hello 2013

Happy 2013! Last year I did Project Life by Becky Higgins and while I had the best of intentions, and even started out really well, it sort of fell by the wayside.  I ended up finishing it (although on time) with barely any pictures and grouped whole months together on a page.  I think part of this was because I didn't LOVE the project and did it solely out of obligation.  I am happy to have it done, but really want to do a better job this year.

This year I decided to skip the Project Life products and do a sort of smash journal idea with a 3 ring binder, lots of scrapbook paper, tags, journaling cards, and just my creativity to put it all together.  I may go back to Project Life next year (she has a lot of really cool designs coming out soon) but this year I really wanted to do something different.  I have found a lot of freebies while on pinterest for journaling cards and since I already have a lot of them already, I may do this again in years to come.  Another reason I felt that I did not make enough of an effort with my scrapbooking was that I kept everything down in the basement.  It is really cold down there and I felt that it was an inconvienence to go down there all the time to work.  Now I keep everything in my nightstand and I can sit on my cozy bed to work.  I have already found this to be a huge help, and have worked on my scrapbook almost every night.

Another problem I had with my scrapbook last year was that I didn't take enough pictures.  I tried doing Project365 in 2011- in which you take a picture every day for a year - but that didn't work out so well.  I end up really beating myself up over these "failures" and I don't want to set my self up for disappointment again.  That doesn't mean I won't ever do Project365 again in the future, but this year I really want to do it for the love of the project, and to chronicle this time in my life.  My kids are growing up, and life won't always be this way.  Sometimes it feels like this has been my life for ever and that it will never change- I have to remember that this is only a moment and when it is gone I won't remember the hard times, but miss the good ones.  I want to remember the good and the bad, because this is my life.

I have found a lot of really cute paper, and at this point, I think I am going to have different themes for each month.  I have been going back and forth on that - thinking that I should stick to one theme throughout the year, and perhaps use different seasonal pages for each holiday, but then I couldn't decide on one "theme" so I decided to use them all.  :)  I am going to try really hard to be diligent all year at recording, documenting, and taking pictures so that at the end of the year I feel like I have really captured "a year in our life"

Here are pictures of some of the really cute paper I found!