project life

Did you know that last Saturday was National/International Scrapbooking Day? To celebrate, the 2013 Project Life Creative Team shared their favourite tips and layouts in this video which you can see on Becky’s blog. I can’t bear to watch my bit (seriously do not like seeing myself on camera), but I loved seeing the other lovely ladies! Apparently I have an Australian accent, but I’ll let you be the judge. Anyway, as the video clip was due just a week after I came out of the hospital with Edward, I had neither time nor headspace to actually share a useful tip. So to make up for it, I thought I’d share ten (actually, eleven) tips in this post about how to keep Project Life stress-free, easy and, therefore, fun!

1) Just do it. Try not to over-think the process, or the final result. Remember that if you really don’t like a spread, you can always re-do it later on. Chances are, a few weeks down the track, you’ll probably forget about whatever qualms you had about a certain page or layout and instead, you’ll simply be thankful for the fact that you actually documented your precious memories.

2) Keep it simple. You don’t have to use a multitude of embellishments to make your pages special. The whole point of Becky’s core kits (and mini kits) is to take the work out of it for you. Choose your favourite photos from the week, choose the cards from the kit(s) you have that work best with the colours in your photos, do some journalling (by hand or digitally), print your photos (and cards if you’re working digitally), and slip them into the pockets! At the end of the day, all you really need are images and words. Isn’t that what memory keeping is all about?

3) Allocate time each week to work on the previous week’s layout. This is one of the best ways to turn your Project Life efforts into a weekly habit! Work out how much time you take approximately to complete one week’s layout from beginning to end. Then try to schedule in that amount of time during the week. Maybe it’s when you have a day off from university, or maybe it’s during the evening when the kids are asleep, or maybe it’s over the weekend sometime when your partner is at home to help with the children. If you don’t have one big block of time, then you could try scheduling two smaller blocks of time. For me, I use Monday evenings to select photos, edit them where necessary and add my journalling/text directly onto the photos. I also layout any inserts I plan to include during that time. On Wednesday evenings, I print out the photos and slip them into the page protectors. This way, I only have to focus on one part of the entire process at a time, and therefore more inclined to dive into it.

4) Don’t stress about nailing your ‘style.’ Rest assured it will evolve over time. In fact, I don’t think it’s realistic to develop a ‘perfect’ style and expect it to always remain the same. Your style will change as you change, as you learn different techniques and as your photography style changes. I’ve only been doing Project Life for over a year, and I’ve noticed that my pages now look and feel quite different to when I first started. But I’m okay with that, because I know that my style a year ago was a true reflection of me at the time. In fact, I like the fact that my pages looked different back then – it makes me feel all the more nostalgic for that period in my life and our family’s life. I’m sure that in a year’s time, my style will be different to what it looks like now, and that’s good too.

5) Don’t compare your layouts to other people’s layouts. Sometimes there can be a fine line between being inspired by other people’s work and having it negatively impact on your confidence in your own memory keeping efforts. Be inspired, for sure, but don’t let it leave you feeling bad about what you’re doing. Remember, your style is your own, and should be a reflection of who you are.

6) Don’t worry too much about taking ‘perfect’ photos. A photo doesn’t have to be ‘perfect’ in a technical sense for it to be a powerful photo. Some of my favourite photos are blurry and out of focus. Focus instead on capture the moment. After all, it’s those moments that will tell the story in years to come.

7) Use your phone camera and don’t feel bad about it. I know I say this a lot, but my iPhone camera is my favourite camera, over and above my DSLR. It’s the one I have with me all the time, which means it’s the one that allows me to capture moments as they happen. Plus, the quality is great, and all the wonderful apps available mean you can have your favourite photos processed/edited even before they hit your computer. I’m not saying don’t use your DLSR, but what I am saying is that you shouldn’t feel like your layouts are somehow inferior if most of your photos are taken with your phone camera.

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Life at home with Edward Bear has just been gorgeous. We’ve settled into a nice routine, and even though we are not getting as much sleep as before, I am absolutely loving every moment of it. Part of me still can’t believe that this sweet little guy is ours! I’m not sure how often I’ll be posting baby updates on the blog, but if you’re interested in seeing more photos, feel free to follow along on Instagram.

Onto Project Life. Would you believe that I actually completed Week 15 whilst in hospital? Because most of my weekly process is done on the laptop, it was pretty much a no-brainer since I had my Macbook Pro with me the whole time (yes, I am that woman). It was actually really lovely spending some of my quiet time in the evenings looking through photos of the boys and Rick, as it reminded me of how truly blessed I am. But anyway, this post is about Week 10, and as always, you can click on the images for a larger version.

What happened in Week 10?
I was 34 weeks pregnant and doing my best to get into a disciplined diet to control my gestational diabetes (hence the ham on toast, and the salmon with soba). Jamie and I enjoyed a lovely one-on-one date on Wednesday, when both Angus and Pete were at preschool (even if it was only a coffee date at our local carwash cafe). We transformed the older boys’ room with the new bunk bed, which the boys were simply giddy about. And to celebrate, Rick and I drank our first homemade iced coffee of the season.

Anything special about the photos?
Half the photos were processed using the VSCO Cam app on my iPhone. The rest were processed in Aperture on my Mac using the VSCO Film 01 Kodak Portra 800+ preset. All the photos were taken on my iPhone 4S.

Favourite photo(s) from the week?
Again, I have a number of favourites: the shot of my bare belly in the title card; the photo of Jamie with his babycino at the car wash cafe (I just adore his blissful expression; and definitely the black and white one of me and the boys trying to take a ‘selfie.’

Overall thoughts?
I love the small pops of colour throughout this spread – for example, the stripy rug, my bangles, and the boys’ blue t-shirts.

Supplies used?
Becky Higgins Design A page protector; Kodak 210gsm glossy premium photo paper. All photos printed on the Canon MG6360 Pixma using genuine Canon ink.

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Other posts you might be interested in reading:
My weekly Project Life process from beginning to end
Tips on taking photos for Project Life
What you need to get started with Project Life

You can read all my Project Life posts here.

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Project Life is a system created by Becky Higgins that is designed to simplify your efforts to document life and help get your photos into a book. To learn more about the product and how to get started, click here.

(Linking up with The Mom Creative.)

What happened in Weeks 8 and 9?
Pete turned three in Week 8, and went to preschool for the first time on the same day! Thankfully, because it was a Wednesday, it meant that Angus could be there with him. It brought me such joy to see them go into school together and to watch Angus lead Pete around and show him where everything was, and what he needed to do. After dropping the older boys off, Jamie and I had our first proper one-on-date cafe date with each other, and we both had the loveliest time. He also had fun moving brightly coloured stools around at the library afterwards. We had a birthday party for Pete that weekend. Week 9 was Rick’s birthday, and we celebrated as a family by treating ourselves to a delicious lunch at a local cafe.

Number of pages and inserts?
Week 8 had about seven 8×10 vertical inserts. Three of these held photos from Pete’s first day of preschool (the below image shows one of these inserts), and our small at-home birthday celebration later that afternoon, and four of these contained photos from his birthday party. No inserts for Week 9.

Anything special about the photos?
About a third of the photos were processed using VSCO Cam on my iPhone. The rest were processed in Aperture on my Mac using the VSCO Film 01 Kodak Portra 800+ preset. Only two photos in the main spreads were taken with my DSLR – the one of the vanilla birthday cupcakes and the photo of Pete with the chocolate cupcake. The rest were iPhone photos.

Favourite photo(s) from Weeks 8 and 9?
I have a number of favourites from these two weeks: the black and white photo of Angus and Pete’s silhouettes in the garage as they prepare to leave for preschool (Week 8, page 1), the snapshot of Jamie with the babycino (Week 8, page 2) is precious to me because it’s rare that we have such quality time together; the one of Pete with the chocolate moustache is a total classic (also Week 8, page 2), and the portrait of the three boys on Rick’s birthday (Week 9, page 2).

Overall thoughts?
I like how the black and white photos balance out the orange and brown hues across the pages. I’m also really happy I made sure I documented Pete’s first day of preschool, as I think I would’ve been quite sad had I not taken any photos to remember the occasion.

Supplies used?
Becky Higgins Design A page protector; Becky Higgins 8×10 vertical page protector; Kodak 210gsm glossy premium photo paper. All photos printed on the Canon MG6360 Pixma using genuine Canon ink.

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Other posts you might be interested in reading:
My weekly Project Life process from beginning to end
Tips on taking photos for Project Life
What you need to get started with Project Life

You can read all my Project Life posts here.

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Project Life is a system created by Becky Higgins that is designed to simplify your efforts to document life and help get your photos into a book. To learn more about the product and how to get started, click here.

As I explained in this post about my memory-keeping framework for the boys, before I discovered Project Life, I kept more of a standard ‘scrapbook’ for Angus and Pete after their first year. (You can read about Pete’s 2nd year scrapbook here, as well as the process I followed for updating it.) After I discovered Project Life, I weighed up the pros and cons of switching, and in the end decided it would be the way to go. A year or so later, I’m still perfectly happy with my decision.

I switched Angus over to the Project Life album at the beginning of his fourth year, and I switched Pete at the beginning of his third year. Because I hadn’t yet started a scrapbook for Jamie, I simply started a Project Life album for him after I finished his first year journal, namely at the beginning of his second year. (If you are considering ‘switching’ yourself, I think it helps to a definitive ‘cut-off’ date, as it just helps to make the process simpler and more straightforward.)

Which brings me to the present day. Each of the three boys have their own Project Life album. This is where I document their everyday lives, store my favourite photos of them, record their funny quotes and sayings and document important milestones in their life such as their birthdays and their first day(s) at preschool. Our family PL album is about our journey and our life as a family, as told through my eyes. The boys’ PL albums are about them specifically – something which they can take away with them when they move out (if they wish). In their company, I refer to these albums “their books.” It is my hope that over the years, I will take the time with each boy to look through ‘his book’ and to reminisce, laugh and remember together.

(You can click on each of the images below for a larger version.)

As i’ve mentioned before, I update these albums on a monthly basis. Because there are three (and soon-to-be four) of them, I allocate one week each month to each of the boys’ albums. And by ‘one week,’ I really only mean a couple of hours on a Thursday morning when my parents are around at our place to play with the boys. I’ve learnt that if I have a time limit that I have to work within, I tend to work a lot faster and not waste time.

The images you see here are from Pete’s Project Life album. It begins with the layouts I put together to document his 2nd birthday. Similarly, Angus’ album begins with his 3rd birthday, and Jamie’s begins with his 1st birthday (since he never had a 2nd year scrapbook like the others). I figure their birthday parties are a great way to ‘kick off’ the albums, and it also means that I don’t need a title page. So for the first 12×12 page (shown immediately above), I simply dive straight into the photos from the rest of the birthday month.

The Becky Higgins 8×10 vertical page protectors are simply perfect for the birthday party layouts, in my opinion. Not only do they sit really well at the front of the album, they don’t droop and they are a great size – big enough to allow for lots of flexibility in design but small enough to be clearly distinguishable from the main page layouts. I’ll write more about my process and thinking behind their birthday party layouts in a further post.

Each month begins with a title card, much like the weekly title cards in our family album. The rest of the pockets in the layout are then filled with my favourite photos of that boy for the month. These are a combination of everyday moments, portraits, funny captures, events and special occasions. I’m quite flexible in terms of how many pages each month takes up – it doesn’t even need to be an even or odd number, since I can easily just start the next month on a new page, whether or not it is a left hand page or a right hand page.

As a general rule though, I try not to go over 8 pages (ie. 4 spreads) per month, and I’ve found that for most months, I’ve been able to cover a whole month in about 4-6 pages. This of course comes down to being very brutal with my photo selection. Like our family albums, I’ve only really used the Becky Higgins Design A page protectors so far for the boys’ albums. If I really want to include extra photos, I can easily add inserts.

Apart from photos, I also print out the journaling that Rick and I have done for that boy for that month. My system for journaling is very simple. In Simplenote, I have a separate note for each child named Jamie’s journal, Angus’ journal, etc. Throughout the month, we add to these notes using either my laptop or my iPhone with funny things the boys have said or things that they’ve done that we feel are worth writing down. Usually we do this at the end of the day on my MacBook Air as part of getting ready for bed, but sometimes, I will also record things during the day when it happens.

By sticking to this system, we’ve managed to document a decent amount of things in writing for all the boys so far. Of course, there are definitely months when we’ve been extra busy and journaling has fallen by the wayside, but the important thing is not to stress about what we fail to record, and be thankful for what we do manage to document. I also love the fact that both Rick and I contribute to the journalling. His writing voice is quite different to mine, and it’s awesome to have his perspective as their dad recorded in this way. I think the boys will really appreciate reading their dad’s words when they’re older. For all the journaling inserts, I use the Becky Higgins 6×12 vertical page protectors.

To mark the end of the year 2012, I added a special 6×4 journaling card to each of the boys’ albums (shown in the bottom left pocket above) in which I wrote a special message to each of them, mentioning highlights and how I’ve enjoyed and cherished watching them grow up and change that year. I also filled up the rest of the page with photos taken specifically on New Year’s Eve (and a couple the day before). This served somewhat as an ‘end page’ for the year, and I think this is a tradition I’ll continue for future years.

In terms of the actual binder itself, I’ve been using this Modern 12×12 binder from American Craft because I like it’s simplicity and the fact that I can choose to customise the cover down the track if I wanted to. (I’m also a big fan of the Kraft design.) The wonderful thing about the workflow and structure that I’ve adopted is that I don’t actually have to start a new binder for each year. My intention is to keep filling up each binder with the boys’ birthday parties layouts and all the subsequent months of that year and to keep doing this on repeat. When a binder runs out of space, I will buy a new one. By using this flexible approach, it means I can potentially document two years (or more) of, say, Pete’s life in the one binder.

I hope this was a helpful overview of my boys’ Project Life albums. I know it’s been a long time coming. Further down the track, I’ll write about my monthly process in a greater detail, and I’ll try to also zoom in on some of the smaller details of the layouts. From then on, I plan to share some of my favourite layouts from their albums each month.

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Other posts you might be interested in reading:
How I manage my time
How I manage my projects
My weekly Project Life process from beginning to end
Tips on taking photos for Project Life
What you need to get started with Project Life

You can read all my Project Life posts here.

Thank you all for your kind words in response to my post yesterday. I’m just trying to take it one day at a time, right now. I know that the next three weeks will go by quickly, and even if they’re uncomfortable and painful, it will be worth it.

What happened in Week 7?
We took the boys out to a good friend’s birthday party at Bondi and stayed out till 9.30pm. It was probably one of the latest nights they’d ever been out, and they had an absolute blast (Jamie, as usual, had made himself the centre of attention by the end of the night.) Both Rick and I kicked off our bible study groups for the year; we bought new dinosaur and train underpants for the older boys; and we finished off our family day on Friday with nuggets and rissoles down at Dee Why beach.

Number of pages and inserts?
Week 7 was again a simple 2 page layout using Becky Higgins Design A page protectors.

Anything special about the photos?
Just the same as usual. All the photos were taken on my iPhone 4S. After I imported them in Aperture, I processed them all using the VSCO Film 01 Kodak Portra 800+ preset. One thing I did do was to duplicate the photo of Pete walking along the sand (the third 3×4 photo below) and crop it to a 6×4 photo that emphasised the light from the sunset and I placed this photo in the top 6×4 pocket. You almost can’t tell it’s the same photo, unless you look really closely.

Favourite photos from this week?
I love the photo of my tummy, the one of the three boys rumbling on the couch (though it looks more like they’ve all crashed asleep in the same spot) and the photo of Rick and Jamie on the floor. So cute.

Overall thoughts?
I like the pops of yellow throughout the two pages, which I feel helps to tie the spread together. Also, I’m really glad I made the effort to document our picnic dinner down at the beach, as it turned out to be our last beach dinner for the summer.

Supplies used?
Becky Higgins Design A page protector; Kodak 210gsm glossy premium photo paper. All photos printed on the Canon MG6360 Pixma using genuine Canon ink.

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Other posts you might be interested in reading:
My weekly Project Life process from beginning to end
Tips on taking photos for Project Life
What you need to get started with Project Life

You can read all my Project Life posts here.

* * *

Project Life is a system created by Becky Higgins that is designed to simplify your efforts to document life and help get your photos into a book. To learn more about the product and how to get started, click here.

Today’s post is going to be short and sweet. I’m at the library, trying to work out if my contractions are simply Braxton Hicks ones or if they are the real deal. I even packed my hospital bag this morning just in case – they were that bad. I am anxious of course. After all, we are only just beginning Week 34. Ideally, Edward bear needs to stay in for another three weeks at least. But I trust the mid-wives and the doctors are our hospital. I know we, and more importantly, he, will be in good hands. All I can do is sit as still as I can and hope and pray for the best.

What happened in Week 6?
Angus started preschool again, I blogged about the boys’ room (before the bunk bed’s arrival), I captured my favourite portrait for The 52 Project, we finished Pete’s birthday invitations and we had Chinese New Year dinner at my parents’ place!

Number of pages and inserts?
Week 6 was a simple 2 page layout using Becky Higgins Design A page protectors. No inserts. This was a bit of a relief, after the multitude of pages and inserts it took to document our family holiday in Week 5!

Anything special about the photos?
Not really. All the photos were taken on my iPhone 4S. After I imported them in Aperture, I processed them all using the VSCO Film 01 Kodak Portra 800+ preset.

Favourite photo from this week?
Naturally, I love the photo of the three boys on the couch waiting for Nan to arrive. But I also like the shot of them at my parents’ place on Chinese New Year. I’ve taken the same shot over the last few years and it’s wonderful to see how our family has grown over time.

Overall thoughts?
I really like the bright colours on page 1 and the more neutral colours on page 2. I particularly love how my maternity dress on the first page goes so well with the kaleidoscope artwork. Visual coincidences like that are the best.

Supplies used?
Becky Higgins Design A page protector; Kodak 210gsm glossy premium photo paper. All photos printed on the Canon MG6360 Pixma using genuine Canon ink.

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Other posts you might be interested in reading:
My weekly Project Life process from beginning to end
Tips on taking photos for Project Life
What you need to get started with Project Life

You can read all my Project Life posts here.

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Project Life is a system created by Becky Higgins that is designed to simplify your efforts to document life and help get your photos into a book. To learn more about the product and how to get started, click here.

Today is all about Week 5 – the week of our family holiday in Gerroa, on the south coast of New South Wales. It was a rainy and grey week, but we still had a wonderful time away. In fact, the weather made for some rather lovely photos; the light on such grey days is so much easier to work with than when it’s bright and sunny. Anyway, I’ve been inspired by Elise‘s simple Q&A format for her Project Life posts this year, and with her permission, I’m going to replicate it somewhat here.

What happened this week?
The five of us drove down to Gerroa and stayed in a beautiful holiday house right by the ocean. The floor-to-ceiling windows in the main living area turned the scenery into stunning works of art that greeted us every morning and stayed with us all day. From the comfort of the house, we watched storms roll in over the water and we saw every day how the headland changed its mood and colours depending on the time of the day. We’d brought a small box of toys to keep the boys entertained, and we were also quite lenient in letting them watch a healthy dose of afternoon television. Meanwhile, Rick put the Nespresso coffee machine to great use, drinking up to four or five cappuccinos a day! He also cooked some amazing dinners for the two of us that week. At the end of the day, it was all about spending time together as a family, and that’s exactly what we did.

Number of pages and inserts?
This was the first time we’d been away as a family in over a year and a half, so I wanted to make sure I did a proper job of documenting it. As such, I went all out. Because I didn’t want to create a separate album, I allowed myself six spreads (that’s twelve pages!) in our main Project Life album. In addition, I ended up with three 8×10 inserts (front and back).

Anything different about the spreads?
Instead of my usual point-form summary of the week in the first 3×4 pocket, I wrote a small paragraph describing our week away. And then, spaced throughout the twelve pages, I placed additional journalling cards – one for each day we were away. On each of these, I wrote an additional small paragraph about that particular day. This served as an effective way to visually break up all the photos, plus it was nice to include some journalling, which is something I don’t do much of in our normal week-to-week Project Life spreads.

Ratio of DSLR photos to iPhone photos?
As you probably already know, I usually only include iPhone photos in my main page layouts. However, I made an exception for our holiday documentation and included a handful of photos of the boys that I’d taken on our DSLR, as well as a couple of shots that I’d taken of myself in the mirror using the EOS. Still, of the ninety-one photos across the twelve pages, only eight of these were EOS ones.

How did you process the photos?
Some of the photos were processed on my iPhone using VSCO Cam, but mostly, I used the VSCO Film presets in Aperture to process the majority of the photos. Kodak Portra 800+ is currently my favourite. A couple of the square photos set in white space (like the one of the boys’ bedroom with the giant fish on the wall) were processed with Instagram.

What were the inserts for?
The inserts were mainly collages filled with some of my favourite photos taken on the EOS. Even though I know I’ll be creating a photo book with the EOS photos down the track, the collages mean that those moments still form part of the Project Life story.

Supplies used?
Becky Higgins Design A page protector; Becky Higgins 8×10 vertical page protectors; Kodak 210gsm glossy premium photo paper. All photos printed on the Canon MP630 Pixma using genuine Canon ink.

Overall thoughts?
I love these pages. Family holidays are so precious, and I’m really happy I was able to document our time away in this way. Even though I usually lean towards minimalism, I honestly don’t mind at all that I used so many pages and inserts. I also love the resulting grey colour palette, which I feel sets these pages apart from my usual layouts. Grey rocks!

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Other posts you might be interested in reading:
My weekly Project Life process from beginning to end
Tips on taking photos for Project Life
What you need to get started with Project Life

You can read all my Project Life posts here.

(Linking up with The Mom Creative.)

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Project Life is a system created by Becky Higgins that is designed to simplify your efforts to document life and help get your photos into a book. To learn more about the product and how to get started, click here.

Finally, I can start sharing my 2013 layouts! Goodness knows I’ve waited long enough for this. Like 2012, my weeks for 2013 begin on Mondays and end on Sunday (the only exception is Week 1, seeing as Monday was new year’s eve, which I included as the end page for 2012). Looking back, there was a sort of languid feel to the first few weeks of January as we prepared ourselves for our holiday, and I think this is reflected in the Project Life layouts. (Remember you can click on each image for a larger version.)

To be honest, there are some weeks when I get to Saturday and I realise I’ve only taken half a dozen photos that week. I’m quite sure Week 1 was one of those weeks. Even so, I still have this semi-reluctance to take random photos of just anything, so I simply do my best over the course of the weekend to look for the little things and the little moments around me that move me in some way yet still captures our everyday life. Sometimes it’s as simple as the crinkle of our sheets, or the snacks on my desk, or the afternoon light that falls on my husband while we sit together in my studio.

I still love including an image sequence whenever I can, even if it’s only two photos side by side like the ones of Jamie here on the couch. And yes, that’s Pete in the top-right photo. I think he’d been pretending to drive a bus (ie. the couch) – Jamie was obviously the passenger – and he’d just gotten a bit tired from all the honking and steering that he’d been doing. Seriously, these boys make me laugh. Every. Single. Day.

Lots of light and shade on this page. Never under-estimate the power of the iPhone camera when it comes to capturing light in the most beautiful of ways. I am constantly surprised by what the device can do.

Week 3 marked the beginning of Rick’s time off, and boy was it good. It began with a late morning drive to La Perouse, which was simply breathtaking, after which we dropped the boys off at Rick’s parents’ for a two-night sleepover. One cannot ask for more generous in-laws than mine… (Seriously, they are the best.)

There are lots of things about this page that make me smile: seeing Rick actually relax and switch off; the head shot of us; my pregnant belly; and the photo of the boys with Pa & Nan the first night they dropped them back home to us. Pages like this remind me that so much of life is simply about the people in our family. I am truly blessed.

(Tomorrow I’ll finally be publishing my post on time management. I’ve been working on it for so long now, and am excited fo finally see it go live!)

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Other posts you might be interested in reading:
My weekly Project Life process from beginning to end
Tips on taking photos for Project Life
What you need to get started with Project Life

You can read all my Project Life posts here.

Materials used: Becky Higgins Design A page protector; Kodak 210gsm glossy premium photo paper. All photos printed on the Canon MP630 Pixma.

(Linking up with The Mom Creative.)

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Project Life is a system created by Becky Higgins that is designed to simplify your efforts to document life and help get your photos into a book. To learn more about the product and how to get started, click here.

I know it’s already half way through February, but I’m so determined to finish off sharing my 2012 layouts before starting on 2013 (which will happen next week, I absolutely promise!). Week 52 was a wonderful week. We’d had an absolutely crazy week leading up to Christmas, and being able to actually celebrate Christmas itself with our church family and our family relatives was such a joy. Like Week 51, I decided to give myself two spreads to play with, to allow myself more detail and flexibility in documenting that week. (Remember you can click on each image for a larger version.)

Christmas Eve marked the beginning of Week 52, so I included a photo of our Christmas tree which I took that night while Rick was out leading our Christmas Eve service at church, and the boys were asleep in bed. It was a beautifully peaceful night. There is also a photo I snapped at a cafe earlier that day (top right) – significant because it was right outside that cafe that I managed to lock us out of our car with Angus and Jamie inside it. Talk about sheer panic and feeling like the worst mum ever – thankfully, the window lock wasn’t on and Angus was able to wind down his window, allowing us to unbuckle his seat belt, freeing him to climb to the front of the car and please the unlock button for us. I could’ve kissed him for hours on end for saving the day. And yes, to remember the occasion, I added journalling to the photo (something I hadn’t done for a long time) so that down the track, I can look back and remember not to do that again!

On Christmas Day, we went to church in the morning and then we went to Rick’s parents place for our Mason Christmas lunch. Most of the photos from the lunch I dropped into 8×8 inserts like the ones I did for Week 51 but I decided to include one of my favourite photos from the event as the title card – the delicious strawberry and mango pavlova that Rick’s sister and brother-in-law brought for dessert. My goodness, I am feeling hungry now just thinking about it. The other photos on this page are of the boys on Boxing Day morning mucking around in our bed. So sweet, they are.

Page 2 simply has more photos from the rest of Boxing Day. We went to our favourite cafe for an early dinner (the kids ate free – woohoo!) and then enjoyed looking out at the beach and watching the scene unfold before us. Seeing that smile of Pete’s in the cafe makes me so happy. He is such an awesome kid, full of so much life and energy.

This next page documents a cafe date with the boys, a beach picnic, a Skyfall movie date night, and a visit from a couple of friends of mine from Hong Kong. That movie date night was such a highlight for both Rick and me. We had mud crab cooked with bean vermicelli for dinner at a Chinese restaurant and it was the best. Rick, who apparently did not like seafood when we got married, ate more than his fair share of the contents of that crock pot! At one point, I looked up from my bowl of rice, thinking there would be plenty of bean vermicelli left, only to discover that Rick had eaten it all! It is so wonderful to remember moments like that.

I feel truly blessed to live in such a beautiful part of Sydney. The top photo was snapped during a post picnic dinner drive to Freshwater, and the bottom photo was taken at Mona Vale beach. I love the fact that the iPhone 4S camera captures scenery so well. The other photos on the page are all of family: we saw my parents off at the airport on the 30th as they were flying to Hong Kong for a month so I made sure Rick got some photos of them with me and the boys – a yearly tradition of sorts. Later that same day, Rick’s parents came over to our place so I made a point of taking photos of them with Rick and the boys. It’s pretty hilarious how Jamie gradually disappears from the photo strip – it’s almost impossible to get him to sit or stand still for photos these days. This page is such a wonderful reminder of how blessed we are to have our boys and our parents. I feel happy just looking at it.

This was my first ever Project Life end page. As I was reviewing my photos from Week 52, it quickly dawned on me that I would make the end page all about New Year’s Eve. It seemed like a fitting thing to do. We’d taken the boys down to the beach that evening for an early picnic dinner (surprise, surprise), and I’m so glad I managed to snap a few shots of us amidst the crowds and chaos. I’m particularly happy I got a shot of Rick and myself, which is not something that I often remember to do these days. I framed that with white space for the first pocket of the page, and added some journalling to record some details of the evening, along with a few sentences about the year. I converted the other photos of us into black and white for some visual consistency, and I absolutely love the silhouette photo I got of the crowd (and the distant kite in the sky) as we were leaving. The bottom two photos were taken at our friend’s house later that night, when Angus and Pete got to hold sparklers for the very first time.

The filler card on the left simply says: “Goodbye 2012. It’s been amazing.” I designed it in Adobe InDesign, using white font on a solid coloured background. The typeface is Rockwell.

And truly, 2012 had been amazing. New church. New friendships. New home. New life.

A new beginning.

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Other posts you might be interested in reading:
My weekly Project Life process from beginning to end
Tips on taking photos for Project Life
What you need to get started with Project Life

You can read all my Project Life posts here.

Materials used: Becky Higgins Design A page protector; Kodak 210gsm glossy premium photo paper. All photos printed on the Canon MP630 Pixma.

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Project Life is a system created by Becky Higgins that is designed to simplify your efforts to document life and help get your photos into a book. To learn more about the product and how to get started, click here.