Project Life 2011

Last year, I posted HERE about Project Life, a "scrapbooking without the scrapbooking" project that encourages you to take a picture every day. I heard about it a little bit late last year, so my album started in February. If you know me at all, You know that I always have about fifty projects going on at once.  As excited as I was about beginning the project last year, I was really skeptical about actually finishing it. Taking a picture each day is a huge commitment and one that I wasn't sure I was really ready for.

But surprisingly, I did it! Okay, not completely. Half of October, and November and December have no photos yet. Since I got a little bit hehind on printing them, I decided that I didnt' want to waste the money/ink on printing them all at home, so I waited for a great deal on prints. Until yesterday, Snapfish was running a 99 prints for 99cents deal, so I ordered them all yesterday and can't wait for the package to arrive so that I can stick them in.

Last year, I wrote about looking forward to using the project to help our strengthen our relationship. Although I was extremely excited and couldn't wait for Olivia to be born, I was a little bit worried about the fact that our first major priority would be  the baby, instead of having time to spend together as a newly married couple before we began our family. After she died, I knew that I wanted to redirect my focus to making our engagement and then our marriage as strong as possible.

I have to say, that it really, really worked. The project not only encouraged me to take a photo each day, which helped me learn about my then-new camera and motivated me to learn more about photography, but also encouraged us to get out and do more fun things. If we spent too many days laying around, the album was boring and I was ready to get out of the house and find something fun to do.

So many proponents of the project were moms with small children, who wanted to document their daily life at home so that they wouldn't miss a moment of those early years that pass way too quickly. I wasn't sure how the project would work for us, but I am happy to say that I loved it. I'm excited to have a record of almost every single day of our life together as a couple, and hopefully continue the project as we begin to have more children. If our children inherit any of my personality, hopefully they will enjoy having something tangible to look back at. I used to ask my mom a lot of questions about their early married days and about when they were dating - I think it would be so cool to have something like the Project Life album to look through. These albums are definitely going to become family heirlooms that hopefully our future kids will cherish. If we have boys who could care less about this type of thing, hopefully they'll eventually have wives who want them.

I am SUPER excited about doing the project again this year. Becky Higgins released two different versions, a feminine one and a more gender neutral version. Both can be ordered from Amazon.com, HERE, if you are interested. My album arrived last week and I have been having so much fun putting it together.

One thing I didn't participate in last year was Project Life Tuesday, hosted by Jessica Turner at The Mom Creative. Bloggers post their 7 days worth of photos each week, and link up over on The Mom Creative. Jessica is one of my favorite bloggers and one of my scrapbooking inspirations. This year, I'm going to. I think it will encourage me to get my photos uploaded and edited in a more timely fashion, and hopefully printed and into my album a little bit faster. Look for my first post when Project Life Tuesday 2011 kicks off tomorrow!