Project Life 2012

As I get ready to finish up Project Life 2011, I am immensely grateful for all the memories, keepsakes, and photographs housed within its pages. Having lost all the photographs of my kids from their infancy to now stored on our old computer, a devastating loss, the only photos I have of the last year are those printed and inserted into Project Life. A simple system of memory keeping: take pictures, print out, insert, journal. Repeat. It has singlehandedly changed the way I look at daily life: I have learned to see the joy in seemingly mundane daily tasks, I have learned that those small, everyday moments really do make up the fabric of our memories, our lives. I have become much more motivated to carry my camera around and USE it. I have found myself in situations where I think: “that is SO project life-able”. I cherish my kids’ artwork and love that it can easily be included. By far the biggest “gift” of Project Life: instead of a pile of photographs, collection of scrapbook papers and embellishments, and mental notes as to what to do with it all, I have a completed album of pictures, journaling, and memories. Done. Absolutely, wholeheartedly LOVE Project Life:

Included my goal for Project Life 2011 in the title page: “Document more, forget less, and cherish it all.” Done.

Before embarking on Project Life 2012, I needed to de-clutter, organize, and rethink my approach. While I would love to have a dedicated crafty magic space in the house (aka. an office), it’s just not feasible. Most of my paper goodness lives in the garage, along with a table that lies unused. While I appreciate the space in the garage, it’s not the most user-friendly, happy space in the house and it’s hard to craft in the garage while the boys run around inside the house, destroying everything in their path. As a result, I do much of my crafting IN the house at the kitchen table or in the dining room. And our dining room currently looks like this:

And my kitchen counter looks like this:

Determined to organize the goods, purge the things that have gone unused for months, and in some cases years, and develop a system that allows me to easily transport goods from room to room, I bought these bad boys from the dollar section at Target. And some clothes pins after seeing the amazing, fantabulous Mish Mash Blog. Goal: to streamline and organize the above chaos and madness.

Voila: the end result. You can SEE the actual dining room table. First time in months. The bare essentials.

White tub. Journal spots and labels of many different varieties:

Red tub. Letter stickers, embellishment stickers, and cup of pens/scissors/etc:

Smash book tub. I plan to use the Smash book for One Little Word, as well as incorporate the embellishments into Project Life. Everything needed in one spot:

Revamped, organized Project Life station on kitchen counter. Bring it. Ready to go…