I just got my March photos in to begin putting together last month's Project Life pages & I realized I hadn't yet shared February's pages! I feel like the months are flying by, it's April already! Wow.

    This project reminds me of that acronym K.I.S.S. - Keep It Simple Stupid. Or, as Ali Edwards often says "Don't make it harder than it needs to be." 

    My process is super simple. I take photos through out the month & I only upload them to the computer at the end of the month. I then edit & print all the ones I want to use to tell the story of our days. During the month I have a bin where I collect ephemra from our lives - reciepts, mail, ticket stubs, church bulletins, packaging, etc. After my photos are printed I go through the bin & create a timeline. I mix photos and ephemra until the pile starts at the beginning of the month on top & ends with the last days of the month on the bottom.

    Then, I just start sticking things in the pockets of my page protectors. I move things around, I journal, I crop & edit as I go one page at a time. Sometimes, I get through the whole month & go back and embelish, sometimes I think of an embelishment as I'm in the middle of it. Not that I really have very many embelishments anyway. A sticker arrow here and there, days of the week stickers, & small word sentiments. I've gone back and added an overlay to a few favorite photos - even after I took the photos that I shared for January & these February photos I've added a couple overlays. As I go through it randomly through out the next month sometimes I see something I want to change or add to. I don't worry about getting it all 'just right' during that first putting together session. Sometimes I add in extra pages other than the ones I got specifically for Project Life. Like in the photos above the Cirque Du Soleil programs were large and thick so to added an extra page just to hold them.

    The other thing I'm doing alot as I photograph my month is playing with camera settings & taking photos on my phone. I have a mix of all sorts in these pages. Some great, some not so much. It doesn't matter, they all help tell the story. Sometimes I take several shots of the same thing & when I print them and see them together I have happy accidents. Like in the bottom two photos below, I didn't know when I took the photos I had made myself a little panoramic set. But, after printing & laying them out I was super excited to have a little spread for my album. I had just been admiring Elise's way of taking a large print & using it over several spaces in the page protector & had unwittingly done a little bit of that myself. (If you scroll up & look back at page two you can see in the center there I found a way to add that idea in another spot - even with my standard 4 x 6 prints.)

    What else can I say but that Project Life is definitely growing on me? Looking back over my days, my months is awesome. Having it come together with such organized ease is awesome. Remembering to take photos of life & not just events is awesome. Oh! In that same vein of taking photos of Life, I've joined Paper Coterie over on Twitter to do the April photo-a-day campaign #ConnectWithPC. There are prompts for every day in April, & I'm excited to see how all those photos add to my Project Life album.
    Life. Documented & enjoyed. 
    Love it.

    If you haven't heard about Becky Higgins' Project Life you might be missing out! It's a super easy, coordinated way to streamline how you document your life. I've been following how my pal Ali uses Project Life for a long time, then Cathy started using Project Life, & so does Elise. (OK so maybe they aren't really my friends but I like to think they would be if they got to know me! ;) ) With all these cool, creative people doing Project Life & just inspiring me so very much I decided this would be the year I tried it out. 

    I ordered the fancy photo pocket pages for which PL is kinda known. I ordered the Amber Edition Core Kit & Cardstock. I sat down & smiled at all the pretty colors & paper options & flipped though cards & thought about how I wanted to tackle this project. I decided that I didn't want to do the traditional weekly collection. Mostly because I didn't think I'd collect enough photos & stuff of life to do that & I figured I wouldn't maintain weekly momentum. So, I chose to go for a monthy glance at our lives & include the memories & stories I remembered to capture. This isn't like Week In The Life, I'm not trying to include every detail of what we do, but just get an overview & capture the larger stories. 

    I've started uploading my photos a month at a time (Aside from the things I document for you or the shop, etc.) & then I choose my favorites & print the whole month to work on during the next month of capturing. Or, atleast that's how it was gonna go until I had to wait for some sold out product to get rolling. But, now I'm rolling & I finished January's pages!

I included a 6 x 12 page among the PL Design A pages too...

The very last January page didn't need to be very big, so I added an 8.5 x 11 to include my final few photos...

    As I am finding my rhythm with this project & figuring out how I want things to look the style might change a bit. I'm letting each month be what it wants to be. I decided I wouldn't make a set number of pages or put any regulations on myself. I would just print the pictures I wanted to use & go for it. I have to say that it's much easier to get the stories told this way. Even the way I included our Las Vegas trip was satisfying. I don't feel like I need to go back and make more traditional pages or expand on what's in the album. That's so nice! It means I am staying 'caught up' with our story & that makes me feel less overwhelmed. It doesn't mean I can't go back and make more tradional pages as I feel compelled to, I can do that too, & add them in, & love the process of documenting any which way I want. So, for now, I'm really enjoying the Project Life way of documenting. Have you tried it yet?