Project Life Week of September 25-October 1, 2011

Hi there, I'm back to blogging today after having a awful case of the flu. I now have a nice lingering migraine but at least I'm functioning again. Today I'm posting a Project Life week from way back in September. I want to remind you that if you get stuck or behind or unmotivated.....it's okay. You can catch up just like I did. I was 17 weeks behind in 2011 because the summer months just got so hectic. I didn't think I could ever catch up but I worked hard, made a plan and I did it. You can read about my post on "getting behind, getting caught up" right here. And I have to admit, the Christmas holiday caught up with me too and then with the flu, I'm 3 weeks behind again. But I have a plan because I wrote down notes in my calendar, I kept on taking photos and will be printing those photos today. It's manageable and I'm confident that I can catch up this week. I've given myself a 2 week window of opportunity on being behind so I'm not far from that goal.

So here's a week from last year. This was Jordan's birthday week. I find it kind of fun to make a little title insert that highlights a big happening for that week. I don't do it every time but I think it's fun for birthdays, holidays, or some big event like the last week of school.

Here's my 2 page spread. This one is quite colorful because I used wrapping paper from Jordan's presents on lots of the journaling cards. Birthdays are fun and festive...especially when you turn 13, right?! As a whole, this spread is just a little mish mash of events...exactly what I want my Project Life to capture. The everyday events is what Project Life is all about to me.
Here is the left side of the 2 page layout.
And the right page of the 2 page spread. My photos aren't perfect, some are dark...but that's okay. The memories are recorded and that's what matters.
Here's the main, dated insert. I stitched on chipboard letters and a label sticker to let us know that it's Jordan's birthday week. I used a folded journaling card from a PL Core Kit for the base and then made 2 horizontal flag pieces from scraps of Jordan's wrapping paper.
Here I've used stickers and patterned paper to dress up some journaling cards. I like to use my date stamp to list several activities on one journaling card.
Here I used my typewriter to make a bullet list of this week's happenings. On the bottom is another snippet of wrapping paper. On the right is a mini Instax photo of my nephew. I just stapled it onto a journaling card that is topped with some patterned paper.
Here I used a tag from an Under Armour shirt. The girls always wore an extra layer at football games. On the right is another mini Instax photo of Josey showing her outfit for Pajama Day at school. Again, just another little memory that I caught. Not an event that I'd want to make a full scrapbook layout for but I'm so glad we snapped a photo.
Here's Jordan's birthday. I stitched on more chipboard letters on top of some crumpled wrapping paper. On the right I added a small photo FaceBook birthday greetings to Jordan. I just take a screen shot then send the photo to my email then save in my photos.
Here I used a 4 x 6 slot to keep some items from Jordan's birthday. There's her birthday wish list, a birthday menu, some wrapping paper and a cupcake flag that Jordan made herself for her birthday party. I want to go back to this week and add in an additional insert page which shows more of Jordan's birthday celebration.
Here's a few 4 x 6 inserts that show some 4 x 4 Instagram photos.
As I look back on these older pages of my Project Life album, I am reminded again of why I love it so much. While we're taking photos, it seems that we surely won't forget this moment. But as the days and weeks go by, the memory seems to fade a bit. We are so caught up in living the moment that once we go back to look at photos, we are given a precious little gift of a photo and a small story we scribbled down. We get to relive that moment all over again. Fast forward to a year from now.....5 years.....10 years.....20 years....we'll be so glad we did this!!

Printing Instagrams:

I've had a few questions about how I get my Instagram photos printed and/or onto my computer to prepare for printing. You can certainly send your photos to Postal Pix right from your iPhone if you have those apps. I recently started printing at home using an Epson Artisan 730 printer. To get my photos from my phone to my computer for printing, I simply email the photos to myself. If you use iCloud on a Mac, I believe those photos instantly get transferred over. Once the photos are in my emails, I save them to my iPhoto. Then I edit my photos as desired. From there I use my printer to resize photos to the desired size. You can also resize your photos in Photoshop. Ali Edwards just happens to have a great video tutorial on this today on her blog here.

My Daily December progress:

I've lots of requests to see my finished pages. Sorry, but I don't have my album completed yet. Once I started taking holiday photos, I couldn't decide whether I wanted my photos to go into my Project Life weeks or into my Daily December. So I decided to just complete my Project Life pages first and go from there on what I wanted to add to my December Daily. I will definitely have some duplicate photos in both albums, I am sure.

Etsy shop update:

I'll have a new Valentine kit up in the shop soon + next week I'll have restocks of the small chevron sacks, large Kraft sacks with stripes/polka dots, small grid sacks and large lined notebooks sacks. Stay tuned.