2012

No, I’m not having twins (thought that would’ve been awesome too). Instead, I’m stoked to finally be able to share the news that I’m part of Becky Higgins’s 2013 Creative Team for Project Life! I can still hardly believe it myself…

This all began about a month and a half ago on a Friday morning when I staggered downstairs in my semi sleep-deprived state to turn on Play School for the boys. Naturally, I decided to flick on my emails as well, and oh my goodness, there was an email from Becky Higgins. Becky Higgins!? I was almost certain I was dreaming at this point. In her lovely email, Becky explained that she’d noticed my Project Life layouts on Instagram and wanted to invite me to submit for the 2013 Creative Team. I’m quite sure I was squealing at some high-pitched frequency at this point, and no doubt the boys thought their mummy was being “a bit funny.” The amazing thing is that I did not wake up Rick straight away to share my over-the-top excitement (since my dear husband only ever gets to sleep in once in a blue moon), but later, I did make a point of comparing it to him receiving an email from the mastermind behind Land Rover (whoever that may be), inviting him to apply to join their design team – or something like that. He got the idea.

Two weeks later, I sent in my sample layouts and another two weeks later (with many sleepless nights in between, I must admit), Becky emailed me again (I don’t think I will ever tire of seeing Becky’s name in my inbox) to let me know that I was successful in becoming part of the new Creative Team! Wow. Wow!!! (Thankfully, Rick by this point had gotten used to my squeals.) The new team would be made of twenty-four women, Becky said, because they’d received so many awesome applications that they couldn’t narrow it down any further. I spent the next week writing up my profile and my lovely friend Alana from Little Rock Photography took some head shots for me. She wanted teeth – so she got teeth. (I am not such a fan myself, but apparently I look more natural when I show my teeth, so there you go.)

None of us knew who the other team members were, as we were going to find out along with the rest of the world in the big reveal that happened this morning. I would not be lying if I told you that Becky made several appearances in my dreams last night. Then this morning, as soon as I woke up, I grabbed my phone (while Rick went off to settle Jamie, bless my dear husband) and logged in to see all the wonderful emails from Becky, Kari (Becky’s amazing marketing director) and all the other women on the team. Finally, the secret was out and we knew who each other were! Needless to say, I feel extremely honoured to be part of this talented group of ladies. I’m a big fan of some of their work, and it was Elise herself who inspired me to jump into Project Life this year!

For those of you Project Lifers here for the first time, welcome! It is truly lovely to have you here. I only began Project Life myself in May this year, but I love it and am totally convinced it’s the best method of memory-keeping out there.

My style is very simplistic and minimalist. I like to let my photos do the story-telling, and I only add words when I think it is necessary. Never under-estimate the power of the photos that you take. I add text and simple graphic embellishments using Adobe InDesign, and I take almost all my Project Life photos on my iPhone. I print my photos at home using a Canon Pixma MP630, which I can highly recommend. I primarily use the Design A pocket pages, but sometimes I’ll add a 6×12 insert or an 8×8 insert – I tend to use the former when I want to include a blog post that I’ve written and the latter for birthday parties.

In terms of the Project Life albums that I keep, I document our family life on a weekly basis in the ‘main album,’ and I also keep a separate Project Life album for each of our boys, which are updated once a month. I have yet to show any of the boys’ albums on the blog, but I plan to start doing this in the new year. It is just such a wonderful way of keeping a record of their young lives. So far, I have not really used any core kit elements in my albums, but next year, I plan on trying to incorporate some of the cards from the Seafoam kit into the children’s albums.

I can honestly say that I love looking through our 2012 Project Life album, and I can’t wait to start building a new one in 2013. This year has been a wonderful one for us in so many ways, and I’m so thankful to have been able to document it using Becky’s amazing scrapbooking system. What a genius she is. Thank you again to her and Kari for including me as part of the Creative Team for 2013, and I look forward to sharing this next part of my Project Life journey with all of you.

You can read my other Project Life posts here.

Materials used: Becky Higgins Design A page protector; Kodak 170gsm glossy photo paper. All photos printed on the Canon MP630 Pixma.

(Linking up with The Mom Creative.)

I honestly love working every week on our Project Life family album. It’s so nice to see the week in review, and to be able to jot things down while they’re still fresh in my memory. Also, I know it’s cliche to say this, but how quickly has this year flown by? I feel like it was only yesterday that I decided to take the plunge into Project Life. I still remember the satisfaction and excitement that came with completing my very first weekly layout for Week 14. And now, suddenly, there are only three more weeks to go before I start a new album for 2013! Meanwhile, I still have a rather large back log of layouts to post here on the blog before the new year so don’t be surprised if I start lumping four to five weeks in the one post. (Remember you can click on each image for a larger version.)

Week 37 was the week of Cameron’s fifth anniversary. I filled most of this left hand page with photos that I snapped at the Memorial Gardens. The head shot of Rick and myself is particularly special to me, as we always take one together when we go to the Gardens. This year, we included Jamie in the photo which was very lovely (I like that he’s not looking at the camera). There is also a photo of the lovely package that we received from my beautiful friend Jane who never fails to remember Cameron with us every year. Also, some beautiful stationery arrived from Wit & Whistle that week, I decided to include that in the layout to add an extra ‘pretty’ element to the page.

The right hand page continues the theme of remembering Cameron: there were the flowers I bought in his memory; the clothes I wore the day of his actual anniversary; the breakfast we had at our favourite cafe that morning; some comfort food that I indulged in; a ‘Pa and Jamie’ moment when we went to visit Pa and Nan that afternoon; and of course the birthday cake we ate to celebrate Cameron’s fifth birthday. Just looking at these pages now fills me with such bittersweet emotions. I also included an 8×12 insert in which I pasted the words that I wrote in this post.

Week 38 was smack bang in the middle of my first trimester nausea. In an attempt to entice myself to eat, I went back and forth between whipping up my favourite Chinese dishes and buying meat pies at my local cafe. Soup from my mum’s kitchen was also most welcome. And those shots of Jamie and Pete in the laundry baskets just make me smile big time! I will surely miss having both of them at home with me five days a week next year when Pete goes off to preschool…

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