How Project Life saved my sanity

I am a traditional scrapbooker. I like to pick out pretty papers and match them with fun ribbons and put my pictures in a place where I can journal and date and tell the story of what is happening. I adore having my scrapbooks around so that when people ask "When did you go to Alaska?" or "What did Annie look like as a baby?" I can not only tell them but show them. Annie loves looking at her baby book and we have pulled out scrapbooks for all kinds of lessons and fun times and I love that I have spent time doing something that I feel is a benefit to our family.

With all of that being said - while I was getting my Master's degree, scrapbooking was not high on the priority list. For two years, we took pictures (probably not as many as we should have) and we were able to have fun as a family, I was just not really able to document and put in a scrapbook those pictures and fun times.

Then Meridith, my amazing sister-in-law, came to visit. She usually comes every year and stays for a week and we scrapbook and watch movies and shop and eat and play. She didn't come last year (we couldn't figure out a week we could do it with my school stuff) so I knew this year would be the year to catch up on the two year hiatus on scrapbooking. I spent a couple of hours picking and printing the pictures that I knew I wanted to scrapbook and then I got really, really overwhelmed. There were about 100 pictures in the little envelope I got from Sam's Club and I wanted to throw them against the wall. We had just gotten back from the beach and Disneyland and I was itching to scrapbook those things, but the pictures from the last two years were glaring at me with their beady little eyes.

Enter Project Life!

This is a page about the construction of Annie's amazing dollhouse.

I had the original Project Life for about a year and I love the concept of documenting little life experiences. Maybe one day I'll do the "Photo a day" thing - but for this year, what I really, really love about Project Life is that it allowed me to take those 100 photos and put them in a pretty, pretty scrapbook setting with accompanying journaling in a matter of hours  (probably no more than six - and that included the journaling). The two years that I was in school was not lost! I felt caught up and I was actually able to move on to doing traditional scrapbooking for the beach and Disneyland while Meridith was here.

This was from Halloween two years ago - one of the first pages in my Project life - look at all the journaling!

 So I am still a traditional scrapbooker - I still love all the papers and the glitz and everything that goes with creating something from nothing. But now I am a real fan of Project Life, if only for the organization that it  helped me achieve. The pictures are in a lovely place where I can show them off and if I feel the urge to traditionally scrapbook any part of those two years, the pictures are already organized, dated and journaled and I can have fun embellishing and blinging.

And guess what? When you KNOW and LOVE the amazing Becky Higgins (and she knows and loves you back) and you invite her to your baby shower, guess what she brings with her?

One of the only times I wished I had a little more pokey-outie belly - but this is me at 36 weeks.

I am one lucky mama!

I am so excited to have the new Amber kit. This will quite possibly be the sanity saver I need while I go through this new little girl's first year. I hope I don't ever have to wait to scrapbook for two years again, but I know that if I do, Project Life will be there to dust me off and pick me back up so that I can think clearly again.

Thanks Becky! You came up with the coolest concept and I'm so happy that it has been so successful. What a blessing you are to the people like me who want to cultivate good lives and record it for everyone to see.