Project Life 2012 - Week Two

I'm back with my second week of Project Life, and I just can't say enough about how much I love this system, and how glad I am that I started. I've never been a chronological scrapper, I have always just scrapped whichever photos appealed to me, so I like that this is a way to fill in the blanks.

And even more so, I like that Lily is already showing such interest in the album, and is continually asking to look through it, or asking if I "want to put 'this' (whatever she has just drawn etc) into your Project Life album?"

Week two spread - with extra inserts:

This week I added in two extra inserts (so much for my claim that I won't add in extra inserts every week!), a custom sized protector (which I sewed with my sewing machine), and a 10x12 American Crafts page protector (Becky Higgins actually has a very similar design within the PL range [design G], but since I already had the AC ones, I didn't buy the PL ones).

Week two spread, without extra inserts:

This week was another busy week, the kids started (and finished early due to the freezing water temperature) swimming lessons, play dates with school friends, a birthday party, and an evening at an outdoor cinema.

Back of insert 1 & insert 2:

These extra photos are all photos taken from our night at the outdoor cinema, it was such a fun night, and the kids really enjoyed themselves, so I wanted to include as many photos as possible.

One of my family goals this year, was to try and get a family photo every month, and so far (one month in! hahaha), so good!

Initially my plan was to print these family photos at 8x10 to put in my album, but I printed this one at 6x8 and trimmed the top and bottom a little to make it the same size as flyer it backs onto (it ended up about 5.5x8), and I do like it like this. I think that I will take it month by month, and family photo by family photo and decide how it will work best in our album, and what size I will print it. I do know that I won't print it smaller than 5x7, as I do want it to be a focal point in the album.

Back of insert 2

some of the photos on the right-hand-side of the spread came out a little dark, and honestly I have no idea why! They were all edited the same (at home), and all printed at the same place - and none of them are that dark on the computer!?!

• I think I've mentioned previously, I am not taking the photo-a-day approach, and instead my album is more an overlook of our entire week. In this spread I *technically* only have a few days represented in the photos - the one of Ian and Benji swimming as well as the duck pond photo are both from Tuesday. The photo of Lily and her friends, Benji sleeping in the high chair, and the two little photos of the kids sleeping are all from Thursday, and then the photo of Benji eating all the Oreos and Lily and Hayley at the birthday party are from Saturday morning, but all in all, I think that this is a good representation of our week.
• Another thing I noticed was that last week I had a lot of photos of Lily, but this week I seem to have more photos of Benji - this wasn't something I did deliberately, I wasn't trying to even it up, or anything like that. I'm just using the photos that tell the stories I want to remember, and if one child ends up being represented more than the other in a week, I'm not going to stress about it...It will all even out in the end!
• I also didn't journal about every single photo, I think that some of them are pretty self explanatory (like the one of Benji asleep in his high chair still clutching his noodles!). If it bugs me, I may go all old-school, and write the date on the back of the photo, but for now I'm happy to leave it as is.
• I'm keeping it simple, sure I love looking at other peoples blogs, and their Project Life pages,  but given that this is my first year, I just want to keep it simple and make sure that I am able to find enough time each week to work on my album, and keep up! Who knows, maybe in the future I will use that ever-growing-stash of mine, but for now I am more than happy with how my layouts are turning out just using the Clementine core kit, and a few little Jillibean Soup - Soup Labels, as date markers, or for small amounts of journalling.