Ta da! The last bit from last year!

Just one more thing I’m waiting for Andrew to do and then this gets put on the shelf with all my scrapbooks (which I need to show you sometime).

Since we’re already almost done with January, I won’t get too mushy or reflective.

But I will say that Project Life is (without a doubt) one of the best things I could have done in 2012. I didn’t have a great year. House + kittens, yes, but a lot of stress headaches and frustrations and other things. I finally got all my (boxes and boxes) of scrapbooking supplies out of storage after 4 years – and realized I didn’t care about them any more.

I had paid a monthly fee for 4 years to keep all this stuff and now that I have it back I don’t care ….

… at least about “traditional” scrapbooking.

Project Life is different. And Project Life helped me get back into memory keeping again.

Which gave me an awesome creative outlet when the stress headaches just would not leave me alone.

I’m hoping over this next year to get more into my supplies, find what I will USE and get rid of what I won’t. And tell more stories.

And live more stories.

But anyway … onward with the last few weeks of the year…

Most (if not all) of these photos are in my December Daily (interesting doing both projects), but the different format focuses on the stories in a different way.

These are my Project Life spreads from December 2012 (December 3 – 31) …. My weeks run Monday to Sunday – which I love, because they keep the weekends together in a chunk. So the images are *roughly* arranged from Monday on the left to Sunday on the right.

(if you’d like to see the images larger, you should be able to click through to view them on Flickr)

Week 49 : December 3 – 9:

Work work work with a busy Saturday

Left side:

(a bit blurry I just realized)

This week included Fang falling in love with (another) piece of trash).

Andrew had another recording session (Pangea – one of his favorites) and I tried a new pork loin recipe for the first time. And accidentally melted the plastic cover of my meat thermometer. Which is actually glued in that second 3×4 pocket below.

Right side: Mostly Saturday. Also a tad blurry.

Saturday afternoon Joey came over (with his parents) and we got to see how he “walks” and did a quick little impromptu photo shoot in front of our chalkboard wall!

Such a cutie.

Saturday night was Andrew’s work holiday party – at a restaurant nearby. Fancy fancy (and delicious food).

Sunday was my parents’ 35-year wedding anniversary! My mom changed her profile to this photo from their wedding, so I thought it’d be fun to include…

a little detail shot:

I just wrapped this blank journaling card with washi tape (green to match a lot of the colors in the rest of the spread) and stapled the business card on.

Week 50: December 10 – 16

Sick, work, and just a few Christmas-related activities

Left side:

Monday night (at work) I was a wreck. Feeling feverish and nauseous and nearly falling asleep at my desk. Luckily for me our office is freezing cold so on my lunch break I just lay down on the floor by an empty desk, near the cold cold window, and tried to sleep. (Note: You might ask why I didn’t go home. When you drive at least 1 hour without traffic to work, you are committed to staying. If I went home, it would have taken me possibly close to 2 hours in the car. So I might as well just stay at work).

Tuesday morning I was still feeling a bit sick, so I got Andrew to go to the nearby store and get me a thermometer (I don’t know why we didn’t own one before). But it turned out IF I had a fever it was gone. Oh well.

Most of the rest of this page is from Thursday.

I took Thursday off work to go to the midnight show of The Hobbit. SUPER fun date-night for me and Andrew, and if I had gone to work I would have not even gotten home til midnight. Which means perfect reason to take the day off.

But, of course, since the movie wasn’t til midnight we had all day together too

In the morning we went (as per tradition the last few years) with Andrew’s mom to help her pick up her Christmas tree. At the time we also got our own – a 7.5 foot Christmas tree (journaled more here).

Visited Andrew’s g’ma in the nursing home where she was trying to recover from an injury and complications, more errands (library, Sprouts to get candy for the movie) then home!

I searched out a The Hobbit promo photo (this one I chose included the logo already on the image) and added my journaling about the movie directly on top of it.

Fun little piece of pop-culture.

Right side:

Friday began with news about the Sandy Hook Elementary shooting – which colored our whole week. I wanted to include just a little something about it – so I found a (non-graphic) news photo and just added a bit of text with the facts. I think that alone speaks for itself – no need to add my thoughts.

Saturday my mother in law had several family members over for a holiday craft day … .Feeling a bit more Christmasy this week!

Sunday, Andrew broke his iPhone

Quite the eventful week!

another little detail shot:

We bought our fake tree but left a couple of the tags up for a few days. This one (picture below) has visible kitty teeth marks from where the cats crawled up into the tree and hung out for awhile and chewed on it!

brats.

Week 51: December 17 – 23:

work, final Christmas professions and family in town

Left side:

We have been spending some time trying to fix/adjust the water pressure in our master bedroom. The top photo is after an experiment that left the water pressure so high that I went through an ENTIRE tank of hot water with just one (normal-length) shower. Um. Back to the drawing board.

Also this week: Finished up the last bit of Christmas activities. Getting a couple more gifts, moving the Christmas tree and going to Costco to get ready for a house full of guests for 5 days or so.

The bottom right photo here was taken late late Friday night. My brother arrived with his dog, and Fang got caught unprepared – with the dog between her and the safety of the stairs.

Right side:

Basically just Saturday and Sunday. A house full of relatives ALL weekend.

I mean, you can kind of just tell from looking at the photos. I made dinner for 6 people Sat night and brunch for 12 people Sunday morning.

And then I sat in my chair with my laptop and worked the rest of Sunday while my brother taught my cousins poker.

The poor girls were so stressed out by the dog. Fang would be a little brave as long as the dog was lying down or staying still, but then the dog would see her, want to play, act like she wanted to chase Fang and then both cats would cower beneath our bed upstairs for hours.

Insert for this week:

A little Christmas.

Andrew has been Instagramming some photos of our holiday 7″ records so I pulled a couple of those from his phone to include. To prove we HAVE been listening to Christmas music even if the rest of me doesn’t feel very Christmasy.

The back of the insert:

I left the paper blank and just used the page protector as a pocket for the Christmas cards we got.

(The card in front is from the Keegan Grosses, the wedding family photo you see is from this family/wedding)

Week 52: December 24 – 31:

Christmas events and then work and cleaning.

Left side:

Christmas Eve night we did ‘Christmas’ with my family. Andrew told me he had to go into work a little bit that morning – but actually he just drove across town and sat at his mom’s house to borrow her tole paints and personalize these cat ornaments for me Sneaky. Also, I love them …

We had decided “no gifts” except for stockings, but my mom is not a good listener The poor cats were too scared to come down, so they just sat on the landing watching, their heads hanging over the rail. Hilarious and heart breaking

(Christmas day was an insert, below)

Right side:

Andrew’s grandmother died early morning Thursday this week. It was not unexpected, but still, of course, very sad. She had been in a hospital of some kind for about 6 weeks, so all the recent photos of her were heart breaking. I went and found this old photo of Andrew and his brother with their grandmother (from January 2011) and Andrew will be journaling about her on the card next to it.

The rest of the week we just worked and cleaned the house. My parents left Tuesday morning, my brother left early Thursday morning, and then the cats finally got used to not having a dog in the house sometime Friday.

Christmas Day insert:

Christmas Day itself was SUPER low-key. We got up. Said goodbye to my parents, ate a little. Then I went and took a nap. Awesome.

We went over to Andrew’s parents’ across town around 2p, went to visit his g’ma in the hospital, and then did ‘Christmas’ with his parents, sister+family that night.

With Andrew’s brother in Chicago, grandma in the hospital, and all the cousins who have been there for Christmases past not there, it seemed like a really small quiet Christmas.

insert back:

Just photos. Including the Schubert traditional Mexican food Christmas dinner.

AAAAAAND! That’s it! Project Life 2012 is done! Project Life 2013 started ….

Supplies used this month:

• Black Project Life Signature Binder
• Photo Pocket Pages – Big Variety Pack 2 (60 Pages) – Design A only used
• 100 Journaling Cards – 3″ x 4″ with Grid Design
• assorted cardstock from my scrap pile
• washi tape from Freckled Fawn
• white 4×6 index cards

ALSO: I have recently contributed to a Big Picture Classes ebook about Project Life! It’s all about using the Project Life structure to dig a little deeper into your stories. Check out more details including a preview here!

If you have questions about HOW I put these together, you can check out my recent posts on the process with supplies, the process with journaling, the process with photos and the process with design.

Project Life, created by Becky Higgins, is a flexible, easy-to-use, highly customizable way to preserve your memories and record your stories in an easy way. Learn more about getting started with Project Life or check out all my Project Life posts.