Project Life- or, what have I been up to?

So, what have I (we) been up to, anyway?? Well, the regular stuff-- and some holiday stuff-- just not blogging about it, I guess... but, part of what I've been up to is a new-to-me idea for scrapbooking the 'everyday' stuff that comprises our life, using a concept (and cool products!) from Becky Higgins called Project Life. From Becky's website: "Project Life is designed to be an easier-than-ever scrapbooking system. Simply pair your photos and journaling with pre-designed title cards and journaling cards. Your photos, these cards, and even your memorabilia slip into the Photo Pocket Pages and that’s it. The result is a stylish masterpiece that represents your life or whatever occasion you choose to record. With Project Life’s beautifully simple format, deciding what supplies to use or how to design layouts becomes obsolete, leaving you more time to experience life." Project Life can be used to document a photo-a-day, a week-at-a-glance, a monthly roundup, random photos and stories- however the user decides.

I started out seeing Ali Edwards post Project Life layouts on her blog all throughout last year, and the more I saw, the more it grew on me- the idea of recording the details of daily life as well as the bigger, 'usual topics' for scrapbooking layouts such as holidays, birthdays, trips, or other special occasions. Making regular "designed" layouts is fun, but only doing those leaves out a lot of what happens in our life. (plus, I rarely get the uninterrupted time or creative inclination anymore to spend a couple hours on just one layout.) I decided to try out Project Life using a weekly approach, and see how it goes-- without further ado, here is my first 2-page spread:

Project Life is made to be used with divided page protectors (also designed by Becky Higgins, to go with the papers); you can slip the date / title card and 4x6 photos right into the larger slots, and the journaling tags (or smaller photos) slide into the smaller spaces. The kit comes with tons pre-cut, pre-designed cards, so you have plenty of room for journaling (some of the cards are folded, too, so you have even more room to write). Lots of people do this as a yearly thing, so they start on Jan 1, but I was so excited about it, I started as soon as I got the materials- haha!! (There will be a title or 'cover' page that goes with this album, but I need to take a couple more pet pics first, so I'll show that later.)

Above is the left-hand page, which covers Dec. 10 - Dec. 18th. We attended a performance of Handel's Messiah and ate lunch at a new-to-us Persian restaurant (which was tasty); I received my Project Life materials from Amazon (see the photos, at the bottom?? LOL! I was so excited about this package I tracked it all the way to my door!) The next weekend, we drove to the Queen Creek Olive Mill, and ate at a new-to-us Indian restaurant (also very tasty). I didn't take pictures of that, but I did save the business cards.

Above is the right-hand page, with more photos of the week's activities- Bisbee snuggling with Tom on the couch while we watched TV on Friday night (she very rarely does that, so I'm glad I got a photo of it, even if it wasn't the best quality); addressing the Christmas cards; a photo taken off of the Food Network website from the final Next Iron Chef episode (I still need to write more journaling, there); and photos documenting a couple movies we watched. (FYI, I got images for the movies from the Internet, cropped and printed them, then attached them to cardstock. The red "Take-and Bake Revolution" is a sticker from the grand opening of our local Papa Murphy's pizza; I just stuck it to a journaling card and folded the overhang to the back. (it's very good pizza, by the way- we've gotten it 3x already!)

This is a detail of the business cards from the left page: I cut a piece of coordinating cardstock to 4x6, rounded the edges, and attached the business cards to the cardstock. And, I wanted to mention something you can hopefully see on the right-hand page: some of the photos have labels on them. They are simply office file folder labels with extra journaling on, and I think I'll be doing this a lot to keep track of more details. Some labels are stuck to the photo itself, and some are stuck to the page protector. Thanks for looking, and reading about my new project, Project Life!! I'm excited for this to continue-- I have a couple more weeks (mostly) completed already, so I'll show you those soon.