Project Life 2013 Finished and Printed!

For the past 2 years in January, I feel obliged to complete two large projects before the month ends. First, I rush to complete the Project Life pages for my album so I can get them uploaded to Blurb and printed into a book. Prior to Project Life, I was making my own version of Project Life with many of the same ideas - repetitive templates throughout, documenting month by month, including the entire family and their memorabilia in the layouts, etc. I love doing it digitally though as they albums come out so thin and well, book-like.

Check out the link for a preview of my latest Project Life Album. It costs a little over $100 to print this 94-pager, but it is well worth the money. One of my favorite books on our bookshelves!

Project Life 2013 (Click this link to see a preview of the book.)

The way I work it out is that each month, I separate our typical family events into themes - Amanda's stuff (usually involving work, hobbies, issues, friends, etc.), Kids' stuff, Family events, and Everyday Life. There are some months when Yusuke has something to share, such as when he travels or attends a friend's wedding. Special family events, such as birthdays, sports festivals, holidays, etc. are allotted extra pages for that month. When time and space allows, I scan memorabilia and use it throughout the pages - things like ticket stubs, kids' drawings, clothing tags, to-do lists, and so on.

I use Photo Shop Elements, both on Mac and PC to complete my pages and then upload them to Blurb in order to make the photobook.

Here's the thing though. By summer, I tend to fall way behind. In fact, in 2013, I was busy researching for my Masters thesis, and I started to fall behind after February. Once I finished with it in September, I spent a few hours here and there trying to catch up but didn't make much headway. I spend most of my winter break powering my way through the last 10 months of the year, so don't get discouraged if you start to fall behind. There are advantages to doing the pages months after the fact (like, you won't be quite as detailed with a little perspective). Of course, there are disadvantages too, like the constant nagging feeling in the pit of your stomach or the likelihood of missing some important details or even the order of events, but really, does that matter in the end? What matter most is that your family has a beautiful book of memories to look at for years to come.

For 2014, I would love to keep up a little better. I don't have the excuse of thesis, but I'm sure other things will come up. Right now, I am trying to figure out some techniques for keeping up and for SIMPLIFYING the whole process. I have a few sets of templates that I go back to again and again, and I found that simple templates work better for me. Though I sometimes love the look of very elaborate pages, it is not feasible for PL pages - too heavy and take too long to work on. I downloaded more Becky Higgins templates and several of Cathy Zielske's templates, both created for the purpose of Project Life. I have a huge stockpile of digital kits that I procured when I was a member of the Digi Files. I have recently unsubscribed because my computer external hard drives were getting so full, and I needed to take a break and use up kits that I have never used yet. I plan to go through and choose several kits that I will use for 2014. Last year, I chose a different kit for each month, but as it turns out, there were some kits I really loved and others, not so much, so I will only choose four or five that I really love, that suit the seasonal colors, that make my heart sing, and I use those over and over.

Here is one in particular that I fell in love with, which lead me to buy several more of the kits created by Libby Pritchett at Sweet Shoppe.

Be Awesome

I love the color blending, the oranges, the shabbiness of it. This definitely reflects my style. Bright but shabby.

Next week, we will be into February, and I'll need to start my January pages of Project Life 2014. Wish me luck, and if you feel the inkling to start an album, by all means...your family will love it, and most importantly, so will you!

What I really wanna do

Don't get me wrong. I enjoy researching and writing. It was fun, and I'll continue to do it because I basically have to continue what I started in order to build up my resume more. Plus, it is important to keep up with new discoveries in teaching if I am to stay in this field. However, for the past two years, I was dying to take some more online classes JUST FOR ME. Art Journaling, scrapbooking, digital techniques, etc. Opportunities to take classes kept passing me by, and I was only signing up for One Little Word because it required very little time to complete the assignments each month.

Now it is January 2014. I am 5 months out of grad school. My word for 2014 is SIMPLIFY. And, I am taking 3 online classes. Yup, three. Not quite good at the SIMPLIFY stuff yet.

First, I am taking One Little Word taught by Ali Edwards, as I wrote about in the previous post. I am planning to update my blog regarding my progress with this word, but please excuse me if I fail or don't show much progress. Something positive always comes out of these words of the year. My next post will be about January's assignment.

Second, I am taking Cathy Zielske's Move Well Eat Well Jumpstart, hosted by Big Picture Classes. Why complicate my life with something that looks like a diet? I don't know. Maybe it's because I am a die-hard fan of Cathy Z and hadn't taken any of her classes since the fall of 2010. I needed a good dose of her. Or maybe I wanted the jumpstart in January to get me back on track for my diet. I will update about my progress, but just FYI, this class is only one month long. After that, it's self-paced and I would only need to check in about once a month. For January though, the assignments are daily! However, they are not difficult, and I printed out the cards beforehand so I only have to find the right cards for each day, fill them out or journal on them, and then put them in the album. Easy peasy. The hard part is actually moving my body and eating well. Doesn't always happen in the same day. I am thinking about getting a FitBit because I am the kind of person who thinks that new technology will help me move my body and eat well. Yes, I admit that I am a sucker for technology.

Third, I am taking a course called The Gifts of Imperfection, taught by Brene Brown. If you don't know her, she is a researcher on human behavior, specializing in shame. Sound weird? This class was offered last November, and I really wanted to enroll, but there was an art journaling component. I knew nothing about art journaling. Then I was reminded that while in grad school, I had been hearing about art journaling off and on and had wanted to learn how to do it. I had promised myself to figure it out after grad school finished. This reminder led me to another class called hosted by A Beautiful Mess called Art Journal All Year, and I decided to enroll in that one instead. I'd been slowly working my way through the challenges since November. Then, just last week, the Brene Brown course was offered once again, due to its popularity, so I decided to take the plunge. Two friends in Japan also enrolled, so I am excited to share the experience with them.

Finally, about a year ago, one of these same friends recommended the books The Happiness Project and Happier at Home, both by Gretchen Rubin. We decided to start our own Happiness Project group and got a few other friends and acquaintances involved. It's a secret/closed Facebook group in which we share our monthly goals and then report back at the end of each month. In between, we discuss our minor successes and challenges regarding our progress and encourage each other along the way. Last year, my goals often related to my word for the year, MOVE. Each member was working on her own issues, and each one of us came out having learned something significant about ourselves by the end of the year. It's a small group, but it ties in quite well with the above 3 courses.

So, just for fun, I am planning to share my progress on this blog. The good and the bad. As my friend Louise says, this helps make us accountable for our actions throughout the year and it's a good record to look back on.

Word of the Year: SIMPLIFY

Finally! I'm back in the saddle. After two years of graduate school and then nearly one year of thesis-researching and writing, I graduated with my Masters Degree in TESOL. Now, I can be proud of myself for achieving something I never thought possible while being married, working full-time and raising two children.

When I first began my graduate program in January of 2011, I decided to join Ali Edwards' class called One Little Word (offered at Big Picture Classes). In keeping with my new goals regarding grad school classes, I chose LEARN as my word. Indeed, I did learn a lot that year, not only about teaching methods and language acquisition, but also about my own strengths and capacity as a mother. Much of what I journaled about also included my daughter's attempts to learn to read and write. She was 4 at the time.

In 2012, I was half-way through grad school courses and I wanted a lighter word, so I chose SHINE. Shine was supposed to push me to my limits while helping me encourage others to shine. I did, but all this focus on studying and pushing myself resulted in a stark and undeniable weight-gain. By the midway point of 2012, I was over 200 pounds. Even my father voiced concern at my appearance when I took the kids on a trip to visit my parents in the States. I was also experiencing some health problems and was told to lose the weight or else. So, my existing burden became heavier, not only literally, but figuratively as well. The decision to study less and exercise more weighed on me. The possibility of getting sicker if I didn't start taking care of myself also weighed on me. Shine sort of lots its gleam, so to speak.

By 2013, I was ready to MOVE and through the help of Ali's One Little Word class, I attempted to find ways to incorporate the word MOVE into my lifestyle. Moving my body was not the only goal though. Moving through the process of proposing, researching and writing a thesis paper was also my goal for the year. Like any organized full-time working mother and student, I had a plan and I followed it to the T. Each month, I moved through the process while trying to fit in exercise whenever I could. In July, I decided my theme for the month would be the opposite of "move", and so "stillness" became my focus. It was supposed to be just for one month though. I had never been "still" before. I was always moving, like a ball in a pinball machine. My father had sent me a Kindle for Xmas the year before with an Amazon gift card that read "Take some time to just be still." I fell in love with "stillness". It became my crutch, my excuse for needing balance in my life. All of the goals and dreams that ran through my head, competing for attention, began slipping away. This is not necessarily a bad thing. I was way over-extended. After the thesis was submitted, and I was notified of my graduation, I reveled in the STILLNESS even more. My body was not used to this nor was my brain. But, since my goals and dreams had sort of slipped out of my head and gotten lost somewhere, I wasn't sure what to think or do. As for MOVE, I made every excuse not to go to the gym. Usually, all my new-found free time was filled in with work responsibilities. Sad, but true. I kept wondering how I had managed for the past 2 1/2 years. I also got sick for the first time in ages, and after not being able to eat for a week, I went back to food and forgot about my diet. You see, I had been making progress up to that point.

I don't blame STILLNESS for ruining the word MOVE for me. It didn't ruin it. Without MOVE, I am not sure I would have finished my thesis on time. (My friend says I would have because that's just the way I am though.) Without MOVE, there would be no STILLNESS. Sometimes, you need to accept the opposite of reality to force you to learn something new. I learned that balance is important, that stillness is important, not just to me, but also to my family. You see, they LOVE it when I sit down and cuddle with them to watch a movie or a favorite TV show. And friends too. My friends don't want to get together to go for runs or play tennis. They want to sit in coffee shops all afternoon and chat and gossip. (Bad friends, but I am right there with them!) No more ball in a pinball machine.

Now, that doesn't mean that I was considering BALANCE as my 2014 word. By December of 2013, the words that kept flashing in my mind were "Simple", Simplify", Simplicity". I craved simple, uncomplicated days. I felt completely overwhelmed. My to-do lists were starting to creep up on me again, my job was brimming with grading responsibilities, and my dreams and goals were starting to slip back into my brain, needling at it and crying for attention. Well-meaning friends were asking me about my job search, and I had to break it to them. I wasn't searching for anything. Our house was in chaos - this layer of chaos covered over the once carefully-organized structure I had arranged years ago. My kids needed more attention from me, and I wondered what would become of my relationship with my husband. It had been on the back-burner for the past 3 years, and I wondered if he still wanted anything from me or if he had long ago given up.

How could "Simplify" help me, help us, become a united family again?

My word for 2014 is SIMPLIFY. Where it shall lead, I know not, but it is the getting there that will be a fun adventure for us. And, Mama shall lead the way!

If you are interested in taking the One Little Word class with Ali Edwards, click on the link. There is also a closed/secret Facebook group for members of the class to share their work and communicate about their progress. It's a wonderful and inspiring atmosphere.