project life

After digging out my Project Life kit (virtually untouched from a year ago) and feeling guilty/excited/adventurous, a little encouragement from Courtney over at The Mommy Matters who also just started using PL as her son's baby book, has convinced me to tiptoe back into the idea of starting (no wait, bigger goal, completing) a real-life, touch it, feel it, album for 2011. I have so many photos on my computer that I am still figuring out how to organize and display, so that my children will have glimpses of their childhood later on, but as an "ex-scrapbooker" I miss the real life albums.

A couple of big things got me discouraged during my first go-around at Project Life (which I should note that I was treating as a 365 day photo project). 1. Taking a photo a day, but more frustrating was keeping track of which one I would use for that particular day and then keeping those in a separate folder on my computer to then send off to the online printers. 2. Uploading then sorting by date the photos after they came back from printer, not realizing that I could rename my photos when uploading with the date so that I would easily know which day was which (doh!) 3. Journaling for each photo. I was at least organized enough to jot down a sentence or two in a document on my computer to trigger the photo/event, but getting those onto note cards to put in the album was just one more tedious step.

What am I going to do to make sure those aren't discouragements this time around? 1. Not stress on making it one photo a day, but making sure there is at least one photo per week. I haven't decided how I'm going to keep out the ones I want printed, but I think I'll print one month's worth at a time (either printing here at home or uploading/printing online). 2. If I use an online service to print, I am going to rename my photo with the date. So, when I get the prints back, it won't be a useless jpg number on the back but a date! Therefore, sorting will not have to include finding them on the computer to compare dates.
3. I have pulled the journaling cards out of the kit and now keep them on my kitchen counter (right next to the coffee brewer, lol). If I snap a picture, I then go grab a card, date it, and journal. It will just remain in the bowl until prints for the month are printed.
I'm hoping all these things will encourage me to be better about documenting what goes on around here, even when it's nothing more exciting then the everyday routine.



Ok, who else is tackling an album idea like this? I totally give you permission to bug me in a week or two about how I'm doing!