Project Life Tuesday ~ Week 32 & A Mini Album

Monday ~ The sunset tonight was so pretty!  There is such a weird & random phenomenon that occurs at one of the intersections near Hwy 75.  There are THOUSANDS of birds that congregate on the electrical wires.  This pic doesn’t even show a tiny portion of them.  It’s like a scene from Alfred Hitchcock’s “The Birds” movie.  CREEPY!

Tuesday ~ Autumn is SOOOOOOOOO into trying to learn how to do a handstand b/c some of the girls on her cheerleading team know how.  So, she asked me to help her do one against the wall.  I basically have to lift her all the way off the ground & set her up against the wall.  She was THRILLED that she stayed up long enough for me to snap this picture.

Wednesday ~ I asked Sis. Lee if she would mind if I skipped Young Women’s tonight so I could go to the temple.  It’s been a LONG time since I’ve been & I really wanted to go.  I got to see the new temple video & I loved some parts of it, but didn’t like other parts at all.  It was a LOVELY evening at the temple!

Thursday ~ Yesterday at cheer practice, Autumn’s coaches surprised all the girls w/ their cheer buckets.  They turned out SO CUTE & will be so nice for the girls to carry all their cheer stuff to the games & to have a place to sit between cheering times.  Inside the bucket was her uniform, pom poms, hair bow, & bell!
I slipped the tag from her uniform into the pocket w/ the journaling card.

Friday ~ After dinner tonight, Autumn & I drove up to Michael’s to see if they had the 5th & Frolic core kit.  I’m sad to report they didn’t.  Since it’s 1/2 price shakes at Sonic & it was a Friday night, we stopped and treated ourselves to one.
I slipped the receipt from Sonic into the pocket w/ the journaling card.

Saturday ~ Autumn & I babysat Jacob this morning so Liz & Liberty could go to the temple.  Then in the afternoon the Johnson crew came over to swim.  We were laughing SO HARD at Peyton’s jump where he would try to do a cannon ball, but instead would always hold his right leg straight out.
I did a Picasa collage to fit 4 pictures in this one 4x6 spot.

Sunday ~ I got to teach in Laurel’s (16-18 year old girls) about, “Why is temple marriage important?”  Then tonight I went to a Single Adult fireside w/ a panel discussion about the Holy Ghost.  The Snyder’s, Jenson’s, & Hamblin’s did a FABULOUS job!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I want to share something I’ve been working on for the past month, that finally came together last night.  I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE Project Life, but as I’ve been looking ahead to the future I’ve realized 2 things:

1. I don’t have time to make Autumn (or any future children I will have) their own individual full sized albums.  I keep our family one updated and will continue to, but trying to keep the family one & Autumn’s own separate one feels very overwhelming, which is the opposite of what Project Life is all about.
2. Even if I did make her her own album, there is no way that when she grows up and goes off to college that she would want to take a bunch of big 12x12 binders w/ her.

So, I came up w/ a solution that works for me.  I chose ONE (just one) picture for each month of her life and put those into a mini album.  I have to admit that it was hard to choose just one picture for each month, b/c I literally take hundreds of pictures each month.  But, I made myself do it & I am THRILLED w/ how it turned out.

She was born in January 2007 & this first album will be full when I pick the picture for THIS month (August 2013).  Next month I’ll just start a new mini album & keep picking 1 picture per month.  This way, when she goes off to college she can take 2 – 3 mini albums that represent her childhood instead of trying to take huge a bunch of heavy & bulky 12x12 albums.

I haven’t done any of the journaling yet, but I just slipped in cards from various kits (mostly Blush & the Dear Lizzy mini kit) to see what it will look like.

Side note: I have to apologize that my pictures are so blurry.  They look super crisp on my screen in Windows Live Writer, but when I publish this to my blog they get all fuzzy???  SORRY!

I temporarily used little green strips to mark the beginning of each year.  Once I get the journaling done, I’ll take those out.  January 2007 is a picture of the day she was born.  February is a picture of her in her blessing dress.

March is a picture of her w/ her 3 oldest half siblings.  I know this isn’t a great picture, b/c she’s at the bottom of it & is partially cut off, but that doesn’t bother me at all.  It was important for me to include pics of her Kemble side of the family since her Dad & I got divorced when she was just 6 months old.

April is an Easter picture.

May is a picture of when her Dad graduated w/ his Masters degree & it also includes her Grandma Michele.

June is a picture of her first haircut & this “stink face” I captured.  She still makes this exact same brooding face when she’s mad.  LOL!

July is when my brother was watching her for me while I went to a job interview and she fell asleep holding a football in her exersaucer.  It also shows off her crazy long eyelashes.

August is a picture of how much she’s changed and grown and how her car seat is starting to look so small w/ her in it.

September is one of my favorite pictures of her ever.  It shows her crib bedding, her favorite pink blanket, some cute new jammies she got, her new teeth, and it was just such a fun age.

October is her first Halloween costume & she was dressed up like Minnie Mouse.

November is her trying to walk and pulling herself up into a standing position and always wanting to “help” w/ the dishes.

December is her inside a fun tunnel thing she got on Christmas morning. 

I have to insert here that as I went through EVERY.SINGLE.PICTURE for each month, I created a folder where I copied and pasted those pics, so I had a few from each month to choose from.  Once I had about 10 of my favorite pics for each month, I had Autumn help me choose which ones she wanted to include in HER album.

January 2008 is her 1st birthday.

February is her hairstyle w/ a pony tail right on top of her head w/ her hair sticking straight up.  We called it her “weed”.

Anyways, you get the idea…  I’m not going to show you every single page but here’s one that starts in March 2010 that shows big events (like her 1/2 sister coming to visit for the first time), but also small events like Papa bringing her doughnuts for breakfast every Friday after he finished teaching seminary.  I tried to include a good mix of small & big events & lots of different people & locations.

I also tried to include things like taking pictures in the bluebonnets every Spring.  I think that will be neat to compare those pics to each other to see how much she’s changed over the years.  I included some firsts, like her first stitches & how Papa took them out at the kitchen table.  Or when she graduated from Pre-K.  Or every day things like her out of control collection of Barbie dolls.

There wasn’t any real rhyme or reason as to why I picked certain pics over others.  Sometimes I included pics that went w/ the holiday for that month.  Like in November 2012 where Mimi came to her daycare dressed like a pioneer.  Or in December a pic of her in her Christmas dress w/ Santa Claus.  Every January I included a pic from her birthday, but I didn’t do a Valentine pic for February.

The idea is that as she gets older & older that SHE will be the one to decide which pics she wants to put in her album for each month & that she’ll take over doing the journaling.  That way the first album will be MY memories & thoughts on her childhood & then eventually it will truly be HER album b/c it will be HER memories & thoughts.  As you can see on this page, I used a few cards from the Mayfield Childhood mini kit & had her write something so she can see what her handwriting used to look like & I had her draw a self portrait.

One of the (many) things I LOVE about Project Life is that it is completely customizable.  For example:  when Autumn’s 12 years old and can’t possibly narrow it down to just 1 picture a month, she can include however many she wants…there are no “rules” to how Project Life works.

Also, let’s say for example that she wants to use a different picture for May 2012 b/c she doesn’t really care for  the picture I picked out for that month.  All we would have to do is print a different picture and switch it out.  “EASY PEASY, LEMON SQUEEZY!” (she says that all the time lately).

I think this will be such a neat gift to wrap up her 3 mini albums & give them to her on the day she graduates.  They’re small enough that she can take them w/ her and they will fit in a tiny dorm room, but she’ll have those memories to look back on.

I am linked up over at The Mom Creative.

THANKS FOR STOPPING BY Y’ALL!!!