PROJECT LIFE® 2016 | WEEK 3

My goal for this year is to stay "caught up" on my Project Life® album. Even though it's only February, I am happy to say that my album is current and up to date!

Today I am going to show you my Week Three:

Last year was the first year I decided to add regular 12x12 pages along side my pocket pages. I really like having the variety and it came in handy when I was low on photos for the week.

I am still using my One Little Bird date stamp. I really like the look of it and I have a lot of fun finding new ways to make it look different and fresh each week

The "I love you so much" card came from an Ali Edwards Story Kit™. I have a hard time using those kits because I am always waiting for the "perfect" story to tell. I am working on letting that go.

I made the rest of the cards by cutting down some paper from a Project Life Jade Edition paper pack. 

When I choose to use a 12x12 page protector instead of a pocket page, I usually will take that opportunity to tell my favorite story of the week. That doesn't always mean the best quality photo of the week. As you can see this photo of my little girl at dance class is not the best quality. It is blurry, plus I decided to enlarge it to a 12x12 print so that made the blurriness even worse. 

My solution is make the photo black and white (blurry photos or ones with bad color always look better in black and white) and then move on. It does't bother me to have "bad quality" photos in my albums. I LOVE this picture of my daughter and I am super happy that it is in my album. 

I have a love hate relationship with full page photos. I love the look of them, but I always struggle with how to embellish them. For this photo, I decided to start with a tag, because you can never go wrong with a tag. To tie the two pages together I layered some more of the patterned paper behind the tag and then simply added my story. Super simple and super cute!

I am happy with how this spread turned out, but I did struggle with the photos that I had available to work with. As I worked through my process I made some mental notes to myself.

• TAKE MORE PHOTOS. The last few months of 2015 were hectic and crazy for our family. I wasn't reaching for my camera as often. I need to create the habit of taking more photos again
• ASK MYSELF QUESTIONS. What does my life look like right now? What is different and what is the same? What am I going to want to remember about our life as we live it today? Asking myself these question throughout the week really helps me to take the kind of photos I want to scrapbook
• GET OUT OF MY OWN HEAD. It doesn't have to be perfect, and I don't have to like it. Some weeks I will have a lot of really great photos and other weeks I may have zero great photos. In the end it doesn't matter. Getting the photos and words in my album is what is important. I need to remind myself that in 10 years from now I am not going to care if some of my photos are a little blurry, or the lighting wasn't quite right. I am going to be happy I recorded the memory.

Thanks for stopping by! If you have any questions, don't hesitate to leave a comment below.