I Made It Monday

So last year I made a valiant attempt at chronicling our year in a scrap book. My goal was to go from December 21, 2011 to December 22, 2012. I called it Waiting for the Apocalypse. I got to about March before I stopped. The problem was I take so many pictures that I ended up with an overwhelming amount to go through. I got frustrated and, not a big surprise, distracted by other things that were slightly more pressing than scrapbooking.

But I still liked and clung to the idea of scrapbooking life as it happened. And it was in the course of looking for new scrapbooking resources that I stumbled across a few blogs that were talking about something called Project Life. I traced the links back to a woman, Becky Higgins, who had hatched and sold a scrapbooking system that cut out time consuming layout dilemmas and matching papers.

Project Life is a streamlined system. Something I can take out and spend an hour or two with and put away. I liked that.

I did not, however, like the price tag associated with all the accessories. I’ve got accessories out the wazoo! Paper, stickers, vellum quotes and sayings, albums…and did I mention the paper? I’ve got a lot of scrapbook paper. I’ve got enough scrapbook paper that I’m probably going to have to include it in my will.

The one thing I didn’t have was the nifty photo pages (photo page protectors…what are those things called anyway?).

So I ordered some (FYI - Becky sells her supplies through Amazon). Just a small pack to see how it would go. While I was waiting from my package to arrive I spent my evenings going through my shoebox full of scraps cutting them down to sizes that would fit the photo pages. I spent hours combing through the photos I’d taken trying to narrow the ones I loved down to a reasonable 5-8. Five to eight photos to capture the week. Reasonable and doable.

Once the pages arrived, I established a routine. Oh how I hate routines (more on that later)! But I knew that if I didn’t establish a day to scrapbook, it would just collect dust like the Camping book, the Apocalypse book and the Birthday Fiesta O’ Fun books. Mondays, I decided would be the day. Mondays I go into town and run my errands. I do the grocery shopping, I pick up the miscellaneous things I need from Home Depot or Target. Mondays I would print my photos and Mondays I would scrapbook.

And, my friends, I do. I am. It isn’t overly elaborate or crazy with crafty and creativity but I’m getting what I wanted to accomplish done. And that, my friends, makes me happy. And slightly proud because really right now, I need to show that I can start a project and finish it.