Project Life: 2012, OMG Finished!

I did it!! I completed our 2012 Project Life album. I honestly can't believe that I stuck with it an entire year, though it was so enjoyable that it really never became a *chore*.  Because really, if this kind of crafty thing is a chore, it really shouldn't be on the to-do list.

I say that to mama friends all the time who feel bad that they are not doing "enough" for their kids' baby books.  I think the baby book is more for the parents than the kid. And if you don't enjoy making one, then don't do it.  Really. Read a couple of extra books to your kids instead if you feel you need to do "penance" ;)

Last night I worked on the spreads, and the final page until 2am. It was already 11pm by the time I sat down with my printed photos and my December Studio Calico kits. This month, I received the main scrapbooking kit, the Murray Hill Add On Kit and the card kit, and put them all together in one Cropper Hopper paper file so I could use all the coordinating things together.  It's a great system to store my monthly kits.

Since I'm covering so much of the holiday stuff in my December-ish album, I didn't want to repeat a lot of the photos. But I also didn't want to pretend like Christmas didn't exist, so I put in a mix of photos from our trip to Leavenworth (WA, not the prison), Christmas gifts, and our post-Christmas Holiday Open House party.

(Click the photos to see a larger version).

Dec 10-31, 2012: Friends, Leavenworth, the Dentist

Dec 10-31: Holiday Open House, presents, school

Since every spread is 2 pages, at the end of the book there's one empty page on the left side. I made a closing page using some of the insert cards I had been saving from my Project Life Cobalt Kit. I also included some recent pictures of us (except for Spike, sorry little guy!) and wrote some thoughts on completing the album. I also added some bling, because what project is complete without it?

2012 Project Life Closing Page - hooray!

I was motivated to really and truly finish this album last night, which also meant affixing a book plate (thank you Martha Stewart Office for your wonderful adhesive ones!) and printing the inserts for it and the "window" on the front of the album.  I used Microsoft Publisher to design and print them - super easy.

While I was designing and printing the labels for Project Life 2012, I completed the ones for 2013, so that album is ready to go!  I also added a bookplate to Trillian's toddler album so everything looks uniform on our shelf.  Yes, I'm weird like that.

Creating order from (relative) chaos

I am SO happy and proud that I was able to complete this entire album. I got several weeks behind in March/April but caught up by mid-summer and stayed on track through the end of the year, even during those first few weeks with a newborn in the house!  

What made this possible was switching from 2 pages/week to 2 pages/2 weeks (or sometimes even 3!).  It took the pressure off, and I looked forward to getting to work on those spreads when the time came.  I also learned to be ruthless about our photos - I deleted everything that I didn't love so I had less to wade through when choosing what to include.

I'm definitely doing this again in 2013, and have my supplies ready! I've subscribed to the Studio Calico Project Life Kit.  For Christmas, TJ bought me some of the plain 4x6 grid cards and the dividers for the binder so I'm ready to go, and can't wait to start our first set of pages in a new album. I'm learning how to use Lightroom to catalog, edit and export our photos quickly so I'm hoping to streamline the process a bit.

Tell me about your PL experiences! Did you finish 2012?