2013 -- week 1 -- a whole new look to project life.

last year i started a kind of digital scrapbook called project life.

i got the idea from dolcetto confections. who got the idea from ali edwards. who got the idea from becky higgins. and she created it because she was feeling overwhelmed with all of the pictures she had taken over the years and done nothing with.
 (we've all felt this way, i'm sure.)

she created a scrapbooking system that is almost pre-made for you, saving you time and the stress of being creative enough to do "real" scrapbooking. you only need a couple of things to get started:

a project life binder, a pack of photo pocket pages (imagine sheet protectors that are already broken up so you can just slide your pictures into them.), and a paper kit that includes filler cards, title cards, and journal cards.

and then you add your photos and any other mementos that you want to save.

what a simple idea.

but also maybe stressful?
and expensive?

let me explain. 






i love pretty paper. i want to use it all the time, for everything. but the idea of having to choose between the many options that each paper kit includes is kind of a stressful thought. maybe it would be easy. maybe you just pick them at random so that your album is complete and you just don't worry about it. but i'm a little too perfectionist for that. plus there are so many other things out there (mementos and what not) that you may want to use for your album -- are you expected to also have a paper cutter on hand so that you can cut up and use those as well? 

 then there is the cost. just getting started could cost up to, if not more than, $100. which in itself, is not bad. but if you use a digital camera, you will also have to print out your pictures. if you don't own a picture printer, the cheapest you can probably print each picture out for is 5¢. maybe. or you buy the picture printer. if you take pictures with a film camera, you, most likely, are already getting your film developed and therefore this wouldn't really be an issue. but so many of us, myself included, use our phones, at the very least, if not a full fledged digital camera, for our picture taking. thereby making the prospect of having to print out all of your photos a little daunting.


but i really do love the idea of doing a weekly scrapbook. 
and the easier, the better. 
 
so i decided to go the digital route.

however, that was a project all in itself as well.  


since i had no idea how to begin, i ended up buying a digital project life kit -- i bought the templates, which are very similar to the photo pocket pages, and i bought a "paper" pack, which project life calls "a core kit". it seemed like the best way to get started. and maybe it was -- it provided you with templates to follow, paper, journal cards, title cards, etc. (all in digital form, of course) for a little bit of money. (and once you get started you wouldn't believe how many websites and blogs have free digital scrapbooking products you can download.)

but when i opened up my extremely old version of photoshop, i ran into another problem.

i had no idea how to use photoshop.

google, here we come. 
 (i am still amazed at all of the wonderful and amazing things you can learn on google/youtube.)  


so i googled it, watched videos, and practiced. and i soon realized that photoshop was not the difficult program that i had originally thought it was. and for a year, 2012, i made my own little version of a project life album; but i think it's time for a change.

like i mentioned before, change is good. so i am trying to do it a little differently this year. i am trying to make it more like project life intended. i will attempt to use the templates and the core kit that i purchased. i will try to use more of the filler cards, do more whimsical journalling, rather than the boring rundown of what happened each week, and i will attempt to scan in and include all of those little mementos and tickets that i save.

here is my first crack at it:

we woke up on the morning of january 1st, 2013, on a comfy sofa bed on the upper east side of new york city. it was the last day of our impromptu vacation, but we had one last friend to go see in jersey city. so we took the subway downtown and then the path train to jersey city. it was a great visit, and a relaxing way to end a kind of hectic trip. (more to be said about that in a blog post coming soon.)

we came home to our kittenz, mildred and cornelius, who, despite our best efforts, are the real rulers of our apartment. in fact, they have commandeered the ipad on more than one occasion so that they can "chase mice". and they were very happy when they received cat nip mice and a laser pointer for christmas. 

(if you have cats and an ipad, i seriously recommend fun and games for cats. your cats will thank you. plus, they get to "paint" as they try to catch the mouse, so you have a cute kitten memento afterwards.)

last year i found out about fatmumslim's photo a day challenge at the end of january and ever since i have been participating. i think it's a nifty way to document the sometimes boring everyday bits of your life as it requires you to really look around and get creative for just one small bit of every day.  often times i have to take a lot of pictures to find the one that i want to represent that day's theme. but i am always surprised when something you're doing that day perfectly aligns with the theme and a picture just falls in your lap. 

here is january's photo a day, if you wanted to participate with me. 

if you are participating, please leave a comment below with your instagram/FB/twitter handle and where you are sharing our pictures; i would love to follow you as we challenge ourselves to complete this together. 

i have a weird obsession with preparing nontraditional foods, and lucky for me, rcg humors me; the jiffy pop is an example of this. it was a fun and hugely successful experiment. (something to look forward to: we cook dehydrated camping food for dinner. will it be successful and/or delicious? i'm so excited to find out!)  

we finished the week with a visit to the tucson museum of art to see a matisse exhibit. and we were surprised to see how large and extensive the museum's art exhibits were. the main building is set up as a "reverse guggenheim", meaning that you start at the top and as you circle down you see each of the exhibits in turn. in addition, the museum is full of history; most of the museum is made up of older houses that have been built on the site that was originally tucson's presidio or fort. 

another spectacular exhibit was "el nacimiento" -- a detailed nativity scene that includes native americans, romans, a traditional mexican market, and so much more. the exhibit will be up until june; it is definitely worth a stop in to see.

for those of you living in tucson, on the first sunday of each month, the tucson museum of art is free.  it wasn't crowded at all! and it's a fun (and cheap) day date.

have you been reading my blog for a while? 

what do you think of the new project life set up?