Category: documenting

project life : april 2 & how i’m using the app
In the middle of April I decided to change my whole approach to Project Life. In order to save time, I decided to start using the app. It’s a hybrid approach, because I do a little bit of work ahead of time on my computer, and I also add finishing touches once the page is printed.

Let me show you my first spread using the app, and then I’ll explain the process.

I’m doing kind of a monthly grouping with my spreads, but I still like to do “week in review” cards and work on things every two weeks. Because each month doesn’t have exactly four weeks, by this point in April I needed to include three weekly updates.

Here I wanted to document getting our kittens, my nephew’s birthday party, knitting my first ball of yarn, and a random cute pic of Liam.

Here’s a close-up of what the text looks like. Very readable. And I added that little label on top of the print, so overall the style is consistent with my previous spreads.

On this side I wanted to write more about taking Liam to the ENT and the stressful season of life it was for me. Then there are more kid and craft pics – nothing new there!

One of my favorite things about using the Project Life app is to easily be able to include digital journaling cards. All you have to do is save them in Dropbox and you can access them easily. That’s also how I got my “week in review” cards into the spread. First I edited them in Photoshop Elements, then just saved and uploaded to Dropbox. Easy.

You can probably figure out my process just from looking at the finished product here, but it just goes like this:
- Edit any journaling cards I need and upload to Dropbox
- Create spread in app
- Order prints
- Add any journaling (I use this pen) or physical embellishments like labels
- Slip into page protector
It’s awesome! The quality of the prints is amazing. It’s fast. It’s easy. It’s versatile. In fact, I don’t know if I even want to go back to doing it the old way. Of course, I lose that “hands on” crafting time, but I do other scrapbooking projects that give me my fix, and now I have more time to do other things.

A few notes:

1. Shipping on prints directly from the app is $5 flat. That’s ridiculous when you just want two 12×12 prints at $1.99 each, so I waited until I had two months’ worth. Obviously it’s a better deal the more you order.

2. If you order a 12×12 print and then cut the photos down to fit in traditional pockets, they will be too small.

3. You can add journaling from the app as well, but I like the look of handwriting.

And that’s it! I have some more spreads to share with you to get caught up in the next few weeks.

p.s. – a detailed overview of the Project Life app
June 17, 2015
LIGHT : may

The month of May has been so good to me as far as feeling lighter. It started out rough, but once I decided to change my attitude, refocus my priorities, and let some things go, everything turned around. Maybe partially coincidence, but I’m going with it!

spiritual

Recently I’ve benefitted a lot spiritually from my revamped morning routine, which I will be sharing more about next week. I now rarely miss my morning Bible study/prayer time and that makes a big difference. I just finished Beth Moore’s study “Stepping Up” about the Psalms of ascent. I really enjoyed it, and now I’m wondering what my next study will be. I am always working on praying more continually throughout my day and noticing the presence of God.

physical

After not exercising for a couple of months, I ran a 5k with a friend last weekend and I was pleased that at least that distance is still easy for me (although we ran quite slowly). I have a plan in mind for my fitness: run twice a week, yoga once a week, and super-slow strength training once a week. Here’s what I need to do to put that into practice: get some good headphones to run with (otherwise I will just skip the treadmill when the weather isn’t nice, which is often), research how to do super-slow strength training on my own, and find a yoga class to attend or figure out how to make it work for me at home.

emotional

Wow, so much better in this area. As long as I am getting decent sleep, I feel good. Meredith’s tantrums have really reduced lately, so obviously that helps, and I just read Love & Logic which gave me a good framework for discipline. There is still some uncertainty at work but I’ve been cross training and so I feel useful. Mostly, cutting back on my personal projects and saying no to new projects has helped me feel so much more in control and able to give attention to the things that need it (like my family). And actually, I have still been able to be quite productive on my own projects as well! I’ve been reading more, and finishing things, and keeping up with the blog and Project Life and none of it feels like a burden.

My current biggest emotional stressors are finances and getting enough sleep. Liam has been sick a lot lately (we are home sick today) so he doesn’t sleep well, and the kittens also disturb my sleep.

relationships

Our little family is in a good place right now. I’ve felt very connected to David recently, although more date nights are always welcome, and I still look forward to the day when the kids sleep in their own beds and we have some time together every night without them. One thing I want to work on is getting back in touch with my out-of-town best friends. We used to email and call regularly, but I let that go when I was so stressed.

creative

My creative life is going strong, and like I said above, it has actually benefitted from reducing the number of projects on my list. I finished my 2014 December album, am cross stitching for fun, keeping up with Project Life via the app, and I even took a second knitting class.

This month in the One Little Word class we were challenged to create cards with “I am” statements. I skipped the artsy part of the challenge (which was to use paint and mixed media to create the base of the cards) and just used some neutral patterned paper for mine, because I’m going for simple.

Here are my statements:

I am letting go of internal pressures + expectations for my sanity’s sake.

I am reading, knitting, cross-stitching, + blogging in my downtime.

I am still finding my footing with this whole motherhood thing.

I am slowly fitting running back into my life.

I am a work in progress. God’s not through with me yet (thankfully).

I am wondering what my job will look like a year from now.

I am loving: our new kitties, audiobooks, Birkenstocks, an extra cup of coffee each day.

I am realizing just how much I can’t do anything on my own.

I am oh so grateful for the good days, for family nearby, and my marriage.

And now it’s almost June and summer! I can’t say that I’m too excited about the oppressive heat and humidity that comes with it, but I do like the long days and reduced traffic. :)

May 29, 2015
december daily 2014 album

I finally finished our December (not quite daily) 2014 album in the middle of May. It didn’t actually take a lot of work, but I had too many things in front of it to finish. Without further ado, here are photos of all the pages, if you’d like to see, and a little more info at the end.

As you can see, I kept it very simple and repeated the same techniques over and over. My process went like this:

1. Choose and order photos, place them in the pockets.

2. Type up journaling (I did this in Photoshop Elements), cut it out and place in pockets.

3. Place any ephemera or found papers.

4. Go from beginning to end adding patterned paper, labels & handwritten journaling, and embellishments.

I really love storing these December albums with our Christmas decorations and looking through them each holiday season. It’s so special and that’s why I know I will try to keep doing them. This year I hope to be more prepared in advance and possibly work on it as I go.

Happy Christmas in May! ;)

May 28, 2015
LIGHT : april (one little word update)

I don’t have a whole lot to report about my journey with my word for the year except that for most of April I was definitely not feeling light. It was a super hard month of parenting and I wasn’t feeling proud of the way I handled the stress.

However, having the word “light” in the back of my mind allowed me to make the decision toward the end of the month to let some things go and release a lot of the pressure I put on myself. I had to get back to the root of why I chose my word: “light” is how I want to feel on the inside. Sure, I would love to completely declutter our house so the space is lighter. I’d love to get back to a frequent exercise regimen so I’m literally lighter. But with all I have going on right now worrying about those things (and others) was just stressing me out so that I wasn’t able to cope with challenges in motherhood, which is a priority.

So far the shift in mentality has been incredibly helpful, but I’ll report back. :)

This month’s prompt was to capture our word through photography. I simply went back through my photos from the year and chose nine that represented an aspect of what “light” means to me. (Also, to get this done I tried printing my photos on cardstock and they came out really terrible. Old me would have trashed them and ordered new ones, but new me is saying they’re good enough.)

Top left: this is one of my favorite recent photos of me and Meredith. It was a happy day and I want to focus on the good times we have.

Top middle: I love being outside and seeing the beautiful skies, and attending Texas Style Conference was such a positive and uplifting experience for me.

Top right: Liam is at such an adorable age and I want to soak it all in.

Middle left: Updating the kids’ room with string lights made me happy.

Middle middle: This is a photo of me at TxSC where I was really feeling lighthearted.

Middle right: I started a fun little cross stitch project, and as long as I don’t pressure myself to finish in a certain amount of time, this is the kind of thing I want to be able to do and enjoy.

Bottom left: Running is so good for me! I need to do more of it.

Bottom middle: Eating real food contributes to lightness of body and mind.

Bottom right: Our new kittens are so playful. They are what I didn’t even know I needed. :)

I debated giving up on the One Little Word project when I was deciding what to let go in my life right now, but it has been helpful for me so far and even keeping up with the prompts hasn’t been hard. If any of them are too involved I’ll just modify it and make it simple. I’m still really connecting with the word “light” and look forward to seeing how it changes for me.

May 6, 2015
project life 2015 : april 1

Today I’m sharing one spread with you, from the first half of April. As I mentioned in this post, I’m at a place where I need to simplify my life to relieve some stress, but instead of giving up on Project Life altogether I am transitioning to using the app. I wanted to share my first spread using the app in a separate post which will be coming soon.

Anyway, this spread from April is one of my favorites, I think. It’s just so springy and happy. Granted, I wasn’t always feeling happy during this time, in fact there were some pretty tough days, but this time I chose to save those for my journal.

I had a ticket stub from a musical David and I went to, but it was bright red. Visually it didn’t fit at all, but I still wanted to include it. So I just took a picture of it on a white background, converted it to black and white, and printed it.

Two date nights in two weeks!!

And just a few photos from Easter and a journal card. In the past I’ve done whole inserts for the holiday but I just didn’t feel up to it this time and I think this is a nice little summary.

I’m a little bit sad to be losing the process of putting these spreads together, but I was able to see some printed 12×12 spreads that used the app and they look great. I think it’ll be totally worth it to gain a bit of time!

May 4, 2015