A Little at a Time

Whew! Glad that project is over. Now I can focus on what I am really supposed to be doing - Second Language Acquisition.

So, after listening to my favorite podcast, the Digi Show (a podcast about digital scrapbooking), I realized that in order to link my scrapbook pages to my blog, I should technically be crediting the designers of the templates, papers and elements that I use. I used to do this when I posted individual pages on my blog, but since linking up to Picasa slide show, I have done nothing to properly credit the designers.

This project took about three weeks of diligently work - a little bit every day. I have over 500 templates and over 500 digital kits, so it was a lot to go through and match up. I know I missed a few things, but after all this work, I now have a much better handle of my digital inventory. I didn't even know I owned certain things, so it was a nice surprise to come across various items that I thought were so beautiful and wonderful.

One more step in this project was to protect myself a little bit. I noticed that on Picasa, anyone can download a photo and do whatever they want with it. This might be okay for family and friends, but I would prefer that anyone asks my permission first, so I added a watermark layer to all of my layouts that go on the blog. The AJY2012 is there just to deter people from using or printing my layouts, but for family and friends, if anyone wants something, just ask and I'll email you or snail mail you a normal layout.

Now, on the left side of my blog, there are 5 slideshows. The most recent is the one called "Theme Albums", which features the Daily December album I did at the end of 2011. This is the only family-oriented album I did in 2011, so you won't see an Everyday Life Album for 2011.

Good news though! You will see one for 2012! I am working on Project Life, which is the system designed by Becky Higgins. Each month, I'll do a couple of lay outs relating to our daily life and daily routines, our thoughts, goal progress, and developments. So, I'll be adding a new slideshow called Everyday Life 2012 and it will feature these lay outs along with any random ones that I feel like doing!

Look, I don't know how it will be possible to fit this in, but really Project Life does not take a lot of work. It does, however, require an awareness of one's surroundings. Now, I have a reason to jot things down - new words that Luka says, funny questions that Ailin asks, progress of my goals, bad days, good days, basically the little stuff that makes up life.

Where do I jot things down? I found two ways to do this that seem to work for me. I downloaded an App to my iPhone called DayOne. DayOne should be syncing to my dropbox, but so far I cannot get it to work. For now though, DayOne allows me to type in what ever I want and it keeps track of the date and time, keeping the entries organized like a diary. It is not meant to be shared, so I can write whatever I want without worrying that it is too mundane, too conceited, too happy, or too depressing!

The second way is to open up the Journaling Card templates on the computer, save them in my drop box and have them ready to complete at any time. Last weekend, Ailin helped me fill them out by helping me recall various details of the last few weeks. Even Luka got in on the conversation by telling me all the words he knows, so I could pick out the new ones to add to the list.

One more feature of Project Life is to use ephemera (real stuff) from your life. I want to do the entire album digitally, so I had to find a way to do this properly. After much ado, I made some decisions about the types of things I want to save, and these things must be scannable. I keep a large ziploc bag in the kitchen and I fill it with items that can be scanned later. Some examples of items that I saved recently: the report of my weight/measurement for my first visit to the gym, a to-do list, a cool clothing tag, a recipe, and a menu from a new cafe in our neighborhood. On the 15th of January, I scanned all the items I had so far so that it wouldn't be overwhelming at the end of the month.

The photos - well, each time I upload photos to the computer, I choose a few representative ones and drop them into my Project Life folder.

Here is the key to getting stuff done though: I keep all Project Life-related stuff in my Dropbox folder so I can work on it from my laptop or from my desktop computer, anytime, anywhere.

Hopefully, at the end of the month, I can easily pull everything together into two double lay outs and that will be it!

A little at a time. That's how to get stuff done.