Project Life - Project Family Journal

credits: paper from Sahlin Studio 's Sweet story telling,date stamp from Cinzia designs, sticker labels and doodle word art from Karla Dudley, tabs by Shawna Clingerman, heart shapes by Chelle's Creations' Techno Love, 'Today' tag by Gina Cabrera, Ali Edward Word Art 'A Day in the Life'

Yes! Ali Edwards issued the invitation to join her in documenting A Day In the Life, and I thought "why not?"   I started really just documenting hour by hour what I was doing, keying into Evernote on my iphone. As I  recorded I was going, my, this is a very ordinary and routine day, is this going to be extremely boring? As the day went on, it became fun and I was noticing all the daily details, now I was glad the flow of a typical day for me is being recorded! But best of all was Ali's reminder to record feelings/observations/thanksgiving - I did this in red in the layout above, and I have found that this ordinary day is a very Good day. A God-blessed day! And thanksgiving flows. Also loved how Cecilia Madden put it  - read her post here.  I'm quite sure I want to do this again :) This page is 8.5 X 11 and will be going into my Project Life, yay!

By the way this layout is inspired by Jill Sprott's see here.

Credits: Paper from A whimsical heart by Genia Beana, quote by Sahlin Studio, date stamp by beszteri, alpha by Charlie's Degiscrap, numbers by Designs by Lili, camera by Pixel Works, and 'Now' tag by Miss Tina

The above is my P365 photos for the second half (fortnight) of January. It was Chinese New Year  on 23 Jan, so this period was a lot of spring-cleaning and then celebrations with family, relatives, and friends for lots of good food, and catching up, really hectic and great fun. This layout took under an hour using my Template 290 set, very happy with how this is going!

Made two more 12x12 layouts to be printed and included in my PL album: our annual Birthday Prayers for the boys, made into layouts. They are 13 and 15 now, when did this happen?

Credits: Paper by Kaye Winiecki, title mat by Dani Mogstad

I'm really enjoying Project 365 together with Project Life. The planning and thinking of a photo idea for a day really causes me to notice everything more, looking for the significant in a day, or finding the routine that I want to remember. Looking at the photos building up day by day really heightens the sense that the days and months are passing by so quickly, have to sieze the day, make them count! 

So I'm feeling that I want my Project Life to be a Project Family Journal. I want to capture not just  how we lived, but what we faced, what we prayed, how God might be speaking or guiding us, our thanksgivings, what touched us, stuff like that. Especially with two teenage boys, I've found that PL is a great conversation opener, where they might share what they are feeling, read what their parents' are writing or thinking about, or feel important about. 

Here are the PL pages for January. I'm totally up to date!

Memorabilia from when the boys attended youth church camp are included here, including letters & commitment they wrote to themselves & us,  prayers they wrote, flare badges, etc. Very meaningful. 

More pics from January, I only picked out those I have more story to tell, like this top right one of dh teaching Jared to tie his school tie, and the bottom rows of lego men all lined up, ready for battle, a familiar sight in my home :)

Here is a drawing Jared made when he visited the D'Orsay museum art exhibition at our local National Museum with his Art classmates.

The back page shows the pamphlet he took back from the exhibition.

The top left photo in the page below was the video we were watching of Ryan as a baby!! Every birthday (they share the party as their birthdays are only 4 days apart) it is a tradition to replay parts of their baby videos, we love it. More photo  and journaling too of Chinese New Year.

I'm completely caught up for 2012, but 2011 album is still being completed, I rushed out 8 more layouts recently:

This is Ryan: he is awesome!

We visited the Closing sale of Borders (sob) and bought all these books (yay)

Just one layout for Christmas!

With our favourite little toddler ...

The last of the Primary school carnivals for us ....

This amazing game that Jared created. Most of his friends play it and they have their own wikipedia-style web site!

A day we spent nearly heat-stroked, lost and just having a ridiculous adventure.

With one of my best friends 

All of these are available in template 293 set 

Feel free to download this template HERE and  capture a day in your life with it! :)

Layout Inspiration

I love seeing layouts made from the templates, it's amazing how they are transformed into unique layouts in each one's own style. I have been 'collecting' a lot of these layouts that have been shared with me,  love to share some major inspirations!

Thank you to all the ladies for sharing, sorry I held onto to some of them for so long! :P

(Reply to comment on my last post, hsmom asked which app my dh uses on his android phoe to capture    his 365 phosos: The android app my dh uses is 365 photos - it does not present the view as well as my iphone app, but it's functional in terms of capturing the photo, tracking them by days on calendar, and being able to export for my scrapping use, so good enough!)

First up, a lovely scene of gift-giving by Anja Breuer

Here is an  amazing scene from the Netherlands, Grid Doerenkamp shares the story behind it: 

 In our village we started a new tradition last year: a crib-walk. Lots of families put a christmas crib outside their house or in the window. Some dedicated women put them all together on a list and made a nice route to walk past each of them. Last year we did three days with each  a two-hour-walk over the whole route! This year there will be even more cribs to be seen, ca. 130 families participate - us included, of course!  It's fun to see how different the cribs all are. Some are big, some tiny, some have only three figures and a cabin, some show a whole landscape with mountains and houses and even a train, some are made with dolls and some with Playmobil. It's really nice to see and I have photographed them all. Some of them are seen on my layout. The village in the background is our village where we live.

And the following are just so cute layouts by Kim, who also did the fabulous LOVE layout which I posted in last year's post here. Love the photos of her kids and how her layout focuses on them!

Karen Mathre does an amazing amount of layouts all the time of her family and so much that they do together:

and this sweetie-pie layout and the yummy one next are both by Marlyn Ramirez from the Philippines!

And here are some amazing layouts by Michelle Rice of her a Round the World trip via Russia, Mongolia and China!

Here's a cute 'scary' layout by Aimee Hernandez

Next is this lovely happy layout by Kathryn :)

And be charmed by this vacation layout by 'Be Charmed Photography'!

And then there are the always awesome layouts with awesome photos from Tawn  @Homemakin' Girl

Thank you to all you wonderful ladies for sharing these layouts with us!

Project 365 + Project Life!

First I would like to wish all who celebrate the Lunar New Year a Blessed Lunar New Year!! We are in the midst of  hectic and wonderful celebrating with family and friends and having a great time meeting especially our extended family, including my cousins, their children and grandchildren!

Yes! After a few months enjoying Ali Edwards' Project Life pages and camping at Becky Higgins blog for the last few weeks, deliberating how I will go about it, I have jumped in onto Project Life, and am loving it!

When I finally made the decision in the first week of Jan, I went straight into Amazon, bought the Turquoise edition, the orange Clementine binder, and photo pockets B & F because everything else was out of stock, and I WANT to get started! Then I had to pay an incredible (Shhh!) amount of shipping for it to be shipped to Singapore. Last week just before my stuff arrived, I realised that Project Life is available in Singapore (silly me!) and ran down to Scraplicious to purchase photo pockets A and the 12X12 pockets, and I was all set! 

And here's my Cover page - scraplifting from Jennifer Woodbury's page featured on Becky's blog.

I was very happy to include our family's favorite verse Micah 6:8, using the word art I made for our living room! Also used the curvy outlined label from 'I like you' by Lauren Grier (recolored) used twice below - printed, cut out and adhered onto the Project Life cards.

I love that we can include physical memorabilia in PL, which I miss in making digital albums, scanning them is not quite the same.

And remember these pages from my Project 365 in 2009? We love that album for capturing everyday life!

Now I only want one album for the year, and it must all be do-able, tell our stories of our 2012 without too much time and cost .... putting all of these desires together, after much deliberation, this is my plan for my 2012 Project Life album:

• capture daily 365 photos  in fortnightly 12x12digital  layouts to be printed out and slot into Project Life Binder
• print 3x4 or 4x6 of the everyday life photos that I want to give special mention + journal on the PL journal cards, and slot into the photo pockets 
• include memorabilia using the photo pockets 
• add 12x12 digital layouts for special events or memories as I feel like it 

Here's my first fortnight's Photo 365 layout - I love how it turned out :) I think I will be able to keep this up !

Credits: Background paper from Digital Design Essentials, camera stamp by Listgirl, date word art by Lauren Reid, corners by Lauren Grier, and alpha by Lili  + Yin Template 290 B.

Have made eight of such 12x12 templates, they contain 15 or 16 photos each, to make up a month, I will be  keeping the embellishment minimal so they don't take too much time, and focus on the photos and journalling- the set is available in the store in case you are interested in joining me in the fortnightly layouts - we will complete the year in 24 layouts, how's that?

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Thanks to Steph's article on Project 365 on The Daily Digi, I found and downloaded an App that is really helping me keep up with P365, using my iphone to take and keep track of the daily photos. This is the one I use: PROJECT 365 but they all work quite similarly. Here's my month's photos so far in calendar view:

It's working so well I've persuaded dh and the boys to download the android equivalent so they too can take photos from their point of view, and be incorporated in our family's 365 layouts!

I also hope to use our Project Life album to capture and be our family journal for reflections, family devotions, prayers and anything else that speaks to us as a family. On the first of January, we spent a bit of time talking about our One Little Word (we did it last year too but I failed to capture it on a layout). I printed out four copies of the word list from Ali's blog and each of us had a highlighter pen to circle the word(s) that speak to us. Now I'm able to incorporate them into our PL album!! I love that with PL, we can be a lot more up to date with capturing the everyday and the now, and can flip through them as the year progresses. I hope this will be meaningful for the whole family.

And finally, I am in the midst of finishing up our 2011 album, there are probably about 10 more layouts to go, and these are two of them, just quick and simple layouts, templates are being shared below.

These are now available as part of Template Pack 7 in the store. Thanks for your interest!

 Do share how you plan to capture 2012 memories, and if you have layouts to share, email them to me at yindgs at yahoo dot com dot sg, I will choose some to post on my blog. Thank you so much!

Blessed Christmas! “Therefore, since we have been made right in God’s sight by faith, we have peace with God because of what Jesus Christ our Lord has done for us.” (Romans 5:1 NLT)
May you know and experience the Reason for the season - we are the reason for His Coming! We are blessed indeed!

I remembered this video that Tracey shared last year, it is so wonderful to have a joyful moment of worship and praises amid bouts of shopping and present frenzy :)

We are just back from Beijing, we had a great, great time. I managed to limp all over Beijing, even up the magnificent Great Wall. Here are some pics from our trip

Blessed Christmas everyone!