WHAT WILL YOU REMEMBER ABOUT THIS YEAR?

Last November, I did a fairly extensive life review.  I spent time considering each of the major facets of my life from several angles.  I looked backward, I looked forward and I looked at right where I was.  It was a great exercise and really helped me to think about how I wanted to spend my time as I moved into the new year.

Before I got started, I read through several articles with varying ideas on exactly how to conduct this sort of life review.  Fitting with my "Questioner" personality, I did a lot of research and then just used the ones that made the most sense to me or really resonated with me in one way or another.

Out of all that, one question has really stuck with me.

"What will you remember about this year?"

This question feels like THE QUESTION.  My days are often filled with monotonous tasks and urgent concerns, but those aren't the things that I will remember.  I fill our family Project Life album with all the photos and lists of what we do and some of the funny things the kids say.  All that is good and I enjoy looking back through the albums from time to time, but most of those things aren't the things I will remember.

It is amazing to me how big and important things feel in the moment and how little of them I can recall a year (or even just a month) later.

The things we remember are the new things, the big things and the things that happen on repeat.

For the first half of 2018, here's what I will remember:

• Sam's love of the presidents and crazy ability to memorize all of their birth and death dates
• Eli's love of Sweetcakes (his plush rat)
• Maggie yelling "Yijah!" and never calling her brother Eli
• Creating a new identity for our family as "campers" and our first few camping trips
• Eli's interests in guns and volcanoes and weather and talk of fish
• My adoption of "The Rule of Six" and all the ways it has helped me be (and feel like) a good mom
• Reading a lot of books - on my own and also to the kids
• Brian's summer of school (with the knowledge that this is the end of his classes and all future summers will be school-free)
• Brian's listening to Jordan Peterson on repeat
• Spending time with Brian's parents in the weeks before and after Ken's surgery
• The 40 Days of Prayer series
• Maggie's talk about ice cream flavors (every single day)and how happily she plays independently
• Sam finishing kindergarten
• Still not knowing if Eli will go to public school or stay home 
• Joining my small group through church and finding kindred spirits 
• The boys talking about our 2017 vacations on an almost daily basis
• Maggie saying, "Hi mama.  How doing?" twenty times a day.
• Running and singing and laughing our way around our kitchen and living room
• Maggie and Eli watching Charlotte's Web and eating Lunchables

I think this list does a fair job of summing up our last six months and I like it.  

Life is good.  God is good.  I can't thank Him enough for all of His blessings.  

WEEK IN THE LIFE - NEXT WEEK

I've decided to join in with Ali Edwards and so much of the memory keeping crowd to document what our family life looks like over the course of a week - and it's happening next week.

REASON WHY

I gave serious consideration to doing this project last year, but never pulled the trigger and oh how I wish I would have.

As we were living out that season - with all three kids still at home with me most of the time - I recognized that it was the end of a life stage for our family.  I knew that having a tangible memento (in the form of a photo book) and writing down the words in real time would be greatly valued by my future self.

I never managed to take the time to do it and that's okay.  But I don't want to miss this year.

Although I am really good about making weekly layouts for our family album, the details are often missing and I only manage to tell a story or two from each week.  Again, that's okay (and obviously it would be crazy to document in detail all the time).  But I want to take this time to capture more of the minutiae and to document more of our daily stories and routines. 

PLAN

Ali strongly suggests focusing on the images and the words at the end of each day and waiting to get it into an album until the week is over.  Although this goes against my natural instinct (to just jump right in with the album), it is a big project and breaking it into two separate components makes complete sense.  I'm going to stick with Ali's plan.

I have decided to use this blog as a place to capture the first phase of this project.  I will be sharing words and photos daily starting on Monday.  Sharing in this way will be a form of accountability and also will force me to choose the photos I will use for each day instead of letting that decision linger into the next week.  [Edit on 5/26/2018: I wrote and shared these posts during the week I was documenting, but have now reverted them back to drafts.]

I am planning to use the Project Life App (now free!) and my current stash of digital scrapbooking supplies to make my album.

If you are interested in what my life looks like - well, lucky you because a lot of details will be hitting the blog over the next week.  If you're not so interested - again - feel free to just skip next week's posts and I'll hope to see you back here in the coming weeks. 

IT'S NOT TOO LATE TO JOIN

Since I'm waiting to make an album until later, what you see right here is the extent of my prep work.  So.... it's not too late for you to join in on the fun!

PROJECT LIFE 2016

My tenure with the Becky Higgins Project Life Creative Team ended last December.  The last layouts that I submitted were done by early to mid November and then, it felt, I was off to a new phase of Project Life-ing.

Being a part of the Creative Team was my "dream aspiration" in 2014 - something that I really wanted and aspired to, but knew was largely out of my hands and didn't really expect to happen.  When it did happened, I was over the moon.  It felt pretty awesome to be recognized and to hit that goal that I didn't plan on hitting.

It was a great year and I am thankful that I had the opportunity.

Still, when I got to mid-November and realized that I no longer had an obligation to submit layouts monthly or use only official Project Life products, I felt a freedom that I hadn't felt in almost a year.  Since that point, I feel like I've really been rocking the Project Life show - keeping up with layouts and making pages that feel true to my own aesthetic.

Subscription Thoughts:

After taking a break for the year that I was on the Becky Higgins team, I resubscribed to the Studio Calico "Documenter Kit" last December.  Studio Calico just knocks it out of the ballpark almost every month.  Sure, there are a few things I receive each month that I know I will never use, but overall their aesthetic meshes well with my own.  I love getting a new set of cards and embellishments every month - it keeps things interesting and keeps me excited to work on my albums.

To note - I think it is important to stress that the Studio Calico subscription works for me because their style is similar to my own.  There are a lot of different paper and scrapbooking subscription programs available.  I've tried a few of them and browsed through the offerings of many more.  This is the only one that I've found, thus far, that really feels worth the cost - because I feel like I can expect to receive products - that I will use - month after month.  

Really, my only complaints about the Studio Calico subscription are that I never receive enough cards to stretch through a full month of layouts and I don't receive my kits until midway through each month.  In other words, I have no problems with their products, I just want more of it and faster.  I'm guessing that for many people the number of cards is adequate.  I just happen to prefer layouts where at least half of the pockets are filled with journaling cards and I do two-page weekly layouts (versus   single page or monthly layouts) which means that I go through a lot of cards in a given month.

On Getting It Done / Keeping Up:

In the first few months of 2016, I kept up with my layouts better than ever before.  My weeks end on Saturday and by Tuesday morning, I generally had the photos printed for the previous week and (often) the entire layout completed.

The best parts of keeping up?  Not spending time catching up on previous weeks and better journaling.  When I get behind, I waste a lot of energy trying to remember the details of earlier weeks and often forget the little stories that I want to include.  Keeping up is a lot easier than catching up.

I kept up right until Maggie's birth and purposefully finished the "first half of 2016" album in the last days before she was born.  She was born on May 10th - before the actual middle of the year - but it felt like a natural dividing point.  So our two albums for the year are now divided into "before Maggie" and "after Maggie" rather than January through June and July through December.

After she arrived, I didn't want to stress myself with a self-imposed need to keep up with our albums.  But, I also didn't want to get so far behind that I would never catch up.  Besides, our first weeks as a family of five seemed like special ones to make sure I documented.

So, I just did what I could.  I took photos.  I took notes in my planner of the stories I wanted to document and remember.  I printed and placed photos into the appropriate weeks, as I found time and energy.

When she was about 11 weeks old, I spent most of a morning working on the album and was able to complete the pages for the first nine weeks of our life as a family of five.  Since then, I've just been making a concerted effort to work on my album every week.  I'm not quite caught up, but I'm close and I think I'll be there sometime in the next month or so.

My Current Method / System:

To make things as efficient as possible, while still ending with a "pretty" result, I've developed a little system of sorts.

I use the Project Life App to size my photos - with a goal of about half (or, often a little less than half) of the pockets being filled with photos.  I print at home using this printer and usually just print between five and ten 4x6 photos per week.  When sorting photos, I usually look through any that I have posted to Instagram or processed through the PicTapGo App first.  Then, I fill in with any others from the week, as needed.

Depending on the number of photos I've already edited and how many require editing before printing, this process takes between ten and 20 minutes.

I look through my Studio Calico subscription envelopes from the previous few months, starting with the most recent and working backward.  I pull out any cards or embellishments that seem like they might work.  This usually fills about half of the remaining pocket spaces.

Then, I look through my stash of older Studio Calico cards and see what I can use to fill in the empty spaces.  I have these cards all lumped together in a single stack of 3x4 cards and a single stack of 4x6 cards.  After this phase, I usually have only two to five spaces left that need to be filled with journaling cards.

All of my other Project Life cards (from every source other than Studio Calico) are sorted by color.  So, I look at my page and think to myself, "hmm, something light pink would look nice in that spot," and then I pull my stack of light pink cards and find something to fill in the space.  And so on, until the layout is complete.

This process usually takes about 20 minutes.  And, I often stop at this point and wait until later in the day or the next day to fill in the cards with journaling.

To keep track of the things I want to journal in my PL album, I keep notes in my planner.  I sometimes journal more detail about the photos that I include in my pages, but more often just share whatever quotes and little moments from the week were most memorable or that I think I will want to remember in the future.

- - -

And that is what I have to say about Project Life in 2016.  It's been a good year.  I've kept up, I am happy with the look of my layouts, I feel like I am capturing the stories that I want to capture and I like I having a system.

DOCUMENTING SEPTEMBER

I titled this post with "September," but I've actually only made it through the third week of the month.  I'm a bit behind right now and need to spend some time catching up - a good goal for this week.

September was the first month that I used the new Project Life Everyday Core Kit - mixing it in with favorites from several other core kits - and I used it liberally.  It feels like a newer version of the Midnight Edition which has long been one of my favorites.  The cards are largely neutral and feel like they mix and match really well with a variety of cards from other kits and coordinate with any and all photos.

The above left page above is my favorite of this set.  While I love taking photographs and using them in my albums, it is often the pages with fewer photos and more journaling that end up being my favorites.  These layouts are filled with more of our stories - rather than just snapshots of moments - and they provide a nice break from the visual clutter that photos often induce.  I sometimes find myself stressed when I don't have "enough" photos from a certain week, but then end up with beauties like this that end up telling a bigger and better story than more photos might.

Glad to have another set of pages completed and in the album - overjoyed to have another few weeks of our lives recorded for posterity.

- - - - -

Project Life is a scrapbooking system created by Becky Higgins to simplify memory keeping.  I have been using the Project Life method since 2012 and am currently on Becky's Creative Team.

If you are looking for a no-worries, easy and "it will all go together" method of scrapbooking that won't require a lot of time, I definitely recommend choosing one or two of the Project Life Core Kits that fit with your style and using that exclusively.

I am all about mixing and matching, so I use cards from many (many!) of the available kits.  My very favorite (and most used) kits are Sunshine, Midnight, Everyday and My Story themed cards.  

If you have any questions about Project Life or about the methods I use to scrapbook, I would love to hear from you.  Comment here or find me on Instagram.  

LOVE WHERE YOU LIVE

Two of my fellow Becky Higgins Creative Team members are hosting an online class / workshop all about documenting where you live.  It is a four week class that begins this week.  It is not about capturing or magazine or Pinterest worthy shots of your home.  It is about recording where and how you live your daily life.

I often capture bits of our home in the background of photos or take zoomed in shots of the "pretty bits" for blog post headers.  But I have never done a full-on house wide photo shoot or taken the time to write out the stories of where we live.

Our house is always in flux.  From the toys that are spread daily on the floor to the photos on the walls.  I am looking forward to capturing how we live right now and putting a time stamp on this moment.

Part of what appealed to me about this class is that there is no set format for documenting.  It seems like so many scrapbooking workshops are designed around the plan to create a mini-album.  Mini-albums are just not my thing.  I like having all of my documenting in one place and I prefer the pocket-style layout.  Accordingly, I will add whatever I create for this class right into our current family Project Life album.

You can read a lot more about Love Where You Live and register for the class here.  There is certainly no obligation here, but if you decide to register for the course, I would love it if you would let them know that I sent you when you register - just enter "brooke petermann" at checkout.

FROM HASHTAG TO BOOK

From my resignation letter in August of 2014 to the last week of May, 2015, my #brookestayshome book is the most comprehensive document I have of my first year as a stay at home mama.

I adopted my hashtag along with my new role and used it on Instagram throughout the year.  There were no hard and fast rules for the use of my hashtag, but I did follow some general guidelines.  The big idea was to catch the everyday things that I was doing with the boys during the time while Brian was at work.  If it was an evening family activity, it did not get the hashtag.  If it was a daytime activity with just me and the kiddos, it did.  

There were weeks when I used the hashtag several times and other weeks that were skipped completely.  Again, I didn't want to set myself up for failure by prescribing anything like a "twice a week" standard. 

The photos are presented in chronological order and a flip-through of the book has a nice little "watch them grow" effect for both of the boys.  It's amazing how much the change over the course of nine months and how few of those changes are noticeable on a day-to-day basis.   

I had the book printed through Chatbooks and opted to include the date (but not the text) for each photo.  Chatbooks made things super easy as I was able to search my Instagram account by hashtag through their app.  Then, I just chose all of those photos and sent it to print.  Easy peasey.  

I know this is a book (and a time) that I will always cherish and it required almost zero work beyond hashtagging photos that I would have been posting anyway.  We are well into year two now and continuing the project with #stayinghomeyeartwo.  

DOCUMENTING AUGUST

August is in the books and I've fallen into the "monthly" habit that I seem to fall into every year at about this time.  Instead of working on my Project Life pages a week or two at a time - as I do at the beginning of the year - I tend to wait until the end of the month and batch process my layouts.

I know that I should be happy with myself for the fact that I got the pages done at all, but (after completing the first many layouts of the year week by week) I know just how much I am losing by completing all of my documenting in one shot.

I lose the details, the little stories, the quotes.  I find myself writing about what's in the photos, rather than other stories from the week, because the photos become my memory joggers for what actually happened in those seven days a month before.  It is hard to remember the little things that happened more than a few days prior.

I've been trying to make myself little notes in my planner and that definitely helps, but I'm not as good about this as I could be.

Instead, I often find myself thinking throughout a day, "Oh!  I have to remember this for our Project Life album" and then promptly forgetting about it.

I briefly mentioned above that I "batch process" my layouts.  What I mean by this, is that I have my process broken down into five big steps and often just do one step on a given day, waiting for my next bit of available time to work on the next step.

 These are my five steps for completing my pages:

• I go through each of the four (or so) weeks and decide which photos to print.  
• I edit each photo for both coloring (to "fix" the coloring or change to black and white) and also for size and orientation as I need it to fit in my photo pocket pages.
• I print photos using my Epson PictureMate Charm Photo Printer photo printer.
• I put photos in pockets for the appropriate week and decide on journaling cards to fill in the pockets without photos.  
• I fill in the journaling cards with stories, quotes and lists of what's been happening for each week. 

This is the only way I can keep up with this project.  I rarely have more than a half hour to work on my album at a time.  This means that doing four weeks of layouts, sometimes takes me a week or more to complete.

In my ideal world, I would find an hour each weekend to get the previous week's pages done from start to finish.  But, this process works pretty well and fits with my actual world and actual available time.

Imperfect as it is - in both content and method -  I am happy to have another month recorded.  These books that document the story of our family, week after week, bring me joy.

- - - - -

Project Life is a scrapbooking system created by Becky Higgins to simplify memory keeping.  I have been using the Project Life method since 2012 and am currently on Becky's Creative Team.

If you are looking for a no-worries, easy and "it will all go together" method of scrapbooking that won't require a lot of time, I definitely recommend choosing one or two of the Project Life Core Kits that fit with your style and using that exclusively.

I am all about mixing and matching, so I use cards from many (many!) of the available kits.  My very favorite (and most used) kits are Sunshine, Midnight, Everyday and My Story themed cards.  

If you have any questions about Project Life or about the methods I use to scrapbook, I would love to hear from you.  Comment here or find me on Instagram.  

DOCUMENTING JULY

I started a "second half" of 2015 album with my July pages.  My first album for the year wasn't overly full, but definitely wouldn't have seen us through the end of the year.  It seemed reasonable to just go ahead and break up the year at the halfway point.  

I have been doing 12 x 12 pages for three and a half years and during that time I have definitely found my scrapbooking voice.  It (usually) doesn't take me long to put my pages together.  Which is nice.  But also takes some of the creative-type fun out of the process.  

I was ready to try a slightly new approach with this album.  I purchased a fuse tool right about the same time that I was working on my July pages.  It is a tool that you can use to customize page protectors.  I am using mine to make my 12 x 12 photo pocket pages "skinnier."  So, the plan is to have pages that are 12 inches high by less than 12 inches wide for all of my remaining layouts through 2015.   

It really isn't a big change, but it is just enough that I've had to put in a bit more creative "work" to get results that I like.  That was the challenge I was looking for and it has added a new layer of fun to completing my pages these past few months.  (My August pages just need a bit of additional journaling to be completed.)

July was a combination of our usual at home time and a couple vacations.  These pages include some photos from the trip that Eli and I took to Seattle to visit my sister.  At the end of the month, we spent a week in Branson, Missouri with Brian's family.  That layout isn't quite done yet, so I'll share it with the August pages.  

Project Life is a scrapbooking system created by Becky Higgins to simplify memory keeping.  I have been using the Project Life method since 2012 and am currently on Becky's Creative Team.

If you are looking for a no-worries, easy and "it will all go together" method of scrapbooking that won't require a lot of time, I definitely recommend choosing one or two of the Project Life Core Kits that fit with your style.

I am all about mixing and matching, so I use cards from many (many!) of the available kits.  My very favorite (and most used) kits are Sunshine, Midnight, Everyday and My Story themed cards.  

If you have any questions about Project Life or about the methods I use to scrapbook, I would love to hear from you.  Comment here or find me on Instagram.  

DIY INSTAGRAM PRINTING TUTORIAL

I recently discovered that I can use the Project Life app to create 4x4 "Instagram prints" that I can print on 4x6 paper.

  

Step one:

Choose the photo canvas/collage layout option from the front screen.

Step two: 

Choose any of the four layouts "4x6G, H, I or J."

Step three:

Choose the photo that you wish to print as a 4x4 inch print.  (You can also print two additional 2x2 inch square photos on each print, if you wish.)

Step four:

Export your image from the app.  

Step five:

Print! (Or order prints.)

Cost:  

The Project Life app costs $2.99.  

To have my nine photos printed at my local Walmart, I paid $1.83, which included tax.  So, each 4x4 print cost approximately 20 cents and I could have had a bonus 18 2x2 prints without paying any extra.  

Easy and inexpensive.  This will definitely be my new go-to method for printing square photos.