycle. Most of the time his papers get recycled. I just don't see the point in keeping EVERY SINGLE PAPER that comes home. But if it is something he is definitely proud of or that really sums up what his school year is about, then I'll stick it in the scrapbook. This system works well for me and keeps things nice and organized throughout the school year!

Another example of how I'll use different sized page protectors in my albums. This is a 2-page layout about Macy's 3rd birthday. In the middle, I included a 6 x 12 inch page protector and slipped birthday party memorabilia (cards from her friends, her party invitation, etc) in the page protector.

And now I'm feeling a burst of creativity, so I need to go make something....